RIP Nadine Gordimer. Here’s an interview she did with the Paris Review in 1979-1980:
INTERVIEWER
What did you do after that year at university? Did you begin any political activity?
GORDIMER
No, you see I was writing then—a lot. I was concentrating tremendously on writing. I wasn’t really interested in politics. My approach to living as a white supremacist, perforce, among blacks, was, I see now, the humanist approach, the individualistic approach. I felt that all I needed, in my own behavior, was to ignore and defy the color bar. In other words, my own attitude toward blacks seemed to be sufficient action. I didn’t see that it was pretty meaningless until much later.
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HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, PONYBOY. The worst possible thing that someone could possibly ever do is RUN WITH THE BULLS, then GET GORED, then try to blame SOMEBODY ELSE because a host of variables could result in you being KILLED POINTLESSLY:
“It was the worst possible thing that someone could possibly ever do. You know, to push someone in the Run who is… to push somebody into a bull is just insane. It’s ridiculous.”
Oh, God, like…no, you should not push someone when you are all running with the bulls, but, here’s the thing, I do not think that you are making great, conscious decisions when you are being chased by bulls? Like, I am sure I would shove a sweet old lady towards a bull in that eventuality in order to live another day, which is why I have chosen not to run with the bulls in Pamplona. Oh, hahahahaha, jk, WOMEN BASICALLY NEVER DO SOMETHING THIS STUPID. Look at this graph I saw in Men’s Health (sometimes I read Men’s Health okay) about who dies from drowning and tell me who is better equipped to hold public office?
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My dad’s life in the wake of WINNING [not personally] the World Cup is like when people take MDMA on Saturday and then have to go to work on Monday, but he has soothed himself by finishing Top of the Lake.
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Oh, look, epic fail in school administration and student safety!
But BuzzFeed’s investigation found that both schools had been aware that Koetters sent numerous inappropriate emails in 2011 to Mikaela Gilbert-Lurie, then a 16-year-old junior at Marlborough, who told administrators that although their relationship was never sexual, Koetters told her he couldn’t control himself around her.
When Mikaela and her family reported Koetters to the school in 2012, Marlborough responded by stripping Koetters of his English department chairmanship and forbidding him from contacting Mikaela, among other disciplinary actions. But the school did not fire him and Koetters remained at Marlborough alongside Mikaela for a full year.
Koetters did not respond to BuzzFeed’s repeated requests for comment.
Polytechnic knew about Mikaela’s allegations before hiring Koetters, thanks to calls from both Marlborough and Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, Mikaela’s mother. But Koetters did not leave Polytechnic until BuzzFeed contacted the school for comment. In a July 10 statement, Polytechnic confirmed that Koetters no longer worked at the school and that it “considered a range of information and perspectives” before hiring Koetters.
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How Jessi of The Babysitters Club does money OH WOW BILLFOLD:
Then there are the theater kids, the ones who assume they’ll be famous someday and that Jessi is here, teaching theater movement at this state school, because she failed. Jessi didn’t fail. Her credits are there on her office wall for anyone to see. She was one of only three African-American dancers in the Brailsford Company. She danced Odette/Odile, Coppélia, and was the Arabian dancer in The Nutcracker more times than she cares to count. (A brown-skinned ballerina always gets the Arabian role, never the Sugar Plum Fairy.)
Jessi didn’t fail; she simply got older. Now she’s an assistant professor teaching a 5/5 course load at a state school and making less than she did as a ballet dancer, but she’s in the rural Midwest so she has a home — an actual house with a yard — for herself and her daughter, which was more than she ever had in New York.
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Organizing things is a skill. Oh, God, I feel terrible but I just want to read more stories about DashCon all dayyyyyy what a MESS:
“Featured artist Noelle Stevenson (a.k.a. gingerhaze, an extremely popular Tumblr artist and author) also found out that her hotel room had not been paid for, at which point she left the convention to sleep on a sofa bed constructed by one of the Night Vale writers.”
Oh, look, a HEAVILY REDACTED LETTER that is meant to prove something.
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Are you watching “American Ninja Warrior” because HOLY SHIT:
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Oh, man, what a great day, really:
I, for one, am prepared to take this account as the gospel truth. A couple issues nonetheless leap to mind. One: what kind of “friend” is this? Žižek’s got an underminer on his hands. “Oh, here, totally, you can use this stuff I just cut and pasted from a random webpage that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an active hate group! No prob at all, happy to help, let’s get drinks soon.”
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Let’s make it perfect, here’s “Undermine” from Nashville, goin’ out to Slavoj Žižek:
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
will I read about fandom drama and failed cons all day? Yes I will.
YES. I WILL.
Ah, fandom drama and a cat snoring beside me. Today is good.
AND FANDOM WANK RETURNS to do a write up
My day is golden, I have never been happier
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1…
I have work to do but uuuuuurrrrggggghhhh fandom shiiiiitttt….. It’s callling me…..
Give in. You know it’s going to happen.
This post from Mark Oshiro about the con is really interesting, http://markdoesstuff.tumblr.com/post/91769561890/… .
Basically for him, it was a relatively normal con for most of it.
It seems like the people worse-affected were the people who were supposed to be paid, or whose rooms were supposed to be paid for. They ended up stranded and out of pocket.
You deserve an extra hour in the ball pit!
Oh man the best part: http://slodwick.tumblr.com/post/91605400607/no-pi…
There’s video of it too and the second hand embarrassment is almost unbearable.
I never want to stop reading about fandom drama of fandoms I’m not in
I don’t particularly love this video, but I do adore Jenny Lewis, Kristen Stewart in drag, and speculating what they all chatted about in between takes: http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2014/07/kristen-…
KRISTEN STEWART IN DRAG THIS IS NOT A DRILL
whew, had a minor freakout there. thanks for sharing, but I’m going to need a moment.
Yeah, it really works for her. It’s also working for me.
oh man I really liked the video! (and I’m a moron who didn’t see it up here yet!) I’m so glad Jenny Lewis is back in the saddle because even though Under the Blacklight was…. okay, I like when she gets going. So very excited for this album.
Also never have I felt the urge to grow my hair a little out until I saw Hathaway. Conundrum.
I know there are Strong Feelings About Hathaway on the internet, but I want her whole head look so, so much. The hair! The brows! The liner!
THAT DASHCON MESS. I had no idea until I read the article yesterday and wowwwwww. Ball pit. BALL PIT.
Seriously, how could NO-ONE predict this would be a disaster
I feel like the people organizing it had too little experience to see the fiasco coming? Maybe? Anybody who’d done anything like this before would’ve pulled the plug, but then again anyone with experience probably wouldn’t have had these issues. Round and around we go…
Yeah, I think it was mainly a lot of well-meaning but inexperienced people — as far as I can tell, there were a ZILLION people involved in organizing this clusterfuck, because each fandom had its own little “committee” and then they were ruled over by some kind of panel of “admins,” possibly with another layer of committees in the middle, who knows — plus a small number of people with actual bad intent, who saw a large mass of naive teenagers and thought, “Wow, jackpot.” (Have you read the post by someone who was on a committee? Where some guy, like, claimed he was going to make a TV show about Dashcon, and it would be a great opportunity to promote the con, and he could fund it on his own but if the organizers donated extra money he’d be able to make it better quality?)
I know some of the main organizers have already made posts about DASHCON 2K15 — IT’LL BE AWESOME. It’ll be interesting to see how that shakes out. I suspect they will have a harder time getting people to sign up to plan the thing.
I feel like this is what happens when a bunch of eight-year-olds just get taller and get a bigger allowance year after year after year.
It is not even a ball pit. It is a ball raft.
That fucking private school teacher. Jesus Christ. I’ve had innocuous crushes on teachers before and I know exactly how great it feels when the person you admire tells you how brilliant and mature you are. It is so, so easy to see how quickly those students’ situations escalated and it must have been terrifying and crushingly disappointing for them to realize what this guy truly was. Shame on him and shame on those schools for ignoring the problem and leaving those students open to such danger.
I tell you what, that guy will be among the first to go when the #Misandrist Revolution comes.
When Mikaela and her family reported Koetters to the school in 2012, Marlborough responded by stripping Koetters of his English department chairmanship and forbidding him from contacting Mikaela, among other disciplinary actions. But the school did not fire him and Koetters remained at Marlborough alongside Mikaela for a full year.
…
But Marlborough didn’t fire Koetters, since, administrators told Mikaela’s family, this was a first-time offense.
EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THIS DECISION, UP AGAINST THE WALL.
Seriously, the entire time I was reading this, all I could think was how much this teacher’s behaviour reminded me of my own experiences with Hugo Schwyzer as my youth group leader in high school. SO SIMILAR (ETA: he never came on to me, just my friend). There is such a clear pattern for this kind of predator but they’re ignored, repeatedly, by supervising adults.
How many times does this sort of thing have to escalate to this level (or worse!) before schools/authorities/people in charge stop allowing the low-level behaviors to continue? Like you said, it’s SUCH a clear pattern, and not only in hindsight.
Honestly, I think it comes down to bullshitty embarrassment-and-trouble-potential-avoidance. If someone blows the whistle, people in the community issue a collective groan over the clean-up job for the org and the work it represents for them. In our church’s case, I think people suspected, but no one actually did anything until a parishioner raised the issue via gossip and it became too big to ignore.
Of course, the victims and targets be damned. Their welfare is just too much trouble for the bad press.
Also, HIS EMAILS. WHAT THE FUCK.
I got to the word “tantalizing” and threw up in my mouth a little bit.
I read them and I was filled with murderous rage, which is very bad for digestion.
His emails are GROSS and also they read as really, really immature, like he’s talking down to her to try to trick her (which, like, to current me? duh, but teen-me would have fallen for that hook-line-sinker. So, yanno, thank goodness the one 30ish teacher I had a crush on in junior year was nothing but the utmost professional.)
But GOOD ON HER. Girlfriend saw through that in a heartbeat:
“Within days, Mikaela decided she couldn’t handle the situation. “Maybe we can be friends, later,” she wrote. “But right now I think I need to stop, and focus on anything else. Not poetry, not you. Just being 16. Studying for finals. I’m sorry. I wish I had a better solution. I don’t.””
I read that and I just felt OVERWHELMINGLY proud of this girl. And then: “Panicked, she told her family. “My biggest fear was that people were going to judge me and say it was my fault,” she said. “It didn’t occur to me until later that he was the adult and it was his responsibility to keep things appropriate.” 🙁 🙁
I think there was a teacher fired for inappropriate conduct with a student for every single year that I was in school at my high school (and once, I think it was two teachers in a year.) One of my English teachers was a little too friendly with me and my friend — he gave us the heebie jeebies, but it never progressed much further than that, thankfully. I just…rage. Incandescent rage.
So the ineptitude of the DashCon organizers is obviously hilarious, but can we also talk about the part that is actually straight-up horrifying? By which I mean the part where (from what I can tell) they rounded all the congoers up, put them in a ballroom, gave them the impression that they were stuck there until they handed over their money and/or that they would be directly responsible for ruining everybody’s weekend if they didn’t, collected money in a very public way that allowed everyone to see who was contributing, and suggested that the money was a loan and not a gift but didn’t give receipts. And the people being coerced into giving up their money were mostly teenagers without their parents.
Anyway. I am going to the Welcome to Night Vale show in Minneapolis tonight (yayyyyyy) and I wonder if people will be talking about it there.
In other news, that drowning graph is UNREAL. How is it possible that the gap can appear so early? I suppose you could argue that parents are more protective of their daughters, but even their toddlers? To that extent?
That is a damn good question re: drowning graph. WATCH YOUR SONS AROUND WATER, FRIENDS.
NEVER TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THEM. I recently went swimming with my boyfriend’s nephew (just turned four) and niece (almost two) and spent the whole time terrified that one of them would somehow go off on their own and drown (there were six adults in the water with them, but it was really loud and crowded and toddlers are easy to lose track of). I’m pretty sure I was just as paranoid regarding the nephew’s safety as the niece, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a tendency to be more relaxed with boys.
I wonder if the root of it is that people expect their sons–even (or perhaps especially) young toddlers–to be more rambunctious and more active and more energetic around the water, so that consciously or unconsciously they worry more about their daughters becoming rowdy in the water. In the sense that they wouldn’t think twice of 3-year-old boys hurling water balloons and splashing and getting rowdy in the lake, but 3-year-old girls they’d keep a closer eye on–even subconsciously. (This is all totally speculation, by the way.) Additionally, expecting or treating young boys as more adventurous, more excitable, more likely to, I don’t know, swing off a tree limb into a pond of unknown depth, you know?
I think this is it, exactly. “Look at Blake playing with that python. Oh, boys will be boys! I just… Madison! MADISON! How many times do I have to tell you not to stand so close to that water fountain! IT HAS GERMS.”
I think it’s also that male teenage dirtbags are more likely that female teenage dirtbags to channel their misguided beliefs in their own immortality into death-defying feats of jumping from rope swings and doing keg stands on motorboats and failing to wear life jackets, etc. etc.
Oh, yeah, the teenage gender gap surprises me not for even a fraction of a second. The fact that there is one, anyway; the size of it, on the other hand, is pretty astounding.
Aaah, I misread your comment. I didn’t even notice how large the gap between boy toddlers and girl toddlers was–frightening!
Nevertheless, that graph does indicate that, as women, we are right to take to the sea because clearly it’s on our side.
I enjoy and support your conclusion.
You there, mother of dragons toddlers! Do you feel like your boychild is more dangerous around/attracted to water?
The sea is named La Mer for a reason
Statistics are so weird that way. I’m sure I have retained residual cultural gender bias despite my best attempts not to, and out of the four children, it is actually my youngest (boy) who might be at the most risk. Perhaps that’s because he’s the youngest, and I’m more relaxed about letting them explore than I was with my oldest (boy), or perhaps it’s because his personality is very much the ‘explore/destroy/climb on all the things’ but water. omg, water. I am so obsessed with them around water. All of them. One of them did fall into a pool once and I was right there, and pulled her out, but I am just so terrified at how quickly it happens.
I’m sure people do tend to let their boys ‘run wild’ a bit more than their girls, on average.
Yeah, I’m glad some of the panelists and attendees were able to salvage a good time, but $17,000 is a LOT of money and the explanation the concom posted makes no sense at all. And I would never for a SECOND let these incompetents run another convention.
Someone described the atmosphere in that room as a “tent revival” which a. matches up to the other descriptions I’ve heard and b. HORRIFIES ME.
I recently read about an interesting generalization of the drowning graph, which is that women outlive men in every age cohort in general:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/06/17/1926…. Apparently the death differential goes all the way from fetuses and babies to the elderly.
I have been a lifeguard for 8 years (and am working as one now) and the only time I have seen a person with no swimming ability start with jumping into the (very very) deep end, it was a 20-something male. I mean, in general, these are the people I have to police the most in terms of rules and unsafe behaviour. So this stat is unsurprising to me (it is also unsurprising because in lifeguard training courses I was told this multiple times, but still, my personal experience corroborates it).
YIkes, you guys, apparently 80 000 homes in Detroit have had their water supplies cut off. Because, you know, if you can’t afford to pay your water bill, then not having water makes life OH SO MUCH EASIER OMG.
Here it is in New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25893-detro…
I recently went home to visit my parents and my dad and I watched American Ninja Warrior together and it was perfect. Clearly there needs to be a feature in Dad Magazine.
American Ninja Warrior! Did you see that family who built like a 14,000 sq foot gym on their housing complex, and all train together? WHO DOES THAT?
I guess people who have housing complexes? That’s the dream.
I want to try to figure out how to embed this but I don’t think I can and frankly time is of the essence and you should all check it out: girl dreamboat JENNY LEWIS + KRISTEN STEWART in DRAG and also BRIE LARSON and ANNE HATHAWAY WITH A RATTAIL:
http://youtu.be/Irvcf6dCk-k
This is the cutest damn thing.
I love this song and I love Jenny Lewis. And Anne Hathaway not only has a rattail, she is “breakdancing” which is priceless.
I don’t believe anyone who writes: “the hotel it’s self was great”
Also the hotel money issue: the hotel sends a contract when you book. There are no surprises.
I always confuse Karl Ove and Žižek because they are both white men who are “serious” so I don’t care. When I read that one was supposedly a white supremacist the other day, in my mind I assumed that both were. Perhaps they are sorta different after all?
I keep thinking that Karl Ove is just a typo for Karl Rove and I’m fine continuing to think that.
It is his new vessel being prepared as the previous shell begins to show clear signs of rot
The Vessels Yet To Come (Karl Ve and its final form, Karl E) are still being grown. When Karl E emerges, we shall know that the final boss battle has come upon us.
Yep. I don’t know who these men are, and I don’t care to find out.
Quote: “men’s opinions literally don’t matter”.
They all look the same to me. You know, white men.
After reading that Bill Hillmann article, I am pretty sure that Bill Hillmann is a giant turd masquerading as a human man.
On the subject of Pamplona, I saw this in the news recently and it infuriated me. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamsh…
In response, he said: “I swear I didn’t even know they killed the bulls afterwards.
“I am totally against bull fighting and any sort of cruelty to animals. I’m just an adrenaline junkie.”
Yeah, the bulls just love the whole thing.
“Mr Hadfield took part last year but told the Nottingham Post he probably would not be doing it again.”
PROBABLY.
How can he be against bullfighting but for the Running of the Bulls? They are literally running the bulls to the stadium where they will be USED IN BULLFIGHTING. And then killed. Good lord.
It’s a stupid fu**ing bloodsport that fills me with rage and honestly, I just love it when an ignorant someone gets gored because yay, bull, glad you got at least one macho-ass loser.
“Huh. These animals are angry, aggressive, and trying to hurt me. They must be having a grand ol’ time!”
ONLY FUCKING MORONS RUN WITH BULLS UGHHHHHHH Like here’s a great idea, let’s all get wasted on sangria, stay up all night, and then spend our morning GETTING CHASED BY A NUMBER OF GIANT BULLS WHO WILL GORE YOU IF YOU GET IN THEIR WAY WHICH IS BASICALLY EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE DOING BY RUNNING IN FRONT OF THEM WITH BARRIERS ON EITHER SIDE.
sorry. my ex ran in pamplona once and i had a nightmare about him last night so rather wishing he’d been on the receiving end of that hearty push.
That Buzzfeed one makes me rage-blind.
After reading that Bill Hillmann article, I really think that Bill Hillmann might be a giant turd masquerading as a human man.
Edited because I accidentally said Bill Pullman rather than Hillmann. Bill Pullman seems to be a decent human being and not a turd as previously stated. He fights tornadoes and is cool with his daughter being all into Casper the Friendly Ghost.
I mean, his novel is described as a “gritty, urban, coming-of-age” tale, so…..
That is the exact point in that article where my eyes just glazed over.
Fully approve of his plans to go back next year for another try, though, a bit slower and limpier this time.
Is it wrong of me to hope for the descendant of the bull that gored him to finish him off, or at least make it impossible to ever run again?
Yeah, pretty sure that’s wrong, but f*** this guy and his ilk.
Hey just want to tell everybody that Noelle Stevenson (mentioned in the Dashcon story) is awesome and her comic Nimona is about a shape-shifting girl who pals around with a lawful-evil bad guy and as it goes on there’s pretty surprising emotional depth and you should read it, starting here, maybe with a box of tissues handy:
http://gingerhaze.com/nimona/comic/page-1
Also she is one of the writers on the awesome all-ages comic book LUMBERJANES!! Which is the only comic book I can think of with an all-female lead cast and an all-female creative team – seriously, that one book has more women working on it than Marvel Comics has in ALL ITS BOOKS COMING OUT IN SEPTEMBER.
That was a lot of capital letters, but Lumberjanes is wonderful and everyone should read it and give it to their children.
Oh, that’s beautiful! Love it!
Whenever there are too many feelings in the main storyline she posts AU comics on her tumblr; lawful evil bad guy and hero are happily married in our universe, Nimona is their adopted daughter.
Also we have a clever commenter here named Nimona, and I have to resist responding to every single one of her comments with “You’re a shark!” or “NIMONA”.
Why has no one mentioned the BSC link yet? Fine I will. It’s amazing!
SO SAD
SO. SAD.
I thought that Billfold piece was in yesterday’s link round-up and I commented there about it, but I think I just saw Nicole’s tweet about it and got confused. Anyway, my response is that I was simultaneously annoyed that the piece didn’t conform to this headcanon and disappointed there isn’t an article for Dawn.
There should be one for Dawn coming up, I think she’s said she’s doing all of them, they’re just coming out one by one.
That headcannon is incredible and kind of the reason I started reading The Hairpin – however I get pretty excited about hearing more more more! I want alternate lives for all of them! Though with some of them as they are set 10 years later could still work. I can believe Dr Johannsen having a third affair …
The one for Dawn should be live in an hour or so! If you follow the tags they’re all there, except for Abby and Karen who will go up later this week. (Yes, I wanted to do a write-up for Karen even though she isn’t a “real” member of the BSC.)
I thought long and hard about building the series off the Hairpin headcanon, because I really like it too. But that seemed kinda weird — like, it’s one thing to write fanfic about Ann M. Martin, but another thing to write fanfic that builds off of someone else’s fanfic, especially such a well-known piece of fanfic, and then publish it.
And then I realized that the Hairpin piece is three years old now and was all TIME WHERE DOES IT GO.
That’s totally fair and reasonable! These were just as delightful to read as the 2011 piece (2011, what?!). I am glad that Kristy’s sexuality remains…not necessarily straight.
Nor are Mallory’s, Claudia’s, or Karen’s sexualities, in this fic. 🙂
I’ve been meaning to add The Billfold to my feed reader for awhile because I love everything that’s reposted at The Hairpin, but the Jessi piece is what spurred me to action. I can’t afford to miss any more BSC financial fic even though it would be hard to top the realness of that one.
After I read the Jessi one, I went through and read all the others and came to the horrifying realization that I will be Claudia Kishi in a few years.
(This is not a jab at Claudia! I love Claudia! But I also love financial stability.)
I love Claudia too but theres something a bit too real about reaching age X (ie been an adult for a while) and suddenly appreciating your own financial instability. Gulp.
Basically I think Im a Claudia too.
I’m not even reaching age X yet (I’m twenty-two and about to graduate university) but staring down the barrel of adulthood without career prospects (woo Liberal Arts degree!) is . . . yeah. Gulp.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/28308329 I just read this and found it incredibly creepy and appropriative and weird. Anyone else?
awful on so many levels and indicative of everything that’s wrong with the straight white male mindset.
OH yes. I kept going back and forth between “oh, no, colonialism, ‘Africa’ as single unit, white man terribleness” and “oh god, he’s telling his six-year-old this ego project is all about her, that poor girl is going to need so much therapy”. And of course “good luck getting those meetings with the governments of Egypt and Sudan about recognizing your bullshit”.
He’s a clever douchebag as far as that goes. An old border-mapping dispute means that if Egypt or Sudan were to exert sovereignty over the Bir Tawil, they’d waive their claims to a much richer parcel of land on the Red Sea coast.
I imagine both governments will be happy to enable his fantasy as long as the occasional diplomatic gift rolls in and the Princess Regnant remains in Virginia. But if House Heaton actually tries to settle people in “North Sudan,” or if minerals are discovered there…
I feel sorry for that kid. I do. The guy sounds like a total nut (“I will do ANYTHING for my daughter, including create a stupid publicity stunt that will haunt the Internet forever!”), but I feel bad for her, because she is going to have this to look back on all her life. And instead of something sweet–“I wanted to be a princess when I was five, so my dad staked off part of our backyard and declared it the Royal Kingdom of Yardonia and declared me the princess and I got to spend all day wearing a tiara and a sparkly dress and it was the best day ever!” it’s going to be “I wanted to be a princess when I was five, and my dad took me way too seriously and went to Africa and staked a land claim and narrowly avoided sparking an international incident and said it was OK because that’s how America was founded, by taking away land randomly from other people, and now I feel really weird and guilty about it.”
I don’t think this is actually any closer to sparking an international incident than declaring yourself emperor of the Moon.
Please excuse my exaggerated embellishment for the purposes of humour.
See my comment below re: moon conquerage.
The moon is frankly a more desirable piece of real estate. It’s like the moon, without the view.
It reminds me of those men who attend ‘purity balls’ with their daughters. He’s saying that he’d go to ‘the ends of the earth’ and do anything for his daughter, but really he’s trying to create this huge debt to him that he can cash in when she’s older – ‘how dare you not marry the man i want you to marry/not do the job i want you to do/ not put up with my bullshit, I founded a KINGDOM for you’.
Nobody respects the dad who tries to ‘cash in’ leaving some trash in a wasteland
YUP.
Weird and harkening back to European colonization of Africa in a bad way, absolutely. Appropriative, not really, since he claimed a dead patch of earth with no population and no current territorial claims. (I think of appropriation as when you take something that rightfully belongs to someone else.)
“He argues that over the years many countries, including the United States, were claimed by the simple act of planting a flag.”
Yep, that’s really something to emulate.
And that’s how America conquered the moon.
Clearly he thinks this is a good idea because colonialism has worked out so well… for white men.
SO CREEPY.
Oh god — that family is local to me, so I heard about the whole thing from several sources yesterday. It is creepy and just awful on so many levels. Every time I clicked on a link to the story on Facebook, I kept getting a suggestion to watch Eddie Izzard’s bit on flags, and that’s about the best response I can think of. You can’t just go around and stick flags in places and expect that to work! Tell your 7 year old they can be princess of the backyard and call it a day, honestly.
One of the creepiest things – and they are so many, the creepy things! So hard to rank them! – is that this is of a piece with a resurgent fetish for actual monarchy, for arbitrary individuals exercising total rule over lands and populations. Combine that trend with the galloping levels of economic inequality and now I’m too depressed to finish this senten
But if the movement is diffuse and barely organized, its members are smart and riled up.
I have a pretty open definition of “smart” but these guys … nope. To be smart you have to do the damn research before you open your mouth. These are ideologues talking like ideologues to other people who want to believe.
(I don’t know if the “blank state” thing is their malapropism or the author’s, but hello telling.)
Really the outrageous thing here is that he blew probably several thousand bucks on taking a vacation to a place even Sudan thinks is a shithole when he coulda just bought his daughter the dollar-store tiara.
This girl is going to grow up with so many issues oh my god.
In sports news the Cleveland Browns have a new mascot:
http://www.newsnet5.com/sports/browns/live-dawg-m…
I can only assume that they will soon be changing the name to the Cleveland Land Manatees.
That day cannot come soon enough. NOT SOON ENOUGH, I SAY.
i have no idea how this has not made it here yet but Jenny Lewis, I regret none of my twelve years of loving you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irvcf6dCk-k
This can’t possibly wait until the open thread (especially as I’m out all day), you all need to watch Jerry the goat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q5eb-iSmJg
HE’S SO BOUNCY.
HI YES I LIKE GOATS
That’s Buttermilk! I love her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuRzJRrRpQ
i’m assuming we have all seen “pipsqueak” with her puppies? Including one named Buttermilk? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSQsphnbUEw
I appreciate that three individual people have posted about the new Jenny Lewis video. This is why I read The Toast: PRIORITIES.
haha as soon as I saw the video, a lightning bolt struck, my world spun, and I loudly announced “TO THE-TOAST.NET!”.
In other words, it’s right up our alley.
I live near the mountains and there are constantly stories about men dying or having to be rescued from mountains. It its literally always men from the ages of 18-24. Never women. How am I supposed to respect these people, as a gender? Is it really that hard not to fling yourself off a mountain?
Is it really that hard not to fling yourself off a mountain?
Some days it’s harder than others. For me, today is one of those days.
I know that feeling. Please restrain yourself. Am sending good thoughts your way.
SOMETIMES.
I’m so happy about DashCon! It’s like being back on LiveJournal during the Swirling Vortex Of Harry Potter Fandom Wank years.
(I am kind of a jerk)
I think the worst thing I heard about Dashcon is that people were getting a RASH from the chairs in the BDSM panel.
How do men even have time to run things when they are constantly DROWNING and getting GORED BY ANIMALS and other stupid things women would never do.
finishing top of the lake is indeed soothing. and vindicating. but also heartbreaking. it’s a lot of things, including, “i want to watch this again, once i catch my breath.”
All of this! I have half of a “Things I Love About” post sitting in my blog draftbox because I wrote it in a flurry after watching it, but can’t bring myself to re-watch and iron out my praises. There are so many amazing things about that mini-series but it’s kind of hard to process the love and effusive admiration (of the filming, performances, screenplay, etc.) separately from the horror.
yep yep yep. it took me about half a year before i got around to watching it again, and only then could i really draw anything about it (here, if that’s not weird to link to) and even then i couldn’t really formulate as well as i would have liked. i want to champion it as an example of what i would like more shows and movies to be, but there are so many things that are perfect about it, i feel like i’d have to separate it into sections: the way this show handles bodies. the way this show handles the shadow of menace in all the interactions between men and women. the way this show handles even it’s monstrous character with respect, giving them vulnerabilities and depth. the way this show gives children autonomy and agency even in the worst situations. ahhhhh
it’s just so good. i still think about it all the damn time even a full year after i saw it for the first time.
I really liked seeing your drawing!
One of the Things I Love on my list is “depicts rape culture.” Then I keep looking at that thing I just typed and shaking my head. I like the way you put it better–the shadow of menace in all the interactions. How there’s such a range, from the real crazy violence Robin is investigating to the needling microaggressions at her job, and you can see how just every big to small instance of it is meant to be an attack and is felt like such. I feel like the show should be required viewing for people who are like “there’s no such thing as rape culture.”
I finished it months ago and still sometimes catch myself going through the whole thing in my mind. That last episode…holy eff.
My friends and I all watched American Ninja Warrior last night and when Kacey finished the course (5 foot tall, 100 pound Kacey finished the course that legions of fancily muscled men failed at) we let out a loud scream in sync that terrified the cats. I love that show.
Oh it was in Schaumburg? Haha!
“We suspect it’s due to the fact that upper management doesn’t like the people at the con.” Suspicion-based fundraising is truly the best.
The professor who groped me/ several other women and got no consequences (academia! academia!) had his laptop stolen at a coffee shop. IT HAD ALL HIS DATA AND HE DIDN’T BACK IT UP AND ALSO HE PULLED HIS HAMSTRING TRYING TO GET IT BACK.
My most brilliant friend said:
You should have asked if he was sure it was his laptop
I mean, there are a lot of laptops
he was almost asking for it, having a laptop in Berkeley.
it’s just out on the table – maybe the guy assumed it was his?
Maybe the guy thought he was lending the laptop to him
And then got startled by the shouting.
Wouldn’t have gotten hurt if he hadn’t chased him.
How he manages his time is important. If he can’t keep everything he values locked away from society, he has no business being out and about and jobbing.
Well, if he hadn’t been flaunting all that data he wouldn’t have had this problem.
The glee! The glee in the suffering of others!
#MIGHTYKACY That was amazing. Next time some jerk says something about how women aren’t as athletic as men I’m going to point out how she beat that thing while also being shorter than everybody else.
And then there is this post that goes into more detail about Dashcon from the viewpoint of one of the other panelists. It wasn’t that bad but it wasn’t that great either? And it seems a lot of it was tumblr being tumblr. http://markdoesstuff.tumblr.com/post/91769561890/…
When I told the spouse that I wanted to go to a bar near his work for “A Toast thing”, he assumed that I was interested in the artisanal toast movement; like that place in the Sunset with coconuts and cinnamon toast, not the website that I talk about ALL THE TIME.
I could have been clearer in my word usage there.
Nor are Mallory's, Claudia's, or Karen's sexualities, in this fic. 🙂
Did anyone see that BBC list about the ‘most influential acts in British black and urban music’ and three of the top 4 were white and Ed Sheeran was number 1 and he tweeted after to ‘listen with your ears not with your eyes’ and ughhhhhhh
I was mostly weirded out that Nolan, of all people, would idealistically assume the money from art sales would actually go toward helping people rather than, say, more effin' creditors who want to hack at the city's corpse. Way off?
I don't know anything, frankly. You have a lot of thoughts, I have a lot of wanting to read them. No pressure!
But if the movement is diffuse and barely organized, its members are smart and riled up.
I have a pretty open definition of "smart" but these guys … nope. To be smart you have to do the damn research before you open your mouth. These are ideologues talking like ideologues to other people who want to believe.
(I don't know if the "blank state" thing is their malapropism or the author's, but hello telling.)
I recently read about an interesting generalization of the drowning graph, which is that women outlive men in every age cohort in general:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/06/17/1926…. Apparently the death differential goes all the way from fetuses and babies to the elderly.
Waitwaitwaitwait! Can we talk about that drowning chart? Because it is somewhat different from the drowning charts for Hawaii. (not the man part, that’s pretty consistent, but the age and cause parts)
I had no idea that it was different, but it is worth noting that in the place with the second highest rate of drowning per capita (Hawaii we’re #2!) the most common victim is a male and 45-64, not 15-24. My entire conception of who drowns was based on anomalous local data!
I really liked seeing your drawing!
One of the Things I Love on my list is "depicts rape culture." Then I keep looking at that thing I just typed and shaking my head. I like the way you put it better–the shadow of menace in all the interactions. How there's such a range, from the real crazy violence Robin is investigating to the needling microaggressions at her job, and you can see how just every big to small instance of it is meant to be an attack and is felt like such. I feel like the show should be required viewing for people who are like "there's no such thing as rape culture."
His emails are GROSS and also they read as really, really immature, like he's talking down to her to try to trick her (which, like, to current me? duh, but teen-me would have fallen for that hook-line-sinker. So, yanno, thank goodness the one 30ish teacher I had a crush on in junior year was nothing but the utmost professional.)
But GOOD ON HER. Girlfriend saw through that in a heartbeat:
"Within days, Mikaela decided she couldn’t handle the situation. “Maybe we can be friends, later,” she wrote. “But right now I think I need to stop, and focus on anything else. Not poetry, not you. Just being 16. Studying for finals. I’m sorry. I wish I had a better solution. I don’t.”"
I read that and I just felt OVERWHELMINGLY proud of this girl. And then: "Panicked, she told her family. “My biggest fear was that people were going to judge me and say it was my fault,” she said. “It didn’t occur to me until later that he was the adult and it was his responsibility to keep things appropriate.” 🙁 🙁
I think there was a teacher fired for inappropriate conduct with a student for every single year that I was in school at my high school (and once, I think it was two teachers in a year.) One of my English teachers was a little too friendly with me and my friend — he gave us the heebie jeebies, but it never progressed much further than that, thankfully. I just…rage. Incandescent rage.