I caught a cold on the plane and didn’t get to go visit my aunt’s house, which was full of little foster kittens, so my joy has turned to ashes in my mouth. Not just one little foster kitten, you realize. Like, SEVEN little foster kittens, climbing all over each other and frolicking, not yet calcified into surly adult cats.
Important update to Blind Items of Rural Southern Ontario: the smug septuagenarian who won’t give up the recipe for her maple fudge? A certain visiting priest took one bite, asked who made it, and formally told her that “her way to heaven was clear.” Humph.
This piece on being a Collections Editor at Medium was really interesting, and also resonates, I think, for anyone trying to figure out how and what to pay writers:
How were we to know how much compensation to offer writers if we didn’t know how much traffic their articles were getting? The pillar of the LadyBits brand is quality, and if I wanted quality writing, I knew I would have to offer competitive pay. The best method I came up with, that would compensate writers and protect LadyBitsLLC from going into debt, was to offer to pay writers 50% of the income their posts generated from Medium (2.5 cents per view), and put the other 50% into the LLC to pay editors, the increasingly necessary staff to manage workflow and financials, and myself. I tried a variety of other techniques to estimate flat rates but as the pitches poured in and the workload grew, asking us to predict traffic performance across a month’s worth of content and base a budget off of it became a job in and of itself.
I cannot handle the stress of watching spelling bees, but thankfully others feel differently:
In the eighth round, the youngest finalist, Tejas Muthusamy, from Virginia, was eliminated when he misspelled “hallenkirche.” As soon as he heard the dreaded bell indicating his mistake, he sighed into the mic, “Obviously.” His cheeks were as red as the countdown screen behind him. “Aw well, he has three more years of eligibility,” said one announcer. “A star is born, we’re going to see him a lot in this competition,” said the other. Kate Miller, who got out on “exochorion,” took leave of the stage with a practiced parade-princess wave. Upon hearing the correct spelling of the word, she said “That was my first instinct!” and then she left the stage to meet her parents, where she went fully supine on the cry couch.
Jaya and Matt got married this weekend. Shower them with love.
You seem like the sort of people who have already read the piece about the suburban exorcists, but JUST IN CASE:
“What is your function?” Larry asks.
“I have no function except to torment,” the voice answers. The eyes are fixed in a way that is glaring yet vacant.
“Do you have a right to her? Yes or no?” Larry asks.
“Yes, I have,” the voice says, in a clipped, mocking tone.
“What is your right?”
“Her sexuality,” the voice groans, drawing out the consonants with a hiss. “I take all of their reproductive organs. Everyone gives to me.”
“How long have you tormented her?” Larry asks.
“Foreverrrr,” the voice says, breaking into a growl. “As long as I want to.”
“That ain’t the answer,” Larry interjects. “Do you want me to punish you?”
“No,” the voice says, growling again. “Noooooo.”
So, I really did not enjoy this old Sports Illustrated piece that popped up on Longform, I found it to be intensely sympathetic to the young man who committed the sexual assault, while patting itself on the back for being even-handed. Which is not to say that we should throw people into volcanos, just that the smug better-than-you-ness radiating off it was quite off-putting. But the STYLISTIC thing that had me throwing stuff, honestly, was the repeated use of the phrase “15 minutes in a stairwell” to refer to the sexual assault that jacked up the young man’s life, like the fact it only took 15 minutes of his day is something we should pay attention to. How long does it take to commit a murder? Four seconds? You never hear anyone be like: “those four seconds in the car cost Son of Sam his freedom.” But, here we are:
1. “virtually everywhere Richie would turn to rid himself of the baggage of those 15 minutes…”
2. “failed to turn up a single thread that would indicate that those 15 minutes in the stairwell were part of a larger pattern.”
3. “For 15 minutes of rotten judgment” (this is not the author talking, it’s a woman he interviews)
4. “Now, wait a minute—no one is going to be foolish enough to blame Richie Parker’s 15 minutes in the stairwell or the administration of Mesa Community College or even the media for the death of a coach’s father, but every event in life is chained to the next, and how do you ever separate the links?”
Like, don’t tell me that this phrase is not meant to diminish what happened. C’mon, now. Do better.
My daughter loves these books, but this woman is right on.
Fuck this bitch in the EAR and say “NO”:
Q. Stingy Socialite: There is a group of mothers at my children’s school who get together socially every now and then. We usually go to a restaurant for a meal. One mother always sits next to me and when it comes to paying (we all pay for our own meals) she pointedly looks at me and says she forgot her purse. It’s not like we dine out at luxury establishments, so the first couple of times I didn’t think much and paid for her. Each time she thanks me politely and says she’ll pay for me next time, yet she never does. I started sitting further away from her and avoided eye contact, but now she makes a point of asking me directly. I feel stingy saying no in front of everyone else when it’s not a great deal of money. But Prudie, this lady drives a new Audi and her husband is a prominent real estate agent in our area who sells multi-million-dollar mansions. I’m having a hard time imagining why she needs me to pay for her each time. How do I say no in a nice way?
DO NOT WANT NOPE:
The last of the Mann Gulch smokejumpers has died. Perhaps you should read Young Men and Fire again. RIP.
