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Kiese Laymon on his Vassar College Faculty ID:
Later that year, maybe 30 yards to the left of Main Building, security routinely entered my office asking for my ID despite my name on the door and pictures of me, my Mama, and them all over my desk. In that same building, one floor lower, after I got my first book deal, I was told by another senior white member of my department that it was “all right” if I spoke to him “in ebonics,” Later that year, a white senior professor walked in at the end of one of my classes and told me, in front of my students, “Don’t talk back to me.”
I wanted to put my palm through this man’s esophagus and burn that building down, but I thought about prison and my Grandmama’s health care. So I cussed his ass out and went about the business of eating too much fried cheese and biscuits at a local buffet.
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I am here for your Star Wars trailer reactions.
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P.D. James was very, very important to me, and although the death of a 94 y/o woman cannot truthfully be called a horrible shock to anyone, it somehow was, and has cast a pall over my holiday weekend. I think she was a true genius, and was possessed of a great heart in addition to a great mind, and that the world is a sadder place without her in it. There are plenty of reading lists floating around, so I will only say that her work never diminished in quality, and The Private Patient was every bit as good as Cover Her Face, and there is a deep majestic sorrow in The Children of Men that is utterly unlike the (excellent) film adaptation, but should not be missed. Also her memoir, also The Maul and the Pear Tree, also Innocent Blood…okay, I made a reading list. I was always more Dalgliesh-oriented than Cordelia Gray-oriented, but there are many who felt quite the opposite, and you should start at the beginning.
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Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.
Right. It’s ridiculous.
So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.
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Businessweek profiled Anita Sarkseesian. I should not have to tell you by now to avoid the comments.
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I saw Mockingjay this weekend and I was INTO IT. I also find the Gale-Peeta split in internet opinion hard to reconcile with Gale being so, so much better looking. It just dwarfs all other factors for me. No, I REALIZE that the second half of Mockingjay will change that, but it’s been ages since I read the books so I’m just stanning in livetime for simplicity.
Also, oh, man, poor Finnick, right, he’s doing his SUPER traumatic reveal speech, and everyone’s like “yeah, yeah, keep talking, this is great,” but are they even LISTENING to him? Finnick is having a rough time, guys! Did you catch that bit where he was just “sometimes I wish we were all dead,” and everyone’s all “yeah, well, they need me in Command HQ.” He needs a THERAPIST. He needs to be HEARD.
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GUTS Magazine has published the first round results of their survey asking about The Talk, and some of them are very funny and some are very depressing, and it’s worth a read:
I, eight years old and in the back seat of a car at prime news hour, heard the words “oral sex” on the radio. When I asked what it meant, my dad told me that it was when two people shared the same Oral B toothbrush. My parents only told me this story recently, but it explains my very healthy protectionism of my oral hygiene products.
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When your postpartum depression doesn’t end.
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I spent Thanksgiving with a dear Russian friend and her husband, and she exposed me to the Russian version of Winnie-the-Pooh, which is…a little like being on acid, and a little like the first five minutes of Watership Down, and Owl is a lady and there is NO Christopher Robin, please enjoy:
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Rams players entered the field with a ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ pose, acknowledging Ferguson. http://t.co/54R978j7i6 pic.twitter.com/KCnp295QCF
— theScore (@theScore) November 30, 2014
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
VINNI-PUKH! There is something just…so freaking charming about the old Soviet animation, but especially Vinni-Pukh.
There was a fantastic profile of Chris Rock on Sunday Morning yesterday (quick, my dad is showing) that was really, really excellent.
I love how gruff Vinni Pukh is, compared to the Winnie we know and love. He stomps around the woods singing “VINNI PUKH LIVES VERY HAPPILY! THAT IS WHY HE SINGS ALL THESE SONGS OUT LOUD!” (or something, I’m too lazy to go back and look up the exact subtitles) but he sounds really angry, like he’s on his way to drop-kick Piglet into the beehive.
Even as a kid I never enjoyed Winnie the Pooh, because even as a child I found it too saccharine and twee (if I had known those words as a kid, which I did not, but the fact of the matter still stands). So when my university Russian professor introduced us to Vinni-Pukh I was like THIS IS THE STORY I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL MY LIFE.
I enjoy it so much more this way. I like my children’s stories with a vague undercurrent of aggression and tight-lipped anger.
I am completely in love with the Russian Winnie-the -Pooh. It’s like meditating, but awake.
Also! I was given from a very young age (three?) a picture book called Mummy Laid An Egg, by the immaculate and mad Babette Cole. All the sex-ed a person could ever want, including a cartoon of two people doing it (variously) on a space hopper, a skateboard and I think also horseback. All under the heading “Here Are Some Ways Mummies And Daddies Fit Together”.
I loved it, and made my mother read it to me often.
This is wonderful on so many levels. <3 your mom.
Sounds like exactly the sort of book I want my (as yet hypothetical) kids to have growing up.
I adore Mummy Laid an Egg! I can’t remember when I first read it, but my family has had it for as long as I can remember.
We had a book called Where Did I Come From? There were definitely naked (cartoon) people and a sperm with a top hat involved somewhere. It was pretty great.
That oral sex story resonates with me. When I asked my Mum what oral sex was and she refused to tell me I went to look up ‘oral’ in the dictionary instead. It just confused me more so I went with the definition that said “spoken rather than written” and for years my mental picture of oral sex was essentially two people talking dirty to each other.
That’s what I thought it was for years, until I HAD ALREADY PARTICIPATED IN IT. Shortly thereafter, I heard someone talking about it and put it together: oh that’s what they mean by oral…
(But honestly, I still prefer my original definition. I mean, an oral argument is where you make your argument out loud. An oral history is where you tell your history out loud. It just makes sense!)
Mine too! Basically I thought oral sex was phone sex, but not necessarily with a phone.
Somehow I got the idea that it was French kissing. I don’t remember ever asking my parents, though.
Same here, though I definitely did NOT ask my parents.
Same. I assumed it was your tongues humping, which is what French kissing sounded like to me.
Me too. Because “oral” meant mouth, and kissing was the only sexy thing you could possibly do with your mouth, right? I was sheltered but I had a good vocabulary.
Growing up I thought ALL sex was oral sex, because I knew about kissing, and I knew sex involved parts “down there” so…. (my barbies/aladdin 69’d A LOT)
Ahh, dictionary sex ed.
I once heard my mom talking about neighbors who were making and distributing homemade “cornography,” or so I thought. I could tell by her tone that this was something salacious, so I looked up “cornography”. I didn’t find anything.
I also ran to the dictionary and learned about “sadism” thanks to a line in The Hardy Boys, oddly enough.
Had to look up Tribadism after a particularly piquant round with my mother in my early twenties. Thank god I had the internet by then, because years earlier Webster’s had been no use for “phallic.”
I thought blow jobs involved… blowing. And I did not understand how that could be erotic.
OH TOAST DON’T EVER LEAVE US AGAIN. Two workdays without Toasty goodness was TWO many.
Also, I know I’m not the only one here who learned about sex and Our Changing Bodies from books my mother surreptitiously left in my bedroom starting at age eight. Sometimes repression is great!
I was at a complete loss on Friday. I had no idea what to do with myself.
For some reason I connected this to the “Our Changing Bodies” part of Aravis’s post.
Yep, I never had The Talk, just a book with watercolor illustrations from the seventies.
I learned the mechanics from “The Life Cycle Library,” brought to me by my mom (could have been my dad’s influence but we’ll give Mom the props on this one). For an old-school Catholic, it was pretty forward-thinking of her. Plus I’m sure she didn’t want to talk about it.
Mockingjay was better than I had expected but I really disliked how they used Effie as comic relief in most of her scenes. Everyone is concerned about Important Matters and she’s complaining about the lack of wigs and cute outfits! She is so vapid and superficial! Or maybe she is trying to cope with the trauma of having to abandon everything she’s ever known and loved and being forced to live in a massive bunker and never see sunlight and eat tasteless gruel for every meal for the foreseeable future. With the threat of being bombed to dust by the Capitol constantly hanging over her head. If she needs to take apart a jumpsuit and make herself a fancy turban to help her cope, well, at least she’s found a coping mechanism, unlike pretty much everyone else in this movie. Effie is being true to herself and I will not stand idly by and let her be mocked!
Also, no disrespect to Julianne Moore, but Alma Coin is essentially a bargain-basement Laura Roslin.
God bless Laura Roslin forever.
It surprised me, but Julianne Moore was the only person I was disappointed by in this movie. Coin was so…blah. Clearly they should have just had Mary McDonnell play her and then at least I could understand why people would be so damn loyal to her.
I always imagined her as Cherry Jones.
So did I!
For sure, although I don’t know whether to put that on Ms. Moore or the script/directing. On the one hand, she *is* supposed to be only partially seen/understood at this point when we’re seeing her through Katniss’ eyes, but the surface-only treatment definitely does not transfer to the screen very well.
My impression from the book was that she was super politician-y and cold, with Stephan Harper-style dead eyes. Julianne Moore seems too nice to me.
I think her blandness is part of what made her such a creepy character to me – she’s almost too detatched, like she’s trying to broadcast “nothing to see, move along” with every molecule of her body. No one in politics is that controlled all the time – unless they’re hiding something truly appalling.
I actually think that the movies do a really good job of making Effie a more sympathetic and relatable character. Like, yes, she is ridiculous, but she was raised to be ridiculous, and her life has been hard and sucky and she is just going to make the best out of a bad situation. I think Elizabeth Banks does a great job with her being both comic relief and a character with depth and intelligence.
I agree–Elizabeth Bank brought a lot of pathos to that role. She’s funny, but she looks like a sick person without her makeup, and then when you see her simultaneously committing full tilt to the cause and finding ways to style her bunker-wear, it’s really touching. I think the performance positions Effie as the maker of the joke, not merely the butt of the joke.
It was partly the crowd at the movie theatre when I saw it – I didn’t get the sense at all that they were laughing with Effie.
Effie’s slowly-evolving bunker-wear style was so heartwarming in a movie that was so full of bleakness. Elizabeth Banks plays her so well – but this is a fairly subtle movie, and I do think there’s plenty of room for people to fail to empathize if they’re determined to do so.
I wish we had seen Effie in that bright pink flouncy skirt/dress she was making in her first scene when Plutarch Heavensbee goes to fetch her. I know there wasn’t any situation in which it would have been appropriate and her District 13 bunkermates would not have appreciated such a flashy reminder of Capitol pomp and luxury in their midst… but with every new Bunker Couture outfit she pulled out, I always thought “But what about that amazing Barbie dress you were already working on?”
I fully expect to see that dress in Part 2.
It’s also ridiculous when the President and everyone else in the cause is clearly just as devoted to their style. Oh really, the President just HAPPENS to have iron-straight hair and a jumpsuit with a fitted waist? MY.
I always think it’s a bit of a shame that they go for making Capital style ridiculous. It seems kind of patronising to the audience. I wish they’d made it awesome and stunning and genuinely desirable. Though possibly that would mean blending it out, and the deliberately ridiculous 18th century-ness is better.
The President obviously has access to the same magical hammerspace hair-straightener that Black Widow used in CATWS.
I laughed OUT LOUD in the theatre in that scene where Cap and Black Widow are crashing at Falcon’s house and she has slightly wavy hair when she gets done showering and then like TWO SECONDS LATER she has bone straight hair. What??? How? Does Sam keep a Chi at his place just in case of hair straightening emergencies?
I ship Cap/Falcon with the best of them, but take one look at Anthony Mackie-as-Sam Wilson and tell me he’s not the kind of plan-ahead dude who would have everything an attractive date might want or need. “Hair dryer? Straight iron? Baby, I got you.” (This is how I managed that scene: frantic lampshade-hanging.)
I didn’t mind the ridiculous fashions. I figured it was a two-fold thing:
1) Any future fashions are bound to look ridiculous to us, so it really complemented the futuristic tech of the capitol.
2) The fashions look as ridiculous and excessive to us as they do to the rest of Panem. It’s not, oh they look so dashing, it’s, I own a maximum of two outfits and they’re both stained coveralls wtf are these people wearing.
“I also find the Gale-Peeta split in internet opinion hard to reconcile with Gale being so, so much better looking. It just dwarfs all other factors for me.”
EXACTLY THIS. I guess they wanted to cast them as far polar opposites as they could, but I just feel like they did TOO good a job.
(edited to spell a word correctly, hello morning)
Totally agree, I also appreciated that Gale is just hot and didn’t really talk that much, thereby allowing the majority of screen time to be taken up by various lady characters, which is mostly what I want in a movie.
Also, Team Johanna right here.
I’d been struggling with how beautiful Liam Hemsworth is, but in Mockingjay Part 1, I just… hated him? Gale is so horrible in that movie he stopped even looking hot to me.
I also saw Mockingjay over the weekend and I am so, so upset about Peeta. I mean I knew what was going to happen and I knew it was going to be awful but ugh.
As far as I’m concerned Gale can just hang around being broody and attractive in the background and Peeta can be all better and open his Hunger Grains bakery and Katniss and Joanna and Cressida can all make out, that’s how the second movie is going to go, right?
I had totally forgotten about the MAJOR PLOT POINT of what happens to him, and I too was very upset.
I remembered his end-of-this-movie-into-next drama, but all the propo stuff didn’t really catch with me during the book the way it did here. By the time I hit Mockingjay, I was kinda speed-reading for plot and getting frustrated with Katniss as narrator, so the horribleness of Peeta and Finnick’s stuff definitely caught me more on-screen.
katniss/joanna/cressida is now my headcanon forever and ever amen
HUNGER GRAINS
I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t see Mockingjay opening weekend so I can talk about it. For me it was all about two things:
1. Natalie Dormer continues to be my ultimate woman-crush because GODDAMN YOU GUYS
2. The Hanging Tree. THE HANGING TREE. I cried, ngl.
I just love these movies so goddamn much. They should be shown to anyone trying to adapt a book into a movie. I mean, they have an advantage because the source material translates so well onto film, but they’re also an excellent case study in how to keep true to a v=book while not putting every word on the page and creating scenes outside the written narrative. THOSE UPRISING SCENES.
Totally agreed, I had no idea a haircut could stir such passionate emotions in me. I saw a real-life woman totally pulling off that haircut last night and I COULD NOT stop staring at her.
For me, the adaptations cure the story of exactly what bothered me about the books: ALL THE ANGST. We don’t get Katniss’s internal angsty-as-hell monologue and it’s kind of the best. I get that that’s why the books are very relatable for the teens, but the movies are so much more powerful and subtle as a result.
Yeah, the humor in this movie really surprised and pleased me. There was some chuckling, even around the sheer unmitigated horror of the stuff that actually came from the books: Effie (and I am so happy with what they did with her, and her mad science with the District 13 uniforms), Pollux being a PERSON and not just a victim of the Capitol, the wonderful job they did making Cressida much warmer and more human than I think she was written in the books. I was prepared for it to be two hours of grim grimness, and it wasn’t, and that is really going to make the second half of Mockingjay even more wrenching, I suspect. We’ve been given time to become attached to all these people…ugh…
The uprising scenes are what I cry at EVERY TIME.
Come sit by me – I have Kleenex!
To me, the uprising scenes were the best part of the movie. The assault on the hydroelectric dam was fantastic. I think the movies benefit from not being told entirely through Katniss’s eyes. I think the third book always suffered from being from the viewpoint of someone uninterested and not included in the political stuff.
assault on the hydroelectric dam
I applauded. Nobody else in the theater joined me though 🙁
I fought giving the District 12 salute several times. I think I would be very, very susceptible to propaganda. I was totally swept up.
Vinni Pukh strips almost all the twee from Winnie the Pooh and lets all the melancholy come forward. I love it so much.
I love Russian Piglet. Ze is the most adorable Piglet EVAR.
The thing that I really appreciate about The Hunger Games is that it does not shy away from how incredibly fucked up the victors would be. I don’t have PTDS, so I can’t speak with any real authority, but I think they do a pretty good job in their portrayals of it, at least based on what I’ve seen in my friends who have PTSD. I think the books are better in that regard, because they let you deeper into Katniss’s head, but even the movies show this range of the ways that trauma can fuck a person up. My hope is that the popularity of the books and films will help give us tools to discuss PTSD – what it looks like, what it feels like, and how to support people who are dealing with it.
And while I agree that Gale is better looking, I am still Team Peeta all the way. Peeta gets Katniss, and supports her, and doesn’t get hung up on her not being the person he wants her to be. [SPOILER] The part where Gale is like “the only way I can get your attention is by being in pain” made me want to slap him in his stupid handsome face. [/SPOILER]
Okay, hi, this is my second agreeing-with-you comment this morning, sorry to be a creeper. But there’s definitely no contest between pouty, handsome Gale and vulnerable, tender Peeta. RESCUE PEETA! Kiss Gale, and then walk away before he starts armchair diagnosing you.
That was the point at which I began wanting to punch Gale in the face (prior to that I had been aggressively indifferent to him) and I NEVER LOOKED BACK. Oh, she’s preoccupied and not paying a whole lot of attention to you? Have you considered that she MAYBE HAS A FEW OTHER THINGS ON HER MIND RIGHT NOW?
UGH RIGHT
Oh, the Kiese Laymon article is righteous and amazing and devastating (I’m in academia myself, and virulent racism is alive and well in my institution, ugh) but in case any of you are reading Toast comments before diving into the links, let me repeat the idiom that holds true almost everywhere except The Toast:
DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS. DO NOT.
Unless you’re really excited about watching a bunch of ding-dongs angrily crying about how THEIR lives are hard and THEY’RE WHITE therefore racism is over and white privilege doesn’t exist. In which case, dive right in, peeps, you’re gonna love Gawker.
Yeah, I read that yesterday and dove right in and it was not a good life choice.
One big reason I left academia (*after* getting my PhD. I finished on the energy of “fuck you — watch me make this argument so well you can’t fail me”) was the racism, classism, sexism, geography-ism etc …. I fucking hated it. I liked teaching, but just sucked at the politics and the double-speak. Saw the word “carnivalesque” in a recent Nation article and damn near threw up. Nothing about Laymon’s experience surprised me — saddened me, broke my heart, but did not surprise me.
Liam Hemsworth = the Blandest Hemsworth.
I actually find both of them so incredibly bland. Which is why I can’t see “But Liam/Gale is so much more handsome!” as a reason to be Team Gale. Because I look at him and my brain sort of goes, “Ah yes, he is very handsome. Hmm. Yes. Well. I wonder what’s for dinner? Do I have time to get my bangs trimmed after work?” That feeling of spontaneous loin combustion (or as I like to call it, “The Elba Factor”) is completely missing.
Is this where I can tell you that I had the weirdest sexy dream ever about Chris Hemsworth in which he took me to brunch in a Victorian mansion except before we started eating, he decided he needed to do some squats and he needed to use my body weight to do them? So my boyfriend Chris Hemsworth (who only became my boyfriend after this dream cuz good lord) lifted me up and did 100 squats while I held bacon in one hand and a mimosa in the other, the end.
PS You know that episode of Buffy where Buffy is telling Willow about her sexy dreams about Angel and she’s all “It had SURROUND sound”? Yeah. It was like that. I mean I’m more of a Cumberbatch girl myself but after that dream I get it, Hemsworth, you’re hot and your entire body feels like it’s made of marble, okay, jeez.
Yes, this is where you share that, because that dream should be shared. It should be a cinematic masterpiece.
Also exciting: PILES and PILES of French Toast and pancakes and crepes filled with pears and peaches and topped with powdered sugar. PILES of them! Taller than me! Perhaps not taller than Thor, though.
This is THE BEST. THE BEST. Gah, I’m so jealous of this dream.
That sounds like the best dream ever. I wish I had dreamed it myself.
I know a girl who bumped into Chris Hemsworth on the street once. As in, literally bumped into, wasn’t looking where she was going, walked headfirst into his chest. Looks up to apologise, keeps looking up “Sorry mate- OH! Sorry, so sorryyy…” (She wasn’t sorry.)
Was it, in fact, like walking into a wall made of marble and dreams?
Basically this but with a different Chris?
I don’t think my parents ever really talked to me about sex ed, but not in like a…. bad way? Like I think they thought that my school would do a good job? (HAHAHA PENNSYLVANIA YEAH RIGHT). However, I do remember one sex-related thing very clearly – I was in the car with my dad one night and we drove past an Adult World and I asked what they sold there. And he just said, very carefully and dadfully, “pornography.” And that was the end of that!
My mom tried to have sex talk with me, but I was soooooooo uncomfortable with it I started crying and asked her to stop. She was like, “Ooookay? I guess, just come to me if you have any questions?” Eventually I got over it and now we watch the Martin Freeman scenes in Love Actually every year together without so much as a batted eyelash.
Oh man, any chance you are talking about the Adult World in Montgomeryville? We might be childhood neighbors. I remember passing it in the car and being so confused/mad they were excluding children from a video store when, helloo! Kids like movies too!
Ah! Close! The Adult World in Quakertown, which is next to that terrible half-burned-down Hair Replacement Center for Men. The saddest place on Earth.
Yup, that was the other Adult World in my life, since my dad’s shoe store was in Quakertown for years.
Right next to Montgomery Mall! And the sign was silhouettes of a naked man and woman holding up a globe? Because then we are childhood neighbors.
And for some reason, the drive from Bucks/Montgomery Counties up to Allentown (I think a little past Quakertown?) includes a stretch of road that used to be populated exclusively by adult bookstores and tattoo parlors.
There is an ad on this page entitled “Toys Designed to Get Baby Cackling.” Truly there is no more disturbing mental image than a cackling baby. Not chuckling, not giggling, but cackling. Shudder.
“Suitable for age witchfingers and up.”
All I really remember about “the talk” was that we had a general one in school that was pretty good, though far from inclusive, and my mother folding laundry while I sat in the living room while she prattled on about not getting pregnant. There were some real “don’t do this or else” overtones in that which I found really, really bizarre coming from a romance writer such as herself.
Gale is undoubtedly handsomer than Blockhead Peeta, but he is also the worst actor I’ve ever seen. And I’ve worked in community theatre. I know from bad actors, and Diet Coke Hemsworth is as bad as it gets without descending into Wiseauesque performance art.
If Gale says, “You’re tearing me apart, Katniss!” I would be very happy indeed.
I did naht bomb District 12! I did NAHT.
On the Star Wars trailer: I was busy futzing with the screen trying to get rid of small windows and make it high-res and fullscreen and all of that and was so distracted that when the first dude’s head popped up I SCREAMED AND JUMPED OUT OF MY CHAIR.
Cats were scared, my husband laughed so hard we had to pause it.
I said in last week’s Open Thread that I was choosing to believe those X-wings in the trailer were Rogue Squadron. I have since changed my mind, they’re obviously Wraith Squadron, good luck talking me out of it.
Wraith Squadron! *dies a little*
I spent the whole trailer muttering “oh, shit,” because I did not want to have feelings about a new Star Wars movie again, but whoops, there go my feelings.
If I had my way, honestly, we would be getting a Rogue/Wraith Squadron TV series instead of new movies. Mostly Wraiths, some Rogues for story balance. I just love those li’l fuckups so much.
yub yub.
the Kiese Laymon article blew me away. I’m a Vassar alum, and I have such a strange relationship with my alma mater. I was a minority scholarship student, and I always felt so different than everyone else, but I blamed myself. At an elite college, you feel like you have to be grateful, all the time, just to be given the opportunity to be there, and if you feel uncomfortable its your fault for not making an effort. It never occurred to me how faculty go through the same thing, or even worse. Ugh, and I bet I know which english profs he’s referring to.
VC ’85 here. I circulated Laymon’s essay among a bunch of alumnae/i, and we’re mostly just stunned that things have gotten worse since the 80s.
although the death of a 94 y/o woman cannot truthfully be called a horrible shock to anyone, it somehow was
The day she died, my spouse looked up from his laptop to see me at mine, composed himself visibly, and said (oh so gently) “So. Your buddy P.D. James… honey, she died. I’m sorry,” and was visibly relieved when I told him I already knew, and that she was 94, so it didn’t exactly knock me over. But I love that he broke it to me so gently.
I haven’t actually looked at her entire bibliography to calculate how many of her novels I have yet to read. I’m going to pretend it’s a lot.
I might just pretend I haven’t read any, and start over from the beginning. Need to fit the autobiography in there too. Such wonderful writing, all of it.
I know of someone who has read all but one Raymond Carver book, just so that there’s one out there that he hasn’t read, so he can’t say it’s over.
I did that with the original Sherlock Holmes stories and novels. I will always have The Valley of Fear to look forward to. 🙂
“After her marriage she taught and published less, talent and personality diminished by the appalling subservience of love.” – Children of Men.
A line that has both haunted and validated me since I read it in a most crucial time in my life. Thank you, PD James, for the righteous anger and humanity of your work. You were so important.
You could boil a whole chapter of “The Dialectic of Sex” down to that one sentence. “Dialectic” is still worth reading in its entirety, though.
RIP.
Is this the same Russian friend who, when someone wrongs her or someone she cares about, lifts her chin and says “I wish him joy,” or some such terrifying curse? Am I remembering that correctly?
IT IS SHE IS PERFECT
I first heard about “oral sex” in Mermaids, when someone is talking about it. I was in 6th grade. I asked my best friend and she thought it meant in front of everyone, like when we had to give oral reports in school. That made sense to me. But then I got a second opinion from a “faster” friend, and that’s the first I ever heard of blowjobs. I still don’t quite believe they exist.
They dont; blowjobs are a lie created by the Patriarchy.
I first heard about blowjobs when I asked a friend how she thought gay men had sex, and I was HORRIFIED. I mean come on, putting a penis your mouth?
I first heard about oral sex in 8th grade, on the bus. I was a very young 12, and my friend from my elementary school was a very mature 13 dating a junior. She sat next to me one day, and told me all about “looksees.” I remember even now how utterly horrified and in over my head I felt. That didn’t change for a very long time.
The best thing that ever happened to me at Disneyland was when i waited in line for my niece to meet Winnie the Pooh. He hugged her and we took a picture. Then he opened his arms to me like I was his oldest bestest friend. I cried a little. I feel like crying a little every time I think about it.
I never understood people waiting around to meet people in character costumes until we met Winnie the Pooh and Tigger at Disneyland with my Pooh-obsessed toddler. The Tigger kept making the most adorable popping noise while he gave us both hugs and kisses. Melted my stoney heart just a little.
I’m loving your wee story, especially on this gloomy, blustery, cold winter morning. Making me a bit weepy, to tell the truth, but reading or seeing small acts of kindness get me every single time.
Winnie the Pooh, you’re the best!
The police unions reaction to the Rams player’s “hands up” moment made me want to puke. “The St. Louis Police Officers Association is profoundly disappointed with the members of the St. Louis Rams football team who chose to ignore the mountains of evidence released from the St. Louis County Grand Jury this week and engage in a display that police officers around the nation found tasteless, offensive and inflammatory.”
Just shut up, you dicks. I don’t understand how the national conversation isn’t focused even a little on how so much of what is happening in Ferguson is free speech suppression. Where are all those constitutionalism now? The police want to suppress and punish the activities of football players. On national television. They’re calling for the NFL to fine and “punish” them now. How do people not see a problem with this?
I spent most of the weekend depressed that a 12-year-old playing with a toy gun gets murdered in 2 seconds while white men carrying real guns into certain restaurants get 10% off discounts.
I love seeing inside Chris Rock’s mind. Here’s another bit I was struck by:
As I told Bill Murray, Lost in Translation is a black movie: That’s what it feels like to be black and rich. Not in the sense that people are being mean to you. Bill Murray’s in Tokyo, and it’s just weird. He seems kind of isolated. He’s always around Japanese people. Look at me right now.
We’re sitting on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel overlooking Central Park.
And there’s only really one black person here who’s not working. Bill Murray in Lost in Translation is what Bryant Gumbel experiences every day. Or Al Roker. Rich black guys. It’s a little off.
A bit of personal good news I got on Friday but there was no open thread to share it in: my work contract has been extended for 6 months! Now I have until June to line up another job and I’ll keep raking in that sweet, sweet librarian money in the meantime.
Hooray!!!!!
YAY!
What great news, congratulations!
Lawl at Finnick. His precise words: “I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there’s no relief in waking.” Okayyy there drama queen, get over it already, amiright?
If you’re being sarcastic (and I hope you are), this may not be the best occasion and deployment of it.
Really? Too soon?
I guess it’s really not my place to be mocking poetic word choice among political refugees having existential crises brought on by dictatorial regimes anyhow. I hear those Hunger Games can really mess you up. My bad.
There is a Tom Lehrer song called “I got it frm Agnes” that is very obviously (to adults) about passing around an STD (including a reference to “lucky Pierre”). As a six year old who listened to Tom Lehrer CDs in the car most mornings, I never understood the song and finally asked my mom what did he get from Agnes? She told me it was the flu.
She then gave it to Daniel
Whose spaniel has it now…
I was similarly clueless about The Old Dope Peddlar as a kid
A bit late to the Link Roundup today, but this past week’s Saturday Links from Rookie was so incredible I had to share: http://www.rookiemag.com/2014/11/saturday-links-1… The focus, as it should be is Black lives matter.
My new priest said “black lives matter” in her sermon on Sunday, and I was so happy. She mentioned #yesallwomen in her previous sermon, and I’m hoping that activist hashtags are going to be an ongoing thing with her.
I would go to church if I had one like that.
<a href="http://www.stpaulsmemorialchurch.org/sermons-list-content-section-adminpages-188/120-the-rev-elaine-ellis-thomas/2390-first-sundy-of-advent.html
http://www.stpaulsmemorialchurch.org/sermons-list… />
I love her beyond words.
I can see why.
No sex ed. None. Learned anatomy from Reader’s Digest pharmaceutical ads.
that lightsaber is STUPID.
(but everything is redeemed with that shot of the millennium falcon. and the music! my body is ready)
YOU MUST HAVE LASERS NEXT TO YOUR HANDS.
And then the lasers would deflect other lasers into the unshielded laser-producing part of the lightbroadsword, That makes sense.
For some reason I thought PD James was one of those uber-prolific crime/mystery writers.
Now I should go read some stuff.
Well, I mean, she sort of is. In the best way.
Yup, that was the other Adult World in my life, since my dad’s shoe store was in Quakertown for years.
-in response to GreenGrasses, if this doesn’t show up where it should!
Is Gale handsomer than Peeta? Sure. But Gale is kind of a shitheel, and also doesn’t know how to bake bread, which is where my priorities lie.
I’m absolutely ready for a woman president. I’m ready for a woman nighttime-talk-show host, to tell you the truth. I wonder which will be first.
– Chris Rock
That was both funny and sad.
The best lines are.
So, in addition to being excited about what I’m sure will be an excellent performance from John Boyega, I love any casting choice that gets racist fanpoodles to casually reveal the depths of their bigotry and stupidity.
If it’s any comfort, Finnick *does* have a therapist in the book! That’s the person who gave him the rope to tie knots in, to give him something to focus on besides his thoughts.
Of course it’s possible that he just actually has the same therapist as Katniss, who tends to just fall asleep in his chair when she won’t talk (because of course the therapist too is a victim of war, exhausted and suffering etc, we assume)…
FINNICK *bawls*
I might just pretend I haven't read any, and start over from the beginning. Need to fit the autobiography in there too. Such wonderful writing, all of it.
I first heard about oral sex in 8th grade, on the bus. I was a very young 12, and my friend from my elementary school was a very mature 13 dating a junior. She sat next to me one day, and told me all about "looksees." I remember even now how utterly horrified and in over my head I felt. That didn't change for a very long time.
I didn't mind the ridiculous fashions. I figured it was a two-fold thing:
1) Any future fashions are bound to look ridiculous to us, so it really complemented the futuristic tech of the capitol.
2) The fashions look as ridiculous and excessive to us as they do to the rest of Panem. It's not, oh they look so dashing, it's, I own a maximum of two outfits and they're both stained coveralls wtf are these people wearing.
I plan to start rereading all of the P.D. James books (in order) soon as a tribute and form of mourning. I have never read such good prose anywhere else. I knew she wasn't immortal but I still wasn't prepared for her to die.
Aw, man. I love the way he broke that to you. The Toast's own Nicole Cliffe broke it to me via Twitter, which was also gentle and kind. And then I had to break it to my great aunt who had introduced me to P.D. James when I was a teenager. We then had a wonderful talk about James and her incredible writing.
HUNGER GRAINS
That sounds like the best dream ever. I wish I had dreamed it myself.
VC '85 here. I circulated Laymon's essay among a bunch of alumnae/i, and we're mostly just stunned that things have gotten worse since the 80s.