This is a pretty puffy profile (heyyyy) of Roseanne Barr, who can say really garbage-y things on social, but there was a lot in it I enjoyed, and I loved Roseanne more than anything. We STILL to this DAY do not have a realistic depiction of working class homes and meals and jobs on TV in this country that comes anywhere close to Roseanne. It was a really special show. Anyway, the parts of Roseanne Barr that are evergreen for me are still around:
Inspired by that, Barr has “always tried to do the right things with my privilege,” and recalls her first joke, written at age 3 or 4, was inspired by fury at a daily gender inequality she witnessed at lunchtimes.
“My grandmother ran around serving the men, they never said ‘Thank you,’“ she recalls. “One day my uncle had two or three bowls of soup. He complained every mouthful. ‘You put too much chicken fat in this,’ he said. ‘That’s what immigrants do.’ I did not like anyone messing with my grandma. ‘I said, ‘Well, if you don’t like it, how come you’re eating three bowls of it?’ And his face went…” and she widens her eyes… “because nobody had ever said that to any man in our family before. ‘That girl’s got a big, big mouth,’ my uncle said. And that’s still how I see the world: women doing the labor.”
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ActiveHistory.ca has been running a series about Terry Fox for the 35th anniversary of the Marathon of Hope, and I have gotten something out of each of them.
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ANI DIFRANCO, various theories as to why we do not listen to her as once we did:
Make Them Apologize Hypothesis.
Without an intersectional approach, her already-rickety second-wave feminist politics aged into obsolescence melting into defensive ignorance: cf. the Righteous Retreatgate of 2013.I Know this Bar Hypothesis.
Based on preliminary ethnographic research (i.e. having attended an Ani show as recently as 2011), we can report that her concert-going fanbase is about 40% guitar dads and 60% nostalgic moms, leading us to the realization that these modern day parental units were once pimply-faced Ani fans just like us, which further led us to the realization that WE ARE NOW MOM-AGED. Maybe it’s all our fault—we’ve ushered Ani into a certain type of momzone, a vast wash of Facebook status updates and bootcut jeans. RIP us.Revelling/Reckoning Hypothesis.
Too many unfortunate Righteous Babe tattoos.Not a Pretty Girl Hypothesis.
Too earnest, too makeupless, too patent-leather-platform-Doc-Martens. Lola asks, “Maybe because she wore these pants in 2008?” Meredith comments, “The year on that can’t be right.” But it is, Meredith.
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This moment in Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s profile of Don Lemon:
I look up and down the menu and suggest that the sorbet looks promising, given his totally understandable criteria.
He leans in, big warm smile, not wanting to correct me, but needing to: “Sorbette,” he says, like a news anchor. “It’s pronounced sorbette.”
“Sorbette,” I repeat, shaky. I smile, not quite understanding the joke.
“Sorbette,” he says with the confidence of a man who informs hundreds of thousands of Americans each night about what is happening across this land as well as many others. “It’s pronounced sorbette.” Sorbette! Could he be right? I’ve been saying it like a French word for years, like a complete asshole. Have I, a native English speaker, a graduate of a four-year college, a frequent eater of frozen desserts, been mispronouncing it all this time?
Or we can leave room for the possibility that he is just plain wrong. This is Don Lemon, after all, the news anchor whose name has become associated with what might politely be called missteps,like asking an Islamic scholar if he supports the terrorist group ISIS, or declaring on the scene at Ferguson that there’s the smell of marijuana in the air, “obviously.” This is the guy who asked if a black hole could be responsible for the disappearance of Flight MH370; who asked one of Bill Cosby’s alleged rape victims why she didn’t stop the attack by, as he put it, “the using of the teeth.”
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I don’t want to go to couples’ counseling but I DO want to sit on on Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s sessions!
I know a 20-something couple who started therapy before graduating from college (and ended up in grad school intact). I know a 30-something couple who never discussed marriage directly until they were on a therapist’s couch (and who realized their goals were incompatible and broke up). The actress Kristen Bell started couples therapy “right away” after meeting now-husband Dax Shepard. In a joint interview with Good Housekeeping, Shepard characterized it as a preventive measure: “In my previous relationship, we went to couples therapy at the end, and that’s often too late.” And sometimes, couples counseling begins because neither party wants to admit when marriage is explicitly off the table. I recently met a pair of 24-year-olds who had been dating on and off since their tweens. To learn how to let go, they went to therapy together.
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On race and immigration in Britain:
Ed Miliband’s anti-immigration stance is odd: it’s hard to vote for a man who doesn’t have the confidence to defend his own existence. It seems that his main argument against immigrants is that his dad raised a befuddled fuckwit. Could you hand Labour’s “controls on immigration” mug to a guest? There’s nothing like jollying up a Macmillan Cancer Support coffee morning by making your neighbours feel like the pakoras were a little unwelcome. Let’s not forget where coffee and tea come from: this mug is bitterly opposed to its own contents. Unless you drink hot Tizer from a coffee cup, the drink inside that mug will be an immigrant. The logic of a receptacle for hot beverages provided by slavery and colonisation being anti-immigrant bears no more examination than a pair of homophobic Speedos.
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I didn’t go to bootcamp yesterday bc I kept blowing my nose and no one wants to be part of that, so I went for a hike up the canyon instead. It was very pretty and I listened to numerous pop hits from the last year.
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.@Nicole_Cliffe should have never told me about the Facebook legacy thing. Sorry @Lubchansky. pic.twitter.com/2wHefFiXQt
— Jaya Saxena (@jayasax) April 21, 2015
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
just wanted to link to this excellent piece by Desmond Cole regarding his experiences of racial profiling in Toronto: http://www.torontolife.com/informer/features/2015…
jaya you’re incredible never change
Except into a ghost, obviously.
Brb, finding some Ani DiFranco for the office today.
I’ll never be able to eat sorbette again without remembering this.
Let’s just go allll the way back and call it sherbert again.
Sure, bert!
sorrynotsorry
I was so shaken by that passage that I had to look up the word sorbet, even though I knew Don Lemon was WRONG.
The rage that passage produced is a very familiar feeling. It’s the same way I feel when men fail upwards at work.
It really is some next-level mansplaining.
I have also had a man (male waiter) explain to me in a peeved tone that “bruschetta” is pronounced broo-shetta.
I mean, I wouldn’t object to pronouncing it either way, let’s all just communicate and not be nitpicky, but I am a speaker of Italian so it was galling.
“You might also want to talk in person”
I am imagining a team of no fewer than six people sitting around saying “Hmm, this is such a great feature we’re adding, but what if people think that they can just leave a ghost-message on Facebook instead of leaving a will, or having a conversation with their loved ones about what should happen when they die? Better tell them to have this conversation in person. God, we’re like therapists except on Facebook”.
To be fair, that’s more thought and consideration than is usually put into social media features of any kind.
Oh there is an interesting Radiolab piece on this whole topic!
I viewed it as – “warn them that they will receive a message from you from BEYOND THE GRAVE!” – but I like your idea more.
Man, the only fun part about designating someone as “person who will curate my memorial page when I die tragically in a hot air balloon accident” is composing the FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!! message. Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think it is just me.
That Guardian column is great, and the mugs are SO APPALLING, and the whole thing makes me think of this Horrible Histories song (starts at about the 3min mark, after some slightly-sanitized empire history): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij4eWlfM2LE
Also that Roseanne Barr story reminds me of pretty much my favorite family moment ever. My Grandmother is an extremely traditional, conservative Southern Baptist housewife and always has been. So I’ll never forget the moment when my Granddad said ‘Honey, will you make me a sandwich for lunch?” and she said “Make yourself a sandwich if you want one!” It was like she’d been working up to it for 75 years and had finally had enough.
Yesterday a coworker asked another coworker if he brought lunch to work every day (expressed with incredulity; we live and work in NYC where brown-bag lunches are almost unheard of), and when the answer was ‘yes’ asked if his wife made him that lunch every day.
I sit very close to the kitchen and overheard the whole thing, and promptly yelled “that’s sexist!!” into said kitchen. Then the second coworker said “in the South where I’m from, women don’t think that’s sexist.” I don’t know how they do things in Lower Alabama, but I lived in Atlanta and parts of NC and know several women there who would find both generalizations to be sexist. Ugh.
(I should clarify that my coworkers are very good-natured – if a little misguided – and the first coworker [who asked the original lunch question] and I have been in an interesting dialogue about sexism and transgender issues, so at least none of this was antagonistic.)
@(#%@*%(@#%($*($%*(#$#($I@
That’s all I’ve got.
My husband packs my lunch for work, and has for over twenty years. Every. Day.
Wife appreciation AND a marketable skill! He will be spared.
Go Grandma!
I’ve never been so enraged at men as when I had to serve my cousin and his loser friends breakfast while my dad was recovering from tumor removal surgery and radiation in the next room. I mean, my mom didn’t seem enraged (might’ve been, should’ve been- I was too busy with my own fury to notice) and my dad was glad to have his favorite nephew there, but I was off the walls furious. They were pretty polite, I guess, but still. A-holes. I just had come home from college for spring break to be with my dad and here come these college doofuses (one of whom later suggested I’d do well at a wet t-shirt contest- we lived in Daytona) all from Mississippi and there was absolutely no question that any of them get their a’s off their chairs and help out. It was a flames coming off the side of my face moment, for sure. Thank God my parents got out of MS and moved to Florida when I was little. I might not’ve survived without killing someone. I cannot imagine doing that for decades. Anyway, good on your Grandma.
Sorbette.
I have a friend named Bette who is a rock climber. I think I will start calling her Sorbette when her muscles are achy. Thanks Don Lemon! (Never thought I would type that phrase.)
I put this at the very end of yesterday’s link roundup but can’t hurt to link to it again. Brother Orange and Matt Stopera on Ellen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tIoGNKfhaU
WAIT WHEN DID BRO ORANGE GET TO THE STATES
OH MY GOD YES, I AM HERE FOR EVERYTHING INVOLVING BRO ORANGE AND MATT’S CONTINUED ADVENTURES
Ugggh they’re so touchy feely with each other IT’S SO ADORABLE
oh and if you’re wondering what this Bro Orange and Matt story is, here’s the original article about it , http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-followed-my-stol…
That is awesome!
My new favorite twist to this saga is that Matt Stopera is Ilana Glazer’s roommate.
WHAT?!?!?!
I DEMAND BROTHER ORANGE GET A GUEST SPOT ON THE NEXT SEASON OF BROAD CITY
Oh man that couples counseling article is so good!
I honestly do think that having some kind of facilitated discussion about long-term goals, present terms, communication methods, etc could be a really good thing for a lot of couples. If you’re in something that seems like it could go the distance, maybe a session or two in a safe place with someone you trust that can help you figure out HOW to fight (because you will), what’s OK and not OK, etc would be a really useful thing. There have definitely been times that I didn’t feel I could be totally honest about needs and wants and goals because there just wasn’t a way to do it without endangering the whole thing, and that’s what I see the pre-emptive counseling helping with the most.
I actually generally think this about regular therapy — that it’s at its most valuable before something goes wrong. I think we’d all be better off if we looked at things like therapy and counseling the same way we looked at going to the gym, rather than the same way we look at going to the hospital.
That’s very quotable, that gym/hospital analogy. Me Like.
Excellent metaphor! I’m so grateful that I found a community that basically takes this approach–it totally transformed my adulthood.
the same way we looked at going to the gym
as in, something that I can only get through by listening to loud pop music and hissing “just 5 more minutes, you can do 5 more minutes” under my breath the entire time?
Yeah. Why, is there another way to go to the gym?
I absolutely agree! Very well said.
I love that the counseling article is basically like, here are a lot of viewpoints, no, we don’t think counseling is inherently good or bad or there’s a “right” time to do it.
So this article seems to use “counseling” and “therapy” interchangeably. Is that right or are those two different things?
I think using them interchangeably in this context makes sense. There might be a technical aspect that I’m not aware of, but the basic concept of “see an expert about an issue” applies to both terms.
I liked it too! And all of the therapists they interviewed seemed like the type I’d want to go to.
“We saw an untapped market!” Preemptive couples therapy is kinda like the “right-hand diamond” so I will expect the print ads shortly.
I kinda want to be Matt and Jaya’s dad. THERE’S an untapped market. A couple’s dad.
You always wanna brine your pork chops, kids.
Bless you.
You end up in a situation where, when slavery is the elephant in the room in your relationship with African Americans, you think it’s OK to say that you killed one of them because he was trying to escape.
Oof. As per usual, thank you Britain for pointing out US history.
That line took my breath away.
Also, the parts about how Britain built its wealth on the exploitation of POC but complains when those same people wish to move to the country to benefit from the wealth. It reminds me of something mentioned in that article featured earlier this week about Ben Afflack trying to hide that he had a slave-owning ancestor–someone involved in the show pointed out that four or five other people just that season also had ancestors who owned slaves. How many rich and influential people today can say the same?
If their families have been here more than 150 years, and let’s face it they probably have, odds are HIGH.
That Ben Affleck thing got me too! A lot of us have embarrassing family histories, no matter how recent, that we’d certainly like to cover up if we could, but c’mon. You go on a show that researches your family history, and then you try to censor it? Really?!
I was heading over here to quote that exact same line. Because damn, that cuts right to the point.
Happy Earth Day! It’s snowing where I am so I won’t be hugging a tree today. Everyone else should feel free to hug a tree, hug a tree hugger, and/or climb someone like a tree.
One of my coworkers brought in doughnuts for Earth Day. Now that is the kind of activism I can strongly support.
Snowing?! Holy Moly, I feel for you, hope you’ll get some sunny clear skies soon!
I mean, I don’t listen to Ani DiFranco anymore because of my Jettison White People Who Are Overly Defensive When Called Out On Racist Practices policy.
What did Ani do? I’ve never even bit a fan but I’m still curious. . .I think maybe I have weird voyeuristic instincts when it comes to White People Being Awful.
see the “Righteous Retreatgate” link above.
Ugh I’m trying to find what was my favorite piece of writing to come out of that mess, basically a piece about how Ani should have been listening to her own best lyrics, eg “they chalk it up to my anger / and never to their own fear.” Google is failing me and showing me super irritating “in defense of Ani” pieces. Anyone remember that?
I think it’s this one? I found this blog through the toast, I forgot exactly how, and went down a rabbithole a few months back, if was great https://floatingpoems.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/ar…
Yes! Thank you. “You gave some of us the words we are now using to tell you about our anger.”
There’s a link in the excerpt above to some kind of songwriting retreat she was going to have that was on a slave plantation, which she just had NO IDEA would piss people off. But I feel also like I remember something longer ago too.
Yeah, as far as I can tell, based on my very official research into the subject, that’s pretty much the reason A LOT of people don’t listen to her anymore. I admit, I still do sometimes, but I will never support her with my money again.
(Also Allergic to Water sucked so hard. Like, SO HARD. Harder than Up x a trillion or whatever that atrocious album was called. And when you have roughly a billion albums, it’s hard to figure out which one is the worst, but Allergic to Water is the worst).
What about the Not Angry Anymore Hypothesis? Ani was young and righteous and angry, and we were young and righteous and angry, and now she’s happy and her music is happy and doesn’t scratch that same itch. (Okay, I see that this is pretty close to their “Shrug” hypothesis.) Course, if she were writing music in the same vein at 40 that she was writing at 20, we’d probably be wondering about that too. Anyway, alack, alas, we are truly old now.
I’ve been thinking about that “sorbette” moment since I read the Don Lemon piece yesterday afternoon, and it might be one of the greatest moments in interviewing history.
Also, in case you missed it, that Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan museum in Brooklyn is now an actual thing. BROOKLYN.
My pleasure at reading the Don Lemon piece was only outdone by my pleasure at scrolling up to see that it was written by someone named Taffy. This could be the “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” of our generation!
I thought that ridiculous profile of Chris Evans where the reporter wound up getting smashed and staying over at his place was the “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” of our generation?
At any rate, I so completely doubted my own pronunciation of the word for at least a solid minute. He said it with such conviction.
Non native english speaker here, has a sorbet question: Why? I don’t understand why it’s pronounced SOR-BAAAY. I also thought it was a french word, Thank goodness I’ve never had the chance to order one. And that I’m not Don Lemon.
Sorbet is the French word for what was originally an Arabic word. My ice cream cookbook says the original was Arabic, and something like “Sharbet “, and that’s where we get our English word “sherbet”. Just to make it more confusing, American style sherbet is different than French style sorbet, and I think that’s why we use the French pronunciation, to indicate a fancier dessert, because French of course
Dang it, you beat me to it. I wanted to be the most helpful person!
I so very rarely get to use my pastry chef training-this was my chance!!
I get into this with my bf occasionally – he grew up bilingual in South America and spent many teenage/adult years in Italy. He insists on pronouncing words like “bruschetta” and “pistachio” … weirdly. He has complex theories about language-of-origin pronunciation that he has never had the patience to fully explain to me.
Wait, how does he pronounce bruschetta? It’s just bruque-etta, right, with the u pronounced a bit morre like an oo sound?
whoa I say “brew-shetta” and I’ve heard “brew-sketta” but I have never heard “bru-quetta!” Language, so weird, I love it.
Wait, I mistyped: I do pronounce the s. So broosketta, I guees (I should really learn the phonetic alphabet someday). I didn’t know people made it a soft shhh sound! Language is indeed weird. And English pronunciation is all over the place. Do you know this poem? http://www.mipmip.org/tidbits/pronunciation.shtml
That poem is so great but it gives me a headache! I can’t imagine trying to recite it aloud.
Here’s another good one: http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/03/19/orthogra…
That one’s great!
Wow, that poem is fun! Though there are a few words/phrases I don’t actually know how to pronounce, so I’m very confused over how Pall Mall apparently isn’t pronounced how it looks.
How to pronounce bruschetta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqp_0B3zq1E
right?
I’m not going to lie – I can’t remember exactly how he pronounces it, because whenever I sense it’s coming, I brace myself to cackle and call him silly names. It’s very exaggerated and he usually stretches it out for maximum effect, but in all honesty, I’m not sure if he says brew-shetta or brew-sketta or el-e-fant or hump-er-dink.
I try to pronounce loan words from other languages like that language (if I know how). Mostly because I find languages to be fun so I like to pick up as much as I can from different places.
Same. I also like to pronounce city/place names with the local accent, for example, my brother lives in MinnesOta, or my uncle is from Bawstin, my cousin is going to Wiscahnsin.
It’s because it’s a French loan word. Weirdly enough, it comes from the same root as “sherbet” — but “sherbet” came into English directly from the Turkish, and “sorbet” came by way of France.
I don’t know the deal in England (I don’t know the deal anywhere but America, because that is what it means to be American), but in the US, sherbet is made with cream or some kind of milkfat, and sorbet is not.
I would say either pronunciation is acceptable, given the English-speaking world hasn’t reached a consensus on this one. Each dictionary seems to give a different answer. That said, there can be no forgiveness for those that pronounce ‘sherbet’ as ‘sherBERT’. None.
Ohhhh noooo I say sherBERT! I am well and truly ashamed.
Me too. I was kinda hoping someone would leave a comment here indicating that other people say “sherBERT” because I was starting to worry I’d somehow made that up.
Even though I know perfectly well there’s only one R in that word, I find it hard not to put in a second one. Maybe it’s just my accent?
Me, too! And that’s how I grew up hearing it. The stress is on the first syllable, but there’s definitely an R and T in the last syllable too: SHIRbert
I’ve been trying to get myself to say sherBE’ but it feels so awkward and why don’t I just say “sorbet” instead.
This, I’ve always said SHIRbert too.
I think the T at the end is standard pronunciation, isn’t it? “Sorbet” is French but “sherbet” isn’t. “Sherbé” as a pronunciation seems like half one thing half the other.
(I also find it interesting how Americans put the stress on the second syllable of French words–ballet, café, garage, etc.–where Brits tend to stress the first syllable. Neither one is particularly correct, since French doesn’t really have syllable stress.)
Yep, it’s pronounced exactly as it looks – ‘SHER-bet’.
Could be! I have relatives from the Thousand Islands that like to add extra r’s for flavour i.e. ‘Warshington DC’.
They also call Detroit ‘Detroy-it’, which is kind of mystifying.
I definitely don’t say “warsh”–I’m from Minnesota and I have broad Midwestern A’s–but I pronounce R’s pretty strongly when they do occur. In New York I used to get confused about people saying “draw” for “drawer.” When I say that word it’s 90% R’s.
I should stop now or I’ll just start to second-guess everything I hear myself say.
I grew up in NJ with parents from the Bronx, and when I moved to the Midwest a lot of my accent softened. So much so that people now think I’m from CA usually. Until they ask me, like, where my stapler is and I say “in the draw.” I cannot get rid of that one.
yes I also say sherBERT
I am 46 years old and until today was convinced that it’s spelled “sherbert”. And I’m a word nerd!
I feel like since the main way I consume it is by pouring lemon-lime soda over the rainbow variety and making a technicolor float, then “sherBERT” is exactly the right pronunciation.
THE BEST FLOATS
ice cream is too rich, but sherbert floats are delightful. Do you have a Bruster’s ice cream place near you? if they have the strawberry-lemonade sorbet, get that in a float with Sprite/7-Up and it is fucking refreshing for summer days.
SherBERT is an abomination unto Nuggan.
Haha yes trying to figure out how to pronounce a third language in your second language is the most confusing part of language learning! French vowels are really close to my native vowels, so I had trouble understanding how a normal (to me!) “é” sound could become “ay”, but eventually I just internalised that English likes its vowels to be diphthongs whether it’s logical or not, so now I can figure out how to pronounce “ballet” or whatever.
But what about other French loanwords, like Mardi Gras? I was like “I can pronounce French words in French and English words in English, but how am I supposed to pronounce FRENCH in English??”
I don’t mean that the American “Mardi Gras” isn’t a real word because it’s not pronounced in French! Obviously it’s a real American English word and should be pronounced the American way! It’s just hard to figure out what the right way is, because normal French AND normal non-loanword American English pronunciation will both be wrong.
Anyway, I know how to say Mardi Gras now, but I’m still regularly baffled and/or delighted by English French.
Is Mardi Gras not said in American English like it is in French (I don’t speak any French really so I don’t know)?
I do know that in American English we say Coup de Grace wrong.. Grace being pronounced like Gras above.. because we though “it’s French, of course you drop the ending of the word!” so it is a case of trying to be authentic and failing I guess.
especially because if you pronounce things correctly in French, Americans will often have NO IDEA what you are trying to say!
Oh my god, yes. I have a vivid memory of standing in line in a cafe in California behind some douchebag who insisted on pronouncing croissant correctly and the little old Latina woman behind the counter had absolutely no idea what he was saying and asked him to repeat it at least five times until some merciful person finally intervened. You know you’re not getting your point across, and you know the American pronunciation; just use it, asshole. Christ.
I… Don’t know the American pronunciation of croissant?! What is it? In fairness, I’m English and not American, and I speak English and French, and pronounce croissant the same on both languages?! (Cwah-ss – o – nasal n.) How should I be pronouncing it?!
In American, it’s craw-sahnt. Or maybe more like cruh-sahnt. If you say “kwah-sanh” some folks will understand and some won’t.
Yeah I’m confused. Mardi Gras is pretty much pronounced the same way in French and American. Slightly different accent, but same basic pronunciation. How do you say it?
Yessss!! THANK you, that was exactly my problem with that word! This has been truly a guide for Loan words
If it’s around the turn of the century and I see a bunch of Ani and Indigo Girls albums on the rack at the party it means I’m probably gonna have a bad hangover. As the Doctor said “those girls can hold their drink!”
And this is probably NOT a date in any way. Once again.
I really liked “Swan Dive”.
if there’s an acoustic guitar around too you will also wake up all hoarse from singing. And of course there’s an acoustic guitar around.
I was the designated singer in high school, there was a lot of Morrissey and The Cure in Brian’s basement. (also I couldn’t play a guitar worth a damn) (still kinda can’t)
I was hoping the Ani article would turn up here! I still love me some Ani songs but I am always surprised when I come across someone who’s a diehard fan in 2015. I was never a fan of Ani the person and everything she represented, so I can’t explain my faded fandom with the “she’s not the radical queer feminist icon we thought she was” hypotheses. But as for Ani the musician? Heck yeah, she sang stuff that I’d never heard anyone sing before, at least not in such blunt & right-on terms. And then I kept growing up and finding new music that also said that stuff, and her songs stayed the same.
I am all about the I Know This Bar Hypothesis, though. I fully embrace my love of dad-rock. No line for the ladies’ room at a good dad-rock show.
It also occurs to me I haven’t actually sat down with a Lana Del Ray album and, like, actually LISTENED to all the words. Heh not being a teenager obsessively poring over CD liner notes heh maybe THAT was a big part of my Ani love. What do the kids these days do, obsess over the music videos? Do they actually look at those digital liner notes?
My daughter is a huge fan of Young Fathers, and does in fact dissect all of their lyrics with her friends (with added context from interviews, social media, etc.). I think that is a timeless teenager thing. 🙂
I kinda miss it, like, how special a new album was and how much time I could happily devote to it. I wonder sometimes what new music I’d be subjecting to hours (DAYS!) of analysis if I were 14 now.
There’s a really disheartening tone of “Not the Right Kind of Queer” in some of those Ani pieces. 🙁
Yeeaaaaahhhhhh that struck me too. I’ve never been a huge Ani fan (I love some of her songs but I’ve only listened to a fraction of her discography and I don’t really have an interest in listening to more) but this part of the McWilliams piece jumped at me:
Most significant among these criticisms was the shock, outrage, and disappointment expressed by her lesbian fan base when Ani got married to a man–and then divorced him and married another man. And then, if she chooses to talk about her personal life in her music she shouldn’t be surprised when people are disappointed in the paths her life takes–she made her life choices fair game for analysis when she decided to include them in her lyrics.
Just… what? Sorry that a musician who’s actually a complete stranger to you no matter how much you identify with her music didn’t turn out to be the gold star lesbian icon you had built her up to be inside your head.
Ugh, yes. “made her life choices fair game for analysis”. Because that’s exactly how relationships work We fill out a scorecard on how complete fucking strangers will judge our life choices and fall in love accordingly.
*flames up the side of my face*
I found her (first) marriage to a man incredibly annoying, but *not* because I wanted to police her personal sex life. It was annoying because so much of her aura was built up around the live shows, and when she got shmoopy-in-love with her drummer, the live shows changed. She became all, “Hey everybody this is Andy isn’t he THE BEST?” And I was like, no, I came here to see Ani, not The Ani-and-Andy Love Show. And I stopped going to the shows, because there was less Ani per show and more (rambling jam-band-type nonsense featuring) other people.
I guess that intersects with some of the other points people have been making about her albums becoming less solo and more of a group effort, her work becoming muddy and overproduced, her becoming less angry and more ambivalent, etc.
My personal take on this was a little different than the explanation quoted. Though I was never a hardcore fan, I *was* a lesbian fan, and in the good olde days Ani made much bank and curried a lot of favor by playing to the ladies very directly. Then–and this was well before she married, I pooped out on her when she dropped the punk for funk–she was actively rude and distancing to what many of us justifiably felt was her fan base. Like, slagging the noisy dyke fans in interviews, and even at shows making a lot of references to them as being unforgiving, etc., when, like, we bought the albums, came to the shows, and this is seriously what you have to say about us? Fuck that mess. I could give a fig who she sleeps with or marries, picked up that she was openly bi from those early lyrics, but don’t shit on me when I put the time and money in out of love. P.S. And no, the racist hideousness didn’t help. But I still love Living in Clip.
yeah I feel like “I am disappointed she 1) got married 2) to a man” is one of those thoughts you can absolutely have, and think on for a while, but should know better than to say out loud?
personally I listened to her a lot when I was in my teenage “boys? girls? no one? what’s up with THIS crush? must…find…right…label!” phase, and I loved the songs that dealt with indecision and what-ifs (mmm School Night, still a favorite). so it’s hard to wrap my head around “but she was supposed to be this way and now she is that way? Betrayal!” (hrrrm this is hard to express without sounding like I am equating bisexuality with indecision, just trying to say that her “I’m figuring this out as I go along” lyrics rang very true.)
I don’t know what it’s like to desperately need a lesbian icon and not have many to choose from, so I want to have some sympathy for folks who did…but it’s so icky to read “she married a man” next to “her racial politics are pretty gross.” Those are not the same thing!
I think you’ve pulled a key piece.
Bisexuality = confusion or Bisexuality = betrayal
It frames “figuring out your sexuality” as laudable only if the ‘answer’ you come up with is lesbian. And denies the fluidity of gender and sexuality.
IDK. This has clearly hit a sore spot for me this morning, that has little to do with short haired singer songwriters.
On the topic of the British elections: I have been enjoying the flurry of hand-wringing and panic at the thought that Kate might give birth to another boy and name him Edward and that the popularity of the baby will rub off on Ed Milliband because of their shared name, therefore leading to a Labour victory.
Not only is this hilarious, but the idea that this is how the Royal Family influences politics — by strategic baby-naming — is like double-hilarious.
“I’ve heard rumours that a Welsh independence referendum is in the works. Eugenie, get the turkey baster!”
Pollsters are attending William and Kate at the birth of their new child.
“We’re afraid that Thomas would upset some swing elections in the northern counties. The numbers are very good for a neutral name, have you considered Aethelred?”
If they name him Aethelred, I will bring alcohol into work and drink toasts to his health all day long. I will feel no shame. I did my Master’s thesis on literacy in Anglo Saxon England, and I am partial to Alfred (obv), but Aethelred the Unready will do in a pinch. What a great name.
Aethelred the Unready is my favorite ancient king name. Man, way to set the kid up for failure.
See also: Ivar the Boneless.
Thank you for directing me to a Wikipedia page with this incredible sentence:
“[Ivar’s] cause of death – a sudden and horrible disease – is not mentioned in any other source, but it raises the interesting possibility that the true provenance of Ivar’s Old Norse sobriquet lay in the crippling effects of an unidentified disease that struck him down at the end of his life; though ‘sudden and horrible’ death by any number of diseases was a common cause of mortality in the 9th century.”
“I mean, it could have been a disease of unknown origin, but it could also have just been the 9th century.”
There was a documentary where a guy with useless legs looked for evidence that Ivar The Boneless was similarly afflicted, rose to a position of leadership despite his society prizing physical prowess most of all, and was carried into battle on a shield.
Ultimately, besides one grouch, the historians who knew said “Probably not, but we can’t really tell for sure. So, knock yourself out.”
rooting for Boudicca personally
Boudica = Brythonic cognate of Victoria, so there’s already a precedent. Go for it, Kate!
Really? That’s fascinating – the Toastatariat is so delightfully educational!
Man if we are bringing back ridiculous Saxon names, then you’ve really got to go with Eadgifu.
I hope it’s a girl, and she names her Nicola, and SNP sweeps the poll in a shocking victory and then has to govern the whole Union as the kind of socialist utopia the Yes campaign imagined for an independent Scotland. Basically I just love Nicola Sturgeon.
I just learned that Neil Kinnock’s son is standing for Parliament and is married to the Prime Minister of Denmark. So I imagine that if he became PM, there could some kind of Anglo-Danish alliance.
My plan is to create a series of facebook and twitter posts to be deployed automatically after I die so as to confuse the issue and hopefully spawn a million conspiracy theories about what really happened, and whether or not I’m really dead at all.
I mean, what are they going to do? They can’t find my body, it was destroyed in the volcano.
Bless you, and may your legacy be confusion and hushed whispers.
That is the legacy of which I dream.
fake_lj_deaths will have to rise from the ashes to detective out the truth!
*pours one out for fake_lj_deaths*
Have a look at this from Reddit’s “No Sleep” creepy stories. “My dead girlfriend keeps messaging me on Facebook”: http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/29kd1x/m…
My mom is French Canadian so I learned French at a young age, and for a lot of these French “loan words” that we have in English I’m unsure what the correct anglicization is so I just say them French-ly but then sometimes people make fun of me and act like I’m stuck up. NO I’M NOT TRYING TO BE CLASSY MY GRANDFATHER WAS JUST THE SON OF A BACKWOODS QUEBECOIS LUMBERJACK.
Coming from the other side, I’m a western Canadian who speaks no French and had a shit French accent even back when I was actively practicing it at school so I never know how much I should anglicize words. I’m never going to pronounce croissant “crows-ant” because that would be an embarrassment to Canada, but if I try and use the French pronunciation for most words I’m going to fuck it up badly (especially wines, because why are so many so hard to get right??) and is it better to mangle the French pronunciation or not even bother? So instead I half-anglicize most of them and hope that somehow makes sense.
Gosh that couples’ therapy article. I don’t know — I kind of am on the side of sometimes it’s better to just get out of a relationship rather than try and try and try to work it out, but that goes for relationships that aren’t even in counseling. I definitely feel like people I know work really hard to make mediocre and bad relationships, particularly of relatively short duration (<1 year) “work,” to the detriment of all involved.
I actually have a theory about this, which is that people get the wrong idea about the concept that “relationships take lots of hard work.” Sure, they do. I’ve been with my partner since 1997, and sometimes it’s not as easy as other times. But the thing is — the type of work people mean when they say that is stuff like working out whether one of you should take a job or go to grad school out of town, working together to take care of a sick or dying parent, talking about how to spend your money (especially when it is limited), having honest and productive discussions and arguments when things aren’t feeling right, that kind of thing. What “relationship work” shouldn’t mean is one person working really hard to try to ignore their needs in order to keep the relationship going. In my relationship with my partner, the relationship itself never feels like “work,” it’s working out how to deal with the world together that takes work. If that makes sense.
Absolutely agree with this – I think some people have an idea that the more you suffer, the better it’ll be in the end, and that it’s some kind of endurance test with a reward of a wonderful relationship if you can just put up with the ten years of hammering a square peg into a round hole until you’re both a totally different shape and thoroughly traumatised. I have a friend who is *really* subscribing to this idea at the minute.
Yeah I had that friend too. All the “relationship work” she did was along the lines of “how can I start liking the shitty way my partner treats me.” 🙁 🙁 🙁
It upsets me so much when she is (daily) posting those faux-inspirational e-card quotey things on social media along the lines of ‘when you find someone who puts up with you when you’re being shitty to them, stick with them because they really truly wuv you’ – I always reply ‘if you find yourself with someone who puts up with you when you’re being shitty to them, maybe you should leave and find someone you don’t want to be shitty to and who you actually like’.
Yes! My friend did the exact same thing! My friend eventually got out of the relationship when the other person left, but seems to be in a good place now. I hope your friend gets to a better place soon!
I am really glad your friend made it! Mine and her partner really seem to dislike each other, both want to change the other pretty fundamentally (from what she says to me), and definitely bring out the worst qualities in each other.
That makes all the sense there ever was. I, too, am often wary of the idea of “relationships take work.” I feel like when my partner and I are fighting, we’re “working” to get through something. But when we’re not fighting, we’re…you know…getting along really well, which is why we’re in a relationship. I never feel like I’m “working” to make us get along. Your point about dealing with the world together is excellent – that’s the way it should be!
Yeah I definitely think that a lot of couples I see don’t seem to LIKE each other very much, too.
yes, that. I love a lot of people -family & friends – but I do not want to live with them and plan my life around them.
Ben & Leslie, relationship model <3 (ugh tearing up at work now, ack)
So true. I remember consoling someone over the time she and her then boyfriend had a terrible row about him not wanting to get married (she moved out temporarily). As we talked, she spoke of him with utter contempt, repeatedly saying how weak and pathetic he was. And honestly, it wasn’t a huge jump from how she usually talked about him. At one point I asked her if she wanted the relationship to work out. ‘Yes, I love him!’ she said, sounding surprised. All I could think was ‘Really? Because it sounds like you hate him’.
They’ve since married, and have a kid, and seem to get on OK, but the dynamic is still kinda ‘he’s a silly man-child and she’s the one with Character.’ I hope for the kid’s sake it’s less toxic than it seemed back when they were having those problems.
But yeah, couples who don’t seem to like or respect each other – weird. There’s enough shitty humans to be dealing with in life anyway, why would you live with someone you can’t stand?
oh, man.
One of my ex-boyfriends with whom I am still in touch has something like this. He is still dating the same girl he started seeing when we broke up, but they don’t seem happy. He has said some impossibly cruel things to me about her, she has said that she is afraid of him, and yet, they are still together. Despite wanting different things out of life, despite him being a dick, she says she “loves him so much” and won’t just fucking leave. And of course they’ve been together and been living together so long that inertia makes it hard to leave, but if your partner is mean to you on a regular basis, why are you still there? Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you should be in a relationship with them!
that makes perfect sense! I think the article was sort of conflating a couple different things – do you go to couples therapy to work on a difficult relationship (or have a third party tell you “maybe y’all should not be together”)? or do you go so you’re better equipped to handle the kinds of work you’re talking about here? (which lines up with the first thought that came into my mind reading your theory – “so, relationships take the same kind of work as being single, you just have another person, for better and for worse, to do that work with!”)
I actually have a friend who ended up going to couples therapy to help ‘save’ their relationship and that couples therapy is actually what helped her realize that maybe it wasn’t worth saving. I very much did not like the guy he was with and I think he was emotionally abusive, so i was very appreciative of that particular result of couples therapy.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. For me, I think that sometimes being a good person is work–like being the kind of person I want to be, who says sorry even when I want to be self-righteous instead, you know? I think that’s part of the work of being alive in the world. It happens, often, in relationships, but the relationship isn’t extra work on top of that. In fact it’s often easier to take risks and be vulnerable in those ways in my partnership, because of all the context we have for each other.
Super well-said, totally agree!
Mmm. I wish people differentiated this better too. I described it later to someone as “good work” versus “bad work” … like a career versus a job. A career where you’re building something, and you put in extra hours because you want to, not a job where you dread it and it’s just something you do as a means to another end.
Too often, we seem worried that people are ditching good relationships for no good reason, when the real problem seems to be more like people staying in bad relationships for no good reason.
YES! I think I’m allergic to the whole “this takes work” mentality after my last two exhausting relationships. Dammit, I just want somebody who exists in basically the same fashion (active, passionate about art/reading, cares about social justice, likes to cuddle a lot) so that things are EASY and we can talk and laugh and not have to constantly try so damn hard just to find common ground. I like easy, easy is good, let’s enjoy each other, dammit.
My ex and I went to couples therapy for several months after we’d been dating for almost 4 years. Mostly because, as the article says, ONE OF US *ahem* could not be upfront about the fact that he was not anywhere near ready to be married (we’d planned the wedding menu together already… the whole sitch continues to baffle me). We’d been having other problems, but the marriage one was getting sticky.
I have to say that I really did “learn how to fight” – more specifically, we learned how I handle conflict and we learned how he handled conflict, so we could negotiate our conflicts a LOT more successfully.
The other side of the coin is that even the therapist said “I… don’t see how this is going to work long-term,” which made us double down even harder for the next 4-5 months until we finally reached an impasse and had to break up. But the break-up was very calm! And positive! Until I found out that he had -immediately- started sleeping with a mutual friend (who had been angling for him while we were still together) and lying to me about it. But that’s a different story for another time.
Yeah I definitely think that there’s a time and a place for couples’ therapy, for sure. I have seen, though, in my life, couples who have been together like, 8 months and are going to counseling and it’s just like…..it really really shouldn’t be that hard that early on. I think those specifically are the people who are doing the wrong kinds of work, if that makes sense.
I’m sorry your ex turned out to be a jerk face 🙁
Sorry to be cheesy but I just found what you said really really beautiful
Completely agree. I think there are a lot of platitudes and advice out there like “The first year is the hardest” and “all couples fight” and such that I suppose would be helpful if you were having a rough time. (But ring completely untrue in my marriage.)
TL;DR: Everyone’s relationship is different and no one can see inside someone else’s marriage.
Literary cross-reference: I’m reading Anna Karenina at the moment and there’s a description of the first few months of marriage of a young couple, and to modern ears it sounds pretty terrible – they get married when they hardly know each other, they’ve just mooned over each other from a distance for ages and now they have to deal with each other’s humanity and are not managing to well, but in the narrative it’s framed as a kind of ‘the first year is the hardest’ vibe, and my spidey sense is going Noooooo you guys are doomed to bitterness and resentment….
..but I still have a huge chunk of the book left to go so maybe Tolstoy has something insightful to say about the unrealistic nature of 19th century marriage, or maybe he’s gonna double down on the They Should Suffer Because Marriage Must Not Be Broken line. At this point, it could go either way.
TL:DR – I waaaay too personally invested in the love lives of fictional characters….
Word. If it isn’t easy and fun at the beginning (first two years when all the endorphins are bubbling), what makes you think it’s worth working on?
Could we maybe go back in time like 10 years so you can tell me this? Thx.
I guess I’m going to be the sole voice of dissent here (although not total dissent). I think for a lot of people learning to be in a relationship is just generally kind of hard. Either we’re not great at communicating, or we don’t know ourselves particularly well, or whatever. Sometimes with folks like this, you have to tough it out through some rough patches, ESPECIALLY in the beginning when you’re learning each other’s communication styles. I don’t think it’s fair to say that if things don’t flow easily between you and another person then you should always break up, because for some folks things never flow easily between them and another person.
I’m not saying that you should stay together with someone you don’t really like very much, but rather that sometimes relationships ARE hard, even when you love someone very much. No, you shouldn’t be in a situation that makes you miserable, and it can definitely be hard to discern whether it’s a rough patch or you’re dating a jerk. But I bristle at the idea that if it’s right it should be easy for some number of years, because for some of us it’s never “easy,” not with any one friend or lover or family member, or whatever.
But your particular framing, that most of the time the hard things should come from the outside, and your relationship shouldn’t constantly make you miserable, is definitely sound advice.
Yeah, if your families of origin are borked on both sides, you’re going to have a bad time until that gets addressed.
I’m a non-frequent to lurker status commenter here, but this hit pretty close to home. From someone who’s likely doing what you’re talking about right now–thanks for speaking about it so thoughtfully and kindly, while still getting to the heart of things.
Silly Taffy, the t is always hard for French loan words that end in ‘et’. Like in the classic song Raspberry Berette!
Unrelated to the Ani hypothesis’, but Ani related: my girlfriend works for a think tank and once they had an event with danah boyd, who as a middle aged woman, wrote a book about teenagers and their social networking habits, because obviously. But danah boyd is also the proprietor of THAT Ani DiFranco lyrics site, which is attached to her official, professional website, and I really wanted my girlfriend to ask her about that and what it has been like, operating the definitive Ani DiFranco lyric site, but alas, she likes her job and having it, so we may never know.
“who as a middle aged woman, wrote a book about teenagers and their social networking habits, because obviously”
She’s a researcher and social scientist and that is what she studies?? I thought the book did a better job than the majority of the research out there in actually capturing a diversity of teen voices. What’s the issue here?
Sorry, I was putting my girlfriend’s impression of her due to the event into this comment without clarifying: I haven’t read the book, but in person she came off as condescending and patronizing, also very out of touch, towards teens and their social media usage. I guess she works better in writing? Or maybe she had a bad day. I don’t know.
excuse me i am A Man and it’s pronounced sherrrrrberrrrt
https://youtu.be/bhuOIbg-hM0?t=55s
“I’m going to go across the street and get you some orrrange sherrrrberrrrrrt.”
SHERBERT FOR LIFE
I once read that watching a movie or TV show and talking about it together after is the same as couples’ counseling. I really like that idea more. I feel like you learn a lot about someone based on what they fixate on or think about when they watch, say, Game of Thrones.
This is really interesting! One of the things that has impacted my relationship with my spouse as I deal with anxiety and depression and the Job From Hell was that I turned into a zombie who didn’t have the energy to talk about, well, anything besides my job. It really affected how close we felt to each other, and is on its way to getting better now, I hope. But it really crept up on us, and I could identify the feeling of “I don’t feel as close to you right now” but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was that was lacking for a long time.
I think our couples counseling used to be doing dishes. But now we have a dish washer, so there’s much less of that, and while I love not having to do as many dishes, sometimes I’m wondering if it’s a bad thing we’re now missing that talk-time, especially since we’re both very busy and have periods of only barely seeing each other. Then again, we biked for hours yesterday, so I think we’re set for a while 😉
Long car rides have always been the couples counseling of my relationship. We live about an hour outside a big(ger) city and when we drive into town for date night or whatever, it’s always the drive that I remember most fondly.
Oh yeah, my wife and I end up having lots of discussions that stem from character’s actions in TV shows. Interesting.
“Daenerys is the only character I really pay attention to, anyway.”
“Oh….. honey, we need to talk.”
(if you can’t say anything nice……..) I, uh…think she’s gotten her shit together by the very end of “A Dance With Dragons”. *That’s*…..nice, I guess.
(books and show, I basically like everyone who DOESN’T want the goddamn throne) (Except TV Stannis, I can’t help it, he’s wry and he looks like Ted Leo)
Dr. Katz, what does this say about me?
THAT AWKWARD MOMENT….when you realize you’ve created Jurassic Park.
I say again: http://asongoficeandlolz.tumblr.com/ IS BACK! REJOICE!
I like the way you think, Ms. Misra.
Jumping back to a topic from a couple of days ago, PROPERTY BROTHERS. Amazing show to watch with a partner.
-Look on in horror as couples enact gross stereotypes! (e.g. dudes saying, “heh heh, she always gets what she wants in the end” or “I’m earning more income, so I get final say,” or womenfolk saying, “Ugh, I can’t stand when he watches sports, he needs to stay in the mancave,” vel sim.)
-Discuss the choices they made and how we would make them!
-Ascertain where we have common ground and where we will need to compromise.
-Discuss where our priorities are as far as spending money is concerned–for example, the spouseman and I are agreed that energy efficiency is more important than granite countertops, stainless steel appliances are pretty but show fingerprints all too readily, and there are worse things in the world than carpet.
Thank you, Netflix, for the free therapy!
oh gosh, that might be more than the two of us could take. Though I am glad you found the right t.v. for you two as a couple!
My spouse and I watched Gett recently (excellent Israeli film about divorce) and despite being very happily married got into the worst fight we’ve had in months in about two minutes flat. Sometimes these things push exactly the wrong buttons!
Okay but wait I totally made out to Ani Difranco earlier this year and it was wonderful
Then again I didn’t start listening to Ani Difranco until 2012, so maybe that’s why???
“If you’re reading this, it means I’m already dead. As we both know, I was too strong to die of natural causes, and that means someone offed me.
Sweetie, I won’t be able to rest until you find my killer and bring them to justice. And by justice, I don’t mean getting them put in jail or killing them. I think we both know what I mean.
There’s a safe deposit box I own, and I want you to open it. Inside you’ll find a key to a warehouse downtown where I have stored certain amenities, as well as careful instructions on how to best utilize them with our ‘guest’.
Don’t worry, I only expect you to spend maybe an hour or two everyday there with them tops, so it shouldn’t cut into your schedule that much. Anyway, thanks for letting me rest in peace. Hugs!”
I’m Yul Brynner and I’m dead.
Don’t Smoke.
That’s for the older people in the audience.
Any time I read anything about Terry Fox, I start to cry. I think that might be the ultimate proof of Canadianness?
Do you somehow then get syrup or Timbits into that thought?
(Seriously, I know Canadians)
So The Toast linked to that thing a couple days ago about the library archivist getting fired (which is such garbage for so many reasons), but what I didn’t realize until last night is that it’s the same school that accessed a student’s counseling records when that student sued them for not properly disciplining the athletes who sexually assaulted her.
University of Oregon, get your shit together.
Firing him was garbage indeed. I love this was one of his quotes: “They offered me up as a scapegoat. I feel terribly betrayed,” Fox said. “In Dante, betrayal is like the lowest rung of purgatory.” <3 librarians!
Oh god, yes, I hadn’t put that together either. What a fucking mess.
I remember when the only reason I hated telling people I went to UO was because they assumed I had any investment in the UO/OSU sportsball rivalry.
Those were the days.
Toasts, today is a day that having a spouse with depression and anxiety is too hard. I am so tired. I don’t know what to do.
This sounds so hard. I am sending you love and strength and wishing I could do more. Please take care of yourself in whatever ways you can: food, music, quiet, rest, activity.
THANKS for making me cry again (no really, thank you <3 )
Fuck it I do know what to do. I’m taking the day off work and going to the Korean spa. Fuck everything.
YES GOOD. You deserve to feel good! Take up space in your life!
YES! Best thing in the short term is just being alone and doing stuff that YOU want to do. It’s so easy to get swallowed up by a loved one’s sickness, and it’s not selfish to need to take a break from being a caretaker.
YES! Let yourself focus on you for a bit, enjoy the hell out of your day at the spa.
That sounds like a good plan. I’m just now getting out of being that spouse, and I really wanted my partner to take good care of himself while I was struggling. Do some good self-care and take a break for a little bit. Have fun at the spa!
Hoping it gets better from here, and I was really happy to be reminded by a recent open thread about mandala coloring books, which I had literally been meaning to check out for…a decade? So I bought one and then found a zillion that you can print out or actually color in online. 15 minutes of that is so relaxing and refreshing, honest. You come back to the grind with a few more strength points than you had going in. Best of luck.
Ha, one of the coloring book recommendations was me. Thanks for reminding me to take my own advice!
Thanks everyone. Spa helped, though things are still rough. You are all wonderful and I love you all.
Has everyone seen this story? It has Moms! and reading! and creativity! and libraries! and loving your own hair! http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/04/_7_y…
Thinking calm and cheery thoughts at you, and hope you have a great time at the spa. Maybe call your best-friend-who-does-not-also-have-a-friendship-with-spouse afterwards?
Pinot noir, Roseanne Barr.
In all serious though, great article, and I particularly like Weinrib’s statement that “Historically, it was the jesters who spoke truth to kings”.
Have some….sort of…King Lear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvU9mvDyi0o
Wait, so how does Facebook figure out that you’re dead? I’m sure this was covered yesterday but I’m lazy.
Dad rock is totally a thing, so it makes sense that mom rock would be, too.
What I love is that Dad Rock moves on. I saw Peter Hook last night. I’m gonna see Ride in a couple weeks.
TOTAL Dad Rock, even if I’m not a dad plenty of people need babysitters for those shows.
especially because if you pronounce things correctly in French, Americans will often have NO IDEA what you are trying to say!
Yeah, if your families of origin are borked on both sides, you're going to have a bad time until that gets addressed.
I always wonder at what point in Britain’s vast and storied history these conservatives and UKIP’ers want to freeze the culture’s development. Is it after WWII? During the Napoleonic Wars? Before the age of exploration and colonization, with all of the terrible foreign influences Britain absorbed? Perhaps before the union of England and Scotland? Or perhaps we should just get rid of all pernicious foreign influences, and return to a golden age pre-Norman Conquest (or pre-Saxon, depending on where your leanings lie). What was the magical point in British history where everything just got too Foreign, and this scepter’d isle became filled with unwholesome influences?
I might say something that the South of England is still sometimes called “the Home Counties” as if even other parts of England are suspicious foreign wastelands, never mind Scotland or Wales.
They want Dirtbag Winston Churchill. Now and forever.
I'm Yul Brynner and I'm dead.
Don't Smoke.
That's for the older people in the audience.
Have some….sort of…King Lear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvU9mvDyi0o
What I love is that Dad Rock moves on. I saw Peter Hook last night. I'm gonna see Ride in a couple weeks.
TOTAL Dad Rock, even if I'm not a dad plenty of people need babysitters for those shows.
They want Dirtbag Winston Churchill. Now and forever.
In American, it's craw-sahnt. Or maybe more like cruh-sahnt. If you say "kwah-sanh" some folks will understand and some won't.
Higher dairy content – which is to say, any dairy content. Sorbet has little to none. "Sherbert" is a regionalism of "sherbet."
Signed, A Girl Who Drinks Pop, Not Soda
Yessss!! THANK you, that was exactly my problem with that word! This has been truly a guide for Loan words