ONE DAY MORE: our new hosts needed a little bit more time, so you have one more day to deal with inexplicably locked comment threads and weird vertical ads and the occasional, crushing inability to read our posts.
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omigod this paragraph quoted in this interview knocked me on my ass for five minutes:
When I think back to my home, when there is no one left now, it always seems to me that things must have been different back then. Then, you know (or perhaps you sensed it) that you had your death inside you as a fruit has its core. The children had a small one in them and the grownups a large one. The women had it in their womb and the men in their chest. You had it, and that gave you a strange dignity and quiet pride.
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There’s a new book out, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this horrible Utah true crime story recently, and just how generally irredeemably awful it is, and feeling a lot of sorrow and sympathy for Susan Powell’s family. It didn’t get a lot of national attention, you may not even be familiar with it.
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I watched The Hunt for Red October for the billionth time, and it’s the MOST fun. “I would have liked to have seen…Montana.” DIES.
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Kathleen Hale’s “Prey” is very good and very difficult to read.
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Worrying about bank robberies, and the nature of low-risk panicking.
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The Man, The Writer, and His Cigarette:
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I say I would have liked to have seen Montana ALL THE TIME. Also “some things in here don’t react well to bullets.” It is my favorite movie ever and honest to God got me to major in Russian in college and gave me a life-long crush on Jonesy.
Pregnancy hormones flooding every bit of my mind, body, and soul this morning, THANK YOU SO MUCH for declaring your love for this movie, I think it might get me through my day.
“Andrei, have you lost ANOTHER submarine?” (eats candy)
I got a gleeful text from my mom a few weeks ago reporting that she and my dad had found Hunt for Red October on the TV. I called them a few hours later to chat and they didn’t pick up; later, when they called back, they admitted that I had called mid-missile room shootout and they just let it go to voicemail. I told them (honestly) I would have done the same thing in their place.
Good for them.
I use to watch this with my dad when I was little but he would always send me out of the room when the political officer “slipped on his tea.” It was years before I saw what happened. Strangely the shoot out didn’t bother him.
And I love the terrible, inexplicable accents, and the ridiculous Cold War hoopla and, well, everything.
My favorite part is Tim Curry (!) saying “But…CAPTAIN!”
He’s such a ham.
Every time I watch it I go “holy shit, I forgot Tim Curry was in this!”
I have the same reaction with Paul Rudd in Baz’s Romeo+Juliet
This is one of my family’s movies that we watch and quote more often than is really necessary. Let’s give this American a wide berth.
And I will have a pickup truck… maybe even a “recreational vehicle.”
ONE DAY MORE TILL REVOLUTION WE WILL NIP IT IN THE BUD
WE’LL BE READY FOR THESE SCHOOLBOYS, THEY WILL WET THEMSELVES WITH BLOOD.
One day more!
Another day, another comment thread,
Another post I try to click is dead.
I cannot live without The Toast
And soon you’ll have a better host.
One day more!
I did not live until The Toast!
How can I live when we are parted?
Tomorrow I will read the most
And yet till then I’m broken-hearted!
Here a little click
There a little link
Watch out for the headlines
That will make you drink!
Prey is brutal. Really brutal. In tears.
Especially the end. “Can anyone say ‘no’ to this?”
Yeah, as I read it thinking about when I was recently on jury duty, I was thinking I would probably have gotten in trouble if they’d asked me that, because I would’ve exploded.
Yeah. The whole thing is really affecting and beautifully written, but damn, the end. I think about that a lot, and it’s horrifying. And in the cases where I know the details, nothing was reported and the assaulter never faced consequences.
A friend of mine was sexually assaulted by her friend when we were in college in Boston, and this whole story brought back a lot of memories. Especially the part about her behavior–a lot of her then-close friends didn’t want to deal with her anxiety or choosing between her and the assaulter, and she quit activities rather than risk facing him (she never reported the assault).
I know it’s absurd to make anything about that wonderful piece of writing About My Feelings, but I just want to say that as a massage & bodywork therapist myself, I really, really want to tear that dude’s spine out with my bare hands. I take my profession seriously as a way of healing not just chronic pain, but really more importantly, the fucked-up relationship we’re encouraged to have with our bodies, where we see them as disappointing and alien entities that won’t give us what we think we want from them, objects that are too old or too fat or too sick or too traumatized or too *whatever* to tolerate. So there’s something especially profane to me about this story, and I’m definitely going to be carrying it around with me for quite some time.
It’s amazing.
Yeah. “Can anyone really answer no to that question?”
I thought I had been paying attention to the Susan Powell story, but here on the East coast I didn’t hear about anything that developed after the father killed himself and the boys. Ugh. Who wrote the new book? Do we think it includes new revelations?
Yes, I was surprised to hear that her brother-in-law also committed suicide in 2013. Ugh. What a horrific story.
I now live very near where that all went down (Puyallup/Graham, WA) but at the time I was a couple counties over, and I had forgotten it was right in this area. Am now horrified anew. I hadn’t heard anything about the brother either, so I guess it’s not in the news much here anymore?
Such an awful story.
A high school friend is a teacher and one of the Powell boys was in his classroom, he was in tears when that all happened. You saw that the Powells wanted part/all of her life insurance, yes? I think they’re a family full of shitty human beings, and my heart breaks for Susan’s family.
What on earth…this woman leaves a secret will saying she’s fearing for her life, the children report that she is dead/in the trunk of a van, and basically nothing happens? He’s allowed to move to another state, no big deal? Horrific.
*sobs brokenly*
NEVER AGAIN
(holds you)
The Hunt for Red October is my number-one Movie I Can’t Channel-Surf Past. If I flip past it I will sit there and watch the whole thing. Even if it’s in Spanish.
Yes! I personally cannot channel-surf past Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Apollo 13 for me. WHAT IF THEY DON’T MAKE IT BACK THIS TIME.
I have never seen it! Amazon has it to rent – is it worth around $4.00?
YES ABSOLUTELY
Excellent! It looks like a portion of my evening is planned. 🙂
What is the name of this new book in re: Susan Powell? I followed the case for awhile and I’m interested.
“If I Can’t Have You”: http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Have-You-Mysterious-Di…
I am not going to buy it, because just hearing about this case on the news makes me so mad I can barely breathe. And that poor social worker who dropped off the boys has never been able to return to work, she feels like she literally drove them to their deaths.
Thanks, Nicole! I will check it out but only with a box of Kleenex on hand. I remember hearing about the case back in ’09 and being shaky-angry about it then and then it just got weirder and…yeah.
I follow cases like this a lot due to my line of work and I guess it’s a good sign that I never stop getting angry about them, rather than slowly being unaffected by hearing about yet another woman missing and/or dead.
ugh i bought it
Please report back. I don’t think I could stand to read it, but that poor women and those poor kids.
You’re a braver woman than me. I love true crime stuff, but the Powell boys are too close to my heart.
God, that poor social worker. I cannot even imagine.
I can’t imagine what that social worker is living with. I also can’t believe that, given the evidence against Powell- especially THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES giving statements that incriminated him- the higher-ups (whose job is it to remove custodial rights?) allowed him to keep having visits with them. And they didn’t even send backup with the poor social worker! What did they expect her to do, fend him off if he got violent?
OMG this amazon link has a review of the book by her sister, now I am crying into my coffee again.
I don’t know if this is related to the server issues, but lately, when I click on the title of a Toast post, about half the time I am taken not to the post but to an ad on a totally different website. (I’m reasonably certain that I am clicking on titles and not accidentally on ads.) Is this happening to anyone else^
This is also happening to me.
You know, I’ve had this happen to me as well, it’s something we’re working on. It SHOULDN’T happen, it’s not meant to.
Aha, i thought I was randomly misclicking and getting ads like I do on facebook annoyingly often.
It happens to me fairly frequently.
I haven’t had that exact thing happen, but a few days ago, when I clicked through from Feedly, there was a semi-invisible ad (just a transparent square) that I kept clicking whenever I tried to click Page 2 of a certain post (I forget which). I also get those little banner ads that don’t refresh the page correctly when you try to X out of them, but that seems to be a phone/Feedly thing and not a Toast thing.
The piece about bank robberies really spoke to me and my irrational fear of flying/people close to me flying. My husband had to go on a bunch of business trips over the past few weeks that involved a total of 10 flights. He texted me just before boarding and just after disembarking, and in the space between the two texts I was so tense that I didn’t even fully realize how tense I was until I got the second message and my body finally fully relaxed.
I know the statistics, that I’m much likelier to die on the cab ride over to the airport than on the flight, but there it is. I love to travel, so I suck it up as best I can. On my last trip I experimented with Ativan and Benadryl – the first kept me calm until the second put me to sleep. It was pretty nice, but I had read other Ativan users’ accounts and was hoping for the almost-stoned, blissful relaxation they described. Instead I just got blunted affect and the inability to focus on any thought for longer than 2 seconds.
oh man, re: A Bitter End. Working in healthcare, having worked in veterinary medicine in the past, I think that euthanasia is one of the most loving gifts we could give in healthcare, yet we don’t give it to people. What is more cruel: letting someone live in constant, intractable, incurable, progressive pain and sickness? Or giving them a peaceful end, when there is no hope of health?
Maybe if we started getting more hip to the idea of death things wouldn’t be like this. EVERYONE DIES. It doesn’t have to be such an injustice. ugh. just… people.
THE DADNESS. How everyone just automatically hands him child-proof bottles to open. How he comes out of morphine insisting that his daughter needs to be protected. The refusing to characterize pain levels and pissing off every single medical professional he comes in contact with.
I had to sit with my head in my hands for a while while reading it.
SCOTUS decision this morning.
That cat has long been my favorite “STFU, world” gif. I’m using the llama to pretend that SCOTUS ruled in favor of llama-jumping this morning, and nothing else. (LalalalaLALALA… llama!)
My day would be slightly improved if I could find an image of RBG holding a flaming sword of righteousness.
Please see the Futurama thread for a Toastie-made gif of Robot Ruth Bader Ginsburg wreaking havoc.
GOOD ENOUGH.
I live in Canada, but I am just so enraged on behalf of all US sestra about this ongoing brutal disrespect of women’s bodily autonomy that it makes me hop up and down cursing. brb donating to Planned Parenthood.
PERFECT. *sobs*
WHAT DO I DO WITH MY RAGE? I am so completely disenchanted with this country.
My answer to that is always “immediately give $10 to Planned Parenthood”. Then proceed with your research on what else to do, now armed with a renewed sense that you/we are not alone in fighting the good fight.
Also: http://www.fundabortionnow.org/ http://www.reproductiverights.org/ http://www.emilyslist.org/
Rage donated (at national and local levels, because: Texas), felt better. May have made one donation in the name of Hobby Lobby’s CEO.
I want to make “taking to the sea” jokes, but I’m just too upset/exhausted by everything.
I honestly wish I knew what to do but any improvement just seems impossible given our current system of everything.
I had a poli sci professor who spent a whole semester on her thesis that changes made at the grassroots have more real effect on people’s lives than the ones proclaimed from the top. The “success story” was the attempt to pass the ERA in the 70s: while the amendment didn’t pass, all the state-by-state advocacy helped drive the dramatic shift in attitudes around the question of “should men and women be equal under the law?”
I don’t know what the modern equivalent is – how to start organizing a kajillion town halls about the more modern ways we discriminate against women and other oppressed classes – but it really does work to just move the needle on public opinion. It just takes a couple decades to work its way up the chain (see also: gay marriages for everyone).
One of the advantages the Right has over the Left is that they are much, much better at organizing at the local level. Being involved in local and state politics, even if all you can do is vote and donate, has significant ramifications. With such low voter turnout for primaries and mid-term elections, every single vote counts — I have in mind California’s recent primary election, where if results had turned out differently could have meant the definitive the end of the CA Republican Party, and the beginning of a split between the progressives and the moderates on the Dems side.
But yeah, I agree with this completely. It is much more effective to work with the local, immediate community, and have those efforts combine into something greater, than to just throw money and time into the giant maelstrom that is national politics, hoping for the best.
I love the bank robbery piece! As someone who has lain awake worrying about how I would save my family in the event of a home invasion by sadistic psychopaths, it hit close to home.
I just can’t save this until Friday’s open thread. I QUIT MY JOB! On Sunday, 7th day in a row, somewhere between hour 100 and 105 of the workweek, I finally cracked and quit. I was being used as a pawn in dirty office politics, and decided that I deserved tons better, at least being treated as a person, and unemployment was preferable. So I packed my shit, and walked. And I feel so much better for it!
Ugh, sometimes I think I should go back to job-hunting in the private sector, and then I hear of nonsense like this. So many high fives for walking! Did you get to leave any super-passive-aggressive resignation notes behind?
No, I didn’t want to stick around long enough to write it. But I’m a super hot topic of gossip since I was one of the most senior peons there, and well respected by the others. I made no secret of why I walked, so the kids are doing that for me.
You are the mythic hero, who does not need to tell tales of her own bravery, for even now bards compose songs to honor her acts!
You are magnificent and don’t need my affirmation, but I want to affirm that, indeed, you *do* deserve tons better. We deserve the treatment we tolerate.
There’s a lot of variations on “extreme violations of someone’s safety/integrity” today. Combined with SC*TUS (it’s a dirty word now), I am really, really grateful that teleworking means I haven’t had to get out of bed yet today.
*piles more kehttens onto bed*
*offers quantities of kehttens to Nicole*
you guys cuddle those kittens, I’ll be running around like this…
Which is an appropriate reaction in every way:
YES YES YES YES 125% appropriate. “Victory for Religious Liberties”, hahaha ha ah *sobs*.
There’s a reason my Christianity tag is “did jesus fucking stutter?” NO. NO HE DID NOT.
Gaaaaaah why did this have to be announced the day I’m stuck on a work shift in a science lab, rather than at home, on the couch, covered in kittens, and with tumblr access? I can’t break anything in here. 🙁
I’m angry lab cleaning today if that helps. I still can’t break anything but I can blast music and ignore the rest of my responsibilities while making my lab a nice place to work for if/when the rage subsides.
That actually sounds delightfully cathartic.
Here is a kitten cam for anyone who needs it due to the SCOTUS ruling. As of the instant I post it, the babymeows are feeding from the mamameow. http://explore.org/live-cams/player/kitten-rescue…