Greetings from Boston where it is very windy and cold.
Ashley Judd takes on online violence toward women and it is not a moment too soon. It gets old, you know?
All praise to Ja Rule.
In a book review for The Atlantic, Leslie Jamison writes about memoir and the shifting boundaries of disclosure.
We live in an era of endless self-exposure: we parade our babies on Facebook, flaunt our witticisms on Twitter, turn our pancake brunches into still lifes on Instagram. At this point, the indignant backlash has become as familiar as the exposure itself: We parade our babies on Facebook! We flaunt our witticisms on Twitter! We spare no sepia filter for our syrup!
Now that amateur autobiography and its detractors are everywhere, autobiographical writers are increasingly invested in defining and defending the value of their work. How can it escape the gravitational pull of solipsism? For a growing number of essayists, memoirists, and other wielders of the unwieldy “I,”confessional has become an unwelcome label—an implicit accusation of excessive self-absorption, of writing not just about oneself but for oneself.
Alexander Chee writes about the power of drag.
H A I R
The year is 1990. The place is San Francisco, the Castro. It is Halloween night. I am in my friend John’s bathroom, alone in front of the mirror, wearing a black turtleneck and leggings. My face glows back at me from the light of twelve 100-watt bulbs.
In high school I learned to do makeup for theater. I did fake mustaches and eyelashes then, bruises, wounds, tattoos. I remember always being tempted then to do what I have just done now, and always stopping, always thinking I would do it later.
This is that day.
My face, in the makeup I have just applied, is a success. My high cheekbones, large slanting eyes, wide mouth, small chin, and rounded jaw have been restrung in base, powder, eyeliner, lipstick, eyebrow pencil. With these tools I have built another face on top of my own, unrecognizable, and yet I am already adjusting to it; somehow I have always known how to put this face together. My hands do not shake, but move with the slow assurance of routine.
Here are some french fry recommendations for NYC because french fries are delicious.
Over at The Guardian, Ashley Ford wrote about bisexuality and how even if she is in a relationship with a man, she is still very much queer.
A family member asked me last week why I continue to identify as queer, even though I’m a woman who is in a long-term relationship with a man: “Give me one good reason why you have to call yourself ‘queer.’” She added that I could save myself a lot of trouble if I wore my opposite-sex relationship more openly, like some kind of hetero-veil to block bigots. I explained that I’d signed a contract with some very shady people, and that it said that I would have to publicly identify this way for a certain number of years and, if I said who, they’d have me killed.
An interview between Ice Cube and The Believer? Why yes.
Have you ever wondered how marbles are made? What a time to be alive.
There were several news-related links I was going to share but the news this week has been dismal and it was simply too much to wrap my mind around.
I love this Vine very much. Happy Friday, friends.
Tags: link roundup, the internet
What are you talking about, Roxane? It’s a whole 28 degrees here in Boston. BASK IN THE WARMTH OF SPRING. (No, really, this feels warm to me now…..)
I didn’t even need to cover my ears with something this morning! It’s basically summer.
Bostonians’ standards for decent weather are so very low right now.
Earlier this week, when we almost hit fifty, I was walking up a street thinking, “The world can’t possibly get warmer than this. We are at maximum warmth right now. SO HOT.”
When I took out the recycling the other day, my bare hand didn’t immediately stick to the metal railing of the porch, and I actually thought, “Ah, spring is coming!”
It was so warm yesterday that I didn’t even need a hat! My hair may have frozen on my way to work, but I didn’t need a hat!
Boston??? Where? When?
Oh. My. God. You were at Emerson LAST NIGHT and I had no idea. GODDAMMIT.
Emerson held it in a small venue and the Q&A started at 4pm. If you couldn’t get there early, you were out of luck, as I was. I mean, if out of luck means “instead go have cocktails with excellent friends.”
FRIDAY THANK YOU GOD. And now only seven hours and fourteen minutes until I can go the hell home.
Hear hear! And thanks to time-difference, it’s only about 3.5 hours for me. Cannot wait (despite the fact that I have to do my taxes tonight)
UGH YES. I was all happy because it being lighter later had given me like .2% more energy but that quickly dissipated.
I feel like the worst person for saying this, but – my joy at the upcoming weekend is totally ruined by the fact that my mom is visiting until Monday evening. *sobs* I love her but we had a guest last weekend too and I just want to slob around in my pyjamas with my husband all weekend and not have to be sociable and entertaining and “on.”
Ugh. Visitors two weekends in a row is horrible.
Six hours and four minutes, here.
yes! i can go home again in 7 hrs and 16 minutes 🙂 thanks
If you enjoyed “Too Many Cooks,” you might like the Election Edition
Love Leslie Jamison. Has anyone read the Empathy Exams? I loved the essay about the people with Morgellon’s disease, and while I had some issues with the essay about female pain, it was absolutely gorgeous and though-provoking.
Read it and loved it! The Morgellon’s essay was so good and really stuck with me, and so did In Defense of Saccharin(e).
What were your thoughts on the female pain essay? I read it while I was in the middle of a binge of reading about female Catholic saints and mystics, and it definitely clarified some of my thoughts on the phenomenon, although I can see how it might not ring as true if you were reading it while thinking of the general population and not just bedridden French peasant girls.
OOH OOH in my last semester of college while in a dense fog of crippling depression and overmedication I wrote a term paper on Gertrude of Helfta and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and how the cult of the Sacred Heart was defined by female sexuality and asceticism, it was brutal but so so fascinating.
Yeah a few months ago I stumbled onto this highly credulous Catholic website cataloging the many, many virginal young women who have claimed to be living out Christ’s suffering as visionaries and stigmatics (trigger warning: everything) http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com and was immediately compelled to read every possible feminist critique of the matter because holy shit, this is maybe the most intense gendered WTFery I have ever seen.
Ohh noooo.
Here’s my ultra-quick feminist critique: female asceticism, with all the horrible gendered WTFery it brings up today, allowed for a certain perverse independence that attracted a lot of misfit women and gave them voices and outlets in a time when that was hard to come by. BUT. We can do so much better now, and that site does nothing to critically examine the context of these women’s experiences, because why would you do that when you can just hang on to medieval concepts of piety forever and ever and uggghhh ughghhhhhhhhhhh
To my horror, on the first page, they described her as a “black former lesbian”.
*flame emoji* *flame emoji* *flame emoji*
Oh no I really want to watch that video about marbles but streaming media is blocked at work 🙁
Did anyone else collect marbles when they were younger? I had a ton of them, my favorite ones I kept in a Smarties tube that a neighbor had brought back from the UK until one day it went missing and I was DISTRAUGHT. I kinda think it was her daughter that stole it from me but I hope she was disappointed when it wasn’t chocolate candies but in fact glass marbles.
I loved marbles! I didn’t get to collect many, but the ones I did manage to buy were cherished. I’d sort them by color and pretend the fancier ones were generals/kings when I was playing Chinese checkers (which, I am just now finding out from wikipedia, is a game that originated in GERMANY. Well done US, just tack China onto anything to make it seem more exciting!)
My grandparents had an old coffee can full of marbles, which I played with whenever I went over there, in their Closet O’ Kid Stuff — they’d kept a few good classic toys and books from when my mom and her siblings were kids, I assume with the idea that someday they’d have grandchildren, and evidently it paid off because I LOVED those damn marbles. I didn’t actually play marbles with them, but I had a small group of Favorite Marbles, and I had a whole elaborate mythology about those marbles’ family relationships, and who was the King of the Marbles, and so on.
My grandparents had a table lamp whose base was a large mason jar full of marbles. I loved deconstructing it and playing with the marbles, and it’s basically the only thing I wanted from their house after they were gone, but my uncle claimed it instead. >:-|
oh! i totally made up personalities and relationships for my marbles 🙂
that is awesome.
I loved marbles, too! I had several favorites. Until one day I discovered the joyful noise they made going through my grandmother’s floor vents, and they were lost forever.
I was obsessed with marbles! I loved them so much I tended to swallow my favorite ones. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Then I wasn’t allowed to have marbles any more!
You should definitely watch it when you’re able. It combines two of my favorite things – human interest story and “how it’s made” type production sequences.
I didn’t do much collecting of marbles, but I have a bag somewhere of marbles that were my grandfather’s. I loved them when I was a kid, and now I’m overcome with the need to go find them and examine them all, except I’m at work and I can’t and it’s unpleasant.
I sent it to my sister, who agreed with you, so hopefully she’ll still have the tab open when I go visit her tonight!
I had a big jar of them! I was toted to a great many flea markets as a kid, and marbles are the sort of low-cost nostalgia item one might ask for while one’s mom is looking at old furniture and corrugated tins. I collected them because they were pretty, like jewels, but also had names and classifications to memorize (swirly! steely! purie!) which was my jam.
I loved marbles! I had a good collection of favorites, though I never actively played any games (there ARE games, right?) just turned them over and over in my hands and looked at them endlessly.
Shameless nonempathetic child that I was, some of my marbles were fancy rock ones stolen from my dad’s fancy chinese chekers set. In my defense it was just a bookshelf display piece, not actively played. In my nondefense, I really liked the glass ones more, so I should have left the stone ones alone.
😀 I wonder what corner of the house my collection’s tucked away in…
I don’t know if this has already been shared, but someone on my facebook linked to this article about a 19-year-old college student (named Jeremiah True) who was banned from class discussion after repeatedly being told that his views on rape were making people uncomfortable and were disruptive to the class. Some choice quotes from the article:
“True, whose Facebook page says he studies “How to Annoy People” at Reed, takes pride in challenging his classmates’ opinions.”
“’I know many people aren’t comfortable with taking the stances I do, but I’m not a sheep,’ [True] said.”
And, my absolute favourite:
“’I just want to bring attention to the fact that this happens on colleges, [True] said. ‘Right now, going to college is a terrifying experience if you are male.’”
I wish they offered “How to Annoy People” as a real major at Reed, just so he could list it on his resume and thus warn all his future employers about his constitutional jerkitude.
my favorite part of this is that he is supposedly no longer attending his other classes nor participating in his extracurriculars “in protest”, like, just keep doing that bud. Just keep doing that.
I feel like he could benefit from reading this: http://the-toast.net/2013/10/02/no-more-devils-ad…
Check out that photo they chose. “F all you people; only this lorikeet understands me.”
If you haven’t read that email he sent to the faculty you should really try. I got about a sentence in before I noped out of there.
BUT THEN YOU MISSED THIS LINE:
I am getting increasingly concerned that I have performed rather outstanding academic research and no one is acknowledging my research, nor telling me I’m right.
I AM SCREAMING WITH LAUGHTER HOLY SHIT
Well done, sir. You have grasped the principle of academic research: be right or everyone else can fuck off!
Oh my. I tried again but I still only got to this place: “I am being accused of the following: Justifying racism, justifying the holocaust, belittling and marginalizing the victims of rape and sexual assault, doubting the experiences of the survivors of sexual assault and rape, supporting slavery (I am black?), being racist (again, I am black), having “problematic” views concerning Aristotle’s virtues of character, being a respectability politician, preferring the company of White men to Black women, and a host of similarly inflammatory and ad hominem-based statements.”
Like dude, if you’re accused of one of those things maybe there’s a misunderstanding. But to be accused of all of them? That’s at least 4 bingos if the card is “Disgusting Shit You Should Avoid At All Costs.”
Relevant Justified quote:
“If you ran into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day you’re the asshole”
Omg, that’s a great insight. Especially since I had this supervisor once who claimed everyone we worked with was “a lunatic — I mean, I think there’s something actually wrong with her/him.” After a while, I started to side-eye him.
He’s still getting credit for the course!
Literally the only thing he cares about is that other people accept that he’s right!
Augh, I feel like I used to be a shithead like this in my youth, and so I ought to have some sympathy, but on the other hand, no, that guy is an asshole.
Where can I find this gem? This is…actually, so like one of my exes it isn’t even funny.
My ex posted a PUBLIC FACEBOOK STATUS about how the journal he submitted to didn’t publish his research because they were “scared of the complex mathmatics” and “weren’t smart enough to see the conclusions he was drawing”. OR your math is wrong and your claims are unsubstantiated.
Good God, part of my just loves dudes with massive sense of entitlement (I am lying, burn them with fire).
Here you go. God speed, my friend.
I’m on page 2.
What a beautiful disaster. (From a distance, I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must have been for his classmates.)
ETA: “The entire conference without exception, men as well as women, feel that your presence makes them uncomfortable enough that they would rather not be there if you are there, and they have said that things you have said in our conference have made them so upset that they have difficulty concentrating in other classes.”
THIS IS GLORIOUS
It’s almost enough to make up for the supreme lack of fandom wank on the Internet these days. It’s got that same trainwreck-y factor that makes things so goddamn entertaining.
Dang it I meant to copy the next sentence, which was the really glorious part: “I, as conference leader, have to do what is best for the well-being of the entire class, and I am therefore banning you from conference for the remainder of the semester.”
YES YES YES
*grabs popcorn bucket for the rest*
“When I acquiesced to Michael’s request, he responded “Excellent, Jeremiah … thank you.” This is just oddly written, which led me to retract my consent. ”
????
“Rowan Frost has vouched for a study which can be called into question by a 19-year old.”
Presumably himself. Now I want to punch him in the face.
And now I’m done. Ugh, what a mess. Frankly, he gives me bad vibes that remind me a lot of my dad, who’s a high-functioning schizophrenic lawyer (not exaggerating). He does this constantly: get tunnel vision on some particular report, conduct his own investigation which he believes must be flawless and everyone else who thinks differently is just wrong, and then pushes it aggressively at everyone without consideration of the feedback he’s getting in a wider context. Like maybe it’d be better for his own sake to drop it. He’d never consider that, because he is Right. And therefore he’ll pursue every official course he can find, and he never realizes how this makes him look.
I completely agree with you. I think that he would be served well by visiting a mental health professional. In his petition he mentions becoming a martyr and telling his family that he loves them…it definitely sounds concerning and I hope someone picks up on some of these cues.
Hmmm. I didn’t mean to imply he had a mental health disorder on the level of my dad’s — I honestly think a lot of it is about his age and immaturity. There’s a lot of dickheads in college like this who grow out of it. But I agree that he’s showing enough deafness to social signals (though I wonder if it’s a cultural thing — is he from another country, maybe?) that a trained therapist may be the best thing for him, just to help him to understand how he’s crossing boundaries and when he needs to back off.
I am exceptionally fond of philosophy and Roman government and am intent on incorporating positive aspects of the Humanities texts into my life in order to improve my character.
Oh noooooooooooooo.
Oh my god, so many of the baby mens are like that. They really think they know more than the person with a PhD being paid to teach the subject.
currently taking full advantage of my empty office to snort/guffaw/generally mock him from afar.
OH MY GOD. I had not read it. Having read the first page it is AMAZING. I am going to save it to enjoy reading later in the day. Wow…just wow.
Apparently he brought up the Holocaust BEFORE he got kicked out, proving once again that Godwin’s law needs to be an actual law so that we can enforce it IRL to make people shut up.
“I’m not a sheep.”
For sure. Your radical reject the system damn the man approach is definitely not upholding the system at all!
Did you read the 9-page single spaced google doc rant he sent to the administration? Because nothing demonstrates your mental stability like a 9-page single spaced google doc.
WITHOUT INDENTING OR SPACING BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS.
I suspect I have a higher tolerance for know-it-all male undergraduates and arguments about statistics than most folks. But dammit, you’re supposed to save this constant arguing for the lunch table with consenting interlocutors, not the mandatory humanities seminar where no one can escape. And assuming what women’s feelings are regarding groping versus rape? You better have evidence for that shit, or at least preface the thought with “I would conjecture that” and then be prepared to concede in the face of opposing evidence (read: the testimony of women who have been raped, sexually assaulted, groped, etc.)
Unfortunately, the kid seems to think that what’s at issue is his contesting of the 1-in-5 statistic, not the fact that all evidence I’ve seen indicates he’s That Douche Who Won’t Shut Up Already And Refuses To Concede That He Might Not Be Completely Right. Bless his heart.
You are a nice person. I am not.
Bless his heart, my ass. Fuck him.
In the way I was using it, “bless his heart” = “In the (unlikely?) event that the kid’s behavior is based in part on ignorance, he should correct that ignorance and apologize to everyone he’s harmed, discomforted, or just irritated. Otherwise, fuck him.”
I’M SORRY, BUT EVERYTHING OUT OF HIS MOUTH IS RIDICULOUS
In a statement about his own character, True says, “I believe that I am an emotionally capable, intellectually gifted, cutting wit, hell of a person. I believe I have experienced more trauma and suffering and pain in my life than many of these, well frankly, middle class white girls at Reed could ever know in their lives.”
True distinguishes himself as a “freedom feminist,” differentiating himself from what he calls “toxic radical feminism,” which “speaks out against rape culture at the expense of men.”
Oh no, not speaking out against rape culture! How terrible! And at the expense of men! Fetch my smelling salts.
Other ways in which Mr. True is not a sheep. Does not provide useful wool. Presumably did not taste like lamb in his younger days. Has never given the internets an amusing gif. Doesn’t hang with border collies, the second best dog breed after greyhounds.
Yeah, sheep are way better.
This is my favourite. You are my favourite.
Let’s think about this very cute lamb instead of that douche: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bOyPg8UM0IU
There are not enough kegs in the world for his male tears. The entitlement and everything.
Thank the deities he’s not a sheep, though. That would be a serious insult to sheep.
I do NOT get people who insist your sexual identity/orientation has to line up with what you’re doing. (EDIT: Which is a terribly clumsy way of saying it … I don’t think being a woman with a man contradicts bisexuality. It’s in the definition!)
Are these the same people who say, “Oh, he’s married to a woman, so he can’t be gay”? I can’t imagine the utter lack of tact, empathy, and common sense it takes to question someone’s identity like that.
I’m single, and when I’m celibate or uninterested in pursuing relationships, does this mean I’m not heterosexual? Screw them all.
“I do NOT get people who insist your sexual identity/orientation has to line up with what you’re doing. (EDIT: Which is a terribly clumsy way of saying it … I don’t think being a woman with a man contradicts bisexuality. It’s in the definition!)”
Well, the thing is, this is a bad example. What she’s doing DOES line up with her definition of bisexual. The problem is that people keep urging her not to ID as such.
“Are these the same people who say, ‘Oh, he’s married to a woman, so he can’t be gay’? I can’t imagine the utter lack of tact, empathy, and common sense it takes to question someone’s identity like that.”
If a dude who IDs as gay is married to a woman, I won’t tell him that he has to show his card or he’s going to be kicked out of the gay club. “Gay” can be an umbrella term for all kinds of things! But if his definition of “gay” is “man attracted only to men”, I will be CONFUSED. Why isn’t “bisexual” ok if you are attracted to multiple genders? Is it bi-phobia or are you just not familiar with the term? Because the alternative seems to be that… you’re married to someone you’re fundamentally unattracted to? IDK, Identity politics is great, but I just don’t understand the reasoning behind this example.
Fear. It’s the reason behind all bigotry and all judgmentalism. One fears one is not good enough as-is, and one must denigrate others in order to elevate oneself or to hide one’s true self.
I get being initially taken aback by someone who IDs as a gay man but is married to a woman, but his identity is his business and your confusion is your problem. The solution to biphobia and erasure isn’t more identity policing, it’s unqualified acceptance.
Yeah I’m not clear on what the actual need is to ID people into their proper category like you’re birdwatching that makes folks so terribly, terribly anxious when someone doesn’t call themselves what by your rubric they should be called.
Eh, this is more a “words mean things” frustration.
Which is perfectly reasonable when someone insists on calling cars sausages and perfectly unreasonable when you’re telling them they’re wrong about what kind of person having their junk handled by some folks and not others makes them
It’s not like you’re having to learn a whole new vocabulary, “OK, you’re gay and have a harem of buxom women hanging off your arm, fine” and then you change the subject, forever.
I am right there with you on words meaning things, but the fact is that the English language is insufficient when it comes to categorizing the breadth of human sexual attraction. A person doesn’t even automatically know their sexual orientation; they infer it through a process of analysis of their reactions to different types of people, and those reactions can trend in different directions over time or be thrown off completely by one individual. Sexual orientation is a lifelong one-person science experiment, and the only one qualified to interpret the results, choose from the ridiculously inadequate list of labels to define them, and decide how to put them into practice is the scientist.
YES. Labeling things that are not people is great. Cars are cars! Helpful and important in all interactions. HOWEVER, it doesn’t matter how other people identify unless you’re trying to get with them or are already with them. Sexuality is fluid (SO, SO FLUID), and also people’s individual interpretation and understanding of their own sexuality is fluid. That means people are going to describe their own experiences and desires differently over the course of their lifetime — and also differently depending on who they’re talking to, context, etc. Furthermore, language changes constantly (“words mean things” but meaning also shifts), so the language people have available to them is not ever constant. It’s complicated, but so is being human, especially being a human who interacts with other humans.
Also, if you’d like to launch another thread of discussion, we can get into romantic vs. sexual attraction and the terminology used to describe those desires or lack thereof.
I wish I could like this more than once.
I had a long thing typed, and then thought better of it because I’m not super versed on gender politics. I hope I can explain myself more succinctly here:
I guess my point was … if we can understand that people can sometimes suppress their identities to the point of participating in something that’s not what they truly want, is it so alien to understand you can be *freely* not demonstrating one part of your identity all the time, but that part is still there?
And comparing the two more closely side by side, I was thinking more how people’s reactions should go .. it’s sort of like, “If he says he’s gay, he’s had his reasons for doing what he did and I should support him by believing him instead of saying noooo, you weren’t before and asking him for a personal history so I can evaluate for myself.”
If she says she’s bisexual, then similarly, “If she says she’s bisexual, then she is and I should support her by believing her instead of saying noooo, you’re not doing it right and asking her for a personal history so I can evaluate for myself.”
As for identity politics and why people choose to identify as bisexual or not, I totally find the discussion interesting but I don’t feel comfortable enough putting my thoughts out there, as I don’t feel qualified to say more beyond “leave people alone if they seem happy with their choices and aren’t oppressing or harming anyone, and help them if they seem like they want it!”
Hope somebody else does though 🙂
“…noooo, you’re not doing it right and asking her for a personal history so I can evaluate for myself”
I don’t want to evaluate for myself, I want a set of solid definitions so I know what people mean when they ID themselves! *is grumpy about constantly shifting terms*
Like, I already know there’s a lot of upheaval around the term “gay”. (Some people are VERY ADAMANT about how bi people are NOT gay, while other people think that “gay” is an umbrella term that “bi” can fit under.) But I thought there was already a definition of the word “straight”, and if it’s now the case that “straight” means “has same sex relationships”, I have really, really missed something.
(And again, why can’t we just use the word “bisexual”? That’s what the word is for! How are we supporting bisexuality by saying anything but it when we talk about how we ID?)
Yeah, your last point resonates with me. I’ve met quite a few women who identify as lesbians even when they’re in relationships with men. I wonder if they would embrace bisexual identity in a less biphobic world.
I haven’t encountered lots of cases in life or online of people who identify as straight but have gay relationships, but I’m quite okay with the idea/fact that it’s possible (and therefore has already happened, as is the way with things in humanity). Or at least I’ve heard of “straightish.”
I do feel less easy with it because my instinct is that this identification comes from a necessarily phobic place, but it can also be a case of someone not wanting to somehow co-opt the identity of a more oppressed group if they “pass” or mostly identify as the dominant group. Or just that they feel it accurately reflects their identity.
For example, I meet a man who really likes women and have had multiple relationships with them, but is currently with a man.
This is one moment in his life, so maybe he’ll “end up” with a woman later. Or, it could be the one he sticks with forever, but he doesn’t consider it an invalidation of his previous relationships (like, he doesn’t think he was “actually” gay the whole time). Or, he’ll end up meeting more men he likes, and his entire relationship history takes on a whole different ratio.
So is he gay or straight, based on the past and present and future? So complicated! Maybe they put more weight on their past, numbers, how important those relationships were, or sexual v. romantic relationships.
So it’s simpler just to go with how a person identities at that time, based on their own assessment of their feelings and history. I get why terms of reference are useful for language and shorthand purposes, but man, identity language is so interesting! I love how very personalized and particular what we take to be a common term can become.
“So is he gay or straight, based on the past and present and future? So complicated!”
See, this is why I’m asking why people do this! Why don’t you just ID as bi? It makes everything less complicated!
Unless you’re trying to date or have sex with them, why would you even care? If you are confused, it’s not his job to teach you.
DING DING DING, we have a winner!
~words mean nothing~
~we are post-structuralism~
HTML IS VERY LIMITED, DAMN THIS LIFE
*falls into the void caused by post-structuralism and never returns*
If that hypothetical guy asked me how I thought he should label himself, I’d advise him to go with bisexual. If he told me he was gay or straight, I’d accept that. If he told me he was gay or straight and someone else said, “No, you’re bisexual,” I would tell them to shut up. The end.
I hear you on this.
‘Why do bi women always seem to end up with men blah de blah’,
Well, when we consider the dating pool percentages of gay-leaning women and straight-leaning men…are the results really so surprising?
I’m trying to be kind and patient. But what situation would arise that someone would be married to a woman, identify as gay, and not be fundamentally misusing that term?
Omg that piece about drag by Alexander Chee was incredible. Thank you for sharing x
The best part of Mr Rodgers’ was the picture picture trips to factories. I could watch how things are made all day long.
I was almost late to work yesterday because I turned on the TV while eating breakfast and found several episodes of “How It’s Made” in a row. How am I supposed to go sit at a desk and do work when I could be finding out about how candles/neon signs/hot tubs/kayaks/jet skis are made?!
THE CRAYON FACTORY.
I once lived near the crayon factory! Mr. Rose and I took a tour and sat at the the little-kid-sized tables and made crafts. It was fantastic.
Mr. Wren recently told me that the Crayola factory is only about 2 hours’ drive from where we live, and I think all my dreams are coming true. I AM SO CLOSE TO ALL THAT AMAZING PRODUCTION AND SORTING AND COLOR! I am trying really hard not to demand that we go there immediately.
Go there immediately! Demand it! I went and loved it. Mr. Rose and I were the only ones on the tour without children in tow. But not many stared. Everyone understood that it’s just plain awesome, no matter how far back one must reach to revisit childhood.
Art marbles are one of my favorite things.
1st day of Spring, also there is an eclipse, here in Philadelphia it is snowing. Is this some kind of fucking convergence or something? Does the Red Room open up today so we can all visit the Black Lodge? What the shit is even happening.
Here in New Hampshire, a state representative managed to fit abortion into striking down a bill about a bird.
‘‘That (the abortion reference) was probably less than the gentlemen who stood up and made jokes. That was almost more upsetting to them because they understood those references. Why didn’t they take us seriously? Why were people laughing?’’
oh my god I hate people so much sometimes
This is why we folks in Vermont give New Hampshire the side-eye.
(Actually, I did it when I lived in Massachusetts, too, but Vermont is a better place to do it from.)
We give New Hampshire-ites the side-eye from Mass all the time, too. Aside from the jerkwads like these legislators (and many of the drivers who venture over the border), the state is full of crazy-ass Free Staters. It’s too bad, because it’s a lovely state.
Right? Classes around the country petition to create Official State Things all the time. Students in Maryland created the state cat. Massachusetts has a state muffin. Eight states have an official dinosaur! I really don’t get why lawmakers were laughing at such an inoffensive piece of legislation.
OMG I HAVE A STATE MUFFIN? I must know more.
(And yeah, fuck all these assholes, making fun of little kids. The fuck is the matter with people?)
It’s the corn muffin! Chocolate chip is also the state cookie, boston cream is both the state dessert AND state donut!
(Grew up in Massachusetts, which is why I know these things.)
Toasties, I just wanted to share that today is Mister Rogers’ birthday. In his honor, I will try to be a little kinder, a little more grateful today – he had such a huge influence on my childhood, and I still miss him.
He was important to me, too. I believed him when he spoke into the camera, “I like you just the way you are.” That a man could be gentle and accepting was astonishing to me. I cried like a baby when he died.
Mr Rogers!
I got invited to a birthday party my friend’s son decided to throw for him a few years back. We had a cake with a trolley on it and were kind to each other and watched old episodes together. Hands down it was the best party I’ve ever been to.
I watch the old episodes on Prime with my kid. SO SOOTHING. It’s a spiritual quaalude. His book is great, btw.
Eh, if a man has only been sexually attracted to a handful of women over his entire life and is surprised when he finds a woman sexually attractive, but is sexually attracted to a fair number of men–that is to say, if he’s, say, 90-95% gay? IMO, “gay with a few exceptions” doesn’t sound like an unreasonable description of his sexuality. And I say this as a bisexual.
EDIT: this was meant to be a reply to MollyRen.
FWIW, I can see identifying as queer and flushing the bigots to the surface to be a feature, not a bug, to some. This depends on personality, though.
Have you ever wondered how marbles are made? What a time to be alive.
Roxane, this video is delightful, but you are more so.
I watch the old episodes on Prime with my kid. SO SOOTHING. It's a spiritual quaalude. His book is great, btw.
There are not enough kegs in the world for his male tears. The entitlement and everything.
Thank the deities he's not a sheep, though. That would be a serious insult to sheep.
We give New Hampshire-ites the side-eye from Mass all the time, too. Aside from the jerkwads like these legislators (and many of the drivers who venture over the border), the state is full of crazy-ass Free Staters. It's too bad, because it's a lovely state.
Please change my pants as fashion dictates.