My husband emailed me this with “cybermen??” in the subject line.
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I really enjoy Caity Weaver’s Thatz Not Okay column, and the people who wrote in this week are garbage nightmare monsters and Caity TELLS THEM:
The first hint that this matter is not worth getting upset over is the fact that “I recently turned 28″ is the most boring possible opening for an anecdote—even worse than “I was on my way to the post office.” There is no sentence that will be improved by tacking “I recently turned 28″ onto the beginning of it. It wasn’t even interesting when Benjamin Button turned 28. No one cares about people who are 28, as evidenced by your family’s behavior.
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“Damn straight.” – an unrepentant sitter
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Karen Carpenter’s isolated vocal tracks reveal a really lovely, lovely voice.
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I am not linking to the Washington Post.
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I’m reading this fascinating and depressing book by Su Meck about her amnesia, and this interview with Diane Rehm gets to most of it:
MECK
Jim talks about when he first brought me home. It was almost as if, like, there was just an incredulous look on my face. Like, okay, so this is where I live. And we walked up a hallway and we had a lot of photos on the wall of, you know, our marriage and the kids were little…
REHM
Sure.MECK
…family photos and such. And he said that I looked at one and I was like, oh, that’s me, you know, in the photograph. And he’s like, you know, yeah, that’s you.REHM
He was very encouraged to see that you recognized you.MECK
You know, myself. But even at that time there were, you know, I still didn’t — you say, you know, I was with my husband and my kids were there, but it was still like I didn’t really know who they were. I didn’t really understand the concept that he was a husband and these were my children and I was a mother. I mean, those concepts are things that I didn’t understand for a long time.REHM
11:16:40How long did you have help with those children?MECK
11:16:46Well, I didn’t really have help. We had one woman that came in for a brief time, right when I got home, but didn’t stay around for very long. And, so, yeah, it was basically me and the boys. And I don’t know what we did during the day.REHM
You don’t know how you took care of them.
MECK
I don’t.
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Rusty Foster said we should read this, even though it’s about basketball and computer games about baseball, and he’s usually right about things, even though I do not understand any of it.
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Did you know there was an out gay black baseball player in the 1970s?
Numbers can’t possibly begin to explain how a tremendously talented athlete would eventually be sidelined by vicious institutional homophobia. After coming out to his teammates and managers in 1978, Burke was reportedly offered $75,000 by Dodgers Vice President Al Campanis to enter into a sham marriage. When turning down the offer—more than $312,000 in today’s money—Burke wittily replied, “I guess you mean to a woman.” Unfortunately, Glenn Burke’s fearlessness would lead to his exile from Los Angeles: That same year, he was traded to Oakland.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
By all means don’t link to the Post’s latest attempt to figure out where there’s any overlap between “women” and “actual human beings,” but I enjoyed 538’s no-nonsense response, which basically amounts to spanking the authors with a paddle made of their own misrepresented data.
can you re-post the link? broken, i think..
Dagnabbit. This works. (ETA: Thanks for letting me know.)
For more fun rebuttaling: The Family Inequality blog.
I truly do not get H. Brad Wilcox, I do not. Because I have interviewed him for work, and he knows the limitations of his data! If you ask him, he will tell you that he cannot prove anything like what he writes in the Post! And then he writes this stuff anyway?? I do not know about that guy.
The Post is on a roll between this and George Will, Noted Bowtie’s grand manifesto of “not all rapes”
The letters in “Thatz Not Okay” – they’re not real, right? they can’t be real. Seriously. Guys?
As for the responses…
“That your father spent some time at your sister’s house before coming to yours is immaterial, first because your birthday is not Ramadan and therefore does not dictate all activity between the hours of sunrise and sunset, and second because you weren’t even happy to see him. As for the fact that your brother got to attend a cricket match and you didn’t (would you have been satisfied with that as a present?), I suppose the only explanation for that is: You are the evil twin.”
A plus, would read again
seriously! what is the premise of this column? fiction??? I HOPE SO.
I dunno, I’ve had roommates who would pull such stunts. But they would at least have had the decency to be ashamed afterwards.
They are IMPRESSIVELY awful.
1. You are a disgusting filth-monster unfit to have roommates or human habitation, and also show a horrifying lack of communal living-space understanding, and would probably complain if your roommate used a sprinkle of salt from your private salt shaker.
2. Your birthday is not that big a deal. If you are over the age of 12, your birthday is not that big of a deal. Milestone birthdays are fun to celebrate, but you are not the Queen and your birthday is not a public holiday. I would like to commission a large LED sign to display this so that people will stop complaining that their birthdays are not being adequately celebrated (or in the case of one Hey Ladies-type girl I knew, that her birthday WEEKEND was not going to be observed, in full, but the entire suite of her friends).
I see your birthday weekend and raise you a BIRTH MONTH. I know a guy who celebrates his birthmonth instead of day. He is significantly older than 12. Not that anyone younger than 12 gets a birthmonth either.
Oh my god please be kidding please be kidding please be kidding.
I know a guy who celebrates his birthmonth by inviting friends over for board games and delicious food! I like that guy.
How on earth does one even celebrate a birth month? My birthday was on a Friday this year so celebrations spanned the weekend, and that was pretty exhausting. I feel like a birth month would kill me and all my friends.
My husband and I treat each other to a “birth month” but it is mostly a joke and it mostly means that one of us spends a little extra time surprising the other one with extra-thoughtful things. For instance, I plant cadbury eggs in his belongings. We also take extra care to get each other our favorite things more often during this month.
We would never expect other people to observe this though!
We are monsters
You are goddamn adorable is what you are.
I celebrate my birthday week but I don’t make anyone else partake. It’s more about scheduling fun things for myself (that friends are sometimes invited to) to diminish the general birthday angst and to put less pressure on the birthday-day itself. But making people celebrate you is weirdddd and not okay.
“Kids celebrate the inevitable passage of time because they have no agency. Emerging alive from yet another year is their greatest achievement. But there’s nothing impressive about a fully developed adult successfully going another 365 days without choking on a Lego.”
WHAM. I love everything about this.
Meh, I live by the “party now, cause soon you will be dead” motto, so I make a big deal of birthdays, as do a lot of people in my social circle. But I also believe that it’s nobody’s obligation to make me feel special on my birthday but me so I throw big parties at my house where there is no obligation to come and I buy extra booze to supplement the BYOB, etc.
To me, life’s too short to not make fusses and celebrate whatever’s going on, but also way too short to be hurt when people don’t meet your random unshared needs. Meet your own goddamn needs.
THIS, this is just about it. I try and make people feel loved on their birthdays (usually through liberal application of cake), and I try to spend mine with the people I love. It works out pretty well!
“To me, life’s too short to not make fusses and celebrate whatever’s going on, but also way too short to be hurt when people don’t meet your random unshared needs. Meet your own goddamn needs.”
A-freaking-Men.
Real talk, though, I definitely laid some “you have to make me feel special on my birthday” stuff on my beloved male life partner, because he does and he can be an idiot about stuff like that. And then he did and it was awesome! But it required a bit of an in-advance tantrum.
“meet your own goddamn needs”
that was my motto for this year’s bday (after a string of disappointing bdays) and it was AH-MAY-ZING. Low key, but full of my favorite things, arranged and orchestrated by me. yes
YES, my literal and philosophical Life Credo is actually “I Make My Own Damn Birthday Cake”. I am biiig on birthdays, but it’s on me and no one else to make it good. I like to think of it as providing an optional special occasion, not obligating anyone to do a damn thing about it. And I make a good cake.
can i still be miffed that my parents sent me a late card and a digital meat thermometer for my 30th birthday? It’s not like I expected much, but they send me all the worst presents and this one was particularly bad because thanks to the horrible gifting of my parents, my brothers and I maintain a regularly updated list of present ideas and my dad was like, “can I just pick something from not off the list this year?!” all excited, with this implication that he had something special in mind. And then it turned out what he did was get himself a digital meat thermometer and then just order me one as well.
still upset. I had a great birthday but the meat thermometer really bummed me out. I don’t even really cook with meat that often, let alone roast it precisely.
Only if I can also be mad that my parents got me a pull toy for my 16th birthday (and a shirt and pants that didn’t fit) and then giggled about giving me “wheels”. My grandma forgot about my birthday completely.
As an adult I can see the humor, but as a teenager it was humiliating to open that in front of my friends.
Oh noooo, that’s no good. I feel like for 16th birthdays, either get a car or don’t, but don’t get things that are car-referential but clearly not a car.
Those bastards. Presents are not for laughing at.
I was always very chill about my birthdays. My parents consistently forgot, and when I was about 15 I started throwing my own. I did that for a while but kind of let it drop after age 24 or so. But for some reason, 30 was an important one for me. All I wanted was someone to acknowledge it. I mean, like send a card that arrived on time, or call me and wish me a happy birthday on my actual birthday day (I usually get guilt voicemails about a week and a half later).
So anyway, for some reason, when my husband came home from work and said casually, “I thought about buying you a card but decided not to,” I cried. He eventually made me a card, which is so much better, but I’m still a LITTLE bummed about it–not holding a grudge, but a little bit bummed. I don’t expect him to make the same kind of fuss over my birthday that I do over his, but it was sort of a raw deal to be informed that I was supposed to get a card.
Maybe I’m a crazy person. I just wanted to say that 30th birthdays are special, is all.
Oh man! WHAT A BUTTHEAD. You are not crazy! I’m sure he’s a nice lovely person and was mislead by your overall casualness, but what a butthead all the same. Especially because if you are 30 its safe to assume he’s probably older than say, 24, and anyone over 24 should surely recognize that the thought, “I should do this” means, buck up and do it for someone. Not, try and get credit for doing it by saying you thought of it but didn’t.
My boyfriend sort of delayed my birthday observances and I went hard core on the guilt and ended up with a handwritten list as to why I’m awesome on the night of my birthday, surprise flowers and balloons on the weekend, and presents at a later date. That’s the power of a good pout. You gotta break em in a little. And 30 is a big deal.
I dunno, I feel like being given a rubbish present by people who love you is always a bit heartbreaking. Either they have *really tried* and don’t know you at all, or they *haven’t tried* and don’t care enough to either try, or know you. I know that birthdays aren’t everyone’s thing, but having tangible evidence that someone you love doesn’t know you very well is a bit jarring.
Personal: my father got me a necklace for my eighteenth birthday. It was very expensive. It was very ugly. It was very, very Not Me. It made me very sad, because he had tried, of sorts, but it was something I would never wear, and he didn’t know anything about who I was or what I liked, and it felt like a symbol for the rest of my whole life around him. (Later that same day, he grabbed me by the necklace and told me I should have been an abortion, so I am willing to admit that my feelings on People Giving Bad Presents may be slightly OTT.)
I gotta believe that most of the “Thatz Not Okay” and “Dear Prudence” letters are fake, but it doesn’t stop me from reading. Caity Weaver is a national treasure.
I generally hate Prudie’s answers, but hot damn do I love the questions. I willingly suspend my disbelief for Prudie’s readers.
I’ve lived just long enough that I think it’s possible for every single one of those dumb Dear Prudie letters to be totally, 100% real. 🙁
My favorite Thatz Not Okay:
I have a new doorman and he’s really great. He seems to actually enjoy his job, like the building residents, and not just have a smile plastered on top of general contempt for us.
Here’s my problem though: when I leave AND enter the building he tells me to “Be safe!” as if me, a man in his thirties, has not mastered crossing the street or like he is concerned that once I get back into my apartment I am going to decide to play with knives and plastic bags. I think it is nice that he is concerned for my safety but to say it feels a bit condescending if there isn’t an obvious added danger.
I’m thinking about saying something to his boss, along the lines of “I think he is great but could he stop saying that?” Is that okay?
Dear Satan,
Thatz not okay…
I really appreciate how she started with Satan and then brought it back around. That’s a theologically sound and well-planned response, right there.
Holy FUCK that’s excellent.
Thank you so much for bringing this into my life.
This is great. How did I not know this column existed until right now? Goodbye all of the productive things I was going to do today.
oh god. I go to gawker solely to check for a new “thatz not ok” every week like clockwork. best thing ever.
That’s the passage that moved me to write an email to the “Thatz Not Okay” author singing her praises. Thank you Toast for the link!!!
Caity Weaver is hilarious. She and another Gawker staff writer do a hilarious joint restaurant review column called “The Best Restaurant in New York” that I cannot recommend enough. Their first review was in the American Girl Cafe.
I”m not even mad about the birthday one because the idea that anyone anywhere thinks it’s acceptable or just to fuck with another person’s toothbrush is making me nauseous and overwhelmed
The weird/extra-nauseating thing is that there was a fairly recent Dear Prudence with a similar problem: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/… (Summary, nanny to horrible couple dips their toothbrushes in toilet water, hears months later, after quitting, that they are having health problems, feels guilty and wonders if she should confess.)
I choose to believe that both of these letters were written by the same dirty-toothbrush fetishist who gets off by making this stuff up (instead of, you know, actually doing it IRL).
That is oddly comforting. Thank you.
Also in the first one? THIS THIS THIS “Stop thinking of yourself as a vessel through which cosmic justice is doled out. You are just a regular person and a below-average roommate”
The NBA Y2K piece is hilarious for the GIFs alone. It is the apocalypse of the NBA, what is not to love?
That was truly a glorious article. It was absurd, hilarious, and somehow weirdly poignant? And, yes, great GIFs.
It somehow made me sad, though. I couldn’t even read the text after a while, just scroll through the gifs. And still I found myself wishing the tiny doods would catch the ball.
Oh, for sure. Like a lot of great humor, it’s got this uncomfortable core of sadness/pathos at the middle. Which is a ridiculous thing to say about an article that basically boils down to “let’s fuck with the settings on this video game and see what happens”, but there you have it.
I was pretty sad when at the end it revealed the Raptors still never won a championship. (Not as harsh a burn as the end shot of the similarly doomed Clippers with all the Lakers banners hanging in the same arena.)
The entire NBA Y2K series is gold, as is Breaking Madden (the same thing, with football). Nothing has made me cry with laughter as much as those preposterous GIFs. And I genuinely love Clarence Beeftank. He just wants to truck fools and also avoid associating with the vain and bourgeois!
BEEFTANK
I can’t even read any of either series at work because they make me choke-laugh until I weep. And then I burst out giggling half an hour later for no discernable reason. I love the writing as much, if not more, than the .gifs, but the moody video montages at the end are Very Special too.
BEEFTANK!!!
Yes! All of his writing is really good- I actually found the newer, GIF-ier series after I read an old post (“The Three Worst Super Bowl Parties You’ve Ever Been To” on SB Nation) amid super bowl coverage and decided I needed to find everything else he’d ever written. He really nails that sharp-eyed, wistful, absurd-yet-almost-too-realistic humor that I find completely irresistible.
You say Cybermen, I say Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne.
Mike Mulligan! One of my kids’ favorite stories.
Ugh, that Washington Post piece reminds me of those billboards that say “Married people earn more money – marriage works.” UM correlation/causation much?
That amnesia story was so, so ,so sad. I totally believe this, because the same thing happened to me: ” but we don’t see anything wrong with you so there must not be anything wrong with you. It must — you know, you’re either faking it or doing this for attention”
I went to 6 different doctors and spent a year taking what turned out to be completely useless tests and unnecessary drugs, being told finally that I was making it all up to get attention, when finally my gynecologist, (a woman) at my yearly appointment, said “you have MS, how can these other doctors not see this?” and she sent me for an MRI and a spinal test and she was right.
It is unfortunately very common for doctors to dismiss women’s pain and experiences as one would if dealing with a spoiled child.
Also – why did they leave her home alone with those kids?
I read the whole book and it was very upsetting on so many levels. It is a wonder no one died. And even now, after all this time, she seems so sad and unwell to me.
That upset me the most. Like, I know that her husband had a really hard time and all, but she doesn’t remember how to eat food anymore so can you please look into daycare for the kids?
The Washington Post opinion/ editorial side is so awful in so many ways, and yet they just hired Alyssa Rosenberg, who is the best. Can they just hire more people like her? Please?
Did anyone else think of Oliver Sacks whilst reading about Su Meck’s amnesia? I find these types of brain injury/malfunction cases fascinating. The brain is so bloody complex and we know so little about it!
Yes! Oliver Sacks is a wonderful read. Highly recommend to anyone interested in the physical nuts and bolts of thought.
Imma let you get back to the Link Roundup, but real quick: Miss Indiana. Did anyone else share my experience of hearing so much about her body being refreshingly “real” and “relatable,” and then being completely baffled when seeing her picture? I was like, “Ummmm… who? You mean that Victoria’s Secret Supermodel??” I feel like the whole world is pranking me…
Ugh. Or what about the winner Miss Nevada’s response to ‘what should we do about sexual assault on college campuses”: women should learn to defend themselves. Cause that would solve the rape problem.
ETA: I did not actually watch the pageant, so maybe she said other things too?
OH NO. I didn’t hear about that, but I will certainly be unable to refrain from Googling it this afternoon and making myself ill…
Since she has a black belt in taekwondo, I’m a little more understanding of where she’s coming from with that comment. Of course, it shouldn’t be the first or only answer to how preventing sexual assault. But between her own interests plus the limiting and weird nature of pageant Q&As, I can understand how it happened and am slow to condemn her for it.
That angered me so much. I was passing through the living room while other folk were watching, and I just stopped and started yelling at the tv.
Here is an article that backs you up.
Based on all the hoopla I expected to see a rounded belly and batwings, and instead I got visible abs and cut-up arms. Thanks for that link, it makes me feel a little less crazy.
are batwings a slang term I don’t know, or are some of you actually bats
It’s slang for flabby underarms or loose underarm skin. But yes, I am a bat. R u impressed w/ my typing skillz?
we r all bats
please to not turn on lights
Karen Carpenter’s voice simultaneously makes me choke up and gives me goosebumps. Thank you for this link, I’ll just be here crying and shivering instead of getting ready for work.
I have spent a very pleasant afternoon listening to them!
Same here! She cuts directly through to my emotional core like a hot knife in butter. Also her voice reminds me of pure maple syrup, so now I’m verklempt and craving IHOP.
My default assumption is that any mysterious goings-on in London (or Cardiff) are the work of some sort of Doctor Who villain…
It’s because of the Rift.
It’s obviously Moriarty.
Reading that amnesia interview makes my stomach hurt. One of my aunts is going through early dementia, and she lived with my dad for a while before they decided that a care home would really be the best place–she’s maybe in her 60s but she can’t hold thoughts in her head, she has difficulty completing tasks. I did elder care in college and seeing how scared and angry that confusion makes people…god.
I’m sorry to hear about your aunt. Dementia is horrible. Early-onset dementia is a fucking nightmare tragedy.
I can’t read the amnesia article. My beloved’s family has a history of dementia on both sides. His maternal side has a history of Alzheimer’s–his mother and her mother both had it before they turned 65. He’s 46. He worries that his brain is a time-bomb.
Articles that deal with people forgetting their loved ones hit a little to close to home. Because I can’t bring myself to think about what we might have to do in twenty years–if we’re lucky enough to get twenty more years.
I’m trying not to judge Su Meck’s husband because of all they’ve been through, but it’s really hard. Leaving her alone with their babies when she had just gotten home and was barely functioning? 24 is not too young to be a human being, regardless of what the (also awful) doctors said. Traveling all over the world and leaving her with three children? She says he’s her rock, then immediately says he’s often threatened to leave her. Yiiiiikes.
I kind of wanted to sic the Wife of Bath on him!
I know! And they asked her if she worried he would leave her, but not “do you feel trapped with this guy who didn’t offer any support with the kids and went off and left you alone or dragged you all over the place while you were trying to make sense of life?”
The basketball thing! The perfect glory of deeply incompetent computer generated players!
Not all cybermen
HEY I HAVE A LINK! I’m a lawyer in British Columbia, and yesterday 1/3 of our profession turned out to vote 77% in favour of not allowing a Christian school with a discriminatory covenant to have a law school (this is a very general and a tiny bit misleading description, but it captures it). http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tr…
I have cried like 4 times about it. I’m super duper proud.
YAY!
(ETA I’m in BC too)
Same here! She cuts directly through to my emotional core like a hot knife in butter. Also her voice reminds me of pure maple syrup, so now I'm verklempt and craving IHOP.