The fact that they restored one of the old elevators Romans used to launch various animals into the Colosseum is glory enough, but there is a VIDEO of hearty Italian men calling “HOOOE-UP” as they turn one of those old-time wheely-deals to operate it, so today is probably going to be a pretty good day. Hoooooe-up.
Hey, uh, guys? Liz Lopatto (proud owner of the cotched kitten and longtime Friend of the Toast) gave me a copy of Mathilda by Mary Shelley and I could really use a friend right now to come over and give me a hug?
With its shocking theme of father-daughter incest, Mary Shelley’s publisher — her father, known for his own subversive books — not only refused to publish Mathilda, he refused to return her only copy of the manuscript, and the work was never published in her lifetime.
His suppression of this passionate novella is perhaps understandable—unlike her first book, Frankenstein, written a year earlier, Mathilda uses fantasy to study a far more personal reality. It tells the story of a young woman whose mother died in her childbirth—just as Shelly’s own mother died after hers—and whose relationship with her bereaved father becomes sexually charged as he conflates her with his lost wife, while she becomes involved with a handsome poet. Yet, despite characters clearly based on herself, her father, and her husband, the narrator’s emotional and relentlessly self-examining voice lifts the story beyond autobiographical resonance into something more transcendent: a driven tale of a brave woman’s search for love, atonement, and redemption.
It took more than a century before the manuscript Mary Shelley gave her father was rediscovered.
I’ll just be on my couch quietly making Tina Belcher sounds in the dark until you get here. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnnnhhhh
“Even black joy is a crime.”
Here is a (SFW) video of my brother-in-law pouring cold water onto my sister on multiple occasions over the course of the past year. I have already watched it seven times, and intend to watch it on the last day of my life. (She has seen this video and also thinks it is funny so do not feel bad about laughing.)
(I rewatched this again when I linked to it just now and I am laughing so hard that there are tears in my eyes.)
I wanted to laugh at this, because the phrase ‘Airbnb for boats‘ is inherently silly, but it actually sounds like a fairly good idea? I mean, if you’re going to have a boat, it seems like a shame to let it go unused.
Walk past any marina, even on a sunny weekend, and you will see most boats battened down and bobbing solitarily in their slips, longing for someone to take them out. In fact, the average recreational boat gets used only 17 days per year, according to a U.S. Coast Guard survey.
Which makes boating ideal, in theory at least, for a peer-to-peer rental business. Those companies provide an online marketplace that lets people rent an underused asset, whether it’s a spare room, car or parking place.
Godspeed, boat dudes. I have always wanted to live on a houseboat but get incredibly seasick even in a harbor and also have no interest in maintaining a septic tank or performing even the most minor of manual labor. What do you have, for that?
oh, wow
“Sony and director Paul Feig have cast Chris Hemsworth to play the receptionist in the female-driven “Ghostbusters” reboot.”
good news, good tweet
https://twitter.com/mikesacco/status/608785624565473281
is J. Crew bad now? Someone get Samantha Powell on this
“21 Jump Street female-led spinoff gets new writers” AND YET NONE OF THEM ARE ME?
KLAXON KLAXON KLAXON NICOLE GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW
“In 1948, a man was found on a beach in South Australia. The mysterious circumstances of his death have captivated generations of true-crime fanatics. Today, one amateur sleuth has come close to solving the case — and upended his life in the process.”
guys Christopher Lee died 🙁
noooooooooooooooooooooooo 🙁
Liking this feels weird to me, so instead I will echo what you said
🙁
What? I’ll be the one over here in shock.
Nooooo. He was a gentleman and a scholar 🙁
He did live an awesome life, though. Special Forces operative, acting legend, metal singer (in his 80s!)…
and he was supposed to top it off by living forever! *sulk*
He was supposed to live forever! I expected him to be making metal albums when I was old and in my new robotic form.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO
May he rest in peace and rise in vampiric glory.
At least dying is metal as fuck. He’d have wanted it this way.
I was happily expecting Christopher Lee to live to 100, because … just because. Because all the glorious celebration would have been worth every penny and he sure deserved it.
THE. BEST. VOICE. EVER.
:sadface: I went to see The Last Unicorn when Peter S. Beagle was touring with it last fall and he said they were just getting the rights returned to them and Christopher Lee still wanted to reprise his King Haggard role.
nooooooooooo
🙁 I suppose rationally I know that he lived a long and full life and had as good a run as any of us can really hope for, but that doesn’t make me any less sad about this.
Ahhh http://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/mormon-utah… ahhh Nicole (Cliffe not Chung!) UTAH RELATED ARTICLE ALERT.
I am HERE to discuss MLM all day every day, because I see them as a way companies prey on women who are looking for extra money but don’t have a lot of options, whether due to culturally-imposed values that women don’t work outside the house, or general inability to find good-paying work in the community (military wives), or lack of opportunity and education (endemic in lots of middle-class areas). I am fascinated by articles where women profess how much they make and how awesome their lives are when evidence points to the contrary, because the most insidious part of these schemes is that they make you believe in it, too. It isn’t selling Kirby vacuums door to door anymore, you’re selling lifestyle brands so of course you believe–Scentsy crap, Thirty One bags, Stella and Dot or Lia Sophia jewelry, Passion Parties, Norwex cleaning stuff, Arbonne skin junk, Beachbody shakes, those body wrap things, you name it. How do you get women convinced they’re going to become wealthy, despite literally having worse odds that than gambling? Loop them into a product that’s more than a product. Done.
Ugh yes I’m so creeped out by this. I have a few Facebook friends who have gotten DEEP into these scams and they make me so uncomfortable. One is a newish friend who got a little drunk recently and told me she got into Stella and Dot because she literally couldn’t pay her bills, and it took all of my willpower not to shriek “PYRAMID SCHEME” while sprinting out of the bar. I’m really fascinated/horrified by how that kind of desperation can lead you to these things that seem very obviously designed to steal your money… but then I guess a big part of it is these companies exploiting female friendships and convincing women to reel in other women who trust them? I dunno, the whole thing is gross.
Beyond the pyramid schemes and exploiting female friendships the thing I really really hate about MLMs is that they take advantage of women who are socialized to be nice and keep the peace. I get a phone call or email once a month from my mom asking me if there’s anything from Mary Kay or Pampered Chef that I need because her niece/secretary/neighbor has started selling and she needs to buy something. NO! You don’t need to buy anything! Buying a lipstick does very little to support whoever’s selling it! But she’ll always buy something so she doesn’t look like a jerk.
They really do! Exploiting friendship and family relationships is truly low down, but that’s how most people get started–throw a party, invite your friends and family, they buy stuff, you’re hooked. Then you won’t stop haunting people!
AND, if you buy one stupid nail wrap because it has outer space designs, you will NEVER get off their mailing list no matter how many people you email asking them to take you off their lists.
Do you remember that Road to Avonlea episode where Janet fell prey to an MLM-type thing? First she had to sew baseballs together, then she tried peddling some fancy laundry detergent that gave everyone hives. Then the guy scamming her called and threatened to come to Avonlea to collect the money she “owed” him, and of course someone was eavesdropping on the party line, and when he gave his name as Heath Hymus the eavesdropper thought he said “His Highness” and spread word through the entire village that the King of England was coming to visit Avonlea and everyone totally lost their shit.
God, I love that show.
I’m also fascinated by MLMs and enjoy an occasional jaunt through http://www.pinktruth.com/, which is full of angry ex-Mary Kay sellers.
Secret Montgomery fan confession: have never watched Road to Avonlea nor any of the films. But I have been to PEI multiple times and seen all the Montgomery spots, so don’t kick me out of the club!
Poor Janet. All she wanted was something to occupy her time with all her older kids either getting educated and being subject to period-typical sexism (Felicity), working and becoming a Knight of PEI (Felix), or taking the Secret Actress Switch potion while recovering from tuberculosis/consumption (Cecily).
WHY COULDN’T JANET HAVE NICE THINGS?
She could have spent more time with Daniel, but even her motherly love didn’t blind her to the fact that he was a completely pointless character (so the Shirley equivalent, I guess).
Also, I just found this: What to expect when you’re expecting in Avonlea and it is so great. I have no idea why the people at Sullivan Entertainment felt it was necessary but I love it.
The physical symptoms they would have experienced during the first trimester would have been the same as a pregnant woman today.
THE HELL YOU SAY?
“The second trimester is, of course, another story, due to the infamous growth of four-foot long tentacles from either shoulder”.
Not only that, but Daniel was pretty much still considered a baby then, even though he was, like, five years old by that episode or something.
He was about as pointful as Cecily was, tbh. Neither of them got to do much of anything, or have much of a personality.
In other news: OMG THAT ARTICLE.
OMG Road to Avonlea reference. I keep hoping against hope it will start airing or streaming someplace legit. That and the Ramona series basically imprinted a lifelong Sarah Polley crush on me.
Ah I linked this piece downthread, too! Very interesting take, although the “this culture is particularly susceptible to MLM schemes” point seemed more circumstantial than anything (there are a lot of MLM companies based in Utah… but what does that really prove?), it’s totally an interesting thesis and I’d love to see more on it.
I keep a fairly pruned FB friend list, which I think has contributed to not noticing many of these “new” MLM companies, but I do remember tagging along with my mother to her friends’ Pampered Chef/Lia Sophia/Longaberger parties (I guess some of those are more direct marketing than MLM?) and being morbidly fascinated by it all. My mom had already explained to me how Avon worked, so I had a dim, child’s understanding that people were maybe being snookered, but I got to eat tiny quiches and sit among literal piles of jewelry, so I sort of got the appeal.
I think it’s not specific to Mormon culture so much as it’s specific to “cultures that place a high value on community sharing” blended with “cultures where most women don’t work outside the home” which tends to be Mormon culture, at least in America, and milspouse culture.
There’s a school of thought that says that the evangelizing, i.e. “mission work”, that Mormon men (and some women) do when they’re young (as seen in The Book of Mormon, the musical, not the actual book), effectively trains them to be salespeople. Not sure what percentage of the missionaries are women, but that may apply to them as well.
It’s a Utah cliche that young guys will come home from their missions and head out the next summer to sell pest control or alarm systems on the East Coast. There’s a company here called Vivent that basically specializes in recruiting these dear overly-enthusiastic young men.
When I lived in San Jose we always had “bug boys” in the singles ward for the summer. We never learned their names, just called them “bug boys” even if they were selling something else
We called them the bug guys, too, when I was in DC. 🙂
I almost jumped in on one that would have had me selling children’s books because how could that be bad, right? What finally got me to make the decision that I wouldn’t do it was finding out that you could buy the same books from the same publisher in regular bookstores. They didn’t even want us to sell an exclusive product, sheesh.
I had a roommate who did that one summer in college. They sent her several states away to flog children’s books door-to-door in hot, humid July weather for a truly ridiculous number of hours a day, with strict sales quotas to meet. The other housemates and I were worried about her and encouraged her to engineer what was effectively an escape–they really, really made it hard for her to leave. We got her on a Greyhound bus out of there. Terrifying.
These sharks target the vulnerable. It’s hideous.
Ugh, I got roped into hosting an Arbonne party once. My sister and I were living together and we went to one thrown by the girlfriend of a friend and because my sister is a much friendlier and more obliging person than I am, when the presentation turned to “Who will host my next party? I will give you a present!” she volunteered us. I did get some free stuff out of it because the people we invited ended up buying a bunch of crap but I’m still a little bitter about it.
My experience with MLM started when I was in high school; someone hired me to mow his lawn, but wouldn’t pay me until I sat through his Amway spiel. Later had a sister and brother-in-law take it up; I was reluctant to be the Debbie Downer to tell them that it was all bullshit, since they were so enthusiastic about it, but wasn’t at all surprised when they quietly gave it up.
I live in Utah (in SLC, not Utah County, although I lived there for a few years about 8 years ago) and I’m Mormon and I have Feelings about MLM and how horrible they are. Nutraceuticals and essential oils especially. There’s a cultural emphasis on being “self reliant” which probably feeds into this, as well has having a large network of people you know, or have common friends with as people you can sell to. I feel like a lot of these companies prey on mothers concerned about their families by portraying their products as being “safer” than other products or helping families be “healthier.”
I think there’s an element of naivete in this as well. Utah County has loads of mortgage fraud and other cons because the people are so trusting of their neighbors, and then get taken advantage of.
It’s not good.
I’ve previously always thought of MLM stuff as a pointless hobby. But the vitamins mentioned in the article that the supporters are claiming will replace psych meds, that’s criminal.
yep. It’s the supplements and oils that bother me (some use the oils as supplements or “cures” for their kids minor illnesses)
I don’t care if you’re trying to sell candles, I don’t think anyone is claiming that the candles make a large impact on your health or well-being (they make your house smell nice, end of) but putting things into your body without the research or even quality control of the drug industry is CRAZY
YES. I don’t mind the makeup and purses and nail wraps so much (though I still think it’s a waste of money for the women selling them), but it becomes criminal the second you sell something claiming it will “cure” an actual medical disease.
that’s criminal.
Well, it should be, and would be if the people who make fortunes off this crap didn’t spend an awful lot of money lobbying against any kind of regulation. I’ve often thought that it was no coincidence that Michael Savage, one of the most popular conservative talk radio hosts, has a sideline promoting supplements and alternative medicines.
I completely agree!! They are pyramid scam-esque scams and they prey on women who as you say, don’t have many opportunities for various reasons. The companies’ business model is execrable, and unfortunately the women who flood facebook/every interaction with sales pitches quickly become obnoxious.
I was so creeped out (and then saddened by) by the piece about WakeUpNow on This American Life awhile back. It was SO cult-like in the language.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/ep…
I grew up in Utah and automatically thought of at least six people I would offend by posting this article to my Facebook. Just recently I had a high school pal trying to get me to “host” a “facebook party” to sell a fiber mascara. I feel bad for that girl particularly, because this is at least the third MLM thing she’s been involved in and each one has ended predictably.
Another friend hosted one of these “parties” to help her friend sell nail wraps. The salesperson was selling nail wraps to earn money for an adoption. It super bummed me out, thinking about all the start-up money she invested in samples and training and how little return she’s going to get on it.
The health and wellness scams are the ones that actually anger me. I’ve had several people tell me that Doterra oils will help “cure” my Crohn’s Disease. Why don’t I drink Tahitian Noni drink? It’s supposed to cure everything! Or Usana supplements! Those will cure it, too! I feel like it’s one thing to sell makeup and purses but selling health supplements with the promise it will fix a serious chronic illness is at the least unethical.
I identify with that, seeing how many people are promoting fake diabetes cures, including this tool, who’s running for President, again.
One of my aunts hates these parties, which are a huge thing in her neck of the Montana woods (really in most rural areas). She calls them “Screw Your Friends Parties.” And that’s what I now call them, because they really do screw your friends and make them feel guilty if they don’t buy whatever crap the friend is selling.
I know a woman who used to sell Thirty One and she made some serious dosh. She works for Disneyland now, which is somehow fitting.
Mary Shelley wrote a book
even daddy wouldn’t publish
daddy-incest was the hook
but daddy thought that it was rubbish
Now of course it’s de rigueur
no topic is beyond the pale
warn the world there is a trigger
to guarantee some mighty sales
You’ve been on a roll lately!
5 minute doggerel a specialty.
Oh man, the end twist on that Taman Shud article…I was NOT expecting it and my mouth dropped open. Definitely one of the greatest unsolved mysteries ever.
RIP Christopher Lee, actual most interesting man in the world 🙁
Man, it is bummer about Christopher Lee. On the one hand, it’s not that bad because the guy was 93, he must have been fucking exhausted by this point, after being Dracula for thirty years and also personally winning the second World War.
But on the other hand, it’s a pretty stark reminder that there’s basically no one in the wings who can step up and take his place. The Era of Lee has ended and now what are we all supposed to do?
become spies
BECOME SPIES
Spies it is, then.
Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.
This is the best plan.
I am here for this idea. Do it for Chris, everybody.
The troubling part of getting older – all your heroes will die before you. Lee was a big part of my youth, loved his movies to death, even the bad ones.
Christopher Lee didn’t make bad movies. Get out of here with that business.
Rock. the fuck. out.
The ending!
Although my favourite detail of this story is always:
On the hunch that the Rubáiyát was being used as a book cipher, Facebook group members combed Australian newspapers for stories about other men who died unnaturally, accompanied by a Rubáiyát. Incredibly, they found one, an immigrant named George Marshall who poisoned himself with barbiturates and died with a Rubáiyát next to him in Sydney. It was not the same edition as the Somerton version. Instead, it was identified as a seventh edition published by Methuen, a London-based press. The interest would have ended there if Abbott hadn’t tried to find a Methuen seventh edition of the Rubáiyát and discovered that the company never published any edition beyond the fifth.
Its not my “favorite” detail, but I’m stuck on the casual reference to the gravesite of the Japanese exchange student. Adelaide sounds horrifying. This story is insane.
aw, Adelaide isn’t that horrifying, honest! Ok, we do sometimes get called the murder capital of Australia, but really it’s not our fault we have a couple of famous unsolved murders, plus those bodies in the barrels weren’t even in Adelaide, Snowtown is 2 whole hours away!
Mine too! I want to know more about that story.
It also sort of makes me want to die mysteriously with a Rubáiyát beside me, only I will date my edition from the ~future~ and befuddle everyone.
YES I want to know more about that phantom seventh edition
Yes, I remember when I first read about this I got to that detail and I was SOLD. Oh my god. How is this real life and not a movie?
The Ed Champion piece…
There’s something about the fact that his best friend describes spending time with him while he was living out of homeless shelters as “a Paul Auster-esque experience”… something about the self-absorption of these writers and publishers, that this is the only way they can frame their experiences.
Yeah. Frankly, Levi Asher sounds like a real dick. “He never PHYSICALLY hurt anyone! I’ve never personally heard him be sexist!”
I apparently cannot get enough of Ed Champion pieces — so many of the people are varying levels of terrible! But the actual level of terrible of Ed Champion himself is almost unbelievable.
“On at least two occasions Champion called his threats of violence towards other writers “performance art.””
okay well you’re a really bad artist
also a shit?
“Like, I was just threatening people with abuse and violence as, like, meta commentary! If they were actually afraid, it’s only because they didn’t bother trying to understand my genius.”
The excerpts of his writing that they included were painfully bad, just so overwrought and lacking in self-awareness. I can’t believe that a dude like that can go so far in a field that is purportedly interested in good writing. Or that all these people around him, novelists and readers who build their careers on being able to understand and depict the human condition, could be so blind to his obvious problems.
wowzers that Ed Champion piece makes me really glad I am only very peripherally involved with publishing and only of the indie variety.
Ah, thank you for this link roundup. This is covering some of my favorite topics (female-led comedy films! Hemsworths! Somerton man!) and I cannot wait to get a minute of quiet from work-crisis-mode to read them all. Some sad stuff happened yesterday and I’m thankful for meaty distractions.
Some people might like this longform piece on MLM in Utah I found yesterday. Haven’t had time to finish it yet but it’s good so far!
I’m so glad that there was a person inside the Lion Lift pretending to be a lion just so that those burly Italian men had an authentic lion-raising experience.
Didn’t they send a wolf up as the first animal? I watched the National Geographic special, and they were careful to point out that “Unlike its Roman forebears, this wolf was not slaughtered or used to kill convicts, but was instead given a biscuit by its trainer.”
Yes! Here! Isn’t he a good wolf? Isn’t he? Isn’t he glad not to be born during the height of the Roman Empire? You and me both, wolf…
http://www.cnet.com/news/deadly-animal-machine-ri…
That was so sweet!
Oh man, re: the true crime link, where is the urban fantasy novel about all the murders in Adelaide?
Also, I don’t think I would like Abbott. I’m with Feltus – the guy who comes in with a blaze of publicity and glory is looking to gratify his own ego, not help an old murder victim. But the details are super fascinating.
OTOH, not much can be done to help someone long dead…
On the other other hand, who wants to be buried in an anonymous grave? In that light it doesn’t matter if the guy who does the IDing is a vainglorious oddball. I just think the dead deserve a little dignity, and Abbott doesn’t seem like the dignity type.
And it doesn’t sound like his goal would actually do anything to identify the guy or solve the mystery of how and why he died, either. He’d still be anonymous and mysterious, it’s just that it would change from “anonymous guy who died mysteriously with no known ties to anyone” to “anonymous guy who died mysteriously and had an secret relationship with a lady named Jo.” I think that’s why I’d be against it — confirming that Rachel is the Somerton Man’s granddaughter is interesting, but it doesn’t represent any meaningful progress toward solving the case, especially since Jo is dead and it seems like the strategy of “ask everyone Jo knew if she ever had a secret boyfriend who looked like this dead guy” has already been tried.
Yes, so much this. You’re right!
His entire goal at this point seems to be…”prove that I’ve produced children with this murdered guy’s granddaughter.” He insists he loves her but hasn’t analyzed himself? Okay, guy. Okay.
Some cases are never going to be solved; at least, not until we have time machines. I hope this guy lets it go before he tears apart this new family he made, you know?
he should be played by Cary Elwes in the movie, reprising his role as the glory-hungry meteorologist in Twister
“That guy’s not in it for the CRIMES man, he’s just here to get his face on the television.”
I was too busy trying to raise money for THIS PERFECT IDEA to reply earlier.
I’m really hoping that book exists, and that someone links to it here in the comments
Yes, I’m dying, I’ve never been to Australia (I just watch a lot of Miss Fisher’s? :D) and it sounds amazing. I suppose I can Google search and see if such a treasure exists! I’ll post back if I find one.
…..how has your sister not murdered her husband in his sleep by now?
Or, you know, started locking the door when she showers?
Whoa hey way to blame the victim, victim-blamer. I suppose you think she shouldn’t wear a short skirt in the shower either.
I mean, I look at it more like how my parents kennel their dogs at night because they can’t behave themselves in the bed. So… in the alternative, I guess she could try kenneling him during shower time?
… I don’t think people should wear short skirts in the shower. OH GOD I’M A MONSTER.
yeah watching that video made my hackles go up like crazy because anyone who did that to me multiple times would get physically harmed BUT I hate surprise pranks like that
When I slept in as a teenager my dad would sometimes wake me up by splashing water on me, which is even worse than pouring water on someone in the shower because instead of already being wet I was all dry and cozy in my bed! After a few times he realized that a lazy sleeping teenager is preferable to a teenager that is about to MURDER YOU.
ahahhahahah I love pranks so muuuch and it’s so funny to watch someone pour water on my dumb sister
BUT I WOULD NEVER CONDONE THE PRANKING OF SOMEONE WHO HATES PRANKS, we are all pro-pranking in this household
For real. If my husband did that, he would quickly become my ex-husband.
It’s a pretty perfect prank though. I’m thinking of adding it to my repertoire.
My other perfect prank: Get a small jar of mayo, clean it out thoroughly, making sure to keep the label intact. Fill with vanilla pudding. Then pick the perfect moment to casually start eating it with a spoon.
Wait, you’ve never eaten mayo out of the jar with a spoon? Try it!
SHE GETS HER OWN
My sister did this to me once when I was in the shower, and I slipped, hit my head on the rim of the tub, and ended up with what I am pretty sure was an undiagnosed concussion. It is close to being my least-favorite “prank”.
AND THAT’S WHY YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE.
HEY YOU CALL YOUR SISTER “LO”! That’s my sister Laura’s family nickname too! (Perhaps this is super common, I just haven’t encountered it before. Also, never telling my little brother about this video because it’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.)
Somerton Man Somerton Man favorite Wikipedia article by a landslide
I love hearing about family nicknames! Mine is Sissa because I am my brother’s sister. I am the oldest. He is the favourite. (Also something something about how he couldn’t say my name when he was little so he called me Sissa.)
I am Tishy and my sister is Muss-Muss. Both are derived from our real names and neither sounds anything like them. I do miss the brief time period when my niece called me “Aunt Titty” because she couldn’t pronounce my name properly.
My grandpa called me and my sister “Freddie and Fritzie” for our entire childhood, for no reason that anyone could determine.
After the boxers in the ’40s, maybe? When was your grandpa a child/would he have been into boxing?
My sister and I don’t really have nicknames for one another (though as kids, I was very briefly Sissy and she was O). We were always very insistent about going by our actual first names in general, though.
My dad and I, however, call one another Bud; when I was six, we started our own secret club called the Bud Club, where the rules for membership were that you had to like root beer, hate shopping, and be a Republican. I’ve since broken all the membership rules for Bud Club, but the nickname remains.
My sister and I call each other sissa! Not much any more but for so many years that I cannot remember why.
I have a friend called Lauren who was Lo all through school. (Mainly because she is about 4’10.)
I do not call my sister Lo, even though she is also named Laura. Generally, we go for “lor” if we nickname her. Mostly, I just wanted to join the ‘I have a sister named Laura’ party.
I really love that everyone on the Toast is totally psyched about the Somerton Man. It’s so great and not super common– I was at my uncle’s house last week, and he collects early-edition illustrated books, and had acquired a copy of the Taman Shud. I brought up the case and just got a blank stare.
I keep trying to get the last line in your comment to scan with “Particle Man” and it never quite works.
Somerton Man, Somerton Man, Mysterious washed-up Australian
…ok, I feel better now.
Hahaha my brain has been trying to do that for hours now.
hahaha I’m glad to hear it I was thinking “maybe this is annoying threadjacking, maybe this is going to make someone else’s brain stop hurting.”
My name is Laura, but my dad calls me “Lu” because he used to call me “Lulees”. My mom just calls me “Lar.”
However, my friends called me Show Laura for a while because the first friends I made in the group met me at a show, but that has since devolved into “ShoLo”, so the “Lo” remains as a nickname for Laura.
My sister and I call each other by letters. Specifically the dominant vowel sound in our names. My letter happens to be the first letter of my name, my sister’s isn’t actually a letter in her name. So obviously whenever either of us buy her monogrammed stuff we buy it with the letter I call her which causes confusion for the uninitiated.
I definitely didn’t just shriek TAMAN SHUD in the middle of my office because I am FAR too invested in true crime and now my coworker is trying to hide laughter behind her hand while my boss keeps glancing at me like she’s afraid I might start speaking in tongues.
i…also didn’t do that.
The thing is about Mary Shelley’s dad…even if (as I hope is the case) he was NOT in an incestuous relationship with his daughter, that story is pretty obviously autobiographical enough that I get why he wouldn’t want to publish it.
I am wondering what reaction she was expecting when she gave him her one and only manuscript.
Today is my birthday and I consider the Somerton Man article a personal birthday present.
Also that video is DELIGHTFUL. I will consider it an impersonal birthday present if that’s okay.
happy birfday!!
IDK, not sure it’s a good idea that any (wo)man Jack with no qualification greater than “wishes to take to the sea” be given casual access to sailboats.
yeah but on the other hand, nothing is bigger idler in your household than a daggone boat.
My dad had a boat, he sailed in it about four times a year. Many lives would have been improved if ladies could have used it to take to the sea.
Please, most of the people who *own* sailboats shouldn’t be given casual access to sailboats.
Especially because most people who own sailboats only sail when they’re 3 sheets to the wind!
When partying out on the water it’s hard to keep an even keel.
Barely relevent PSA: Drinking & boating really is a very terrible idea.
(Sorry, I know you weren’t endorsing it, but a kid in my high school class died in a boating accident involving alcohol. As did several kids who went to the other high school in town, the year before.)
I once saw a boat on the Rideau canal which had the name CASH FLOW in foot-high letters on the side. You know you’re an asshole when…
Variations on “my boat is too expensive” seem to be the most popular kind of boat name.
Oh Christ, boat names are a rich vein of douchebaggery.
I read “Mathilda” in undergrad and remember thinking to myself, “Hoo boy, this is the weirdest friggin’ id-fic I’ve ever seen.”
I’m torn on the most disturbing part: was it the bit where Mathilda realizes what’s been going on with her father’s weird mod swings, or the bit at the end where [spoilers!!] she tries to convince her poet friend to die with her? I know Romantics love to beat on the drum of, “DEATH IS THE ULTIMATE CONSUMMATION” but that did not make it less bewildering to read.
So, is there something I’m missing about the Ed Champion story? Like, is this a hatchet job done by someone with a personal, “you left my sister at the altar”-style beef with him? No? Then how ON EARTH do people this terrible get to have lives and careers and incomes and POWER for a decade+? Please, I want to know.
oy. I absolutely resent this guy for all the precious minutes I have spent reading about how awful he is…I started reading this link and had to back away telling myself “you don’t actually care about this.”
And then I remembered that, just probability-wise, there is an Ed Champion in my field. Bleurgh I guess I have to care, a little.
had to back away telling myself “you don’t actually care about this.”
This is a crucial internet Life Skill that I have still not mastered.
I definitely should have done that, but I didn’t, and now I have Regrets.
Thank you for your comment. It gave me the push I needed to close that tab, I am the better for it.
There are a lot of reasons, but probably the biggest one is that his former partner was and remains extremely powerful within the publishing world. (Which, it should be noted, confers no actual power in the real world.)
I do not know if this your intent, but your ending parenthetical made me snort-laugh in glee. No! Actual! Power!
it’s all taking place in the New York Literary Scene, so it’s got to have some kind of ~meaning~
Frankenstein is probably the only Mary Shelley book that hasn’t damaged me. Mathilda hurt my brain for obvious reasons. But The Last Man–I still have nightmares seven years later featuring the deep and inescapable dread of watching everyone around me drop dead in a slow, years-long plague. Thanks, Mary!
I do forgive her though. I’m reading Romantic Outlaws and marveling at how bad-ass both she and especially her mother were. And also that there are so many new ways to learn how Byron was a dirtbag. I recommend it.
ok that Somerton Man story is BONKERS.
also at the end of the article they linked to this story: (https://stories.californiasunday.com/2014-12-07/mormon-fundamentalists-warren-jeffs/) which I will now be reading because I have a deep obsession with fundamentalists and/or polygamists
Oh no me too!! All cults fascinate me, but especially the ones that endorse polygamy or other alternate/taboo lifestyles.
Always, always, always here for Somerton Man. I love everything about it but I will say that the description of his legs sounded a lot like cyclists’ legs to me.
I do think the teeth clinch it for me, though, if I’m being honest. It always feels with these cases like people ignore perfectly good theories in favor of keeping the mystery alive (Dyatlov Pass, come on guys, that was hypothermia and Avalanche for sure).
DYATLOV PASS WAS A FAILED MKULTRA EXPERIMENT AND YOU KNOW IT
Did you see the movie Devil’s Pass?
I am CREEPED OUT AS HECK by the Dylatov Pass mystery. :/
ohmygod you guys. i am so far down a Dylatov Pass rabbit hole now. send help!
*slips back into aether(net)*
Yup. Teeth are massive clues when it comes to genetics.
Anyone else seen the documentary Stories We Tell? Sarah Polley and her biological sister have identical smiles.
I’ve bumped into Derek Abbott a few times online (he frequents the r/UnresolvedMysteries subreddit, where as you can imagine, the Somerton Man is a popular topic) and he seems like an interesting dude. That’s gonna be one hell of a story to tell the grandkids someday.
“Grandpa, how did you and Grandma meet?”
“Well honey, it all started when your great-great-grandpa’s dead body was found on Someton Beach . . .”
I stumbled upon that exact subreddit yesterday after reading this article and I spent all day there! After a few hours I started becoming progressively more tired of people’s desperation to find sinister behavior in bizarre coincidences, but all in all not a bad way to spend a day.
The Australian mystery piece. WOOO-EE! So fascinating. Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers could have written it!
It’s the 20th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill! Have an article about Alanis Morissette.
I read that yesterday and felt so, so old. :/
So glad you were here to remind us!
I felt that you oughta know! I fell head over feet for this album the first time I heard it. All I really want is for it to get the appreciation it deserves, because I think it is pretty much perfect.
But what it all comes down to is no one’s really got it figured out just yet. Ah well. You live, you learn.
Soundtrack for the day!
I know every single lyric to this CD, as it was one of the very first that I ever bought, in order to do a powerpoint presentation to “Ironic”. (Also, I did not know what hidden tracks were, and I FLIPPED OUT the first time I heard “Your House”.)
Ugh, you guys sorry to threadjack but I’m bummed because Anne Lamott made some gleefully transphobic comments on Twitter and refuses to apologize. Does this mean I have to stop giving Operating Instructions to all of my new-parent friends?
Tried to embed tweets and gave up, here’s the text:
Is it okay to be a tiny tiny bit tired of Caitlyn? Yes, was very brave but so far he’s gone from man to mannequin, instead of man to woman.
@marylowry1 hostile to Caitlyn. Will call him a she when the pee-pee is gone. Says “Brave is to endure stares, jeers, prejudice. He won’t.”
I saw that yesterday too! What the FUCK, Anne.
I have always found her grating (despite liking Bird by Bird AND Operating Instructions), so this did not shock me, but I was still disappointed and annoyed with her careless bigotry.
yeah it is a bummer, Bird by Bird was great
I have never cared for Lamott’s writing, but that’s super disappointing and gross. WOW.
Her irreverence–towards faith, towards writing, towards imposter syndrome and similar brain weasels–really helped me taking a lot of things, not least myself, less seriously, so this is… seriously disappointing. Granted, she’s always been a bit irritating on Twitter, but this goes well beyond irritating and straight into cruel and harmful. 🙁 🙁
gah! I keep seeing comments that start out like “I’m sick of celebrity culture, all this uproar over Jenner is gross,” and I’m like ok sure, I feel you on that, and then they ALL turn transphobic. So gross. I guess people who are truly tired of the conversation are just…not saying anything?
Yeah, I feel like that’s true whenever someone makes a big deal about how much they don’t want to talk about or hear about something. People who don’t care about the Kardashians don’t talk about the Kardashians; people who talk a lot about how sick they are of the Kardashians want you to ask them why, so they can go on about it at length.
“I don’t care about the Kardashians but I care about you knowing that I don’t care about the Kardashians!”
Honestly, I think half of their popularity at least is due to people being able to take pride in publicly not caring about them.
Yep. It’s a superiority thing. And people do take pleasure in disliking things. See: Irrational Hate Lists.
If the book is still good, buy the copies used so she doesn’t profit.
Anne Lamott can take her transmisogyny and shove it.
this blows. what a rotten thing to say.
but i would also like to point out that anne lamott is a white person with dreadlocks, so…my positive feelings for her were not strong to begin with.
“Brave is to endure stares, jeers, prejudice. He [sic] won’t.”
Yes, that sounds extremely accurate and grounded in reality.
I mean… that very tweet constitutes both “jeers” and “prejudice,” so I especially don’t get the argument.
I have signed copies of both Traveling Mercies and Plan B, so although I’ve become a little more disenchanted with her in recent years, she still had a big impact on my in my early 20s and this is super disappointing.
The silver lining of this, though, is her son (lovingly) calling her out on this, asking her to delete the original tweet and become more educated on trans issues. If that’s not a great endorsement for Operating Instructions, I don’t know what is.
I saw it last night and was shocked and saddened. The first tweet was bad, the doubling-down and hiding behind it being a quote from her traveling companion was disgusting.
At one point in my life several of her books (Operating Instructions and Traveling Mercies especially) were emotional lifelines to me. Then I read her book about her grandson’s first year at the same time my nuclear family was living with my in-laws for a few months. Suddenly her confessional “just being honest about what’s on my mind” style read as super passive-aggressive and miserable to be around. I felt really bad for her grandson’s mother. I also thought I might be projecting onto my own situation, in which I felt a near-constant silent disapproval
But I could never read her writings the same away again. And littler things like the way she handles any kind of disagreement on her Facebook posts (the Mother’s Day one was a good example but she seems to have deleted her follow-up complaints about it) made me think less of her as well. She really doesn’t seem to have room for other people’s opinions and truths, as much as she likes to write her books as if she’s “I’m okay, you’re okay.”
This whole thing with Caitlyn seals it. Her behavior when called out (doubling down with the “pee pee” post, retweeting some tepid support, refusing to acknowledge anything else) is deeply troubling too. I have totally lost respect for her and feel sad about it. I can only imagine how many of her trans fans felt.
She just now apologized, and it’s not a terrible one:
“I am so sorry to have caused pain to people in the transgender community, esp to parents of transgender children. You are loved and chosen.”
Still not impressed with how she handled criticism to this point, like characterizing the responses she got as “vicious, inaccurate hysteria.”
Also, from that Ed Champion article:
“He’s an anarchist. He’s a punk. He’s fun. He’s somebody who breaks stuff. It’s a kind of 1960s prototype: Abby Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Hunter S. Thompson.
One, you spelled “Abbie Hoffman” wrong. Two, thank you for summing up everything wrong with 90% of the “progressive” men who emerged in the sixties. Three, please explain how threats of putting a cigar out in someone’s mouth constitute “punk” or “fun.”
As other people begged compassion for Champion, Gould wondered: “Why are people worried about his mental health?” What about the people he hurt? “Why aren’t they worried about us?”
Which is really all that needs to be said, I think.
[edit] OH MY GOD he left a screed in the comments.
Oh lord, the comments. I do worry about his mental health, because I worry about basically everyone’s mental health, and I love seeing a success story. So as I was reading I felt a little hopeful that he seemed to be laying low and maybe taking his meds. And then I checked the comments and NOPE.
I felt so gross reading that article, the guy is a bully and a serial offender at that. And I could use a little help parsing the mental health reasoning here… I take mental health very seriously, but something here just makes it seem like in this case, it’s really being used as an excuse, as a kevlar vest to protect a white boy who is behaving in ways that could be explained by mental health, yes, but could also be explained by “that’s how privilege affects people who aren’t careful about checking it.” Nothing he’s done is really out of line from what I’ve seen other men do, say, as adolescents, when drunk, when they feel emasculated, etc. (#notallmen but you know.)
I really don’t want to make light of the issue if he does have problems with mental health, diagnosed or no, but… gah. How do you parse what’s going on with him? (I’m genuinely asking, feel free to tell me I’m coming at this from entirely the wrong direction, being really insensitive, anything.)
(ETA: I also don’t mean to put you on the spot to explain to me– not your job. Just an open question. Sorry!)
I’m not saying that it’s an excuse for anything he’s done– I know people with all kinds of mental illnesses who are still kind and caring members of society. And I also don’t want to suggest that we can diagnose him based on his tweets or something. But this guy’s intensity and lack of insight suggests that he’s got something going on in addition to his jerkitude, and most of the people in his circle seem to agree? So I very much hope, both for his sake and that of the people he’s terrorized, that there are people in his life who can sit him down and be like “dude, we need to take steps for you to chill out and start living a functional life, and we’re going to hold you accountable on this.”
It is really hard to parse an individual’s pattern of escalating violent behaviour in the context of The Patriarchy At Large. White men seem to be the only people whose mental health issues, alleged or real, earn them a get-out-of-jail-free card, particularly when their violence is directed at women/POC. What’s notable to me is that there’s no indication that this guy has psychosis or anything that would excuse responsibility for his actions. People keep pointing to Champion’s terrible childhood, which I have no doubt was characterized by Serious Pain. All kinds of other destructive behaviour motivated by Serious Pain are deemed unacceptable (drug abuse, gambling addiction, theft etc) but when it comes to misogynist violence/bullying we are somehow meant to tolerate it as an inevitable consequence that can’t be stopped. Hmmm…
His apologists are clearly using the mental illness claim to shield him from accountability. You’ve touched on a disturbing trend wherein people with a lot of social privilege/education who have mental health problems that impede social interactions are allowed to get away with abusive behaviour for as long as possible if not forever. I have worked for several professionally respected people like this and it chills me to the bone.
Oh, man, I just saw his comment. It’s pretty weird how a good, regular guy should consistently be surrounded by so many vindictive unhealthy people with emotional problems that a person could even write an article like this.
Any question anyone could have about any particular part or characterization of the article was completely removed by that comment. I’ve run into his type before (both male and female) and getting away relatively unscarred is a relief to this day.
I think you mean you’ve run into the type of the many, many terrible people that surround him in his life and are constantly trying to destroy him.
Oh, right! It’s that kind of silly mistake that I keep making that has me rightly pegged as such a sexist hater who constantly tries to dismantle everyone around me and yet will never make any kind of contribution to history.
(“relatively unscarred” may have been an understatement.)
This, to me, was the crux of the article: “When some would ignore him, it was not usual for him to contact their siblings or spouses.” He’s a creepy stalker, no matter how good some of his writing might have been. I was also thinking of his ex-partner as his enabler, long before that word appeared; good for her for finally ditching him.
Fun fact: if you search Champion’s website for the word “cunnilingus,” Google returns 187 results—twelve pages worth. Champion offers oral sex to women he wants something from, denies he wants to give it to women he interviews, fantasizes about performing it in different scenarios, and so on. (Sometimes Champion is straight up writing about sex, but it is not to those posts I refer.)
eew, eew, eew, get it off me, get it off me, get it off me
*crawls out of skin, takes hot shower, buys new skin, gets dressed*
if i wasn’t a masochist, i wouldn’t go back and finish the article buuuuuuut…
The subject matter of the Brooklyn Magazine article is in the comments defending himself. I don’t feel like giving him the satisfaction of a Name at the moment.
Now where did I put that popcorn gif?
holy shit that is… something
Oh, my stars.
“oh, wow” indeed.
I read the whole thing and didn’t even see that he showed up foaming at the mouth in the comments until toasties pointed it out. holy balls.
I’m always sad when I’m reminded that Mary Shelley didn’t get a chance to know her remarkable mother.
If only because Mary Wollstonecraft would’ve had ZERO patience with Shelley and Byron.
Maclean’s cover story this month is the stories of thirteen Indigenous women who came terrifyingly close to being on the horribly long list of missing or murdered Indigenous women in Canada. It looks really good.
(I’ve only read the first part, in my dentist’s waiting room this morning, but it was good and I’m pretty sure Maclean’s will have done a good job on the whole thing.)
Oh, wow. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks! Now I’m wondering if I have the nerve to read that link about Matilda…
Just finished it. There are no words. 🙁
Oh man. Do the Airbnb for boats people actually own boats? Every boat is different and quirky in the dumbest ways. Everyone knows how to use a faucet in a house kitchen but every galley kitchen is a special snowflake. It would be easy to destroy the galley sink faucet because you didn’t know that you had to open a valve to the day tank and you ran the pump dry.
Or, you are anchored overnight in a pretty bay and wake up to learn you left a light on and drained your battery bank. That 12 volt system is not difficult to use but every boat is different.
And! Boats are super expensive to fix. I would not just let anyone use my boat. They might break something that costs $1,000 and all my it profit is gone. We have a well maintained boat and need to dump at least 5k into it each year. (Commercial fishing boat but still)
Let’s not even talk about how they just breeze by needing a license to take passengers out like its NBD. Sea time + class time + test. It takes awhile to get there
Dream killer.
Aaahhh sorry! You can rent boats in harbors through VRBO and there are tons of chartered opportunities out there (this is what this website is side stepping). Go out on boats! They are awesome! The ocean is amazing!
Yes, too earnest. I deleted a story about boating because Way Too Much comment.
Oh, I am 100% here for boating stories!
Ok! As long as you (both) share one too.
Also, this got built up a bit. So we were in our skiff out jigging lingcod and the outboard engine died. Out boat got turned broadside to the 2-foot swell and we just bobbed there. We got it fixed–the fuel line got disconnected from the motor. We reattached it, resolved the vapor lock, and continued on. Not very high stakes but we only knew how to fix it because it was our boat. I can’t imaging scrambling on someone else’s boat without them there.
Your story is an example of why I don’t take to the sea even in a kayak; sea kayakers also have stories that start ‘so we got turned broadside to the X foot swell’ which never sounds good, ha!
My stories are not nearly as dangerous. One of the best ones I wasn’t even kayaking, but tubing, on a stretch of a river that doesn’t normally allow it, and it was a weekday, so there was no one on the river. I lost an argument with a snag and my tube deflated and I was still 3 or 4 miles from the takeout. So I had to swim and wade the rest of the way. Then there was a miscommunication with the shuttle guys and no one showed up to take me back to the campground. At dusk, some hikers showed up at the parking lot and let me use their cellphone.
The ocean does not seem to be so forgiving. 😛
I would love to read a comment about a boating story. I do not mess with boats bigger than a kayak, but I love to read stories about them.
What about like, little canal boats? Because I seriously need to meet someone who has a little canal boat, and I guess this is a stopgap.
I don’t know a thing about canal boats. what are they? How are they used?
Boats that are used for riding leisurely around canals in Dutch cities, they can range from fancy and comfortable to shitty speedboats that barely stay in the water. When the weather’s nice people who have boats take them out on the canals and they and their friends ride around and drink beer on them, and gaining access to a boat is my dream because it looks awesome.
That sounds great! I bet there are owners associations or something that you could be involved with. I find that offers of food and fuel are good ways to get out on someone’s boat.
In the UK you can rent them by the week or day! Many happy holidays of my childhood were spent on canal boats, wandering along the canals of England/Scotland/Ireland, doing a few locks, good times.
A few weeks ago my godfather had his birthday party on a canal boat. They took it out for the day (about 10 people), had a party, and celebrated!
If Jane Austen Got Feedback From Some Guy In A Writing Workshop
http://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonreed/jane-austen-r…
This made me laugh.
TOO REAL
“you don’t have any people of color”
I just can’t see That Statistically-Likely To Be White Guy In The Writing Workshop noticing that, let alone objecting.
I thought that part was making fun of the Statistical White Dude for noticing the very basic fact that the story has no people of color in it, but then proposing a solution that boils down to: tokenize PoC by adding *one* character of color, and he should be *the butler*. That’ll fix your representation problem right up!
Ah, subtle! I like it.
I wrote the piece, and I can confirm that yes, that was the joke I intended. 🙂 Thanks for reading!
just have Wickham, Jim and Othello talk about the war, while Mrs. Bennet lies unconscious in the background, holding a ribbon
my god. I am laughing and so angry right now at the same time.
Christopher Lee, Ornette Coleman, Rue McClanahan, and now Ruby Dee.
This is a tough day in RIP-ville.
Rue McClanahan died in 2010. There’s just lots of activity on the anniversary of her death that’s causing confusion. Here’s an article from a year ago:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/…
But yes, very sad to lose them all, no matter how recently.
And Ruby Dee was last year, but now I’m sad about her again.
Okay, the creepiest thing about the Somerton Man story is that they details are practically identical to the set-up of Dorothy Sayers’ Have His Carcase. Which was written in 1932. (Okay, not identical, but: mysterious man found dead on the beach? Mysterious man who turns out is probably a dancer? And has a cipher on him? And was involved in some dodgy lady-business? And maybe it has to do with Russian spies?)
Holy Christ Almighty, between the Jump Street and Ghostbusters movie news items, I might spontaneously combust.
Man, I don’t know how much people are keeping up with what’s been going on in McKinney, but is it okay to be impressed with how quickly people are getting fired?
I think it’s great that the department is getting cleaned up and not covering for anyone, which is a step in the right direction.
Also that racist teacher just got fired, too.
I have access to Italian men every day of my life (not actually as fun as it sounds), but I’m not sure I often get to see *hearty* Italian men so I had to click on the link.
Those guys are HOT. *fans self*
(Also I might be going to Rome next weekend, assuming we don’t get too scared of being outside all day in 35°C heat and chicken out! Woohoo, maybe I get to see this thing in person?)
Man, I’ve been archiving old work emails to tidy up one of our work accounts, and plenty of them are from my ex-boss. Between that and the Ed Champion article, I kind of want to claw my skin off.
Clearly, the solution to this is tonight’s episode of Hannibal. Yes, that will help.
One of my aunts hates these parties, which are a huge thing in her neck of the Montana woods (really in most rural areas). She calls them "Screw Your Friends Parties." And that's what I now call them, because they really do screw your friends and make them feel guilty if they don't buy whatever crap the friend is selling.
I know a woman who used to sell Thirty One and she made some serious dosh. She works for Disneyland now, which is somehow fitting.
Hey lady OGs, medium time reader first time commenter here.
This article has left a bad taste in my mouth http://www.damemagazine.com/2015/06/09/quit-sayin…
but I’m wondering if it’s just me? Something about how the author dissects another woman’s body to bemoan she cannot tell if Amy Schumer is legitimate in how she speaks about her body? Something about how the author is open to enjoying feeling ‘visible’ in New York, but thinks Schumer lends too much credence to the scrutiny of women in SoCal. Are my feelings real on the internet if you cannot see my one-side-of-mouth-turned-down emoticon face???
that's criminal.
Well, it should be, and would be if the people who make fortunes off this crap didn't spend an awful lot of money lobbying against any kind of regulation. I've often thought that it was no coincidence that Michael Savage, one of the most popular conservative talk radio hosts, has a sideline promoting supplements and alternative medicines.
I identify with that, seeing how many people are promoting fake diabetes cures, including this tool, who's running for President, again.