Kamala Harris is running for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat (“Hmph. I wanted her to be governor” – Jasmine). I find this news to be CHILL and GOOD.
***
But maybe I should give myself more credit. I didn’t just pitch. I had damn good ideas and I can follow through with writing of equal quality. I pitch about 10 articles a week. Sometimes I pitch at 5 am when an idea hits me or secretly in church when my mom isn’t looking over at me in the midst of an ongoing sermon.
I’m contributing at all these places and it feels good that people are interested in what I have to say. I’m still getting used to it, to be honest.
Right now, I’m in Vermont for my writer’s residency. It’s cold, snowy, and windy, and the weather is having an effect on my body. I feel tired all day but God, am I happy.
***
Joshunda Sanders on Janet Mock’s new talk show:
Janet Mock, author of Redefining Realness and one of our country’s most visible trans women of color, is now a talk-show host on what MSNBC is calling its “new video experience”: Shift, a series of 14 online-only shows the cable channel launched in December. The shows are meant to appeal to 16-to-34 year-olds, whose TV viewership has been dropping off.
Mock’s show, So Popular, is about popular culture. This is exciting particularly because Mock mentioned to Bitch that pop culture was a big part of her groundbreaking memoir—making the most of her platform as one of the few voices for trans women of color includes getting people into the spotlight who usually are ignored.
Mock describes her mission in the inaugural episode of So Popular perfectly: “Here to cover all things culture, from art and entertainment to literature and anything trending in the zeitgeist. Our goal is to discuss the things you pretend you’re too smart to like, in an effort to expand the idea of what is considered political and worthy of analysis. Every Friday, we will have fun, we will be cheeky, we will mine the nuggets of truth from the cultural topics and experiences that consume our time and I will mess up the teleprompter often.”
OH MAN “the things you pretend you’re too smart to like” ARE MY FAVORITE THINGS
***
I’m like four choices into this Twitter game and I’m already kind of scared. [clicks with hands over my eyes]
You should probably be asleep.
I’ve created a “Choose You Own Adventure” on Twitter.
Start here ➡ @wnd_go
Pleasant dreams.
— Terence Eden (@edent) January 12, 2015
***
The URL for this includes “compound eyes” and “giving birth to parasite” so if that is going to be a problem for you, go ahead and do yourself a favor and don’t click.
***
“A full-lipped, cheek-chiseled man in Ancient Greece knew two things – that his beauty was a blessing (a gift of the gods no less) and that his perfect exterior hid an inner perfection. For the Greeks a beautiful body was considered direct evidence of a beautiful mind. They even had a word for it – kaloskagathos – which meant being gorgeous to look at, and hence being a good person.”
100% of articles should be like this. All I ever want to read about is MALE VANITY and LONG-VANISHED STANDARDS OF BEAUTY. (Also, I definitely would have been considered a beauty. My #1 skill is believing that in any period in history I would have been considered extremely desirable for no real reason. I have an enormous amount of faith in my universal appeal, despite the fact that I almost certainly would be burned as a witch for a solid 300 years of European history.)
***
IT’S THE SECOND AGE OF ULTRON TRAILER
***
On the one hand: this is a real person’s real life, and divorce is always a sad thing, regardless of the particulars. On the other hand: I love Food Network gossip more than anything in the world and have VERY STRONG OPINIONS about which FN celebrity marriages are staged.
***
3 Tips for Designing an Invoice That Gets You Paid Promptly
Mmm ACTUALLY I feel like this headline and this article have very little to do with each other (“1. Establish rapport” isn’t something you can actually PUT in an invoice??), but this seems like as good a reason as any to swap freelancer tips in the comments (not just writers! Freelance anybodies!).
Tags: link roundup, the internet
I wonder if ancient women had a hard time learning to draw their face suns like we have a hard time learning eyeliner. “DAMMIT this sun has one thick wobbly ray and two spiky rays!”
Also hey Toast, I’m writing this from my phone in my office with no working water because the pipe are frozen! No plumbing for us! Also the internet isn’t working! It’s -35 C here! Tralalalala
How did your interview go?
Questionable? They asked a bunch of stuff which was not on the ad (“how are you with Web design?” Uh this is the first I’ve heard that this position involves Web design so. …not at all. ..) and some red flags that made the place sound really chaotic. We’ll see if they call back after promising up and down they’d let me know either way. Shall see.
“My #1 skill is believing that in any period in history I would have been considered extremely desirable for no real reason. I have an enormous amount of faith in my universal appeal, despite the fact that I almost certainly would be burned as a witch for a solid 300 years of European history.”
I feel like this should be a skill we should all put time and effort into achieving.
probably like half of that is just garden variety white privilege and the other half is enormous self-regard so idk if it’s worth cultivating but go nuts
honestly like, if you know it’s white privilege, then it’s probably like… not worth bringing up in an article? just an idea. like, if you don’t want to come across as smug and racist.
on the other hand, i’m not here to tell you how to live your life or anything. but like, yeah. i am totally just saying.
and if it helps, you’d almost certainly have been considered fucking hideous in nearly all non-european cultures prior to the worldwide ubiquity of racist imperialist western standards of beauty which say that just being white is basically 99% of what we consider “beauty”. so like, that’s definitely a thing, which should give you some perspective on how hot you’d have actually been throughout most of history.
Do you know, that’s quite a good point. It was a dumb joke that fell flat for obvious reasons and it’s never a good look to say “hurr de hurr white privilege is funny and harmless” when it’s neither. It was a thoughtless and a racist thing to say, and I’m sorry I said it. It was careless and frankly not funny. Thanks for pointing that out.
Do you have to “contend with an ominous undercurrent” tho?
I feel like just having (fairly) straight and white teeth at my advanced age would be enough to make me pretty desirable in olden times.
Janet Mock’s show sounds awesome and I really want to watch it. Does anyone know if it will work through Chromecast? I hate hate hate watching videos on the computer (see also: why I have such a hard time watching a youtube video over maybe a minute in length if I’m not streaming it through either chromecast or my smarttv).
Man, two clicks into the choose your own adventure and I exploded and cannibals ate me (presumably.) Fuck.
I will admit that I was unfamiliar with Kamala Harris until yesterday, when I saw someone refer to her on Twitter by first name only and automatically assumed Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel, was running for a Senate seat.
I was incorrect.
ME TOO. I was on board though.
OH GOOD. Not just me, then.
I just read some informative facts about her: http://time.com/3665461/kamala-harris-senate/
Me too…I’d totally vote for Kamala Khan!
On the subject of FN marriages, my mom has recently become obsessed with the marriage between Ina Garten and Jeffrey. Every time I see her she has a new Ina impression to try out on me or more speculation about their sex life and basically I love it.
Their marriage is perfect and I have met Jeffrey! And he DOES work SO HARD he deserves a roast chicken.
PLEASE TELL THIS STORY! How did you meet Jeffrey???
He is one of the premier economists in the world and teaches at Yale. He is absolutely fking brilliant and pragmatically charming and kind of terrifying in a Tywin Lannister kind of way.
Whoa! Fascinating.
you can swear on the toast you don’t have to bleep yourself it’s ok
can we also swear upon the toast because I feel like that is sometimes appropriate
Somehow I envision Ina finishing and saying to Jeffrey, “How easy is that?” while failing to notice that he is, as usual, good-naturedly just going along with everything happening around him.
Your mom and I would have a lot to talk about
My goodness, I love the choose-your-own-adventure, more of these please!
Also, the twitter accounts used are years and years old – how? why? what? This makes it about 100 times creepier!
I wonder if people donated old ones and just changed the usernames?
and some of the TWEETS are years old! like, @wnd_flesh has a tweet from 2010… “Please help… I don’t know who I am…. It’s very distressing :,-(” CREEPY.
Oh wow, that makes it even worse – I hadn’t come across that one 🙁
Well I watched the first two episodes of Jane the Virgin last night and it is CHARMING AS HELL. I love her abuela! and Xiomara! and the perfect soap opera/telenovela plot twists and relationship complications. Jane’s love interest(s) need to step it up though.
I need to get started on that–thanks for the reminder.
some folks were saying yesterday that Hulu doesn’t have the first few episodes, but I’d check out the CW’s website.
Hulu now has the first episodes, but not like 5-7. I’m in a time zone ahead of EST and it changed this afternoon after I had watched 3 & 4 but before I’d gotten beyond that. So now I’ve got up with 1 & 2 but will have to find somewhere else to watch 5-7. I’m assuming it was because they aired 1 & 2 last night, making them the most recently aired episodes and thus eligible for Hulu.
Oh, my god, THANK YOU for the warning about compound eyes.
..but I am curious. Can someone less trypophobic describe?
(Curiosity kills lots of cats. I should probably just be satisfied with “birth of a parasite.”)
“Biologist Piotr Naskrecki, who traveled with me to Belize last year, returned home to find himself incubating several skin parasites. Piotr is a talented photographer and a reflective thinker, so the mini-documentary that emerged in the flies’ wake is, of course, both stunningly filmed and narrated with unusual depth and reverence.”
I did not watch this video; I will leave the description of that horror to someone of stouter heart.
Ok, even the description gave me the jibblies. NopeNopeNope.
I did not watch the video because I would probably never recover, but it seems like the dude welcomes the bot flies as they incubate under his skin, and then he films it when they emerge?
I had an anthropology class once with a primate researcher who voluntarily incubated one of those bot fly maggots in his arm and filmed the whole thing. He sold the footage to Nat Geo for like $1,000 afterwards too.
IT’S SO GROSS it’s like watching a giant gnarly blackhead squeeze itself
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope
I watched it, it was great and very interesting, horrifically disgusting, and I’m a little bit in love with the guy now, or at least just very glad he exists.
“Compound eyes” and “giving birth to a parasite” didn’t faze me, but I noped out of there the second I saw “botfly” in the description. I can deal with a fair amount of body horror and will gleefully watch the excavation of a 20-year-old blackhead, but I cannot. fucking. deal. with maggots, especially if they are in somebody. One of the most terrifying pictures I’ve ever seen in my life was someone whose teeth had fallen out and maggots were living in the cavities LOOKING OUT AT THE CAMERA.
Toasties, what are the things that you pretend you’re too smart to like?? Mine are reality tv competitions. Like all of them. I would say Taylor Swift too but I can’t even pretend not to like her anymore.
I watch Once Upon a Time. It is my greatest pop culture shame. It isn’t even a good show. Why do I keep watching??? I have no idea.
Ditto OUAT and also Netflix’s Marco Polo. Both shows have a lot of potential, but the writers just don’t seem capable of putting any real critical thought into what they should be doing. MP is visually stunning but relies on absurd Orientalist cliches and every now and then there’ll be a good scene or line of dialogue and I’ll think, “Oh! This show is improving!” but it’s one step forward, two steps back. OUAT needs to stop adding in so many characters just because they have the rights to them, and instead focus on coherent, compelling storylines between the characters they already have.
TSwift used to be a guilty pleasure but then she went and released 1989 and I am QUITE OPENLY IN LOVE WITH HER NOW, also her Tumblr is amazing and the way she engages with fans online is really sweet!
Yes! I watch OUAT and Glee. They are both pretty terrible but all kinds of enjoyable.
Oh God, to my everlasting shame I’m kind of in love with Reign. I started watching it out of hate, but now I kind of love it and all its crazysauce twists (and batshit costume choices and musical cues). I’ve been VERY DISAPPOINTED in some of the plot choices they’ve made recently but then they threw in ghost sex and I am ALL IN.
I started watching on Toast recommendation but stopped due to the disappointing plot choices, but if there’s ghost sex…maybe I’ll have to reconsider.
I have to finish Pretty Little Liars first though, of course.
The ghost sex takes place in the season that’s currently airing. However, King Henry does fuck a woman out a window in the middle of season 1, so if you’re not sold on the show after that I’d just stop. It’s the watershed moment,
Um. Sold.
…I’m really liking Galavant. I know I shouldn’t, but damn some of those songs are catchy.
I’m watching for Timothy Olmundson alone.
Tim Omundson is why I plan to watch Galavant on demand as soon as I get a chance. (so busy!)
He is my favorite Hollywood celebrity twittererer.
Yup! Was just thinking of that.
There’s a whole bunch of dumb, bro-centric comedies that I will watch whenever they are on TV. Pineapple Express, Talladega Nights, Zoolander…
I don’t really pretend not to like trashy reality TV, because that’s ~camp~ that my women’s studies friends have written papers on. But god damn do I like RuPaul’s Drag Race, and you sure don’t need a PhD to follow it.
TALLADEGA NIGHTS IS A LEGITIMATELY GREAT MOVIE
oh here we go
*fetches popcorn for the toast-itorium*
I think the Toast-erati have long since learned not to go in against Mallory when CAPS LOCK is on the line.
Hey, Zoolander is genius. It is the best bro-centric comedy (wait, is that even true? at the very least, it’s probably my favorite, after Harold & Kumar).
I feel like celebrity gossip is probably my “too smart to like” thing. I know objectively that it is bad to care about this stuff and that gossip generally feeds into a culture of misogyny, but goddamn it if dlisted.com isn’t super hilarious and entertaining.
Bachelor in Paradise. Except I barely pretend, I mostly just try to drag more people down with me.
I am in denial about my Bachelor franchise watching – I now actually anticipate new seasons, even though I read all the spoilers in advance anyway. I think I just like shouting at the TV.
Also Sharleen from Juan Pablo’s season would fit right in on the toast.
The Bachelor is the one I have the deepest shame about watching. This season seems especially cringe-y from the feminist point of view. Or maybe I just forgot how cringe-y the last seasons were.
I kind of want to invite Sharleen to brunch so we can laugh about how she got to take all these great trips and would never have said yes to Juan Pablo anyways.
Sharleen! I can’t blame her for only wanting to engage in nonverbal pursuits with Juan Pablo.
Most of my Bachelor enjoyment comes from writhing in pain over the insane things happening with my roommate and then listening to The Right Reasons podcast from Grantland. Juliet and Jacoby are on my level.
I do not know that podcast! But I will listen to it from now on. I’m similar – my boyfriend (for some reason!) doesn’t watch the Bachelor(ette), but usually he’s in the room so I can relay the ridiculous situations to him. I also like to find a nice snarky recap to read at the same time (this is probably my substitute for not having a Bachelor-watching buddy).
“The Bachelor” franchise used to be that for me, and now I’m in league where there is money on the line, as well as a crown and a bedazzled rose/wineglass scepter.
I feel this is might an appropriate place to ask if anyone else is watching The Librarians? It’s SO BAD, but like, good bad (I think?). Every week I have actually had to stop the episode because I am laughing so hard I can’t hear the dialog. I swear the writers’ room has got to be a bunch of people going “well, that’s ridiculous, but could we maybe make it more ridiculous?”
I haven’t been, but the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books recaps make it sound amazing(ly bad). I’m hoping it makes it to netflix pronto as it seems to be right up my alley.
Basically every show in my DVR is a thing I pretend I’m too smart to like; also, like 75% of the songs in my main Spotify playlist.
Yes, the music everything, yes. My Sonza “recent playlists” is just oodles of “your favorite upbeat ‘indy’ and/or pop songs from the past decade!” With a heavy presence from every playlist that includes at least some Mumford.
Say Yes to the Dress! I’ve never actually pretended not to like it, because my friends know me better than that, but if someone were to mention it at work or at a social event I’d probably act like I had no idea what they were talking about.
I can’t believe they took it off netflix grumble grumble
I openly admit to crying during Say Yes to the Dress – some of their back stories are so sad!
Oh maaannnn I was just sitting here all smug thinking that I’m totally happy to admit to all the junk media I consume like, I’m so over trying to be cool I’ll own up to watching every crap supernatural-themed show the CW puts out but then I remembered TLC. I try to pretend I’m too smart for Say Yes to the Dress, or 19 Kids or that one with the creepy white dude and his 4 wives…but in my heart I know the truth. I ain’t too smart for any of it.
SISTER WIVES. I have honestly only watched it once, one of those “because it was on” scenarios, but goddamn it was enthralling. My favorite part was the popups encouraging you to tweet about it with #sisterwives, like yeah I want to broadcast to social media that you’ve sucked me in again, TLC.
Oh crap. I forgot about Sisterwives. Also 90Day Fiance. TLC is pretty much the worst.
19 Kids and Counting! I don’t watch TV (not because I’m better than other people, just because it’s not my jam) but I waste so much time reading gossip about the Duggars and speculating about which kid will be the first to break free from this horrible bizarre family. Personally pulling for Jana. You can do it, Jana! You don’t have to feel bad because your little sisters got married before you did!
I love Say Yes to the Dress! Whenever I’m home, I watch Friday Bride-day with my mom. Our favorite used to be I Found the Gown, because we like the discount dresses and watching the husband and wife team that owned the store go on dress buying missions, but I think they stopped airing it. 🙁
The Real Housewives but mostly when people fight.
The Royal Family? (I’m British, so it’s not as weird). I pretend I’m interested in what they *mean* for our nation today, and their symbolic power, etc. etc. — but I really just like looking at their pretty clothes and money and fun lives. I even read the Daily Mail gossip about them, and I don’t care about any other celebrities.
I do not care at all about any other celebrities, but I will ALWAYS look at pictures of Princess Kate. (Yes I know she is properly styled Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, but this is like asking Mallory to name fiber arts correctly, I’m just not going to do it.)
It’s at the point where I like so many things I should be too smart for that I’ve gone from pretending I don’t like them to aggressively championing them like “OH SO YOU DON’T LIKE STUPID TV SHOWS WELL YOU ARE OBJECTIVELY WRONG AND NO FUN AND HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE WRONG AND NO FUN ALL THE TIME?”
I still haven’t told my book club I love romance novels, though.
I legit LOVE romance novels. And I’m no longer afraid to admit it.
In college I took a semester of Black Women Authors in which we read Zora and Toni and Maya, of course, but we also read Terry McMillan. And I have never forgotten the professor taking us to task for not considering romance novels to be “real” literature. They are books, written with words, explaining the human condition. She said the only reason that romance novels aren’t taken seriously by society as a whole is because they are generally written by women, for women… and men find that threatening and so have tried to belittle them. Boom. Tendrils of feminism began to grow around my cold, midwestern heart all those years ago.
EMBRACE THE ROMANCE NOVEL LOVE.
I’m going to write an article for my neuroscience writing group’s blog about romance novels that have science so my love for them will be out there in the world and I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT. They’re fun, they’re well-written and they make me happy.
The funny thing is that I’ll happily tell anyone else about it! I’m a fish biologist and when I was working at a job that required a lot of fish fieldwork in northern Canada I found a romance novel with a fish-biologist-in-northern-Canada heroine and I definitely made sure knowledge of that one spread around the office. My office manager wanted to buy a copy for the office and he was very sad when we realized there were no hardcopies published. So you should DEFINITELY make that list.
Also, did you get Talk Sweetly To Me for your list? It’s a romance with a black astronomer heroine and it’s really great.
GIVE ME THE TITLE OF THAT ONE I NEED TO READ IT IMMEDIATELY.
I wasn’t going to put Talk Sweetly To Me on there because I’m already putting on two other Courtney books (Proof by Seduction for its portrayal of bipolar disorder and The Countess Conspiracy because LADY SCIENTISTS). I like it, but just not quite as much as some of the others- the ending felt a little rushed?
Anyway, I am open to any and all suggestions for romance novels that involve science! Especially if they involve neuroscience somehow- I’ve never come across a neuroscientist hero or heroine, but I also mostly read historicals. Also looking for any books that are particularly good at portraying characters with some kind of neuro-type disorder (i.e. Flower in the Storm and aphasia).
It’s The Edge of Survival by Toni Anderson. And it’s only $3! It’s actually not bad from a fish science perspective, I think the author was a biologist so she got most of it right, and the writing is decent. As consultants, my coworkers and I got a kick out of her describing the consultant as a lazy, useless drunk, too. I think she has a couple of other biologist books that I haven’t tried yet.
Thank you, you are the best! I will comb through her backlist to see what I can find!
What was the Kinsale one with the Lady Scientist. Midsummer Moon maybe? I have memories of flying machines and hedgehogs.
Yup, that was Midsummer Moon. I liked that one but I didn’t love it, mostly because it amazed me that Merlin was alive at all considering that she literally could not function in the real world. Also it was kiiiinda rapey in the beginning and while I found a lot of the book amusing, I spent a lot of time wanting to slap her upside the head.
I can’t think of any neuroscientists ones either, probably because I read almost all historicals, and the only neuro-type disorder I can think of is another Courtney one (Ash’s dyslexia in Unveiled). Doesn’t the Rosie Project have a hero with Asperger’s? He’s a scientist as well, isn’t he? I haven’t actually read it.
Oh, and the Parasol Protectorate series has a number of female scientist/inventor characters, including a relationship between two of them. They aren’t the main romance, though, and it’s not exactly lifelike science.
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books had a thread on science heroines a while ago: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2014/07/the-re…
ME TOO. I have so many fish biologists in my life that need that book. If anyone has reccommendations for romance novels involving scientists/ecologists I would be v. v. interested.
Finally owning my love of romance novels was sooooo freeing. After years of secret romance reading, I finally came out and it turns out that no one else really cares.
TV shows: Kroll Show (Especially any scene with Niece Denise)
Awkward.
The Spoils of Babylon
Movies: Brothers Solomon
MacGruber
Hot Rod.
OKAY LET’S DISCUSS THE AGE OF ULTRON TRAILER
1. Not nearly enough Steve. Look, I LOVE WHO I LOVE AND I LOVE CAP
2. Y’all I’m like 90% sure we’re getting Black Widow backstory and I AM HERE FOR IT
3. Who IS that woman randomly in the cave in the middle of the trailer? Speculation suggests that it’s Shuri in Wakanda, but I’m not 100% sure
I heard an interesting theory that the woman is Hela and that Thor will be trapped in Hel (when he’s in the water and he’ll be stuck there til his movie comes around).
You say not enough Steve, I say not enough Banner. I just want to stare deeply into Ruffalo’s eyes forever.
DID YOU SEE MERYL STREEP KISS HIM ON THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW???
it was the most heartwarming thing ever, he was so overcome, it was too much.
Yes!! #getitmeryl
1. Not nearly enough Hawkguy.
2. With you. (To the end of the line, even.)
3. That’s all I’ve heard, and I’m not familiar enough with the history of the comics to confirm or deny it.
4. I’m trying to remember if the promotional pieces for the first movie were this relentlessly dark. I’m of the opinion that the best Marvel movies are the ones that balance out the gravity of the situation(s) with humor. (For research purposes, see DC Pierson’s and Danny Pudi’s performances in The Winter Soldier, when Rocket interrupts a cry-worthy moment in GotG by shouting “Now we’re all holding hands,” and Steve’s “I understood that reference” in The Avengers.) So, while I’m sure Age of Ultron will be terrific–really, I’m certain it will be–I wouldn’t mind, y’know, one quick quip somewhere in there.
Don’t even get me started on the lack of Hawkguy. As my avatar might imply, I’m more than a little in love with him and Kate Bishop, and no one who has only seen the movies can understand why. At least it seems like he might have more lines in this one.
The first promo piece had the humor- the bit where they’re all hanging out trying to pick up Mjolnir. I know the end is going to be pretty grimdark, but I’m hoping the beginning has enough team hanging out together scenes to balance it a bit.
I mean, is Joss known for anything more prominently than the black humor one-liner? It would take a very single-minded determination from Marvel execs to completely prevent, say, the St Crispin’s Day speech, updated.
Joss Whedon’s legacy will be twofold as he is masterful at two things: the black humor one-liner and killing everyone you’ve ever loved.
Both of which seem likely to be heavily on-display in this movie!
Often at the same time.
WAIT is Jeremy Renner actually “HawkGUY” and I’ve been saying “Hawkeye” like a dummy all this time?
I AM ABOUT TO ENLIGHTEN YOU SO HARD.
This is a series of panels from Matt Fraction’s current run of Hawkeye.
… which is immediately followed by:
And then Grills (Clint Barton/Hawkeye’s neighbor) says “Hawkguy” a couple more times, adding “Just like on M*A*S*H!” And it’s one of the ten best things to ever happen in Marvel Comics history, probably.
Ahhhhh, yes, I feel much better.
I LOVE CAP, more Steve in everything.
Yay, Black Widow backstory! Between Black Widow, Gamora, and Agent Carter, I feel like “Kick Ass Lady Spies/Assassins” is becoming Marvel’s version of the Disney Princess Line.
Which also makes me hope Marvel never gets Spider-Man or the X-Men back. Them having to elevate lesser-known to downright obscure characters to star-level status has forced them to be creative in ways that being able to make a “Wolverine Vs. Spider-Man: Dawn of Judiciousness” movie wouldn’t.
I kind of agree with you on the second point. I don’t know if we’d have a lot of the shows we do have if they were able to play around with Spidey and the X-Men. I’m pretty certain we wouldn’t have a show about Peggy Carter or Jessica Jones. Plus having to work around not having mutants means they have to bring in the Inhumans which means they can bring in Kamala Khan so YAAAAAAAAS.
Yes! And to me the best part is, these characters don’t come with a lot of pop icon cultural baggage or audience expectations. Like, every damn Spider-Man movie has Aunt May worry-worting & Peter being a picked-on dweeb, and (for some reason) Mary Jane/Gwen being imperiled by an Osborn. But I can go to a Marvel movie or show and not worry that I’m watching the umpteenth version of an origin story I already know by heart.
To be fair, I think those failures of the various Spider-Man franchises are less the fault of the material or audience expectations than they are the fault of the studios in charge being spectacularly defensive and uncreative. I’m pretty sure if they would make Spider-Man movies about SOMETHING ELSE people would see them.
There is never enough Steve.
(There’s also never enough women or POCs, but like you, I love who I love. Can’t help myself.)
Oh god, we so need more women/POC in the MCU. I’m channeling all my feelings about that for the Jessica Jones and Luke Cage shows (also because I’m a major Jessica/Luke fan). SO DAMN EXCITED
HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THEIR CASTING FOR LUKE
SO
MUCH
jessica … eh.
1. word. more steve, please. i hope this movie doesn’t brush winter soldier’s events under the rug.
2. word. between the face-palm-medical-instrument scene (which gave me the heebie jeebies) and the ballet scene in the previous trailer…i’m excited.
3. no idea. i’ve heard shuri and hela and that’s about it. hela seems more likely to me though cause there’s that scene where thor is screaming in the water? looks like the same place.
otherwise: i have to say though i am already kind of bored by the big explosion-y action scenes they showed in the trailer. i get it, hulkbuster is pretty cool. i just find the smaller-scale hand-to-hand combat fight scenes way more interesting and fun to watch. i may be watching the wrong movie haha.
I just post this every time I see anything about Chris Evans/Captain America because despite the fact that it was three years ago, it is ridiculous and should never be forgotten: http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201…
Oh my god I just read it on Sunday and I can’t even believe that that happened. Chris Evans is a gift to humanity.
AMAZING.
Ah bot flies! I used to work in a medical film archive, and their films were the grossest and I had to catalogue SO MANY bot fly tsetse fly parasite etc films. Also eye surgeries. Also weirdo 1920s bladder stone removal films where they stuck gigantic pliers RIGHT UP a man’s willy and smashed around so the stone broke up and they could then suck it out.
Who among us hasn’t wanted to take a pair of gigantic pliers to a man’s willy and smash it around?
When the project finished and I was about to leave, I did a presentation and showed the willy pliers one. So satisfying to see a room of lady librarians giggling and male librarians wincing.
Oh god, that’s my nightmare.My dad used to talk fondly about the film reels he had to watch during combat first aid training in the military, which he said made every man in his unit literally vomit. I’ve always been sort of curious about this but I know if I ever actually found it on youtube or something I would have to slam my laptop shut and run away.
However, I fully endorse the illustration on this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_medicine
That picture is amazing. We didn’t have any combat medicine films, fortunately, but we did have a film called “Perineal Excision of the Rectum”, which is a title to inspire nighthorrors!
My dad is a medical professor. His specialty is infectious diseases. One time when I was about 7, I thought a binder of specimen slides he’d left in his home office was a binder of vacation slides.
However, I did get to borrow some of his slides for my black death class, and now I get to enjoy inflicting them on another generation of students (the day I show the slides is purely optional, but they all show up).
Can we have (by which I mean, will Mallory pleeeeeeeze write) an entire post (…or series) on Food Network marriages? Because I too have Strong Opinions.
(…unless it’s been done and I just can’t use the “search” box like anything but a common hack, in which case, someone please point me there pronto?)
NO I just feel kind of bad getting more specific about whose marriage I think is fake because I’m probably wrong and they’re real people!
More Food Network coverage in general. The Official Guy Fieri Instagram liked one of my partner’s photos, and it was strangely thrilling. I want to know more about the whole enterprise…
When Food Network Humor stopped posting on the regular I became very, very sad in a way from which I have yet to recover. She had NO mercy for Fieri in particular.
“Santa Claus exists or not, Giada De Laurentiis’ little daughter still patiently waits for the white-bearded man to receive the gifts she wants to have.”
Why is this captioning Giada’s face I do not understand.
There were so many weirdly written things in that article!
Annnd the site seems to be infested with phishing scams (I got the ol’ MacDefender window after clicking, which can only be removed by force-quitting the browser). Click with care! Or maybe don’t click at all.
ok well speculation about Food Network people is all well and good but WHAT ABOUT AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN?
Julia has a husband and he’s a fishmonger and he showed up on the show once to talk to Chris and he did NOT look comfortable.
I cannot abide ATK. Every personality seems so smug, so self-important, so deluded that they are some kind of Actual Scientist because they know what the Maillard reaction is. The last straw for me was when they did a test of five popular aprons – APRONS, NERMAL – and rated the best.
Seconded, it’s like the TV version of the “new and improved” Serious Eats…
Man, I miss the old and entertaining Serious Eats. (Though the Beef Stroganoff recipe they posted last week is delicious. I’ll probably never make it again because it’s fiddly as all hell, but damn it was good.)
But then sometimes Chris Kimball dresses up as giant items of food!
I wonder if ancient cultures valued a sense of humor in their women, along with bald heads and face Suns?
Not making this up: due to an eye irritation that is blurring my vision, I read that as “3 Tips for Designing an Invoice That Gets You Laid Promptly.” Needless to say, I clicked.
“That’s a really nice invoice…. soooo, are you doing anything later?”
Oh, my goodness, I work with a lot of freelancers and writing to me saying ““Please make a payment immediately” does not incentivize me to rapidly process your invoice.
Here’s my advice for invoicing companies:
In my experience, delays in payment are usually caused for two reasons a) invoicing being delayed in a bureaucratic processing sessions and b) getting lost in someone’s inbox.
For a) Ask for invoice guidelines at the start of the contract and follow them as closely as possible. Don’t make the accounting department chase you down for additional information.
For b) Don’t send an invoice to only one person via email. Try and find out the finance department’s information and include them. Always mail a hard copy as well.
Always invoice within a month of completing the work.
Yeah, my whole view on that was “Good luck!” I can write “ASAP” or “PAYMENT OVERDUE” as many times as I want on a check request, but once it gets down to Accounting anything can happen. They’ve sat on check requests for months and when I ask for a status update I’ll get an answer like, “Oh, we need a W9 from that person.” AND WHEN WERE YOU GOING TO TELL ME THAT??
Imagine my surprise when I did my first freelance proofreading job and got paid 2 weeks after I submitted my invoice!
Accounting departments like that frustrate me so badly because our accounting department (one person) struggles so hard to make sure that every invoice gets paid within 30 days.
Hilariously, right after I typed this, my co-worker shared that the Accounts Controller decided to send one of her checks (instead of returning it to us to log and send) because the Controller went to high school and college with the payee and “wanted to send a personal note.” Did she even e-mail my co-worker to tell her that? Nope!
I have never once sent a hard copy and usually only send the invoice to one person and I’ve had relatively few problems. I guess it all depends on your clients.
If a month passes without getting paid I ping my main contact just to ask them to “please look into it for me” and usually it’s in the mail (or on Paypal) right away after that.
Ugh, I spent too much time this morning trying to mock an acquaintance via light absurdity for posting “beauty tips” on FB. This article and especially that diagram are exactly the antidote I needed. Gonna get to work practicing my red sun drawings and research the best salons for snake rolls.
Quote from my husband, attempting to troll me so early in the day:
“Kamala Harris, if elected, will change from the best looking Attorney General to the best looking senator!”
(although the bar is pretty low for both positions, looks wise)
kalon kakon.
Or kaloskagathos. Whichever. Hedging my bets.
I have an enormous amount of faith in my universal appeal, despite the fact that I almost certainly would be burned as a witch for a solid 300 years of European history.
I think you may be selling yourself short here. Based on your work, I feel that you would have very little difficulty getting yourself burned as a witch at almost any point in history. Stereotypes aside, “universal appeal” and “getting burned as a witch” are by no means mutually exclusive! Embrace your strengths in your personal affirmations:
“I am powerful; I am formidable. I have universal appeal, and am highly inflammable. I have no blemishes, only witch marks. I resolve to speak my mind, even though this makes me a plausible scapegoat for crop failure. I spit through my fingers at you, which might signify that your first-born will be a dog, but mainly just because I want to spit on you. The force of my gaze can curdle milk or enchant the unwary. That two-headed calf born last week? That was me; that was all mine.”
Reminder! Seattle Toasties, at least 4-5 of us are meeting up tonight at the Elysian Bar on 2nd between Pike and Pine. 5:30 until whenever. If you think you’ll join us, let us know in the facebook group or email me at lauren at myusername dot com so I can let you know if anything changes.
I will probably be the first one there and will post here with my location. I am a fat girl with glasses and a ponytail and a red cardigan. Will probably be fiddling with phone or iPad since I already finished my book. If I think of it I’ll print a little toast sign to put on the table, but I have a busy day of meetings so no guarantees.
I’m here! At the back of the room on the main level. Facing the door.
This reminds me that I STILL have to go bother a company about an invoice that I sent a month ago. I did a photo shoot for a previously-agreed-on hourly rate, and I’m pretty sure the photographer is just being an asshole because I didn’t/don’t want to do nude modeling for him (which was not part of the original agreement!). I’d love to let it go, but it’s a not-insignificant amount of money. Ughhhh.
Help me remember – isn't Kamala Harris the one who was against prop whatever-we-just-voted on (penalty reduction for some crimes – might give some prisoners early release) because it would decrease the amount of free prison labor?
I can't find any articles about it now and maybe I'm wrong (I hope so) – I remember being horrified and thinking it couldn't possibly be right/there had to be more to the story because I liked her!
Much to celebrate in Kamala Harris, with the prayer that she gets a little more real about prison reform. CA is using petty criminals as a way-below-minumum-wage workforce, and for some pretty harsh jobs, e.g. fighting wildfires, which we are having ever more of. She’s been called out for heel-dragging before and if something’s changed without my noticing I’ll be delighted to eat my words, because I really do like her otherwise.
Much to celebrate in Kamala Harris, with the prayer that she gets a little more real about prison reform. CA is using petty criminals as a way-below-minumum-wage workforce, and for some pretty harsh jobs, e.g. fighting wildfires, which we are having ever more of. She's been called out for heel-dragging before and if something's changed without my noticing I'll be delighted to eat my words, because I really do like her otherwise.
Immense respect for the way you were able to take that criticism and rethink what you said. God i love you >_<
Finally owning my love of romance novels was sooooo freeing. After years of secret romance reading, I finally came out and it turns out that no one else really cares.