SITTER CATASTROPHE 2014 IS SOLVED. Yesterday, I just let my kid watch all our vintage Scooby-Doo episodes while I worked, today I have a former sitter who can also do Friday, and tomorrow I have a teen I found on Twitter. Thank you for your sympathy during my brief meltdown.
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I do not know if you saw this thing from the Jalopnik writer about getting busted for going 93 in a 55 in Virginia and having to spend three days in jail (I have nothing against the piece, really, for the record), but I was SO EXCITED for his ass to get handed to him for being a damn fool, bc Lord knows you can be literally choked to death by the cops for standing around and commenters will be “here are the nine easy ways he could have conducted himself differently” but instead it’s a sea of “Virginia has such crazy laws, lol, SWEEEEET RIDE.” I cannot even.
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Remember how in 2006 there were two different movies about 19th century magicians? The Illusionist and The Prestige? (The Illusionist was sort of yellow-y looking and The Prestige was sort of blue-y looking?) Anyway, I had rewatched The Prestige a few times, but had only seen The Illusionist once, and it was on last night and I thought it was CHARMING as BALLS. Also, it’s meant to echo THE MAYERLING INCIDENT, which is super-fascinating.
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Men, not looking so great in Dear Prudie right now OR EVER:
Q. Out of Town Make-Out: I went out of town for work a month ago. I was a little lonely for two weeks I was there, so used a common dating app to find someone to have dinner with. I was up front with everyone that I talked to that I had a wife back home. I ended up meeting a girl, and we had a lovely dinner together. At the end of the night, after a few drinks, we ended up kissing while waiting for each of our taxis. I did not mean for it to happen, but it made me feel good about myself. Should I tell my wife about this?
Yeah, you do that.
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I’m so sorry, but there was ANOTHER Dear Prudie we have to talk about:
Q. Should I Let My Husband Marry His Dead Fiancée’s Ghost?: Before he met me, my husband was engaged to another woman who passed away only weeks before their wedding. Her mother contacted my husband with an upsetting story of her daughter appearing in her dreams repeatedly. The mother believes the spirit of her daughter is tormented and unable to “pass over” because she has unfulfilled business, namely the wedding which never occurred. The mother has asked my husband to take part in some creepy spiritual wedding ceremony so that her daughter can find peace and enter the afterworld. After he said no in the nicest possible way, she has continued to pester and plead with him. Now he thinks he should just do it for the sake of putting an elderly grieving woman at peace. While I don’t believe in such superstition I find it weird and plain wrong for my husband to “marry” another woman, even if she has been dead for years. We have been fighting over this insane issue. Am I being stubborn or am I right in thinking this is twisted and inappropriate?
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oh, man, obvi if you’re going to ask bartenders to do this you need to CRAWL on your BELLY, you can’t be demanding to check your TEXTS:
She recalled how one girl kept asking if she could just check her text messages while her phone was charging behind the bar. A huge faux pas, according to Rose. “Listen, I’m not a runner. If you put it back here, you sacrifice your right to use it,” she said. “As long as you’re polite, I don’t mind. It’s the people that treat us like servants, not servers. That’s when I’m like, You can go fuck yourself.”
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Misadventures in self-improvement
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Baroness Mary’s #bighairnoheart game is STRONG.
Uggghhh, how pact-like do you think their suicide pact was?
I wish to hell that dude had lived to be the catalyst of the Great War.
“Ruined his parents’ marriage”. Yeah, that marriage was always super happy, and not indicative of the kind of repression of women and coddling of royal men that led to this bullshit.
Oh hey, this is the incident beginning The Hallowed Hunt play homage to! Dead prince, beautiful lady, succession bullshit – all we need is leopard spirits.
More leopard spirits are always a plus.
Uhh…I’m pretty sure that marriage was doomed from the outset.
Do you think the Great War would have even happened if Rudolf had lived? He was much more liberal-minded than Franz Ferdinand was. I mean, he still wasn’t allowed by his father to have any great impact in politics, but he was still very interested in fostering good relations between Austria and its neighbors.
Also, Prudie’s advice to juicebox up there (the traveling hookup guy, not the ghost wedding guy [!!!]): “Here’s my advice: Shut up and delete Tinder.”
I AM NOT SURE THE APP IS THE MAIN CONCERN HERE.
Monogamous person with Tinder on their phone is a problem, but probably it’s just a symptom of the problem?
(Probably there all all sorts of good reasons for a married man to have Tinder, but I can’t think of any.)
If you think of any, let me know. (A single friend sent me a screenshot where a married male mutual friend of ours was on it. I don’t know his life, but …)
Well, I mean, if you have a consensual, legit open marriage. But that is the only one.
I can think of NO GOOD REASON for a married person to have Tinder, but there are many ill-advised, bad and wrong reasons why one such person would have it
And now I have an earworm of “Your Cheatin’ Heart”
Country music is pretty solid in providing moral guidance here. What about “On the other hand… there’s a wedding band”?
It’s “On the other hand there’s a golden band”. As in “there are a lot of reasons to sleep with this nice woman I took out for dinner on a business trip, but on the other hand, I am married, and my wife would be unhappy if I did.”
“Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?
“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels”
whose bed have yer boots been underrrr
ETA: AH littlehuntingcreek you got there first. WEIRD, but: I actually woke up with that song stuck in my head.
A possibly legit reason: he is an app developer who is staying on top of trends? This would be a temporary install only though.
Truth. Or you work for Tinder, and need to be able to check for bugs.
Re first Prudie: just, no. Why are you even asking for advice about this? You knew what she was going to say. You know you are now officially The Worst. The only real solution here is to have her download Tinder and make out with a conventionally attractive man who’s also an exceptional kisser. Then you’ll be squared away.
He should serve her selflessly for all of the days, all of the days ever, and she can get her make-outs partner from where-ever she wants. Maybe she could test drive a few, see if they’re up to snuff. Get a few practice make-outs in.
team david bowie playing nikola tesla
Awwwwwww yeeaaahhhhh… Oh David Bowie how I love you.
THE MAYERLING INCIDENT. My favorite. I am totally about to read Danubia for some solidly weird Hapsburg stories, but can anyone recommend a book with the Mayerling Incident in it?
Have you read any Victoria Holt? Several of her books have shades of the Mayerling incident. I read them all in my early teens, so it’s a little vague.
No, but I will keep them on my radar! Looking for more non-fiction around the Mayerling Incident, though, for now.
Off the top of my head: The Road to Mayerling, Rudolf: The Tragedy of Mayerling, Crime at Mayerling: The Life and Death of Mary Vetsera, A Nervous Splendor. For a slightly more crazytown read, The Mayerling Murder. Also you should definitely read Marie Larisch’s autobiography, My Past. I also recommend Brigitte Hamann’s biography of Elisabeth, The Reluctant Empress, though obviously Mayerling is not the focus.
Can you tell I’m really into this?
Hi hi hi I know I’m coming to this 3 weeks late and you probably know about this anyway but do you know about the T.S.Eliot link? I am deep in a thesis on Eliot so basically in my life All Roads Lead to Eliot.
Hello there! Somehow I have never heard of this??? Please do tell! I always want to know more about Mayerling. (If you want to take it out of this 3-week old comment thread, you can shoot me an email – alysonmgrimm at gmail dotcom. )
Ooh how fun I get to tell someone about T.S.Eliot-related things!
So these lines in the first section of The Waste Land:
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
They bear some resemblance to passages in Marie Larisch’s My Past so people thought Eliot must have read it but actually he apparently met her (probably in Munich) and this passage was taken from a conversation he had with her in which she talked about her childhood.
I’m guessing you’ve already read Frederic Morton’s A Nervous Splendor?
How have I never read Danubia?? I just ordered the hardback with that sweet sweet Prime shipping. Thanks!
Good god, the Master Cleanse. I would almost certainly kill someone if I tried to do that. If I’m not allowed a chai in the morning and regular chocolate infusions during the week, I get stabby.
I really hated The Illusionist when I saw it in theatres, but if The Toast hive mind deems it charming, I guess I have no choice but to see it again. I tend to like movies a LOT more or a LOT less after 8 years have passed anyway.
And, of course, Dear Prudie: WTF?!
It is rather charming, but in my mind, The Prestige is a much heftier, better movie. Just the right balance of suspense and human drama. Plus, magicians. And, as mentioned above, David Bowie with cats.
I couldn’t make it all the way through the Prestige the first time, because I couldn’t bear the horrible escalating war between those two dudes and its awful consequences for everyone else, which were clearly just going to get worse. I couldn’t take it. I guess at least I was invested?
I remember being VERY confused by The Illusionist when I saw it in theaters, and after reading the Wikipedia summary… I am no less confused.
I prefer L’illusioniste, the cute French animated film about a magician who comes to Edinburgh to sort his life out. SPOILER: Edinburgh is pretty, sadness is plentiful.
I saw this movie on my first date with my boyfriend, and at one point during the movie he left to use the washroom. This was during the scene where he lets his magician bunny loose in the forest, and I started BAWLING then immediately realized I needed to stop before this dude got back and saw me sobbing for no apparent reason because he’d missed the scene.
I mean… it would not be hard to be more “charming” than The Prestige, a movie I find simultaneously fascinating and facile (which is to say, a Nolan film). I barely remember The Illusionist but I have an impression the chief female character actually was a character rather than another elaborate prop for Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman to manipulate and engineer, so there’s a point for it right there.
I barely remember the Illusionist either, but I’m pretty sure Jessica Biel’s character was deeply, deeply boring and mostly just exists to be “wispy fragile noblelady hero pines after and wins back from mean dude”.
Your not-memory is certainly a lot easier to believe than my not-memory, which is depressing as hell.
That is pretty much what I got out of The Illusionist, although to be fair, I did watch it while annoyed/concerned by the attentions of a former friend with a serious white knight syndrome, so I found the title character and his whimsical hobby more worrisome than charming.
Yes, I vaguely remember being pissed about that as well.
I struggled with The Prestige too, facile is a good word for it. I usually don’t have a problem suspending my disbelief but there were parts of that film that took it too far.
I haven’t ever been able to watch The Prestige all the way through. I’ve fallen asleep while watching two or three times. I always have my roommate wake me during the Tesla scenes and the end.
The Illusionist though, I’ve watched several times and enjoy it each time even though I know how it all ends. Also, I really like the music.
Oh, I am so grateful for the early morning link roundups. I’m doing construction monitoring, and it is so dull and so isolated – but I can open these links before I go and be entertained and surrounded by the love of toasties.
I am on maternity leave that has not yet become actually necessary, and I have become wildly dependent on the link roundups. I wish they started earlier.
Also I read an autobiography of Margaret Mead: Blackberry Winter. (I only bring serious books when I do construction monitoring because otherwise I have trouble not reading during work and I blow through all of them by mid-morning Tuesday.) Fun Mead facts: she all but states that she married each of her three husbands because they were good field assistants – she switched spouses when she found someone who was better suited and then remained single forever when she was done with fieldwork. Her mother quit her doctoral program to marry and have five children – but when Mead was getting her Master’s, her mother went back to school and they did their research and writing together. (The theses were on whether the children of Italian immigrants did better on IQ tests when they spoke more English at home and whether there were phrenological differences between their head shapes. Yes, and apparently also yes.) Once, in grad school, Mead and all her roommates hung a May basket on Edna Saint Vincent Millay’s doorknob; I think this is code for queerness, but I think that about everything. (She also mentions that she and her first husband had “beds” in their bedroom and notes that she didn’t need to worry about getting pregnant.) Margaret Mead: misandrist hero.
It’s fascinating, because it’s the 1920s, and all these bright and educated women are living together in New York, scavenging furniture and doing craft projects to make their house pretty, going to grad school, working scut museum jobs, trying to make a living as writers, having love affairs and weeping on the sofas of their friends and insisting that they aren’t old maids if they aren’t married by 25, they can have babies until they’re 40.
Sometimes I feel like the upper class lives in the future.
And Ruth Benedict’s lover.
Probably… probably there are several lovers? But Ruth is absolutely the most important and the most honored. Mead has a college bestie who gets a lot of ink too – her co-conspirator in the Millay incident.
I would hang a May basket on Edna Saint Vincent Millay’s doorknob if you know what I mean.
“I’d hang a May basket on her doorknob” is now official Toast-approved lesbian innuendo.
her mother went back to school and they did their research and writing together
My mother went back for a second B.A. the same year I started college, and we wound up having a religion class together. At 8 in the morning. We sat next to each other and shared a textbook to save money.
Then we graduated together, and dad gave us our diplomas, and it was super cute.
This is super fucking cute! I am envious!
I wish I could remember what I said, but one day in class, I said something that made her give me this really impressed look, and it was the best day ever.
She also put her degree program (religious education) together herself, using classes from religion, psychology, and education.
I love everything referred to as “The X Incident”; revel in white men getting arrested; and NO HUSBAND YOU CANNOT MARRY A GHOST I CANT BELIEVE YOURE MAKING ME SAY THOSE WORDS
I am sort of okay with people getting thrown in jail for speeding — egregiously, not just 5-10 over. Going 93 fucking miles per hour is way more dangerous than smoking and/or selling pot, and people get thrown in jail for that all the time.
He just sounds so oblivious. “I didn’t hurt anyone, or kill anyone, or sell drugs, or drive drunk, or beat my wife, or steal; I was going to jail because I drove too fast in a car.” Yeah, because driving at over 90 miles per hour never hurt anyone ever. (Thirty-eight miles per hour over the speed limit! That is ridiculous.)
I am so glad to see that article linked here, with the exact same sentiment I had when I read that article!
The moral of his article shouldn’t be ‘Virgina laws are crazy’, it should be ‘don’t drive like a reckless butthead, even if the car is shiny’.
I mean it’s not like cars can kill people or anything…
Ghost wedding – NO
But if he does decide to have a Ghost Wedding after all, may I come?
How could it go wrong? Maaaybe he gets sucked into the netherworld for having pledged his love to another. Small price to pay.
This is a book I would want to read.
It’s already been more or less written! http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16248223-the-g…
GOD BLESS THIS WORLD.
An IRL Corpse Bride??
There IS a book about a ghost with ghost weddings as a plot point. Lemme see if I remember the title …
Peony in Love by Lisa See.
oh god i hated that book
it was pretty terrible; one of those ‘all these characters are garbage people can they be thrown into the sun please’ affairs.
I hated that book, too. I read it after a month in China (Hangzhou, where the book is set) and that made it worse than it would have been otherwise.
Yeah, I’m not going to be reading more Lisa See, methinks. I liked Snow Flower & the Secret Fan, but the others I’ve peeked at have been brutal.
As a native Marylander, I have an innate/unfounded sense of superiority and disdain toward Virginia, but I don’t disagree with the harsh stance on speeding. Spending time in jail for it is definitely excessive, but speeding is dangerous, stupid, and not necessary. So, go on your with laws, Virginia. Just don’t need to lock folks up.
As a DC transplant, quiet fistbumps for the sense of superiority vis-a-vis the scary downstairs neighbors.
lol any time I get arrested/jailed it is ALWAYS in DC and it is ALWAYS for something like being within 25 yards of a homeless guy with an open bottle of beer. Virginia’s a shithole full of bumpkins but DC is fuckin Mordor, man.
Hmm, I don’t know. A short stint in jail doesn’t strike me as crazy, and I’m generally pretty anti-incarceration. What he did was super-dangerous, y’know?
Jail was perhaps especially appropriate if the judge thought that GM would just pay any fine for him, as part of the promotion deal.
I’m sort of horrified that there are people who think getting a weekend in stir where nothing at all happened for nearly killing a bunch of folks is so exotic and wild as to deserve this kind of breathless prose, like he just spent four years lost in the bush rising through the ranks of a never-before-seen Amazon tribe. It’s sort of like how I imagine a 1780s Frenchman would feel stumbling into some aristocrat’s longsuffering whining that he went to a peasant tavern and nobody at all fed grapes into his mouth, one by one, while soft music was played by a bevy of comely wenches. Fuck this guy and his car.
Ohhhh boy do I ever share that sense of superiority and disdain toward Virginia. It’s the worst for all the reasons, obviously, and you cannot tell me otherwise. (Yes yes speeding is bad and you’re right, so right, but also Virginia turns me into a bull-headed teenager. I’m not proud.)
— DC born/MD raised/DC resident
I love how anti-Virginia The Toast has become!
Former DC-area West Virginian here, cosigning that Virginia sucks alllllll the butts
As a native Virginian, this thread is confirming my impression that people in Maryland are SUPER MEAN. Which, granted, is 100% due to my High School best friend moving to Edgewater and posting horrifying tales on LJ of being gay-bashed by rednecks, but still!
We’re not mean! We just have a complex about being below the Mason Dixon line but not culturally southern.
I just try to be understanding about it cause after all they do have to live in fuckin’ Maryland, it’s like how even a perfectly pleasant person is probably gonna start acting shitty if they’ve had the flu for three weeks.
I recently transplanted to Virginia. And, nope! Maryland is entirely balls. Virginia is pretty great.
I moved to Virginia from Florida. Do you know how much better anywhere is than Florida? I kind of like it here.
I grew up in Northern Virginia, which is arguably the least awful part of this state, yet I also feel a sense of intense disdain for this tobacco-stained wasteland.
The Vietnamese food skews the curve. I’m NoVa born and raised, and until the Democrats bring the VA legislature into even the second half of the twentieth century, I am not willing to entertain any thoughts of moving back. (I just sneak over the border for fixes of banh mi and pink agar drinks.)
Maryland ain’t perfect, but hey, come for the blue crabs, stay for the marriage equality, early voting, and relatively sane reproductive health policy.
That self-improvement article!
1) I am so glad my twenties are over. San Quentin, I hate every inch of you. Anything that hints of evoking that feeling that the reason I was unhappy was that something was wrong with me, and if I could just fix it, that would be the way out is deeply uncomfortable.
2) Are we heaping enough scorn on the heads of those who promote “cleanses” of any kind? I say no! Eating solid food does not make bodies “dirty.” (This also applies to “eating clean” terminology. Fuck you, my food isn’t dirty.)
3) I think we need to get more young people trained to volunteer in ways that make it clear that mostly, when you step into an established org to volunteer or do work, you are wading into a deep river of institutional BS, and that maybe 10% of the labor involved is your nominal volunteer gig, and the rest of it is the work of not drowning.
Cleanse scorn! Bad science in the name of being “healthy” all around scorn, actually. My eternal quest to find recipes that are not “add more butter to the lamb chop” means I spend so, so much time wading through terrible “this recipe is healthy because it has a super food and lots of this one vitamin and also zero calories! eat clean!”
But of course, the Toastie cleanse scorn has a long and proud tradition: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02…
I feel the master cleanse was a big joke Stanley Burroughs decided to play on the world. Like “what’s the most ridiculous thing I can get people to eat or drink to lose weight and improve their health? I know! Hot peppery lemonade-ish water stuff! And shit, throw some maple syrup in there, why not. HAW HAW HAW! No one will fall for this, right? It’s too ridiculous” but truly for humanity nothing is too ridiculous, so here we are.
In my fantasy, Mr. Burroughs says HAW HAW HAW like a bad person in a Jack Chick tract.
My grocery store had samples of just the lemonade with maple syrup the other day (no cayenne) and it’s fucking delicious and now I’m MAD that the cleanse people are polluting it with 1) cayenne and 2) lies.
Actually, I love me some ginger lemonade since spicy+sweet+sour = delicious. But that doesn’t mean that your cayenne/lemon/maple is somehow magically more purifying than my ginger/lemon/honey(/gin).
During my tenure working at an organic grocery store in my 20s, I went on a three-day juice fast, and realized too late that since I take psychotropic medication, upsetting my food intake threw off my med levels WILDLY, and I felt like absolute shit for weeks. LET MY EXAMPLE SERVE AS A WARNING TO OTHERS.
Yes! We have a CSA subscription, and every time I go online to find out how to cook whatever mysterious vegetable it is this week, I find 8,000 articles on how you can use it as a substitute for your hamburger bun, because paleo.
STOP THE MADNESS.
I just had the most fantastic mental image of someone putting a hamburger between a pair of rutabagas. Thank you for that.
I guarantee you someone’s tried it.
But then the ghost of the grass-fed, antibiotic-free, open-range cow they ate appeared to them in a dream, and now they only eat Quorn patties between their pair of rutabagas.
Did they marry the cow?
Why marry the ghost cow when you can get the ghost milk for free?
The Moose Cleanse!!!! MALLORY. I die.
It’s the worst. Internet, I just want to know the iron content of my vegetables, and ways I can hide mushrooms in less-objectionable foods; stop giving me the carbohydrate count of every recipe. I don’t want the carb count of every recipe.
My otherwise brilliant sister-in-law just spent a month doing “Whole 30,” a wildly restrictive diet designed to suss out “food sensitivities” etc. I’d read these dispatches from her no-coffee no-dairy no-sugar no-grain lifestyle with my head screaming “YOUR EUPHORIA IS KETOSIS” and grinding my teeth.
As a native Kansan, I especially object to the notion that grains are bad for you. GRAINS MAKE CIVILIZATION POSSIBLE. THEY ARE AWESOME.
I was feeling awful the other day, so exhausted and bad, and I ate half a bagel – only half – and INSTANTLY the day was a billion times better.
I was having a crazy-feeling day last weekend and then I ate an excellent bowl of bacon and beer cheese mac n cheese and I felt IMMEDIATELY better. FOOD, YOUR BODY NEEDS IT.
That day where I had eaten my tiny, “healthy person” breakfast/lunch and was feeling light-headed and woozy and also had just started my crazy-heavy period?
Yeah, asking a coworker to go to the next door greasy deli and buy me as much roast beef as they’d put on a sandwich was the right call.
ALWAYS the right call. Good for you and good for coworker and good for deli.
As a fellow Kansan (hi!) who eats Whole30 99% of the time (once in a while I have some wine or a bite of dark chocolate), I gotta say “hmph” to your “otherwise brilliant” analysis. Different strokes for different folks, and eating paleo probably saved my life, health-wise. It’s not always easy and sometimes it’s not fun–travel is a bear. But for someone who is allergic to dairy, coffee, soy, gluten, eggs, and a whole host of other things? It’s better than destroying my GI tract. Having eaten this way for three years now, it really doesn’t seem all that restrictive!
But I don’t sneer at my vegan friends eating their gardenburgers on whole-grain bun, and they don’t chastise me for my steak and red chard (with duck fat!).
Duly chastised. Taking off my judgeypants now, abjectly groveling for forgiveness. (And yay Kansas! I’m in Wichita.)
I guess what really bothered me is that she narrated the whole thing on Facebook? Like, eat what you want–I certainly do, and it’s a shifting melange of Healthy Choices and absolute garbage–but it’s really, really boring to tell other people about it daily.
I’m in Lawrence! *waves enthusiastically*
Sometimes people find it necessary to log their food, and doing so publicly helps hold them accountable. It’s like Tumblr, y’know? If you don’t like what you see, just keep scrolling. Unless she was saying other people were bad or less-than or making terrible life choices by not joining her on her eating adventure, in which case fuck a bunch of that. I got no time for proselytizers or people who think there’s One True Way to do anything.
Fair enough. I do have a terrible habit of feeling judged indirectly, perhaps because I am relentlessly hard on myself about everything so I expect the same of the world. WHEEEEEE for early-morning comment-induced self-realizations!
Unsought emotional growth before noon? ALWAYS AWESOME.
On the one hand, temporarily or permanently hiding someone on Facebook or other social media is pretty easy to do, but on the other, extreme focus on “good” and “bad” food choices is not a neutral thing to put out into the world in terms of its potential effects on others, whether it’s extreme calorie counting or implying (or saying outright) that other people’s food choices are dirty or poisonous, and that’s the language that bothers me from watching other people’s dietary revelations from the sidelines.
I think it’s kind of inevitable, and now I laugh it off, possibly because there’s no other choice? When I started weight lifting I got really excited about it because no other exercise had ever made me feel as great or changed my body as quickly etc etc, and I was literally mid-sentence with one of my friends when I realized I was like…a weight lifting evangelist. It had just made me so happy, and it surprised me, and I wanted to share! I apologized profusely and then was immediately like, but no, seriously, weight lifting makes everything better and women are so uncomfortable with it, trrrryyy iiiiiittt, all the while watching myself do this with a vague, detached horror. Just, unable to an immediate full stop, but aware of what I was doing.
I think it’s what it would feel like if you were self-aware while a zombie virus took over. Stuff that makes us so happy we become insufferable: they are just little zombie viruses, trying to procreate.
Ah, and here’s my comment-induced self-realization of the day, even if I didn’t make the noon cutoff.
Your love of weightlifting? It sounds awesome, and if you were someone living near me, I’d make you drag me to a gym and teach me. My actual-nearby friends who love their paleo? So. Much. Eyerolling. And me and my love of hanging out with a club of kinky, open-relationship-y, queer feminists? My other friends have really had to learn to duck my tendency to bring it up every third drink or so.
My brain is desperately trying to put it all into some sort of paradigm that makes it all noble, where I embrace any evangelism that counters the patriarchy while rejecting the “mainstream” ones, but I think I’m just another homo sapiens who could use some practice suppressing the “my worldview is the best” instinct, at least in pleasant conversation.
Yes! I think I’ve decided that, for me, the distinction between whether it’s lovably dorkish enthusiasm or unbearable evangelism is based entirely on the dork/evangelist’s responsiveness to other people. Are they actually listening to the person they’re having a conversation with, or is it more like a monologue with forced breaks? Is it more about sharing something awesome or getting validation for a brand new identity patch?
That’s kind of a cheat, though, since the Listening Test works for like…everything. Although it makes my own attempts to be Better easier, because mostly it’s just like, really listen to other people, and most other stuff works out.
Yeah. The “I felt so light and clear” line from cleanses/fasts/whatever. That is hunger. You are lightheaded from hunger. You are not thinking more clearly, you just think you are. Just like your brilliant ideas when you are high/drunk are usually not actually all that brilliant.
I cannot do a crazy cleanse/fast since I get migraines when I let my blood sugar get too low. Also I get mean.
Also the “I’m doing a juice cleanse, so I’m super-cranky for the next week; you’ll just have to deal.” No, I do not have to tolerantly accept your hunger-induced crankiness. You are cranky because you are choosing to starve yourself in order to flush “toxins” or excess shit or whatever out of your body, which is medically stupid. You are deliberately making stupid choices, and those choices make you angry, and I feel no compunction to accept that with a smile and an understanding nod.
Yesssss to everything you just wrote! Except I’m still in my 20s (almost out though!) and I still frequently fall prey to the self improvement trap. Like, oh, if I clear my dresser of excess tchotkes I will become wise beyond my years. Nope, I just have a clean dresser. More room for books!
And “eating clean” is such a revolting term. All of this “holier than thou” lifestyle crap is just so infuriating. The only food that’s dirty is food that literally has dirt in it.
Actually, that dirt will help strengthen your gut biome. Eat more of it. But only on organic carrots, because we have to eat clean.
Just last week I was listening to a talk by microbiologist Dr. Brett Finlay about what can go wrong with you if you mess with your microbiome. Cleaning your innards will literally make you sick.
Is this also along the lines of/directly related to why antibiotics make me feel terrible?
Yes, pretty much. Some docs will even prescribe a probiotic to take when you’re done with your antibiotic, to replenish gut flora!
That makes so much sense why does my doctor not do that. COME ON, DOC, GET WITH IT.
You don’t have to wait for your doctor to do it! Toddle on down to the walgreens and pick up your own, one with as many different strains in it as possible! Magic!
Fortunately for me, volunteering just means walking dogs and rubbing their ears/bellies/telling them how smart and pretty they are. I fully believe that if I got more involved that there would be more organizational BS, so I’m happy to stay at the lowest level possible.
I really enjoyed the Illusionist when it came out, despite the accents that Norton and Biel…sometimes had. But I will watch Rufus Sewell in pretty much anything, which is why I’ve seen Dangerous Beauty entirely too many times despite the fact that that movie is a historically inaccurate MESS with an absurd ending.
Fistbump on Rufus Sewell. Have you seen Hercules yet? SO GOOD.
RUFUS SEWELL IS THE APATHETIC ANCIENT ROGUE WE ALL DESERVE.
I don’t think I even realized he was in it! Now I’ll have to watch it.
Can I get in on the Rufus Sewell party, please? BRING BACK AURELIO ZEN. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but then his exasperated with corrupt Italian bureaucracy face was perfection.
Then you’re gonna love him in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Hercules!
How sure are we that Rufus Sewell is actually a dweller of this century and not a time-traveler, because I have never seen him in anything that took place in the last hundred years except for that short in Paris je t’aime where he talks to Oscar Wilde’s ghost.
He’s in a BBC modern day version of The Taming of the Shrew, in a series called ShakespeaRe-told. Where he shows up in a miniskirt and fishnet stockings on his wedding day. (It’s actually really really awful otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend it)
I know we talked about it on The Toast already but Rufus Sewell as Ladislaw in BBC’s Middlemarch:
Daaaamn girrrrrl
He looks like an angry owl. <3 Git it, Dodo. GIT. IT.
Not that you don’t already know this, but there’s a key difference between the Jalopnik writer and dudes who get put in chokeholds for standing around which may be leading to the difference in comments. (It’s that he’s white.)
Spoiler Alert!
The Jalopnik writer is every dude who makes me grind my teeth because it’s okay if he speeds, he’s a good driver. (Evidence for being a good driver typically extends to: Has a penis.)
The comments are doubly incredible, because there are literally people suggesting he should have stepped on it and fled from the cop. Not “Here are all the ways you could have done an innocent thing more innocently,” but “Here are the ways you could have REALLY broken the law.”
To be fair, he’s not claiming that he should speed because he’s a good driver, but saying that he did speed (and admittedly stupidly) because he was test-driving a powerful car which is meant to go fast and made him feel good. The author himself acknowledges his own idiocy fairly frequently, while pointing out that it’s fairly stupid to send someone to jail along with violent criminals for speeding on a country road. Which is stupid.
Although *far* less stupid than sending someone to jail for using heroin, weed, etc. Given how violently racist Gawker comments are regarding black people punished/murdered/etc. for *any* crime (“Well maybe they shouldn’t have used drugs / sold tax-free cigarettes / resisted arrest when the cops violently clubbed their head from behind / looked so black! STOP PLAYING THE RACE CARD!!” I seriously can’t read their websites any more; even Jezebel comments pull this shit.), the forgiveness and sympathy in these comments is pretty staggering. Poor white guy fined and sent to a jail problem-free for a weekend. He should have resisted arrest! (…Wait..)
I read somewhere recently that jail is way more effective as a deterrent for people who commit crimes for reasons other than desperation. And this dude does seem to be deterred from speeding again, at least in Virginia. So I don’t know that sending him to jail for a weekend was stupid at all.
That is actually quite true (and seriously man 40 mph over the speed limit?). Though some nice grueling community service would probably be just as effective, less expensive, and seem less comically overblown.
According to the article, it cost about $104 per day to send him to jail. By the time they found something suitably grueling and supervised it and what not, I’m not sure how much cheaper the community service would actually be.
And I suspect the fact that it seems overblown is part of what made it an effective deterrent. If he went away thinking, “that was a totally reasonable price to pay for how great speeding made me feel,” then surely he’d be more willing to risk it again.
Yeah, you’ve convinced me now. This actually probably was the most cost-effective way of preventing him from doing this again in the future. Okay, he might just stop speeding in Virginia. But that seems like a win for Virginia.
Plus, he gets a fun story to tell his friends and the sympathy of the Jalopnik comment section, sooo…
“It wasn’t me, Officer, it was the car! The car!”
IT SEDUCED ME!
In the article he tries to drum up how craaaaazy a penalty this is by pointing out that it is handled in the same category as pointing a gun at someone, and you know what? That really isn’t fair. Launching a two-ton hunk of steel at random commuters at 40mph over the legal limit is way more reckless and dangerous than that, and kills way more people all the time. He should at least be up there with some doofus who goes shooting randomly into buildings for funsies.
White men are preeeeety much the worst, was my takeaway here.
it’s the takeaway everywhere
Seriously! As a criminal defense lawyer, I literally got nauseous when I read this sentence: “Apparently a softcore porn on Netflix [Orange is the New Black] is everyone’s sole frame of reference for prison and jail, which is kind of hilarious and sad considering the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world.” Um DUDE. NO. “Everyone”????? NO. How about “apparently Orange is the New Black is MY WHITE ENTITLED FRIENDS’ frame of reference for prison and jail, and THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT OUR OBLIVIOUSNESS TO ENTIRE SWATHS OF AMERICAN SOCIETY, GIVEN THAT the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world.”
Also, dismissing Orange is the New Black as “softcore porn” is pretty uncool, given the fantastic talent on display in that show.
I prefer The Prestige because there is just a montage of magicians punking each other. Like, making their tricks go wrong and then it pans the other guy like “you got serrrrrved.”
And never recognizing each other until it’s too late. A beard? Foolproof disguise!
I love The Illusionist AND The Prestige and feel like I am on an eternal, futile quest for similarly toned books and movies. Any suggestions??
Have you seen Now You See Me? It’s not very good but I loved it, because Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg are MAGICIANS, and Mark Ruffalo is the detective who MUST STOP THEM FROM MAGICKING.
I have not! That sounds like exactly the type of movie I can watch to keep my soul from draining away while I write cover letters.
You’ve already read Night Circus, of course?
YES! Night Circus is brilliant! (Also I really enjoyed Now You See Me, great light hearted easy-to-watch movie)
Seconded to The Night Circus. One of the best YA novels I’ve read in, uh, ever.
Yes! And I loved it.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? There’s real magic in it, so maybe not quite what you’re asking for, but it is a work of genius.
I love that book so much! Though I’m also kinda cautious about recommending it, because some people bounce off it pretty hard, what with the length and the style.
If not in the mood for an enormous novel, the same author’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu is a lovely collection of short stories set in the same world.
I will read anything Susanna Clarke writes and am rabidly awaiting her next book (which, since JS&MN took a decade to write, could be… a while).
Miss Jane Tobias, misandrist icon.
It’s been ten years since JS&MN–surely we should get something new one of these years, right? I Google her periodically but I never seem to discover any news. There is a Strange & Norrell miniseries coming this year, though!
Strange & Norrell casting thread in the next Cocktail Hour? I went through it with a friend and we were alternately squealing and groaning. I didn’t recognize any of the actors, but some are perfect and some are not.
Since I never got in on that thread and just now noticed these responses (I am good at internet, yes), I will just say that ever since seeing the TV series Rome, my perfect Jonathan Strange has been Tobias Menzies, who plays Brutus.
I’m going to read that for book club this month (August’s theme is Nebula/Hugo/World Fantasy award winners)!
Am I the only person who found this boring and a trudge to get through? (Am currently marooned at page 500). Susanna Clarke is brilliant at capturing the tone of an early 19th century novel, but it’s as if, by focusing on style, she’s sucked every last drop of emotion out of her story. I don’t care about any of the characters and she doesn’t manage to give anyone any plausible motivations. It talks about magic all the time, but doesn’t feel particularly magical. Plus, how would British history be exactly the same if there were always magic? But I accept that other people enjoy this novel immensely. That being said, there are more interesting stories embedded in the footnotes.
I enjoyed it the 1st time I read it, but haven’t found it particularly compelling on attempted re-reads. What was amusingly period-appropriate stiltedness becomes kind of empty and brittle. (Probably in connection to my admittedly-childish desire to have Characters I Like/Relate To.)
I ended up loving it, but it took me forever to get into. I think it’s brilliantly written, but poorly structured. Norrell is such a pill that one quickly loses interest. But Strange and Black are great characters and as the novel progresses and the magic gets darker, stranger, and more dangerous, I thought it picked up and became really interesting. Also, it DOES eventually show how English history was different due to magic (the Raven King and such).
I really enjoyed the book in the end, but it took me absolutely forever to get into it (and even longer to finally read the damn thing – 10 years after I bought it!). The length and “period-appropriate” style were big hurdles for me (also the fact that Norrell = boring as heck and a pretty unappealing main character in general).
Freedom and Necessity! Not the book by Engels, but the epistolary novel set in the slightly-altered-by-magic Chartist revolutions in England. Double-crossing, drowned men come back to life, secret societies, women disguised as men to get shit done and mock Oxford students, opium, sprigs of rowan and books you REALLY hope are bound in calf but are…suspiciously soft, stronger-than-death friendships. It’s magnificent. Engels is actually in it, all beardily exiled and in love with his partner. (I can’t judge the accuracy of the events or the politics, but the newspaper excerpts are apparently real.)
Oh oh!! *waves hand frantically in the air* Oh me! Me! Me! I know the answer! Please, PLEASE read “Carter Beats the Devil” by Glen David Gold. It is absolutely wonderfully written — here is the blurb on Amazon: “[Gold] hypnotized us with his portrait of a 1920s magic-obsessed America and of Charles Carter–a.k.a. Carter the Great–a young master performer whose skill as an illusionist exceeded even that of the great Houdini.” Gold does an absolutely masterful job of making the reader as dazzled by the magic tricks as the audience would be (an incredible writerly trick — I still am in awe of his ability to do that) and the whole story is based on historical fact, which makes it even more delightful to imagine. It’s a one of those rare novels that is intelligent, but also totally charming and engaging. And if you can get your hands on the hardback version, I totally recommend you do so, because that version has these GORGEOUS images of actual magicians’ posters from the early 20th century.
Oh wait also, Prudie. Right after ghost wedding she shames a lady for sleeping with a guy on the first date. Granted, it was a former teacher of hers, but Prudie noooooo.
i’m going to come up with a text replacement code for this site that switches out every incident of the word “shames” with the word “headbutts” because if i ever see that word again i’m going to murder the sun
But I need the sun for photosynthesis…
please stop idea headbutting me
I feel so aheadbutted
It’s really a headbutt that you two can’t just get along
Can you work on something that compels people, when they feel the urge to shame someone, just to actually headbutt them instead, IRL? Because I feel like that would create a vastly more honest — and entertaining — world.
Would you accept “chides” or “lectures” instead? Because I really want to bring “chide” back.
uuuuuuuuuugh the prestige uuuuuuuuuuugh
I wanted to like it, but having read the book it is VERY DIFFICULT to do so, because as far as I can remember (ROT13ed for spoilers) AB YNQVRF QVR va gur obbx, naq lrg Puevfgbcure Abyna qrpvqrq gung GJB BS GURZ arrqrq gb qvr sbe gur zbivr. Pynffvp sevqtvat. Fb tebff, naq fb haarprffnel. Pna’g gur zntvpvnaf whfg or qevira jrveqbrf?
Uuuugh. I need to rewatch The Illusionist, one of my friends took classes with the author of the short story on which it is based.
Hrrrm, good to know. In 2006, I was team Illusionist, and after reading that, I think I will happily stay as such. It’s the smaller movie, less ambitious, and I’m okay with that.
personal claim to fame: carpooling with steven millhauser
Is it really a spoiler to note that Christopher Nolan thinks the only way you can have drama is if the main character’s beloved wife/girlfriend/love interest dies brutally? He does it in basically all of his movies. To the point where I saw trailers for Interstellar and was like “oh, Matthew McConaughey’s wife must have been mauled to death by a chimpanzee.”
That was more about my uncertainty about book versus film spoilers! But yeah, Nolan is predictable and gross on that as well as other points.
Yeah, Nolan appears to start his plots with “Okay, so his wife dies, then what?”
The film had Hugh Jackman, more hugh jackman and christian bales and it was still kind of ‘meh’ which my frustrated 2002 Jackman/Bale worshipping self found an impressive feat.
I couldn’t get through it when I tried to watch it. I was just like, “GROW THE FUCK UP AND STOP HARMING EVERYONE AROUND YOU WITH YOUR FUCKING MAGIC TRICKS WHAT THE FUCK.”
Yep, it was just a dick measuring contest that went waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too far.
“Nothing up my sleeve! Oh wait, my penis was up there.”
YOUR SPOILER FORMAT IS AMAZING I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE
I can’t figure out the code, and I feel stupid. Help?
Paste the text into this: http://www.rot13.com/index.php 🙂
Is the book worth reading? I’ve avoided it because of the film but there were things in the film that didn’t make sense that might be better explained in the book.
Its a fast and easy read which is good because there isn’t much of a conflict.
On the self-improvement tip: most of those stories just made me sad, and reminded me of how being in your (my) 20s allowed for some deeply fucked-up thinking to rule.
On the iPhone charger situation: Is it better or just as bad if you have your own charger, and ask if there are any outlets in the restaurant/bar you can use? This has happened to a friend of mine once and all of us, including him, were kind of shrinking in shame, but he did have his own charger.
I work in a bar where this happens all the time. It’s much much better if you bring your own charger, and best yet if you attach a little tape flag to the charger with your name or some other clear identifying mark. It’s still a pain for the bartender if you have to plug in behind the bar, but I can’t even begin to count how many times customers who use outlets by their seats have walked out with the charger they borrowed from the bar or another customer.
Also, if you even think you might have to plug in your phone behind the bar, PUT IT ON SILENT!!! Because nothing is quite as awesome as listening to your super fun audio clip ring tone over and over and over and over and over and over.
I write my name in sharpie on all my chargers — I can’t tell you how many I’ve left behind in hotels or accidentally swapped with friends. And people will help give it back to you if you do forget it somewhere. 🙂
I work in a coffeeshop where people ask to use the outlets behind the bar allllll the time. I outright refuse to let them use the outlets since we spill drinks allllll the time as well. My part time job is at the library so I am always happy to direct them to go across the street and use the outlets there!
Use your last 4% to text your friend that your phone is dying and where you’ll meet. No sympathy here. You’re goddamned adult. Figure things out, y’know?
The Prestige is a movie I used to love, before I started recognizing Nolan’s grossness about women characters. Because, as we all know, men have rich inner lives and complicated relationships to one another and women are either Paragons Of Virtue Who Die or Evil Treacherous Whores.
Hmmm. I think this is true for a lot of his movies, especially his earlier ones, but Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises and Ariadne in Inception are two big exceptions that come to mind. Perhaps he is improving (plus Interstellar looks like it’s got some decent Strong Female Characters).
Neither of those improved my opinion much. Selina was another Treacherous Whore (literally!), what was done to Talia al’Ghul was shameful, and Ariadne could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout for all the personality she displayed. And the main gal in Interstellar appears to exist mainly so that McConaughey can display Important Male Feelings while Important Men Save The World.
Basically The Dark Knight Rises was Nolan’s last chance w/ me and he blew it.
I guess if you’re determined to see things that way, then that’s how you’ll see them…
No, I’m with her on TDKR. Just saw it for the first time last night, and Selina Kyle had no evidence of an inner life besides deciding she loved The Important Man for no apparent reason. Made no damn sense at all.
Still passes the Bechdel Test!
That is a loooooooow bar. Like, that is the reason the Bechdel test is an effective rhetorical tool, because it is the lowest bar imaginable, and yet still so many fail.
I think I have just hit my lifetime tolerance for shitty female characters. I’m just done. Any artist who can’t manage to make female characters into actual people fails as an artist for me. It’s to the point where it just yanks me out of the experience.
That’s too bad. Not sure you’re going to be able to consume much film or television from here on out! (which is a depressing solution)
Lol. Thanks for the concern? Turns out most of the stuff I consume for pleasure isn’t ruined, and the stuff that is usually causes a bunch of other unrelated eye rolls. Most stuff just isn’t that good, especially the millionth time you see it.
I think it’s far more depressing to just give up and accept insulting dreck like there’s no hope for better options in this world.
There’s a big difference between “giving up” and accepting that not every single piece of consumable media (film, television, book, web stuff) is going to live up to the standards we would like to see in place in the world for female characters (also, I completely disagree that Inception was insulting dreck).
I agree that 98% of media does not live up to the ideal standard I’d set for portrayal of female characters, but seriously, when will the world ever live up to that standard? And as a side note, does all literature etc. that centers around male characters (or portray women in a bad light or not at all) get the same withering response? Then I guess you miss out on Proust, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Vonnegut…I could go on.
Just making the point that consuming media that doesn’t prominently feature Strong Female Characters does not make you a) an idiot co-opted by the system, b) someone with “bad taste,” or c) someone who doesn’t also patronize art that gives women interesting and nuanced portrayals. I will keep watching stuff to be entertained, just as I will keep watching stuff that has interesting women in it so that my money/eyeballs are going to those things as well.
I don’t need my female characters to be strong, or good, or anything close to an ideal. I need them to be fully realized and believable as people, not just props for men. This is not a big ask. Failing this is a pretty big artistic failure.
You’re assuming everything we’ve been talking about (Nolan, etc.) is “art.” I think a lot of people would disagree. I for one see it first as entertainment. Not to say there should be lower standards for it, but c’mon guys, see the world for what it is! See movies today for what they are! They are mental candy most of the time! And you’re also, by the way, simply free to NOT WATCH THEM if they don’t live up to that “ask.” Seems like boycotting is a pretty good tactic in this situation, if it’s something you feel that strongly about. I do it with meat! It’s certainly something to consider.
I think you are assuming a distinction between art and entertainment that I think is false in the first place. And even if I did grant that there was a distinction (which there isn’t), so what? Still not a big ask, in the way that “treat people like people” shouldn’t be a goddamn “ask” at all. It’s basic competency of storytelling informed by basic humanity. What makes it even more frustrating is that writers (and screenwriters in particular) are taught about this very thing — treat your characters as real people, remember they’re all the main characters in their own story — and then only apply those lessons to male characters. It’s not that they don’t know how, it’s that women aren’t treated as real people. Which is bullshit.
I have no idea what to do with your assertion about the way the world is. I just…what? What does this even mean?
And if there were a way to tell which stories, books, movies, whatever would suddenly up and veer off into bullshit misogyny land, hell yes I would boycott them, but at the current time there is no such MPAA style system. Might be something to consider, in addition to the fact that accepting this treatment of women as a norm is in no way neutral in society. It has consequences. But lol you’re a vegetarian. High five.
Wow. Ok. Definitely did not mean for this exchange to set off a nerve, but clearly it has. Apologies.
I 100% agree with what you’re saying about screenwriters, male characters, etc., and yes, it is incredibly frustrating. It is a battle, however important, that I do not choose to fight every day, but I know that some people do, and I appreciate that and think it’s incredibly important. I know those portrayals have consequences, etc. as well. I’d just say that I don’t believe watching movies that do not pass your test for acceptable in terms of their treatment of women makes me a horrible human being. Just like being vegetarian doesn’t make me a good one.
But hey listen, thanks for making it personal with that remark at the end, and for making the one place on the internet I actually felt comfortable having conversations feel hostile! Well done there.
I’m with you, not only on TDKR but all media. I’m sick of having to put up a mental block of “To enjoy this piece of media I just have to assume I’m not going to see women contributing to the story” there is a lot of media in the world. More than a single person could ever consume in one lifetime. I’ll be fine without super hero movies in my life.
YUP. I have used up all my reserves of “just ignore it” for the foreseeable future. It’s also just…kind of frightening, really? “Character” is one of those things that gets hammered into any storyteller’s brain during their varied education. If you are a supposedly mature artist and you still cannot conceive as an entire class of people as people*, you have some problems.
*Not just women, here, obviously.
Just realized that “Treacherous Whores” is a STELLAR NAME for my heavy metal band
Interstellar itself appears to exist mainly so that McConaughey can display Important Male Feelings while Important Men Save The World. I’ve never been less excited about a space movie in my entire life. Can’t I just go back and watch Gravity three more times?
Ariadne was such a character-free prop that I spent the entirety of Inception waiting for the reveal that she was a projection of Arthur, or maybe a heretofore underheard-of mixture of Arthur with Dom’s unconscious, harnessed together on the sly by Arthur to extract building skills from Dom without also allowing him conscious access to the plans.
But no, she’s just a standard Female Helper character.
I like to call characters like Ariadne “the Exposition Stick.” If the character could easily be replaced with a stick with the word “Exposition” on it, so the other actors know that this is the direction in which they deliver exposition-heavy dialogue, then they are an Exposition Stick. Ariadne did have little moments here and there (mostly, breaking into Cobb’s brain) but overall… Exposition Stick.
http://endlessrealms.org/2013/03/writing-women-th…
Now just picturing a version of INCEPTION where Leo carries around the leg lamp from A CHRISTMAS STORY and keeps explaining to it how Inception works.
Inception almost made me have more sympathy for Christopher Nolan, because it was like, oh wait, you just can’t write. Your brother can write ok, leaving the whole woman thing out of it. You, not so much.
It was just a bunch of pretty set pieces punctuated by exposition dumps. Horrible story with a stupid premise that was chosen for it’s ability to support cool shots. All the thumbs down.
[enormous all-caps rant about how great Ariadne is redacted]
I would sincerely be interested (and maybe relieved) to be persuaded that Ariadne is great instead of someone we’re just told is great.
She folds Paris in half the second time she’s in a dream! She shows an instant understanding of and deep ability to understand dreams, and when she asks questions she takes that information in quickly and uses it to do more. She is creative and inquisitive and a quick thinker. She is utterly fearless. She is stubborn as hell and doesn’t take well to being told she can’t do something. Sometimes these things get her in trouble, but she’s very good at improvising on the fly.
I mean, I freely admit she does not get a ton of very deep characterization, but I don’t think anyone in the movie really does with the exception of Cobb. But I love Ariadne, I think she’s brilliant, and I have spent the past four years writing fanfic and meta about her to that effect.
I’m going to think about that the next time I watch it (and there will be a next time, and a next time after that, because I find the film a weirdly pleasing intersection of writerly and readerly text: something that works either as a constructed reality presented for our amusement or a reality within which we are responsible for the construction of a narrative) and consider whether that fleshes her out for me.
I certainly have to quarrel [edit: I meant NO quarrel! no quarrel! such a significant typo!] with someone who does see an identity In Ariadne rather than a toolkit necessary to move the plot forward; I just don’t quite see it myself, but maybe that’s my failing, not the film’s. It’s always instructive to have someone passionately point out where I’m wrong, whether I end up agreeing or not, so thank you!
[see edit. I left the original comment for context and I’ll leave this follow-up in case you only see this by email; I’d hate for you to only get the original unedited message and think I was picking a fight.]
I’m team let him marry the ghost. If neither of you truly believes in it, why are you so hurt that he would pretend to marry the ghost anyway? Sure it would be nice to help this woman and get her therapy but if her own friends and family aren’t accomplishing it I doubt the man she wants to marry her ghost daughter is going to be able to convince her to do it instead of this ghost wedding that some sham psychic is probably trying to take her money for. You won’t be able to BELIEVE how much she will stop calling you and you will never care that he is married to a ghost you don’t believe in.
Man, I HIGHLY doubt that would be the end of it. Isn’t the ghost going to be mad about being married to ghost bigamist? What if the ghost wants him to get a ghost-divorce?
Maybe he could offer to have a spiritual break up ceremony rather than a spiritual wedding? Either way, once whatever con artist who’d like to charge for this service gets paid for something they will find another service the ghost daughter would like performed.
I mean my real advice is to stop taking her calls? It’s been YEARS apparently, why are you still chit chatting on the phone with your dead fiancees mother who only calls to try and guilt you into the plot of an 80’s supernatural romantic comedy? But I’m a cruel person. And if you are letting a GHOST WEDDING effect your marriage YEARS later you really can’t help anyone until you help yourself.
Yeah I’d be more concerned with what this says about the dude’s own mental or emotional state. That is not an easy position to be in, but at some point you gotta draw boundaries if you want to move on.
If that involves a ghost “ceremony” (not a gd wedding NO that is not moving on), then…I mean. I guess do it? With the major caveat that you shouldn’t do it if it’s going to irrevocably mess with this dude’s head? Which…let’s be honest. Good chance of that.
I like this idea.
I actually really like the idea of a closure ceremony … where Ghost Daughter and Alive Fiance commune with a medium’s help (and the girl’s mother in the room, or something) and say their last words to each other and agree to move on and be well. I totes do not believe in ghosts, but this seems like it would be a nice “humor her as she is clearly still devastated, and also clear up any last unresolved emotions of my own” gesture.
No, he shouldn’t do it if it means that much to the wife he loves and has currently. But… “And if you are letting a GHOST WEDDING effect your marriage YEARS later you really can’t help anyone until you help yourself.” To me, this sounds like it should be pointed at the wife, not the husband.
Alternately, though, she might NOT stop calling. She might keep calling, saying that, like, her daughter still hasn’t passed on because they need to have a ghost honeymoon, or that he needs to come over for “family dinner,” or god knows what. There’s no way of knowing whether this would lay the delusion to rest or feed it.
I bet she starts emailing him a weekly honey ghost do list, you’re right.
This is how you wind up with your spouse being dragged screaming through the floor by skeletal arms to go on his ghost honeymoon
There’s also this concept, so it’s not totally out of left field: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_marriage_%28Ch…
I know I had The Ghost Bride on hold at the library at one point, I need to get it back on there.
I agree. It’s a meaningless gesture to help a lonely old woman deal with her grief.
Has no one considered the ghost fiance might be better off ghost-single? There’s lots of other ghosts I bet who were ready to commit and turned dead and I just can’t see how getting ghost married to an alive guy with a WIFE, is better.
I think the real issue is this lady is not coping, and she wants him to keep her daughter’s memory alive, but in this weird way that jumps into the life he lives now. Its incredibly sad of course, I get wanting to cement it down, but the wedding didn’t happen. Her daughter is NOT alive. you can’t throw her a wedding. What’s next? Ghost Master’s Degree? Ghost driver’s license renewal? Ghost taxes to the ghost IRS?
Now-Married-Man to Grieving-Mother: “I have to tell you about last night! Your daughter visited me. Yes! In my house. My wife was at her book club and I was all alone when I felt a *presence*. Yes, it was your daughter! She and I had a good long talk. After a couple of hours she said to tell you she is going on now, that she will not be in touch again. She just feels so good about how we worked out things between us, she wanted me to tell you she is at peace. She asked me to watch as she stepped into the next world. She waved goodbye, blew me a kiss, and reminded me to tell you what a good mom you were to her.
True confessions, I totes judge people who make a big to-do about needing to charge their phones at bars. Keeping a phone charged is not hard. Plug it in overnight. Plug it in at work. Plug it in with a car charger. Plug it in anywhere but a bar.
Yup. The author’s own phrase “enraged entitlement” sums it up perfectly. Also, like she said – if your phone is at 10%, go into triage mode. Close all apps, send an eta text, and put it in airplane mode.
IF it’s ABSOLUTELY necessary to charge your phone at someone else’s inconvenience – charge it in airplane mode. It’ll charge a lot faster.
Also: if you are at a bar, please put your phone away and try interacting with other people. Your inability to bring up amusing cat videos and funny GoT macros will not ruin the evening, I promise.
JUST GO HOME. No one is making you stay at the bar. If you can’t be there without a functioning phone, leave.
My new phone holds a charge for an unbelievably long time, but my old phone was terrible at holding a charge. I bought a backup battery and was my own charging station for 6 months and you know what? I survived.
+1000! I miss the days when I had a burner Nokia that would only need to be charged once a week. No data, no email, no caller ID. Life was so easy with only texts, calls and a really bad paddle pong game!!!
Yeah, sometimes I forget to charge my phone before I go out somewhere, but I understand that that’s my own fault and don’t expect strangers/businesses/public places to accommodate me to get it charged.
Oh, I SO agree with you. When I last worked at Starbucks, battery-guzzling smartphones were just starting to come out, so that hadn’t become too much of an issue, but we had people who were always demanding that I plug their laptops in behind the bar, because there wasn’t a convenient place for them to sit near an outlet in the lobby. They didn’t understand why I objected to having a freaking electrical cord (probably completely filthy) running through the cold beverage station. “But I need to work!” YEAH SO DO I. And funny enough, only one of us HAS to be in THIS store to do that!
Re that second Prudie letter, we were playing ‘Betrayal at House on the Hill’ last night and THAT WAS THE VERY HAUNT WE PLAYED.
oh god i am so creeped out right now
I love that I have played that game SO many times and never played the same haunt.
We actually initially got one we had played before, but it was with only 3 Omens out and the traitor was supposed to be the person who never played before, so we kept playing and a few Omens later got ‘Ghost Bride’ which WAS AWESOME and I was traitor (I was able to say “I’m coming for you, Chris!” in a very creepy voice) but I lost because the heroes found the Mystic Elevator and used it as a shortcut. My character did manage to kill my wife’s character though, which she is still mad about last I checked.
That game is THE BEST and I was really happy that the only time we played it nobody got ‘turned’ but we were instead fighting evil doppelgangers of ourselves.
Good times.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I support marriage equality but not for ghosts.
Where will it end?
(This poor woman is grieving deeply, and clearly not dealing well, and this won’t help her at all. Therapy will help her, not some weird creepy ghost marriage)
I don’t know – maybe alongside some kind, thoughtful therapy, a sort of symbolic ceremony might be really helpful. I’m thinking along the lines of “write down your worries on paper and then burn them.” I think it would reeeeally depend on her grasp of reality and her understanding that it’s a symbolic action rather than a real act.
Yeah, I’m pro-ghost wedding, but I like this idea a lot. Like, maybe he can agree to do it, but also dictate what the ceremony will entail and have it be one of closure rather than true, er, wedding?
Yeah! With cake, though! For therapeutic purposes, obvs.
Cake makes everything better, even Ghost Weddings.
Now-Married-Man to Grieving-Mother: “I have to tell you about last night! Your daughter visited me. Yes! In my house. My wife was at her book club and I was all alone when I felt a *presence*. Yes, it was your daughter! She and I had a good long talk. After a couple of hours she said to tell you she is going on now, that she will not be in touch again. She just feels so good about how we worked out things between us, she wanted me to tell you she is at peace. She asked me to watch as she stepped into the next world. She waved goodbye, blew me a kiss, and reminded me to tell you what a good mom you were to her.
Gosh, I sure am sorry you didn’t enjoy the consequences of your actions, dude who was warned like NINETEEN TIMES, including MOMENTS BEFORE taking the car out, that he was driving in an area that was notoriously tough on speeders and who nevertheless made the decision to drive FORTY MILES PER HOUR OVER THE SPEED LIMIT.
thanks for linking that Jenny Lewis review. i got to start my morning with Portions for Foxes which cannot be beat.
Curses on that Jalopnik writer, giving a bad name to those of us who break speeding laws carefully and in a responsible manner (i.e. on quiet country roads, in good weather/lighting conditions, and with a quality radar detector carefully placed on the dashboard). That said, the most I’ve ever gone is thirty over (85 in a 55). There is no reason to drive a non-emergency vehicle faster than 40mph within city limits.
Not to defend him too much, but he was on a country road in good weather.
Hm. Maybe I should read the article! And not speed in Virginia. Or listen to the locals.
Although given how windy a lot of VA country roads are, 90 is a dangerously irresponsible speed. There’s just not enough time to react to unexpected situations hiding around blind curves. Good weather or not, that speed is neither reasonable nor prudent.
so… what was your reason for driving 30 over?
I wanted to.
An excellent reason.
As, presumably, did DudeMan up there.
Vintage Scooby doo is the best parenting strategy.
The most recent series was one of the better iterations I’ve seen as well – actual character progression! But… there will always be a soft spot in my heart for the originals.
I loved the first season but had to stop watching the second season 2/3 of the way through when it became impossible to pretend there was going to be a guy in a mask at the end of the nabiru arc
I kind of liked that whole angle. It worked for me as part of the whole riffing on the original series. Like each episode they set up this outrageous thing that looks to no way be a person in a mask (throwing around cars, flying, etc.) then each thing is *still* just a person in a mask. It was either going to be the best ever de-masking, or more than a little crazy. I think I would have been OK with either take.
I think I sat up off the couch when I heard them directly mention Zecharia Sitchin… like, did they really go there? And then they kind of did, or at least steered halfway past there and hung a right at Cthulu. It did provoke some interesting conversations with the little ones, I wish I had written them down.
IMPORTANT TO MENTION: the episode set in Chinatown has like three scenes that get “mysteriously” fast-forwarded through in our home.
It’s a one-stop-shop for introducing your child to the comedic genius of Phyllis Diller, Tim Conway and Jonathan Winters (Sonny and Cher, too).
My younger brother has been mad for motorcycles since he was a toddling thing, and now at 28, he’s on number four? five? Dude has been popped for going 100 on the freeway and not gone to jail, but OOOOHHH how I revel in the consequences he faces like only an older sister can. I mean, I honestly worried when he hit a deer while doing the speed limit and went to the ER, but egregious speeding on public roads? COME ON NOW, you deserve what you get. I just paid a ticket for 37 in a 25 (I was decelerating but the camera never says that), and I paid without bitching because I should have known better. People (okay, men) who get pouty and put out about speeding tickets are balm to my misandrist soul.
I am completely terrified of motorcycles because I lose a car to some textdriving idiot on a roughly annual basis and I’m sure any one of those woulda splattered me without a couple tons of intervening metal, how crazy do you have to be to drive a motorcycle recklessly and how lucky do you have to be for that to end with only a heap of traffic tickets?
A ghost wedding. A GHOST WEDDING. Lady, your daughter didn’t pass away, she fled.
Oh my god, that ghost wedding letter made me laugh a lot. Although I am also on team just have the fucking ghost wedding. It’s not like it’s real or legally binding, calm down fiancee.
Well maybe not legally binding in her present jurisdiction…
I remember reading somewhere that Angelina Jolie was supposed to be in the Illusionist, but had to back out for scheduling reasons. I found it very hard to believe that Jessica Biel grew up with Edward Norton’s character when there was visibly more than a decade’s difference in their ages. Plus, while she’s beautiful, she’s a wooden actress. I enjoyed the film, but imagine how much better it would be with an actress that has some charisma.
I’m of two minds about the ghost wedding. On the one hand, if you don’t believe it is a real thing, then it is a harmless thing to do to placate someone who is distressed. On the other hand, I feel it can be really disrespectful to participate in rituals you don’t believe in (obviously this depends to some extent on the ritual and on who invited you). Obviously the mother is a little off, since she a) believes that it is possible to marry someone’s ghost and b) thinks it is okay to ask a married man to marry her ghost daughter. Is that not bigamy? Or does it not count because once they’re “married” the daughter will move on and leave the husband free and clear?
On a third hand, there’s a Pascal’s Wager element – what if it really IS possible to marry a ghost and now you have two wives and the ghost wife haunts the shit out of the living wife? (though prob she would have done that by now)
Is that not bigamy?
RIGHT? If she really wants her daughter to be freed from unfinished business, she’d be asking for a gentle and respectful ghost break-up, not a ghost wedding. This sounds like a (conscious or unconscious) attempt to validate her continued attempts at interaction with her now-absent daughter by involving other, still-living people in them. It’s very sad, but it doesn’t sound like a healthy thing to encourage.
I’m not trying to sound like a hardass or anything, but I wasn’t scared. I just wanted to get the three days I had been sentenced to over with.
Don’t worry, you don’t.
Yeah, BREAKING NEWS: super-privileged white guy isn’t scared of jail!
Insert the Neil DeGrasse Tyson badass image of your choosing here.
Oooooooooh. He’s so tough.
Also:
To answer your inevitable questions right away, I didn’t get raped (that happens in prison more than jail) I didn’t get my ass kicked (that does happen in jail but it didn’t happen to me) and I wasn’t forced to participate in “inmate fight club” for the sick pleasure of the guards.
Fuck you, you fucking fuck.
This kind of cavalier attitude toward prisoner abuse is especially sickening to me right now, because I just learned about the death of Darren Rainey, an inmate in Florida who was basically tortured to death by guards.
ETA: Probably should warn that the story I linked to is really disturbing to read.
On a side note, can I just say how great it was recently that John Oliver dedicated a portion of his US Prison segment to calling out the casual use of prison rape jokes? Because seriously, how did this kind of humor become a thing? (“John Oliver: Not a Terrible White Guy (I’m Pretty Sure)!”)
Agreed, can we put him back in for a few extra months?
To be fair, some of the women don’t come off so hot either. I’m thinking of the person who apparently delights in thought of embarrassing her in-laws over their sex lives. Clearly, that’s not as bad as making out with random strangers while still married, but… still pretty creepy.
Yeah, no, as soon as you think to yourself “FINALLY MY CHANCE TO SHOW YOU THAT YOU’RE NOT PERFECT AFTERALL” drop everything and walk away. Especially, but not limited to, trying to shame someone about their sex life.
I just saw Jenny Lewis in concert on Monday night and HOO BOY she knocked my socks off.
I’ve been listening to the new Jenny Lewis album on repeat constantlyyyyy. Ugh it’s so good. (also she has a lot of amazing songs about awkward threesomes doesn’t she?)
I have seen The Illusionist at least three times and enjoyed it every time and only saw The Prestige once and was deeply bored and annoyed by it. *rolls by flipping Christopher Nolan the bird*
I just read “The Night Circus” and liked it quite a bit, and the whole time I was thinking, you know, I need to re-watch “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige.” Weekend plans!
The deceased bride is not a real ghost, but an eidolon masquerading as your dead fiancee. Do not engage in spiritual marriage, your soul will be committed to the nightlands for eternity.
YES. John Oliver won my heart forever with that. Why anybody thinks casually joking about prison rape is okay baffles and enrages me.
Shall we talk about successful self-improvement projects?
Like, after law school I went to a meditation retreat, and it was super hard but also a HUGE growth experience for me, and I’m forever glad I did it.
Also, somehow I used to be messy, but after effort throughout my 20’s, I’m now pretty clean and very happy about it.
HOW DID YOU STOP BEING MESSY
Hahaha ummm…. Lots of little things added up! I’m sure the overall factor was WANTING to be clean.
1) I lived in a very small place with a pretty tidy person, where everything had to be in its spot or we would be immediately drowned in a sea of stuff.
2) I then moved into a bigger place that I love and have lived in for a while, with a variety of house-mates. Being a bit of a den-mother has helped me be more tidy, because I feel like the dam that holds back the chaos.
3) I have implemented a few ‘tricks’:
a) If it takes less than one minute, do it right away. You notice a pair of pants on the floor? Put them away. Even if there are 10 more pairs of pants on the floor. Putting 1 pair away is betting than putting none away. Repeat. The overall mess becomes less daunting, and the habit becomes self-perpetuating.
b) Have “places” for common messes that help facilitate their cleanup. Like, I have a bookshelf in our room near the door, and I put all the things that should go downstairs on it, and then it’s easier to remember to take them downstairs. When my boyfriend and I moved bedrooms, I insisted on the bookshelf, even though he thought it was a dumb location for books.
c) I try (but don’t always succeed) to put things in the right place the first time. Laundry in the hamper, etc. The other half of that equation is to put the right places in the right places. Where do your clothes always end up? Put the hamper there. Set yourself up for success! Do you always have a mess of mail on the kitchen table? Put a pretty bowl for mail on the kitchen table. Swim with the river, not against it.
d) I roll with when I feel cleany. I feel cleany in the morning, so I clean then. I NEVER feel like cleaning up at night, so I don’t then.
4) My boyfriend would laugh in my face, but I make a concerted effort to have less stuff. I like to get rid of stuff pretty quickly, or find a place it belongs. I try not to let things just swim around in the house for my than 2 weeks without PUTTING them somewhere (preferably the recycling or the donation bin). I have donated Christmas presents before they have made it in the front door.
Mostly I just kind of fell in love with my space and the feeling I got when it was clean/tidy, and now I’m motivated to get it that way. I will confess, I have a cleaning lady (but not a tidying lady) in from time to time, because my roommates are lovable monsters and I have a sometimes very high-pressure job and a busy life. I have income, and live cheaply because of roommates, and just consider it kind of the price of my life. Also, our house is super big, and I hate vacuuming.
I'm going to think about that the next time I watch it (and there will be a next time, and a next time after that, because I find the film a weirdly pleasing intersection of writerly and readerly text: something that works either as a constructed reality presented for our amusement or a reality within which we are responsible for the construction of a narrative) and consider whether that fleshes her out for me.
I certainly have to quarrel [edit: I meant NO quarrel! no quarrel! such a significant typo!] with someone who does see an identity In Ariadne rather than a toolkit necessary to move the plot forward; I just don't quite see it myself, but maybe that's my failing, not the film's. It's always instructive to have someone passionately point out where I'm wrong, whether I end up agreeing or not, so thank you!
[see edit. I left the original comment for context and I'll leave this follow-up in case you only see this by email; I'd hate for you to only get the original unedited message and think I was picking a fight.]
There’s a Kenneth MacMillan ballet about the Mayerling incident, and it involves great deal of sexy gyrating with pistols AND/OR SKULLS, totally casual.
SHUT THE FRONT DOOR
I didn’t read anything else in this post yet because my eye caught the picture of Rudolf and Mary Vetsera. THE MAYERLING INCIDENT IS MY FAVORITE THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD.
The Prestige bugged me. If you were a magician, dealing in illusions, and you found a way to make a transporter copy of yourself, would you treat it nicely, have it pop up in the other box, (as an illusion), and live in peace with your doppelganger? Versus the 50% chance of murder, 50% chance of suicide life the character lives under for the rest of his life. Insane.