We had a meetup in Toronto! It was a lot of fun. We had a man come, he didn’t do anything terrible, and we ordered “Hawaiian nachos” which involved ham and pineapple, as you might expect. Everyone was very cute and 90% of you have really awesome glasses. “Send all the sexy librarian-types upstairs,” I said to the bouncer, and he did. Coincidentally, the ratio of archivists to people who do not work as archivists was truly impressive. I look forward to seeing you all in the future. Thanks for coming!
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Clark Gregg hates me.
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Animals sitting on capybaras.
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“Probably 80 percent of the people who work here weren’t alive when the show began, so if I’m talking about why we did something with Bill Murray, it might as well be that I’m talking about the Battle of Appomattox.”
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“I don’t want to be controversial,” she said. “I just want to be liked.” – actual quote from THE TIGER MOM
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Julia Stiles on Ghostwriter in 1993. She’s a hacker, dontcha know.
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Oh, my GOD, the fat cats at Gogo have so much of my money, I hope they are placed on meathooks.
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“I thank God and I thank the birds I caught to eat.” – a hero
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Guernica has devoted a whole issue to the present and future of free speech.
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Here is a family story I just heard this week. Our very bossy cousin Sister Gertrude was an expert at making her relatives (and friends, and fellow nuns, and priests, and waiters) do exactly what she wanted at all times, not being much of a “blessed are the meek” type, and she was allowed to have a car, which she drove to a party at the Belleville Hotel (I think it was just a saloon) in the late 1970s. She informed one of her nieces that she was to escort her out to her car, which she then realized she’d locked her keys inside. Sister Gertrude flagged down a local man who was distantly related to her on her mother’s side, who also happened to be a mechanic, and told him to break into her car at once, for free, which he did. Then she looked around and said “…this isn’t my car.” They all spilled out of the car hastily, and her car was located a few minutes later on the other side of the parking lot.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I will respond to Clark Gregg’s anger by continuing to write Clint Barton/Agent Coulson fanfiction. TAKE THAT, CLARK GREGG. TAKE THAT AND LIKE IT.
I love that now “geek” and “loser” are not synonomous. BACK IN MY DAY etc. etc.
I mean, I tried with that show. I did. But it is just not good.
Also plz link yr fanfic
Seriously. I gave it a half a season but I just didn’t care about any of the new characters that they seem to think should be the POV characters. When you’re billing a show as a resurrection for a fan favorite character, maybe you should, idk, focus on the fan favorite? I find fic way more fulfilling.
I have never even heard of this show, but I have long had a (to my friends perplexing) deep physical attraction to Clark Gregg. Which weirdly enough stems from his turn as Catherine Keener’s cheating husband in Lovely and Amazing. But I kind of find all the jerky men in that movie attractive.
Oh, man, have you seen Whedon’s Much Ado? You will never not want to be kissing Clark Gregg.
SO GOOD
Basically. I watched up through the point at which people said it was “starting to get good” (FZZT, I think?) and I just…am not feeling watching more. Mostly because I don’t care even a little about Skye and Agent Jawline and they keep insisting on putting them on screen and giving them marginal levels of plot. GIVE ME COULSON/MAY BACKSTORY, DAMMIT.
Yeah, FZZT was the best episode so far but after that it just fizzled. I don’t care about Skye or Agent Bland’s mysterious past. Maybe if May/Phil were secretly Skye’s parents, maybe then I’d care? Maybe not.
I think this has some really good discussion about what’s gone wrong with the show too http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/4807314.html
May/Phil’s hypothetical daughter should be SO MUCH MORE BADASS than Skye is, though.
I’ll check out the link at lunch! Thanks!
“Skye isn’t so much a character as a collection of TV Tropes entries.”
Perfect.
Every episode I’ve watched where someone claimed “they’re really finding their feet now!” has … not inspired that feeling in me. It is still cardboard ciphers being pushed through flimsy dull plots.
Maybe it will be good in the future. But it is not good now.
And I have confidence in my circle of geek-friends to tell me if it gets good, at which time I will binge-watch my way to the present and then resume watching it.
Right. I’m hoping they do something worthwhile with Coulson–from the spoilers I’ve read, the justification of retconning his death was not very strong at all, and it makes me wonder if Joss Whedon found that upsetting. I feel like his death Means So Much in the world of The Avengers and as much as I love the Coulson character (I mean, come on, he’s perfection), I was very disappointed to see him back.
Especially now that he’s being brought down by a mediocre show.
a) correct answer
b) SHIELD IS SO BORING. IT’S SO BORING. it’s too boring to keep on as background noise. like, i try to do things with SHIELD on in the background and i can hear my television quietly hissing you’re wasting your life you’re wasting every moment
c) jaimie alexander is guest starring as sif at some point and it’s the first and only thing i don’t like about her. i respect it, though, because contracts.
I am really, really into the Marvel cinematic universe, and I adore the Agent Coulson like none other(and I wanted him to live!), but goodness, the show is so boring. I think I’d rather just watch the sitcom where Agent Coulson and Melinda May sit in the SHIELD cafeteria and bitch about paperwork and new recruits.
I am so glad that I am not the only person writing that particular brand of fanfiction on this site. Also, I love you.
Let’s be best friends.
Be friends and then link me to your fic? Pretty pretty please?
Email me and I’ll send you a link! (My email address is just my first and last name @ gmail, and my first and last name are on my blahg, which is citizenchristy.wordpress.com, in the upper right corner).
Haha, I love your cousin, Nicole. She sounds just like my late mother-in-law.
Also I need a capybara for the Bergy Bits to sit on, the dog ain’t trying to hear that.
They must be really comfortable and easy going if so many things want to sit on them.
I like how none of them seem to give a damn. Sit on my head? sure. Ride on my back? okay. Water taxi? whatev.
It makes me sad for any animal rejected / ejected from a capybara.
I am picturing that and am totally dead now. Would you get just one capybara, or three?
Oh god we’d have to get three (in EXACTLY the same color)
OMG SO JEALOUS OF TORONTO MEETUP!!!!
Also, as miserable as winter is, it could be worse and we could all live in the Yukon http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/google-marks-…
D:
I don’t… I mean… Can humans survive at that temperature? My sister really wants to visit the north but that is not terribly appealing right now.
Sure, Inuits and other Northern residents do it. Dress warm, don’t expose any skin, spend as much time in a warm dry area as you can. It’s notable simply because it is the coldest temp on record–it’s not normal!
You basically don’t leave the house, really. The coldest I’ve been in is -70 (including the windchill) and you just don’t go outside unless it’s to keep machinery going (because you’ll never get an engine started in that temperature).
The arctic in the summer is lovely, though. Last summer was 25-30C for weeks at a time. If you go farther north, it’s cooler but then you can avoid the bugs.
Oh good lord. You are a braver person than me. -70! Even having it hover around -20 for the last little while in Toronto means I leave the house only to go to work. And sometimes that seems like a challenge. Although I do hear such nice things about the north in the summer.
I live in the Yukon. It’s really not that bad–like you say below, you just need to dress for the weather. This winter was actually unusually warm when the USA was being hit with the worst of the “polar vortex” stuff, and it’s kind of a pain in the ass. When it’s cold all the time, you just get used to it and it begins to feel normal, but we actually had some freezing rain and melty days which turned the town into a skating rink–much more annoying than consistent cold.
Capybaras’ feet! Look at them! They’re so silly!
CAPYBARA FEET. File under “things I never thought about that will now haunt me forever.”
I liked Tiger Mom better before she introduced the world to her husband and suggested we all needed a sense of a) superiority; b) insecurity; c) perseverance (I think? forgetting number 3, because it was less sociopathic than numbers 1 and 2). What a terrible idea — a recipe for a world of “wounded narcissism” people.
It makes total sense that she & he are faculty at Yale, because Ivy League faculty often have that combination of grandiosity and obvious insecurity — but if anything, I think it makes people self-conscious and inhibits rather than promoting achievement. It is so sad what a lack of self-awareness they have — semi-racist sentiments, but also “helpfully” promoting mental illness or at the very least psychological disfigurement, and getting a major platform from book publishers and the NY Times to do it. Makes me want to go reread Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations instead. Ach…
I think their “Triple Package” could be a pretty good metric of success for individual persons. Like, a feeling that you can do anything, but are afraid you’ll measure up short, and you don’t get distracted easily? I bet a lot of “successful” people the world over share those traits (along with more important traits, that Chua and Rebenfeld conveniently forget to mention, like access and connections).
But the idea that you can apply those traits to cultures is racist and stupid. I really wish someone would subject humanity to A Clockwork Orange-style treatment until we get the idiot idea that Culture = Personality out of our heads.
I think the projection of individual traits and metrics to whole groups of people (or vice versa) is just a curse upon humanity. See: the usage of BMI.
Yeah, in my experience, those three traits describe a lot of successful PhD students. Which isn’t in itself a measure of success, but I can see how under certain circumstances that profile would be very effective. I just hired a new research assistant who seems to fit this description, and I’ve been so much more pleased with her work than the other, more laid-back undergraduates I have had in the past. ANECDATA.
Based on the article, it does seem like they devote space in their book to access (e.g. the Appalachian example) and even institutionalized racism. But if that is the case, then the decision to make the story about ethnicity definitely seems like a ploy to be controversial/talked-about.
Echoing Toronto meetup jealousy! Also proposing new tagline. “The Toast: Send All Sexy-Librarian Types Our Way.”
Between The Toast and NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour, my people feel so welcomed!
Honestly, the worst thing about that rejection from library school of mine is that I don’t get to claim the truest of affinities to Toast & PCHH crowds.
I think Sister Gertrude is related to my mother, who did almost exactly the same thing, with the same sense of Queenly entitlement.
Toronto people!!! We started a Facebook group, it is called Toast of Toronto, and we do not understand how to add you to it because Facebook is hard and there was beer at the time but look for it!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/778422305518416/7… Go here and join us, Toronto People. I’m not remotely sorry for how many Hawaiian nachos I ate, and I am slightly remorseful that I left so early, and Sexy Librarian Types is apparently a REALLY CLEAR SEPT, y’all.
Also anyone who doesn’t work as an archivist or librarian seemed to work as a writer, or a software and computer technician supporting archivists, librarians, and iSchool types. It was pretty specific. And funny. And Nicole did not do thirty push-ups but is maybe the most charming Queen Of The Archivist Librarians I’ve ever met. She needs her own Warhammer figurine with a +10 to Charisma I’m allowed to mix systems what.
Everyone who didn’t work for an educational institute or a literary publication worked for a non-profit, it seemed. And we were not a small group.
Also Nicole told us Mallory stories and talked about the Feel the Burn videos and Mystrade fanfic and it was EVERYTHING I WANTED AND MORE.
I was literally the only one, and am leaving my job to…work in non-profits.
HELLS YES YOU ARE!
I technically do not work for a non-profit, but I work for a very tiny theatre company, so we’re, like, emotionally a non-profit. It counts?
I hear you can totally be non-profit just by making absolutely no profits above what it takes to run your company. I hear. << lies.
That’s how I tend to think about it. But it doesn’t work so well in tax season? Crazy.
Can I join even though I missed the meetup? I’d love to come to one in the future!
Figuring out how to find and join the Facebook group, after beer, on the new mobile app version, was probably the most challenging part of my week.
Man, I would have loved to be part of the Archivists:Nonarchivists ratio. [No one knows what I do, not even the librarians with whom I work.]
I am now enjoying disliking the Tiger Mom, since she wants me to like her. There is zero need to bully children to get them to learn things. She is a very sick woman.
Ohhh, Ghostwriter. Ohhh, early ’90s portrayals of The Internet.
OH MY GOD GHOSTWRITER, I loved it so much. Does anyone know where I can find and rewatch every episode? This is important.
Youtube. Same goes for Are You Afraid of the Dark.
it was my favorite show! I don’t even remember it being about the internet somehow
Gee thanks Clark Gregg, I now have Beck playing on a loop in my head.
Yes,me too.
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t ya kill me (and bring me back for a mediocre television show, I’m sorry for disappointing you Clark Gregg, please don’t hate me)
Man, I am a huge fan of Clark Gregg, but that is some bullshit, sir. I wanted to like Agents of SHIELD! I truly did! I still do! But it is not clicking for me, and as a crazy fan of Coulson that’s hard to admit. Thank God for good fanfiction stepping in to close the gap.
Sigh. I’m just going to be looking at pictures of capybaras for the rest of the day.
One day, maybe authors, writers and pundits will figure out that the fastest track to being liked is probably not criticizing people’s personal decisions, be they parenting decisions or otherwise. ONE DAY. (And then the Internet will shut down for lack of things to argue about.)
On the other hand, maybe it’s a refreshing change from “I’m not here to make friends!” She WAS just here to make friends, you guyysssss!
She’s just really terrible at it, like a parrot that keeps attacking its own reflection! OK now I feel sad for the fictionalized Amy Chua we just created.
“I just want to be everyone’s Tiger Mom! Tigers are fuzzy and colorful, guys! Come in hear for a big ol’ tiger hug!”
When they say “Put a bird on it,” 90 percent of the time, “it” is a capybara.
ONE YEAR. One year! OnE yEaR! How do you entertain yourself on a boat alone for one year? No really, what do you do? I can barely make it through a bus ride.
I dunno, a year alone on a boat sounds kind of amazing (except for the “on a boat” part).
Back in my day, carjackers weren’t these hooligans you have now. They were men and women of God!
Ha!
I love that story. I want to hug that story so hard until it’s incorporated into my own backstory somehow, like the worst story-stealing person ever.
I, too, had a Sister Gertrude in the family. Nuns, amirite?
Ok, as usual we are the odd household out because we love AoS, and watch it avidly. At least what some of you are saying here – you aren’t interested in the new characters – sort of makes sense. It’s not how I feel, but it’s a thing. Some of my friends say things about it that don’t track for me at all.
Sigh. We were the only house in America that loved Ang Lee’s Hulk too.
Guys this is unrelated and more “open thread” material but I just learned that the mother of a guy I dated for two years eight years ago just passed away. We have spoken maybe once per year over the last eight years but I still feel horrible for him and don’t know how to offer my condolences without it being weird for him.
In a similar situation, I bought a card and wrote the ex a short note saying how sorry I was and sharing a memory about walking around the city with him and his father. It felt awkward, but the ex got in touch several months later to say he appreciated the message. This is the time when Miss Manners is a great help; you don’t need to be wildly original, just sincere.
Yes yes yes to the card. Physical, and in the mail. It doesn’t even have to have the memory (although that sounds sweet), just a couple sentences that say you’re thinking of him and his family. The real magic of this is that it requires nothing back from him.
Also, totally looked this back up the other month when an early-childhood friend died in a car crash: http://thehairpin.com/2011/04/do-this-no-3-help-a…
Absolutely. Small gestures like this are really helpful to people who are grieving. On the scale of things that are “weird for him” right now, hearing from an ex who remembers his mom is not even going to register. If you remember anything specific about his mom, tell him. When you’re grieving, it really helps to know that you’re not the sole keeper of a person’s memory, if that makes sense.
Assuming your relationship didn’t end terribly, which it doesn’t sound like it does if you still talk … a good old-fashioned sympathy card. Write something like, “I know we’re not close anymore, but I wanted you to know you’re in my thoughts” and a sweet memory about his mom if you’ve got one to share.
I speak from experience: I’ve never felt bad about offering someone heartfelt sympathy but 100% of the time have regretted it when I’ve chickened out.
It actually did end terribly (we were both young and dumb and not super good at maturely parting ways when the time was right), but over time, sharing a few mutual friends, and him being a frequent customer of a shop I used to work at sort of made us more friendly, although we haven’t shared more than the occasional chat. He’s a good guy, though, and I genuinely liked his mom.
Agree with those saying to send a card in the physical mail, as long as you already have his address or can get it from someone else. If you can’t get his address, a nice, considered email is fine.
Because maybe you know this already (and my condolences, however belated, if you do) but in the first few days after a close family member dies, you get A MILLION phonecalls/emails with condolences, questions about what they can do to help, where to send flowers, when is the wake… it is exhausting and overwhelming to have to respond to everyone. Don’t ask him for his address, don’t ask him for anything.
Yeah I spoke to him briefly today on Facebook but I’m going to send a card in the mail. I’ve asked a mutual friend for his address but I may have it somewhere in the recesses of my old hotmail account if she doesn’t know it.
“He was found disoriented and clad only in ragged underpants last Thursday”
Oh, man, I feel ya. ME TOO!
My family had Sister Sheila, who took my mom barhopping in the 70’s, and was a big reason why I seriously considered “Nun” as a career path for a while.
Is this a THING now? “Amy Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, captured from two different cameras at the same moment.”
I mean, it’s funny, I guess? All those times us moms have lined up our kids dressed all fancy for their homecoming dance, a big long line of them and the parents spread across the lawn, each with their own camera, telling them to smile, every pic with one or two but never more than four faces actually focused on that particular shot. I enjoy it, as an amateur with a camera phone, but as the image for the article? And sure, if they’re saying ‘look how they’re not in sync’ or something, but all the caption says is ‘this is one moment, two cameras, so maybe that means something somehow we don’t know you figure it out?’
If you unfocus your eyes, they appear in 3D. THE FUTURE
Ghostwriter!! One of the shows I most loved as a kid that I now have the hardest time finding on Youtube.
Seriously, and why the shit this and Zoom aren’t available anywhere is a goddamn travesty. Love you, PBS shows with preteens!
Aw, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the Toronto meetup! I had too much work to do and prep for the game jam I did all weekend. 🙁
Also, are capybaras like, the buses of the rainforest?
I have, in a past life, thoroughly researched what it would take to adopt a capybara and raise it as a house pet/start a capybara ranch. Pro: You can train them to bathe themselves when they come in from outdoors (by pressing a button with their silly feet)! Con: They really prefer to be covered in dirt.
Benedict Cumberbatch on Sesame Street.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7jS7X-2ggA
So happy right now!
My tummy hurts from all the giggling!
I love him so, so, so much.
Is there some sort of unwritten Sesame Workshop rule that handsome Brit men must wear a blazer over an unbuttoned shirt for their appearances? It’s very awkward to be that het up while watching beloved Muppets interact with the subjects of a lot of my inappropriate fantasies. (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_ubVVnWglk)
I am smiling so many smiles, thank youuuuuu
Dear lord. I never got the Tom Hiddleston attraction, but after that video I want nothing more in life than to be his cookie.
I really want him to teach me about delayed gratification. Really much.
Was just coming here to post this–yes!!!!!!!!!
ETA: He is so much more dreamy after this than he was before. And no one even thought that possible. Miracle of miracles.
*swoon*
There are two words in the Tiger Mom piece that tell me all I need to know about her, the author, and whatever the Times thinks it’s doing: “vulnerable rugs.”
You know what, Clark Gregg, most people I know gave/are giving AOS way more benefit of the doubt when it comes to “it takes shows some time to get their footing” than they would just about any other show because of Whedon and Gregg’s involvement in it so this “you guys are losers for not sticking with it” stuff really rubs me the wrong way. Any other show with any other people involved would have been cancelled already but people are clinging to a thinning thread of hope with this one because they like you, dude, don’t be a jerkwad.
No kidding! If the Whedon name was not attached to this thing NOBODY would be tying themselves in knots pretending that it’s a decent show that will get good eventually. So Joss is a big enough player to engage in nepotism now, that’s fab. THE SHOW IS STILL STUPID AND BORING AND I DO NOT OWE YOU MY EYEBALLS, MR. GREGG.
YES YES YES. I am giving it as much of a chance as I am because I like him so much! Don’t be a jerkface, Clark! Coulson wouldn’t do that!
He might, if we’re going with AoS characterization. It’s weak enough that he could do anything.
Also, I have missed 2 weeks now, and I can only catch up on 1 of those weeks before tonight’s episode! Like, Hulu only posts the previous week’s episode on Wednesday. I shall never catch up!
So, CLARK GREGG, it’s not my fucking fault I had to give up.
Hey, us too!
real talk: I’m with it now because of J August Richards. I would follow that beautiful man off a cliff.
YOOOOOOOOOO DC TOASTIE BOOK CLUB UPDATE! – I know it’s been a while, and I’m sorry for the delay. I just sent out an e-mail with location details for Saturday, so check and get back to me! See y’all soon!
Ahhhh! Is this just a book club email list? I would love to do a DC meetup but I did not get in on this book club.
Join the book club e-mail list ([email protected])! Our first meeting is this Saturday at 2:00 and we’re discussing the Goldfinch. You’re more than welcome to come (though I need you to let me know ASAP if you will), or join our next meeting. I’ll keep you on the list so you can come to whichever meetings interest you. I’m also hoping to organize a general DC meetup sometime soon!
Ah! I can’t come this weekend but I’ll email you to get on the list. Thanks!