You’ve always wanted the backstory to “monkey torture,” have you not?
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We will be meeting-up in Toronto on Friday (this Friday!) the 31st at 7:30pm in some reasonable proximity to Yorkville, ’cause that’s where I’m staying (it doesn’t really have to be there, but it would be nice.) Tell me where we should go and if you’re coming in the comments, and I’ll call bars and book us a room. Or one of you can! Some of you seem very enterprising.
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brb buying a new book about Heloise
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How much does Thomas Lennon look like Kenneth Branagh? There’s no link here, it’s just a general observation.
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Reading history typically does two paradoxical things: it tunes you in to the unique, specific fuckery and magic of your own moment, while simultaneously proving the old adage, “Same shit, different day.”
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Will read anything about Lizzie Borden, day or night.
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Turns out that “Drunk in Love” and the Song of Solomon have a lot in common (you might spot a familiar sister-of-Mallory byline here).
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Scotland’s prison hairdressing competition! Watch this half-hour documentary.
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Q: You illustrate that one moment in the book, where you realize you’re just not going to get [your mother’s] approval.
Bechdel: It certainly was an important moment for me, that realization that I was not going to get what I wanted. It was very freeing. I keep using that word “freeing” or “liberating.” I feel like Houdini sometimes, like I’m just getting out of one set of shackles after another, hanging upside down inside a burlap bag with handcuffs on. Hopefully one day, I’m going to get out of this tank of water.
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Lauren Haldeman is a lovely poet.
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How a substandard abortion provider stays in business, via The New Yorker.
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Seasonal Affective Disorder Olympics:
DOWNHILL
A brash alarm begins its unforgiving beep. It’s the morning; dawn peeks through your window.
“It’s all downhill from here,” you say.
Bronze medal.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
First? Woo!
I have yet to go to these links (but I will!), I just wanted to pop in and nominate Sunday’s Sherlock (the wedding one) as the best Sherlock yet. Any seconds? My God, for the dancing alone. Also, I’m not viewing any Sherlock in advance, so if it gets even better next week, let me be surprised, please.
OK, that is all!
I’m finding it so interesting that people either loved or hated this episode. I was in the latter camp, but I want to know what makes it either someone’s favorite episode, or leaves them debating whether to score it below Blind Banker. (Okay, I disliked it, but I’d never put it below Blind Banker.)
It definitely had some of my favorite individual moments… and I did appreciate what they did with the first real mystery of the season, even if everything except motive and method of murder were pretty obvious (and motive really should have been, let’s be honest).
Count me in the loved it camp. I know I have a weakness for sentimentality, so there’s that. On the opposing side, there might be people who are upset that the case solving was not the central theme.
One interesting thought as well might be that given the nature of a “season” of Sherlock, folks might be more emotional in their reactions vs the reaction to an episode of a show that fits more in the normal mode. When you have what might be considered little, every bit matters.
YES. This. I wouldn’t have minded sacrificing one episode to silliness, if there hadn’t been only three. I want murder! Tightly plotted, frightening murder!
People hated it? Man, I’m out of the loop on Sherlock fangirling. Big time. I liked that the three crimes were randomly linked. I liked all the sentimental stuff. I liked Mycroft on a treadmill. I liked him dancing (which I’ve said) – the idea of him as a slightly more human alien. I liked that the head bridesmaid latched onto him. I liked Molly’s horrible yellow bow. I absolutely loved “Oh What a Night” as the last song on the dance floor, with him turning around, back to being an alien. (Am I misremembering that that’s the song? I do that.) What else? I guess I could go on for ages. I think you’re right – favorite individual moments. I do think the drunk thing went on slightly too long, but it was still great.
Do I want to know the parts you hated? Did something happen with the clowns at the beginning? I need to rewatch, had to step out right in the middle of the intro.
Lastly, I read the fantastic Molly/Lestrade fanfic recommended here last week, mentioned it to my husband and he said, “That would work, actually. Why haven’t they done that?” and I fell in love with him a little bit more. Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble about Sherlock – like I said, out of the fangirl loop (been burned by other shows as far as losing myself too much, so that it interferes with my real life), but I really do love talking about this. Moderation is the key, right?
I need to clarify a couple of hims! I liked him dancing refers to Sherlock. In the last paragraph, fell in love with my husband a little bit more. OK then!
I loved this ep! I had v v many Feelings and have already watched it twice. I wonder if it is partially because I hated ep 3.1 THE MOST, always excepting Blind Banker. I remember when I originally read the ACD stories I really experienced Watson marrying as such a loss! I always wanted John and Sherlock to be together with their camaraderie and adventures and weird cozy domesticity. I mean, also I pretty much read the stories as straightforward wish-fulfillment that aloof weirdos with abstruse interests would find someone perfect for them who completely accepted them, but with murders, so my interpretations might be PERSONALLY COMPROMISED.
Did you like the season premiere?
Personally, I think this episode was where I gave up on my preconceived notions of what it should be which allowed me to appreciate what it currently is. The mysteries don’t really make sense, and the world continues to bend itself around Sherlock, but it’s fun and stylish and silly without being stupid and that’s enough (for me) to be an enjoyable show. I thought all of the characters got some good character moments, and I like that they deviated from canon by having Sherlock be supportive of John getting married and I continue to like their treatment of Mary.
I hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated it. Worse than Blind Banker by a country mile. It was obvious, and had some really awful comedy women in, and the murder was bloody silly, and Moffat did his Introduce Person Of Colour Kill Them Swiftly thing, and I hated the clumsy horrible typefaces at the beginning, and I hated the sentimental Sherlock, and I hated hated hated drunk Sherlock, because that isn’t something he would do, god dammit, and he would have noticed, and it was stupid, and Sherlock is many things but stupid is not one of them and OH I HATED IT SO MUCH.
However.
However.
I loved the third episode completely, and since realising that the original scheduling for TV must have been Guy Fawkes’-Christmas Eve- Christmas Day, I have forgiven them some of the gaiety. I think I would have enjoyed it more on Christmas Eve with a brandy.
I am in the ‘loved it’ camp, 100%! I really enjoyed the change of tone and pace (and getting a break from my Moriaty-induced nightmares), I really liked seeing Sherlock have actual feelings, underneath all his genius. Drunk Sherlock, funniest thing ever!
I just try to take the show as a different thing entirely to the books, I guess, it’s the same strategy I use in order to thoroughly enjoy the Hobbit movies!
For your consideration.
whoa
really? Dunno. Maybe it’s just that I’m around northern European types a lot, but they look really different to me — Kenneth Branagh has a much more oval, narrow face and a bigger mouth, while Thomas Lennon’s nose has super-angled nostrils.
Their coloring is what’s the same, that’s all — no?
All white guys look alike.
(I actually don’t see a lot of resemblance, but I figured I’d put the pictures up to save everyone some googling.)
THANK YOU I WAS JUST ABOUT TO GOOGLE. Also I want to give you seven dozen points. Oh well.
What sticks out to me is how much craggier Kenneth Branagh is. Not that it’s a bad thing, just an observation.
I don’t see it!
If anything Kenneth Branagh looks like Ewan McGregor in that picture.
I don’t see any resemblance whatsoever. And Thomas Lennon usually has darker hair, and thus usually looks even more unlike Branagh.
Also, I don’t know who these people are who are getting up when dawn is actually visible, but they clearly already have a leg up in the SAD Olympics.
*Waves sadly from Great Britain* WOMP WOOMMMP
*waves sadly back from next to my sun replacement lamp in my windowless office*
Science claims we will see the sun again, someday.
I saw Lizzie Borden’s passport application at the National Archives! That is all.
My Lizzie Borden knowledge is fairly limited but after reading this article I want to learn more. Who wants to link me to their favorite case analysis?
I’m trying to find it online but without success so far – Florence King wrote a chapter about her in one of her books. I can’t think offhand which one I read it in, but it’s in ‘The Florence King reader’. I will come back if I do find it online anywhere!
Aha – here it is: http://old.nationalreview.com/king/king2004080612…
Has anyone seen the play Blood Relations? It’s a really interesting look at Lizzie Borden.
lol. great comment on that drunk in love piece:
“As if!!! This is BLASPHEMY! How can you compare that stupid song with the bible! This is no where near the beautiful scriptural love of the Song of Songs or the Song of Soloman. NEVER… They come out with some dumb articles. SMH!”
The Bible, SMH.
ETA: If this is a tasteless joke, someone tell me!
i think its not tasteless unless you say SMDH because obviously damn + bible = tasteless. OR SOMETHING.
SEX HAS NO PLACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.
You’re kidding, right? The Old Testament is nothing BUT sex and violence. And weird food rules.
*Decidedly* kidding. (Man, my ninth grade English class was tittering a *lot* during that semester. Emphasis on the Lot! *slide whistle!*)
“Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit”. – “I’ll climb you like a tree”, old testament style
I would just like to share with the group that once upon a time, when I was roughly twelve or thirteen, I was reading the Song of Solomon during church when I was bored with the sermon, and it helped me figure out that oral sex on women was A Thing. Thanks, Bible!
Yes thank you me too!!
Heloise! But that article really made me want to read more of what Barbara Newman has to say about Heloise, not to buy the book. How can I trust an editor who suppresses Heloise’s use of “que” to express her gendered reality in Latin style?!? These and other questions.
It’s true! I wonder what would be a better edition/introduction?
Thinking about that, I did find this free online webpage with a public translation of the letters plus a poem by Alexander Pope about Heloise & Abelard and this nicely wacky painting of them with Fulbert popping in from behind and surprising them: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/aah/
Also: their child was named Astrolabe?!
They named their child Astrolabe. They actually named their child Astrolabe. This is kinda proving the point of the “reading history” article quote, it’s the So’Unique or Lemonjello of olden days.
Oh, and RIP Pete Seeger! I did the roundup before I went to bed.
Also: RIP The Queen’s money. Mycroft would never have let that happen on his watch.
Bathtub full of gluhwein sounds like a good time.
Immediately post-college, when pre-gaming in tiny apartments, at least one of these events involved making sangria (cheap wine, cheap rum, cheap fruit!) in plastic storage tubs. The bathtup really only seems a logical extension.
I clicked on the Heloise link thinking “Oh how nice, a book about Hints from Heloise!” and started thinking that maybe she had some kind of salacious/intriguing/sad backstory. But it’s Abelard&Heloise. Still good but with less tips for using vinegar around the home.
Is it wrong that this was my same impulse too?
Precisely the progression of my thoughts, as well.
I was SO CONFUSED.
brb doing a post about this now
Those poems are great – oof, the first one, I love it so much. Thanks for pointing them out.
yes! “The only time I wasn’t jealous, I was napping.”
It totally can be freeing to realise (and accept) that you’re not going to get someone’s approval! I can remember going through the same thing with my mother, and the difference between the sick feeling I used to get whenever I would try and deal with her and the rational but loving way I am able to do so now is just night and day. It’s so hard to know that you can get to that point when you’re still wrapped up in seeking their approval, but it can be so important to learn.
Thank you for the Lizzie Borden link, through which I discovered Angela Carter’s “Mise-en-Scene for a Parricide.” It is one of the best things I have read in recent months!
Angela Carter’s everything is wonderful.
Any suggestions for what of hers I ought to read next?
I like the Bloody Chamber collection, which is mostly dark fairytales, but all her short stories are fantastic -they’re collected in Burning Your Boats. For novels, Nights At The Circus is pretty good, a sweeping epic with a lot of humour, and The Magic Toy Shop is beautiful but grim and twisted.
I’m really excited to read Cuisine and Empire!
Wow, that Bechdel quote is such a good explanation of how life feels…
(PS – today is the Bergy Bits’ 3rd birthday!)
Awww Happy BergDay! 🙂
I wanted to link to a picture of an iceberg birthday cake but they seem to all have the Titanic about to crash into them or penguins falling off of them, which doesn’t really convey a joyous sentiment. So I’ll just echo the above and say Happy BergDay!
This one looks awfully adorable and not really horrifying!
Now I DESPERATELY want that cake to be their real 3rd birthday cake.
I want that cake to be MY next birthday cake!!
Happy Birthday to them, and Happy Survival to YOU. Do they have three little cakes?
They requested cupcakes for their birthday this time, but Mr. Iceberg did make them 1 cake each for their first birthday 🙂
triple 3rd bergday! hurrah!
Happy Bergday, BBs! Mama, I hope you treat yourself to something excellent today. You done good.
There is apparently an ice storm headed for our town this evening, so I think perhaps we won’t be going out for pizza after all. It’s okay, they don’t really have a clear grasp of the whole “boffday” thing anyway apart from that they get cupcakes, so.
Cupcakes know no day or season. Live everyday like it’s your boffday.
<3<3<3
Woohoo! You’ve kept three tiny people with undeveloped frontal lobes alive for three years! That is seriously amazing. I hope you bake an extra cake for yourself.
Someone needs to make a line of birthday cards to that effect.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BERGY BITS and HAPPY BIRTHING DAY ICEY <3 <3 <3
Happy birthday Bergy Bits!!
Damn I dont think I can come to the meetup. This is sad :(. BUT – for venue purposes consider the Vic Cafe or Bedford Academy or No one one writes to the colonel or Sneaky Ds – all within reasonable proximity of Yorkville.
There’s also Nirvana (Bathurst & College, about a 40 minute walk from Yorkville, right across the street from Sneaky Dee’s) and all the places in Kensington, but yeah, for proximity, Victory and the Central are good. Aw mans, I wish I could get my ‘Pin on that day.
P.S. that’s the 31st; have a happy Chinese New Year! that means it bears mentioning that TEN MILE AROMA (near Dundas and Spadina) have FIVE dollar pitchers, but keep it on the DL.
I second Victory, The Central, and No One Writes to the Colonel!
When I saw the Pete Seeger news, I said OH NO, and then I realized that that was fitting, because sometimes my response to news of a death is thank goodness that dirt bag is gone. But Brother Pete will be missed.
Baby Michael Ian Black is so beautiful.
it was my sister!!!!!!
Still desperately hoping for a miniature Kingston meetup. Just me??? Others????
Um, I will totally participate if it happens next time I’m back home!
(it was be good because I have this secret plan to move back to Kingston and I need friends there!)
OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL FRIDAY I’M SO EXCITED/NERVOUS FOR THE MEET UP.
There was a The State reunion last night on that @Midnight show the Nerdist podcast guy hosts! It kept me up later than I should have been up, but I love all of them so much it was worth it. Look!
P.S. Did we know Michael Showalter is Elaine Showalter’s son? That fact never fails to make me happy.
I did not know that! Yet another justification for my years-long crush on Michael Showalter.
I didn’t know that! And I have a HUGE crush on him! According to Wiki, his father is a professor of 18th Century French Literature. !!!
The New Yorker article about the substandard abortion provider is chilling and heartbreaking and furious-making.
Agreed. I’m very glad I read it but now I feel all kinds of things.
There are so many reasons why we can’t just have nice things and they’re complicated and ugh.
Also, I know this is so messed up to think and I don’t exactly really think like this but why is George Tiller dead and this guy is alive? You know? YOU KNOW?! There’s a whole thing to dissect there. Someone operating a sleezy back alley coathanger operation lives to destroy women’s bodies for years and years, someone else who does diligent medical work on high risk patients is hunted like he’s a deer in a forest…. One might take a cynical view and say that protesters go after the good guys first….as the bad guys help prove their point.
Not only prove their point, but support their morality: if pregnancy is a punishment for women having sex, and abortion is wrong because it lets women circumvent that, I’m pretty sure a perforated uterus or sepsis is an acceptable alternative.
I’M SO EXCITED FOR THIS MEETUP YOU GUYS. It will likely be after I have quit my job and I will need approximately 100 drinks and 100 toast hugs to stop being shaky.
Also I don’t actually know where we should go because I’m not around Yorkville often but The Annex is quite close so we can go somewhere around there? We had a Hairpin meetup at The Bedford Academy once, which is just by St. George station, that was pretty nice.
I believe I have also been to the Bedford Academy and it’s nice, and probably closer than Nirvana and No One Writes to the Colonel. I think they have a room?
I have heard good things about Bedford Academy!
(Also the Annex is generally cheaper than Yorkville *dissolves into a pile of student debt and dust*)
Bedford Academy is good – maybe we could get an area upstairs? Downstairs gets so loud.
If Nicole does not want to leave Yorkville, the Pilot is very nice and probably about the same, cost-wise, as the Academy.
I’ve been to events at the Pilot and its very nice! Cool mature-yet-friendly vibe.
I actually went to No One Writes to the Colonel for the first time this weekend for my birthday! Really enjoyed the atmosphere
I second @cosmia’s suggestion of the Bedford academy!
Thirded! Or fourthed! Either way I think it’s a great spot.
Did anyone else read the SAD Olympics ‘Pin article and automatically think of Bob & poor Eli, or was it just me?
I’m still coming! 🙂 I have no idea where to go though.
My favorite useless fact about Heloise/ Abelard is that they named their son ASTROLABE after the SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT. The original ridiculous celeb baby name.
A brief history of measuring the temperature (“Celsius was fucking crushing it. The influence of atmospheric pressure on water’s boiling point, the non-influence of atmospheric pressure of water’s freezing point– he nailed it.”)
“Celsius proceeded to stick his rod in various things and take note of what happened. While that might sound questionable, remember that he spoke Swedish.”
This is a total delight, thank you.
I think I’m gonna just keep rereading it all day instead of doing work.
Thank you.
Mr. Unshored made an offhand remark last weekend that “it’s supposed to be twice as warm today as it was yesterday!” and I was like “I FEEL THAT IS MATHEMATICALLY UNTRUE” and then we determined that “twice as warm” in Celsius degrees would be, like, 10 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas “twice as warm” in Kelvin (the only way that makes logical sense in terms of physics) was the difference between near-zero Fahrenheit and around 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
At which point of course he was like “all I meant was, we might not need long underwear today”
don’t worry, I swear I’m not like this all the time
The cold does strange things to a mind…
I am going out of town (to Ottawa!) on Thursday so will miss the meetup but I hope you all have a lovely time and I will come to the next one.
Ughhhh I want to go to the meetup SO BADLY but there is a big librarian conference this weekend with Important Networking Events that I should probably go to on Friday (but I hate “networking” so maybe I’ll skip those and go to the meetup instead).
AAHHH I just confirmed that I was going to wine and cheese with friends on Friday…But, but, but…
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.
I’ll be there! Wherever there is…
I’m coming out of lurking to say I will be there on Friday, and I like the idea of Bedford Academy due to its proximity to St George Station.
I’m totally in!
I am in the 'loved it' camp, 100%! I really enjoyed the change of tone and pace (and getting a break from my Moriaty-induced nightmares), I really liked seeing Sherlock have actual feelings, underneath all his genius. Drunk Sherlock, funniest thing ever!
I just try to take the show as a different thing entirely to the books, I guess, it's the same strategy I use in order to thoroughly enjoy the Hobbit movies!
I am a master hermit, but since Friday is my birthday and the weather is supposed to be in the single digits, I will use the next three days to talk myself into coming out of hiding. I will use the Bedford Academy’s dessert menu to coax me out. FEATURE CHEESECAKE. I can overcome my fear of strangers and humans in general if there is FEATURE CHEESECAKE.
Hey there, longtime Toast lurker, first time commenter. About the meet-up Friday, can I come even though I haven’t been real present on the site community? I’d love to meet some of you