*
Even a lyrical essay about tornado chasing can serve to remind us in an aside about the culture of white supremacy in the United States:
New Orleans to Tupelo, fourteen hours on a near-empty coach, much of it bending across the Magnolia State, the deadliest tornado state, cows and sunshine, McComb and Durant, billboards of lawyers and Jesus. GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION? I SPECIALIZE IN U TURNS. Grenada, where the Greyhound stops for gas and in the shade of a tree with magenta flowers I eat leftovers packed in an old snorkel mask case we’ve been using as Tupperware. Sunset, night bus, night trees, night noises. At midnight I arrive in Elvis’s birth city, where on April 5, 1936, a tornado killed at least 216 people, the fourth deadliest in U.S. history. Many more surely died but at the time black fatalities went uncounted.
*
Louisa Thomas on Floyd Mayweather’s career in boxing and domestic violence:
I can’t, of course, say what’s behind Mayweather’s serial abuse — physical, verbal, or emotional — of women. Men who are rich beat women; men who are poor do, too. They do it in Alaska and South Carolina, in New York and Oslo and Dubai. They do it when they get away with it, and they do it when they don’t. Every day, an average of three women in the United States are killed by a current or former lover. But the more I watched Mayweather fight, and the more I read about his allegedly violent acts outside the ring, the more I began to see it as all of one piece. The circus that follows him. The bag filled with cash and gambling slips. The entourage. The houses and the women installed in them, the diamond rings as collars. The way he takes the measure of a situation in the ring, determining when it’s safe to punch and when to duck.
*
I admire Kate Harding as a writer and a person FIERCELY and her new book Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do About It is now available for pre-order. It is my goal to move so many copies that people will be forced to put her on all the same panels as Jon Krakauer so we can tag-team the process of educating the American people about sexual assault. You should also buy her older book about chasing the unicorn of dieting and the importance of loving your damn body, because her work has played an important role in keeping me from being the NO EXCUSES douchebag that my evangelical attachment to exercise and half-assed Paleo eating would otherwise turn me into.
*
this person who wrote in to Prudie is a dick:
Q. Inheritance and Responsibility: My mother is a lifelong substance abuser, and is now close to dying. Her parents left her a lot of money, including sizable funds for my brother and me, and she has been living off the investment income from this money for decades. My father divorced her decades ago, and my brother cut all ties with the family when he turned 18, leaving me the only family or friend my mother has. I know both she and my father were cruel to my brother, but I feel that it is now his turn to take care of her. However, I don’t think he deserves to inherit anything since I am the one who loyally stayed with our mother, to the cost of friends, jobs, and fiancées. Should I hire a lawyer and have both my mother’s and my grandparents’ wills revised to reflect and account for everything I’ve had to sacrifice, then sue my brother to force him to be a man, own up to his responsibility, and do his part to take care of my mother in her last years?
*
Hawkeye is underrated because he uses a BOW in combat, which is the most useless of weapons and he should have a gun instead, a phrase very rarely uttered in this link roundup. Also, he is just not nearly as cute as Cap or Cobie or the Hulk and I do not enjoy him IRL, so.
*
if you fiiiiind someone’s sex tooooyyys while snooooping KEEP IT TO YOUR DAMN SELF
*
The pace of social change in America.
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Also Jeremy Renner has a face like a constipated chicken and is a black hole of charm, plus probably horribly sexist, so.
I like in the Avengers when Captain America is setting out the plan. “Hawkeye! Go up there and…look at stuff or something. I don’t know. Just stand somewhere you won’t get hurt.”
“Yeah, no, you’re totally an effective superhero with your non-replenishing weapons supply! Yep, yep, you’re prettttty cool – I’d expand on that, but I gotta go hero all over some stuff, so ttyl, for sure.”
“Just keep shooting them one at a time until you run out of arrows; I’ll be over here kicking one thousand cyborg alien monsters to death.”
“Hawkeye! What do your elf eyes see?”
I’m almost certain I saw him at a philadelphia restaurant two nights ago…. and your description is shockingly right-on. (if it wasn’t him, I feel bad for the individual who somehow acquired his face)
Unpopular opinion but I find him fuckable. Then again I’m a guy, so yeah.
But what are your thoughts on the Belgian version of Jeremy Renner, Jérémie Renier? He has really horrifying hair in one of those photos, but he also has something called a Magritte Award, which sounds cool. (I hope it says “Ceci n’est pas un prix” on it or something.)
<3 you for a morning Rene Magritte joke.
MCU Hawkeye has been so disappointing, because I would LOVE an actual Hawkeye movie based on the Fraction/Aja comics, with Clint Barton being a lovable loser dealing with the Tracksuit Mafia and Kate Bishop kicking all the ass everywhere.
In my dream world, there is a Hawkeye(s) movie written by the staff of Brooklyn 99.
I AM IN
I would pay a shocking amount of money to see that.
That is the next Netflix series they need to make. Hawkeye: The Avenger Who is a Guy.
Plus a Pizza Dog TV spinoff.
I would support this hardcore.
I just saw him as the drug guy on “Louie” and he skeeved me out so hard. I know that was the point, but still. Ew.
My little sister looooooves him, while the rest of my siblings and I think he has a face like a potato. So we tease her thus:
“Oh look! There’s Hawkeye! The pride of Idaho!”
“He has such beautiful eyes.”
“One day you’ll get married and have lots of little tater tots.”
Just…just do yourself a favor and don’t do a google image search for “constipated chicken” thinking you’ll find something funny. That was not a fun way to start my work day….
It makes me so happy when my internet favorites are each others’ favorites too! But then I think there is a pretty wide overlap among the Toastitariat, the Awkward Army, and former Shapelings.
I miss Shapely Prose! It played such a big part in letting go of my food issues and just appreciating my damn body for how it is.
Shapely Prose was really special, and all three of the head witches of that site have gone on to write amazing things for various audiences.
I see “Jedi hugs” so often now and I am so pleased about it. It’s like a shorthand for knowing, “there are people who are going to get you in these comments.”
Squee! Jedi Hugs was my contribution to that space! although I can’t take full credit–it was my BFF’s little nephew who came up with it. He was 5-ish, I think, and not super into physical affection, so he gave hugs with his mind.
A 5-year-old invented Jedi hugs??? That makes me love it so much more!
Ooh, Sara Davis, really? It’s a very rare day when we can tell someone
in a comments space on the Internet, “you made the world a better
place with that comment,” but in your case, it is so true. I’ve seen
that phrase pop up in a lot of trauma survivors’ spaces — it’s a
really, really great shorthand and is really helpful. Thank you (and
thanks to your BFF’s nephew, too!)!
He demonstrated the jedi hug for me at a funeral, where I had been hugging a great many people despite not being in the mood for hugs. It was the perfect kind of hug for certain kinds of grief, too.
I use “jedi hugs” and I never realized it meant “hugging with my mind.” (I think I thought it meant “hugging like a cool person from Star Wars and everyone else on this blog is using it so…”) This makes so much sense and now I love the term even more.
An Awkwardeer made a glossary of frequently used terms on the CA site, which is brilliant and I look forward to the day some enterprising Toastperson does the same for this site!
Y’all know I’m Sweet Machine, right? (I know you do, Sara)
You get some kind of Triple Crown for writing for all three sites!
I will never forget the day I found out you were Sweet Machine.
It was a dark and stormy night…
whuuuut?! whoa.
I’m having some sort of fan reaction to this information.
One million heart emoji to you all.
Hi everyone! Bmore roundup for today:
-if you’re in Bmore and want to help, here’s a friend’s daily volunteer roundup: http://t.co/AcGiWT5sgg
–here is some BS about how they’re now trying to say the Freddie Gray broke his own neck, even though they said 10 days ago that he didn’t
-Caitlin Goldblatt of the Bmore CityPaper details how women have been on the frontlines of this movement for justice, even though you wouldn’t know it from the rest of the coverage
-Stef Mavronis (admittedly a friendly acquaintance & fellow UMBC American Studies alumna) touches on the curfew and media
-follow Bmore United and BaltimoreBLOC for more things on local marches
-it makes so many of us so happy to see the solidarity marches.
-curfew is BS and only seems to be enforced in Penn/North & Upton. Probably Sandtown Winchester too. I can tell you though that @deray did a bit of a roll call to see who saw police enforcement, and I can tell you that my neighborhood nor many of the other middle class neighborhoods saw anything. Still leery of being out past 10 though, especially with my husband.
For MD (not just Bmore) Toasties, some info I’ve cut and pasted:
Key points from Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle’s Community Meeting this evening: 1. The Gray family wants to see the officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death convicted. So we must immediately get people in the community registered to vote so that a decent jury can be pooled. 2. Call/write/email/meet with your MD State legislators to demand that the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (basically gives them more rights than the Constitution) be REFORMED. If you’d like a script/phone numbers let me know.
sample language: “I am calling in support of House Bill 0968 and Senate Bill 0586. I would like to know what Delegate/Senator Name is doing to support this bill.
Here are the major points of the bill that we care about:
It allows for residents of a community to serve on the trial boards that determine disciplinary measures against officers that have engaged in misconduct. Currently only other law enforcement officers serve on this board.
It removes the 10 day window that police officers are given before they are compelled to make a statement in the event that they kill someone in the line of duty.
Allows for family members to file complaints on behalf of a victim of police misconduct.
It requires that police officers are questioned before they receive information about the complaint against them.
If they ask you about other parts of the bill, make it clear that the advocates are willing to negotiate on other parts of the bill, but that the talking points above are the main elements that we want in the bill.
If they ask for specific names of advocates you can tell them Dayvon Love from Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Sara Love of the ACLU, and Rion Dennis.
Key officials who have power to amend the LEOBOR: Speaker Michael Busch – 410-841-3800 – [email protected]
President Mike Miller – 410-841-3700 – [email protected]
Senator Bobby Zirkin – 410-841-3131 – [email protected]
Delegate Kathleen Dumais – 410-841-3052 – [email protected]
Delegate Joseph Vallario – 410-841-3488 – [email protected]
P.S. In other news I actually made it to the gym yesterday after a week of having a sinus/cold thing and the past few days of sheer distraction. Ugly lifting day but it was kind of nice to not think about rebuilding/tracking civil unrest/keep an eye on police/the national guard. I haven’t been eating very much because I’m just glued to computers now, trying to figure shit out.
Thank you again for these posts. You’re really doing a good thing.
Do you mind if I cross-post to some other sites to signal boost? I can either credit or not credit to you, depending on your preference.
Not at all! Please do cross-post, feel free to share my name too but I freely admit that I’m just cobbling together pieces that other people write. 😀
thank you so much for this. I’m from Maryland but not near Baltimore, and I want to do something. Emailing right now, and I’ll call during my lunch break or after work. (unfortunate/annoying FYI to other Marylanders who want to do the same – I’ve heard that legislators put more weight on phone calls than on emails, so call if you can!)
please keep eating and taking care of yourself <3
thank you!! Also, thank you for calling; sometimes I think it’s more powerful for non City folks to call their state reps because many of our state reps are for these reforms anyway.
You are amazing and I genuinely appreciate seeing this round-up every day.
Thank you! Just trying to counteract any other narratives re. what’s going on!
Thank you again Hieu!
Thank you!
Hieu you are my everything.
Thank you so much! That’s really kind of you to say. 🙂
Echoing everyone else to say thank you so, so much for your posts the past few days.
No problem! 😀
BTW, other Bmore Toasties–please post important links or events that you’re aware of! I do not claim that anything I put together is comprehensive, and I know I’m not the only POV here nor should I be taken as representative of the entire city.
Today, there is something going on at the Urban Business Center at 5:30. It’s on BMore Blocs twitter feed but I can’t figure out how to link to the poster
I gotcha:
Thanks so much for posting this.
Comics Hawkeye is a lot more interesting and engaging than his on-screen counterpart right now. Many cinematic sins would be forgiven if a certain one-eyed dog got a cameo in AoU. (It is particularly galling that Hawkeye gets a spot in the MCU because he’s one of the comics Avengers, while Janet Van Dyne, who named the damn team, is being fridged out of Antman and Hank’s history of spousal abuse is being conveeeniently dismissed so that we can sympathize with yet another sad white man, WHEN OH WHEN WILL WE FEEL WHITE BOYS’ PAIN ENOUGH.)
I am 100% with you on all of this – both on it being bullshit that Hawkeye is even in the MCU and the Wasp isn’t, and on Fraction’s Hawkeye being pretty awesome.
Also, slightly spoilerish for Age of Utron, but clearly Renner’s whining worked and he got more screentime… and well, UGH. It’s the worst. It’s a waste of a great actress, an insult to everyone clamoring for more interesting female characters in the MCU, and it really pissed me off.
PIZZA DOG IN THE MCU 2K INFINITY
FIX. THIS. CAT. (a response to Kelly Sue Deconnick’s writing challenge, swapping her and her husband’s writing styles/titles)
Comics Hawkeye is a lot more interesting, certainly, but my actual favorite Hawkeye is Kate Bishop, always and forever.
One of the best things about Fraction’s run on Hawkeye has been seeing Kate Bishop always be the ass-kicker who saves the day, and Barton being kind of a bumbling doofus. He’s ostensibly the hero of the story, but it is pretty obvious to me that he’s her sidekick. 🙂
YOUNG AVENGERS NETFLIX SERIES IN THE MCU 2K INFINITY ALSO
like I want this series, idk, YESTERDAY
CAN WE PLEASE KICKSTART THIS SHIT.
I just posted something similar above! I would LOVE to see a comics-version of Hawkeye on the big screen, especially with Kate Bishop and Pizza Dog!
MCU hawkeye was my fave* when his 30-second thor cameo sprouted a literal rainforest of clint/coulson fic that is still going REALLY STRONG despite laughable attempts on AoS and AoU trying so hard to hetero them. like, i love the hawkeye-shaped lacuna in the MCU narrative more than hawkeye himself. i love hawkeye wandering in and out of terrible situations, shooting one arrow or none, saying something bitchy, then not answering his phone for three years. LOVE. IT.
* fave after sif, thor, pepper, steve, maria+fury, bruce, darcy+jane, natasha, rhodey, bucky, tony, coulson, ok you get the picture my fave in that he was a person who was in the movie
but that was almost five fucking years ago- WHERE IS PIZZA DOG. WHERE IS KATE BISHOP.
WHERE IS THE MOTHERFUCKING WASP YOU LAZY FUCKS #JANETVANCRIME
JANET. VAN. CRIME.
Yes! I’m using that phrase now.
Wait, is Evangelline Lilly not becoming the Wasp in ANT-MAN?
She probably is, but she’s Hope van Dyne, not Janet. Janet is conveniently dead, it seems, which means they can neatly bypass the whole DV mess.
I am A-OK with retconning DV in comics movies, but not by just having the character be dead! Jeez.
BUT the Ant-Man movie is about Scott Lang… which means we will PROBABLY get stuff about his daughter, because taking care of her is one of his primary motivations… which means we will have CASSIE LANG aka STATURE aka A YOUNG AVENGER in the MCU!
I hope everyone has seen this but if not, Ross Gay wrote an incredible poem about Eric Garner and it’s absolutely spectacular and you should all go read it (again, if that applies).
Oh man, that last line. Love.
That Prudie letter makes my legal head want to explode! “Have both my mother’s and my grandparents’ wills revised,” “sue my brother to… take care of my mother,” WHAT? Her parents left her money, which makes it sound like they’re dead, but he thinks he can revise their wills? He thinks he can get other people’s wills revised by going to a lawyer?! He thinks he can sue someone to do what he wants them to do in spite of there being absolutely no legal obligation?!?! Like, I’m glad Prudie told him not to do it, but I wish she’d addressed the fact that NONE OF WHAT HE WANTS TO DO IS EVEN REMOTELY POSSIBLE/PLAUSIBLE.
And can you imagine the poor mother being taken care of this child that cut off all ties with her when he was 18? Just what you want when you are in a vulnerable state — the relative you haven’t seen for decades who apparently harbor hate/resentment toward you sitting at your bedside and determining all medical care and the smallest details of your daily life. Very loving of the first child!!
Ehh, about that “poor mother”…: both she and my father were cruel to my brother
It’s just not an end-of-life scenario I’d wish on anyone, even cruel or awful people.
(And it would damage everybody involved, sons too).
Yeah, I feel you kind of reap what you sow when it comes to emotional/physical abuse :/
“Your Honor, can I just swear out a Writ of Be A Man And Own Up To Your Damn Responsibilities against my deadbeat brother?”
I wonder if they wrote to Prudie after being shot down by several lawyers.
I am always amazed by people who think that lawsuits consist of 1) hire a lawyer to announce your feelings publicly 2) people agree that yes, that other person is an asshole 3) you get what you want.
Luckily for us all, being an asshole is not illegal.
The number one thing that makes me glad not to be working in private practice anymore is not having to deal with the yahoos who walk in and basically say “This thing happened, and I feel personally wronged, now SUE SOMEBODY.” Also the jerks who are all “I did this thing that was wrong, and now these people are suing me but I don’t want to pay them, PLEASE SUE THEM BACK.”
Hahaha yes exactly!!! Super well-stated 🙂
My friend in a law firm told me of an exchange she had that culminated in the phrase, “Sir, a snowstorm does not have automobile insurance.” (The man drove off the road in the snow. Somehow, he could not process that there was nobody to sue in this situation.)
I’m wondering whether the letter was actually written by the brother, in an effort to get a third party to tell his sibling to back off.
I know, I read that excerpt before I’d had any coffee and my head about exploded. You want to revise dead people’s wills? Then sue your brother to force him to take care of your mom? It’s like those questions on Ask A Manager — my coworker chews too loudly, is this legal?
I just want MCU Hawkeye to magically turn into Fraction’s Hawkeye. That’s all.
JINX.
Comics!Hawkeye is my favorite (I literally carry around all my stuff in an “I <3 Hawkeye” bag) but MCU Hawkeye is Not My Clint and Renner has done nothing but piss me off lately. KATE BISHOP IN THE MCU 2K15.
Also the article about Zoe Quinn’s ex, the one who wrote the thing that kicked off GamerGate, is incredibly well done and also horrifying. What a sick human being. Don’t go near the comments, of course.
#NotMyClint! perfect. And yes, let’s bring on Kate Bishop ASAP.
I also read that GG piece, and it reads like a horror story. That dude should be accompanied by the Jaws theme wherever he goes.
All I want in life is Arden Cho as Kate and Gina Rodriguez as America Chavez in a Young Avengers movie. MY NEEDS ARE SIMPLE AND FEW.
With kissing!
The kissing is a given.
#KateBishopIsNotThatStraight2K15
It is amazing how many people rush to Gjoni’s defense saying he is innocent when HE ADMITS IN THE ARTICLE THAT HE DID IT ALL.
On the other hand, Worf weighed in against these yahoos today, so that’s good.
What?? Link??
Voila.
Try and ignore all the bullshit surrounding his tweet.
Yay thank you. Hooray for Michael Dorn not being an asshole!
ROFL at the guy who replied to Dorn saying that nothing in the Boston mag story fit the truth. They *interviewed the guy who did it, and who said he did it*. I wonder if these same commenters also think that Durst has been unfairly maligned.
Just fyi, that tweet has translated inside my head into “DOXXING IS NOT HONORABLE. YOU BRING SHAME UPON YOUR FAMILY.”
I love all of the (comics) Hawkeye fans in the comments here. I am all about getting Kate Bishop somewhere in the MCU. And a version of Clint Barton I actually like.
aaaagh that GG article, it gives me the super creeps reading how perfectly logical and rational that guy’s every move was in his own mind. [crawls under bed away from all men forever]
AGH I READ THE COMMENTS UGH UGH UGH
Me too :(.
I DID TOO, WHICH IS WHY I SPECIFICALLY ADDED THAT WARNING. I TOOK A LONG, HOT SHOWER AFTER READING THEM.
I feel like inheritance issues can take a reasonable, intelligent adult and morph them into a massive gaping asshole. Is this a sleeper gene of some kind?
I agree, but reading between the lines of that letter, I think the sole person who stood by (…enabled?) their substance-abusing mother is probably a black hole of issues in the first place. A black hole of issues created by their substance-abusing mother, no doubt, but still.
Yup, isn’t it weird? I have seen it with my own reasonable, intelligent, beloved relatives. Right now I am encouraging my parents to just SPEND ALL THE MONEY (not that they have much) and be very clear about who gets what family treasures well before they die. I’m sure it won’t forestall all the bad shit, but I hope it helps.
It is so weird. And it’s often over not very valuable or important shit. In my family back before I was born there was a giant split of two branches of extended family based on who got a rocking chair (as best I understand it – I was born after the fact)… dozens of people never spoke to each other again.
I always feel like the worst fights are over family relics, even if money’s at stake, because then EVERY piece has some sentimental value to everyone and you get three separate people with hearsay stories about how Granma totally promised that they could have the recipe book, and everyone feels betrayed regardless of who gets what.
My immediate family has been surprisingly level-headed about inheritance, with the only controversial move being the decision to give a bunch of money to one niece who was cut out of the will (sorry, Aunt Leah, but “had a child out of wedlock” is a bullshit reason to cut someone out of the will and you’re dead so you can’t stop us). My grandfather’s third wife’s family just went super nuts when my grandfather and their mother died leading to this whole saga that involved paintings smuggled out of Soviet-occupied territories, threats of lawsuits, contracts disavowing the relationship between my grandfather and their mother, family photo albums held hostage, and some bizarre tax-evasion schemes. I’m not going to say we didn’t contribute a bit, but the wave of angry flailing from that side of the family was entertainment for almost a full year.
One of the many advantages to being an only child. It’s all mine, and no one else can fight with me about what kind of funeral to have or who gets the books. (But of course the flipside is that everything is my responsibility and I have to make all the decisions)
“Go to your dad’s house and get whatever you want to keep ’cause the rest of the family’s coming!”
(Sackville-Bagginses)
it is a maelstrom of grief and greed that blind-sides many many many people
failure to communicate before grief comes tends to exacerbate the problem
My former roommate will agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts here. She comes from a large French Canadian family with a lot of valuable land holdings up in New England (“enormous… tracts of land!”) and her family is sort of at war now that the patriarch of the family has passed. Matriarch is still alive and presumably really sick of all her kids fighting.
My grandma, on the other hand, told my (large Dutch) family from the outset that no one was getting any money, and all the money she managed to save while raising 6 kids on an itinerant preacher’s salary was going toward subsidizing the lodge we rent every year for family reunions. As a result, all the cousins spent their entire childhoods seeing each other twice a year minimum and most of us are all still super close. A much better use of money than just handing it out. (She also gave $4k each to our college funds, but that’s drops in a bucket in today’s tuition.)
IUDS and a Republican who actually cares about policy and not just small-government/moralistic grandstanding!.
I’m getting the copper IUD installed next week. Eeep. Wish me luck.
Take the pain meds they prescribe and give yourself a couple of hours to rest after. If you can, get someone else to give you a ride. You’ll be back to normal soon, but the first few hours are weird.
Good luck! You will nail it! I had a Mineria installed in October and while it was a bit tough, I’m great now. Do you want any advice?
Thanks for sharing this article!
Good luck! I got the hormonal one installed a few months ago. The only advice I have is ask your doctor for all the pain prevention they’re willing to give (I only got an ibuprofen injection, which was better than nothing but I don’t know why they couldn’t do more), and then prepare to go home and sleep for a while because holy CRAMPS. YMMV, of course. 🙂 Regardless, it was **totally worth it** and the nurse/doctor were super excited for me to get it, which was fun. I felt very empowered, and I now feel like I have a super-uterus. Seriously, it’s like when you buy an awesome pair of shoes for a great price. I just felt so good about my decision and kept wanting to tell everyone about it.
I too have become a Mirena evangelist. IUDs FOR ALL.
IUDs for some, tiny American flags for others (those without uteri)?
But yes, I’ve had to stop myself from telling certain people at work about it, because it would be inappropriate. But everyone I’m close enough to tell, I’ve told.
I’m kind of a prude but I will still tell anyone about my IUD. I feel like I conquered biology and am no longer subject to the cruel whims that have hampered humanity’s progress since the dawn of time. Is that too dramatic? I’ll tell people anyway.
maybe if we made IUDs in the SHAPE of tiny American flags we could get more conservatives on board?
And changed the name to IUPs: Intra Uterine Patriotism. They’ll be all for patriotism implants.
Amount of pain totally varies (I can’t remember having a lot), but there’s no need to avoid taking precautions!
(Mirena. LOVE IT.)
I miss my Mirena! I couldn’t keep it in because I have a tilted cervix and it never sat right and jabbed me. Partner has had a vasectomy so that’s nice, but I still need to use condoms with any outside partners, which is a bummer.
ETA — also no hormonal bc for me due to migraines. Sometimes I think sleeping with people with penises just ain’t worth it.
It’s worth it! I got my Paragard about three years ago, and I love it! I had dreadful cramps for a few days after getting it (got it while I was on my period), but 3 baby-free years and counting without ever having to think about birth control has been a goddamn delight.
That state senator! He got his lapel pin from “a gal on Etsy!”
Also, I used to have a tube of the anti-teen-pregnancy chapstick that they mentioned, but I had no idea until now that the initiative it was promoting could have gotten me a free IUD?
Hooray for the copper IUD! I’ve had mine for several years now and it’s been awesome. Seconding all the other comments saying to take the pain medication and give yourself a day of rest if possible.
Re: Mothers finding sex toys, I have always had a messy bedroom and this has always distressed my mother. As a child and into my teenage years, she would sometimes clean my bedroom for me – I always stressed this was unnecessary, but she did it to satisfy herself. She continued to do this when I went to uni in a kind of ‘you’re still my baby’ kind of way. One summer, I was home for a while and then went to stay with a friend for a week. I came back to a tidy room and thanked my mum – couldn’t work out why she responded uneasily. Fancied a wank that evening and realised the last time I’d used my vibrator, I’d left it (after cleaning) on the floor beside bed (told you I was messy). I thought my mum must have thrown it away or something – until I found it neatly packed away in my toiletries bag, which was definitely not where I left it. I never said anything to her, but I felt that was a real gesture of motherly love: not mentioning it to me, not embarrassing me, just tidying it up and leaving the issue there. Though she never tidied my room after that.
Almost the exact same story, but with Mom unpacking and repacking my suitcase when I visited on a break from school. She hasn’t done it since, so I guess that’s one way to tell a well-meaning parent your shirts don’t need expert folding (especially if one looks like it might be wrapped around something).
“She did it to satisfy herself.”
PHRASING. *dies*
And yes, moms tenderly packing away our sex toys is so mom!
Before Mr. BHam and I moved in together, he had been living at his parents’. His parents helped him/us move. When we started unpacking, I noticed that his sex toys and a couple porn DVDs were sitting completely visible right at the top of an open-top box and joked that he was ballsy to leave them out in the open like that.
Come to find out, he’d originally packed them elsewhere but then, while helping, one of his parents (don’t know which and don’t intend to ask) had juggled some stuff around between boxes, including the sexy stuff. HOWEVER, neither of them said a blessed word about it or acted weird in the least and that has always made me like them even more than I already did.
Mine goes the other way. As a dirtbag 13 year old, I went snooping for Christmas presents. My mother had, rather brilliantly, hidden them behind her sex toys, which I, of course, stumbled across first. I never found the presents, never mentioned the sex toys, and never went snooping again. Lesson learned.
Brilliant mom-ing.
My mom helped my pack up and move out of the apartment I’d been living in my last year of college. One of the bags she took down to her car had my vibrator tucked into it, which she didn’t know until she dropped the bag accidentally and it started buzzing. I got down to the car with the last load and she goes “oh, I took the batteries put of your vibrator, didn’t think you needed it turning on accidentally again.”
Haha this just reminded me – a few weeks ago, one of my coworkers came into the office with her bags packed to leave for a trip that evening. Midafternoon, randomly, her backpack started buzzing. Her immediate reaction was to yell “it’s not a vibrator it’s a toothbrush!” while frantically trying to silence it. The rest of us cracked the hell up. I love my workplace.
When packing to go back to university, I left my vibrator on the floor of my bedroom by mistake. My mother posted it to me, with a note saying something along the lines of, “I think you left this. Cat toy?” (Pretty certain she knows what a vibrator is when she sees one.) I am very grateful to her for being casual about it.
To be fair, if it was on the floor, it was a cat toy.
OH AND can we talk about Bernie Sanders, real quick? Or is that to be saved for tomorrow’s OT?
I think he’s great but I’m nervous about what his run will mean for the general election if there’s a bitter primary fight and all the real progressives vote Sanders. I hate to be THAT person being all “don’t divide the party, we have to stand behind our mediocre moderate candidate together!” but I am just SO SCARED of having a Republican back in the White House that I am. . .being that person.
That is a totally valid concern and I will admit to harboring it too (thanks a lot, Nader) and I know his campaign probably won’t go anywhere because, shit, anyone over the age of 25 remembers how awful the party-splitting effect can be. BUT. I think that he will probably end up demonstrating that the leftier wing of the Dems is bigger than Hillary might realize, and that she can actually be progressive without sacrificing too much in the name of vote-getting, which would be great. As long as he’s running as a Dem rather than an independent we should be OK.
oh god I just shuddered all over thinking of him as a 3rd-party candidate. But he’s smarter than that, and unlike Nader he’s still got a pretty powerful position whether he wins or loses the primary.
I get your concern, but a competitive primary doesn’t seem to lead to problems in the general. 2008 Obama was not harmed by a contentious primary, if anything it helps because it lets the candidate become accustomed to dealing with potential issues (ex. Jeremiah Wright). Democrats are perfectly capable of strenuous disagreements and then vote for the Dem in the general.
If Sanders were to run as a third party candidate, that could be a problem, so I’m glad he’s running in the primary and encourages Hillary to move to the left a bit.
I think it depends on how contentious – the republicans’ primary shenanigans hurt them last time, and it looks like they will again (fingers crossed). Maybe that was just because there were SO MANY of them, though, that they had to get extra-vicious/extreme to differentiate themselves.
Honestly, I’m not sure how much it hurt Romney. He wasn’t a very good candidate against a relatively popular incumbent in a growing economy, but still didn’t do that badly.
Aside from the split vote denying us a Cain presidency, I don’t see that the Republican primary affected the election much at all. Even the tea party guys fell in line for the RINO, he was just an unlovable dracula with no real platform.
I am hoping that his campaign will force real policy debate in the primaries and maybe force Clinton to the left a little without splitting the vote in the general election.
This would be ideal, wouldn’t it.
There is a tiny little part of my brain squeaking about strategy and wondering how the Dems managed to talk Bernie into this.
I want to be excited but ugh with everything else going on right now the news barely registers. I hate that we have another potential historic first president and my main reaction is “oh yeah, Presidents, we gotta elect one of those soon.”
But also part of me is hoping against all my election cynicism that he’ll push the conversation leftward…
Listening to him on the radio today made me want to cry that there’s no way he’ll actually get elected. Can you imagine if Bernie were president? How incredible would that be? Like maybe everything wouldn’t be completely disasters all over the place all the time! But we can’t have nice things, because America.
Maybe he would somehow make the government forgive my student loan debt. That would be amazing.
Winning platform tbh. Indebted-Americans are a huge demographic.
I actually received and signed a petition to declare a sort of Jubilee on college debts.
My dream last night: there was a Toast TV show. In it, Nicole and Mallory (playing themselves) were being escorted to Hungary on a US government airship as part of a diplomatic visit, but they discovered en route that the US was actually going to declare war. Upon landing, they warned the innocent Hungarians and fled through the Hungarian countryside, which involved frolicking with goats and hiding out in charming farmhouses.
So, that’s my headspace rn I guess.
My mom and uncle liked to tell me to not base my opinion of Hungarians on my dad’s family. “No, they’re great! *Those* people are crazy.”
I ain’t eating kocsonya though. I saw it up close once and I don’t need to get in touch with my roots that much.
I think that pace of social change graph is actually misleading as to same-sex marriage. Yes, it’s legal in 36 states, but it hasn’t been legalized by 36 states; I believe it’s been legalized by 19, while 17 others are under federal court order. Both are good, obviously, but if what you’re looking at is how public opinion/locally accountable official opinion has changed across the country, a federal court order is neither here nor there. Also, I doubt many (any? maybe abortion and interracial marriage) of the previous trends that it shows have that same federal court order effect baked in.
That bothered me, too!
Also, it doesn’t really take into account how states have been backing off on legal abortion and basically making 80% of potential abortions illegal anyway.
I think it speaks to a broader error in the way the media has covered the quickly-changing landscape of same-sex marriage. Yes, public opinion has been shifting fast, but the big wave of federal court interventions after the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision is not a very good bellwether of that shift, and there has not been any kind of collapse in conservative religious opposition since 2013.
It’s tricky, because I don’t think this should be covered as “liberal elitist judges, imposing gay marriage on the simple religious folk of Utah and Alabama!” But I also don’t think it should be covered as “Wow, did you ever think you’d see the day when Utah would legalize same-sex marriage? I guess times have really changed” because that’s not what’s going on.
SPEAKING OF, after paying my massive tax bill this weekend I lay on the couch drinking wine and watching the Captain America movies for the first time. WHY did I spend four pointless years resisting the charms of Chris Evans?? Apparently I am now attracted to many different kinds of women and blandly handsome jacked up bros. The Winter Soldier: Why Are Murderers So Sexy?
*spreads arms, falls backwards into AO3* (recommendations??)
I AM HERE TO HELP WITH AO3 RECS what are you looking for? My specialty is Steve/Darcy, but I’ve explored most parts of the Cap-related fanfic world.
Ah this is so late (I was at work) but if you’re still around I would love some recs! I’m think I’m MOST interested in the intense man pain followed by raw yet emotionally sex with Steve/Bucky, or post-Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Sam Wilson/Bucky. Steve/Darcy also sounds intriguing. I was just getting bored of the old fandom I was reading this is so thrilling!!
I’m near to just plain assuming that Fisk can understand the Russian, Chinese and Japanese they lapse into when they wanna cuss him out and make him lean on Toady…………
Like a blind man who can actually see everything.
The American Gigolo scene with D’onofrio totally giving it Pvt. Pyle was……well ALL of his scenes are disturbing. It’s like he’s got a “CREEPY” switch in his actor’s toolbox.
Hell, he often looks like his eyes aren’t focused on anything.
No, I know he’s not blind. But it’s still an acting choice.
(FUCK, Glenn is only in one episode?!?! Don’t die, Bart Mancuso! You’re getting up there and that worries me!)
Episode 9 and…….we’re fucked.
And D’onofrio’s performance is physically repellent. Constantly trembling, over-enunciating, enraged but panicked…it’s the worst fucking episode of “Frasier” ever, he’s tasering my nerve endings.
Steve/Bucky forever.
oh god oh god oh god. I tried watching Captain America one time and it just didn’t do it for me and then maybe a year later I decided to try again and I am now in just the same place you are.
Suddenly all the feels for Chris Evans and Cap and I am in platonic, girl-power love with Black Widow and where did all this come from???
MY HUSBAND HAS AN INTERVIEW ON MONDAY FOR A JOB IN MONTREAL, please send any spare good vibes his way! 😀 😀 😀
I am there/here and so my vibes will be trebly potent. I will set them to vibrate on Monday.
I noticed that only woman was interviewed in the entirety of the tornado piece, and she is given only one line, and that bothers me so much.
Interesting. I didn’t notice that. Do you think it has anything to do with the writer’s appearance while he was travelling? He does mention that a kid asks him if he’s a serial killer. Would women talk to a stranger hiking through town who read as a potential serial killer?
And yet, I wonder. Would women describe their experience in such epic and Biblical terms? A lot of the men seemed to be drawing from a Jonah/Job place.
There are so many women in the periphery of the essay – wives, sisters – that I get the impression it’s less they were unwilling to talk to him and more he didn’t bother asking them in the first place. Like when he’s talking to the other Justin; other!Justin’s wife is IN THE ROOM with them, but she never once is given a voice. I guess she just sat there silently the entire time? But surely she was also there for the tornado and has her own story!
Not asking people if they’re serial killers is an underrated life skill.
That CA thing upset me so very much. My mom definitely had a thing about never knocking and not liking locked doors in “her” house. She really was otherwise a great, respectful mother who never pried or snooped but it still caused me lasting damage. Reading that question and the comments just brought me right back to that feeling of “I’m never safe” and I think caused my GERD flareup last night 🙁
My partner had a much worse, more typically narcissistic mom, and that CA question triggered the fuck out of him.
Yyyyyup sometimes I catch myself being evasive about personal shit there’s really no reason to not give a straight answer to and I think back to walking in on my dad tossing my bookshelves when he thought I wasn’t around and him yelling about how I was hiding something
::nodnodnod:: It took us a long time to get out of the pattern where I would say “hey that thing you did/said hurt my feelings” and he would react with “you don’t love meeee I’m terrible I’m the worst you’re probably going to leave meeeee comfort meeeeee…” We got past it thankfully but honest go gods? No small part of that was his mom dying when we were around 25.
Eesh sorry that got too real…..
Oh also, I have been watching all the M*A*S*H that is on Netflix now so I get SUPER confused when people talk about Hawkeye.
I haven’t seen MASH in years and I still have to make that mental adjustment sometimes.
Fuckin’ Alan Alda! He is not to be so easily forgotten.
You are not alone. I was trying to recall ever seeing him with a bow and arrow before I realized the youths were onto something else entirely.
I love that show but man, rewatching it now, it’s got some issues.
omg, yes. I decided to give up on everything with Frank Burns still in it and proceed warily up to the point that Radar leaves. Everything after that is MOSTLY safe, by which I mean mostly tolerable. Like how Margaret stops being Hot Lips and starts being Margaret.
I’ve been alternating episodes of M*A*S*H with episodes of The Great Queen Seondeok and would recommend this to anyone who would like to be depressed by U.S. racism and imperialism in Korea.
True story: M*A*S*H is one of MrChouffe’s very favorite shows and movies, and right after Thanksgiving he bought the movie soundtrack on vinyl. He put it on some time later, I think just after New Year’s, and that awful scene with Margaret and the shower tent is on the soundtrack album and oh man, I got super triggered and he got furious and actually broke the record in half saying there was no reason for us to own something that awful, and then we had a really good conversation about how Margaret actually outranks most of the men on base AND STILL it was OK and a funny joke. He’s been a bit (a lot) soured on the whole thing since then.
Agreed. There’s a lot of good stuff in it, truly, but SO VERY MUCH bad stuff.
I am imagining some Toastfriend has recently discussed with a teen niece or daughter how James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye is silent when it comes to women and how it’s typical of the genre.
So, 3 Hawkeyes now.
Not sure which link would be the best, but look for Mark Twain’s essay “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”. Dissects that particular Hawkeye with skill and vigor.
oh thank you this is my problem exactly
For anyone who’s still around to see this extremely late comment, does anyone know about how long the wait is to hear back from the Toast or the Butter after submitting something?
– Now I’m contemplating a messiah who specializes in U-turns. He’s got a Dodge Challenger with one of those knobs on the steering wheel that lets you spin it real fast with one hand. He’s telling you about the Prodigal Son when he does a smoking Uie across four lanes of tire-screeching, honking rush-hour traffic. “Had no idea there was a Starbucks on this street!” He orders a couple of venti Pike Places, and winks when you choke on yours and you realize that he turned it into pure espresso. You nearly piss yourself as he pulls out of the place and almost immediately puts the car into a 270-degree drift through an intersection where the light has already turned yellow. “He who believes in me may never die,” he murmurs as you hold onto your coffee with both hands and try to forget that you used his name in vain at the top of your lungs.
– Hawkeye uses a bow because it seems to take more skill; he had a couple of pistols in the first Avengers movie, and he may as well have been back in that Mission Impossible movie where he played second banana to Tom Cruise.
– People keep their copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves shut up in their nightstand?
The Captain Awkward column has some of the best advice I’ve seen for dealing with a narcissistic parent, and it’s the last freaking sentence. I emailed it to my sister and posted on my FB and my tumblr. Gonna be thinking about that one all day.
oh thank you this is my problem exactly
Winning platform tbh. Indebted-Americans are a huge demographic.
I'm near to just plain assuming that Fisk can understand the Russian, Chinese and Japanese they lapse into when they wanna cuss him out and make him lean on Toady…………
Like a blind man who can actually see everything.
The American Gigolo scene with D'onofrio totally giving it Pvt. Pyle was……well ALL of his scenes are disturbing. It's like he's got a "CREEPY" switch in his actor's toolbox.
Hell, he often looks like his eyes aren't focused on anything.
No, I know he's not blind. But it's still an acting choice.
(FUCK, Glenn is only in one episode?!?! Don't die, Bart Mancuso! You're getting up there and that worries me!)
Episode 9 and…….we're fucked.
And D'onofrio's performance is physically repellent. Constantly trembling, over-enunciating, enraged but panicked…it's the worst fucking episode of "Frasier" ever, he's tasering my nerve endings.