The case for Black with a capital “B”:
Linguists, academics and activists have been making this point for years, yet the publishing industry — our major newspapers, magazines and books — resist making this simple yet fundamental change. Both Oxford and Webster’s dictionaries state that when referring to African-Americans, Black can be and often is capitalized, but the New York Times and Associated Press stylebooks continue to insist on black with a lowercase b. Ironically, The Associated Press also decrees that the proper names of “nationalities, peoples, races, tribes” should be capitalized. What are Black people, then?
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“All My Friends Are In My Head”
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Collectors Weekly on the strange phenomenon of trying to make antiques more manly:
Bradley: It’s one of those things where you know it when you see it. I like to say mantiques are at the nexus of rusty, sharp, strange, vintage, and retro. It’s the type of thing that my dad used to keep in our basement, like a mounted jackalope hanging on the wall. Dad decorated our basement family room with things that my mother wouldn’t let him bring upstairs—coon-hunting trophies, farm implement signs, Tom Mix pocket knives, and woodworking tools that were very cool. Mantiques often go back to your childhood and things you grew up with. A lot of the mantiques collectors I’ve met have these odd things they keep. Thinking about it this way helps explain why unusual people do what they do and why they collect what they collect. They’re all different, but they’re all kind of the same, even though one guy looks rough and tough and hard to bluff and another guy’s a single dad in his early 30s.
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A short story about dogs and bullshit boyfriends.
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Marlowe was born Aug. 3, 1890, in Montego Bay, Jamaica. According to The Times obituary, he served in Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force, a World War I fighting brigade that guarded the Suez Canal. After the war, Marlowe immigrated to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles, where he soon became a private detective. Both obituaries made the same bold — and almost certainly untrue — claim: “In L.A., he was the first licensed P.I. west of the Mississippi.” The notices were larded up with the private eye’s civic achievements, even referencing a few organizations — like the Old Black Screen Actor’s Guild, from his days as a bit actor — that I couldn’t verify ever existed.
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Here is a long profile of Benedict Cumberbatch I could not possibly bring myself to read.
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Please relate one fact about yourself that has never appeared anywhere else in print or on the Internet.
When I was twenty years old I had gum grafts put in. My dentist told me I had the gums of a seventy-year-old, and they offered me two options: they could remove skin from the roof of my mouth and graft it on (but there was no guarantee the roof of my mouth would ever heal, which seemed like it was just…moving the problem from one place to another), or they could use cadaver gums. I opted for cadaver gums. It’s my favorite story to tell someone after I’ve started dating them.
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Well done. “@sarahjeong: .@ShrillCosby @Jesselansner @GeeDee215 pic.twitter.com/RZjr7Kp0RN” — Gene Demby (@GeeDee215) November 18, 2014
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Toasties! Another really-belongs-in-open-thread comment here, sorry.
We are leaving our city in half an hour or so (FOREVER!), though we don’t actually fly out ’till next week, and STILL have to finish packing the boxes we are sending and need to do final checks are having conversations about what to leave behind. Why does Mr Captain leave everything to the last minute?! IT IS FUCKING DOING MY HEAD IN. I am so stressed, and SO over this, and I want to tear my hair out.
BIG HAIR NO HEART is all that’s getting me through right now. Any other suggestions to maintain (some of) my sanity?
It will all be OK! It really, really will. Keep telling yourself that by this time next week (or in ten days, or whenever) THIS WILL ALL BE OVER. I promise it will end and you will be in your new place and one day this will all be a distant memory.
breathes deeply
It will all be over one day. It will all be over.
#bighairnoheart forever
One thing that helped me through my recent drawn-out, incredibly fraught, cross-country move was making a mental list of All the Things I Will Do Differently Next Time. It somehow felt productive. Mainly I swore I would start a separate savings account for moving expenses so the next time I can just throw money at the problem and not have to lift or pack anything or drive anything larger than a regular-sized car.
BON COURAGE
Merci beaucoup!
The boxes are FINALLY packed, and we’re heading out now, to send them, and then leave the city. See you on the other side!
I know this is probably not at ALL the mindset you’re going for, but sometimes when I find myself in times of trouble I just think, “Eh, one day I will be dead and this won’t have mattered at all” and it makes me feel better. Nihilism, the great mood-booster!
Can vouch for this method. Sometimes I think about the sun blowing up if the problem seems particularly bad.
Ugh, gum grafts. I have the same issue but nowhere near the same severity – they just take the tissue from the roof of my mouth, no zombie tissue necessary. I’m fascinated that the cadaver grafts would “take.”
I do have the privilege of living near a periodontist who apparently is world-renowned at this procedure – fastest scalpel east of the Missisisippi – and he acts like a Dad into the bargain. So I have it good.
Really? Can you pass your periodontist over to me? If I’m going to get it done east of the Mississippi it might as well be by the best!
http://www.pericopc.com/roger-j-wise-d_d_s.php
Ask for plenty of Novocaine and it shall be given unto you. This procedure calls for it no matter who is doing it.
I had the gum graft thing! Except I opted to use the skin from the roof of my mouth and it healed just fine. I was still in high school when I had to have it done. Stupid receding gums.
I just got told I need gum grafts. Do they last? Are your gums fine now? I am grumpy that dentists complimented how clean my teeth were for 30 years and now it’s suddenly “you’ve been brushing so hard you wore your gums away”.
Wait what? My dentist always tell me I should focus my brushing on my gums. Like, actually touching your teeth with the brush is almost incidental; the whole point of the exercise is to massage your gums for ten minutes a day.
My gums are receding, and I have been told by my dentist that my toothbrushing style is part of it: I am meant to just use a soft toothbrush and not push on the gums too much.
Good to know, as my own gums have just start receding. I’ll let up on the scouring.
I didn’t realise that this is where hard gum brushing could lead! I visited a new dentist when I moved, after having gone to the same one for like 15 years prior and who made no mention of receding gums, and she said I should buy an electric toothbrush with softer bristles because I was brushing too hard. I thought they were just trying to sell me an expensive toothbrush, and dismissed it. But now, I see I could become part zombie too, if I’m not more careful! Though..part zombie would have its perks maybe?
It’s been a little over a decade since the graft, and everything seems to be holding up fine. We’ll see how that goes in the future.
I had it done over the summer (also due to brushing-my-gumline-away reasons), and of all the mouthwork I’ve had, it was seriously the easiest/most painless. The worst parts are the shot they put in the roof of your mouth to numb it and the crankiness from not eating solid food for a few days afterward — the gums didn’t hurt at all, and the roof of my mouth was only tender for a few days.
No need for grafts yet, but my gums just started receding at two teeth and my dentist is claiming it’s because I floss wrong. So now not only do I get shit for not flossing enough but also when I do actually floss I’m killing my gums. I hate teeth.
A dentist I went to when I still had my labret piercing threatened me with a gum graft (well, threatened is an exaggeration, more warned me that I might need one) because the laborite was encouraging the gums to recede. I switched to a plastic back and eventually took it out because I didn’t want to wear it any more (this is why I liked the idea of a piercing instead of a tattoo), and at my last dentist visit it wasn’t mentioned to me. So we’ll see, I guess.
When I got my graft done, my dentist warned me very sternly to never get my lip pierced, or I would surely need to operation again and again. I really wanted a lip piercing for most of college, but my dentist’s warning always kept me too scared to get one.
I also opted for roof-of-my-mouth skin (plus some weird animal stem cell protein treatment), because the thought of cadaver gums was too much for me, and also, my palate is battle-hardened from years of impatiently shoveling piping-hot spoonfuls of mac and cheese into my mouth, so it healed up quickly.
Oh my god, I just had to google what “cadaver” meant because I’d never heard the term. *shudder*
The dental hygienist and I were discussing the fact that I might have to get a second round of gum grafts, and she was SO excited to tell me about how the cadaver gum techniques have massively improved in the last few years to the point that they don’t use the roof of the mouth thing that often anymore. “You’ll heal so much faster!” she told me. AND I WILL BE A ZOMBIE.
The upside is your teeth won’t fall out when you inevitably start eating brains!
Mallory’s confession has given me some great metal band name ideas.
CADAVER GUMS
CORPSE MOUTH
ZOMBIES FLOSSING
GINGIVITIS OF THE DAMNED
This isn’t a gum graft, it’s ORAL FLESHCRAFT.
m/
I SING WITH THE MOUTH OF THE DEAD
Any name so long as the lead singer is FRANKENSTEIN FACE
Okay, but for real, Corpse Mouth is actually a really good metal band name. So much so that I actually just googled it to see if it already was one.
When we lived in LA putting dead people skin (?STUFF? I DON’Tknowbutitsfromdeadpeople) in lips and other body parts was a thing. Like, for making one more “attractive”. Could not get behind that. For like, necessary stuff (we need gums!), OK kinda maybe sure. Talk about a killer smile.
If someone is doing necromancy in your neighborhood, would your mouth burn a little, or would the gums entirely evacuate their living host?
Mantiques?! That’s it, I’m womandone with the wombweb.
I’m going to devote my life to needlessly masculinising normal things.
Mantacid
Manthropology
Mantennae
Manise-flavoured spirit
Ban words beginning in “AN”
Surely that would lead to manarchy.
Mantiquities
Maniseed balls (ew)
Mankerchief (I bet this one already exists)
Mantidisestablishmentarianism
Nothing in that article could convince me this doesn’t have something to do with mustached dudes in leathers striking poses in the thrift store.
They really just have to go and get their chromosomes all up in everything, don’t they? When women entered the workforce, they didn’t call themselves, like, “fem-gineers” or “fem-chanics” or “fem-sicians.” But a man can’t just do a thing, he’s got to make sure that everyone knows he’s doing it in a manly way, not like those dumb girls would do it. (By the same token, I loathe terms like “male nurse,” which seems to be something they get labelled with, rather than one they choose.)
I dunno. You still hear “lady doctor” and “woman lawyer” and similar, and it used to be a lot more common to refer to female writers as an “authoress” or “poetess” because they couldn’t just be authors and poets, nooo.
(On the latter point it is a quirk of the Guardian style guide that they use “actor” as the unisex term, which still provokes double-takes every now and then depending on context.)
Oh, gosh, really?? I have not encountered “woman lawyer” or the like, and only hear “lady doctor” when the speaker is referring to an OB/GYN. That is disappointing.
But “authoress” and “poetess” – are those terms that were chosen by or applied to women? If I heard someone refer to a woman who was a lawyer as a “woman lawyer,” I would take exception to it for different reasons than a man insisting on calling his snack a “brogurt.” I hear “woman lawyer” as othering and implying that she is an exception to the default, and “brogurt” as a man needing to put his XY stamp on something that is agender at best, and coded female at worst.
I’m not sure. My impression was that it was originally disparagingly applied by male readers/critics, but I do not have hard data to back this up. Google Ngrams tells me that ‘authoress’ peaked in usage in the mid-to-late 1850s – when the Brontes were publishing – and ‘poetess’ in 1894, much later than I would have thought.
The rest of your second para is interesting because to me those two phenomena are flipsides of the same coin. “Woman lawyer” implies that lawyering is For Men and it’s different when women do it. “Brogurt” implies that yogurt is For Women and it’s different when men eat it. In both cases the infuriating thing is the insistence on, first, gendering un-gender-related things (lawyering, yogurt) and, second, loudly marking any exceptions to the rule that you just made up.
Now I think about it more, though, the particular way these sorts of terms seem to get deployed isn’t the same. “Woman lawyer” implies that a woman lawyer is different to a male lawyer and that makes it weird. “Brogurt” rather implies that bro-yogurt is different to regular yogurt *and that makes it OK*.
I need to think about this more but I’m pretty sure I agree with you.
Lisa Hix from Collectors Weekly is barely managing to concel her contempt for “mantiquing,” isn’t she? Can’t say I blame her. Favorite quotes from the ultimately harmless but utterly clueless “Mantiques” author:
“mantiques are at the nexus of rusty, sharp, strange, vintage, and retro” (I like to think that’s MY aesthetic but ok)
” Yeah, and the first shop using the name Mantiques in the 1970s was owned by two women in New York City, who sold luxury gentleman accessories to collectors. Eventually, it was taken over by men.” Sighhh.
Not gonna lie, though, I do love the occasional episode of Pawn Stars. Strangely compelling, in the same vein as Bar Rescue and American Ninja Warrior. All can be watched with a mix of genuine enjoyment and gentle embarrassment for the state of masculinity.
I’m reading that short story, and I came back here to say this:
dogs >> douchelord men.
Finished the story, and YES DOGS I LOVE DOGS. The rest of the story was solid and great reading too, but the awesome dog cemented it for me.
I was so worried for the dog but now I am very glad I read that story. Dogs!
SO GOOD.
“This is how women sometimes turn into witches. We come home from work one day too many to discover our partners curled up on the couch like leeches in a nice warm tank, and we decide it’s better to take up with a hut with chicken legs.
A good chicken-legged hut will never disappoint you.”
YES.
I may yet move to a chicken-legged hut with my cat. That, or take to the sea with her. Good mousers are still welcome at sea, right?
ulcers >> douchelord men
Before I read, can you intrepid souls confirm that the dog lives happily ever after?
Yep, the dog lives happily ever after.
Thank you!
Did anybody else get the idea that Ilya deliberately sabotaged her birth control, and was drawing the parallel between donor livers and pregnancy in order to get her used to the idea/feel her out on the subject?
Oh, Jonestown. I had a habit of obsessively researching mass-murders and genocides when I was little, and I think that’s the first one that really stymied me with sheer why-the-fuck-ness.
And does every other Toastie have gum grafts? I’d seriously never heard of them.
Some thoughts on the bandersnatch cummerbund profile:
– Holy god the illustrations.
– Haven’t we as a world agreed to not describe women as hysterical anymore?
– The weird assumption that all slash fiction is written/enjoyed by gay men
– This is so clearly a profile of a man. He drinks! He jokes! He’s an ambitious sex symbol! And we like him all the more for it!
I was totally gonna comment on the slash thing.
How did that reporter actually manage not to talk to any of the females in the crowd who might’ve said “I WANT HIM TO MAKE OUT WITH MARTIN FREEMAN THO.” Bad journalism if you ask me.
Wait, I thought slash was mostly read by women (including many bisexual and lesbian women)? I mean, I don’t know any dudes who (will admit to) read slash, gay or straight. I know lots of ladies who do.
Exactly, quite odd.
Perhaps because women producing and enjoying slash indicates a degree of sexual agency and lack-of-caring-about-the-male-gaze that contradicts the screaming fangirl image?
It is MOST UNSEEMLY for women to enjoy erotic materials that do not involve at least one woman because then a MAN has to be in a sexually submissive position and we can’t go around turning MEN into passive sexual objects, now can we? What’s next, rain falling up? Cats sleeping with dogs?
I recently discovered that a very heterosexual dude friend of mine wrote a lot of Spike/Angel slash fic in his teens. He’s like, a computer programmer with a wife and kids. It was so delightful.
But my experience is also that it’s a mostly woman-read genre.
I am in a weird place of still finding him physically attractive but his personality is now officially repulsive to me. So insufferable.
This is why his role at The Toast Commune will be mostly decorative and entirely servile. Bendy Cucumberpatch will do as he’s told and speak only when spoken to, uttering only pre-approved phrases.
Excellent plan.
In my case, it’s that I don’t find him attractive although I don’t mind his acting or voice, and I find his personality repulsive, so I have a full body shudder in horror every time someone’s exclaiming over him.
The basic understanding that women write and enjoy slash fiction should be a mandatory requirement for writing about internet culture.
Even if you didn’t know about it going in, ~2 minutes of googling could clear everything up. Like, bare minimum “research.”
CADAVER GUMS. That is priceless. If someone I’d been dating told me that, I would have to spend at least a few minutes wondering exactly how much of a corpse I’d been making out with. WHOSE CORPSE?
Mallory “Ol’ Dead Mouth” Ortberg
MANTIQUES. I don’t understand how men can be SO STRONG, so very, very, very much stronger than women could ever ever ever be, so strong and manly men, but still be TOTALLY DISMANTLED at the thought of antiquing or crafting or anything Typically Feminine.
Come on, fucking Gaston decorated his place with antlers. IF GASTON CAN DECORATE YOU CAN DO IT TOO. And he didn’t call it “mandecorating” either. Do we really really really need another way to divide Men’s Stuff from Ladies’ Stuff? Men stuff: barware, rock’n’roll memorobilia, guns, video games, hunting/fishing stuff. Ladies stuff: anything with flowers, I guess? WHY IS THIS GENDERED?
Also “I think young couples’ homes look more like Apartment Therapy.” Oh dear, I guess we’re doing it wrong, then, since I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything on AT that I’d like to live in!
I think the issue is exacerbated by the fact that we’re talking about antiques here–things which, by definition, are from an even more products-were-segmented-by-gender time that our own. So yeah, back when the tat was produced even more of the stuff they marketed to women had shitty flowers on it… antiques tend to segment themselves by gender very very easily!
I think you mean “mantlers”.
Gaston is the epitome of masculinity by which all men should be measured. Egg consumption included.
One of the worse cultural studies gender analysis articles I’ve ever read was one that argued about how Disney was setting bad masculine role models for little boys … via the character of Gaston.
I think they didn’t understand the concept of villains.
I would read an article on how Disney was setting unrealistic expectations for future cholesterol levels by Gaston’s promotion of daily egg ingestion.
“Gaston: Brought to you by the National Association of Egg Farmers”
Ron Swanson clearly was affected by Gaston’s egg consumption.
I fucking LOVE antiquing. My fiance has to steer me away from the antique store row in our town because she knows I’ll get distracted and lose 3 hours wandering around. What’s not to love about antiques?? Shit is OLD and awesome, and there’s always that thought that things today Ain’t Made Like They Used To—which may be total bullshit—but it always puts me in a mood of awe as I hold a 10-pound plate from the 1930s made of fucking indestructible radioactive iron or something.
Bros that don’t do antiques are no bros of mine.
My Beloved is much like you. But when we sigh together over some antique store find, we tend to say things like, “Look how cheap labor was back then. How hungry were this artisan’s children?” And “Women’s labor had no value at all, did it, churning out textiles as lovely as this in such quantity.”
Emby I just read your rant aloud to a crowded room after telling them about the ridiculousness of the “mantiquing” and you should probably know that there was loud applause and cheering at the final BROS THAT DON’T DO ANTIQUES ARE NO BROS OF MINE.
My two favorite things about The Toast:
-The casual misandry!
-The constant references to Beauty and the Beast!
“It’s personal.”
That is……not a conventional usage of the word, Mike Wise. I know, I know, language is descriptive and not prescriptive. I just feel like you would communicate more clearly if you used more standard meanings. So for example, instead of saying “it’s personal,” you might want to say “I’m actually a completely clueless white dude with no idea what people of color go through so I’ll sit down and shut up now.”
Oh also Dad Magazine book http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/what-…
DADBOOK!!!!!
!!!! Tryna sneak this in with no fanfare!!
Also maybe they didn’t know you two were married, but it makes me very happy that you were called “colleague” instead of “colleague and wife” or some other possibly-reductive nonsense.
It only occurred to me yesterday that they never asked how we knew each other or anything, and it seemed weird to bring it up because it’s not really relevant to the project. But they did ask how the idea came about, and we told the story of how we were visiting San Francisco and had lunch with Mallory and started making dad jokes. So at the very least we’re the kind of colleagues who take week-long, just-us-two vacations together.
Hahaha JUST ROOMMATES WHO SHARE A BED AND A BANK ACCOUNT
YAY
YESSSSS my people
Count me in as another one who reads everything I can get my hands on about Jonestown, in an effort to understand what the hell happened. (Also recommended: the story that ran a few years back — I think it was in LA Weekly — on the Chaikin family. Are we allowed to do links in comments? It’s here, and there’s a followup note from the writer about the discussion of Phyllis Chaikin’s family’s socialism.) And honestly, I think the more you read about Jonestown, the more of a tragedy it looks. A good many of the people who died there werent’ “sheeple” who mindlessly “drunk the Kool-Aid” (and it wasn’t Kool-Aid, btw) in service of their leader; by November 1978 a good many of them had figured out for themselves that Jim Jones was drugged and sociopathic, but they had no money, no way out of the isolated Jonestown, and little energy left. It seems to me, reading this article and others, that Jonestown is less the story of a “cult” and more of how appealing was the ideal of a community where everyone — including older black women — was respected and valued, and how an abusive megalomaniac was able to use that ideal to manipulate and eventually murder.
(Look: I know the narrative of Jonestown is “900 people committed suicide,” but if you’re isolated in the jungle, with no way of getting out, and you’re taking poison because your parents are giving it to you, or because people who have been caring for you for months are giving it to you, or because men with guns are going to shoot you if you don’t, that is not suicide.)
Have you read Raven by Tim Reiterman? I thought it was excellent, if horrifying. As you say, Peoples Temple really was a positive force for a great many people before it… wasn’t.
no! I’ll have to look it up. Although I have seen the documentary, which I think Reiterman is in.
I did at one point stumble across a fascinating book, written in what I want to say is the early 1980s, which examined Jonestown through a perspective which placed a very strong emphasis on the FBI’s surveillance of Jones and the history of US colonial involvement in Guyana. My memory is that it came reaaaaaaaaaaaaal close to casting Jones as an anti-colonialist martyr, but I may be doing it a disservice. I can’t remember the title, unfortunately.
He also wore them down psychologically: blaring loud music at all hours, random pre-recorded messages from him in the middle of the night that everyone had to pay strict attention to, separating families and other alliances and encouraging fights, as well as, obviously, working and starving them half to death. Not quite the same as a stereotypical doomsday cult.
I’ve always thought that cults were essentially abusive relationships on a much larger scale. You have one person wearing down the other people until they’re too frightened or emotionally exhausted to leave; in the most extreme cases, like Jonestown, it ends in murder.
My priest wrote this piece about how offensive he finds the phrase “drank the Kool-Aid.”
I recommend the newish Ti West movie The Sacrament, which is basically a thinly veiled alternate Jonestown story.
“A Thousand Lives” by Julia Scheeres is another book that is worth reading.
Dudeliest word: it’s now a tossup between mantiquing and brogurt.
I’m partial to the new manly donuts going around: bronuts.
I imagine those as very very small beignets.
BROGURT
I SINCERELY HOPE that men are paying a premium for these bro-ized items the way women are expected to do for pink razors or whatnot. As in, regular Greek yogurt? $3.99. BROgurt? 4.99. Sorry, bro.
One of the bro-gurt brands has fake abs embossed on the container. It is so, so, strange. And the serving size is comically small. But the yogurt abs really kind of freak me out.
did you know manmosas exist? It’s no brogurt (possibly my favorite horrifying word mashup ever), but still: not bad.
My friend’s husband goes to broga. He says he can’t control his boners around women in tight pants and therefore finds co-ed yoga classes too distracting, so he goes to broga instead.
…
Sigh.
I had the opposite problem – when I had braces my gums went nuts and grew down to meet the brackets. I had to have them cut back to their normal position in several stages. Do not recommend. Especially since I still had braces during the whole mess so I kept catching the stitches on my braces and ripping them out.
(Sorry, everyone)
I had my gums trimmed as well! It was after I got my braces off, though. The periodontist said he recovered something like 40% of my teeth, which is crazy to me, because I still have a lot of gums.
I also stopped wearing my retainer while I had the stitches in, so my front-tooth gap reclaimed its space and remains to this day.
Was not aware that antiques were scary to men. Every Antique store I have ever been in has had a resident Mansplainer who Knew All about whatever it was that we were looking for.
It’s really cathartic when they babble on and on about a piece and then you get to butt in and go ‘Yeah, actually this is a reproduction/has been refinished for the following reasons…’
Like, I’ve been antiquing regularly since I was in the WOMB, you’re not gonna get that shit past me.
The dogs in that short story are Moscow street dogs, which are a stable population of dogs descended from domesticated ones:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_dogs_in_Mosco…
Some of them even know how to navigate the subways like in the story!
I, too, would opt for the cadaver grafts, Mallory. Zombie mouth!
I learned very recently that two strange sources of skin grafts are cadavers and foreskins. I find that incredibly fascinating. And horrifying.
Oh man, I didn’t think it could get any more awesomely horrifying than cadaver grafts. I WAS WRONG.
But what about cadaver foreskins?
(CLAIMED for my Misandrist Punk Band!)
Okay, little brag moment, if y’all don’t mind? It is somewhat related to the cadaver surgery stuff.
My partner was in a motorcycle accident and suffered a Grade 3 AC joint separation. He had the option to re-attach his shoulder with cadaver ligaments, but opted not to because the success rates for the surgery were pretty low and some people report decreased mobility. NGL, I was pretty bummed. But he took the opportunity to push himself in rehabilitation and now he has some freakin’ killer arms and shoulders, so really it was a win/win situation for me. I’m gonna shamelessly share this photo of him, two years post injury:
That was three years ago, and he’s managed to increase mass and eliminate most of the shoulder imbalance you can see in the photo. MY GUY!
Why isn’t the picture moving, Clever Manka? Please fix it.
Ah ha ha ha ha ha! JUST FOR YOU (and the seventeen people who liked your comment), I’m gonna film him and put it up for y’all. Although just a warning, he is not a little vain (there’s a reason we get along so well) and he’s gonna want a couple weeks to prepare so he can show himself to his best advantage. But it’ll go up on an Open Thread at some point, Pinky Promise!
I know! I guess you’re supposed to massage gently and use a really soft brush and make sure you don’t push upwards… I don’t really get it, so now I feel like I’m messing up every time I brush.
I’m getting this from my dentist now too! It makes me super paranoid about brushing, which is probably not the intended result, but WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?
Dear Prudie: How soon after you start dating someone do you tell them you have gum grafts from a cadaver?
Put that shit in your OKC profile, dude.
Just a public service announcement to not read Escape From Jonestown if you are in a public place, like a coffee shop or office, or anywhere you would be embarrassed to be seen sobbing, because I read that piece yesterday and holy shit.
Okay, that link on tulpas just gave the term “imaginary friend” a WHOLE new meaning. Also, totally fascinating. Here’s my reaction emoji: 😯💬💆
(I think I’m addicted to emojis, thanks to that NYMag article and for an iPad update that magically added an emoji keyboard button…I literally can’t stop myself from using them).
I had a pretty visceral memory flash to my childhood and imaginary friends, reading the tulpas article. And gives some new perspective on Snapewives, etc.
So fascinating.
It is nice to see tulpas being treated seriously and with some respect instead of just mocked and laughed at, but oh some parts of that article just made me want to put my head in my hands. I realise that my *entire normal life* requires mental gymnastics for most people, but ugh. It requires a lot of mental gymnastics to understand what singleton lives are like too! (Like: what do you DO with all that TIME?)
Mallory you were into the Enchanted Forest books?? Those were the greatest. I demand a Femslash Friday about Cimorene and Alianora.
YES PLEASE.
Cimorene and Morwen, come ON.
What? Cimorene/Kazul for life!
Ooooohhhh. Yeah.
You think they went back to dating when Mendanbar spent twenty years in a magic closet?
Men: so insecure they have to put manly words into other words so that it’s OK to like things.
I’ve been told I absolutely need them OR ELSE, but this is by the same dentist who also told me that I “absolutely need” to get my wisdom teeth (that are not bothering me) removed. He was furious that I got pregnant and therefore needed to postpone this super-important operation, and said my wisdom teeth had cavities and then amended it reluctantly upon questioning to “they MIGHT develop cavities in the future.” He also told me that brushing three times a day is not enough, and that I should get my teeth cleaned by their office every month whether or not our insurance covers it, so I’m having trouble believing him about the gum grafts. I need a new dentist.
Your dentist sounds terrible. I am not overly fond of my dentist–he tends to talk down, like I’m an idiot for having trouble getting floss between my close-together teeth–but he only brushes his own teeth once a day and doesn’t make up stories about cavities. (I’ve actually been to him twice when *I* thought I had a cavity which turned out to be something else.)
I definitely had an “emergency” dentist visit for what turned out to be a popcorn kernel husk (?) jammed into my gums. :-/
To be fair, popcorn husks are the perfect size and shape to wedge right into your gums. I’ve had similar experiences. But my two false cavities were a cold sore and then pressure sensitivity from grinding my teeth at night.
Oh man yes you really really need a new dentist. Please go find a new dentist. This one is trying to rip you off.
I haven’t seen a dentist since high school when he swore I MUST have my wisdom teeth out. I’m 37 now and they have never bothered me.
Your dentist sounds like a horrible person. HOWEVER, I had wisdom teeth that were very slow to come all the way in. I was told they should come out, but they weren’t hurting or anything, so I let it slide for YEARS, until one morning I realized I couldn’t move my mouth, either to close my teeth all the way or to open wide. I thought it was a TMJ thing, but went to the dentist to be sure and discovered I had an infection around one of my wisdom teeth because it was so hard to reach with the tooth brush, and the inflammation was keeping my jaw locked. I got antibiotics and all four removed by a surgeon for my lack of trouble. Take care!
Same thing, though not quite as sudden and drastic, happened to me. Luckily the infected tooth was really easy to remove and I just had to go to a regular dentist and get it pulled. But I can confirm that sometimes it’s not a good idea to ignore your wisdom teeth.
All this talk about cadaver gums has made me realize that I would love to read a post by a Gal Scientist or just A Toastie who is involved in/knowledgeable about organ and tissue donation. I’m an organ donor myself* and am generally pro-donation, but I don’t know much about how it all actually works!
*Although, upon reflection, a lot of my body parts are already faulty so I don’t know how much good they’d do anyone.
I’d recommend the book “The Undead” by Dick Teresi. It’s honestly not super well-written, but the information is fascinating (and kind of scary) and you’ll learn a lot about the business and science of organ donation. The biggest thing I took away from it is that the medical establishment still hasn’t exactly agreed on what “dead” means, which has a lot of implications for organ donation!!
Seconding this! That would be awesome. And I guess on more political lines – why haven’t we moved to an opt-out system? Is there a reason besides the fact that as a culture we’re deeply uncomfortable with our own mortality and like to pretend we will never die?
Ugh why is my copy of Flesh and Blood at home and not in my office?! I feel inspired to read about cadaver grafts!
Great book, by the way. I think about what it would be like to get a blood transfusion from a baby lamb like twice a week.
Oh Mallory! I have a weird tooth implant that got secured using the “freeze-dried bone powder of someone who is deceased.” This fact is always a big ole’ hit on first dates.
I was never even OFFERED the cadaver gum option. Thanks, Province of Ontario and/or my insurance company.
(although the roof of mouth thing worked out fine and not nearly as traumatic as my later jaw surgery, so.)
GOING TO FLOSS RIGHT NOW!!!
It was a shame that video gaming and fannish communities online put up with and enabled RequiresHate for 10+ years, so I’m just glad for every person (white or not, author or not) is standing up against the threats and bullying. RequiresHate attacked PoC for ~acting white~, destroyed multiple online communities with her toxic behavior, mocked trans people for being ugly, said a woman of color should be raped by dogs, repeatedly called for people to be dismembered or have acid thrown in their face–and this was not for great justice, this was for things as petty as liking a video game someone else didn’t like. There’s no call for that kind of threatening bullshit.
Tempest, meanwhile, has egged on RequiresHate for years; I’m absolutely fine with her getting some flack for that.
Uhhhh I had gum grafts when I was 16 and I’m just now realizing that no one ever said where the skin was coming from…
Cadaver grafts! Got em at 16 for dental implant surgery (actually, in preparation for dental implant surgery, as I didn’t have enough upper jaw bone-type area to hold the implant in place). Wait. That particular implant kept getting infected (sorry) and failed, so now I don’t know if they had to scrape all the cadaver bone out (again, sorry) or if eventually it just calmed down. Huh. I’ve spent a lot of time blocking this out, truly. But now I don’t know if it’s cooler that I had cadaver grafts or rather, instead, that the cadaver rejected me, on a cellular level, and then what that says about me and/or the cadaver. I have a Ouiji board upstairs and now, for the first time, have a very specific question to ask it.
I know this isn’t the point, but this (from the Jonestown article) irks me to no end:
The travelers slipped back in time, passing thatched huts stilted on the riverbanks and Amerindian families, who eyed them warily from dugout canoes.
No. No. They did not slip “back in time,” and indigenous peoples are not some sort of live-action artifacts.
Oh ugh, yes, this.
Oh, thank God she ended up with the dog (and puppy!) in the end. I hope she moves into a chicken-foot mansion.
The moment on the train platform was terrifying.
I was so scared.
+1
If I could upvote this a dozen times, I would. RequiresHate is an abuser, and has been for years. The people enabling and defending her deserve to be called out just as much as the people who enabled and defended [Emma Bull’s husband], Vox Day, et all.
I have a giant “Need gum grafts?” google ad at the top of this page, which is making me laugh to think about someone googling around researching the procedure and ending up here.
Really? What did I miss? I need this information!
This is in reply to Stonefruit’s comment to Nicole about buying a car
Is that a very large football or a very small elephant?
Thank you!
Thank you!
"she herself harasses PoC she doesn't like to this day."
Examples? Because this is a lie being put out by the RH camp. I have harassed exactly no one, white or POC. (Although by your logic, I'm 'harassing' you by responding to your libel. Guess what? If you make public comments, people get to comment publicly on them.)
I also note your hypocrisy in citing Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's post as an argument that whites need to shut up about RH, but as soon as someone points out that Rochita did not mean this, you hide behind a bullsh*t 'unsafe' claim which bears no close examination.
Abusers like RH are making POC unsafe. People like you supporting abusers make them unsafe. White people like Elizabeth Bear by speaking out and supporting RH's victims, are not. And that's the truth whether you like it or not.