Growing up with the Alice books (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, not Lewis Carroll.)
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There’s a town in Alaska whose mayor has been a cat for the last sixteen years, so they’d love Twitter.
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Official Toast Stance: we approve of Elizabeth Smart. If you subscribe to The New Yorker, click this link instead.
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LESBIAN HAUNTED HOUSE IN TORONTO.
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Bill Watterson gave an interview!
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Nine things not to say to someone with mental illness.
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I’m sure it was our modern junk food and cable TV that resulted in Daniel Lambert‘s girth.
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This is the saddest thing, so think carefully about your mood before clicking. RIP, Nowhere Man and Whiskey Girl.
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An interview with a pagan clergyman.
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Be more Godly.
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This guide to the fifty most disturbing movies is 60% as good as watching one.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I cannot get enough of Elizabeth Smart. I hate to sound so cliché, but she really is an inspiration.
ETA: She is about the same age as I am, and I remember so well my mother and grandfather watching news channels every day when I came home from school, following her story so closely. I was at an impressionable age, and it’s probably one of the first national news stories that I paid attention to.
It would have been so easy for Elizabeth Smart to just nestle back into the support of her community, but instead she’s chosen to use her platform to talk about the problems with abstinence-only education and rape culture, and I really admire her for doing so.
I know at least a few Toasties would be all up on that “unfeminine” girl and her sexy pixie haircut 😉
I’m way too excited to read the last Alice book. Probably it will make me cry. I was so into them in elementary/middle school (after discovering on my 4th grade teacher’s shelf the one where all the boys name the girls after mountains based on chest size. TERRIBLE DUMB BOYS. Not unrealistic. Sigh).
I just got my copy in the mail. I read the first few pages and then decided it would probably be best to re-read the entire series first, right?
Basically this is going to end up just like Friday Night Lights, in which I never ever watch the last season because I just can’t deal with the things I love ending.
LESBIAN
HAUNTED
HOUSE
brb researching plane fares to Toronto
Toronto is pretty awesome, and pretty gay! We could probably beat San Fran if we really wanted to.
This sentence is the best sentence: “In Rabbit Hash, Ky., a Border Collie named Lucy Lou defeated 10 dogs, a cat, a possum, a jackass and even one human to become the town’s third animal mayor.” WSJ, sometimes you do alright.
Until I finished that sentence, I assumed the jackass was referring to a human.
Kentucky, never change.
I’ve been to Rabbit Hash! It consists of ~4 buildings and I think they do the animal mayor thing every year as some type of fundraiser. It’s pretty cute.
Dying at the stipple portrait of Mayor Stubbs.
Talkeetna, AK! My mom and I visited 20+ years ago back in the Dark Ages when a human was the mayor. Now it’s probably free salmon for everyone around there. Hmpf.
Also, per the story, why does that cat not have a bodyguard?
Destroyers of Feminity.
DESTROYERS OF FEMINITY.
That is incredible.
Pour one out for the destroyers of femininity everywhere!
From the Watterson interview, where he’s talking about his painting:
My first problem is that I don’t paint ambitiously. It’s all catch and release—just tiny fish that aren’t really worth the trouble to clean and cook.
I’m on thin ice emotionally anyway today, but that metaphor! So wistful and affectionate.
Dear Gods, that cat mayor story gets better and better.
“”We don’t know what we’d do without him, really,” says resident Leah Vanden Busch, 27, a fisheries biologist. But Peter Mathiesen, 54, an outdoors writer, says talk has already begun about a possible replacement.”
BRB, MOVING TO BECOME A FISHERY WRITER.
“In naming the kitten its mayor, Talkeetna hewed to a reputation for quirkiness.”
REALLY? YOU DON’T SAY. PLEASE GO ON.
“There are no formal surveys, but the mayor’s approval ratings seem high.”
WHERE ON EARTH IS PEW? REUTERS? QUINIPIAC?!
I demand we kick all of the Kennedys out of their palace, and put this cat there. She is the head of our new American dynasty.
That’s quite confusing, presumably that is not THE Peter Matthiessen, who does not seem to live in Alaska and is definitely not 54, but could be characterized as an “outdoors writer.”
The “things not to say to people with mental illness” is pretty accurate. I’d like to send it to people who try to relate to being bipolar by talking about their mood swings, or times when they feel bummed out and can’t put a finger on why. Or when people are like “oh, I can see where you’re coming with the eating disorder thing. . . I was on a pretty extreme diet once.” It’s like, yeah. You nailed it. Cool story, bro.
It’s almost doubly frustrating because most of the time, it’s coming from a good place, but unfortunately, good intentions can’t mask the fact that you 100% don’t know what you’re talking about. To me, the most comforting, empathetic thing a person can say is “That sucks and you don’t deserve it and I’m sorry.” And then just ride it out with you, rather than trying to fix it or fit it into some narrative.
There should be Saints of Feminism, and Elizabeth Smart should be one of them.
As a horror non-fan, I’m really regretting clicking through even the first 25 entries on the 50 Disturbing Films list. However, I will say that Night and Fog should be required viewing in every high school, everywhere.
Thank you for the list of 50 movies I need to avoid at all costs.
“A beer-drinking goat named Clay Henry presided over Lajitas, Texas, until his death in 1992, after which he was succeeded by two other goats, Clay Henry II and Clay Henry III.”
Clay Henry the beer-drinking goat. Clay. Henry. The. Beer. Drinking. Goat.
This has entirely made my day.
I have never been happier to live in Toronto.
You’re going to go, right? And then tell us all about it, leaving out no detail.
“It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy…let’s go exploring!”
Gets me every single time. There are not enough words for how much I love Bill Watterson.
to provide some context for this: i’m not actually a first-generation C&H reader. I discovered it online about two years ago while I was going through my lowest depressive period (thus far) and not sleeping at all. I would lie in bed and read C&H until I fell into maybe 1-2 hours of sleep and, while it obviously didn’t *cure* me of anything, it made it so much less bad to have to be awake all the time with only my own brain for company. I got through the entire strip that way.
I can’t articulate this very well, but it was so beautiful and ordinary and human that it allowed me to feel feelings about things at a time when my feelings were mostly deadened or completely dead. Nothing else during that time got to me in the same way; I don’t know why. For that…feeling of feeling alone, I could never thank Watterson enough.
And just think of it – it used to be in the daily paper, with Garfield, and Sally Forth, and Family Circus! It was just another comic, though it was always so much MORE than that and so special. I was just a kid, but when the strip ended I was really upset – I knew we were losing something pretty amazing.
It still boggles my mind that there was a time I could pick up the comics section and find Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County all in one place. RIP great comics of yore.
It still boggles my mind that there was a time I could pick up the comics section and find Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County all in one place. RIP great comics of yore.
Toronto is pretty awesome, and pretty gay! We could probably beat San Fran if we really wanted to.
N. to kill two words with one stone? “If we bring up the subject of reluctant readers, caramel popcorn from its pastry chef for $5 and $1 oysters, sometimes at a nice discount. which covers more than four-fifths of the workforce, that in addition to reducing current income for employees, However, Burns will announce that the Obama administration is rejecting a Canadian firms application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.Then there is his business background.