An interview with Claudia Rankine:
On Thursday morning, I spoke on the phone with the poet Claudia Rankine, who was visiting St. Louis and Ferguson, about Hughes’s poem, and about Rankine’s new book, “Citizen: An American Lyric,” which will be published in October by Graywolf Press. “Citizen” opens with a series of vignettes, written in the second person, that recount persistent, everyday acts of racism of a kind that accumulate until they become a poisonous scourge: being skipped in line at the pharmacy by a white man, because he has failed to notice you in front of him; being told approvingly, as a schoolchild, that your features are like those of a white person; being furiously accosted by a trauma therapist who does not believe that the patient she is expecting could look like you.
If you are a writer of color and want to sink your teeth into writing a piece on The Negro Motorist Green Book, I sure would like to hear from you (nicole at the toast dot net.) I have earmarked one of our donations for this purpose and I will hide it from all other freelancers until I get the right pitch.
We can talk about Doctor Who on Wednesday. Not before. We can talk about the VMAs now, however. And if, by some chance, you want to talk about Don’t Legalize It: Best Buds, the newest straight-to-DVD Trailer Park Boys movie which I watched last night and is amazing, I’m here for that too.
All I ever want to read are things about old SNL actors, tbqh:
It was a crystallizing moment for Chevy, an instant when he realized that everything was going to change. It was also, according to those who worked with him, one of the few times Chevy Chase ever ran from stardom. More than most people who become famous very fast, Chevy walked into fame with his eyes open, expecting it, taking it as his due, seldom pausing to wonder why it was happening to him. Which is not the same as saying he took fame in stride.
I know he’s a colossal dick but he was really sexy in the 1970s.
All about Lisa Hanawalt’s new show on Netflix. HORSES:
Picture fashion godhead Anna Wintour riding confidently astride an ostrich’s bare back. If it’s difficult to imagine, there’s a workaround: Lisa Hanawalt has already breathed life into this very idea in her unhinged book, My Dumb Dirty Eyes. Many aspects of the artist’s singular style can be summarized in this one image–a preoccupation with wildlife, the subversion of celebrity, and bizarre visual combinations with their own internal logic. It’s no coincidence that these themes also describe Netflix’s first animated series, BoJack Horseman, since Hanawalt designed its characters as well.
“She took off his shirt, his skin glistening in the sun like a glazed doughnut. The glaze part, not the doughnut part.”
I always got hives from that scene in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book where she had to diagram sentences to get her teacher’s license, and this is the SAME GODDAMN FEELING.
This ran on Friday, don’t miss it.
I know we already talked about “More Adventurous” but it was also the album I was listening to when I started dating my husband (along with, weirdly, “Boys and Girls in America” by The Hold Steady) so I am attached to it and this piece is really good.
Check out the SACK on this motherfucker, renting this place.
oh god i love breakfast sandwiches so much look at all these breakfast sandwiches
Please, let’s talk about the Hold Steady. They’re my favorite band and I think BAGIA might actually be the perfect album.
Also, I could only watch about 15 minutes of the VMAs before I got a headache and played Arkham City instead. The thought I keep coming back to is that Nicki Minaj can rock the high-waisted Poison Ivy look. (This could have something to do with my current Arkham City fixation. But probably not.)
I love the Hold Steady, but I’d vote for Stay Positive over BAGIA. Mostly because Joke About Jamaica is such a wonderful song.
Yeah, while I think BAGIA’s probably their BEST album, Stay Positive is my favorite. The title track helped me work through some pretty dark times, as songs do.
I also love Separation Sunday and Almost Killed Me. Spinners is good and has some fantastic tracks but it’s nowhere near their heights, and I could take or leave most of Heaven Is Whenever.
YAY ‘SPINNERS’!
I overidentify with Separation Sunday, especially for someone who was pretty much well-behaved throughout high school. I somehow still haven’t gotten Spinners yet, probably because Heaven Is Whenever was such a letdown.
Spinners isn’t perfect, but it has a few songs that belong in the Best of Hold Steady canon. “On with the Business” has some of the best lyrics Craig Finn has written since BAGIA.
I too love the Hold Steady! Stay Positive and BAGIA are excellent albums, but my favorite is Separation Sunday. I was recently able to answer a bar trivia question about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse thanks to the lyrics of “Cattle and the Creeping Things”.
I got drunk as a lord Saturday night and walked home singing the chorus from “Killer Parties.”
That is all.
They are my favorite band, Boys and Girls in America is my favorite album, the vinyl record is framed and hanging like 4 feet away from me. That is all, I love it forever, and I love you all forever too.
BAGIA forever!!! EXCEPT FOR “CHILL OUT TENT.” I refuse to listen to that song.
“It was kinda sexy / but it was kinda creepy”
I have a friend who I communicate with using about 30% Hold Steady lyrics. In all caps.
Joke About Jamaica isn’t a song. It is my life, circa age 24.
Love you, Hold Steady.
I legit have “Damn right I’ll rise again” tattooed on my lower back, nbd.
I love Ta-Nehisi Coates’ ability to explain things so perfectly and succinctly that there is just NO ROOM for butting in with counterpoints.
I also loved the More Adventurous essay. I only listened to it last week (?!) and it is so wonderful. I spent too much time in high school thinking I only liked male-fronted bands.
TNC was also one of the first people I’ve read who simply said “stop arguing for your humanity,” which was a huge revelation for me. Refusing to engage in arguments that have ridiculous and stupid premises was something I hadn’t really considered as a possible course of action.
I’m trying to figure out how to read that quote — was he saying “stop arguing, for the sake of your humanity” or “stop arguing in defense of your humanity, there’s no point”? Sometimes I over-read things…
“stop arguing in defense of your humanity, you shouldn’t have to argue about it and if you are doing it with someone, they are an idiot” is my general understanding.
Ah okay, thank you! So it’s more like advice for a friend than a rebuttal to an opponent.
I spent the better (?) part of junior high English classes diagramming sentences, or as my teacher called it, parsing. It sucked.
However, I’ve since taken up two new languages and found the stuff I learned suuuuuuuuuper useful in understanding new grammar structures. So, like, yeah, y’all
I hated doing it when I was younger, but now I think they’re kind of amazing. All those discreet words, forming clauses, serving very discreet and specific functions. It’s like how the periodic table takes all of the bits of the universe and lays them out in rows and columns, like God’s submission to Things Organized Neatly.
ngl we had to learn it in elementary school and I unreservedly ADORED IT. That is the type of nerd that I am.
I know Chevy Chase is an asshole, but I actually dislike him because he’s not funny, and yet has been very successful in professional funniness. For example, Christmas Vacation: terrible movie, weirdly inflated reputation due in part to its association with Chase.
i didn’t think there were people who disliked christmas vacation in the world
i would like to study you and your humour feelings, for science
I myself am not a fan of that movie, but as a veteran of 25 Italian family Christmases I do find myself saying “Hallelujah, holy shit! Where’s the Tylenol?” at least once per year.
I agree. That movie is almost aggressively unfunny.
I think I’ve only ever liked Chevy Chase in “The Three Amigos,” which may have been due to proximity to Steve Martin, and “Community,” though I suspect he didn’t have to stretch much as an actor for that role.
Yeah, I love Community too, and he had some good eps in season one, but he was never my favorite part.
“Pierce! Those flu vaccines are for the day care center!”
“I will be A LIVING GOD!”
–Chevy Chase’s last good moment on “Community”
Lol, thank you for reminding me of that exchange. My favorite of his scenes was when he fashioned a canoe to go back to the ship in the parking lot, and he gives Jeff that speech about not letting being a failure stop him.
I think I’ve only ever liked Chevy Chase in “The Three Amigos,” which may have been due to proximity to Steve Martin
Hey now. Don’t sell Martin short.
Dad joke!
Martin Short as half of the first men’s synchronized swimming team in that SNL sketch will forever define him in my mind.
“I’m not a very strong swimmer.”
Also my fave not-The-Simpsons Harry Shearer moment.
BUT WHAT OF “THIS IS SPINAL TAP”?
We’re all out of Martin Tall, sorry.
I would travel all the way to Santo Poco to tell you I love that pun.
Oh god I’ve my whole life thinking Chase and Martin were the same person.
One of the most salient points in the oral history of SNL is that Chevy Chase is the emperor of the shitbirds.
That… is a great insult. I am going to use that an awful lot.
His type of humor never appealed to me either. Fletch is the worst.
Yeah, the only reason he works in Caddyshack is because he’s playing a sleazy shitbag, and everyone else (esp. Bill Murray) is so frickin’ awesome.
What about Spies Like Us?
also, gonna go out on a limb here and guess that a lot of these “what about black on black crime” people would be the first to scream BLOODY MURDER at the first hint of the gubmint encroachin’ on their liberty to [do whatever.] It’s not that they don’t understand that there are different standards for how we treat crimes that are, at their root, abuses of power (i.e., the state’s monopoly on the use of force), it’s that they think that those standards only apply to crimes (“crimes”) committed by the government against them.
In conclusion, may this week be filled with unicorns, rainbows, and the deafening silence of morons from sea to shining sea, amen.
I like that blessing
amen.
I wonder what would happen if Beyonce went to Ferguson.
We had a mini Toast meetup yesterday in Queens and it was the best, and we will definitely be doing more of those if anyone is interested in the future! Also they had a grapefruit beer that is delicious, beer-snobs be damned.
Ok back to Ferguson and my rage at the NY Times falling for calling him “no angel” and all that bullshit.
Shit, that was the Times? (I just saw the excerpt posted out of context, and for reference, it’s here: https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/503886765… ) What the fuck, NYT? That paragraph almost reads as a parody of the old racist trick of smearing black people murdered by white people. I mean, they actually justified the “no angel” thing by noting that “He had taken to rapping in recent months.” And if you look at the context, there is literally no way to read it as anything other than a presumed character defect.
wtf wtf wtf I JUST read Roxane Gay’s “A Tale of Two Profiles” this morning on the train which is horrifically relevant.
Everything about that is awful and racist, but the rapping thing was the most absurd to me too. “He rapped, therefore he was a troubled no good teen.” SERIOUSLY?!
Also literally every single detail in this article is normal stuff that 95% of teenagers do. I mean, “no angel,” whatever, neither is anyone else, FFS. Every single kid in America talks back to their parents and thinks that their friends understand them better than their family. That is normal. That is what teenagers do. WTF.
Bah! I got back later from NJ than anticipated. I will be at the next one!
The meet up was indeed the best and the NYT is in need of a cleansing fire. What the actual fuck.
Woman we were talking to about weightlifting on the train after the meet-up: Who are you?
Genevievenumba4? Deadlifts are the best and you are all lucky I managed to restrain myself from gibbering girlishly about them until we were on the train. DEADLIFTS.
(I’m deadlifting tonight so…excited)
AHH! I tried to friend you on facebook after but I didn’t want to add the wrong persons name! I will definitely be exploring the gyms in my neighborhood in the hopes that one day I’ll be stronger than all the men in the land!
YOU WILL. Amazonia is a glorious place.
Yay, I could only remember people’s names in relation to where they were sitting which was not helpful once we left. I was sad I had to get off the train so soon because I had so many deadlift questions. Mainly what non-free weight things can I do to build up to them because I will definitely injure myself if I try them on my own at this at this stage (I once hurt my back reaching for something at my desk and injured a nerve standing up funny). Please gibber your amazonian knowledge at me!
Ooooh. Let me ask my guy at the gym, because I don’t want to give bad advice in this area. I think absent pre-existing injury most people do start with the main lifts (they just start light and work their way up), but that is with the major caveat that I’m kind of guessing. Do I have your email? I can email you what he tells me, and that might be a decent starting off point. (He’s a powerlifter who also does Crossfit, I believe, but for like…a long time, and also he’s generally just great. I am super paranoid about injuries (having realized I have little to no natural self-preservation instinct), and I was happy to discover that he is too.)
Thanks, there don’t seem to be any helpful people at my gym so that’d be great! My gmail is: 42robots.
Awww, I wish I’d realized! I’ve been in Queens all week but I’m going back to the Netherlands today.
WTELF. They actually wrote that?! Excuse me while I take my visibly pulsing blood vessel outside and scream at the heavens.
That garbage article itself is hard enough to get over, but they also published it today, the day Michael Brown’s parents are burying their son. Disrespectful as fuck NYT.
Seriously.
http://journolist.tumblr.com/post/95739282425/whe… just going to leave this here
Toasties! I have been on a love-island w my bf celebrating the end of 2 yrs long distance (!!!) but HELLO! Nice to see you!
I sent out postcards to some folks from Palm Springs, I hope you received them!
The weather in DC has been near perfection and it is freaky and weird but I WILL TAKE IT, I WILL WELCOME MYSELF HOME.
I have inarticulate thoughts about people not taking you seriously professionally even with all your fancy degrees and a badass resume and backing from prestigious institutions –>>> #killallmen #ANDSOMEWOMEN #nothingValidatesYouButYOU #MaymyFUTUREbeScatteredwTheirBONES
The relatively humidity-free DC summer has been wonderful, but I’m having a serious case of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Will we get a freak hurricane? Blazing hot October? WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN!
We’re going to get derecho after blizzard after derecho. The city will be leveled by next summer, when the nation’s capital will be moved to more favorable ground – the middle of Death Valley.
At that point, Death Valley will be a balmy but manageable 85 degrees year round. Thanks climate change!
I am taking your hashtags with me into my job interview later today. Bless. (And welcome back!)
Yes! I bet you rocked it! and thank you!
I LOVE BEING JOHN MALKOVITCH SO MUCH, I LOVE THAT SOMEONE THOUGHT IT UP AND IT EXISTS
WHAT A GLORIOUS PIECE OF MISANDRY
I don’t know how to feel about John Malkovitch as a person because he comes across as a dick maybe? (someone prove me wrong) but I so appreciate that he was like “yeah totally I’m just going balls to the wall in it okay?”
I wonder what would have happened if he had said no. Would they have re-titled the movie with a different actor? Or would Charlie Kaufman have drawn some sort of line in the sand, like, “It’s Malkovich or no one!”
I feel like I heard somewhere that another option would have been Being Gary Senise but I might be making this up, and if so, why am I making that up??
Dreaming of this scenario right now tbh
I feel like John Malkovitch really is the best option, though. The movie wouldn’t have worked as well as it did without someone with as insufferably pretentious a public persona.
I saw him on the DreamWorks panel at Comic-Con and he was annoying as fuck. Pretentious and boring. Nasty combo. I have no doubts that he’s a fearless actor, but god, he seems so full of himself it’s seriously off-putting.
I truly love that movie, it’s one of the funniest and weirdest things I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
Proposed discussion question: is the fate of Craig (John Cusack’s character) at the end of the movie too harsh, or just deserts? I come down on the side of “too harsh,” because goodness gracious, I can hardly imagine a more horrifying fate. But I am a Man, so I may be too sympathetic to Craig. He’s definitely a slimeball, I just don’t think anyone deserves to be trapped in that situation. What say you, Toasties?
Despite Craig being A Man, I also think it’s a really harsh fate! But I end up laughing a little at it too, am I evil? That whole movie is so darkly absurd that I can’t take anything that happens too seriously
All my sympathy is reserved for Emily, who is going to get bodyjacked by Charlie Sheen et al in forty years.
When I was but a wee anglophile teen, I dreamed of living in London. This was cured by visiting and discovering low ceilings, a general feeling of grime, and that your mucus turns black over the course of the day, but if that hadn’t done it, I think seeing that you pay like $900 a month for a crawl space might’ve.
oh my god my knees get weak and and my diaphragm trembles when I think about Chevy Chase, he is so loathly. Every time I walk past a Chevy Chase Bank or see Chevy Chase, Maryland, on a map or hear the traditional English Ballad of Chevy Chase I get a little hot stab of hatred in my core as it were someone pouring molten lead into my vitals.
I also unfairly judge the city in Maryland. If they didn’t want my judgment, they should have *done something to stop him.*
Not unfair at all. I grew up there. The only good thing to be said about it is that it’s marginally less soul-destroying than the neighboring town of Bethesda, Maryland.
Has anyone else read this article in Texas Monthly about a public information officer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who was required to watch every state execution as part of her job? It’s… harrowing, to say the least. What struck me is that after witnessing 278 executions, including those of inmates she believed could have been reformed, she’s still in favour of the death penalty.
Reading it now. Oooof.
The quality of the journalism coming out of the Texas Monthly on a regular basis is amazing. Going right over to read this, thanks for the tip.
Their Murders At The Lake story is nothing short of astounding. Worth the [long] read if you haven’t.
I liked them on facebook, despite loathing almost everything about Texas. Skip Hollandsworth is a national treasure.
As a pregnant woman, is there anything better than those breakfast sandwiches?! ALL THE PROTEIN
I think there’s an argument to be made that breakfast sandwiches are vital to the American way of life.
I say huzzah to breakfast sandwiches for me and my fetus. Huzzah!
One of my favourite things in fanfiction – because that is my jam – is when people go out of their way to point out someone’s skin tone or other racially distinguishable features. His eyes looked like eyes because they were eye-shaped, not almonds. Oh, god, so many almond-shaped eyes. SO MANY. Yes, thank you for reminding me that her/his eyes are almond-shaped, how else would I know if you didn’t keep saying it in every third line?
White women tend to be desrcibed as having creamy skin. But I would love a description of her exotic, mashed potato skin because that sounds delicious.
I don’t really read fanfiction, but sometimes I read poorly-written-but-guilty-pleasure-y murder mystery novels and the amount of times black people’s skin is referred to as the colour of “hot cocoa” or “good, strong wood” makes me laugh/sigh every time
Mmmmmmm mashed potato skin…
A snack right there on your dermis! So tasty, so handy.
I also like it when people try to aggressively go in the other direction and use commonly unused descriptors. I read a book where the person’s eyes were described as being OBLONG several times and I kept thinking “you tried your best not to say almond shaped, didn’t you”.
Also there’s so many things skin could be like! Hideous things that are still somewhat accurate! Like cheap oatmeal! Or various meat products! “Her skin had the color and texture of refrigerated honeycomb beef tripe you often see at the Kroger and poke at gently because it’s fascinating but like you aren’t sure what to do with it and probably won’t buy or eat it”.
You know, the only-slightly-varied description of the Wakefield twins at the beginning of every Sweet Valley High book always described their eyes as almond-shaped. For the longest time this confused me–like, I couldn’t picture what an eye looked like if it was shaped like a literal almond.
Well, inspired by this post, I did a quick Google and I found this delightful eye to almond comparison: http://clairelight.typepad.com/seelight/2006/09/a…
That’s great! “Almond-shaped eyes” always confused me as a descriptor of Asian people because I basically cut my teeth on Sweet Valley High and forever associate them with bratty blonde girls who share a Fiat.
Same here. I read a lot of romance novels and “almond-shaped eyes” is a pretty common descriptor for white women, although lately I’ve seen “tip-tilted” taking over for it. At least I think that’s what tip-tilted is supposed to mean? I hate it, because it makes no sense.
Here is a perfect article superimposing pictures of almonds on white people’s eyes vs. East Asian people’s eyes AND IT IS WHITE PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALMOND SHAPED EYES AND EVERY TERRIBLE BOOK DESCRIPTION THAT SAYS OR TRIES TO IMPLY OTHERWISE IS LYING TO YOU.
http://clairelight.typepad.com/seelight/2006/09/a…
GAZE UPON THE GLORY
I literally cackled with glee when I found this because ‘almond-shaped eyes’ is SUCH A STEREOTYPICAL DESCRIPTOR and now it has been EXPOSED for the lazy lie that it is.
oh Sara Davis posted the link right before me and I didn’t see it, apologies for the repeat (but also I think it’s worth mentioning twice)
I related the content of that link to my Chinese roommate, and she says that in China “almond-shaped eyes” is used for wide eyes. Y’know, like the eye shape that white people stereotypically have. So at least one culture has its shit together where food-eye-descriptors are concerned.
I once read a fanfic with so much attention to eyes -colour, movement, characterization- it could’ve been a drinking game (eg: “green eyes met Nestle-chocolate”).
I have always hated the term “olive skinned.” Like, sickly green? Red? Black?
Since English is not my first language, I’ve been puzzled by this term for a very long time. I kept imagining either black or sickly green but both of those seemed really unlikely. It has no resemblance to actual olives which was very disappointing as I started to understand the term for real.
I think it REALLY comes from attempting to describe the skin tone of people from countries in which olives are grown (Italy, Greece, Spain, Turkey, Lebanon, etc). Which is silly. It’d be like describing Midwesterners–all Midwesterners–as being “corn skinned.”
Official petition to have myself described as “moonshine-skinned” by all who approach me. It works, my skin is so pale as to be translucent, and I’m from TN and apparently moonshine is a thing we’re doing now for tourists.
I’ve been interpreting “olive skinned” as having kind of a gold-ish or otherwise more yellow colored tint to it rather than a red or pinkish tint.
Is it maybe the colour of the olive tree?
I am white. My white parents told me I have olive skin. My mother realized early that dressing me in little-girl-pink made me look a bit ill, slightly green. As an adult I don’t understand the term, but can attest that pastel pink washes out the pink tones in my skin and makes a green shade more prominent. Like a green olive. And people ask if I feel OK and suggest I sit down. I suspect Choctaw heritage my racist parents would never mention or admit to. It’s so common in the region where my ancestors lived, the ones I know about.
More evidence that we might be the same person, though my “olive” or “cream” has Armenian and Mohawk in it. How the hell can it be olive and cream at the same time? Maybe I’m striped, like a rugby shirt.
I prefer to picture you as a lovely plaid.
“Person of Colors”
That is interesting! My mom described my (half-Japanese, half-white) son as having “olive skin” so no pink for him I guess.
I depends on the varieties within “white”. My siblings do not have my olive skin and wear pink very well. (We have plenty of other evidence for sharing the same two parents.) It seems the same genetic mix gave one of them less “olive” and the other more “brown”. So their pinks don’t wash out. It makes me tired, thinking about it.
But I am certain your son is very good looking and wears whatever he pleases with aplomb.
I have skin that is always described as olive and as a little girl (and still now) the word has always made me picture myself as kind of green.
I started a historical romance set during the Gold Rush with a Chinese hero and a French-American heroine, and went out of my way to have him describe her eyes as “wide and exotic.” Why not, really.
Oh, please please finish that. It sounds amazing and I want to spend tomorrow home sick reading it.
Uh, I have 11 chapters I could send you, but for some reason I got stuck on the first sex scene, so it’s kind of a tease? But seriously, I’d be happy to send it to ya.
I would love that!! faye dot c dot willard at gmail.com
I feel like the prevalence of almond-shaped eyes in fanfic comes from the generation of writers who grew up reading the Baby-Sitter’s Club books, in which Claudia was described as having “almond-shaped eyes” in just about every Chapter Two.
I really appreciated the two years I spent in Catholic school, but especially their emphasis on old school grammar instruction, and I had an extra year of foreign language. It prepared me for an argument with my 10th grade English teacher about the difference between alliteration and assonance, which I won, because I was an insufferably pedantic little show-off. But I still can’t diagram a sentence, and looking at them raises the fresh prickles of anxiety that always accompany this time of year, no matter how far removed I am from mandatory school attendance. I’m 32! No one can make me go to school! Stop feeling these feelings, body!
Oh god oh god oh god all the breakfast sandwiches. Alllll of them. In me. Now.
A compendiary of lesser-known breakfast sandwiches.
Sheetz schmuffins
Taylor ham and cheese
The delicious ball of grease you inhaled with your eyes closed at 4 AM at the horse show, may Buffy bless the hosts and their griddle
That time you overcooked the Hollandaise and used it as a spread
Stomping Ground’s ham, poached egg, and gruyere on a croissant
The deconstructed backpacking sandwich: bagel, meat stick, cheese hunk, boiled egg on a table of rock as the sun rises in front of you
-the “cheese toast” at my local bagel place, which consists of “extra sharp cheddar cheese, mayo, dijon mustard, bacon, tomato, a pinch of black pepper.” Put that sucker on a hot-out-of-the-oven egg bagel and nothing can touch it in this world or the next.
-the american-cheese-and-egg-on-english-muffin griddle-pressed sammiches sold at the cafe at my college’s gym. The taste of my college years.
Scrambled egg, American cheese & tomato on toasted whole wheat sandwich bread. Ideally wolfed down in 3 bites before it has the chance to get cold or soggy.
Also nominating the fried chicken biscuit — i.e., the best hangover cure I know.
TAYLOR HAAAAM! Are you from New Jersey? Are you empowered to ship it to Californians? Will it increase your sympathy for me if I tell you I felt the recent earthquake despite not being brained by falling masonry? Just wondering, not like I love the stuff and haven’t tasted it in pert near 20 years or nothin… PS-If I didn’t believe your username before (and I totally did) I am evangelical about it now. Amazed.
Random obligatory surf by comment for mentioning The Hold Steady.
Also:
8. His body had the color and shape of raw ground beef.
15. Her beauty was indescribable, which means she’s white.
OK…basically all of them (because my wife reads reads me all the terrible skin descriptions…and the terribleness in general).
Oh, man, I really enjoy diagramming sentences. It’s weirdly fun.
I DO TOO! I can’t believe it is no longer a part of normal curriculum … granted I went to private school my entire life, but my best friend/roommate was in grad school and looked up at me one day from the couch and asked me what a preposition was. I almost fell over.
If y’all haven’t read this piece about #ferguson, you should. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Body_In…
How do I focus on getting my work done (and I NEED TO get this article written by Friday, dammit) when there is so much racism in this country? And most white people don’t believe it exists? http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/226899/more-white… It is so upsetting I find I can’t concentrate and just spend all day reading stuff about it on the internet, which doesn’t actually help anyone.
Jesus Christ, white people. Get your shit together. /white person
Those posts. Heartbreaking. It’s the same old thing for decades.
Eggslut yesssssss
On a happier note, OMG that egg sandwich at Cutty’s. Did not know. Must try.
Guhhh breakfast sandwiches. Nicole why are you doing this to me, I need a bagel breakfast sandwich STAT but no money mo’ problems.
(Absolute best: everything bagel, egg, swiss, mayo, bacon. Donezo.)
Aw man, the buzzfeed article backfired on me because “the strap of her dress slipped off her marzipan shoulder” sounds like just the most darling thing and I wouldn’t think twice about seeing it in a novel. We definitely shouldn’t use food to describe people generally (and particularly people of color), but marzipan is so much prettier than it is edible, so perhaps it doesn’t count?
I have in my freezer a loaf of “bacon egg and cheese bread.” Yes, that’s right, the bacon, egg, and cheese have somehow magically been baked into the bread. I bought it from some lovely Amish people at a flea market in the backwoods of Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago and am now VERY upset that I didn’t use it this weekend, when I was sitting around itchy and uncomfortable (and missing the Queens meet-up!) due to a bizarre case of shingles (!) that has erupted despite the fact that I am only 28 and shingles is for grandmas.
What should I make with my bacon-egg-and-cheese bread? My initial thought was grilled cheese but that seems too simple.
French toast?
Grill it and use it as a base for sauteed greens with garlic and lemon juice?
Simple, but absolutely delicious.
BEYONCE
I thought I’d fully explored my sentence diagramming trauma by now, but apparently not. The English teacher I had for 6th and 8th grade English made us diagram sentences… with a ruler. Your lines had to be completely straight and not accidentally intersect where they ought not intersect or else you’d lose points. A lot of points. Your paper would BLEED RED from all the circles, even before you got to the parts you diagrammed wrong. And we diagrammed a lot of sentences over those two years, so that was a lot of red ink.
I’m not going to say it wasn’t a useful exercise, but my 7th grade English teacher had us diagram without rulers and I had rather less anxiety over it that year. Such trauma!
Does it count as talking about Doctor Who (I HAVEN’T SEE IT YET) to complain that apparently episode one costs $6, and I am furious about it, and mistrust The System?
For a while, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting rid of cable and just streaming stuff with Netflix & Amazon Prime but Amazon’s season pass thing for currently-airing shows (like Doctor Who) is pretty stupidly expensive. :-/ I’m with you re The System being bogus.
🙁
There’s a browser extension called Hola which allows you to watch BBC shows via their iPlayer website, if that helps…
I’ve tried it before, and haven’t been able to make it work. (Rather, it seems to hijack my computer in bizarre ways, so I deleted it.) But thank you! I appreciate the recommendation. I’ll probably just suck it up, because Doctor Who is my great weakness.
OK, who else watched BoJack Horseman this weekend? I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it, other than the second last episode was by far the best one. And Sextina Aquafina was awesome and I wished the show had been about her instead.
I also watched Happy Valley, which is RAD, and Catherine is a BOSS, and everyone should go watch it as long as they don’t mind seeing some triggery stuff.
We make a lot of breakfast sandwiches at my house, and one time I made a breakfast banh mi with Vietnamese pork meatballs and daikon slaw and poached eggs and hooooo boy.
I only made it thru a smidgen of the VMAs before realizing nothing makes sense in pop music and it was impossible to hear, but I kind of like Nicki Minaj despite knowing nothing about her and woke up trying to remember if Sir Mix-A-Lot was spoofing SNL’s Gap Girls sketch or a Melanie Hutzel character in the intro to the “Baby Got Back” video, so this roundup is pleasing to my senses. If The Toast opts to monetize with a spinoff site entirely dedicated to SNL discussion you will feel my velocity come comments time.
I don’t love Nicki Minaj’s music, but I love her rant on assertive women and being called a bitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzGZamtlRP0
There’s a wonderful piece on Autostraddle today about NM as a much-needed monkey-wrench in the feminist machinery. So good. And after watching all the linked videos through a tiny space in my fingers, I like her even more though, like you, I find her music a little terrifying.
Breakfast lovers, when in San Francisco you mustmustmust get a mysterious and amazing “The Rebel Within” a softboiled egg baked into a savory chive/cheese muffin at Craftsman & Wolves http://sanfrancisco.about.com/od/restaurantsnight….
Your link just inspired me to make a naan/sunnyside up/goatcheese and spinach breakfast sammy for lunch.
IT IS WEDNESDAY IN AUSTRALIA but I will not capitalise on this terrible power. But I’m so looking forward to hearing all your thoughts on the good Doctor et al.
Um. Eight hours later, I realised it is actually Tuesday, anyway.
Oh, thank goodness. I spent ages thinking, “but I know the time difference between the UK and Australia! Surely there’s no way it can be Monday night here and Wednesday there!”, immensely confused.
There's a wonderful piece on Autostraddle today about NM as a much-needed monkey-wrench in the feminist machinery. So good. And after watching all the linked videos through a tiny space in my fingers, I like her even more though, like you, I find her music a little terrifying.
that last paragraph is MY LIFE PREACH IT
I related the content of that link to my Chinese roommate, and she says that in China "almond-shaped eyes" is used for wide eyes. Y'know, like the eye shape that white people stereotypically have. So at least one culture has its shit together where food-eye-descriptors are concerned.