This story about Lois Duncan’s search to solve her daughter’s murder is fascinating, but it’s really about an entire life:
After being fired from a $200-a-month advertising job (“I wouldn’t sleep with the boss,” she said), Lois found herself in a magazine shop, determined to figure out how to break in as a writer. She bought 22 copies of 22 different confessionals — pulp magazines that published lurid, anonymous secrets that hinged on an easily replicated formula. “I sinned, suffered, got caught, and repented,” Lois explained. She regularly began exposing new, fictionalized sins. One week, she was a kleptomaniac who, at the grocery store, couldn’t help but stuff her purse with overpriced tins of smoked oysters. The next week, she was a mother so frustrated with her constantly interrupted love life that she accidentally killed her colicky infant with an overdose of paregoric. Her most popular story was headlined, “I WANTED TO HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH A TEEN-AGE BOY.”
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Everything and everyone has always been only narrowly constrained by society from bathing in each other’s hot blood while whitewashing fences or something.
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As an ardent monarchist, I feel that abdicators are quitters. You were put there by GOD to rule. You’re supposed to continue on, held together with morphia and frequent blood-lettings until God chooses to release you from your service. That being said, immediately read this FASC-inating, super-dishy book about the Duchess of Windsor, which I just finished.
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We watch a lot of old Scooby Doo DVDs in our house, which leaves less time for this sort of thing:
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This woman is one tough cookie, and I hope that Toasties in medical school are being offered and choosing to avail themselves of training on abortion. There is no reproductive choice without providers, at least until that terrifying Prometheus machine gets invented.
Medical schools once taught abortion as part of their integrated curriculum, but that’s changed. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, only one-third of American medical schools in 2005 provided a formal lecture on abortion. Although 45 percent of schools offer clinical training in abortion care, students frequently opt out. Reproductive rights advocates predict if the trend continues, and abortion becomes even less accessible, women will revert to tactics used in the years before Roe v. Wade.
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Sometimes having the best wrong answer to your honour-system online trivia league is its own reward:
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
That waffle is amazing, but better suited for pictures than eating, I think. Once my BFF and I made a rainbow layer cake using a similar principal, and it tasted overwhelmingly of food dye. It looked awesome! But was not as delicious. That Pinterest board is a damn archive of horror and no mistake. A) People only do this for blogs so people will coo over how amazing it is, and B) I admire a well-laid-out plate in a restaurant! I do. But really: it’s food. You digest it and it turns into poo. Don’t spend that much time on something your toddler cannot appreciate. Don’t even spend that much time on food without eating it!
GODDAMMIT EVERYONE, IT IS NOT A SIN TO JUST BE COMPETENT. Pinterest must be stopped! Pinterest must stop telling people that it is not enough to serve your family decently-tasting, affordable, healthy food! Food does not have to be cute! If you’re spending that much time designing your food, why can’t you just focus all that time on making it TASTE amazing? This is art! Art is lovely! But oh my god, I wish people wouldn’t feel bad about not making their food beautiful?
Please do not get me started on what Pinterest has done to weddings, it’s a several-thousand-word piece with lots of screaming.
When I was little, my dad used to cut my PB&Js in the shape of my first initial. I would go exactly that far for my hypothetical future offspring.
My parents would buy a pre-made pizza base and make smiley-face pizzas for me, which was cool, and is also exactly how far I would go.
My dad was a great cook and I ate widely and adventurously. I was warm, and clothed and cleam and my room was decorated how I wanted it. Those are good things. There comes a certain point when you aren’t doing it for your kids any more, you’re doing it for you or to show off, and while that’s fine it’s best to be honest and not get involved in those bloody stupid ‘I am the best and most creative and most perfect and wonderful’ competitions, because no-one wins and everyone gets hurt.
My dad did something similar: he cut sandwiches into 4 triangles, then rearranged them so they looked like two butterflies. I loved it! And it takes absolutely no effort.
My daughter just walked in, saw the picture of the rainbow waffles and said, “Ewww! Blegh! Gross!”
She was excited earlier because I got the best waffles in the world for breakfast this morning, the frozen kind you put in the toaster. I have raised her well!
I make multicoloured cakes on a fairly regular basis – I use gel food colouring, you only need to dip the end of a toothpick into it for enough for half a batch of cupcakes, so it doesn’t flavour the cakes. I don’t do it for kids though, it is purely for my own entertainment. (CF banana-bread skulls with pink cinnamon icing brains on top, Dali clock cakes, dinosaur shaped glittery cupcakes and godzilla cake)
YES THANK YOU. Can I just say that a) why are we shaming people for being creative and sharing something they enjoy? and b) TANGENT AHEAD: I am dead tired of Pinterest boards that are specifically created to complain about shit. Like I actually found one one time called ‘Oh Honey No’ that existed to mock outfits that the creator felt to be ‘unflattering’ and to complain about how American flag-print clothes were on par with treason. I know that I am actually complaining about Pinterest boards right now which kind of invalidates any legitimate point I have to make but WHY ARE WE DOING THIS TO EACH OTHER.
My pinterest boards are hot men (and hot women), food I am actually going to make (not just food that looks like pretty), weird art, stuff I see and want to buy one day, and mostly Buffy quotes.
It makes me sad that people automatically use these things to be nasty to each other.
Instead, we should make sharks out of brownies. (I got the idea of using chocolate orange segments for shark fins and it went from there…)
I love love love pinterest food boards. I’ve never seen much of the creative one’s, it may have to do with which boards I follow, but they have been super helpful with cooking. I get a stomach ache if I wait to long to eat but while I love eating I loathe cooking and having a neatly organized board with clear photos of food that I like, that if I click on them it takes me to a recipe, is insanely helpful with planning out my meals each week.
Why NOT make brownie sharks? Excellent IDEA.
is that a cool-whip ocean?
SO HUNGRY.
If cool whip is the same as whipped cream then yes! It was for my sister’s birthday cake a while ago.
I’m just going to keep posting photos of my ridiculous cakes because they are the anti-pinterest.
RAAAAWWWRRRRR!
real whip is so much better. these are hilarious! i make weird cakes too but don’t have any pics to share at the moment.
These boards don’t exist in a vaccuum, though, they exist within a long, long tradition of patriarchy being reinforced through a message of “This is the best way to mom, why aren’t you mom-ing as well as me/this other example, you are failing as a woman/mom, your sins as a woman can only be remedied by spending more time in the kitchen thinking about your children’s wishes.” Those creating and re-pinning these items may not have had the intention to perpetuate that tradition, but that doesn’t mean it’s invalid to see that message in them and call it out appropriately.
You can choose to place more “blame” (responsibility?) on the readers who see and/or internalize the harmful message rather than only seeing the message of “oh, that’s someone’s hobby, how nice”, but I don’t think that’s entirely fair. How we choose to discuss all things domestic definitely matters to our larger worldviews on gender roles and feminism and all those things, and in general, I think Pinterest does more harm than good to that conversation. (Individual boards’ mileage may vary.)
I absolutely agree, although I didn’t see the board that Nicole linked to engaging in that kind of gender criticism. And you’re totally right about unfairly placing responsibility on the viewer for having internalized feelings of inadequacy – this is something I do to myself a lot and it’s shitty.
My work filter blocks pinterest, so I pulled out my phone over lunch to look at the board in question. I read the author’s tone as being one of mocking the “how to be the best number-one mom” narrative. I see how it could be read as attacking those who created the crafts, although that reading does feel like kind of a stretch to me.
I’m really seeing a person frustrated with a world full of a near-infinite supply of messages that boil down to, “hey, you know those ten things you accomplished today? Here’s what it would look like if you had done them better/”right” “. And those messages are, in turn, a way to tell women that they’re living their lives wrong, especially domestically. (And yes, I’m making an assumption about gender(s) here, and yes, it’s f*cked up that I’m probably right.)
But you might see the board’s author speaking differently than my interpretation?
Nope, you’re right! Without context the board seems really Mean Girl. But I looked up Scary Mommy and it seems like what you’re talking about – pushing back against supermom expectations – is her raison d’etre.
I liked it better when it was Martha Stewart shaming me, rather than randos on the internet, ok?
Yes! My mother is very proud of the story involving how she kicked Martha Stewart out of her life while us kids were still very young. (An episode of her TV show started with her out in a boat, catching the fish she was going to cook for dinner.) And she’s such a perfect example of how a surface-pleasant tone can create an environment that’s toxic, both gender-role-wise and self-confidence-wise.
I actually have a medium-high level of okay-ness with the post-prison, post-internet world of Ms. Martha, but there’s a very straight line from her supremecy in the 90s to the pinterest one-upsmanship of today.
Haha my godmother’s story involves framed handkerchiefs and her rage at not supporting local artists, but my mom’s is quite similar to your mom’s.
I am also surprisingly quite ok with post-prison Martha. She was totally targeted because she’s a woman! So I’m now into her, despite her oppressive ways? Who knows. I still don’t do pinterest.
Post-internet is I think the controlling modifier here. Now that we’re swimming in a sea of How To Domestic, on-demand and uncoupled from magazine stands and televisions, you only have to dabble with her if you want to. Super-crazy egg-dying crafts are far less horrifying if I was already googling for them out of boredom.
YES! I have a pinterest board that’s just all the recipes I’ve torn out of magazines over the past decade and tracked down online, but that’s the only one I work on.
HOWEVER, I am SO TIRED of Pinterest being used as some sort of fucked-up one-upsman bullshit between moms. So fucking what if you got a Cri-cut and made 34 custom party favors for your two year old? I assure you, your child is still in the booger-eating phase, she’s happy with a plastic crown made in China and Costco cake. Pinterest privileges money, time, and access to these expensive resources, so for those of us who work and can’t afford to spend five goddamn hundred dollars on a fucking birthday party, we’re supposed to think we’re shitty parents for not throwing some mason-jar-centric twee explosion of a party.
Don’t even get me started on Elf on a Shelf, my head will LITERALLY explode.
i ignore the haters. i assume they’re not visual people and don’t understand how it works anyway. you only see the people you follow, so follow interesting boards that inspire you and you’ll be good.
my board brings me unending joy. projects, images, recipes, travel ideas. all the good stuff lives there. it’s my sunny island in what sometimes feels like a life void of creativity. reminds me about what really matters and gets me back on track.
I completely agree on your Pinterest points and how it is making people crazy, BUT on your attempt to do rainbow whatever, did you use the gel food dye or liquid? They have super-concentrated gels that allow you to use less to impart a more intense color.
http://www.craftsy.com/blog/2013/10/types-of-food…
(I follow weird fangirls of Supernatural on Pinterest rather than actual crafters.)
It was several years ago so I have no idea, but I’m thinking probably liquid, because we were broke-ass university students and that was what was for sale at Bulk Barn.
I loff you.
Yeah, my first question on seeing that waffle was what kind of evil color it would make your poop.
Applauuuuuse! And if your kids DO like time-consumingly artistic food, you’re going to find yourself trapped in a never-ending cycle of making tiny sculpted hardboiled eggs for the rest of your life, because they won’t eat normal ones. Never contribute to expectation creep!
I sort of liked the reindeer hair bun, though. The idea of googly eyes as a hair accessory appeals to me on a fundamental level.
I think everyone on those boards is under the impression that these are the things you should do FOR your kid, when in fact these are perfect ideas for kids who want to use the waffle iron without asking permission first. If I had pinterest when I was 10, I would have done ALL of these, and my mom would have had multiple heart attacks. Now, I’m less interested.
This is an excellent point.
Fair enough.
Also I think we’re overlooking the possibility that these can be things you do TO your kids, a la Dali hotdogs: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/212372938649354947/
Let ’em TRY to become picky eaters after that shit.
Pretty sure this shit’s how you get grown-ass adults who refuse to eat anything but macaroni and cheese made exactly how their mom made it when they were five.
OMG, truth. Last week we tried out this recipe:
http://www.budgetbytes.com/2013/05/chipotle-sweet…
So ugly. Incredibly ugly. Like, orangish blobs studded with corn and beans like something the dog horked up. Not even Pinterest can make them pretty. And they were also the most delicious things I have put in my mouth since ever.
PREACH.
“Kids these days awful and far far worse than my generation” report adults from every time period since humanity began.
In the print version of that article, they had a subhed that said something like, “Parents today could learn a lot from 19th-century America,” and then the article was all about killing cats and bullying handicapped people. I …. just don’t know that I’m on board.
In Lucy Maud Montgomery’s diaries, there was a horrifying entry about how a local boy just up and sawed a kitten in half. Between that and the whole “I’ve chloroformed plenty of cats!” debacle from Anne of the Island, my mental image of 19th-early 20th-century Canada as a maple-flavoured Arcadia inhabited by very polite and apologetic people really took a nosedive.
omg I just finished rereading Anne of the Island, could we please have an in-depth discussion about the cat chloroform situation + other relevant matters
Wait, what? Was there any explanation as to why he decided to do that?
Oh absolutely. What the freeze dried hell, people. Let’s just go ahead bring back child labor! That’ll keep the selfish little buggers off their electronic whizzbangers and whatnot. And probably the exhaustion and industrial related accidents and infirmaries will keep the sassmouth to a minimum.
It’s good to get them out and doing activities with their peers, really give them the social push they need.
Reading things like that about what kids do left to their own devices makes me wonder how much less awful and troll-filled the internet might be if 14-year-olds experimenting with their ability to upset people weren’t on it. Probably wouldn’t make a big difference, it just makes me feel better to think all the awful people are really just kids who will grow out of it.
I don’t think the 19th century is exactly the author’s generation.
I thought the article was interesting just in the way that it disputes that whole Freudian narrative that the universal experience of childhood has always been moving under your parents’ strict guidance from Savagery into Civilized Behavior. The reality is, parents have often not taken much interest in what children get up to, or provided all that much guidance, or — apparently! — even thought they were too Savage at all.
The past really is a foreign country sometimes.
John Grinspan is hundreds of years old, and will roam the earth long after both of our deaths. It’s right in his author’s bio.
Nicole, you’re in Learned League, too? Any other Toast people there?
I am! Rundle B Midland. You?
Rundle D Midland!
Rundle A Metro. I am _totally_ out of my league in Rundle A, but the last few seasons I’ve done just well enough to keep me there rather than send me to Rundle B where I belong.
Every season I crush a lower Rundle and am promoted to the next-highest Rundle, where I get my ass kicked. And then the cycle begins anew.
I seem to have a permanent home two or three slots above the relegation zone. Have either of you written any one-days/MLs? Those are more fun than the regular season, I think.
Aw, no Seaboard-er’s? I’m in Rundle C over there. And I smithed the Brooklyn one-day earlier this year – writing trivia was really fun, and not nearly as daunting as I thought it would be!
Ahhh, the Brooklyn one was so good! I was kicking myself when I realized I missed it – Saturdays are, for whatever reason, frequently missed by me.
I did Chickens last year and have Buffalo coming up in a few months. Does anyone want to try and collaborate on one for next year? I’d love to do an ML, but that’s a lot of questions for one person to write.
Thanks! I’m totally looking forward to the Buffalo one. I could totally be talked into collaborating on something! I haven’t started to think about what to do next year, yet, so PM me if you have any ideas!
I could also be talked into collaborating on a one-day or ML. I won the Scary Movies one-day, which took me completely by surprise.
Omg, I have never heard of this and now I feel completely excluded. I want to solicit an invitation but I’m also scared that I’m not good enough. How did you all get involved in this? How can I figure out if I’m worthy?
I have some invitations for next season and can send one to you if you’d like.
It’s trivia with the added strategy of guessing how easy/hard a question will be for your opponent.
I got involved because I do a lot of puzzle and trivia stuff and got an invite from a friend who also does a lot of puzzle/trivia stuff.
Seriously, this sounds amazing and if you would send me an invite I’d be eternally grateful. My email is [email protected]. But honestly: I absolutely love trivia but don’t want to tarnish your good reputation. What if I end up being terrible? I would stick to the honor system though! And I’m definitely on the computer every day.
No problem! Basically, read (and follow) the rules and you should be fine.
I’ll send that invite out later today.
Same here! I would really like to play, but am pretty sure I’m not clever enough.
I only have one referral per season, as it turns out, but another Toastie should be able to send you one if you’re interested.
Well, if any toastie wants to be that kind, my email is [email protected], but I certainly don;t expect or demand one!
Rundle B central represent!
I made it to the A rundle once, and promptly got my shit ruined
Rundle E Highland!
my partner is in it. I don’t know rundles but he is usually either bitching about Ken Jennings beating him, or crowing about beating Ken Jennings.
That Lois Duncan story is heartbreaking and weird and fascinating in equal measure.
The abortion clinic story is heartbreaking. I am in Texas and the Wendy Davis filibuster was great but ultimately failed because they just called another emergency session and passed the law then. I believe we are down to three clinics that provide abortions of any kind in all of Texas. Abortion is a medical issue in my opinion, not a moral one. I worry about my daughters heath care as they reach puberty.
Reading the comments on that site was horrifying.
I did not make it as far as the comments. I had to stop halfway through because of all the feelings. ARRGGG!
As monarchs go, Juan Carlos is pretty great. Helped manage Spain’s transition to democracy, and aided in snuffing out the coup that threatened to topple the elected government in 1981. Certainly no 20th-century monarch has done anything nearly as good for their country.
(Side note: it always kind of blows my mind that Franco was in power until 1975. When my parents were in high school, Spain was ruled by a dictator.)
Agreed!
And the scandals are good too. Princesses are called Infantas, and the Infanta Cristina is in trouble because she’s married to an *embezzling* *Basque* *handball player*. Or is he a volleyball player? I forget.
Right? Spanish history is bananas! In the 20th century, Spain was a monarchy, a democracy, basically an anarchy during the civil war, then a dictatorship, and then had a nice transition into a constitutional monarch, with lots of bumps in every step. That’s a lot of tumult, yo.
Also, I agree, Juan Carlos is pretty cool. He finessed Franco into leaving the country to him by promising to maintain a total monarchy, and then reneged. And I mean, finessing Franco is no joke.
I lived in Spain briefly years ago, and this news reminds me of the ¡Hola! series of a young Felipe sunbathing with his girlfriend. Sadly, I am not finding them on the internet but trust me, teenage girls were very excited about it at the time.
Shame about his recent elephant-hunting trip, though.
I have been looking at this article since last night and still can’t figure out whether it’s real or just really good satire:
Female-named hurricanes kill more than male because people don’t respect them, study finds.
Your link is broken, I think. I read this today and I am leaning towards not satire because men are just that stupid and the world is that ridiculous.
Drat. Here’s the link, maybe it’ll work better this time?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weath…
Works now!
The answer is almost always, “YES, Men are THAT STUPID”
Real, but there’s issues with the methodology/reporting: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/0…
Not satire, but not good science either: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/0…
Which is a shame, because I liked the idea that just giving a storm a female name granted it increased ability to destroy.
Oh god THANK YOU for that link.
Let me preface this by saying I am a social scientist who has a chip on her shoulder about hasty online declarations of peer-reviewed research as “good” or “bad” — the many, many valid criticisms of peer review notwithstanding. BUT:
The criticisms cited in the Nat Geo piece are arguably “poor science”* as well. Here’s why! Randomization of experimental treatment removes the need for representative sampling; it doesn’t matter whether the students studied are representative of those living in coastal areas or not, if the mechanism in question is psychological and the treatment (whether asked about male- or female-named hurricanes) randomly assigned.
As for the lack of significance in the era-divided data sets, that is not suspicious so much as it is a function of greater sample sizes creating greater confidence in observed correlations; fewer years = smaller sample size. Hurricanes are not all that common, so gathering sufficiently large n’s is not a particularly surprising problem. It’s not the researchers’ fault or a methodological failing; it’s just an attribute of the data they had to work with. It’s also worth pointing out that while the n was too small to yield a statistically significant correlation coefficient, the direction of the observed effect was consistent with the findings from the full data set (more “male” names were correlated with a decrease in deaths; more “female” names were correlated with higher numbers of deaths).
Moreover, the experimental component of the design — the one that actually tests the hypothesized mechanism — doesn’t use historical data at all; the researchers used names that have not yet been given to hurricanes at all, so there’s no question of the data being skewed based on the over-representation of female-named hurricanes in the historical data set. Specifically, participants were asked to assess the intensity, riskiness of hurricanes, and their own evacuation intentions in response to a short paragraph about an impending hurricane. On all three metrics, giving the hurricane a female name (Hurricane Christina) had a statistically significant effect, when compared to a male name (Hurricane Christopher) or no name. The experiments were repeated using a series of different paired male/female names and with a variety of controls for familiarity, perceived strength of the name’s gender, age, and likeability, with robust results.
As for the “indirect” vs. “direct” deaths — they are arguably both a function of preparedness; if people had evacuated the storm area, they wouldn’t be vulnerable to either.
I do agree that taking a look at the substantive effects of the observed correlation is important — how much of the variation in death tolls is explained by the name of the hurricane? But the authors admit this.
Sorry to belabor this, but between this and the variously (often poorly) informed Piketty critiques, I get very frustrated with people’s tendency to either propagate or critique research uncritically and without an understanding of the underlying methodological choices and options.
*calling something “bad science” or “good science” is an incredibly subjective exercise given the plethora of untestable assumptions and beliefs that underlie *any* scientific method, including experimental and regression analysis
Just because you use valid scientific methodology, doesn’t mean you end up with good science, though. It’s worth asking “is it really plausible that Hurricane Andrew would have killed 25,000 more people if it had been called Hurricane Diana?”, which is the size of the effect they claim.
My beloved did his own replication, and the correlation doesn’t show up with just the names and their perceived femininity, only with an interaction model that includes the strength of the hurricane. Plus, if you leave out Diane and Andrew, the published correlation is no longer remotely significant.
But what IS true is that lightning kills six times more men than women. It has inspired my brother to call his next (hypothetical) band “Misandrist Lightning.”
This was on NPR on my way to work! I was rolling my eyes the whole time. Even when they explained the study, it still sounded stupid. I’m glad the Nat Geo link shows there are REAL, methodological reasons to eye roll.
When I was in high school, I was pressured into joining the Monarchist League of Canada. It was actually pretty cool: I got to meet Princess Anne. They still haunt my parent’s mailbox with their leaflets. And, yes, they would agree that abdicators are quitters.
Dude, in grad school I knew a guy who was so deeply into the Monarchist League that he was like, a chapter leader, and he would pontificate frequently and vocally about the importance of the monarchy and how Canada should revert to being a straight colony with none of this independence business, AND when Kate and William got married, the League commissioned a truly hideous painting of them and sent it to the wedding and fondly imagined they would hang it in a place of honour in their home.
That comment kind of got away from me there but oh man, that guy was a loon, I think he is the guy who writes the leaflets.
That guy sounds like such a fun loon; I would love to see that painting.
…. it’s probably in a newsletter somewhere in my mail pile at my parents.
omg omg omg you can see a (tiny) version of the painting in this newsletter BUT apparently it was only SHORTLISTED as a gift from the province? OH GOD http://www.monarchistnb.ca/newsletter/issues/July…
Oh my god
Jesus, who is that behind them? It’s so small I can’t tell, but is it Diana’s ghost?
Please tell me it’s Diana’s ghost.
I think it’s meant to be a stained glass portrait of Diana?
I THINK IT IS. I remember seeing the real thing and being “Oh, how….lovely….” and I’m 98% sure it’s a stained-glass portrait of Diana.
I mean, NB is backwards in a lot of ways, but even they had the common sense not to send this.
Thank goodness.
I think the artistic establishment in NB would’ve had a fit if they sent that.
Bidding starts at only $1500! I want it. It will hang in my stairwell. “Loyalists Only”
ahaha can you imagine being a royal person who actually gets gifts like this and has to be like “oh I say, that’s ever so lovely!”
That whole newsletter is terrifying. So much monarchist gushing!
I love reading about royals, but it’s also incredibly frustrating for me. Not because of any ethical qualms about whether monarchy is a just and acceptable political system or whatever. Because I’m jealous that commoners are marrying into royalty right and left and I’m not one of them, goddamn it.
Mette-Marit, crown princess of Norway? Met the crown prince during a party at a rock festival.
Mary, crown princess of Denmark? Met the crown prince at a pub when he was visiting her homeland of Australia during the Sydney Olympics.
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands? Met the king at a fair in Seville.
I go to rock festivals! I go to pubs! I’ve been to Seville! I have yet to have a prince or princess ask for my hand in marriage. Hell, I’d settle for a count or even a baronet. What is it going to take for me to finally assume my rightful place among the jewelry-crusted nobility of Europe?
Secretly I also feel this way though I do not habitually go to rock festivals, pubs, or Seville.
Usually I just obsessively read Go Fug Yourself for their amazing descriptions and discussions of Royalty The World Over and how they meet.
When my sister was in law school she hooked up with an International Type who confessed at one point that he was the crown prince of [redacted] and that’s why his life entailed his suddenly being unavailable at random points and also random burly guys showing up where they were. We… had doubts.
But if it was true, my sister could be a princess now! (I mean, if she hadn’t given up THE DREAM like a FOOL.)
He could have also been a married mobster.
Just sayin’
OR he could have been an international spy!!!! Ah, mystery!
Speaking of True Detective (several weeks ago) I was reminded by iTunes last night about that scene where Marty is at Rust’s apartment and they do a montage of Rust getting ready to go back under cover for the raid on the drug drop house. When Lucinda Williams’ Are You Alright kicks in as the score, I confess I swooned a little bit. A bold choice and it totally worked for me.
I’m in nursing school with my dream field being women’s health clinic work. I really want to get good training in abortion care- not sure if my school offers it, but I can get it outside of school if I have to. But I’m determined to get training so I can work in a clinic that provides abortions, precisely because we need people to fill that gap. Making sure that everyone has access to safe abortions is so so important. I can’t even fathom why people would WANT to go back to pre-Roe v Wade and that is all I can say about that, because if I think about it any more I will probably explode and it is still morning.
Thank you! For what you are doing now and for what I’m sure you’ll be doing in the future.
You are a Toast Hero!
<3 <3 <3
Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.
My life has not taken me to healthcare fields but I feel strongly about reproductive justice and hope to at least be a clinic escort at some point.
“his glamorous wife Letizia, a former award-winning newsreader and divorcee”
DAMNIT, when do I get to be an award-winning divorcee? Some people have all the luck in the Divorcee Pageants, and as for the Divorcee Committees – don’t get me started! They all have their pet Divorcees, and no matter how acrimonious and mud-smeared my own divorces increasingly get, they just won’t let perfectly deserving divorcees onto even the long list of consideration.
I was reading the wikipedia article on her, and it said she got married “after a 10-year courtship” and then they got divorced after about a year. I just… don’t get that. How does it happen that 2 people spend an entire decade in a happy and stable enough relationship that they decide to get married, only to split up that shortly after the wedding?
Same thing happened to one of my cousins. He and his girlfriend were together for 7 years and then got divorced less than a year after getting married. What deal-breakers could possibly have cropped up in those few months after the wedding that weren’t an issue in all the time they were together before?
I mean, obviously things worked out pretty well for Letizia, but it’s kind of weird.
I think it’s because the long term relationship starts to lose steam, and the couple thinks the solution is to get married. Surprise, it’s not.
The phrase “take it the next level” often gets kicked around, without realizing that the next level is breaking up.
Oh! I know how to fix a marriage that didn’t fix a faltering relationship! BABIES!
more importantly, how do I become an award-winning newsreader??
(Googling has led me to understand that “newsreader” is really just another word for news presenter/anchor. WHY CAN I NOT BE AWARDED FOR BEING GOOD AT READING THINGS ON THE INTERNET)
The abortion situation is heartbreaking. I’ve done some work as a “standardized patient” where med students practice talking to me about birth control while I pretend to be, like, a lesbian who should get tested for TB or a mother who would like an IUD. Occasionally the students will say really boneheaded things and I just despair.
Same here! I spend all day alternately appalled and heartened by the future of medicine.
ATTN med students who read these comments: NOT ALL med students. We know. You are brilliant snowflakes and we love you. 🙂
Ha! You’re totally right. I’m operating under the assumption that Toastie med students are among the ones who make me feel good about doctors-to-be, and that they know better than ANYONE that there are some…troubling candidates in their midst 🙂
Any choice quotes?
The exact boneheadedness is a secret we are bound by blood and iron to keep.
Has anyone seen the adaptation of Any Human Heart? The protagonist has a series of encounters with the Duke of Windsor and his wife. The Duchess is played by Gillian Anderson and she is by turns beguiling and terrifying.
So weird that Gillian Anderson turned out to be such a good actress in period pieces.
The best thing I’ve made in a waffle iron were COOKIES. Seriously.
I’ve put falafel in a waffle iron. Also mashed potatoes.
Joy the Baker did a recipe not too long ago for, like…cheddar bacon chive mashed potato waffles, or something like that? Sounds AMAZING and I’ve been dying to try them, but I haven’t had leftover mashed potatoes since then, and it seems weird to make them JUST to make waffles.
French Toast in the waffle maker is very lovely.
I think the best part of that Lois Duncan story is how it makes the real Albequerque looks WAY scarier than it ever did on Breaking Bad. (I thought it was pretty funny that so many politicians were worried about that, BB’s Albequerque is pracitcally sanitized compared to some of the stuff in that article. THE NINJA COP for example.)
The only good thing about my recent abortion, which terminated a trisomy 13 pregnancy, was that med students were involved in every step. I get to feel good about participating in their education, at least.
The only good thing about my recent abortion, which terminated a trisomy 13 pregnancy, was that med students were involved in every step. I get to feel good about participating in their education, at least.
Jon Grinspan!!!! Is that a nom de plume? It seems a man saddled with such a handle could only be fated to write NYT op-eds waxing nostalgic for the lost days when an American boy could run free, lynching, stoning and setting fire to his heart’s content all the summer long.
French Toast in the waffle maker is very lovely.