I love her, I love her, I love her, and where she goes I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow….
And I never thought I’d see an Emma Thompson car chase. How much of that driving did you get to do? They actually let me do my own stunt driving. I got to drive down the steps and along the steps with Pierce, who was just terrified in the car, with the camera and the crew. It was very funny and great fun because the French, they just say, [in French accent], “Oh, you can drive? Yeah, you can do the stunts.” That was really one of my best bits in my life.
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Your daily reminder to read Ta-Nehisi Coates on reparations.
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Oh, look, antibacterial soap is worse than I casually thought it was!
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There is nothing unpopular about this opinion, and enforcing the beautiful silence of the Quiet Car is the only confrontation I engage in as a human being who shuns confrontation.
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The animal shelter he tried to reach was closed, so he took the moose home for the night. The next day, Desgroseillers stopped for coffee at Tim Hortons before taking the young moose to the Wild at Heart Animal Refuge Centre.
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If you are on a desert island with nothing better to do than play rock-paper-scissors like a goddamn animal, this may be of use to you.
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The nation’s dads are reaching out to Dear Prudie as they lose the ability to mask their fundamental dadness via performative masculinity:
I am a 50-year-old man, the foreman over a group of guys who work outside. Real manly man kind of situation. Over the past few years I’ve started getting choked up more and more. Last fall I was the best man at my son’s wedding. Didn’t even make it close to getting halfway through the toast. I was really embarrassed. What can I do to try to control this? Even talking about my 5-year-old daughter we’re in the process of adopting, and I’ll start to choke up and have to walk away. Watching movies will even do it.
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Graduations, queerness, stepparenthood, ex-stepparenthood, feelz:
This is how you find yourself seated immediately behind the woman with whom, for a while, you raised the child about to graduate, back when this child, her daughter, was in grade school and when the two of you were married. Take your seat behind this woman, whom you loved with a devouring and awestruck passion, and watch as she casually touches the forearm of the man for whom she left you, years ago now, those few weeks after you found out you and she were not, as you had thought, going to have a baby. Sit maybe a foot behind this man, his overstuffed camera bag, his rolled-up blue jeans cuffs. Look for a long blinding time at the naked nape of his neck, as he whispers nothing consequential in the ear of the woman you were married to, and then, one day, weren’t.
It’s at this point that time will start to get gluey.
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no one ever donates their body to the humanities just another example of the unfair treatment that privileges science departments
— Mallory Ortberg (@mallelis) May 20, 2014
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This article is SO FASCINATING and weird and about parking.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
“Real manly man kind of situation.” Oh my lord dads.
Also, I used to work at a fancy soap store, and I always learned that ALL soap killed germs, so there’s no need to add extra antibacterial stuff to it.
I recently switched to all bar soap (fancy, handcrafted, non-antibacterial) because I received a lot as a gift and it was just sitting there looking awkward. My biggest fear is that people will see that I use it and will give me more. I DO NOT NEED MORE, IT LASTS FOREVER.
I have not bought soap in four years because I have so much left from this job I held for like 8 months.
My relatives are making soap now, so they just gave me SO MUCH. Unfortunately my skin has a bad reaction to lye and I have to use delicate sulfate free body wash, so I pretty much cannot use it.
I use mostly bar soap because I’m friends with the woman who owns and makes all the soap for Paintbox Soapworks. (Free plug: she used to be a pastry chef, she’s a Tolkien nerd and her soaps are AWESOME.) I have never liked antibacterial soaps, but I confess it’s a secret apocalyptic fear of mine that everyone ELSE using antibacterial soaps will kill us all anyway.
I WANT TO BUY ALL THE FANCY SOAPS BUT MINE WILL NEVER GET USED UP EVER
I use it in the shower too, so mine goes relatively quickly. I still buy WAY too much.
But it doesn’t kill germs, right? It just removes (re-homes) them, with…polarity (now, let me scuttle off before my pseudo-science can be interrogated)?
Monk 1: how does soap work
Monk 2: tiny germ-grabbing hands, all over it. just…grabbing all the germs.
Monk 1: sounds legit thanks
Monk 1: …
Monk 1: what are germs
You may wear the Best Comment Crown today.
Yep, the one Scientist I ever knew (who was all into pandemics and stuff) was big on hand-washing but not big on antibacterial soap. He said it was the act of hand-washing that made it useful. Which annoys me that the majority of Dutch bathroom sinks have only cold water so I can’t wash my hands as effectively as Jacob suggested.
I read recently that cold water is fine for washing your hands effectively, since the temperature at which water is hot enough to be more useful is too hot for your skin to handle without burns.
What’s wrong with regular soap? Why does everything have to be the nuclear option? Need a pun for soap escalation…
Something something frothing something lather?
This is just the best comment
That moose headline is so delightfully and perfectly Canadian it might as well have been crafted in a lab. I have been gleefully sending it to people all week.
I just want to pet the moose.
Please do not try this…moose cows are bad-ass and will try to take you down if you approach their kids. Only truly terrifying large animal encounter I have ever had (as a remote-living Canadian) was with a mom moose and her twin babies. Moose calves are totally adorable, though…newborns are reddish brown, like fresh gingerbread.
I also agree that everyone should shut up on the quiet car that’s why there is a goddamn quiet car sit somewhere else if you don’t want to be quiet.
A thousand times this, why did you come to the goddamn quiet car if you just want to talk? Also, I hate you.
A lot of times they seem to think the rules of the quiet car don’t count if they’re talking in person as opposed to on the phone. Or if they bring in a toddler with them. “He can’t help being loud! He’s three!”
Then maybe…don’t sit in the…GAH. Every time.
But the other cars are so loud they can’t hear themselves talk!
You know what else is quiet? *looks around menacingly* Corpses. *narrows eyes at loud people*
The nice thing about the quiet car is that if you toss those people out of the train you know nobody else is gonna say a word to anyone about it.
Especially if you then said “no ticket.”
I once snapped at someone in the quiet car when she started to make her second phone call of the ride and she snapped back that I didn’t have to be so rude and have been wracked with guilt ever since. To be fair, the commuter rail does not usually make it clear which car is the quiet car, you are just supposed to know.
I finally realized that I was getting so mad all the time on the quiet car that it was ruining my mornings and switched back to the regular cars. I get annoyed at obnoxious people in the regular cars but nothing like the white hot rage that would overtake me if someone was loud in the quiet car. The quiet car is also home to men who express themselves through snapping and crumpling their newspapers in a deafening fashion.
The ones on the Dutch trains have an S over the top of the window, along with “SILENT” written in three languages. You know.
Yeah, I get much more irritated by noise when I’m sitting in the quiet carriage than when I’m sitting in a normal one. (I am pretty irritated by it most of the time, admittedly. Fellow train passenger: stop snapping your gum loudly, it makes me want to scream.)
I love the idea of the quiet car! But once I felt awful because I was sitting on the quiet car of a train and someone leaned over to ask me “What time does the train leave?” and I said “Four-fifteen” and a woman turned around and SHUSHED me with her finger in front of her face and everything. Lady!!! I was being quiet!!! We were whispering! It was a two-second question-and-answer! And why shush ME and not the guy asking me????
No one ever donates their body to the humanities.
I beg to differ.
This was the worst, best, weirdest story I’ve ever heard on NPR.
YES! I just learned about this from Shakespeare Uncovered, and it is EXCELLENT. (Also, I cannot highly enough encourage anyone who fancies David Tennant to watch his episode of Shakespeare Uncovered, because his Scottish burr is adorable.)
I’m… biased, but I thought his episode was the BEST – he’s just so enthusiastic about learning stuff! *hearts for eyes*
That Emma Thompson interview:
“And the blokes would be clutching their crotches, going, “Oh no, God. Please leave me alone.” It was very satisfying.”
I love her so much.
Emma Thompson made my Friday morning.
she’s a gemmmm
Speaking of dads, i feel like that lady in the parking article should be made an honorary one because that is SUCH a dad thing to be obsessed with.
I lived with my parents for a bit after college and briefly commuted between DC and WV on the MARC train for an internship, which was the same commute that my dad had been doing for like 30 years. The WV line is notoriously shitty, and people going all the way to the final stop are on the train for well over two hours. One afternoon I sat down in a random car and took out my book, and gradually realized that everyone around me was just openly drinking/already drunk — which became even more apparent when some dude on the upper level of the car shouted down at me, “HEY PURPLE DRESS GIRL, WANT A BEER?”
When I mentioned this to my dad later, he just raised his eyebrows and said, “Oh, you sat in the PARTY car?”
I hear the cafe cars in the Acela trains are like that in the evenings. Only with investment bankers and lawyers and such.
I’m not an investment banker, but there are few things as satisfying as being bone-tired and thirsty and buying a nice cold beer to enjoy with your book the whole 3-4 hrs back from New York after work or a conference. I felt like I must not be in America, or that someone was going to stop me with my malted beverage-of-sin, but it was still great! (I even took it to the Quiet Car!)
Once I took the 4:40pm Metra Electric line and it was full of middle-aged secretaries from various state agencies who all knew each other and had brought those tiny bottles of wine and who cooed over my phone. PERFECT
I can totally picture this vignette-awesome!
They all look like the secretaries from Kids in the Hall.
That just gave me a pang of sadness for the Metro-North Bar Car:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/nyregion/at-the…
train travel is the best
Caltrain on any kind of SF festival or sports game day? It’s no use even trying to sit down, b/c the partiers will eat you alive.
Also, I’m really hoping the party car happened on your morning commute!
ugh i’ve accidentally hopped onto one of those special game day trains before. so much beer. actually it was genuinely awful because drunk, oblivious, party-people blocked my way off the train and i missed my stop.
BART is equally raucous during festival days. last year i had to go into the city on the day of the st. patrick’s day parade. noooooo
Oh man, this was my train when I was interning in DC and living in Harpers Ferry. How did I miss the party car?! 🙁
I use antibacterial soap when I get a new tattoo (12 june! Come ooooon) but it’s ‘natural’ antibacterial, with grapeseed oil and tea tree and stuff.
But otherwise, regular bar soap is fine, and way less wasteful than liquid soap. I like to buy expensive Lush soap.
You can pry my liquid soap out of my cold, dead, clean hands.
In the upcoming superbug germ uprising, you’ll be first against the wall.
It’s not antibacterial! Just liquid!
ACCEPTABLE, you may return from the wall.
I hate liquid soap. You throw away this great load of plastic, still with loads of soap in it, and the idea that it’s more hygienic is false.
Besides, nearly all of it gives me a rash.
We have a giant gallon jug of it and refill the individual dispensers in the bathroom and kitchen. But I know what you mean about throwing away the plastic bottle with a bunch still left inside. That happens with my body lotion and I hate it. I’ve been known to save an “empty” one until another one is “empty,” then cut one of them open and scoop out the leftovers into the second bottle and ta-da! Half-full bottle of lotion.
But it’s not a great system, obviously.
But the carex one smells like strawberry laces.
I feel like I need a copy of Emma’s sex advice book for her daughter. I also need her tips for men not having thrush because I have a son who’s not circumcised and have no idea what the hell to do because we have no experience with this. Help me, Emma Thompson…you’re my only hope!
In the UK people aren’t circumcised as standard and my husband only gets thrush if I’ve got it and haven’t gone symptomatic yet.
He – TMI here, probably – just makes sure he cleans under his foreskin by pulling it up when he washes. He’s had thrush twice, and he’s treated it by applying an over the counter cream three times a day for ten days.
And, they’ll do the cream 3x/day for 10 days. Because god forbid anything is wrong with that body part.
Antibiotics get tossed away 2 days into the course of treatment, because pffffft, they’re tough and can beat this without pills. Get a little red spot on the wang? They’ll obsess over if for weeks.
UK-er here, thrush has never been an issue with all the many many many (ok not that many) uncut wangs I’ve encountered. I think you just wash your knob properly?
Thank you! Good to know. He’s 6 and we’ve never had this problem before, but this winter he was on a few rounds of pretty hard core antibiotics due to a difficult bout of bronchitis. I think that started it. We’ve tried a few different creams and nothing’s made it go away completely. I’m taking him to a urologist (for another thing having to do with kidneys) in a few weeks and I’ll ask what the right kind of cream is. So, uh, he/we should be pulling back his foreskin and washing with each wash? These are the things I need you all and/or Emma Thompson to tell me! (TMI for my son, but it’s for his own good! Holy crap, I’m being an embarrassing mom. Mom magazine fodder, I think.)
So, before I moved to the US most of my boyfriends were not circumcised and they all told me that you 100% always have to wash under the foreskin every time you wash every single day. I don’t have a penis, so I don’t know much about it but they were very adamant that it must be cleaned under the foreskin always, so, that’s all the advice I have.
Thanks! A new subject for me too. It’s extremely weird to be responsible for the care of a penis. Extremely weird.
I believe the foreskin isn’t really retractable for some years; when boys are young it’s still fused to the glans and it’s only when they’re older (exact age varies, but around 10?) that it can be retracted. Don’t force it – it can be damaging and painful. So no, if it’s not easily retractable, do not pull it back.
My boyfriend is uncircumcised (another UK person here – it’s the norm), and he’s never had thrush in the five years we’ve been together, if that makes you feel better.
If you are interested in how our legal system doesn’t work to cover certain geographies, you should probably read this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/… Basically, tribes can’t prosecute non-members who commit crimes on reservations, which adjacent (terrible) white people have used as carte blanche to rape a lot of Native women. It’s basically horrible.
The excellent book The Round House by Louise Erdrich is also about this topic.
There was one stand-up routine I used to do about thrush or candida [known in the U.S. as yeast infections]. I used to do a lot about sexually transmitted diseases. I don’t know about now but in the old days, when you got candida, you could sometimes treat it with natural yogurt. One of my gags was about sending my boyfriend out to get yogurt for the disease he had given me and him coming back with tropical-fruit-and-nut flavor, which just wasn’t what was needed. That used to get quite a big laugh.
EMMA THOMPSON!!!!!!!! 🙂
Re: the veterinarian who wrote the letter to Trudie – I wish Trudie would have been a bit more ballsy with her response, more along the lines of it’s COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE AND IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO TELL CREEPY DUDES THAT YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED. END OF STORY. And Also: All this hemming and hawing and fudging the truth (the thank you note must have gotten lost in the mail? then she hastily writes a thank you note instead of a “leave me alone please” note?) makes pushy dudes think it’s ok to be pushy. Which – it’s not ok. Not at all. Especially in someone’s workplace.
Which reminds me of that “stop saying you have a boyfriend” article – has anyone else read that?
I read it, and dislocated my eyes from rolling them.
really?!?! what made your eyes roll?
Namely, “and the worst part of the whole situation is that we’re doing this to ourselves.”
Also, “I can go home that night, sweaty and tired and happy, and know that I gave myself all the respect that I deserve.”
To hell with that and all it implies. Sometimes I invoke the patronus of an imaginary boyfriend because I’ve already stated lack of interest to a harassing dude and/or tried to remove myself physically from the situation without luck, and it’s clear that my preference alone isn’t enough to keep things from escalating. Sometimes I do boyfriend patronus when I don’t feel like waiting around to see if things escalate. If I’ve missed a teaching moment by invoking boyfriend patronus too soon, sorry not sorry.
I hear you, and get it. It’s exhausting. But I guess I feel like it’s still worthwhile, and I’m glad someone is trying to rally the tired troops.
Uh, I read it. I get the sentiment and I consciously avoid doing it as a default but if guys are such bellends that they don’t think my agency is valid in and of itself then I have 0 interest with engaging with them any further. I don’t really care after that if I have to mention my boyfriend in order to disengage, I’m not pissing my energy on ‘teachable moments’ with sexist (social)space-invaders.
No, let’s be clear: it’s not just that I’m too tired to play along. The parts I quoted borrow assumptions straight from the Sexual Harassment Apologism handbook: that I’m somehow complicit in my own harassment (because if I respected myself, men would respect me too, right?), and that odds are the harasser is a basically decent, teachable guy who just doesn’t know better (so why not just talk to him, right?). Her argument is that I should wager my physical and emotional safety on those odds. And to hell with THAT.
Ok, I hear you. I’ve never been in a situation where my physical safety is at risk, because I’ve always been with friends, or in a bar where I know people and can send the bouncer towards the offender. I feel like it’s a great thing to do, to get pushy men used to the idea that “sorry, not interested” is valid. I hope you’re not reading more into what I’ve written than what I’ve actually written.
Then by all means, have as many conversations and arguments with pushy men as you feel safe having. Then maybe you could write an article about it, but without shaming or blaming the women who choose not to engage. And then we could post your article all over the internet, instead of the crappy one that is currently going around.
I’m perfectly serious.
I would read the hell out of an article that didn’t tell women that we’re only making the issue worse by saying we have boyfriends, while pointing out TO MEN that we shouldn’t have to do that because “No, thank you.” should be perfectly sufficient. Unfortunately, the only people who would read it would already fucking agree with it.
Link for the boyfriend one?
Edit: Never mind, I found it. (http://www.xojane.com/relationships/stop-saying-i-have-a-boyfriend)
I possibly have a serial killer mindset for thinking of this, but I wondered if he might have deliberately sickened his cat in order to see her. He seemed super creepy, and like a potential cat-poisoner.
While I wish she would have told him off and hopefully helped him to be less pushy and awful, I am also of the “do whatever you gotta do to feel safe, lady” perspective. I try really hard not to use the “I have a boyfriend line,” but some guys have gotten EXTREMELY belligerent and borderline scary that I don’t belong to someone AND YET am not falling all over myself to get naked for them. I’m all for changing the culture, but sometimes I say what I need to say to get these models of gentlemanliness to go away.
Ahhh I thought that too! And now I have a half-memory of some weird fake Garfield comic I saw somewhere online where Jon was poisoning Garfield to have excuses to take him to see Liz the hot Vet?
It makes me feel like less of a monster that someone else had the same thought, thank you!
YES! http://the-toast.net/2014/03/25/the-coen-brothers…
I mean, even though I have a boyfriend I usually don’t tell that to creepy guys in bars because if I was single I still wouldn’t want them creeping on me and also because I find people use that as a reason to ask weird questions about your sex life.
HOWEVER, that article rubbed me the wrong way because in my experience women tell guys they have a boyfriend (real or imaginary) because sometimes saying no will cause the situation to escalate, sometimes violently. I feel like it’s a little silly to expect women to risk their own physical and/or mental safety just so they can take some weird stand about why, specifically, they are rejecting this one dude.
The Quiet Car is a monastery and one takes a vow of silence. My husband worked for Amtrak and reported many passenger-led insurrections that occurred when one of the non-elect violated the Code Of Silence.
Little known fact: if you want to meet journalists, politicians and captains of industry, the Quiet Car is good place (but you can’t talk, of course. You just sit together smugly in your superior silent mode, nodding in acknowledgement. Yes, we are the Quiet People. We do not stoop to Public Displays of mundane conversation.)
Oh man now I’m imagining the quiet car as a place for a secret document drop between whistleblowers and journalists..
Here is why people LOVE the Quiet Car. It is one of the few places on earth where one is legally able to tell other people to SHUT UP. It’s an amazing social experiment. Anthropologists should be begging for a residency to ride and study the sweet satisfaction of telling public talkers to STFU. Oh yes, They could actually charge extra for the Quiet Car. https://www.google.com/search?q=amtrak+quiet+car&…
I love the quiet car. I particularly enjoy the schadenfreude of seeing people who don’t believe the rules apply to them get shushed. One time as I was departing DC, I was behind this upper middle class white couple who were talking to themselves about how delightful it was to be in the quiet car away from the “loud urban teenagers.” Yeah. When the conductor walked through and said “This is the quiet car and there’s no talking” directly to them, it was glorious.
Wait are there laws against telling people to shut up
Guess I’m just an outlaw then
It’s impolite to tell people to shut up. We learn this in kindergarten. Of course now there is the Quiet Car Caveat, which states EXCEPT IN THE QUIET CAR
It can be so stressful, though! I work in an academic library and part of my job is to check the reading rooms now and again and make sure people aren’t being loud or eating/drinking prohibited stuff (anything other than bottled water, basically). I always try to be polite, but lots of people are such arseholes when their rulebreaking is pointed out to them.
In further writing about reparations, this piece by Jamelle Bouie is a good look at how practically reparations might work. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/p…
I love Jamelle Bouie. He’s like an amplifier of Ta-Nehisi Coates. In my mind they hang out and get coffee ALL THE TIME.
I work at an academic library that is known on campus as the loud, group-study, raucous library, but one wing on an upper floor is our silent study area. It is ruthlessly policed not by we librarians, but by the students themselves. They will go so far as to shame one another on Twitter – “Hey whoever is eating pita chips in the silent area – that’s unconscionable.”
unconscionable
AMAZING
Is there anything more satisfying than to have social Permission to enforce “correct” behavior? NO, no there is not.
Oh man, if ever I am feeling sleepy in the library I just listen out for the whispering Undergraduates who are in there somewhere and go tell ’em to shush. Adrenaline unlocked!
My college library is like that! Several floors of loud people eating sandwiches and loud chips in crinkly bags and flirting and gossiping and watching videos on their laptops without headphones, and then one area dubbed the “graduate reading room” which is supposed to be silent. We all collude in pretending that there is no noise coming from the courtyard below, which is utter lies, although comforting ones.
I love when there’s poetry!
Me, too! And today’s poem got me right in the gut, good choice Link Roundup/Nicole!
Weird confession time: I at some point actually started to avoid the quiet car. Not because I enjoy talking on phones or having loud conversations with my seat mates. No. At some point I developed a weird aversion to the loud sound of typing, however (I think when I shared an office with a coworker who absolutely *pounded* his old mechanical keyboard with single index fingers). It drives me up the goddamn wall.
The quiet car is often full of nothing but the sound of typing.
You all need to learn to type less loudly.
(Yes I am insane and absolutely unreasonable in my demands on human society and I am probably that lady in the article above.)
I type with purpose.
You monster.
Anything I can have in common with Anna Kendrick, even indirectly through a character, I’ll take.
Actually – if you go to the article linked and then go to the NY Times article linked from there, the author of that one was shamed for typing too loudly on a Quiet Car. So.. you’re not alone.
I once shared an office with a guy who was a loud chewer. Far too often, the only thing you could hear was his chewing. His very, intensely, extremely loud chewing.
I understand.
I want to sit at Emma Thompson’s feet and just listen to all of her stories.
Thank you for the history of street parking article, Nicole! If anyone wants to think about parking more (and I know there must be a few) I can recommend the documentary “The Parking Lot.” It is so good.
“‘Oh, you can drive? Yeah, you can do the stunts.’ That was really one of my best bits in my life” makes me think of a piece of the commentary from Cabin In The Woods.
[HUGE SPOILER FOR Cabin in the Woods!] After Bradley Whitford’s first take firing the machine gun at the army of monsters that would surely destroy them all, Joss Whedon had to suggest a motivation: “What if instead of the best day of your life, this were the worst day of your life?” Every time I think of that, I start giggling.
Thank you for warning for the the spoiler! I started to read your comment and then yanked my gaze away (I have yet to watch the film, although I want to! I just need to make sure I can watch it in daylight to minimise the fear).
I’m glad it was enough! Spoiler warnings don’t do me much good because my eyes are usually moving too far ahead of my brain (sloppy, fast-researcher habit) to look away before I’ve seen the words, but I still think they’re valuable for many people, so I do make an effort.
I was somewhat surprised that I was able to stop reading in time – normally I just take in chunks of text in one go. Good work, eyes!
I despise bar soap.
You are killing it all over this thread.