You may have missed A Mobster Who Really Wants a Pet Rabbit due to getting your patriotism on for the Fourth of July, but I love it so much I want everyone to read it.
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Twilight of the Pizza Barons, or Why I Refuse to Order Domino’s Even Though There Is No Longer Any Connection There:
Monaghan began to dabble in Catholic causes. He established Legatus, an organization for Catholic chief executive officers, and donated $50,000 to support a Michigan ballot proposal to ban state-funded abortions. After the National Organization for Women responded by calling for a boycott of Domino’s, Monaghan told the Ann Arbor News, “It made me realize why martyrs die with smiles on their faces.” He was equally busy giving interviews about his $40 cashmere socks, his obsession with the actress Debbie Reynolds, and his growing pile of pricey toys. He could afford them. In 1985, Domino’s opened 954 stores, bringing the total to 2,841. The year before, the Tigers, which Monaghan bought for $53 million in 1983, won the World Series. Today a replica of the trophy stands in a glass case down the hall from Monaghan’s office.
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IMPORTANT INFORMATION for those who are participating in our An Untamed State book club! (First discussion here.) We will be meeting back on Thursday, July 17th, and discussing through the end of Chapter 12. Gird your loins.
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I am here to talk about Warren G. Harding’s sex letters allll day.
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Jolie Kerr on grout, but also GENDER ESSENTIALISM.
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Buy a buncha new books.
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Leslie Jamison on why confessional writing is not self-indulgent:
Another woman wrote to say that one of my essays had made her turn down sex with a guy who didn’t love her. “As low as that sounds,” she said, as if it didn’t matter much. But it mattered to me. It didn’t sound low at all. It sounded like something I might have needed – at several points in my life – to hear. She told me she was writing drunk. She’d needed to get drunk to find the courage to write at all.
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Vasectomies! Cheaper than tube-tying and good for what ails ya.
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I am buying a new car, since we have sold our 1999 Chevy Tracker (RIP, 1999 Chevy Tracker.) I am less emotionally equipped to purchase a car from a human whose job it is to make me pay more than a car is worth than ANYONE WHO HAS EVER LIVED. Wish me luck.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I just need to put this here while my outrage? mirth? is still fresh. For anyone who still believes the letters in Dear Prudence are real, please read the third letter here.
P.S. The first one is also a doozy and, I have got to believe, fake.
P.P.S. “I think I know someone who can help you with your sex pooping problem.” WHEN IS 30 ROCK NOT RELEVANT?!
The most unrealistic thing about that article is “since the birth of our child the sex has gone down to three times a week.” Also, it’s all over the place! Your kid is two, but this is recent? Or it’s not recent? Or the sex downturn is recent? GODDAMNIT, PRUDIE, have some self-respect and stop publishing fake letters.
…DOWN to three times a week?
That’s still a pretty healthy amount, you crazy kids!
I still think that the re-enactment of the ‘Til Tuesday music video of “Voices Carry” is one of the top fake letters. Of course, her answer was par for Prudie on people being sexually assaulted, but it was kind of funny when several people called her out on it.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
Right? Three times a week is a GREAT WEEK!
“It sounds as though you’ve recently seen the Sally Field movie, Not Without My Daughter”
YOU DON’T SAY
RIGHT?
Okay, that one is fake, but you will never shake my belief that the twincest letter was 100% real.
The twincest letter is the Prudie hill I choose to die on. I WANT TO BELIEVE
I believe that one too.
Also, I think she’s way off base in her second answer.
If I were a 12-year-old alone in an airport sans cell phone, I would be super freaked out if the people sent to pick me up were a half-hour late. If the kid was 16+, it would be a different story. But 12 years old? That’s way too young for to use “So sorry, I’m just chronically late, whoops” as an excuse.
I was about to say, “I think I would have been fine,” but then I remembered that at that age, I would have a brief moment of panic if my mom wandered to a different aisle in the grocery store without me, so I will co-sign your comment.
If they were meeting him at the arrivals, and he had to get his own luggage first, a 35-minute delay wouldn’t be that bad – it would probably take longer than that for airport staff to unload the luggage. But if they’re supposed to meet him at the carousel, yeah, that’s different.
Yeah, my daughter is 11, and I would be more than angry if any of her grandparents were 35 minutes late in picking her up at the airport. Chronically late or not, get your ass to the terminal on time to pick up your grandchild, people.
From the sound of the mother, I doubt the kid has been left to his own devices ever in his life, so yeah, probably not cool.
When I was 12, summer between 7th & 8th grade, I took the train to my grandmother’s, ran around the city on the bus alone, I had a job, and was pretty independent. So, if it were me, I think I would have been chill? Which is just to say that kids are a lot like people, with varying degrees of capabilities. Just shorter, usually.
ETA: actually she specifies that her son is a tall child, so I guess I’m wrong about the shorter thing.
Oh, I’m sure the kid could hypothetically be just fine. I just think that if he’s expecting his grandparents to pick him up at an unfamiliar (and presumably crowded) location, it’s bad form on their part to not be there on time (or even early!). It’s one thing to go off on an adventure on your own; it’s another to be thrust into one by some adults who can’t manage their time.
Agreed, I actually think it’s bad form not to be there on time (or even early) no matter how old he was. I remember getting off the plane in college, to be immediately paged to a white phone, where my dad was calling from a payphone off the highway to tell me he had been held up in road construction and would be there in 20 minutes. I would have been fine, I was 20, but I appreciated the courtesy.
I thought the tallness was a weird detail to include in the letter – she didn’t say he looked older than 12, just tall. Like, would you look at at adult who’s 6’5″ and go “wow, you must be the most mature, responsible person ever!”?
If someone was 35 minutes late to pick me (an adult) up at the airport I’d be hella worried (probably 50/50 “they don’t love me/forgot about me” versus “something terrible has happened to them”).
I guess it depends on whether it’s happened before? My parents were like this (and on a few occasions, would completely forget that I needed to be picked up) and so it didn’t send me into a panic or anything when they didn’t show up right away. I was perfectly capable of sitting for half an hour and finding a phone if it went on longer. Downside: I have now become the chronically-late adult.
I was surprised that he didn’t have a phone. I mean, I hate the kids and their precious cell phones, but it seems like a prepaid throwaway flip phone just for emergencies and just for this trip would have been in order. Having made a trip (accidentally) without my phone, and then having the flights delayed and being stuck at airports overnight not knowing the number of the person who was supposed to pick me up (because said number was stored in the phone), I assure you, the phonez make air travel much less stressful for everyone involved.
I was often also left places as a kid by my sister and my dad, who were both chronically late, and while I did get used to it, it wasn’t nice while I was in the process of getting used to it. My mother obviously wasn’t furious since she was happy for them to carry on, but my other sister and I have become chronically early because of it. I really hated being left places long after I was 12.
I read that letter as saying the in-laws arrived 35 minutes after the plan was scheduled to land, so maybe they were not waiting as diligently AT THE CAROUSEL as long as they were supposed to be, but probably breezed in as he was looking around for them. So, all’s well that ends well.
Also, what does this mother need advice on? How outraged to be? Clearly not.
That is not the first sex pooping advice column story I’ve read.
“I will also note that your remark that your sex life is down to only (!) three times a week since the birth of your child will have a lot of readers messing their pants.”
HAHAHAH PRUDIE WHAT THE FUCK
Wow, this is weird, my dad scooped a Link Roundup by making me read Twilight of the Pizza Barons the other day, and my comment was “I like that picture where the sun is a pizza” and “These old white men are insane,” to which my dad’s response was “They have been doing weird stuff since the 80s but nobody seemed to care then.” Preach, dad.
Just recently I had a conversation with someone about how basically all pizza companies are owned by deranged billionaires and is it some sort of conspiracy? Or are they all driven insane by pizza madness? So I’m totally excited to read the article. And I also like that picture where the sun is a pizza.
My parents absolutely refuse to order Domino’s, and so did I until my last year of college. At that point, my friends starting ordering Domino’s when we were drunk, and though I have technically never picked up the phone to order, I have contributed money. And I have eaten the pizza. And it was so good.
BUT – I am not in college any more, and I hope I have the principles to Never Eat Domino’s again.
Wait, no… what? I was totally with you up to “it was so good”. There’s plenty of worthy discussions to be had about how much politics to play with our consumer spending habits, but let us not forgive that the Original Sin of Domino’s is tasting like cardboard with a little cheese product on it.
(At my college it was Papa John’s, whose evil is a little newer in the public eye.)
Domino’s was never a struggle for me, since their pizza is nasty, but when the Papa John’s guy threw that big fit about having to pay his employees I was like “BUT THE GARLIC SAUCE!” I still miss the garlic sauce.
Papa John being an asshole has brought the average liberal’s LDL count down by 10%
(that garlic sauce is the nectar of the gods when you’re drunk at 1 AM)
Not just pizza companies! Think about Chik-Fil-A, In-N-Out, Carl’s Jr…
At this point I’m resigned to the fact that probably any money I give to a fast food joint is probably directly contributing to some sort of evil (They ALLLLL buy Montsanto products) and resign myself to occasionally enjoying a Carl’s spicy chicken sandwich.
Nicole I know it’s too hot to wear boots so put on some serious business lippy when you go to buy the car. You got this! Maybe even take the child with you so they feel sorry for you and give you a better deal.
My parents’ trick was to take all the kids and let us poke around the dealership, burble out our endless child-thoughts, and otherwise create an unprofessional atmosphere so the salespeople quickly grew eager to close a deal and get the whole family out of there. Dad believed that a crying child would do wonders to his bargaining power.
I heard a story on a podcast once (probably This American Life?) from a woman who was ACTIVELY IN LABOR while buying a car–she had to get a car so she could take her baby home from the hospital after the birth, possibly to get away from an abusive ex? My memories are fuzzy. But the story is great and she talks about how the salespeople had never seen a sale go so quickly or so smoothly. So, Nicole, if need be, just wait until you’re in labor, and use that as a bargaining chip.
Oh god, that was a great story. I don’t remember her relationship being abusive, just that she had a strong need for independence. But the process got jammed up because she had the cash to buy outright, and it takes extra paperwork to *not* get the financing option. But clearly we should all go re-listen to that one after reading all the Link Roundup stuff.
WAIT, I looked it up–she was giving the baby up for adoption! That’s what it was! Here is the link for anyone who wants to hear this. It is a good one.
Dad was a genius.
Protip the business lipstick move works just as well for men, maybe better.
Except when they try to pair too loud a lip without doing the foundation work. It’s okay guys, we all had to learn the tricks at some point.
My boss’s advice on car-buying was to pick out the car you want and email a bunch of dealerships to get their offers. Then — adamantly only dealing with them via email — negotiate between them. As little human interaction as possible is key!
That’s what I did except I didn’t negotiate once I got the offers (since they were way below what I had thought was a fair price–it was the end of the month/also maybe I didn’t know what I was doing). I also used a man’s name when emailing.
We did this in February – did a ton of research online on what car we wanted, and then went through Edmunds.com to see what dealers had the car at acceptable prices. Then we found the dealer with the right car, put a deposit down online, and only had to deal with people to test drive and sign the papers.
(It helped that we were buying a 2013 Prius, and the dealers were all very anxious to get them off their lots and already offering big discounts.)
I took my dad because he is a car-knowing person. (and also then he couldn’t complain that I had overlooked something obvious) The salesman talked only to the father figure and never to me; he tried to sell me a jeep for about 10k more than I wanted to spend, and he pointed out that the headlights were ROUND LIKE THE EYES OF A HORSE.
I was not too pleased with any male human within fifty feet of me at the time, so I looked down at the ground, twisted my toe in the dirt (a habit my dad hates) and said in my tiniest quietest voice that I had a couple of questions.
“Sure!” said the salesman “Dad doesn’t mind you learning to do this yourself!”
“Is it 1944?”
“What?”
“Are we in occupied France?”
“No?”
“Then I don’t want a fucking jeep. Show me that car over there.”
I proceeded to be the coldest bitch – and I got it for $1500 under blue book and it’s still running great five years later. I also quietly horrified my father and am now the family member who is Good At Negotiating.
What I’m saying is that triggering misandry before car purchasing worked for me – it might work for other people too.
“Are we in occupied France?” I love this so much.
I am selling my beloved little car to get a bigger vehicle from my mom, who in turn is getting an even bigger car (They are all Hondas, of course) and I am not emotionally prepared for this. I may have teared up while thinking about it yesterday and am being weirdly possessive and am judging most people who have inquired about it wholly unworthy of owning my baby.
Yeah, I was not prepared for how emotionally attached I got to my old car, which I hated.
Nicole, I am really invested in this new car negotiation. I hope it goes very well and I second Bergy’s suggestion of business lippy.
I have never bought a car but I am terrible in any kind of high-pressure (or low-pressure) sales situation. I got upsold a bunch at my pedicure the other day! The first time I bought a laptop, I was talked into so many things by the Apple store “genius” that when I had to replace that computer, I just marched in, scowling, pointed at the MacBook and barked at the woman, “I want that one and NOTHING ELSE!” (It worked; her eyes widened and she scurried off to the back room and I was in and out in ten minutes with a new lappy.)
My point is there’s got to be a happy medium. Please find it and report back.
I bought my car at the end of the lease term because I couldn’t face the prospect of the dealership. I would very much like an online-buying option for cars.
CarMax is a pretty close substitute, I think? There’s no negotiation. It’s, like, just a car store. Which, of course, makes me feel like I’m not getting the best deal possible, but I’d probably feel like that after buying from a dealer, so who knows.
*disclaimer: i have never bought a car but am about to.
Any kind of high-pressure sales situation is a nightmare to me–I turn into a sniveling, scared little wreck. At least I’m finally learning how to dodge the super aggressive Greenpeace hawkers on the street in my town.
I’ve been getting better at fending of upselling and it’s become soooo much fun! Recently my boyfriend and I bought the best and cheapest BBQ – they talked only to him when showing the BBQ (which was a mistake because my beloved is tightfisted while I am profligate) and then immediately turned around and tried to sell me all sorts of silicon BBQ mats and smoke boxes and the like. I turned to the guy and said “I use foil for that” and winked. I WINKED. And then we left with 1 BBQ and 1 BBQ brush. It was a turning point in my life.
(I also recently yelled “I AM A LAWYER” at an insurance agent who was being verrrry pushy about not cancelling my very expensive and entirely useless loan insurance after she tried to tell me the insurance would protect my estate and I was like “look I don’t have an estate I have no exigible assets and one massive loan” and she was like “you moron everyone has an estate” and then I said “I KNOW, I AM A LAWYER, MY ESTATE IS INSOLVENT. CANCEL MY INSURANCE NOW”.)
Blah blah blah GOOD LUCK WITH BUYING A CAR NICOLE.
Six months after I started dating my now-husband, his mother tried to set him up with a graduate of Ave Maria University! He was like “lolnope.” It was my first inkling that my MIL did not approve of me.
I like how the article mentions that accreditation took longer than expected… like, how shocking that people would have doubts about the academic rigour of a Catholic fundie university established by a pizza billionaire.
Also, between the remote location, the Ave Maria town, the concept of the university as “saint factory,” the fact that he brags that 20% of students marry each other… dude, you don’t have a university, you have a cult compound.
He’s like I WANT TO BUILD A SAINT FACTORY and I was like I feel you have failed to learn anything about sainthood, at all, ever. Here, I will lend you a book.
I can’t imagine that anyone would be so eager to build a school with a 100% mortality rate.
(I mean, technically all schools have a 100% mortality rate, but maybe not quite as dramatic?)
I actually know a couple people who went there (what up Catholic homeschoolers) and it sounds like it’s basically a more religious Florida party school populated with blonde volleyball girls. Seems like it’s 40/60 super Catholic/couldn’t get in anywhere else. And, oh yeah…it’s not actually accredited and is basically a fake college. (The one girl I knew who went there did end up married to a guy who appears to be a less-smart Paul Ryan wannabe, so….the system works?)
Interesting, too, because that 20% isn’t all that far above the marriage percentage for many universities (especially remote ones where you’re stuck with the people that go to school with you). I think a lot of liberal arts schools average around 16-18% if I’m remembering right! Although we end up pretty culty about our schools, just sans religious fervor.
I was thinking that, too — 20% actually seems kind of low for a religious school! Like, I think it’s at least 20% at Rice.
I wonder if they have statistics for BYU…
It’s gotta be at least 80%, right? The only reason the Morman family I knew growing up let their daughters go to college is so they could find a good husband.
My DORM has a 14% marriage rate.
My car buying advice is go in knowing that if you feel like they are taking advantage of you, you can just walk away. You have the power because you do not have to buy from that guy. Do not let them pressure you, just walk away. Keep going places or even the same place until you find someone you feel is giving you a good deal. When I was growing up there was a dealership that had the slogan “Drive a little, save a lot”. My husband and I quoted this to each other the few times we bought cars. When we felt that we were being cheated at one place, we got in the car and drove to the next place, even if it was out of the way.
And if they say “What would it take to get you in this car today?” it’s OK to Bad Feminist and explain that you definitely have to look some things up online or your spouse/boyfriend/father/entire family would never let you live it down. You don’t have to be straight assertive to wiggle out of their clutches! It’s OK to lie!
That last sentence in the Warren G. Harding article is hilariously cheeky. It reads like it was penned by someone’s aunt.
I came here just to check if they had the Warren Harding letters! Thank god. I love that he named his junk Jerry.
“Oh, Carrie mine! You can see I have yielded and written myself into wild desire. I could beg. And Jerry came and will not go, says he loves you, that you are the only, only love worthwhile in all this world, and I must tell you so and a score or more of other fond things he suggests, but I spare you. You must not be annoyed. He is so utterly devoted that he only exists to give you all. I fear you would find a fierce enthusiast today.”
TEE HEE
My favorite part is how he interjects “Gee!” into a flowery description about how he wants her to climb his junk.
“I like to dream in loose, flowing garb, because I can dream more intently. And I did — to alarming release. I called your name aloud thrice, begging you to come, and a voice from upstairs responded, wanting to know what I wanted. I was alarmed and sobered.”
TEE HEE INDEED!
Domino’s was my first boycott. It was also, I think, my easiest. Man, I thought their pizza was terrible.
You were right, and it still is, yea, as it was in the beginning. With the overly sweet sauce and pillow-adjacent crust? Shudder.
Pretty much my favorite thing was when they started their new campaign. “We know our pizza USED to be terrible, but we promise it isn’t anymore!”
One of my roommates at that time ordered a lot of delivery pizza, so we all bartered slices off him to try. It was exactly the same pizza, with some garlic salt sprinkled on the crust.
Domino’s tastes good for about 3 milliseconds while you’re super drunk and you take your first bite, then you regret it for the rest of your days.
Nicole, you can do this. First, research how much the fair price of the car you want should be. Then, armed with foreknowledge, gird your loins by dressing for success, taking insurance info and other papers with you. You have to believe you can do it. My FIL owned a successful chain of Jaguar and Lincoln Mercury dealerships for many years in Southern California. So this I know: they always admired business like customers who knew what they wanted.
re dressing for success: I just watched the 30 Rock episode about Jack’s negotiation academy strategies. Wear all black with a single power accent. Hair movement is a sign of weakness.
POWER MUMBLING. I use it all the time irl.
EYE CONTACT
Has anyone else read My Search For Warren Harding by Robert Plunket? Because it is a comic novel about a historian who rents a room from Harding’s now elderly mistress to find and steal his love letters and I cannot get over the fact that it is all coming true. I am monomaniacal on the topic.
I haven’t, but I just read on her wikipedia page that in her later years, Carrie Phillips’ “home was overrun with German Shepherds, and she was known to walk the dogs while wearing large mink coats with little on underneath.” So I hope that part is included.
That is wonderful! I haven’t read the book in years and years and so can’t remember if that detail made it in (and, in fact, the book may have invented a fictional mistress) but I certainly hope it did,
Totally read that as “Jolie Kerr on gout” and was like, ew.
I am fascinated by her mindset. My best friend is like this too and I just find it so alien to my view of the world. This may be why I’ve left the half taken down wall paper in the dog’s bedroom (yes, he has a bedroom with a captain’s bed, don’t ask, he’s 13) for the last 3 years because it was hard to take down and then we put furniture in the room. Plus a dog sleeps in there, so I can’t get emotionally invested in the decor.
I am all in favor of having a separate bedroom for the dog (although personally I would worry that he would get lonely and should have his own bed in my room). Also, I have had a ladder that I borrowed to do some painting in my apartment for almost 2 years now…
Watch out for bridges and hop-ons; you’re gonna get some hop-ons.
Leslie Jamison!! My hold on The Empathy Exams just came in at the library and yesterday I took it to the wine bar to celebrate (the rose I was drinking matched the cover quite nicely) and it made me cry on the train on the way to work this morning. I never want it to end it’s so good.
That book. Man, that book. “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” is the essay that I read and thought “my life’s work has been scooped,” and then I cried and then I decided to use it in every lit class I teach from now till the heat death of the universe.
It made me hold my breath at times- it was my favorite thing I’ve read this year.
About that Awl article: WHY DO PEOPLE TAKE PICTURES OF FIREWORKS? THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME.
AND THEY ALL LOOK RAD AS HELL
And the video! Why would you take video?? If you ever play it back, which you never will, it’ll just be shitty loud noises and then tiny out-of-frame light specks turning into light lines. Terrible. Put down the phone and live your life!
I took video of some fireworks! It was because we were in a car, and the fireworks were being lit, illegally, in the middle of the street we were trying to drive down, and we were blasting “Angel in the Centerfold” from the car radio. It was the most white-American-man thing I’ve ever experienced.
Has anyone in the history of the world ever gone back through their phone after the fact and thought “aww yeah, look at these dozens of dark pictures with blurry flashes on them, now those are memories to last a lifetime”
but if you didn’t record it on your iphone, did it really happen?
So they can post them on Facebook, obviously. And then everyone else will know that they had the best fun, and also the pictures you can get on your iphone or ipad are just so beautiful they make nice, grainy images for all your friends to print out and frame.
Actually I like to think about the guy who really loves all his videos on his iphone and goes home and in a dark room plugs in his iphone and loads up all his videos and spends the night re-watching old fireworks and concerts, all with low sound and picture quality. He’s poetically pathetic.
When I was fourteen, I entered to the State Fair a photo I took of my godparents’ dog in their lake. He was an enormous golden retriever, standing armpit-deep in the shallows and looking down into the water at a fish. His nose was an inch above the water and the water was so still that his entire body above the surface was perfectly reflected. I’d taken one photography course and was avidly applying Fibonacci’s Ratio to EVERYTHING. Thirty years later, I still believe it’s one of the best photographs I’ve ever taken.
I got second place. First place? A generic photo of a bunch of fireworks. I AM STILL BITTER, Y’ALL. Still bitter.
WE SHARE YOUR RAGE
Thank you. Rage-sharing is one of the best things about the commenter community here at The Toast.
Is it online anywhere? Post it! We will admire it!
The only print in existence (even the negatives are gone, I’m sure) lives with my parents. I should get a copy made next time I visit them.
I took a couple, so I could send them to my little sister with lines from “Proud To Be An American” as captions, to commemorate the year that we got reeeeeeeeeeeallly drunk and we were in the bleachers in the park and couldn’t hear the fireworks music so we sang Lee Greenwood really loudly and got our whole section of bleachers to join in. Other than that I just sat and enjoyed.
I did film the boat storage container burning last year because THAT was a unique site. Every time the fire made it into another boat’s gas tank there was another explosion.
My husband always talked a big game about how he bought cars. All of the cars he has had since I’ve known him, he purchased himself. I began to doubt his tales of prowess though when he went to buy a used motorcycle. The guy had two and said they both had to go. Husband only wanted one and only had cash for one, so he’s like “Well, I guess that’s it, then.” Then I piped up with, “We have $300 in cash right now. One of these is only good for parts any way. You give us both bikes and you get $300 in your pocket today.” As we started to walk away, the guy stopped us and took the deal.
Fast forward to buying our current car. I actually went along this time because I’m the one who will be principally driving it. It’s minus 30 Celsius in January in Winnipeg. Earlier that winter, both our car and our pickup truck have been totaled in separate incidents wherein someone lost control on our icy, rutted street and crashed into our vehicles parked in front of our house. It was a terrible day to test drive a car. The car itself was nice. So we are in the little trailer that’s serving as the sales office (the dealership is undergoing renos), shivering and suddenly, it becomes clear to me that we’re actually buying this car. The salesman walks away to do something and I turn to my husband and say, “Are we actually buying this car?” And he shrugs. “I guess so. We need a car.” He spent months researching before he bought his truck and then we slide into a car almost completely through the power of suggestion on the part of the salesman. So don’t do that.
oh my god thank you for reminding me about the mobster wants a rabbit piece I WOULD HAVE MISSED IT
it is perfect
Yesterday I mislaid my bath mitt (hard to do, since it really only belongs in one place), and kept saying, “Where’s my fuckin’ oven mitt?” Later I found it and was disappointed in its lack of velvety ear feels.
I want all the books.
I went camping over the fourth and plowed through my backlog (including “Friendship”, which I liked) and am now sorely in need of buying a buncha new ones.
Car buying: If you haven’t already, listen to the This American Life about the car dealership on Long Island. It will humanize the car salesmen, give context to what they’re pushing on you, and offer tips on getting a fair deal. GOOD LUCK!
I JUST listened to this one driving down to the beach a few days ago! It was fascinating. Really epitomized what This American Life is for me.
I misread “Catholic causes” as “Catholic curses” and I was like I KNEW IT I KNEW IT IN THE DEPTHS OF MY PROTESTANT HEART I KNEW YOU GUYS HAD CURSES
Of course the Catholics have curses: http://www.bereanpublishers.com/curses-and-anathe…
I think I would be more on board if we had curses. Like, at least there would be some utility.
I remember specific phrases for the blessing of cars, bees, houses, and beer, but no curses. Excommunication, maybe. People just REALLY hated Jan Hus.
…in what situation are Catholics blessing bees?
Maybe it’s December 7th and you forgot St Ambrose’s holy day. Maybe you need to exorcise some demons and their venom is the closest thing you have to holy water. Maybe some kid showed up to your St Francis’ Day blessing of pets with a single bumblebee and you didn’t have the heart to say, “Sorry, kiddo, the Blessing of All Domestic Animals only applies to vertebrates.” Do you ask why there’s a blessing for Scout badges? No, you suck it up, Padre, and you crack open that Rituale Romanum.
Considering the threat of total hive collapse, the bees need all the help they can get.
High-level cardinals can even shoot lightning out of their fingers.
It’s called Catholic Plus.
BRB off to write my own Presbyterian curse list:
*May your motion be always tabled by the committee
*May your baked goods always be subpar and thus you are given a pity assignment by the Presbyterian Women. (“You can bring… ice.”)
*May your motion never be voted on because there wasn’t a quorum.
*May your services always be “blended”
*May your new pastor be a hugger
*May your funeral reception not use the good china or have pimento finger sandwiches.
May your pew always, and for every Sunday hence, be taken by visitors.
This one. THIS is the one i’ll use.
dammit now this has to be a post and i have to give you partial credit for the jokes
May you trust the family of the ambitious Brownie scout with baked goods and receive a dozen sleeves of Samoas.
“May all the guitar strings break during your Teen Worship Service.”
“After the National Organization for Women responded by calling for a boycott of Domino’s, Monaghan told the Ann Arbor News, ‘It made me realize why martyrs die with smiles on their faces.'”
what
My husband and I had to ditch our dying, old cars when we moved to Oklahoma City. After a couple of days of car shopping, we decided “NOPE. We’ll go carless… in arguably the least walkable city in America.” That was 10 months ago, and we’re not planning to ever go back to having a car. We write about it here: http://carlessinokc.blogspot.com/
Recently I went on a camping trip with some people who spent a good hour talking about buying a new truck – as in, pick-up truck – and I was utterly mystified by how anyone could care so much about a vehicle to find things to talk about it for an hour. Like, does it go? Does it have a music playing device? Is it kitted out with lots of airbags and things? Will it cost a lot in fuel or a lot lot? So obviously I am also hopeless in this department.
This is why when my current car dies I am buying the exact same make and model.
I make a point to not engage in conversations about cars. I have one, yes, but do I need to talk about it? No. Do I love it? No, I love sentient beings, mostly.
I recently went on a camping trip with some people who had a similar conversation about their trucks right outside my tent at one in the morning.
(They later revealed themselves to be racist, sexist dickbags. It was not a great camping trip, in the end.)
“He balks at saying how many push-ups he can do because he worries it’ll undermine the credibility of everything else he says. He finally admits he can do 800 in three sets, adding, “They’re not the best push-ups.””
Hahahahaha, okay then! Is your name Nicole Cliffe? No? Then you’re definitely lying.
Also, who would split 800 into THREE sets? That’s 266 and 2/3 push ups per set if you’re dividing it evenly.
Since 2/3 of a pushup is about my max, that sounds right to me!
Jolie Kerr has always been A+ about gender essentialism, expectations in relationships (challenging the idea that The Woman Should Do The Cleaning), and just everything in general.
An incredible obituary from Canada http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/timescolonist/ob…
“What to say about George? Certainly, no one could accuse him of having been a loving son, brother, or father. He’d gladly have stolen the shirt off your back and he was generous to a fault with other people’s money. Was he a small-time con-man with grandiose schemes? Probably. But another view of him is that he was the most exciting member of his family and of the families he married into.”
Amazing!
The truthfulness about, affection for, and frustration with George in this obituary are touching. The writer really painted a picture that feels real. Sad and wonderful.
Harding’s letter on March 12, 1915: Jesus on a pogo stick, that’s the most romantic BJ request I’ve ever read.
As romantic as any BJ request ever attributed to a talking penis called “Jerry,” for sure.
My husband and I called around every Honda dealership within an hour of us (there are a lot) to get a quote for the exact make and model we wanted, and we would always ask them “can you do better than [the lowest price we received a quote for]?” We also made sure that they emailed a confirmation so we had it in writing.
Some tips from that experience:
-there are always bullshit fees
-make sure they have that make and model on the lot, sometimes they will quote you something and when you get there they will be like “LOLWHOOPS, can we get you to test drive this [more expensive] version, it is practically the same thing!”
-if you want, you can try to negotiate the smaller things. Do they offer free oil changes for the first year? etc.
My husband and I did this when we bought a Honda Fit last year.. we got a stupidly low quote, got there, ended up they did not have the Honda (base model) Fit around but offered to pick one up from a town a half hour over and we said, “YES DO IT” and then camped out in their store for the entire afternoon. You have a child, so you’re probably less likely to do that. We were in desparate straits (that we did not let them know about) so we were wiling to outwait them.
Always walk away if you want to.
On car buying: I like the “call all the dealers who have the model you want within x miles, ask for their best price over the phone, and tell each one you are doing the same with all the other dealers” approach. It annoys them, but it’s over the phone as opposed to in person, and it forces them to drop all the bullshit.
They get really antsy when they realize they’re on the receiving end of it, don’t they! I actually also found it was a good way to suss out who was most interested in working with you. Some people blew me off, others were very interested in following up. That made a big difference.
Yes! In my head I’m all, “OH HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED.” Some of that glee might bleed through.
(I use this tactic whenever possible when there’s a sales scenario with information asymmetry and also dickishness. Game theory FTW.)
this is exactly what my Dad does, and that combined with his legit knowledge of cars gets him pretty good deals. When I eventually buy a car, I’m bringing him with me.
My thoughts on that Awl article:
“Other people having experiences incorrectly!” How dare they!
Yes, this makes sense. But my issue with the constant recording of whatever is more about how it distances the recorder from other people present — like being at dinner with someone who is constantly checking Facebook on their phone. It’s…rude. Have dinner with me, dammit! This is also the issue I have with Google glass. So…I dunno, get off my lawn? I don’t know if this is curmudgeonly, but if so it is the curmudgeonly hill I die on.
People can take all the photos they want, and see the world through their phone as they please. What pisses me off is ALL THE PHONES BLOCKING MY VIEW OF THE EVENT.
AND THE IPADS. STOP HOLDING YOUR IPAD OVER YOUR HEAD AT EVERY EVENT, I DON’T WANT TO SEE IT.
The main time I’ve been really annoyed at stepping around all the photo-takers was when I went to Dachau. Not only all the people getting their own picture taken in front of the gate, or the sleeping quarters, or whatever (which, uggggggh, stop it). But also there’s this: at what point in your life are you going to be sitting around and decide, “right this second, I want to look through my photo album from my visit to a concentration camp”?
I spent the whole hour long bus ride back to Krakow from Auschwitz thinking about the photo thing. Our (amazing) guide was like “please take as many pictures as you want, it is essential that this is remembered as a real place, not an abstraction” which makes sense. I do not get the people who wanted to be in the pictures, but it is conceivable that they are related to someone or knew someone who died there and they are ‘reclaiming’ it in their mind? Definitely saw a bit of terrible behavior by some other tourists while I was there. And I judged HARD.
I did not take any pictures at Auschwitz because of the reasons you mention and also because I’m not a very good photographer and many professional photographs exist of the camps. “Yes, let me reflect on human capacity for evil and the industrialization of death.” – a thing I rarely think.
Serious question, though: if there are enough people that their cellphones block your view, wouldn’t the sheer number of people in front of you also block your view even if they were all phoneless?
As a regular concert-goer who loves being on the floor, my answer to this is a resounding NO THEY DO NOT. I have a better view at a concert these days if I stand close to the mosh pit. Not even kidding.
Maybe the reason I’m not bothered by cellphones at concerts and other events is that I am pretty darn short, so I wouldn’t be seeing much either way.
I feel like, as in most things, it’s just a matter of some people being jerks and ruining it for the rest of us. I was at a live Welcome to Night Vale show last week and the audience was encouraged to take photos (without flash, of course). At least in my part of the theatre, people were pretty good about it and only took a few shots each, so my view was hindered only for maybe a minute or two in total.
I’m short too, which means that camera phones make it even harder for me to see than regular standing people.
It’s not a matter of “some people being jerks”. It’s just sad, annoying behavior. It’s like urinating in public. It is never good, but if it’s very rare it’s tolerable. Like how a small amount of arsenic can be ingested safely.
No. A person standing with their arms down blocks the view less than a person standing with their arms raised and a glowing rectangle at the end, because a person standing with their arms down is shorter than a person standing with their arms raised.
Which is taller, a person standing up or a person standing up and holding a big bright phone a foot over their heads?
It’s not about “other people having experiences incorrectly.”
It’s about trying to see a band on stage but your view is blocked by glowing rectangles.
It’s about trying to talk to your friends but mid-sentence they whip out a glowing rectangle.
It’s about trying to eat something but someone shoves a glowing rectangle between me and my own damn food to take pictures of it, interrupting my eating process.
It’s about trying to dance at a club, but the dance floor is clogged by zombies standing motionless, holding aloft their glowing rectangles, occasionally taking a photo of me (without my permission, of course).
It’s about holding the rest of the group up on the hike so you can take selfies.
It’s about having glowing plastic rectangles between yourself and the people you’re trying to spend with.
People who take lots of cell phone pictures at social events are funparasites. They don’t have fun. They document the fun. They interrupt the fun to take pictures. They tweet about the fun. They post pictures of the fun to get favorites and likes and whatnot, but they have no part in making the fun. They interrupt the fun to take pictures. But they never actually contribute to the fun. They don’t dance. They don’t play instruments. They don’t say or do anything funny or interesting. They barely move except to lift their glowing rectangles a lot. But they don’t generate fun. They take from the fun and don’t contribute to the fun.
The problem is that they interrupt your fun, not that they don’t have fun.
Yes. That is my point. They don’t have fun. They don’t contribute to the fun. They take fun and diminish the fun of others. They take something without creating or giving anything back and in fact make things worse for the people who are actually making the fun happen, the way a deer tick sucks blood from its host and gives it lyme disease. They are funparasites.
It is infuriating having someone take glowingrectanglepictures of you while you’re dancing (is this going to end up on the internet with some insulting caption), but then shake their heads sheepishly when you invite them to shake it on the floor.
It is infuriating to have trouble finding space to dance on the dance floor because someone is taking up space to get a blurry shot with the glowing rectangle.
It is saddening to hear that same person say of you, “why is she moving like that” while you sway rhythmically in time with the music.
It’s infuriating to try to slip to the front of a crowd to see the band, and you find the front is occupied by funparasites WITH THEIR BACKS TO THE STAGE because they’re snapping glowing rectangle pictures of each other and of the crowd.
I don’t really know how to respond to this level of rage for picture taking. I mean yes, I have definitely been annoyed by people who have gotten in my way while taking a picture, in the same way I get annoyed by people who stop walking at the top of escalators. And some of the actions you are describing are just rude, absolutely.
But honestly, taking pictures and being in pictures is pretty integral to my experience of fun in some circumstances. Like weddings: weddings go by so quickly and there is so much to do that it would all be a blur in my memory, but I absolutely love paging through the photos of a good wedding and seeing the good time we had. The first time I went horseback riding, my friends and I all died laughing taking pictures of each other on our horses, and I’m happy I have both the images and the memory of making the images. My SIL takes 9 million pictures of everyone who comes to visit my nephew, which can be irritating, but now I have all these adorable nephew pictures with me in them, and he will have all this evidence that his aunt played silly games with him as a baby. And I’m not going to lie, I even love the sweaty stupid pictures I’ve taken with friends on a dance floor. And some of the pictures I’ve taken of fireworks.
So I’m not exactly sure who are “they” who are leeching fun out of things in your life, but I’m pretty relieved that they are not sucking the fun out of mine!
Well said.
I am not talking about people who just take pictures. (Notice I referred to “people who take lots of pictures”, not “I hate everyone who has ever touched a camera”)
I am talking about people who take pictures non-stop and do nothing else. That is anti-social behavior—you take pleasure from a shared experience without contributing to it, and often interrupt others’ experiences to take pictures.
Demanding that someone else (a total stranger, usually) stop dancing so that you can take a picture with them is really selfish and rude. Shoving a lens at someone and demanding that they smile after they’ve said, “No, seriously, I don’t like being photographed” is obnoxious. Ignoring the people around you to stare at a screen is obnoxious. Blocking someone else’s view with your cell phone camera or iPad is obnoxious, like wearing a sombrero in the front row of a theater.
And, yes, I encounter this behavior a LOT, probably because I actually try to do something interesting at social events instead of waving my glowing rectangle around.
By the way, in terms of the book thing, I got The Hundred-Year House early via a Goodreads giveaway thingy, and so far I highly recommend it!
This Ask Metafilter question about buying a car might have some good ideas. In particular there is this concept (more or less mentioned above) about faxing (?? this was in 2006, I guess now it would be emailing) different dealerships with your exact specs and asking for a quote, and telling them you’re contacting lots of others. I have never had to buy a car thank god, but this seems like the route I might take. (Not having to talk to people ftw!)
We’re buying a washer and dryer this week, and it’s actually more daunting than buying a car because I have NO IDEA what to look for or where to go. It feels insanely grown-up, and I’m no good at that stuff.
Try looking in Consumer Reports. Your local library probably has it.
That’s what my mom suggested. Worth a look!
You can get a month subscription online too and look at all their charts and rankings without having to make sure no one else has checked out the issue on washers and dryers.
We did this not too long ago. It depends how much you care about appearances versus value. You can easily spend thousands on a space-age, front-loading, fashion-color set brand new. Or you can do like us and buy a reconditioned secondhand kenmore set that looks ugly but who cares because it is is a closet, not on display.
The folks have a CR subscription, and they sent us scans of all the recent W/D articles. What it boiled down to was that if you go with one of the big name brands, repairs will be easier and cheaper. Also, everyone I know who has a front-load has had leakage issues.
Ha, ours will be in an ill-lit cobwebby basement, so looks are not an issue.
We have an LG front-loading washer, which our landlords bought about 18 months ago. I’m pretty sure it was the cheapest one that fit the dimensions of our laundry closet, but it’s worked pretty well so far! It also sings a little song when a load finishes. I don’t think that is a Consumer Reports criterion, but it does measurably improve my attitude toward doing the laundry.
Oh man, my lovely generous parents bought us a new washer and dryer as a wedding gift (thanks mom and dad!) and one of the reasons, beyond the obvious, that is great is that i don’t have to pick it. My smart parents did that part!
a) Scratch and dent places are awesome
b) LG washers play a little tune instead of buzzing. I think it’s cheery, other people think I’m strange.
c) Your library might even have online access to Consumer Reports, which saves the whole trouble of actually leaving the house
Also, wait, are vasectomies covered under the ACA? We have shitty grandfathered-in union insurance because the husband is technically part-time at the post office so he’s on that sweeeeeet federal-employee gravy train. But he’s sworn to get snipped so I can get this effing IUD out and stop last-scene-in-Carrie-ing one day a month, and if it’s free we should probably shop around.
(Can you even get a marketplace plan if your employer offers insurance? Clueless.)
I’m pretty sure you can; the requirement is that you have insurance, but you can always uncouple yourself from your employer’s.
Heh heh Harding’s sex letters heh heh
All I can think about re: that notable book list is how annoying it will be to search for 300,000,000 in our database. Curse you Blake Butler!!!
Roundup unrelated hypothetical question that might be related to something I read here yesterday. So if Beelzebub owns a tabloid full of demonic garbage, but I have a blog and see something in the garbage that I can mine for humorous purposes and in so doing use some of that material on my blog, what is the benefit to the Beelzebub Inquirer? Or put another way, what is the protest value of *not* linking to or using it? Is it simply that it’s seen as an endorsement of said garbage, or does it contribute to its “numbers” somehow? In re: the piece I may be referring to, as you can’t unring a bell, neither can you unlaugh your ass off. I stand by my ass, as it has been laughed off and is now next to me on the floor.
In like a theoretical sense? I don’t know probably no harm.
In practice though: it keeps the Daily Mail normalized as a part of polite society if we keep sharing it and on the internet there isn’t even a short step from ‘oh look at this train wreck’ to going and looking for trainwrecks which give the Mail more traffic and more perceived legitimacy.
And also while this doesn’t really apply to the Toast which has never really claimed that be a safe space: if a place you like keeps sharing stuff from some source that is actively hostile to you, how long would it remain a place you like?
Thank you, this helps! Until I saw the source link, I thought the Daily Mail was the English way of saying postal service (as in, it’s a steady job delivering the daily mail, but maybe you want to be a paperback writer). Does this mean the Isle of Wight is a real thing, too? Vowing to vote with my clicks and leave no hanging chads.
I think in theory having links to their site from other sites improves their search rankings, so that people are more likely to get the Beelzebub Inquirer’s articles than some other, less demonic news source. Also, having people click through from non-demonic sites leads them to having more viewers, which lets them sell advertising, which lets them make money and continue being demonic.
Thank you, I appreciate this. I certainly understood the root of people’s objections, but not where they were growing or how to eradicate them without (Link?) Roundup. The internet is more like a net than I’d like to believe, full of struggling dolphins and confused writers who miss the simplicity of print media.
All of these Warren G. Harding letters are making me snicker like a 12 year old boy in health class, but especially this bit:
“Wouldn’t you like to get sopping wet out on Superior — not the lake — for the joy of fevered fondling and melting kisses?”
(I love the “not the lake” interjection — juuust in case the innuendo wasn’t clear enough already)
I am really sad that this play is now over and I can’t go to it again and again.
My dad is a big enjoyer of buying and selling vehicles. When I need a car, he goes and buys one for me. Once, he bought me a Ford Ranger for the summer and then, at the end of the summer, sold it for $1000 more than he paid. If you want, he would probably buy a car for you! But you would have to go to Pa. to pick it up.
I am late to this, but I want to say that I bought (well, my parents and I) my first car-used, fwiw- from Carmax and had a very good experience there. It was low-pressure, very businesslike, and I didn’t feel like I was being pandered to. My parents actually bought the car for me as a graduation gift, because I’m a lucky motherfucker (and because getting me a car ensured I would get a job and thus out of their house much more quickly). But the salesman spoke to me specifically, didn’t bring my parents into the conversation unless I did, and didn’t second-guess any of my decisions. And I didn’t get any dumb follow-up letters or pressure to buy an extended warranty, as opposed to when I bought my second (used) car from a dealership. Carmax- A+, would shop there again.
Poor Brazil! Poor poor Brazil!
The spouse has his head in his hands because Brazil beat Chile, and in order to preserve the honor of Chile, Brazil had to win. Now it has not, and Chile is shamed by proxy.
this is exactly what my Dad does, and that combined with his legit knowledge of cars gets him pretty good deals. When I eventually buy a car, I'm bringing him with me.
In like a theoretical sense? I don't know probably no harm.
In practice though: it keeps the Daily Mail normalized as a part of polite society if we keep sharing it and on the internet there isn't even a short step from 'oh look at this train wreck' to going and looking for trainwrecks which give the Mail more traffic and more perceived legitimacy.
And also while this doesn't really apply to the Toast which has never really claimed that be a safe space: if a place you like keeps sharing stuff from some source that is actively hostile to you, how long would it remain a place you like?
Thank you, this helps! Until I saw the source link, I thought the Daily Mail was the English way of saying postal service (as in, it's a steady job delivering the daily mail, but maybe you want to be a paperback writer). Does this mean the Isle of Wight is a real thing, too? Vowing to vote with my clicks and leave no hanging chads.
Thank you, I appreciate this. I certainly understood the root of people's objections, but not where they were growing or how to eradicate them without (Link?) Roundup. The internet is more like a net than I'd like to believe, full of struggling dolphins and confused writers who miss the simplicity of print media.