In school, there were rules. You stuck with the kids from your neighborhood. In the instances when we were forced to interact with Eastie kids, especially the black kids, it was confusing for everybody—I know I’m supposed to hate you but I have to pick you for my kickball team. So then we would be friends for that brief period of time, but it was a distant, temporary friendship. I was aware that I couldn’t get too close to them. I figured if I were friends with a black kid, it would confirm to everyone that I was really black. I was managing an already teetering identity in Southie, and I couldn’t afford it. Besides, they didn’t want to be friends with me either. They saw me as a race traitor, a white wannabe, a defector.
Any new kid I met—black, white, or whatever—had just one question for me: “What are you?” Always. I learned quickly that my mother’s answer didn’t work. “I’m Irish” was met with skepticism, laughter, or confusion: “And what else?” Even adults would give me a fake smile, and I knew they didn’t believe me. Black kids would say, “Oh, you think you’re white, bitch?” Spanish kids just spoke Spanish to me—“¿Cómo se llama?”—and when I stood there in silence, they called me “puta,” sucked their teeth, and walked away.
The Jezebel Ghost Stories are here.
Gawker linked to these ouija board reviews and I am IN SO DEEP NOW:
Our own Sarah Jeong on why surveillance begins at home:
Privacy advocates rarely connect the dots between intimate partner violence and surveillance, and anti-violence advocates often fail to talk about technology in its entirety—and they omit in particular the complicity of law enforcement in the abuse of technology.
Facial hair championships.
I do love these lil videos the Health team does over at The Atlantic.
I believe (PERHAPS unfairly) that snoring is a sign of moral weakness and societal decay, but I have entered the phase of my final trimester where witnesses CLAIM that I engage in this disgusting and demeaning behavior nightly, and now there is nothing left for me but the grave. Farewell.
1. Do not go on vigilante raids to capture “fake” clowns.
2. There are no “real” clowns and “fake” clowns, you are all weirdos and some of you have just paid a lot of money for weird schooling while others commit crimes.
3. Let this be your last battlefield.
Joyce Carol Oates is the worst:
Would be very surprised if women walking alone were harassed in affluent midtown NYC (Fifth Ave., Park Ave.), Washington Square Park etc.
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) October 30, 2014
This just in: Rich people don’t do anything bad. They certainly never catcall women, or orchestrate legislation against poor people, or rape and murder people, or anything else. In case you forgot for one minute: Rich people are perfect, poor people are the cause of all the evils in this world. Thanks for clearing that up for us, Joyce Carol Oates!
This just in: what the fuck is wrong with Joyce Carol Oates?
So many things.
JCO once tweeted something to the effect of “I bet a lot of people who are against statutory rape still love Nabokov’s Lolita and that’s morally inconsistent!”
But she did invent oatmeal so we have to be grateful to her for that at least I guess.
True. Oatmeal is a pretty significant contribution to culture.
You know what would be great though? If harassment of women was treated seriously enough that there was significant funding for actual research with actual data that we could cite.
This made me beyond angry yesterday & I listed off all the “nice” areas I’ve been harassed in nyc as well as saying some of the same things as the lovely Roxanne (below) as well as tweeting an example to JCO that just that morning a perfectly “nice” white guy in Midtown took a picture of me with his camera phone!!!! #banallmen
On a related point, just saw this via NK Jemisin’s Twitter feed: as well as the point that the NYC catcalling video was edited to remove most of the white harassers (which I’d seen discussed elsewhere), the bloke who made the video, someone called Rob Bliss, is also loudly pro-gentrification: https://storify.com/Aut_Omnia/why-you-shouldnt-sh…
Interesting. Also, what’s the story with the “anti-harassment nonprofit”? Asking people to throw money at the problem was already a bit suspect, but now knowing that’s going to this guy…..
I’m delighted that she’s on the I Never Liked Her Anyway list, to which Ani DiFranco also aspires.
Those men who like to invade your personal space and make way too much eye contact while telling you [pointless thing] have all stolen their fashionable pinstripe suits.
Joyce, honey, go back to sleep.
Joyce Carol Oates is the worst but RGay is THE BEST. She shot that shit down so fast.
I dont do Twitter! WHat was her (im sure perfect) response!
Here is just one tiny sliver of her perfect response, but there was so much more:
“Anyway, stop being racist and classist” might be the best way to respond to both racism and classism.
Mallory!
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/10/mallory-ortberg-o…
The Tom Bombadil quote is so lovely and exactly everything that I want to be.
I want to embroider …”you can’t make fun of the things white men like, because it breaks their tiny, precious hearts. But it’s my favorite thing to do.” on something.
Mallory has my heart forever.
I want to read that light comic spinster novel so fucking much.
me too! I love I Capture the Castle. That book is such a sensual, lovely read.
The Toast: come for the misandry, stay for the eternal woodwosery.
I only recently actually thought about it and realized that my sister was DEFINITELY moving the Ouija board, and that she had constructed a huge and bizarre spirit world to communicate with us. I may never forgive her.
But I want a huge and bizarre spirit world to communicate with 🙁
My grandmother LOVED the ouija board, and about a year before she died we played (using a bar of soap because the pointer was lost) and she was definitely moving it and she spelled out the name of the guy I was going to marry, and hopefully she was wrong because it’s not my beloved’s name. She was 97 at the time.
When I was eleven or so I constructed this huge elaborate poltergeist fantasy for my friends and I involving everyone having their own personal poltergeist (mine was named Anna; I believe my best friend’s was named Tess) and it somehow tied into this ridiculous ghost story I had concocted about the local park being haunted by some woman who was hanged for witchcraft and then possibly run over with a car. There was also a “poltergeist dimension” where the ghosts all hung out when they weren’t flicking our lights on and off.
Anyway, we all had a lot of fun with it.
Oh my goddddd the Jezebel stories are not all that scary except for the “Chirp” one. Real people being creeps and horrorshows are infinitely scarier to me than a story of someone’s lights turning on and off (although if it was me, I’d be shitting myself).
I was so excited to see that link on here, though. I read the shit out of those stories every year. It’s the only time I’m watching the Jezebel comments section.
The stories this year were a total snorgasm. I wish the previous years’ were more easily searchable, because there are a few that I STILL think about and scare myself with, several years on.
WELL I AM ONE STORY INTO 2013 AND OFFICIALLY TERRIFIED
I think I have actually managed just to desensitize myself, sadly. Last summer I re-read all the Jezebel ones and, like, ten AskReddit threads about “the scariest/most paranormal/most unexplainable thing that ever happened to you” and now I am a hollow tin person incapable of being scared.
OK I TAKE IT BACK
I read them last weekend/early this week, so I just read one that wasn’t up then where the person was at home writing an essay while wearing noise-canceling headphones all evening and someone BROKE IN and WATCHED THEM FOR TWO HOURS.
That sort of real-life home invasion stuff is infinitely scarier to me than paranormal stuff is.
I can’t decide if that was real or not. But if so, HOLY FUCKING SHIT TERRIFYING.
I couldn’t decide that either, and now I think maybe it wasn’t? How do you track footprints ALL OVER a house? Doesn’t the mud run out after a few steps? Did the guy have an inbuilt reservoir in his shoes for ongoing mud-dispensing? Anyway, it makes me feel MUCH better thinking it’s not real.
Do you listen to the Spooked episodes on Snap Judgement? Those should get your motor running.
I’m kind of a wimp, because “James” freaked me out! Although, it’s kind of funny to think of him as this desperate 18th-century loser, hanging out in a basement hitting on teenage girls. Ok, not scared anymore.
“Blue Mommy” is also creepy, but I’m a sucker for any toddler-talks-about-scary-things story.
“He’s not a nice man.” AUGH SCREECHING
I never find them scary. The only things I ever find scary are internet creepypasta that are obviously fictitious. I hate when people are all THIS IS TOTALLY TRUE GUYS when it’s so obviously half-torn from an urban legend.
I read that first one and was like “night terrors, yeah I had those too”.
Dear Joyce: I have been very much UNsurprised by being sexually harassed on a daily basis while working on K St and in other affluent areas of Washington DC, in Law firms by Partners, in Newport Beach, CA and many, many other places. Sexual harassment knows no color or income line.
All that is required is that men feel entitled to a woman’s attention. Their paychecks or ethnic background have nothing to do with it.
Seeeeeeeeeeriously. I live in a rich, white town, so I get harassed mostly by rich, white men.
Also, I’m an editor at an academic publisher and get harassed regularly while working in the company booth at academic conferences. It’s depressing as fuck. SHOCKINGLY, men are terrible regardless of race, class, or education levels. Who would’ve guessed.
Yeah, walking through Philly, which has a pretty darn diverse population, I’ve been harrassed way more by white guys than men of color. You know who those white guys are? Douchey college kids from Penn and Drexel! Private, expensive, “elite” universities. Also dudes who look like finance bros. All directions, same source.
+1: have been harassed almost exclusively by creepy-ass entitled white dudes in extremely diverse Baltimore, DC, and Durham, NC. Can only conclude that entitled white dudes are the creepiest.
D.C. has been a virtual paradise for me (which means, a few obscene comments a year and only one minor assault) compared to my short time as a nondriver in suburban Indiana. White Men In Cars are the dregs of the universe.
“thumbs up” doesn’t seem like quite the appropriate response here, but I’m from suburban Indiana and I have to indicate my empathy and solidarity with this comment somehow.
Worst street harassment I’ve ever gotten? Ann Arbor, Michigan. College douchebros, amirite?
I remember a couple times they didn’t yell discernible words they just made bellowing noises as they roared past. people debate back and forth about the utility or cathartic value of having a witty or angry comeback to a rude remark, but what can you even say to that? BLEAARGGHGHGH to you too, sir!
also I thought a couple times I was going to get murdered by them purposely swerving into the ditch (no sidewalks naturally) to kill me, or by me panicking and running the wrong way when they started to, to scare me. and I don’t even know if that was them hating me for being a woman outside or just for being a human who was not driving a car.
Or maybe “being a human who was not them, or currently having sex with them.”
Incidentally, you have the BEST username.
It’s ALMOST like being rich and white gives men MORE incentive to act on their sense of entitlement because they know there’s essentially zero chance of any legal or even social repercussions, even when people try to call them on it!
whaaaaaaat?
Come on now, that’s crazy talk.
I think that ethnicity actually might have something to do with it in that white men harass women of visibly different ethnicity from their own more freely. I don’t know if there are good statistics on how much street harassment is cross-racial, in all directions, but my unscientific hypothesis is that it’s a lot — men like to scare women they perceive as being out of place, or intruding where they don’t belong. to some extent any woman who leaves her home is intruding on the male public sphere, so nobody is safe, but I think women who feel free from harassment in a rich upper-class area feel that way because they ‘match’ their surroundings and they aren’t the targets of racist gendered abuse. In that regard they are no different from men who don’t think street harassment is that common because it doesn’t happen when they’re around.
Not to suggest for a second that white men don’t also harass and threaten white women because I know from personal experience that they absolutely do. but I think they do it to other women more. and that’s why series of anecdotes that are heavily tilted towards women of one race will give a misleading idea of the demographics of men who do this.
My personal anecdata, as a white woman, is that I’ve almost always felt more threatened by street harassment from white men than from MoC. The white men seem to mean it more, and I know that statistically, there’s a much greater likelihood that they’ll turn violent if they feel rejected.
I desperately want Ouija boards to really work (on their own) and my main reason for not trying one is my fear-belief that nothing will happen.
They do work on their own, but only when you are the honest (credulous), rule-abiding nine-year-old girl among slightly more sophisticated nine-year-old girls.
I SWEAR MINE WORKED WHEN I WAS IN SUMMER CAMP IN SEVENTH GRADE I SWEAR
I actually had to throw it out, I was so freaked out
Once my brother and I played with one, and asked it a question about favorite Space Ghost Coast to Coast characters (as you do), and it replied “Moltar” which was neither of our favorites. So clearly it wasn’t either of us trying to use the Ouija board to prove we were right. We were both pretty freaked out after that and put it away. I still haven’t asked him about it (if he even remembers) because I kind of like keeping the mystery.
My parents -very pragmatic Presbyterian ministers – had one when I was a kid. But they never EVER played with it. One day I asked my mother why, and she said it was because they’d summoned an ancient Egyptian spirit and became terrified. To this day I don’t know if she was trolling me or serious. She will only claim now that she doesn’t remember anything of the sort.
My friend has a good story about how he and his college buddies opened a portal to Hell by way of using a Ouija board. I should get him to write it down, though it’s really much better to hear it while sitting next to the backyard firepit the summer before your senior year of college.
I seriously need to hang out with you all in person because shit like this NEVER happens to me.
My mom says she was chased around the attic by a card table when using a Ouija board.
I really want one of the Toast’s illustrators to make a cartoon of this.
My mom is TERRIFIED of Ouija boards despite not being a superstitious person or a ghost-belever. When I was a kid playing with my friend’s (totally dumb, Milton Bradley) board she got super upset, and I later found out it was because she saw it working on its own when she was in high school at a friend’s house once after they’d tried contacting a boy at their school who’d died in a car crash.
Just want to quickly update anyone following the ~librarian lawsuit~ issue who read the LibraryJournal blog post yesterday. The comments are getting pretty nasty; one anonymous comment has been deleted after the commenter referred to the defendants in the lawsuit as “a tr*nny and a mentally ill person.” LJ must have moved on it first thing this morning, since it was still up when I was having my coffee before leaving for work.
Anyway, depressing day all around. This is the comments section on a blog produced by our best known professional publication. I’m not shocked that people are gross bigots, but seeing it in the professional sphere is disheartening. I’m going to go put on my dinosaur costume to make myself feel better.
RAWR! (my reaction to both the lawsuit nonsense on LJ and your choice of costume. well done!)
Yeah that comment kind of just made me want to burn it all down.
Right? And, okay, I don’t really think that people need to be responsible for the words of their supporters, exactly… but if I were Joe Murphy, I am pretty sure I’d be asking my supporters to REIN IT IN.
Oh, hm, I thought that the anti-fake-clown vigilante groups would be made up of real clowns, and I kind of got really excited about this idea. Like some basic battle in the human psyche about clowns, whether they were jolly fools or scary monsters, was finally made physicaly manifest on the streets in France, and the War of Clowns would finally put an end to it.
Someone needs to write that story! I would totally read it.
Yuuuuuup. Been harassed in my own lovely neighborhood, which is in Midtown (but not the douchey part, really), a few times. Not as many as in some other neighborhoods, like, you know, Chelsea, which is substantially wealthier. Thanks for the super in-touch and on-point commentary, Joyce!
Yup, me too. I tweeted her back that I have been harassed in UES, UWS, Midtown, East Village/NYU….. pretty much any of her “nice” neighborhoods. She can fuck right off.
I was diagnosed with mild sleep apnea between my second and third pregnancies, which qualified me for a sleep mask. I really DO sleep better, but man I hate that mask beyond reason. Keep fighting the non-snoring fight, Nicole!
at my first slumber party as hostess, my friend Carrie brought a ouija board and my normally laidback mother wouldn’t let us play with it. We got the Not in Our House and also the Mini-Lecture About Unseen Warfare. I’m pretty sure she only grudgingly allowed us to play Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board — like she clearly thought there was something fishy about it, but couldn’t put her finger on what.
I did not host a lot of slumber parties.
My one and only foray into slumber party Ouija board shenanigans resulted in my (super-Catholic) friend Domi hiding behind the couch reciting Hail Marys to protect us from evil. I mean, nothing bad happened so maybe it worked, but it kind of put a damper on things.
I was at a Catholic school sleepover with all five of my fellow 7th grade girl classmates (I mean, we spent all week together, why not the weekends too?) playing Light as a Feather, when the hostess’s step-mom came out of her bedroom with a Christian Bible and lectured us all on demons and how she’s seen people levitate and we had to stop playing that game, etc.
She was genuinely more frightening to me than any of the stupid games.
My mom has used a budget Ouija board as her “I need to write on something while sitting in bed” board for my entire life. Hers has some weird picture of a genie in the middle and all of the words/letters are in some stylized vaguely racist “Asian” looking font. To the best of my knowledge, the only thing she has ever used it for is writing on, and that’s kind of a bummer to me.
I can’t get over THIS DEVICE IS THE SAME AS LETTING YOUR CHILD PLAY WITH A REAL GUN!!!!!!!!!!!! though. Somehow…I don’t think so.
Us, too! I used to do my homework on a Ouija board so I could sit in front of the TV. As far as I know, it conjured nothing, unless tortured adolescence counts.
“The Ouija is the spiritual facebook”…okay, David Wells, thanks for that.
That first piece by Jennifer Roberts.. wow. I would love to read more of her work about growing up in Boston, and learning more about her family! The whole “having antecedents the rest of the family won’t talk about” thing is a little fascinating to me; it feels both common and shrouded in mystery.
Also, not that it’s any of my business, but I’m realizing I’m pretty interested in what led Jennifer and her mother to make some very different decisions on how to identify themselves as adults. These stories can be really hard to read sometimes because of all of the blatant racism that’s discussed, but I’m just struck by how strongly her mother reacted to the idea that she was anything but Irish, and what (like terrible experiences) led to that response.
I feel like such a voyeur for admitting all of this though.
I come from a family of completely awful snorers, but I somehow have the exact opposite of snoring which means that I am so quiet and still and breathe so shallow* that multiple people have thought I died in my sleep and shook me awake out of fear.
*I am still breathing and I know this because I also come from a family of severe apnea sufferers so we’re all hyper-aware of the symptoms. They all have very strong opinions about the various masks.
My husband alternately both snores and breathes like that. It is the worst. Either he is loud and it is keeping me awake, or i can’t feel hi, breathing and have to nudge him (not enough to wake him, but enough to get some sort of reaction) to make sure he is not dead.
TOASTPOST UPDATE:
THANK YOU to ladyimogen who sent a WONDERFUL card, along with a Kate Beaton comic and cake recipe! I can’t wait to try it out!
(Sorry for the delay, I got the card on Wednesday but haven’t been around The Toast much this week.)
!!!!! Appalling. I work for Bowker (which used to own LJ), and know several people there. Will check in w/them today. Thank you for posting this.
ETA: that was meant for bibliobotic….
Thanks, that’s good of you! Honestly, I think they took it down as soon as someone saw it, and they do make it clear they don’t moderate comments continuously. It would be nice to know that certain slurs were at least filtered out, though, especially with anonymous commenting enabled.
I just DM’d one of my guys – his response…TGIF. But yeah, he said they’re monitoring now.
Okay, that’s good to hear. Thanks for getting in touch!
Nicole, thank you for linking the Southie piece. It’s SO INTERESTING (Boston organized crime is ALWAYS interesting/terrifying) and really well-written. Plus it feels right to be talking about Boston today, given the loss of one of Boston’s darlings, Mayor Tom Menino, yesterday.
So, thanks!
What’s ever been right about her? Also, how did she manage to convince so many people she is the only female writer of literary note for decades while simultaneously being unreadable?
Uh, that was in response to “what’s wrong with JCO.” Sorry about that.
I guess that’s a good point. I think of her as being weird and interesting, but that doesn’t mean anything, obviously. She’s a fan of H. P. Lovecraft, which is kind of cool, but H. P. Lovecraft was also a HUGE racist, so that doesn’t necessarily prove anything.
It’s almost like I can’t rely on people who share my tastes to have the same personality as me.
.I have never liked her writing. I just couldn’t get why other people did. She is just awful.
Oh, the Facial Hair Championships! My lovely dude started growing out his beard shortly after we started dating (it’s RED, guys, I’ve got a bearded ginger on my hands and I couldn’t be happier about that) and it’s my not-so-secret hope that eventually it gets GRAND enough that we can enter him in a Facial Hair Competition.
Red beards are the best! I was iffy on my boyfriend’s first beard attempts (at 21, patchy; at 23, scraggly), but at 25 his beard grew in lush and RED. His beard is now the envy of other men, and it’s one of my top three favorite things about his face.
My boyfriend’s beard is red, too! It’s not like, a fiery ginger red (my friend Jeff has a fiery red ginger beard, and I call him Lief Erikson every single time I see him), but it’s definitely a different colour than the brown hair on his head. It’s the best decision he’d ever made for his appearance, and once he got hit on in public when a girl said “I want to go to there” to him, and I could not be prouder.
My dad has been graying for most of my life, but there are some hilarious old pictures of him floating around where he has an enormous red mane and beard and looks like an actual cartoon character. My sister inherited the ginger curls, but I sadly missed out. 🙁
In my head, it’s less a main story than it is this thing going on in the background of some weird hipster novel. Like, you never really find out the reasons for it, or the tactics or anything, it’s just something that happens all the time where a bunch of vigilante clowns with tire irons will attack some other clowns handing out candy to children, and people just have to figure out how to deal with it as best they can.
East Coast/West Coast clown beefs being settled in absurdly high-casualty driveby shootings
The cops open the doors of the black mercedes. Dead bodies start tumbling out.
“Oh, god…god they just keep coming!”
The Great Clown War of 2014 raged quick and fierce in the streets of Portland, and nobody knew how it had begun. But then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ceased, and nobody ever found out from where the clowns had come, nor how many their number, nor why their rage burned so hot against the others of their kind.
Based on the Ouija board reviews, I’ve now decided to reply to all work emails today with “I can tell ya why…SATAN!” Thanks, Amazon reviewer SideshowBob!
Possibly funny story: my husband used to work for A Prestigious Literary Magazine, and the editor told him about going to A Fancy Dinner Party For Authors (in D.C. or NYC one, can’t remember), and he was seated at dinner next to Joyce Carol Oates. He said she was hands-down the worst dinner companion ever. She had a little notebook out and was eating with one hand and scribbling constantly, almost automatically with the other. She never stopped, and she answered all his polite questions with monosyllables. He said he couldn’t decide if she were a really dedicated writer or just someone incapable of functioning in society. I think we know now.
crap there’s a difference?
She came to my college way back when she was writing that book on Marilyn Monroe that I think everyone ended up thinking was overlong while at the same time not treading any new ground. I had friends in the literary society who made the hour long trip to the nearest city with an airport to pick her up and they got the weirdest set of instructions: don’t look directly at her, don’t speak to her unless she speaks to you first, don’t ask her any questions. It was really bizarre.
Blagh! Get it together, IntenseDebate! You are making the commenting process unnecessarily challenging.
We had a fake clown hanging around my school once. Everyone thought it was a normal real clown for like half the day, then for some reason its head deflated and it was still running around doing antics and pulling scarfs out of things and such, with no head. Some of us threw rocks at it, but kids were still seeing it doing cartwheels in the woods at the end of the day, I don’t know where it went after that.
Uh actually the only time my sister was stalked was in a nice part of NYC soooo yeah.
I and my housemates had a go with a homemade ouija board (OK, a plastic tablecloth with letters drawn on it and an upturned glass) a few years ago just to see what happened. All of us were/are sceptics, and were mainly interested in seeing whether the ideomotor phenomenon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_phenomenon) would work even if we were fully aware of and looking out for it.
Turns out that it is still possible to generate and be creeped out by unconscious movements even when you’re expecting them. Either that, or the message we got from Abraham Lincoln telling us that he was hanging out in the gay bar Aleister Crowley runs in Hell was not in fact a product of our fevered imaginations.
(Note: Results not guaranteed.)
#BeenRapedNeverReported was a hashtag trending on Canadian Twitter last night, in response to Jian Ghomeshi’s defenders. It’s full of incredibly powerful and brave stories (it’s potentially triggering, and definitely emotional, so heads up about visiting it while at work)
I don’t think it’s that voyeuristic or wrong to say it would be interesting. She clearly discusses the different ways her and her mother feel and a follow up piece would make sense. She may have zero desire to write it, which is of course fine. Really good piece and gets at a time in Boston’s history I have a hard time wrapping my head around, though it’s not that long ago.
(reply to RK Fire about the Jennifer Roberts piece)
Really like that piece about Boston! Makes me miss it even more than I normally do, warts and all.
It did bring up a pet peeve of mine which is adults not explaining things to kids. There are obviously limits, given some kids incessant need to ask “why,” but why wouldn’t they at least try to explain busing? I get why the parents wouldn’t, but couldn’t the schools have tried to explain why it was happening?
I have this nagging feeling once in a while where I think, “Wait, should I be reading Joyce Carol Oates? I should probably read at least one book by Joyce Carol Oates.” So honestly, this is kind of a huge weight off my shoulders. I never have to read her. Thanks, Twitter!
She wrote a pretty great story about a woman being harassed on the street called Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been. I don’t think she mentioned what race the guy was in the story.
It’s not about street harassment, actually, but it definitely involves a threatening, predatory man who gives a teenage girl uninvited and creepy levels of attention. Actually one of the only things I’ve read by her, but now I am, let’s say, not super motivated to find more.
Is that the one where the girl winds up sitting in her kitchen while the dude talks to her from the other side of the screen door and she freaks out?
I read one for the exact same reason. It was one too many.
I like Foxfire, about a girl gang from the 50s in upstate New York. It is less plodding than some of her others, and pleasantly misandrist.
Her latest (a gothic) was dreary (expected) and tiresome (not expected). It was my first Oates novel and I had to force myself to finish.
Also, I was never allowed to join Girl Scouts because my mom heard a rumor once that a local troop used a Ouija board at a campout. This is why I’m never prepared.
Starting the Jezebel Scary Story thread here!
So, the one where the mom dreams of being strangled … I’m not sure I understand the last paragraph. Why does the mom think the boyfriend didn’t do it? Seems pretty clear that he probably did. So confused. But all these stories are deliciously spooky.
Because the mom thinks the GHOST did it – and that, if she hadn’t moved out, the ghost would have strangled her as well, and left *her* partner in the frame for her murder.
ETA: whittingly got there first and I didn’t see it because what is up with these comments.
i was w you! I feel like it was the ghost of the INCIDENT in which the bf strangled the previous tenant. According to ghost shows on the Discovery channel that is a real thing.
True story, my … bfs dad in law (?) LOVES ghost show marathons and its been the primary bonding tool in forging our relationship during wkds w his fam.
The implication is that the ghost did it.
But the whole time I was reading that story I was saying out loud to my computer “LADY YOU HAD A HEART ATTACK.” Neck and jaw pain, inability to catch a breath, and choking sensation are all symptoms of a heart attack, especially in women. Oh my God, that’s not even a fun scary ghost story, that’s just like, holy crap she could have really seriously died in real life and not from ghosts.
PSA: In case you feel like a ghost is strangling you, call 911.
I understood it as the mom saying the ghost strangled the woman, not the boyfriend.
The one titled “BFM” really got me. REALLY GOT ME.
In other news, Amanda Palmer: still a douche.
Amanda Palmer Calls Out The Haters Protesting Her Upcoming Event With Jian Ghomeshi
Jesus Christ. “Hate has no place.” Well, you know what ELSE has no place? FUCKING BEATING WOMEN. You tremendous asshole.
“Weeeelllll, I don’t want to talk about haaate, so I’m going to weasel around and talk about how hating assholes is actually just perpetuating a horrible place to live, so you jerkholes being mean are making this situation worse! Can’t we all just forget about it?”
Awful.
She is the fucking worst, and I side-eye Neil Gaiman so hard for dumping his wife of 20+ years for her.
Yeah. I can’t think of any other explanation besides Neil Gaiman being secretly terrible too.
Her TED talk about how great it is when people do stuff for you for free is still one of the most obnoxious things I’ve ever seen on the internet.
I have to pretend Neil Gaiman has no persona outside of his fiction, because otherwise I would start to hate him. I unfollowed him on twitter a year or so ago when I came to realize that all he talked about was how great Amanda Palmer is.
Yep I unfollowed him for that reason also. Shame because I really love his fiction and I met him at a book signing and he seemed like a lovely guy. There was a MASSIVE queue of people waiting to get stuff signed and I’m fairly certain he signed absolutely everything.
Also, just a constant stream of RT’d five star reviews of his own books and pleasant things other people say about him and sort of half-aggressive advice to desperate people who want to write the next American Gods, and a WHOLE BUNCH OF NAMEDROPPING.
(reply to twoburgers about Neil Gaiman on Twitter)
as freshwaterpearl said, I think Gaiman and his ex-wife had been separated for a while before he met Amanda Palmer.
(though I am absoutely a fan of Gaiman’s work, so yeah)
Anansi Boys and American Gods are two of my favourite books ever so I just do that thing where I totally don’t follow his personal life and only read his fiction
Oh bless you. I can’t stand her and always felt bad about it, because she fronts like a Cool Feminist Woman Who Gives No Fucks and everyone I know likes her and I am supposed to like her but I CANNOT. Her music is okay, but she herself is incredibly obnoxious, with all the depth of a petri dish and the substance of a half-melted wad of cotton candy.
Like, sure great, you’re pro-pubes and armpit hair, dismantle the patriarchy! but it’s probably a lot more helpful to women if you, you know, BELIEVE THEM WHEN THEY SAY THEY HAVE BEEN ASSAULTED. And not CHASTISE THEM for being angry about the assault of other women. But yeah, like, it’s so haaard to have to think critically about this guyyyyy and such a drag to have to change up your show. Haters, ammirite?
She justifies all of her shitty and self-indulgent behavior by acting like everything she does is capital-A Art, pronounced like “aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhrt.”
And I don’t want to imply that victims of sexual assault are a monolith, but she herself has been sexually assaulted and is pretty open about her experience – I can’t attest to whether anyone has challenged her on her story and what her reaction was, but really? You’d rather pretend that this is about “hate” and not holding someone accountable for their terrible behavior? “Hate” in the way she’s using is should be reserved to identify feelings/beliefs/policies that target people because of superficial characteristics – not to condemn specific actions. I LOATHE how hate has been watered down to mean “anything I disagree with” and the rise of “haters” to mean “anyone who dares to criticize.” Annoying that the article users “haters” in the headline when the people who object to Gomeshi’s inclusion in the event are doing so for damn legitimate reasons.
Yep – you’ve summed up my thoughts on her perfectly! I regret I only have one thumbs up to give this post.
Body hair makes a really good flashy feminist token, which keeps people from interrogating your beliefs on the rest of the super-problematic shit society forces on women.
I am convinced that Amanda Palmer has some kind of radar in her house that alerts her to highly sensitive situations just so that she can immediately rush over and be a COMPLETE ASSZIT about them.
Hah for real. I just told my boyfriend about this, and he was like “She always waits just long enough between terrible things for me to ALMOST forget about her.”
Oh, Toasties, it is so nice to be among people who don’t automatically like Amanda Palmer and Joyce Carol Oates.
And I saw the former in “Cabaret” and Schultz, Schneider and Fraulein Kost way out-acted and out-sang her, so there.
This is awful but I am glad to know that my intense intuitive dislike of Amanda Palmer is now grounded in reality.
Nicole, have you still not read that Cumberbatch interview?
no but maybe today maybe
You’ll hear a faint whooshing noise. It’s the sound of the Internet’s collective knickers flying away.
Two of my friends posted it on my FB wall. At this point my wall is entirely posts from my friends about BC, though, so nothing new. Embarrassing, maybe, but not new.
I saw him in Frankenstein last night, the National Theatre do ‘live’ cinema screenings of their plays and repeat this one every Halloween. There was an *awful) lot of rolling round in a small loincloth.
!
Oh! I saw the other one, where he’s Viktor, and it was SPECTACULAR and now I want to see the one where he’s Adam.
I saw it the other way round last year! They’re doing a few screenings this year over the next few weeks of both versions. I was surprised how different they were, actually.
That makes a lot of sense! It was some of the best theatre I’ve ever seen, ever, and it was really evident that the role-swapping added SO MUCH to both performances.
(Of course today it’s blowy and snowy and gray and would be ideal for viewing both, possibly back to back, but alas, work.)
I spent my lunchtime walking down to the beach, in a t-shirt and sunglasses, to get an ice cream. It’s 18 (65 F) degrees here today! I did wear a t-shirt with a skeleton on it so it was at least a bit seasonal.
I am very much hoping they release it on DVD.
I will also probably go to the beach this afternoon. We are in the middle of 50-mph gusts from the north here on the Lake Michigan shore, so the waves are pretty spectacular. No ice cream, though.
My sister (who I went with last night) found a picture! http://here-for-the-pretty.tumblr.com/post/246124…
Me too! Saw him as Adam/JLM as Viktor last year, and then BC as Viktor/JLM as Adam last night.
(Er – spoilers?)
I was most struck by the differences in the Viktors: Miller seemed much more impulsive and reckless – when he said he realised how to induce life in “a fever dream” I could really imagine him having the revelation in some sort of quasi-manic state – whereas to me Cumberbatch’s Viktor was far, far colder (and had a muuuch creepier vibe when talking about/showing off the female creature, ick.) Both very plausible readings of the character.
Definitely! I liked it this way round better I think, as I felt BC’s Viktor was too Sherlocky – I wasn’t sure if I was projecting or not but I thought JLM made him much more alive.
Also I liked seeing BC as Adam and not being all cold and calculating, makes a change for him from what I’ve seen him in before.
I’ve seen both and it was spectacular. Unfortunately I went to see the first one after staying up all night so I think I fell asleep and missed a few bits but stil..
Many blessings upon you.
I have decided that I am not going to read anything about rape culture or Jian Ghomeshi or catcalling today, only spooky things, because I need a break from shitty irl garbage on Halloween, the greatest day of the year. I’ve listened to 10 ghost/witch/disappearances/serial killer-related episodes of the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast this week, and I have no regrets.
The only thing I’m going to read that touches on all those things AND spooky things is that great interview with Jen and Sylvia Soska on The Hairpin.
Lol Joyce Carol Oates tell that to the white guy who pinched my ass outside of my dorm on Union Square West twenty feet away from the FARMER’S MARKET for fuck’s sake.
Oh bless you. I can’t stand her and always felt bad about it, because she fronts like a Cool Feminist Woman Who Gives No Fucks and everyone I know likes her and I am supposed to like her but I CANNOT. Her music is okay, but she herself is incredibly obnoxious, with all the depth of a petri dish and the substance of a half-melted wad of cotton candy.
Like, sure great, you’re pro-pubes and armpit hair, dismantle the patriarchy! but it’s probably a lot more helpful to women if you, you know, BELIEVE THEM WHEN THEY SAY THEY HAVE BEEN ASSAULTED. And not CHASTISE THEM for being angry about the assault of other women. But yeah, like, it’s so haaard to have to think critically about this guyyyyy and such a drag to have to change up your show. Haters, ammirite?
I read the Globe and Mail article about Ghomeshi’s firing this morning. To summarize: They knew there were allegations, let him defend himself and then were horrified by the emails and texts he presented in his defense. Even then they gave him one last chance to back down from his defense of his actions and it was only when he wouldn’t that he was fired.
He has yet to apologize for any of his actions. Dude, are you even CANADIAN?!?
it’s a really searing insight into his mindset that the documents he presented for his *defense* horrified CBC execs to the point of firing him.
I have always hated Joyce Carol Oates’ writing, so I am meanly delighted to find out she’s a garbage person.
Joyce Carol Oates’ only noteworthy accomplishment was writing a book that was eventually loosely adapted into a movie where baby Angelina Jolie is a charismatic drifter who forms a girl gang with Jenny Shimuzu and Jenny Lewis (who sings about condoms in a grocery store). Every other aspect of her life seems like total garbage.
When I was…let’s say 8? 9? My best friend’s older brother Jack and three of his chums spent what must have been hours rigging their basement with reels of black thread. Then they called Clark and I down from whatever we were doing (likely it was Clark kicking my ass at NHLPA Hockey ’93) with the news that they’d found…something.
Or someone.
“There’s a spirit in our basement,” said Jack. “Swear to god. I’m terrified. Come and see.”
He opened the basement door. There was void beyond. We asked why the lights were off.
“Because it will go away if we turn them on. Hurry up. I’ll go first.” And he went first, and took up a guard position by the light switch.
Clark and I padded down to find one of Jack’s friends training a flashlight on a Ouija board laid out on a chair. The beam followed the movements of the planchette, which spun and twirled around the board like an ice dancer—with no human hand to guide it.
“Oooh,” said Jack’s friend. “It’s spelling things. Yes…wait. That was DEATH. That was definitely DEATH it spelled just now, mostly.”
It was a very credible two minutes. Then Clark or I won free to a light switch and exposed a room absolutely webbed in thread, with Jack’s other friends crouched in odd corners, knots around all their fingers.
I believe they were separated/divorced for some time before he and Palmer got together, he just continued to live next door to his ex-wife and didn’t really announce they had split. (Source: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/04/all-questio…
I guess that’s understandable then, but I still side-eye anyone who is in love with Amanda Palmer tbh.
Fair!
I think part of it for me is also wrapping my head around how culturally different the US was on a day to day basis in the 60s-80s. My family came to the US in the early 1980s so my sense of the social history of the time is really rooted in media, books, and accounts like these.
Also, I’ve been having a lot of conversations recently (for whatever reason, I guess it’s Identity Week for me) with different biracial and multiracial friends who, for various reasons, took a long time in identifying as PoC. In one friend’s case, she still doesn’t entirely feel comfortable identifying as Black. I’ve never been entirely clear on what being Vietnamese or Vietnamese American is, but I’ve also continued identifying as both of those things so her piece in particular is making a lot of wheels in my head spin, especially in regards to how the racial attitudes of your time impact how you identify. (I’m also, to my own knowledge, not even remotely biracial, so the option of passing for White or even the desire to be White is probably mitigated by that, but that hasn’t stopped others..) My husband and I have a lot of biracial nieces and nephews now–of White and Black parents, of White and Vietnamese parents–and I can’t help but think about how much easier it is for them now.
I also have this observation as a non-Black family member of a Black family that (now) Black families are pretty accepting of biracial relatives, but a lot of that is influenced by my own experiences with my husband’s family. It just feels like, hey, yeah, there are different people in the family (in different generations) who are lighter skinned, and that’s fine and well, and they’re still family! It’s a bit jarring to me to be reminded that isn’t always the case, and makes me wonder if those dynamics in my (husband’s) family have always been like that.
Anyway, lots of food for thought. I’m kind of skittish from coffee and getting over a cold, so apologies if this was a bit of a word vomit!
The facial hair link has me sexually confused, real talk.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE MURDEROUS GRANDMA ARTICLE http://www.vice.com/read/my-gandma-the-poisoner-0… https://twitter.com/mallelis/status/5278955292469…
Hilariously, not 8 hours after I read that Joyce Carol Oates tweet (and replied to it), I was *actually harassed* on Park Ave! One of the rich ones! This is what life success looks like.
South Boston article: amazing!
Surveillance article: MEN ARE THE WORST.