40 Reasons Local News is the Best News:
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This man is a monster.
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What common medieval fantasy tropes have little-to-no basis in real medieval European history?
Were blades ever poisoned?
Rarely. Most potent poisons expire and lose their lethality quickly. There’s also a risk of the smalles little cut when you hande the blade – especially in a struggle – killing you as the assassin as well. Poisons were rare and expensive and could be pretty easily traced, so most would just take their chances that another stab or two would do the job better than a poisouned blade.
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I am sure you have already read the Phineas Gage piece, based on our shared interests, but if you have not:
Beyond that sketch of his activities, there’s no record of what Gage did in the months after the accident—and we know even less about what his conduct was like. Harlow’s case report fails to include any sort of timeline explaining when Gage’s psychological symptoms emerged and whether any of them got better or worse over time. Even the specific details of Gage’s behavior seem, on a closer reading, ambiguous, even cryptic. For instance, Harlow mentions Gage’s sudden “animal propensities” and, later, “animal passions.” Sounds impressive, but what does that mean? An excessive appetite, strong sexual urges, howling at the moon? Harlow says that Gage cursed “at times,” but how often is that? And was this a saucy “hell” or “damn” here and there, or something more dastardly? Harlow notes that Gage started telling his nieces and nephews wild stories about his supposed adventures. Was he confabulating here, a symptom of frontal lobe damage, or simply indulging a love of tall tales? Even the conclusion that Gage “was no longer Gage” could mean almost anything.
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OH MY GOD THIS IS THE GREATEST THING I AM BOILING WITH HATRED:
*And if you have any pride in your own cooking, you would do well to steer clear of the doodie. “My ex-girlfriend fancied herself a good cook,” says my friend Dan. “And she was,” he adds. “But I was better.” One night, they ended up in a standoff over onions. “I wanted a dice, and she was doing a rough chop,” he says. His girlfriend accused him of being condescending. “She got really mad,” he says. She was like, ‘If you ever talk to me like that again, I will fucking kill you.’ And I got defensive. I was like, ‘I won’t, if you cut the onion right.’”
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I LOVE ELLEN BURSTYN:
I was half-expecting to see you pop up in Aronofsky’s latest, Noah, even if just for a second.
Oh, I was almost in it! There was a moment where he tried having the voices of the monsters, or whatever they’re called. The stone monsters. He had me record the voices, and then he twisted it to make it sound like something else, and then he decided not to use that. So I was almost in it. My voice was almost in it. I was very disappointed that I didn’t get in it. [Laughs.]
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How to stop a wedding.
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RIP, Farley Mowat, a really complicated and ornery man who was exceptionally Canadian:
Determined to go out at his post, banging away on his manual typewriter on the second floor of a heated shed in his backyard, Mr. Mowat insisted that writing was the only function – “well almost only function” – that he was still capable of performing at 88. He refused to have a bulging aortic aneurysm treated or to undergo a triple bypass several years ago, and he insisted until the end of his life that refusing medical intervention not only prolonged his existence, but enabled him to enjoy a higher quality of life. “I’m floating on a very, very thin surface tension, which can erupt at any moment” he said in November, 2009.
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You monsters made me spend HOURS last night reading about Cassandra Clare and plagiarism and so on. When I die and must make an accounting for why I never read past Swann’s Way in A Remembrance of Things Past, I’m blaming you.
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“The best time I took a rescue cat to a pet psychic”:
He believed he was five. When we told Rhonda he was off by about a decade, she paused and said, “Oh, he says he doesn’t get time. He says, ‘I’m a kitten.’’” (It might have been a quick save on her part, but to look at Milo, he is clearly a creature who cannot be too concerned with the unrelenting march of hours, years.)
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Missed connections for a-holes:
At the gym parking lot today. You were the hot guy with the soul patch in the Kia Forte. You took my spot. I was waiting for that spot, and you just swooped in and took it. I wish you could have heard me honking at you. Our eyes connected but you just kept walking. If I had the chance to see you one more time, I would roll down my windows and call you a dick.
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Update: my friend and some likeminded parents got that Utah fourth grade public school trip to the Church History Museum squashed with the aid of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
<3 that update! Won’t somebody think of the children?!!!
FFRF is excellent at getting shit *done*
I like food and all but I must STRENUOUSLY OBJECT to the idea that food must be more complex, complicated, involved, or fancy, to be “better.” You know what’s heaven on a plate? Mashed sweet potatoes. Boil potatoes, mash with a little butter, add some cinnamon. Done. Eat. Orgasm.
Also I’m sure I would enjoy eating something that had been cooked sous-vide but mostly I can’t wait 48 hours for anything to cook so I will be eating Kraft Dinner, thanks.
(I don’t care, I love delicious cheap food more than fancy food. I will eat all your gas-station foods please. MORE PLEASE. I have no shame.)
I love food. All food. From the cheapest, anstiest junk to the sort of thing they charge £40 a plate for. I love it.
And you know what ruins ALL OF IT? Some snobby person deciding that they are the only person who knows how to do it *properly*. Which may be the case with a dish they invented, but probably isn’t with mac and cheese, you know (though I make the best mac and cheese).
What struck me most about that ‘Doodie’ article was that the guys in it were seriously invested in being *better*, and it;s something I see over and over. Men, very invested in being *better* than the women they know.
Get over it!
Oh we were discussing mac & cheese on Twitter yesterday, specifically: what do you put on top, more cheese, or breadcrumbs, or…?
Yes.
Breadcrumbs then parmesan if you’re baking it, just more cheese if not. But either way you have mac ‘n cheese, so life is great.
Cheese, parmesan, pancetta cubes.
You brilliant creature.
My macaroni cheese has four cheeses in it (a good sharp cheddar, a tangy crumbly cheese like wensleydale, a rich creamy cheese, and a blue cheese) grilled, crispy pancetta with fennel seeds, and has paprika and nutmeg on top of the cheese I top it with before I put it under the grill to get a delicious topping.
IT IS THE BEST.
Oh my god give it to me now
(I had to throw out some delicious mac and cheese the other day because I packed it for lunch and then LEFT IT ON THE COUNTER. Sobbing.)
I still would have eaten it YOLO(TYDFDPSWI*).
* Then You Die From Dairy Poisoning STILL WORTH IT
And then there’s my favourite kind of mac and cheese, which is just plain macaroni mixed (while hot) with butter and grated cheddar cheese.
My mother made this when I was little when she didn’t have enough time for the fancier kind (and didn’t have any KD in the house), which was a lot.
i.e., there’s no accounting for taste!
Pine nuts if you want to be fancy! But, yeah, lots of bread crumbs and extra cheese.
Canned diced tomatoes and a fuckton of Tabasco sauce in it, bacon on top. Then broil until the bacon’s done.
More cheese & those French’s “onion” “rings” that come in a can, & then bake for just long enough for it all to melt together in a delicious mass.
I just want to thank you for the thread that stemmed from this comment because now I have all the ideas I need for a solid week of mac & cheese.
If my husband told me even once that dinner would be delayed until midnight because it was much more important to sous-vide everything perfectly precisely than to FEED HIS HUNGRY WIFE, I would:
1) walk out the door and go get dinner at Whataburger
2) never come back.
I have zero issues with late-night dinners as long as I have a NORMALLY-TIMED DINNER AS WELL. (I made fried rice at 10:30pm last night, for no reason I can justify, but I also snacked heavily from the time I got home around 6, so.)
Precisely. I’m like a hobbit in the number of meals per day I find acceptable.
Replace “acceptable” with “necessary” and I am right there with you.
I still use the term “fourth meal” because it is SO USEFUL. It’s the only thing Taco Bell has ever given me.
I have never gone to Taco Bell and not regretted it. And yet I do it all the time. Why.
My husband and I use “second breakfast” all the damn time.
I have low blood sugar and have to eat every few hours or I get dizzy/angry/dangry, but even if I didn’t have low blood sugar, I’d still eat every few hours because FOOD IS AWESOME.
The word you may be looking for her is “hangry” and I am WELL FAMILIAR with it. Off to shove a granola bar in my face.
Late-night dinners are only acceptable a) in Italy if I can gelato first or b) if I am cooking and I apologize once per ten minutes & give you guacamole
Eating the food is more important than cooking the food perfectly. You are not a chef.
I mean let’s be real, it’s just going to be poop in a few hours, anyways, best case scenario. And I say this as someone who has used several J. Kenji Lopez recipes in the past, and enjoyed them even though they take one million hours. (His vegan chili is my favorite vegan chili though I only make it for people I really, really love.)
I actually couldn’t finish reading the article b/c I was so annoyed. Jesus christ dudes ruin everything.
“it’s just going to be poop in a few hours” is going to be my new retort to anyone who complains about a meal
I feel like actual chefs would understand this better than these dudebros. You’ve got to get the meal out of the kitchen and onto the table or your customers are going to walk out.
No shit. An actual employed chef would be going “what the shit do you mean it will be a 3-hour wait? Everybody’s going to fucking leave! OKAY, FUCKERS, stir-fry for everyone.”
Agreed. I’m already a hangry hell-beast when I get home. Having a snack tides me over til dinner, but that dinner better be at a reasonable time.
#hellfuckinyeah
This response is right and proper.
See, I have the problem where I choose what I think is a simple dinner (pasta with sauce with a few extra veggies, broccoli, salad), and I have not yet figured out how to cook meals efficiently, so it ends up being late ANYWAY. I started around 8:15 and didn’t sit down to eat until 9:45 and I SWEAR it was the simplest meal possible.
Basically, every meal you could possibly cook from something resembling scratch takes a minimum of an hour. If you are still getting practice with chopping/ cutting/ cooking things simultaneously, just assume it will take longer. Onions never, ever, take 8 minutes to brown (looking at you, Jerusalem cookbook). You can speed up weeknight meals by putting in some of the prep on the weekend, but basically you’re just splitting the hour over two shifts.
Rachel Ray only manages 30 minute meals because she cuts, like, one thing per meal.
I would also submit that one can MICROWAVE sweet potatoes and it is also good and delicious.
I think we can all agree that sweet potatoes in all forms are perfect.
Sweet potatoes with lime juice and cilantro and salt! So good!
I recently discovered Jerusalem artichokes, boiled, amshed and served with butter. Try it, it’s great.
My husband is a great cook and I love food but fucking hate cooking. He can be obnoxious in the kitchen (the term Kitchen Nazi has been used), so I just leave and let him do his thing. If I get home at 8 after working all day, it’s cereal or pasta with ketchup if I’m feeling like making an effort (I know. I’m disgusting.). If he gets home late, it’s flambe’d tuna steak with fettucine alfredo. This has seriously happened. I have it good.
yeah this sounds pretty ideal. “Fine, you want to deal with all the cooking and also make something great? I’m just going to be over here watching Ancient Aliens, call me when it’s done.”
The only downside is that he tears the fucking kitchen apart every time and I have to clean it up.
MEN they do not seem to understand how to cook without using every fucking dish & pot in the house.
I mean could you just RINSE it, at least? It takes two second and then whoever does the dishes later (…me) doesn’t have to deal with crusted-on food.
SIGNIFICANT SIDE-EYE IN THE DIRECTION OF CHRIS KIMBALL
he’ll hear you!
he hears everything
I am okay dying on the hill of Clean As You Go And You Don’t Need That Many Damn Dishes Anyway.
I’ll be right there with you. (Seriously, how do they use all of the bowls in the kitchen? We own, like, a million bowls).
DUDE, RIGHT? I, um, still live with my father, and he’s a pretty awesome cook even though his food jams are generally a little different from mine, but, yeah, there will be a minimum of 4 pots and/or pans used, basically every knife, 3-6 bowls or other prep dishes, 3+ cutting boards, &c. used every time he prepares something, no matter how simple the actual meal is. Also, cleaning as he goes, say, while waiting for a pot to boil or something to reach temperature, is completely out of the question.
I mostly hate this because of course on nights that he makes dinner I then clean up, as is right and fair, and it’s SO MUCH HARDER than cleanup is when I make dinner.
Yes yes yes and more yes. three-quarters of the meals I cook are one-dish conglomerations that I call “Bowl of Food.” Shredded chicken, ground beef, leftover rib meat, whatever protein is available, combined with at least two of whatever vegetables present themselves, and a hefty dose of seasonings. Nothing fancy, nothing time-consuming, but delicious and full of good nutrients. Would my cooking win any awards? Nope. But it’s tasty and on the table when I want it and that’s what matters most to me.
I want to be able to make this but I never have leftovers, or when I do, I get home too late for dinner. 🙁
I make most of my Bowls of Food on the weekend so I have something to eat ready and waiting for the microwave.
Ha! I do “bean bowl” and “rice bowl.” Bean bowl does contain rice, though rice bowl has no beans. It is an imperfect system that provides me with much sustenance. A few different sauces, a soft boiled egg, some greens, and it presents the illusion of variety without actually being complicated. Why make a big fuss all the time! These people have too much goddamn time and money, is my conclusion, and this is coming from someone who occasionally ferments her own sauerkraut.
*fistbump*
My ‘specialty’ is “bowl of stuff with an egg”. Cook a grain, saute some vegetable with garlic, and drop a softboiled or fried egg on top. Easy, quick, tasty — and, frankly, if I have to wait past 8 pm for dinner, things will *not* end well.
Have you tried cracking an egg into the rice cooker near the end? So easy! So good!
I have not, but I will now!
I feel like you would like the ‘garbage plate’ of Rochester, NY
Confession: I am from Rochester and I have never had a garbage plate. <shame>
You gotta do it! Preferably late at night while drinking. If you want the standard plate I’ve found no difference between Nick Tahou’s and all of the other places. If you want a traditional plate that is less greasy and nausea/shame-inducing I recommend the junkyard plate at Dogtown. If you want a fancy garbage plate that is actually really good food, get the gate plate at The Gate House and then tell the haters to suck it when they mock you for ordering a fancy garbage plate.
1: explain to me what a garbage plate is, this sounds like nonsense?
2: ALWAYS TELL THE HATERS TO SUCK IT; THEY ARE HATERS AND DESERVE NOTHING MORE FROM YOU THAN YOUR DISDAIN.
Here is an article describing the glory of the garbage plate.
The relevant passage: They consist of a foundation of baked beans and/or macaroni salad with either home fries or French fries. On top, a choice of two: cheeseburger, hamburger, red hots, white hots, Italian sausage, chicken tender, haddock, fried ham, grilled cheese, or eggs. The crown jewel on this mountain of food: onions, mustard and Nick’s signature hot sauce — which is a ground meat chili like you’d get on a Michigan-style Coney dog. There are varying opinions on how to eat a Garbage Plate, but the conventional wisdom is that it should be done quickly, with plenty of ketchup.
I maintain that the correct garbage plate is the one consisting of mac salad, home fries, and two cheeseburgers, and I also agree that plenty of ketchup is required.
okay if ketchup is required I’M OUT
ketchup is a weird crime against food
Name your favorite food and I will tell you how to improve upon it: freeze it and make it microwaveable.
Freeze it in single portions!
My brother’s a chef of some stature in our area of the world, and he makes occasional tv appearances. I was watching one where he was making some dish and telling the host, “Oh, chipotle mustard is my favorite and I use it in everything!” I commented on his favorite mustard when I saw him later in the week and he had no idea what I was talking about. When I explained he said, “Oh. Yeah, you just have to say crap like that on tv. It sounds better.” I then asked him what was his favorite mustard. His response? A shrug and “French’s.”
All that is to say that yes, his cooking is some of the best I have ever had in my life and he LOVES his sous vide at work and uses it for practically everything, but at home? He has much simpler habits because he realizes that sometimes, a grilled cheese sandwich that takes five minutes to prepare can be much more satisfying than any of the complicated stuff he does for his job for the simple fact that it allows him to spend time with his family.
My husband also sometimes says “why would we eat X when Y would take more effort but also be so much better?”
But X usually = some weird combination of food left in our pantry (oatmeal, frozen peas and peanut butter) and Y usually = going out for a nice meal, and the effort = putting on pants and going outside.
It has never occurred to me to add cinnamon to sweet potato mash! I normally do rosemary, a bit of sweet chili sauce and garlic.
crushed bits of ginger, with honey and butter
I am adding sweet potatoes to my next shopping list.
cinnamon! I have never tried cinnamon with my mashed potatoes, but now I’m very curious.
(also to the rest of your comment: word.)
I once had a hotdog that had been cooked in a sous-vide.
HOT DOG. SOUS-VIDE.
By a doodie, of course. Listen, just because you have the fancy equipment does not mean you have to use it at every occasion. Jesus Christ.
There is a single perfect way to cook hot dogs, and it does not involve a sous vide.
I don’t even know what a sous-vide is, and I’m ok with that.
Same here.
Was it any better?
I mean it was fine, but definitely not better, and it took a hell of a lot longer until I could eat it.
Fancy complicated food is just repackaged elitism rich-are-better BS. <chows down on frozen taquitos>
I am the kind of person who genuinely takes pleasure in all the fiddly tasks of cooking, my friends joke that I will take any recipe and make it harder and more time consuming. But the thing is, I do that because I enjoy doing it. If someone asks me for my recipe I leave all that out, because who else would care? I’ll only admit to it if you ask me why yours turned out a bit different, and usually with a “I’m crazy, but you asked…” I would never give anyone else a hard time about how they chop the damn onion.
Kraft Dinner and all it’s incarnations are my favourite dinner defaults, especially when made with yogurt, olive oil and hot pepper flakes. Soooooooooo goooooooooood.
I am super fussy about making food. I will make the fanciest goddamn food. Dinner will always be late.
But always, there will be snacks. Also, I will not be a dick to you if you are helping me make food, although it is entirely possible I will not let you help.
As a dude who likes to cook (and even sometimes fiddly equipment though not a sous vide, that sounds like a nightmare) I was getting a little worried with this article, but it sounds like these guys are mostly just assholes.
I can understand wanting to make cool fancy dishes, but not at the expense of hungry people waiting on you. And plenty of quick, tasty foods you can make for weeknights.
Look, we all know that there is no such thing as “real” medieval European history, the medieval era did not exist, therefore debating this poisoned blade nonsense is a moot point.
Continuing in the vein of “medieval-things-that-did-not-happen” – how has there not already been a 21 Gun Toast Salute to Theodora and Marozia?
The “influence of two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman tiara” i.e. the papacy. “From this description, the term “pornocracy” has become associated with the effective rule in Rome of Theodora and her daughter Marozia through male surrogates.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marozia
“Pornocracy”. Or, alternately, the “Rule of Harlots”. COME ON.
WRITE IT AND WE WILL READ IT
Kind of love that cat psychic article. I’d take Anne and Bonny to one, if it wasn’t far too ‘woo’ for me and if I didn’t suspect that Bonny doesn’t have enough brains for a pet psychic to get anything other than ‘food! Cuddle! who you?’ out of her.
Yeah, all you’d get from my cat would be “NEW FRIEND. I LIKE YOU. CAN I EAT YOUR HAIR?”
You may get a constant stream of ‘how can I get food out of you’ from fatty little Anne, but I suspect Bonny’s thought process is… not. Maybe it’s just shapes and colours! Certainly there’s nothing behind her pretty yellow eyes.
She’s pretty, affectionate, athletic, and so stupid it’s a good thing she’s a house cat.
I have never taken my horse to a psychic OR a horse shrink, but all the women I know who have employed the latter act like those who employ the former are CRAZY, not hard-nosed like them.
I live in one of the… weirdest cities in the UK (it outdoes London, unofficial motto ‘do different’) yet I don’t think I;ve even heard of an animal psychic or psychiatrist anywhere here.
Yeah, animals can get all weird and neurotic about things, but… they don’t communicate or think about those issues in the same way people do? And the best way to deal with it is adjusting their environment and your behaviour?
Well, just to channel the horse-shrink-women, I feel like it does make sense to think about mental/emotional reasons for animal behavior. Like, maybe your cat is peeing outside the box because you put it near the loud dishwasher that scares her, or maybe your dog needs some aversion therapy rather than scolding to get over his bad reaction to men wearing red or something.
HAH! So true! I’d love to try Red out with a horse/animal psychic because…well, I kinda buy into it. I could tell you a tale about thought bubbles, llamas and a horse that was convinced llamas were out to do me some major harm and that I needed protecting.
I know, that piece was really sweet. Everyone should adopt a black cat! They’re very concerned about your heart chakra!
Adopt black cats! Adopt older cats! Or they spend their whole lives in a centre, which is far from ideal.
Also, they are the snuggliest. Unless they are my old cat Olive, who was a reincarnated dictator and owned a 4 mile territory and showed love through vicious assaults and once scared off a fox.
My black cat is so concerned about my heart chakra that he jumps into bed and starts meowing every time it seems like we’re about to get up.
“Are you okay, meow?”
I adopted a black cat, but he is the cat equivalent of a frat boy, so I doubt his commitment to my heart chakra.
My cat has chronic bitch-face and I feel vaguely certain that I can read her mind without the aid of a psychic. It’s like living with a silent, furry Michelle Visage.
Klaas-Jan would run away from the psychic because he is scared of people not me.
Jesus CHRIST that Dear Polly letter is brutal.
Right in the heart.
Gah. But then her response, as always, was so perfect.
For graduation, my boyfriend hand-lettered a card with a Dear Polly quote: “Do not allow the same crappy thought patterns to wear the same terrible grooves in your brain over and over again.” I try to remember it every day.
Oh man I needed that today, thanks.
Oh man, that local news one is making my morning.
Rising ocean levels threaten corgi!
PB&J sandwiches: are they racist?
David Williams: manly player
Very glad I have the office to myself today. I’ve only gotten through 10 of them and I can’t stop laughing.
The ones with the placeholder text are my favorite.
My boyfriend works in local news and I seriously hope one of those is from his station…
Am I secretly still a 13 year old, because I definitely laughed out loud at “one squirrel one cup”
*8th grade fistbump*
I lost it at “Cat: ‘RAAAAAAAAAARRRRR!'”
Somewhere on the internets is the audio of that whole thing and it is amazing. It’s this angry cat that has trapped a family in a bedroom in their house. #whyIlikedogs
EVERYWHERE on the internets is where they announced that that cat was getting a visit from the “My Cat From Hell” show. At least, my Facebook feed a-sploded with “secret” fan squees.
Every single one of those is my favorite thing ever. My new mission is to be identified on local news as “BEER CONSUMER”
Cool, you take that one, and I’ll go for “Not Wearing Any Pants.”
I had to stop drinking water as I went through it. I lost it at the “Syrup Related Crimes” graph. It went from zero to 1!
That one knocked me to the ground, and then the Kick a Ginger Day victim killed me dead.
Omigosh, I know it’s awful, but I couldn’t stop laughing at that one. The poor kid.
the bar graph of “Syrup Related Crimes” had me in tears and shaking from holding back laughter.
Fortunately I’m working from home today so I can chortle like a maniac. And I did.
I have a need to imagine the reason behind such a graph. (Yeah, it’s a sickness.) I imagine a clueless supervisor with a short attention span and nasty temper shouting, “I don’t care about any of that. Just gimme a graph, dammit!”
I have to kind of defend the toddler memorial one a little though. Boring is actually the name of the town where this was taking place–it’s just outside of Portland OR.
*takes small amount of joy in seeing bad_penny linked in a link roundup*
*falls into the medieval reddit*
I definitely spent about an hour holed up in a conference room at work yesterday reading that entire Cassandra Claire debacle. Was it worth it? Maybe. Was it awesome to learn about early 2000s Yahoo! message boards and rabid fandoms? YES.
Reading about the Cassi Claire debacle is ALWAYS worth it.
Now, waste MORE time finding out about MsScribe.
I *just* went and re-read the Journalfen stuff about Cassandra Claire recently (trying to figure out if I should go read one of her books, or if I was still too skeeved out – turns out option B for sure). Serendipity!
I guess here is what I still don’t understand – are all of the issues with her plagiarism related to her Draco series? Do people just not want to read Mortal Instruments because they’re still made at her about Draco, or did she also plagiarize her other work?
WELL, Mortal Instruments is basically a names-changed rewrite of her Draco series, and there is some evidence that plagiraised passages worked in to that AND ALSO she was recetnly accused of plagiarism AGAIN.
BUT but but I think a lot of it is anger – because she behaved very badly and bullied and harrassed a lot of people,a dn people are mad that she can do that and then be forgiven and successful OFF THE BACk of ehr fandom work.
All is clear to me now! I read the Mortal Instruments having no awareness whatsoever of the online drama, and I honestly just thought they were OK bordering on not good. So I don’t feel too bad about delighting in all the drama while having very little opinion on her all!
I never knew her – I came into fandom a couple years later, and was mostly in LotR, then Stargate Atlantis – but the whole thing was just so, so slimy. There were reverberations years and years later (well, obviously) and I just can’t get past them enough to read her stuff in an unbiased way.
It makes me want to start reading fandomwank on a regular basis, like I did 10 years ago. But, I fear that we’ll never see the trainwreck internet drama of the early 2000’s ever again.
As a representative of the Sherlock fandom, I am here to inform you that, hoo boy, we got your trainwreck internet drama right here.
See also: Tumblr in all its insane glory.
I clearly need better fandoms.
Yes indeed the Tumblr is dark and full of Terrors (and so so much wank).
But no one has as yet catalogued the Sherlock crazy with encyclopedic zeal.
(if someone has, please link so that I can avoid all human contact for the weekend.)
God, those were the days.
Ugh MsScribe Ughhhhhhhhhhh.
FANDOM: Like a university English department, except about books people actually read, and nobody gets paid.
and the points don’t matter
sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than reading up on old fandom wank. just beautiful.
Oh Mylanta. that Polly piece hit home. Been trying to figure out how long I should stick around with my lovely husband who became a substance abuser when I went back to school. We’ve been separated for over a month. I have so much sympathy for him, but so many things Polly said just shot me through the heart. Thinking of printing it out to hang over my desk right now.
I think you have your answer right there in your post. But I recognize that doesn’t make it any easier.
I am sorry. That really sucks. I’m assuming your husband is lovely as you say (not a narcissist like dude in the Polly letter). I’m clean now, but I hurt a lot of people when I was using. Personally, I’m grateful to the people who cut me out. I think that your husband would be grateful, were he in his right mind, if you protected yourself from him. Sorry for the unsolicited opinion- I’m certainly not trying to tell you what to do. I wish you all the best in dealing with a horrible situation.
Well, that’s the thing. He’s become a monster over the last year. But substance abuse can do that to a person. He’s finally gone from being completely unaware that he has problems and is hurting people, to at least admitting that he’s hurting people. Small steps? :-/ The person he was before all of this was completely lovely though. I’m hoping that he’s still in there somewhere.
Ohhh my heart is breaking for you. I don’t want to be presumptuous; I don’t know your life. There are a ton of resources (like Al-Anon) for people in your situation. Have you looked into any of that stuff? The disappearance of your husband and the emergence of this monstrous imposter are huge, heavy life events, and I do so hope you have a support system to be there for you. My experience, as a drug addict and someone who loved several drug addicts, is that he is still in there (yay), but as long as he’s using, you won’t get him back (boo). I hate even typing that. It’s an ugly disease. I think it says so much about what kind of person you are that you can feel empathy for him. Just please don’t let your empathy for him trump your care for yourself.
I AM HAVING A RAGE ANEURYSM OVER THAT “DOODIE” ARTICLE COME BE MAD WITH ME
I just read the excerpt and I am trying to keep myself from spitting fire. Fuck the following things, in no particular order:
* Dudes shaming women for not agreeing with them
* Dudes one-upping women
* Dudes doing a traditionally female task and turning into something only experts (men) can do
* Treating delicious food like trash
* Food snobbery
* Getting into a fight over the difference between a “dice” and a “rough chop”
* fuck it, burn everything
OH GOD I READ IT AND NOW I’M EVEN ANGRIER AGGGHHHHHHH KILL ALL MEN AND SOUS-VIDE THEIR BODIES
Debuting at #1 on the Top 40 Murder Charts: Doodies
That asshole bitching about onions is just begging to be rough-chopped into tiny little pieces.
WHY WOULD YOU BE SO PICKY ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DICE AND A ROUGH CHOP
it just isn’t going to matter that much I promise you; it just isn’t worth it; maybe you suck
I’m now daydreaming about a Doodies/Hannibal crossover.
Their flesh would be so evenly cooked!!!
PS – women only like salads.
I WILL KILL YOU ALL WITH MY MIND
what is that bullshit about women’s metabolisms?? I WILL EAT ALL THE PORK PRODUCTS I WANT
Oh God Almighty, I completely missed that. Everything about this fucking article is terrible, I’m moving into a lesbian commune
and the article is BY A WOMAN! Who seems to think this behavior is endearing and not HORRIBLE.
Yes! Exactly!!! Seriously, Get Rid Of Your Men, They Are Disgusting
OK this article is a joke right? It is making fun of people who think this way/act this way? It is tagged as “gender normative food writing.”
That was my reaction–the tag saved it.
If this is satire, I am deeply impressed.
I don’t think it’s satire (clearly these dudes exist) but it’s written in a self-aware way, maybe?
Or maybe it is satire. I don’t even know anymore. The Toast has continued to blur the line between satire and reality and I can’t tell anything anymore.
OH BOY DO THESE DUDES EXIST I have been on dates with far too many of them.
one of my least favorite friends owns a ‘water bath’ for creme brulee
wait
Like a separate thing specifically made to be for a water bath?
cause you should just use, like, a glass baking pan. I’m so confused.
I am boggled by this. JUST USE A PAN, JESUS CHRIST.
Oh I feel good that there are other people with least favorite friends.
maybe believing it is satire is my internal self defense mechanism
Yeah, clinging to the belief that most publicly-awful people are just deeply-committed satirical performance artists is the only thing keeping me sane.
I don’t know if it is satire but the tone of it (oh, those mens and their food, how cute) reminds me of the 300 sandwiches lady. I wonder if she is engaged yet?
She is not, and is currently eating a “forbidden sandwich” while her intended is away from the house. AVOCADO. ON WHOLE WHEAT. THE HORROR.
A quote from that blog post: “You’ll see from E’s Forbidden Foods list to the right that he doesn’t like a number of delicious foods—I still don’t understand what his objection is to blueberries. But he’s out of town, so I get to make sandwiches I like! Pass the alfalfa sprouts.”
Whaaat. So not only is she making 300 sandwiches but also he has a list of forbidden foods that not only can she not put in his but that she also has to wait until he is out of town to ever ingest? nope nope nope
Also: “I needed to eat light since I’m joining him on the beach in Barbados next week”. That sounds like a terrible way to approach vacations.
And on the list of things she does when he’s away: “I go to bed with zit cream on my face.” Why is that not a thing she can do all the time? Whyyyyy?
http://300sandwiches.com/sandwich-254-everybodys-…
OH MY GOD. HORRIBLE.
You are all stronger than me, because I cannot even think about that woman without going into a rage blackout.
Oh. Oh dear.
“I just did the absolute worst thing a girlfriend could do: I made him feel guilty about proposing.”
Let’s all think of worse things a girlfriend could do tho.
sawed off his junk with a rusty diamond ring. (while making him feel guilty about his ugly face)
I like your style.
My father had the best advice on how to deal with my feelings. “Get cracking on those sandwiches.”
OH MY GOD
RAGE
I read that as she was making sandwiches for both of them, so she wouldn’t put stuff in that he didn’t like because she was making the same sandwich? Which when I used to cook for a boyfriend, I did too. It simplifies the prep.
We’ll, I’d be more likely to think that if she wasn’t someone who decided to make her boyfriend sandwiches in order to get him to propose to her, and has made other weird comments on her blog about suppressing her wants and needs so as not to get in his way.
When I lived with my boyfriend he cooked all of our meals and he would accommodate my food preferences and allergies when he did so, but he wasn’t trying to beg for my love with food and he didn’t have a list of forbidden foods he wasn’t allowed to eat until I left the house.
I think the difference here is that you are a normal person in a healthy relationship who does nice things for your partner, and this woman just lives a very sad life.
Setting aside the dank horror of controlling awfulness that is that whole mess, the actual contents of said List of Horrifying Horribleness are baffling. Okay, some people hate mushrooms (but they are wrong), but PEAS?! OLIVES?!?! BLUEBERRIES??!!
“We tend to fall along gender lines,” he says. “I am very much the guy who is pan-roasting and all those kind of primal techniques, and she is making these wonderful salads.” FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
Reminds me of this article I read in my undergrad, Finding a Place for Father: Selling the Barbecue in Postwar Canada: “While grilling food over a fire was not entirely new, the cultural form and meaning of postwar suburban barbecuing sprung directly from middle-class family life and gender relations in 1950s Canada. In particular, this paper explores why men played such a key role in outdoor cooking and how sellers of barbecue culture attempted to normalise this apparent transgression of 1950s gender expectations.” http://www.erudit.org/revue/jcha/1998/v9/n1/03049…
How is pan-roasting even a ‘primal’ technique?! Or deep-frying or ANYTHING ELSE that isn’t just cooking meat over an open flame?
Did someone design these guys in a lab to be as infuriating as possible?
“I say, Dr. Smythe, why don’t we add six drops of Mansplain Juice to these specimens?”
“Excellent idea, Dr. Tarpington-Wallop. Here, let me – oh dear!”
“Oh, pfft, six drops, six liters – all will be well. After all, we ARE designing them to be -”
[in stereo] “As infuriating as possible!”
“Indeed!” “Oh my, yes!”
Love this!
This is the setup to a hilarious farce.
I just spent 15 minutes looking up the history of cookware, and pan-roasting is certainly NOT a “primal” technique, unless you are placing an earthen vessel directly in a fire, which we have evidence of around 19,000-20,000 BCE. Although I wouldn’t put it past some of these dudes.
I’m sure these guys think ‘cooking in an earthen vessel directly on a fire’ and ‘using a Le Creuset roasting pan in an oven’ are exactly the same thing, because these guys are the worst in all ways.
If anything, salads would be the more “primitive,” yes? You don’t even need to have invented fire to make a salad. Although I guess to make an acceptable salad you would have to have invented dicing, because heaven forbid your veg are roughly chopped.
Plus salads can never be ‘primitive’ since they’re lady food and lady things can never be primitive to these guys, who probably thought women circa 19,000 BCE spent all their time having babies and doing needlepoint on animal hides.
Exactly. Delicate girly things like growing entire human beings and then pushing them out through a hole that is not big enough for that, and hiking around looking for roots & berries,* and wrestling enormous animal hides into shelter to keep people alive. Stuff like that.
*If you buy into the “common knowledge” that in every primitive society, men and only men were hunters and women and only women were gatherers, which I do not.
Well, as an ex once said, “Animals have babies all the time without making a big thing of it, so I don’t know what women are always complaining about.”
We did not date for very long, because I was worried that rage would make my brain explode. Dude was a biologist.
WE STAND UPRIGHT AND HAVE A STUPID BIG HEAD AND A FUCKING HEMOCHORIAL PLACENTA THAT STEALS OUR BLOOD AND LETS THE FETUS THROW WHATEVER FUCKING CHEMICALS IT WANTS AT US. I’D LIKE TO SEE A FUCKING LION DEAL WITH THAT SHIT.
Someone is a shitty biologist.
I mean, he’s a computational biologist. But lots of people manage to realize that women and horses are different without being ANY KIND of biologist. He made a similar comment in front of one of his two sisters and she was like “WHERE DO YOU EVEN COME FROM?”
Obviously, he was also a libertarian.
WHAT. WHAAAAAAAAAAT. I am revoking his biologist licence right this minute. >:(
But what most of those early anthropologists kept overlooking, is that in hunter-gatherer societies, the gathering usually consisted of over 80% of their diet (and also, rather than sitting around at camp tending the hearth, the women often had to range just as far as the men in finding food). So, meat was fine and dandy when they could get it, but it’s the roots/berries that kept them alive.
Needlepoint on animal hides! I am filled with delight!
Yeah heaven only knows we only started eating leaves and things until we made mirrors and figured out how horribly unattractive we are and had to start dieting to keep up with the slim ladies from the next village over. >:(
Cave men! With their roasting pans! And their convection ovens!
They used the local geyser as a sous vide! It was like their water cooler!
There is legit a chapter in the Momofuku cookbook that references hot springs for sous vide.
YOU ARE JOKING you are not joking are you
Well there’s my requisite abyss-staring session for the week. :/
(Peering into the magma heart that powers the bro-iest of all the sous vides?)
What makes pan-roasting “primal”, exactly? Were prehistoric humans really into their cooking techniques?
That reminds me of one of my favourite bits from Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender, about whether the sex of vervet monkeys affects whether they play more with “boyish” toys, “girlish” toys or neutral ones:
“If, by the way, you are curious about the choice of a pan as a girlish toy, you are not alone. Although it is true that primatologists regularly uncover hitherto unknown skills in our nonhuman cousins, the art of heated cuisine is not yet one of them. Frances Burton has informed me that, in her long career of observing monkeys,she has never met one that could cook”.
Women only like salads *while laughing*.
WE CAN’T HELP IT WE’RE JUST SO GOOD AT NURTURING AND VEGETABLES TEE HEE
Please don’t forget that they’re treating a NECESSITY TO LIFE like a hobby–which is fine, but let’s not forget our priorities here.
RIGHT YES JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
Seriously. I hope that dude enjoys being single with his precisely-cooked food. Also, I am not even sure I know the difference between a dice and a rough chop, and I seem to be surviving JUST FINE.
It’s like the time in Harry Potter when Ron cuts his roots super carefully but then Snape makes him take the roots he didn’t chop well and give the good ones to Draco, because Snape is a jerk. This dude is basically Snape, is what I’m saying.
ARRRRGHHHHH and all that gender essentialist BULLSHIT about how men are more technique and recipe-focused and women are more improvisational and creative – ladiez be making SALADS with their FEELINGS! Ragggeeeee
UGH YES. I mean, yes, I am more improvisational with my cooking than my boyfriend but that is only because HE IS TOTALLY ANAL.
Also, what about all those other articles that are like “ladies like baking better because everything is precisely measured”? MEN, GET IN THE KITCHEN AND BAKE ME A CAKE!
Yes but how do you explain the MEN AND SCIENCE correlation? Clearly ladies do not know how to science because everything is precisely measured, etc.
PICK ONE, SOCIETY.
I’m more improvisational than my husband or sons but that’s because ALL THEY DO IS FOLLOW THE PACKAGE DIRECTIONS.
Though the one kid sometimes pokes the film with a fork several times instead of cutting a 1″ slit. Does that count as “improvisational”?
I do that as well but it is because I am lazy and do not want to dirty an extra utensil.
I just aim carefully so I can return the knife to the knife block.
This shit KILLS ME because I have literally seen the opposite thing argued in other contexts (primarily career-related ones) where men are creative and improvisational and women are rule-followers who do things by rote, but of course in THOSE cases the creativity is a thing that shows their MANLINESS and women are AFRAID TO TAKE RISKS because cavemen, cavewomen, hunting, babies, blah, blah.
Rule of thumb: research shows men do the thing that makes them appear superior in that instance.
“Delusions of Gender” by Cordelia Fine has a whole chapter on that
I love that book!
“Ladiez be making SALADS with their FEELINGS! Ragggeeeee”.
Nailed it.
We’re the opposite – my boyfriend is better at improvising and I need specific directions and measurements… AND he likes salads way more than I do! I’ll be sure to taunt him about his ladylike cooking tendencies.
You mean “compliment”. “Compliment him about his ladylike cooking tendencies”. Women are the best. It is only natural that he wishes to imitate us.
It’s funny too because I’ve heard the exact opposite gender essentialist bullshit argued – women are servicable at cooking because they’re good at following recipes precisely but it’s men who are the true cooking geniuses because they are more improvisational and creative.
Personally I don’t measure, but that’s my personality, not gender. My husband prefers to cook (and eat) food that is simple enough not to require much in the way of recipes and techniques or improvisation.
When my father mansplains when we’re in the kitchen, my mother and I do the dead-eyes and say “Are you sure you want to talk to me like that when I’m holding a knife?”
(My father is lovely. Dads, you guys. But where I would say “Do you mind chopping that onion a little finer?” he’d say “Who taught you how to chop onions! YOU NEED TO ROCK THE KNIFE. You need to be using a different knife. And a different cutting board. Here, this knife is two inches longer, and this cutting board is a quarter again as big. Now attend.”)
Actually, you know the stupid gender essentialist “men are better at this” rhetoric in this article? My dad says similar things all the time – about cleaning the kitchen. “Women just don’t understand the dedication and constancy required to wash the dishes every night. And they’re too short to reach all the surfaces than need to be wiped down. And their fingers are too weak to scrape the gunk off of a burned pot. Their poor spatial awareness means they load dishwashers 10% less efficiently than is optimal. It’s fine. I’ll do it.”
It’s probably mostly to make me and my mom squirm a little, but we can resolve a remarkable amount of cognitive dissonance when it means not scrubbing pots and pans.
I would take a lot of bullshit if it meant someone cleaned my kitchen for me. A LOT
Yup.
syrup-related crimes
Up 100% from previous decades!
Now now, we don’t have the data from the last century. There could have been a glut of syrup-related crimes in 1987, but would the graph have acknowledged it?
I smell a (syrupy) cover-up.
Their graph would’ve been WAY more impressive if they had included the Boston Molasses Disaster.
Scoff all you want, but choosing the RIGHT KITTEN is IMPORTANT
Oh, God, why would you do that to me. I’m not ALLOWED near journalfen ’cause then I don’t work for DAYS. So much glorious fandom gossip, so little time DDD:
Anyone who’s enjoying that medieval history thread might also enjoy Lindybeige on YouTube! He has many, many videos about how medieval and historical arms, armor, and combat would actually have worked and he is a delightful fast-talking nerd.
Wow, that’s the first Ask Polly column I’ve ever read and it was amazing. I’ve never encountered an advice columnist who gave answers with that sort of depth and authenticity. Goddamn.
Check out the old Dear Sugar columns. I weep.
And the Dear Sugar book! It’s excellent!
Ask Polly is amazing. The guy in that column is so, so awful, I can’t believe how terrible he is.
Ask Polly is the most compassionate, understanding, smart advice column Ive ever read.
Polly is so good at empathy, and she’s like the perfect person for a letter like that. I mean, my answer would have been “Nuke him from space, NEXT,” which is probably not helpful.
It’s the only way to be sure.
Ditto. I’m sitting here in stunned silence, contemplating, like, every moment of life now.
I am loving the illustrations for the wikihow article. Asymmetrical haircuts! Looking determined in the mirror! Drinking bowls of tea with two hands! It’s got everything, really.
It is the best. The text is delightful, but those illustrations are completely joyful. My favorite is the first, head down, thinking hard about why this is necessary.
I’M SORRY NICOLE, BUT IT WAS THE BEST ACCOUNT OF THE CC-DEBACLE THAT I COULD THINK OF OKAY!
(if it helps, I still have the tab open, and am reading the reader comments a day later. )
I’m totally in there, several usernames ago.
I’m anon in there somewhere.
Never apologise, never forget! THE INTERNET IS MADE OF PEOPLE.
With the “Doodie” piece I would like to remind everyone that dads have been futzing with grills and other kitchen appliances for generations so THIS IS NOTHING NEW.
Also not new: men who cook being seen as serious crafts men while women are delicate and domestic. Fuck that.
I remember a Margaret Atwood sketch about how men gradually turn cooking into their exclusive preserve which women are not allowed on. “If Nature had meant women to cook, it was said, God would have made carving knives round and with holes in them.”
Men did the same with childbirth. Once exclusively the domain of midwives, now reserved for formerly-exclusively-male medical doctors.
Yes, yes, yes to this (this whole comment thread is awesome).
The doodie article: sexist on so many levels:
That women cook to nurture, but these men like the cooking as a sport – NO we cook to EAT.Sometimes to nurture, but please, that’s such a cliche.
This is the same poison gas as Men like sex because: sex, and women only like sex because :love
Also![]()
BABY DIRTBAG
beat me to it. DIRTBAAAAG
She didn’t go to the hospital. Oh my god.
Book where a poisoned sword is a major plot point: Dark Angels, by Karleen Koen http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Angels-Novel-Karleen-K…
Oh man I LOVE those books.
The other day I was feeling kind of cranky because I realized that the Futuremr. has cooked dinner for us literally once in 6 years & it was “chili mac” (Hormel poured over … spaghetti I think?) but now it is like a chorus of angels is singing “NOOOOT A DOODIE!” to the tune of the Hallelujah chorus. Plus he is good at buying fancy cheese & putting it on a plate with a knife, so.
In my opinion, cheese-purchasing cannot be rated highly enough in a future Mr.
Cheese skills are Life Skills
Truer words
Here’s a lil daily affirmation for y’all: https://twitter.com/IceBergMama/status/4643989965…
LET US HEREBY NAME THINGS THAT HAVE GONE RIGHT TODAY
-I woke up before my alarm!
-The universe has not yet collapsed into a fiery doom pit!
-The Toast dot net still exists!
I didn’t wake up before my alarm, but I still felt pretty ok waking up hella early today!
I had time for tea and peanut butter toast!
I went to the gym and made my body do exercisey things, and all of my parts work more or less like they’re supposed to!
I just ate some string cheese! (Best thing so far today.)
Hey, this does feel really good!
– I managed to have time to do Wii Fit U stuff in the morning, and I unlocked the next level of one thing
– I remembered to listen to the news during breakfast, so I have a vague idea what is going on in the world
– I didn’t have to scramble to figure out what to take for lunch, because planning and stuff
– No fiery doom pits in sight
– My mom is on an airplane RIGHT NOW on her way to visit me!
– It is trivia night! Also my mom is coming to trivia night!
– I made cold brew coffee and I’ve been drinking it all day and it is delicious!
I put ice cream into the ice cream maker and showed up to work nominally on time
-I woke up early enough to get in some delightful snuggling before I had to get up and Do Things!
-I found some cookies at the office
-My boss is working from home so I feel weirdly free despite the fact that I’m doing exactly the same things I do when she’s here
-Tonight I go to a comedy show! Fun outings!
– I’m off work today! And for the next four days! And it’s not because my manager forgot to put me on the schedule, so I probably won’t be getting any last minute requests to come in!
– I got a bagel sandwich from the really good bagel place downtown for lunch!
– I have chocolate milk!
– I finally ordered the new pairs of shorts I’ve been meaning to order for like a month now, since all my old shorts had to be retired at the end of last summer!
Ooh, this is good, especially right before I head for bed:
– I wore the pendant my dad gave me for Christmas, his last (post-mortem) gift to me
– I took the commuter train to work, and saved a piece of the environment
– I saw 3 cormorants cavorting in the Charles River as I walked from the train station to my office this morning
– I had a supportive and productive talk with my boss
– My kid and I had Chipotle for dinner and critiqued all the Met Ball dresses on The Cut (winner: Janelle Monae!)
brb stalkin u on the twitmachine
girl what’s yo handle?
@brigidkeely (I try to be CONSISTENT)
Holy crap, Nicole. Killing it today. And I didn’t even click on the local news being the best news link!
The doodie article: Sexist, yes. Satire? Unclear! Why unclear? My husband is a normal dude who likes to try to help prepare meals. Usually this occurs on the weekend, when there is ample time and he can find some overly elaborate recipe and then go to the store to buy the expensive supplies. Fine. Whatever, dude. Be you! So he has doodie-type things about him. What saves him is that he is in no way a dick about it. You know why? Because when you only cook a little bit and follow directions and don’t actually observe what’s happening in a, oh, damn, that’s not the way the book says, how do I fix this to make it edible? kind of a way, usually, the food is sucky. But god bless him. Also, he doesn’t do vegetables, like the doodies, but I contribute that to his particular problem with juggling multiple tasks and the fact that his parents didn’t prepare vegetables. See that? He’s a sucky doodie and yet he’s trying and I love him. Oh and he’s not a dick about it.
Not for nothing, but my sister is a foodie and that shit is annoying. My husband made dinner in her presence once and he, oddly enough, made Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and she said *to me*, btw, “Does he know that the noodles are done? Because the noodles are done. If he waits any longer, he’ll ruin the noodles.” About fucking Kraft Mac and Cheese.
Also, I spent a long time with the Cassie thing and I had no idea she wrote Mortal Instruments or that any of this went on and cray cray! What has that got to do with the Faulty Stars book, though? Isn’t that why it was brought up yesterday?
So, in summary (not at all), killing it, Nicole! I’ll miss you next week! (But at the same time am looking forward to Samantha’s finds too.)
I’ll miss you too!!!!!!
I mean, when you start the day by guzzling a half-gallon, I think anything you do that day qualifies as “syrup-related.”
Also, yay for them not going to fake museum! So cool. Also, also, I’m having major life-changing thoughts due to Dear Polly. Seriously. Especially owning the timeline insistence. I truly do that! So, no, you must understand, first I did this, right? Then they did this horrible thing. Then, well, what else could I do but this even-handed thing. Then they….on and on. Doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Move on, heal, look to the future. Damn, Polly!
“Were brothels as common as in George R. R. Martin and Terry Prachett’s books?
Not really. Fantasy and romanticist medieval ideas tend to overestimate the urbanisation of medieval Europe. While there surely were brothels in the larger cities, most people lived in small, rural villages or on manors.”
SO MUCH THIS! So you can imaginarium up a world with dragons and magic and endemic rape but not one where men have amount of sex that they were typically having?
You know who was getting laid a lot? Medieval women.
Right??
That wikihow article really spoke to me. Not because I’m planning on stopping a wedding, but because I’ve been in a pensive mood all week.
My personal favorite Local News find (actually spotted by myself!):
I didn’t get a screencap, but my favorite was “Tony Martinez; Would Not Miss Grackles.”
My favourite headlines from my local paper are “Mask Stuck In Tree” and “Girl Takes Rabbit Out For Walk”.
Such a good roundup, I’m particularly intrigued by the Phineas Gage article as he was such a big part of our AP Psych curriculum.
I wish that local news BuzzFeed could go on forever.
Between that dude foodie article and the Ask Polly, I am ready to swear off men forever. Take to the sea does not even cover it, I’m going to have a farm on the moon.
(Also, the word ‘doodie’ is grinding my gears so hard because wasn’t the whole point of using ‘foodie’ rather than ‘gourmand’ the idea that it was more appealing to dudes? You can’t keep dude-ing up words that were already invented for dudes. )
It is super obnoxious, but I’m choosing to imagine them all as literal piles of poop with little arms, assembling needlessly elaborate meals and lecturing people about vegetable chopping out of their poop-mouths.
(I am a Mature Adult)
Have you considered becoming a Space Witch? https://twitter.com/the_space_witch
We’re not really worth it. Swear us off, it’s for the best.
On a very vaguely related note to the poisoned blade thing: I was reading about curare – the poison for poison darts that isn’t frog-based, but plant-based. I always wondered what happened if a hunter nicked himself, or a baby grabbed a dart – did they just live a life full of tragic sudden deaths?
Nope. “We hunt in groups of two, and when someone cuts himself, we breathe for him for a while.” They do mouth-to-mouth! Everyone knows how to do it, and if you touch a dart, you let people know and they give you mouth-to-mouth until the paralysis wears off and then you’re fine.
(I got this from One River, and it is an excellent book about collecting plants in the Amazon and Andes. It’s about 1/3 ethnobotany, 1/3 genocide, and 1/3 awkward botanists taking hardcore hallucinogens for science. It’s a little bit culturally appropriative, but then I’ve never read about how all the different native cultures in South America work.)
Also, yay for your friend and the Freedom From Religion Foundation! Good work!
I think I gave myself a hernia laughing at “LAST MINUTE GROCERIES: FORGOT CHEEZ WHIZ”
Omigosh, I know it's awful, but I couldn't stop laughing at that one. The poor kid.
Ooh, this is good, especially right before I head for bed:
– I wore the pendant my dad gave me for Christmas, his last (post-mortem) gift to me
– I took the commuter train to work, and saved a piece of the environment
– I saw 3 cormorants cavorting in the Charles River as I walked from the train station to my office this morning
– I had a supportive and productive talk with my boss
– My kid and I had Chipotle for dinner and critiqued all the Met Ball dresses on The Cut (winner: Janelle Monae!)
Does this mean we can look forward to your thoughts on the Cassie Clare debacle sometime soon? (Please say yes! PLEASE!)