HONORARY TOAST HERO SAVES LIFE IS PERFECT (this is ancient news, but we just saw her in a movie, so):
“She told them, ‘You’ve done enough. You can either keep threatening me, a defenseless unarmed woman trying to provide medical services to a dying man, or you can go get this guy some water like a decent human being,’” said Damien Hazel, who told The S.F. Examiner that he witnessed the entire incident.
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No. Do not do this. No. Do not buy $128 dreadlock extensions from Free People. I am assuming if you are considering this, you are white, because that’s what Free People is going for, so: do not be a white person with dreadlocks, you look like a fool and it’s weird. TOAST STANCE.
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Worf and Troi are IRL friends! SHE CALLS HIM DORNY!
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What Well-Dressed Dykes Wore in the 70s:
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Sarah Jeong explains the cellphone decision in the Supreme Court.
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Uber and the costs of racism:
My night in NYC went fine, with my feet, the train, and friends making sure all went well on the transportation front. The following day, however, I started to run into the usual trouble. Running too late to catch the train from Manhattan to JFK, I tried hailing a cab in the crowded streets around Times Square. Even though dozens of cabs were on the streets (and hours away from the next shift change), four different cab drivers claimed they were off-duty, despite their lights declaring otherwise. Still more sped around me, not even bothering to pull to the side for the lone black girl on the corner but happily picking up the white couple a few feet away. I started trudging to the nearest hotel, hoping to fall on the mercy of the concierge, when the 11th cab I spotted heading up my way finally picked me up.
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Graphic novels to read this summer!
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Yeah, mind your own bidness if your friends want to have a kid and you think they can’t afford to:
Your friends will figure it out. They have a combined income of $80,000 a year in a country where the median household income is $51,017. The money they used to spend on “new iPhones, or weekends in Vegas” will shift to child care.
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Kate J.M. Baker’s piece on campus sexual assault at Quest University in Canada is really interesting:
Quest’s quandary is universal; schools across the continent are grappling with sexual assault allegations. But there are no deep-rooted institutional issues impeding Quest’s radical goals of remaking higher education or nurturing a respectful community: no tenure, no departments, no Greek life, and no influential alumni (no alumni older than 30, actually, since the first graduating class matriculated in 2011). The school is explicitly not for everyone; Quest can ask students to leave if they fail to contribute to the intellectual environment, and has done so in the past. Part of what students pay for, along with $29K annual tuition plus $9,500 mandatory room and board, is the assumption that Quest is a bubble, safe from more than just tedious courses and fluorescent-lit lecture halls.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
There are so many white-people dreads in the UK alternative scene. So many. So very many.
white people locks make me feel itchy 😐
They just don’t look good. They’re all greasy and matted and nasty.
Also, I had a friend when I was 16 who tried to do locs (white boy) and his hair was just this single huge mat of grease. Just one, single solid shape. It was crawling with some kind of bug – not lice, I think, cause I read they prefer clean hair? But some kind of nasty biting bug that I caught off him and finally died when I bleached my hair.
I have a friend who had dreads and cut them off, and kept them for sentimental value (ick) and obviously forgot all about them, and when he found them again they’d eaten through the binbag they were in.
This is HORRIFYING.
Isn’t it! He’s grown them again now (had short hair when I met him) and while he’s a lovely chap I just can’t get that image out of my head.
THE POLISH PLAIT, a “hairstyle OR A MEDICAL CONDITION”
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HE HAD AND IT IS SO GROSS
please note, white people with locs – when contemporary accounts refer to hairstyles like elflocks, THIS IS WHAT THEY MEAN.
And no, white people didn’t have locs like african people did, they typically braided and shaved their hair.
Plica Polonica, syn. plica neuropathica, (common name Polish plait) is an uncommon condition in which hair shaft becomes entangled irreversibly, forming a mass which is matted and sometimes can be sticky and moist.
ಠᘩಠ
Ok, so that is horrifying, but upon scrolling down to the In Folklore section it says that
a) people inserted coins into them to keep the hair-beast docile and
b) it was associated with creating whims and cravings, which needed to be satisfied promptly, and people around a person with plica needed to make effort to help the craving individual to conform to those cravings. ..and that was especially fond of wine. (Wine was an imported and expensive drink.)
That’s GREAT. But don’t look at the photos on that page jsdjsdskl urgh.
I just made a real-life D: face right now.
I worked with a white guy who had dreads until one day he realized that he looked like Sideshow Bob and cut them all off.
White people: Cut off your locs! You all look like Sideshow Bob.
I have a white-girl friend (in Canada) who had a dreadlock extension business. And also dreadlocks, of course.
I always assumed those were the people Helen Fielding called “Trustafarians.”
Mike Dang has the patience of a SAINT, and his response to the concern trolling about “my friends don’t have enough money to have a baby hurr hurr hurr” is much, MUCH kinder than mine would have been. (Something along the lines of DON’T YOU HAVE ANY OTHER FUCKING THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT? Jesus, your life must be FANTASTIC if you’re getting yourself worked up over your friends’/coworkers’ financial and procreative decisions. GO TAKE A VACATION OR SOMETHING.)
I was thinking “WOW GOOD HUMAN GARBAGE COSTUME NOW GO THROW YOURSELF AWAY FOR ME” but I guess that’s why I don’t write an advice column.
I keep trying to give this MORE thumbs up and the system won’t let me.
“I WILL JUDGE YOU” would make an eminently readable advice column and probably one the more Jerry Springerish of letter-writers would still submit to, I say go for it
And good god does that one merit some harsh-assed judgement
I would love to see The Bad Advisor take this one on. “Yes, your coworker’s reproductive decisions are entirely under your purview! It’s very important that you begin lurking outside their bedroom windows. When you suspect they’re about to have procreative sex, burst in with a condom! They’ll totally thank you for preventing them from having that kid they desperately want.”
It’s effing appalling how many people have decided that children are a luxury good, like a Benz. Sorry, douchebag. The working class is still allowed to procreate. They’re not actually obligated to become department heads first.
Really the capper is how having snooped on their finances Personal Accounting Inquisitor is apparently holding a profound grudge that a young couple could prioritize anything over company events and buying gifts for coworkers I KNOW YOU COULD BUY THE INTERN FROM ACCOUNTING A BIRTHDAY PRESENT KATHY YOU JUST BLEW YOUR LAST PAYCHECK ON THAT IPHONE
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU’RE FIT TO BREED WHEN YOU DIDN’T EVEN ATTEND THE SEMIANNUAL TEAMBUILDING RETREAT
I hope to god that I have the wherewithal to jump in if I ever witness a situation like our Honorary Toast Hero did. What a flippin bad ass. I want to find her and give her a (non-ironic) chest bump.
A really humbling feeling when PIECES OF SOMEBODY’S BRAIN fall into your hand.
Oh. My. God. I hope I grow up to be a tiny sandgrain of that woman someday.
Neither of the women in the Free People pictures even have dreadlocks, which – don’t get me wrong – is for the best, but it makes the product they’re selling look very very silly.
Toast Stance is Correct Stance on this one, as it is on most things.
If you unfocus your eyes they look more like they’re wearing feathers in their hair. It’s like Magic Eye, but with cultural appropriation.
I am currently watching Star Trek TNG for the first time (almost done; two episodes left!) and I think Worf is the best. Sorry, Patrick Stewart!
Worf is great. And he’s also on Deep Space Nine, so you can watch many more seasons of Worf!
Oh man, BBC America has circled back around to Season 1 TNG and it is SO HILARIOUSLY BAD. The women planet! Picard’s sheer irritation with everything! Handing command of the ship over to anyone over the rank of ensign!
HEADLINE OF THE DAY:
Alaska bear falls through skylight into party, eats all the cupcakes
Yesterday my local paper led with ‘Lack of fame no barrier to local woman;s 8-volume autobiography’. It read like an Onion article.
Clearly the winner of yesterday’s HEADLINE OF THE DAY. Wowww.
Quote from the article “The printers did beg me to try to cut it down, however I felt if I tried to cut it, I would’ve lost the whole ethos of what I’m trying to do.”
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/lack_of_fame_no_barri…
I guess that’s Karl Ove Knausgaard’s whole schtick!
I am SO SAD that there are only 120 copies of this book and you have to call her in the UK to get one, because I would totally read at least the first volume of this.
Seriously, she needs to Inter-Library Loan that sucker out.
I love the fact that she thought it was going to be boring when she started writing it but persevered anyway.
“Bishop told the paper that she opened a door from the living room that led to the backyard and that the couple yelled at the animal until it casually walked out of their residence.”
I really lost it at “until it casually walked out of their residence.” I can just imagine: “Great party! Thanks for the cupcakes! I’ll be on my way now!”
I’m sad that the bear was destroyed after the incident though. At least it had a bitchin’ last meal 🙁
I know! I was very upset.
I shared the article without reading all the way to the end, and am now making up cute imaginary endings for fellow bear-admirers. 🙁
“Don’t read to the end! I’ll tell you how it ends: the bear goes and creates a cupcake shop for all of his friends.”
I like you a lot.
“The bear and the baby sat down and shared the rest of the cupcakes, then had a tea party and opened presents, and then took a nap.”
Oh yes, and then after the nap they went to the park together and the bear pushed the baby on the swings while confiding secret lore about the best places for blueberries and salmon.
I just had this identical experience.
It just wanted some cupcakes!
Are we absolutely sure it was a bear, and not Slavoj Zizek?
NO, no we are not.
Haha! He’s so cute and grumpy!
I have never so much regretted not being born a bear.
(Bears don’t stress out about SCOTUS opinions, that’s for sure.)
oh, but why did they kill him? He was just being a baby bear! He loves cupcakes! Awww
OK, so I know that google advertising shows you things based on your previous browsing history.. but all my ads right now are for things I have already purchased, which seems self-defeating. Surely it would make more sense to show me things SIMILAR to those?
Somewhere an absolute marketing genius is getting a promotion for figuring out a way to target web ads to people 100% known to have interest in owning a specific product.
Not unlike Amazon asking me to review things I looked at on their site but never purchased. Review what, the browsing experience? Gurf.
those dykes you guys THOSE DYKES
Srsly. The vests. The ties. The vests. The scarves. Hngggngngngngngn.
Oof, that Quest article. I’m a Quest alum, and I don’t actually know any of the students, because they came after my time, but it’s been interesting to see how the alumni discuss it. The administration isn’t handling it well, but Quest administrators have always gotten defensive when they feel the students are attacking them. We had our own struggles with the administration, but not over sexual assault. There’s been a lot of shifts in the culture as the school has grown, and things that work in a community of 200 don’t necessarily work when that community grows. A lot of us noticed that there was a definite shift in the student demographics the last few years. The first three classes mostly did not have many students coming straight out of high school. We had a lot of students who worked for a couple years before deciding to go to university, my class had a huge number of transfer students, etc. Now there’s a lot more 18 year olds on campus than there ever were before, a lot of kids living on there own for the first time, a lot of kids who are wealthy enough to afford a lot more partying, and I think the resources on campus have been slow to catch up to that demographic shift.
One counterpoint to white girl dreads: Cosima from Orphan Black? Although are hers technically dreads or just braids? I can’t tell. In any case, she’s beautiful and perfect and I will give her a pass.
Cosima’s hair is the main reason she is not my favorite clone.
But it’s more than just a question of aesthetics–you shouldn’t wave on weird shit just because it looks great. I’m not sure that the creators intended it this way, but the dreads actually make sense to me given Cosima’s personality/background; white girl from SF/Berkeley, aka someone who thinks of themselves as generally liberal but who’s not necessarily thoughtful or knowledgeable about race/culture.
I thought she grew up thinking she was biracial? Did I imagine her telling someone that?
I saw it floating around as a fandom theory, but I don’t remember it ever being stated on the show.
I would totally see Medea starring Marina Sirtis, for real
Yes please.
Ugh, re: rape at college campuses… Thought Catalog posted a horrible piece yesterday from some guy with all these well-reasoned explanations* about how rape really couldn’t be happening as much as the statistics say, including (and I shit you not): women’s legs are stronger than men’s arms and ‘somebody would hear and interfere’.
HULK SMASH
*absolute bullshit
In a just world, no-one would ever convict us if we set him on fire.
My bro and I were texting about street harassment yesterday (as one does at 8 in the morning after getting catcalled pre-coffee). Basically I ranted that when my ongoing metamorphosis into Thor, God of Thunder, is complete, my first act as a deity will be to obliterate all harrassers in a righteous smiting via lightning and hammersmash. He, darling little bro, facilitated that rant wholeheartedly and said, “If you equipped each woman with a gun and made murder a legally acceptable response to harassment, you’d see the problem stop preeeeetty damn quickly.”
To which I replied, “You are describing my utopia.”
So, yes. Let’s set him on fire. I’ll bring the marshmallows.
[ETA: I realize this utopia fantasy wouldn’t actually work. Guns are bad and scary. Which is why I’m turning into Thor.]
‘somebody would hear and interfere’.
Just like they helped that couple getting beat up in Oakland.
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody, outside a small circle of friends . . .
Thought Catalog is the literal worst
If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.
But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.
But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:
For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.
1. I knew a white girl in university who had dreads down to her ass and they were in horrifying condition. Just awful. And every time she sat on my bed (she was friends with my roommate, not a random creeper), I’d cringe and cringe and cringe some more.
2. Oh, you think your friends are too poor to have a baby? Making nearly EIGHTY THOUSAND BUCKS A YEAR? Shut the fuck up and mind your own god-damn business, you classist asshole, I will pass along your concerns to my many happy friends and acquaintances with babies and less than $80,000-a-year incomes, who live in expensive places. Whereupon they will laugh at you for being an annoying concern trolling busybody.
Ugh, just ugh. In addition to the most frustrating part of that article (assuming he can judge someone else’s income/decision to have children), I also felt like it was a pretty serious transgression of the privileges of his position, since typically even if you DO know what someone else’s salary is due to whatever your position might be, it’s not ethical to disclose that.
SERIOUSLY. Who looks through their coworkers’ compensation records and goes “hmmmm, they’d better not be planning on having kids!”????? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
What I think (because obviously I know éverything) (not but hear me out) is that this woman secretly/desparately wants children herself, but feels like she can’t afford them, or her potential babydaddy doesn’t want to and uses finance as an excuse.
This because it really reminds of a forum I frequent, where a woman wanted a third child and her husband didn’t, and just to weirdly console herself she started making up statistics that once you’re past 30 your child will come out like a panda/schizophrenic hybrid anyway. She was laughed off the board.
What gets me ON TOP of the classist BS about how somehow 80k a year isn’t enough is that this letter writer is sitting there thinking “I don’t think they have the drive or skill to move up” and “they spend their spare money on iphones and trips” as if the LW is their personal accountant. Excuse me, asshole LW, you don’t actually KNOW their spending/saving habits, nor do you know about their drive!? What the crap!? This letter tells me way more about the LW than it does about the couple who wants a kid, that’s for damn sure.
Summer reading! The trade of Sex Criminals is also out, and it includes an update to the famous poolhall dance scene and a list of rejected names for sex acts (brimping made the cut; Montezuma’s reward did not). Zdarsky and Fraction are teasing a book of letters to the editor that they’re planning to call Just the Tips.
If you’re willing to hang on for the slow drip of standard releases, consider the just-released first issue of The Wicked + the Divine, which has among other things a female David Bowie-as-Lucifer character and a gorgeous Spotify playlist.
WicDiv love!
I was not crazy about Phonogram but Singles Club was just fantastic.
I didn’t read Singles Club; Phonogram felt like a sophomore effort, but oh Young Avengers, so much fun and bitterness and boys kissing.
I have not yet read Young Avengers but I am going to.
And I definitely recommend Singles Club, because it is light years better than Phonogram.
How the fuck is 80K too poor to have a baby by any stretch of the imagination?
I mean, right? I’m pretty sure my parents had me on about £5k a year. They were both unemployed when I was born, and they had low-paying jobs my whole life.
All you need to do with a baby is love it, feed it and clothe it, right? Pretty much?
How does this person think that poor people manage to have babies? Also what is this person making that they think making a combined 80K a year makes you broke??
I have no idea. I think they must live in a world where designer baby carriers are necessities, not luxuries.
I am totally not defending this person, who is a jerk and it is none of his business, babies are not luxury items. And yes I agree, $80k is a ton of money; we have two kids on less than that and we are managing just fine.
BUT I do want to point out that along with love/feed/clothe is also pay for medical care, at least in the US. My daughter’s birth cost $85,000 — I am not joking — and my son has a heart murmur which meant a lot of extra check-ups and some tests and a nutritionist and a lot of other stuff. My family is very lucky, we have medical insurance through our partner’s job, so all of this was very easy to manage. But if we had not, it would have been a really scary time, even on $80,000 a year.
Yeah, I guess I never considered that because it’s not an issue here.
When my mum gave birth to me she was so poor she couldn’t afford to turn the heating on the house and it was a snowstorm outside, so the hospital refused to let her take me home. They didn’t want to treat a baby with pneumonia next week! And that didn’t cost her anything.
I mean, that’ll all change if the tories get their way, what with their current attempts to privatise the NHS, the police service, the fire service…
Well, I hope the tories do not get their way, I envy that kind of health care very much. It drives me crazy in the US that there is some idea that people just take care of themselves magically.
I think the guy who was doing the concern-trolling was probably in fact a jerk who thinks that an iphone is a life necessity and has no idea of the real costs of raising kids. (And I didn’t go read it because I didn’t want to get angry, so I don’t even know what country he’s in! Maybe they have free health care there!)
I’ll admit, that as a person who was raised by parents who went from ‘so poor they bought the food the market stalls were throwing out cause it was cheap’ to ‘poor but stableish’ with a brief trek through the valley of ‘we can afford NEW clothes?’ that my idea of what is a lot of money may be skewed.
I also may be more inclined to reject the idea that poverty means you can’t raise a child well.
I definitely don’t think poverty means you can’t raise a child well.
I do think poverty makes it much more difficult to raise a child who can escape poverty, but the onus of that is not upon the people who are poor, it is upon the messed up social systems which think that if you are not wealthy you are Doing It Wrong, so if you can’t afford health care/child care/whatever, then you just shouldn’t have children. That is ridiculous.
It’s not trivial but it’s still something most people manage, it is eminently normal. Growing up my family’s income came mostly from my mom (and then me) doing seasonal landscaping, which does not come with employer insurance and does not net you even clooooose to 80k a year; all three children still survived to adulthood sometimes despite ourselves.
Dollars to doughnuts this person thinks that poor people manage to have babies by appropriating his tax money.
100%
At least for the first few years! (And read to it! But libraries are freeeeee.)
Sure, you have to educate it too, but… OK, maybe I am spoiled by the relatively high standard of state education in my home country.
The uniforms are expensive, but the education itself is paid for out of taxes, and there’s a free lunch program for the poorer kids.
BAH, educating them babies. Just throw them in a pen with some books, they’ll figure it out.
Because people only live in Manhattan and San Francisco. The rest of the country is just a howling wasteland.
I’ve seen that
pornomovie!Oof, Uber. I really hate the idea of these services coming up as parallel infrastructures in places that could use expansion of general public transportation. It sets up this awful divide between people who can afford a cab/the smartphone to hail one, and everyone else. Are these our only two options? Put up with racist drivers who refuse to do their fucking jobs properly, or divert resources to private entities?
It seems like an easy answer would be an overhaul of all regulations? But then what of the cabbies who took out massive loans to by a medallion? Ugh. It would be nice if there were a clean answer.
It was SO CLEAR during the recent Muni sickout/strike action in SF who was a Have and who was a Have Not based on who could just take Uber to work no problem. Hello, I make in an hour what one short ride costs, fuck no!
I have several friends who use Uber or Lyft, and while I appreciate the convenience/safety factor I am a big public transportation advocate and have a hard time with it. It’s kind of like the school voucher debate, do you fix the broken system or route around it? That said, I am fortunate to live in a city that has decent 24 hour public transportation and I haven’t been in the situation described in the article. I feel like the taxi dispatch apps that are available now should be able to provide similar accountability though without supporting Uber (which isn’t a company I’d choose to support).
Ack, I’ve already read 5 of those 10 graphic novels. More recommendations, I say. MORE, MORE!
Are you reading Revival? Read Revival. It’s not a standalone but the first few trade paperbacks are currently out. (Totally different take on zombies! Bleak Midwestern setting! Badass, badass ladies! Characters of color! Beautiful artwork!)
Boxers and Saints! American Born Chinese was also great. If you haven’t already, I’ve really enjoyed Y: The Last Man, Promethea, and Saga.
Read The Massive! The third trade just came out and it’s good. Oh, oh, and if you haven’t starting reading Saga yet, READ SAGA. It’s seriously the best. And also The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, which has become maybe my favourite weird myth story and that’s saying a lot!
It’s more a collection of spooky stories than a twentysomething New Yorker’s memoir but The Sleep of Reason is pretty good (everything Spike and Iron Circus publishes is pretty good)
There’s also Spera, a collaborative fantasy thingy with a whole bunch of different artists/writers taking turns on the same central narrative about a team of vagabond adventurer princesses.
I guess I really like seeing lots of different illustration styles?
You’ve read Saga, right? (Or at least the available issues / trade paperbacks?) Because Saga is totally amazing – delightfully weird and funny Sci Fi / space opera / fantasy / romance, with excellent writing and even better art.
If you are looking for something non-fiction, I just read Baby’s in Black: Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe, and The Beatles by Arne Bellstorf. It is beautifully told but sad, very very sad.
A Redtail’s Dream” The dog! Ville!
She’s doing a new comic: Stand Still, Stay Silent – it’s slightly killing me a little.
idk, there is a white guy on the US men’s soccer team with some pretty glorious white guy dreads and i, for one, am into it. but yea in most cases, gross. i saw SO many dirty, unshowered white people with the grossest dreadlocks when i was in africa.
Saeed Jones says that guy is the only thing that’s ever made him reconsider his “no white person dreads” stance.
Good god
Hrm. I was looking at him the other day while watching a match and thinking ‘Now that young man would be so handsome if he got rid of his white man dreads’. Oh well.
Noooo Kyle Beckerman’s dreads look like he has an octopus affixed to his head that is attempting to suck out his brains. They defy gravity! It’s upsetting!
He looks like he spends his entire life at a ski resort, either snowboarding or working for shit wages in exchange for a free place to crash and good weed. If I was 21 I’d be into it.
OH MY GOD
How does that even happen
How does a person look that good
People that good looking shouldn’t be allowed among the lumpen, asymmetrical masses. They should be put in pretty person habitats, where we can go look at them and where they can breed to make yet more pretty people, but where they cannot ruin our days by walking down the street and making us realise all our flaws.
I’d fund that kickstarter.
Idk, he’s got weird ears.
I wonder if it works because in those pictures he looks like he could be biracial (black/white).
One of the captions says he’s French/Colombian, but I think you’re on to something.
Yeah, I saw that–but if I’ve learned anything from this World Cup is that the African diaspora definitely made it all over Latin America, not just Brazil! I’ve definitely seen that eye color/skin complexion combo before in the US.. with one of my husband’s (our) nieces. And some friends of ours..
Oh absolutely–wasn’t saying that a guy with French/Colombian heritage couldn’t have African heritage as well, I didn’t articulate that clearly enough.
Whatever his family lines, he is a pretty, pretty human.
I was agreeing with you, just..still marveling over my own ignorance of how widespread the diaspora was. Seriously, it’s like I’ve been watching this World Cup and going “huh.. that’s Costa Rica’s team. awesome!”
He really is so pretty though. So pretty. “What a time to be alive” indeed. Indeed.
ETA: one of the FB comments is “God is Real” lolololol
yessssssssss
I think it’s that with a face that perfect and symmetrical, with cheekbones that high, you can get away with any hair.
I still think he’d look better without them.
I am generally with you because I’m of the mindset that most guys look best with short hair. I don’t care if it’s in a ponytail or dreads or what, just cut it off!
Does that guy have dreads or twists though? In the picture where they’re down, they look more like twists. Also that article says he’s half “Colombian” which doesn’t for sure tell us anything about his race but he may be mixed race.
No no different guy!
I wish that dude played on the men’s national team. Sadly, they have this dude, Kyle Beckerman, and his nasty-ass hair.
Supernaturally pretty people could pull off wearing a tuxedo of week-old fish skin and everyone’d still think they’re hot; that doesn’t make it adviseable for anyone who doesn’t get featured on magazine covers.
my sister posted something on Facebook calling him “dreamy.” Not sure how to feel, but my sister would like the white guy with dreadlocks…
I have… deep, deep crushes on Jones and Howard. The cheekbones! The “yup, I caught that ball right as it was headed into the net; that is my job.” face! The little moment in the US Ghana match where Jones gets knocked down and the Ghana guy is sorry and they comfort each other!
I watch soccer with my in-laws a lot, and it is a CONSTANT struggle to quote Nicole and say “His face would fit perfectly between my thighs.”
That Billfold question… My husband and I make pretty much exactly 80k a year (granted, in a pretty low cost of living area) and we’re trying for a kiddo. I’ve crunched the numbers, it’s totally doable. Def no weekends in Vegas for a while (but, I mean, how even would that work with a baby?) but it won’t be that big a stretch.
But babies LOVE Vegas! All the flashing lights and… tigers!
Hi elldubs! I have a baby (who goes to daycare), I live in a mid-high cost of living area, and have a household income of about 80k. It’s absolutely doable, and last time we went to Vegas we just used a Sex and the City slot machine as a babysitter (just kidding, you are right that Vegas weekends are not workable with an infant, cost-wise and otherwise).
How often do people go for weekend trips to Vegas????
I’ve been to Vegas once. It was for a work thing. I did get to play a Village People slot machine though.
If you’re in the Southwest or West (especially within driving range), remarkably often.
(me, never)
I have a few friends on facebook who are always bragging about going at least two or three times a year. Sometimes more than that!
I love Vegas but I couldn’t go more than once every two years.
I’ve only been once, but I have a lot of friends who go four or more times a year. They also either a) don’t have kids or b) really love the credit card. I managed to make my weekend work for under $800 but I was sharing a room with three other women and we didn’t eat out and one of us had packed an extra suitcase of food and booze.
The idea of “weekend trips to Vegas all the time” being a large enough part of your lifestyle that it would be something to “give up” to have kids is so foreign to me.
I’ve never been to Vegas (it’s real far from KY), but I do go on weekend trips to various places often enough that giving that up would make an appreciable difference in my budget.
Our household income is just under that, with a moderate cost of living (we’re paying $1500/mo for a 2bdrm, but with all utilities included), and affording our kid is totally doable for us. (Disclaimer: Canadian and so health costs are a non-issue.)
Of course, the jerk who wrote to Mike Dang probably would think we couldn’t afford to have a kid, because the we wear a lot of hand-me-downs, and we pretty regularly say that we can’t afford to go out for dinner. But it’s because we’re prioritizing our money for important stuff, and restaurants burn through the budget quickly!
See, this makes perfect sense and it sounds like the cost of living is similar (maybe a bit cheaper) where I live. Our mortgage is about 1k for an 1800 sq ft house on a pretty sizable lot plus a couple hundred for utilities, but renting a house like this would be more expensive.
So, that jerk letter writer has a pretty warped view of what 80k gets you. I would probable not meet their fiscal responsibility test, either. We currently eat out a lot and throw things into our cart at Whole Foods with abandon without checking prices and online shop like the internet won’t be here tomorrow… But I’m totally fine with sticking to a budget once I need to pay for daycare (which will be like, $700 a month here). No bigs.
Money and living is so interesting! I really like the discussions here, and hearing how everyone else prioritizes their lives and cash. I am also Canadian, with the same combined income, and we feel like we couldn’t afford a kid at all (we’re both devotedly childfree, but we’ve discussed what a kid would do to our finances endlessly). We’re pushing hard for freedom 40, though, so we put all our cheese into retirement savings.
but are you factoring in birthday presents for all your coworkers
80K in a place like new york? where both parents work and you have to pay for daycare? it’s doable, for sure, but it’ll be tight.
Can New York yuppies please stop pretending that in New York a household making more than 70% of the country is equivalent to a child laborer sleeping in a broken fridge in a garbage dump outside of New York
it is not
wtf is up with the Billfold giving me a full-page ad that can’t be closed?? You click on “go to page” and it just gives you MORE ADS.
Disclaimer: of course other people’s reproductive decisions are none of the letter-writer’s business, and using knowledge of their salaries to judge their personal lives is Not On.
That said, would the Billfold letter be better if the focus was not “my (well-off) friends are too poor to reproduce”, but “my friends are too financially unstable/irresponsible to sensibly reproduce”. I mean, she’s begging clothes from friends because charity shops are too expensive and refusing to go to the doctor, that’s beyond thrift, and something about the “maybe their families will support these grown adults and their children” argument puts my hackles up -perhaps because there’s no guarantee that said families are willing or able. Obviously everyone has the right to have children and these people are not in a terrible situation, but there’s middle ground for going “that is not the world’s best idea.”
It’s not the world’s best idea but it’s none of the letter writer’s fucking business.
ugh i hear you so much on this. i really grapple with my “why dont you get your shit at least somewhat together before you try to breed” stuff … because you are right, everyone who wants babies should have them, not only people who have their shit together.
but i was a kid who grew up with 0% structure and stability and it sucked. it truly did.
I grapple with it, too, because we also had that kind of childhood (with lots of bonus awfulness thrown in), and I really do not know where the line is. ‘Everyone who wants babies should have them’ — well, no. I don’t think so. Having total control over another human being just because you want to is not okay. And obviously we don’t really believe that as a society, you can’t just go buy a baby on Ebay or whatever, there are controls on adoption and stuff. But when it comes to procreation I don’t think there’s any plausible ethical way to manage/control it, and I definitely do not think I (or anyone) knows who gets to have kids or not.
I am another person who grapples with this. I have a BIL and SIL who think that even natural family planning (which is endorsed by the Vatican!) is sinful because it’s an attempt to defy God’s plans for you. They’ve been married for 6 years and have 5 children, on an income that puts them just barely over the national poverty line. My SIL also has significant health problems which have been severely exacerbated by going through 5 pregnancies in such a short amount of time. I know that after every delivery, her doctor has advised that she wait at least 2 years before trying to conceive again, but she’s invariably pregnant again 3-6 months later. And her babies have been anywhere from 6-14 weeks premature.
I know that their reproductive choices are none of my business and I would never say anything about it. I do want to say, “Um, you know that if you keep doing this, there’s a good chance you or your baby might die.” But she would just answer that God wouldn’t send her more children than she could handle.
Oof.
I grapple with it as well, because I have extended family members (cousins) who have . . . not made the best reproductive choices in the world. Like, two kids in two years with a guy you previously had a restraining order towards (!!!!) who is also in his fourties and has no income when you ALSO have no income and no plans to accquire one is not a great plan! But I don’t comment on it to them, because we’re not close and they haven’t asked. (Fortunately for everyone involved, especially the kids, Child Services stepped in and went “uh, no” and whisked the kids away to people who will clothe and feed them properly.)
I have a friend who’s making what appear to be pretty irresponsible financial decisions (an apartment that will cost 50% of their income, that they don’t understand why their parents won’t cosign for, with the expectation that their fiance will be able to get a job immediately when they move into town, and a number of other really unwise expectations) but it isn’t my business. If they complain about the parents refusing to cosign, I’m going to be like “Of course they won’t, it would be stupid of them to do so.” but ultimately I can’t affect their financial decisions very much, and shouldn’t try to. But yeah uggggggggh sometimes bad decisions jeez.
I have that friend! Quit his job because “I’m tired of working there.” Lived off his savings while doing no job hunting whatsoever, then when he realized he was almost out of money, he decided to take an extended trip to Europe because “I’ll be totally broke soon so I won’t be able to afford it then.”
I didn’t say anything because hey, none of my business, but I was definitely thinking “Noooo wtf are you doing.” I know finding a job is hard but it’s 100% harder when you don’t look or apply for anything!
My dad did that! Not the Europe thing or the living on savings thing (because my mom was still working) but he had a “you can’t fire me! I quit!” conversation with his boss a few months after we’d moved into a new house (and consequently gotten a new mortgage.) My mom was not best pleased with him.
I went to an academic conference not that long ago and there was an attendant who was a white lady that had dreadlocks that hit the floor when she sat down on a chair. Like, she had to make sure the dreadlocks went over the back of the chair, and they hit the ground. It was insane.
truth: i lost my virginity to a white guy with dreadlocks. but i learned my lesson, i promise.
“We’re all fucking hypocrites. That’s what I think about it.”
Is anybody getting vertical banner ads above the main post instead of horizontal ones?
Yup! It’s always the “free audiobook from Amazon” ad.
We’ve been working on it!
Yes! Very odd.
Michael Dorn is certainly aging well.
(As is Marina, but damn, Dorn.)
My husband and I were in grad school when we had our daughter (BROKE! IN DEBT! OH THE HORROR!) and we did just fine and no one starved and she is a lovely person so that guy can just shut up.
Yeahhhhhhhh as someone expecting my first kid and last year not even hitting 30K (although this year will be better!) I need to retract my eyeballs from where they rolled to the back of my head.
The Billfold article is almost certainly due to the LW’s own personal issues. My (NYC-based) partner & I have a reasonably cushy combined income and I am often like “HOW COULD WE POSSIBLY AFFORD A CHILD-HUMAN! WE WORK 6 BILLIONS OF HOURS A WEEK AND BESIDES WHERE WOULD IT SLEEP, ON MY CHAISE LONGUE?” but that’s because I don’t want one.
We live in an apartment which is on the small side and has a kitchen so tiny as to be useless, but for some reason there’s a massive walk-in closet in the bedroom. The first time my mom came over, I gleefully showed her the walk-in, which is the pride of my heart. She said, “There are much better uses for this space… for example, you could put a crib in here…” Um, no, because then where would my clothes go? Also what am I, Petunia Dursley?
I suspect my mother thinks I don’t have a baby yet because we live in a one-bedroom apartment, but the truth is we live in a one-bedroom apartment because we don’t want or need more space because we don’t intend to have kids. She’s still very much in the “You’ll change your mind! You’ll seeeeeee!” camp.
Graphic novel suggestions: Who read Fun Home and loved it/ felt like they’d been given a gut wound?
Anyway, if you’re a devoted daughter of a loving father and you both have similar intellectual interests, don’t recommend this book to your dad. He’ll think you’re trying to imply things.
I mean, your dad might not. My dad preforms the fuck out of masculinity.
I loved Fun Home, and the follow-up “Are You My Mother,” it was a relatable family dynamic. However it’s a book I can’t recommend to anyone I know because, as you said, they think I’m trying to drop hints. An old roommate found my DTWOF anthology and told everyone I was a lesbian, which was ……. strange.
Well, when she was walking around it didn't hit the ground, just when she sat in a chair at one of the panels. Still disturbing, though.