What happens when you revisit the woefully misremembered science fiction of your youth? Joe Howley (Latin teacher) and Johannah King-Slutzky (internet wraith) asked adults to re-read their genre favorites from childhood. For the second in our series, we talked to bona fide adult Dave Klion, a foreign policy analyst and editor at World Politics Review, about Frank Herbert's 1965 epic, Dune. We spoke with Dave via Gchat about how Dune affected…
Gretchen McCulloch's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Sometimes people tell me, as a linguist, that they're surprised I swear so much. They think linguists must have a mystic access to the higher realms of the language and that we oughtn't to sully ourselves with anything as profane as swearing. But what makes swearing so profane is social factors, not linguistic ones, because linguistically, swear words are fucking fascinating. In fact,…
At the time of this writing, the Walt Disney Company does not control the weather in Orlando, Florida, but for some reason it is a surprise to arrive at Disney World's French Quarter resort under cover of darkness during a mild cloudburst, a little like catching your grandmother sleeping in church. We, that is my wife Pamela and I, accidentally arrive on Disney Gras, a chaste celebration that extends from Fat Tuesday all the way…
Anne is usually described as the intelligent, cultured, beautiful wife of the doctor in Glen St. Mary, Prince Edward Island. But her mysterious origins may hold a key to the bizarre episodes of her time-traveling children.
Those of us who spent our childhood and teenage years obsessively reading L.M. Montgomery books instead of getting drunk in basements and smoking illicit cigarettes in our friends’ cars (full disclosure: definitely did way
In the summer of 2004, I quit my first full-time job—teaching high school—and answered an alt-weekly ad that asked "Do you love New Orleans history? Do you love to tell stories?" followed by a date, a time, and the location of a 24-hour bar.
My job interview lasted a week: I read and memorized stories, shadowed other guides, and took the city-mandated drug test and history exam. In a week,
Some say the best way to get to know a city is to take a ghost tour. Most of those people are ghosts. The following is a review of ghost tours I have participated in, with analysis of the haunting level of each. Next week, The Toast will feature a piece by a ghost tour conductor!
A few years ago, when my brother's girlfriend was pregnant, my mom called to tell me that nearly the entire carton of eggs in the fridge had double yolks inside.
OK?
“It means your brother is going to have twins.” (Obviously.) That idea popped into her head with the first egg, but she kept going. Two yellow yolks plopped out of several eggs.
Feed them a liquid diet through the bars of a cage. Use a hamster water bottle to slow them down on the protein shakes and avocado smoothies because they don’t know when to stop. Makes the plan more affordable. Also the clicky noise the the ball bearing makes as it releases drops of liquid will reassure you that they are still alive.
Caroline O'Donoghue's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
When I was in college, my University allowed me the option of studying several film history courses. If you're nodding, that is because you also did an English degree, and half of the reason why you did it was because they promised you there would be film history courses, or art courses, or another kind of course that you didn't have
Felix Kent's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
A General Note:
I grew up in Los Angeles, in a household which many people would describe as New Age. A lot of things I believed then I no longer believe, or, more accurately, no longer believe are my business. However, certain habits of mind are ineradicable; one that I have been unable to eradicate is my desire to
Cara Ellison’s “Sacrilege” is a small game, in that one playthrough takes about five minutes, even while playing it furtively on a work computer when anyone could walk by and see what you’re doing or hear the music playing at such a low volume that you almost don’t realize it’s playing at all. It’s a small game, but it is also expansive. It’s more than the sum of its parts. It says
He stands with his back to the room, gazing out a window glazed with rain, a snifter of fine Scotch gripped tightly in his left hand. I notice the whiteness of his knuckles, the hair curling over them in still-black rococo swirls. He is still angry. He doesn’t know I’m watching him. That fact makes something unfurl warmly in my abdomen--a rush of heat, like a heating pad that warms you from the inside, said…
The following phrases have been excerpted from an English to Latin textbook printed in the early 16th century (Auct. 2Q 5.9(4)), which has been digitized by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford as part of an ongoing project. You can read the whole thing here or learn more about the project here. (You can also follow us on Twitter if you like the sound of #damagedmanuscriptThursday.) 1. Good morrowe. Good…
I had been living in North Carolina for five years before anyone told me that Dirty Dancing was filmed at Lake Lure, a summery vacation spot just a couple of hours away from me. This information was shocking, like learning that God resided quite nearby and was up for visitors.
I got out my atlas and circled the blue dot with a pencil. Just a small circle, so I could find
I wake up in a cheap motel off of the interstate, in a small anonymous town somewhere between Fort Laramie and Boise. It’s August 2015, the middle of summer, and I’m freezing. Motels always seem to overshoot the mark in comfort, temperature wise, but I’m grateful for the real mattress and the clean sheets. Most nights I sleep in the back of my van or on my friends’ couches. I’ve spent the last
