Ask a Manager is one of my fav sites and oooooh lordy LW #2 needs to stahhhp:
Recently a new person joined our team. We got along well so I went ahead and asked her out. She said that she doesn’t mix dating with work.
Now, since she said no, I figured she wasn’t interested in me and I kind of instinctively started avoiding looking at her in a group setting since I didn’t want to be a creeper, but I didn’t avoid or ignore her if she was in front of me and continued to greet her as usual.
We’re in different roles so, aside from maybe a common meeting per week, our interaction lasts only for about 10 minutes every day in a group setting and that too can easily pass off without us really requiring any direct conversation. I am not sure how she construed my behavior but it seemed like she didn’t like it. One day when I didn’t make any eye contact with her in a meeting, she looked upset when I said hi to her in the break room. I think she thought I was giving her the silent treatment or something, when in reality I’m a really quiet/shy person and I didn’t want to make things awkward or be labeled as a creeper.
Anyway, from the next day onward, I stopped avoiding eye contact with her. For a whole week straight, she would look me in the eyes the first thing every day during our 10 minute stand up meeting. She stopped doing this abruptly one fine day. I have since tried thrice to re-initiate conversation with her, while she does respond back she doesn’t initiate any conversation herself. She looked in my eyes again this last week.
Any suggestions/advice on how I should proceed? I’m completely at a loss here and I have re-kindled my feelings for her. Should I go back to instinctively avoiding her?
*
I 100% support right-to-die legislation as a matter of personal freedom and bodily autonomy, but I am not unsympathetic to the contrary stance and reasoning of many disability activists (the idea that we should focus on improving end-of-life resources and care, amongst other things, and not make it seem like being in a wheelchair, say, is the worst thing imaginable), and I thought this somewhat-related piece in the New Yorker was good.
*
June 12th 1970: One of the most important days in sports history, a day perhaps bigger than any Stanley Cup victory, any World Series, or any Superbowl. 45 years ago today, Dock Ellis pitched an eight-walk, 2-0, no hit-victory while high on LSD.
*
We talked a lil bit about the Game of Thrones finale yesterday but let’s talk about it again, someone start a thread! I watched the last two eps on Sunday bc I had been out of town, and my husband lost his everlovin’ shit about The Stannis Thing and has been muttering darkly about it ever since.
*
I miss you all so much when I’m away, I just wanted to tell you that.
*
My little cousin came home from her babysitter’s and told her mom “we got into trouble today, we said the b-word,” and her mom was like “OH WOW what happened???” and she said “we were upset and we just said it and then our babysitter made us do the dishes” and her mom was all “solid choice, babysitter” but was worried about the b-word thing and then asked the babysitter about what happened and learned that the b-word was “bored.”
*
LOL, it is one thing to be “look, we pay for the water so fuck all of y’alls and your dumb state” IN YOUR HEAD, but to vigorously defend said premise in public is just…amazing:
“I call it the war on suburbia,” said Brett Barbre, who lives in the Orange County community of Yorba City, another exceptionally wealthy Zip code.
Barbre sits on the 37-member board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a huge water wholesaler serving 17 million customers. He is fond of referring to his watering hose with Charlton Heston’s famous quote about guns: “They’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
*
Bae and I are the only unmarried/unengaged couple at this wedding so pic.twitter.com/OsEFoQ1yl4
— Jazmine Hughes (@jazzedloon) June 13, 2015
*
Are you familiar with the fascinating water feature at the Detroit Airport? It’s very attractive and strange. Here is a video of it. Now, imagine this video, but with a small girl child flinging her body into it while her father’s back was turned and getting soaked to the skin about twenty minutes before boarding the remaining four-hour flight to her home:
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
“It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?”
……..yes.
Or rocks! Or scrubby desert brush. Some cacti? I dunno. Get creative rich folks.
Seconding. I love grass-free gardens with native or at least climate-appropriate plants. If I were rich and living in drought conditions, I’d totally get spendy with succulent ground coverings, fancy imported rocks, and local flora.
Succulent lawns look so nice!
Hell, we have plenty of water where I live (Great Lakes area), and I would still plant drought-tolerant plants or just rip everything out and put in some rocks. (If I wasn’t so broke/ averse to ever going outside). It’s just gonna get hotter and drier everywhere over the next few decades.
I ended up (through various circumstances) moving from an apartment to a house with a lawn, but I never water it and I’d be perfectly happy without any grass, honestly.
My front lawn is terrible. The ground is uneven and full of tree roots, the sprawling oak tree keeps the grass from getting enough light in the summer, and the dead patches never came back after we left leaf piles sitting for too long several years ago. My solution to this is to try to propagate moss everywhere.
My gardening style is best described as “Doing the absolute bare minimum necessary to avoid getting a ticket from the city”.
(Also, my little brother mows for me because I am a 35-year-old who’s still terrified of lawnmowers).
I just got a manual lawnmower! It’s way more work, but it feels like less work, because it doesn’t make a terrifying noise, and doesn’t have a bag to empty. Now I can stop borrowing the neighbors’ mower!
It’s also very hot here. My electrolytes are all out of whack. 🙁
Or a relaxing Zen-style rock garden!
Seriously! A pretty landscaped yard of local/non-water-intensive flora/cacti/etc. would look so amazing, and would be an even more showy way to spend all of your rich-person money than growing stupid grass!
I was looking at pictures of some gorgeous desert-adapted succulents yesterday, mostly from the Capetown area. I’m visualizing a really beautifully-landscaped rock and succulent garden, with plenty of patio space, nice umbrellas, maybe a fire pit or two.
YES. My fiancé grew up in Phoenix, and he gets so angry about all the people who move there from other places and want to keep their lush, green lawns. NO. YOU LIVE IN A DESERT. DEAL WITH IT.
A lot of the newer developments are going with “native landscaping,” but my in-laws just bought a new house in a particular development specifically so they wouldn’t have to have native landscaping. I thought my fiancé’s head was going to explode.
That’s where I grew up too, so I love the look of xeriscaping and have similar head-explodey reactions as your fiancé to verdant lawns in deserts and other drought-ridden areas. Water is so artificially cheap in Phoenix that there’s little financial incentive to cut back use–it honestly scares me.
Or if you — like me — don’t particularly like the look of xeriscaping, you don’t move to a desert.
Of course I also don’t like the look of snow and I live in a frozen wasteland far too many months a year.
Back when I lived in AZ, nothing drove me nuts like all of the people in complete denial that they live in a desert. There’s a great NPR City Edition about Phoenix which is all about how Phoenix did absolutely everything wrong in terms of developing a city in a desert. The one guy was basically like “there have been cities in deserts for thousands of years; you must have some massive denial about it being a desert to eff things up this bad.”
Do you happen to have a link for that, or at least know where I can find it? I did a quick google search, but I’m not sure I’m looking at the right thing (and I am not very NPR savvy, to my chagrin).
I want to say it was this episode: http://www.npr.org/2012/08/14/158776471/scorching…
It’s actually the “Cities Project” not “City Edition.”
Also (SoCal Native Plant nerd here), you can have “native landscaping” that is also grass! There are plenty of species of native grasses that are highly drought-tolerant and hardy and very low-maintenance, but people don’t know about them or consider them because they don’t look like a putting green, smdh.
I have a relative who moved to to Arizona in the 70s, specifically because she has horrible, life-altering allergies to most types of grass, and the worst hay fever imaginable. She was INCENSED when people started moving in and plopping down enormous water-guzzling lawns.
What a lot of Arizona Haters don’t realize is it’s not the locals that make things crappy for everyone. It’s the damn newcomers who bring all their bullshit with them. Xeriscaping 4 life.
When we moved to AZ, my parents bought a house south of Tucson that was xeriscaped in front… and lush lawn with complicated in-ground sprinkler system in the back. There were FRUIT TREES in that backyard. I was not old enough, when we lived there, to understand how crazy that was.
I visited my in-laws in Phoenix two years ago, and all I could think then was, “this city will have to be abandoned in 50 years”. California’s snowpack being 0% of normal this year makes me wonder if instead of 50 it will be 30.
“I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world,” said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear.
THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE we cannot expect them to adhere to our Earth logic
It takes a lot of awful behavior for me to think poorly of someone named Gay Butler, and yet here we are.
WIN comment of the day.
“It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said.
…you mean, not looking at the overall picture as in CALIFORNIA IS RUNNING OUT OF WATER? Because that’s what the overall picture looks like from where I’m standing.
“She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.”
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT
HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE
IS SHE RUNNING THE WORLD’S LARGEST SLIP ‘N’ SLIDE
Mine is, like, $40 per quarter . And half of that is just a service charge! (Of course, I’m in upstate NY near a giant lake. But still).
Great Lakes Region 4 Lyfe
Perhaps she hosts this?
FUCKING PAVE IT
Succulents are quite pretty! As are rock gardens! And many species of cacti have flowers! Basically theyre being uncreative. A lot of neighborhoods are more forward thinking about this though, we shouldnt let some backwards thinking rubes from the OC get everyone down.
There are houses where you can do a load of laundry and shower at the same time!? Whatever with those people, obviously they are missing out on an opportunity to develop important family communication skills.
Green is the glitzy Ferrari of LA neighborhoods so I’m not that surprised people are whining. (See: Pictures of the purposeless Beverly Hills lawn)
“You could put 20 houses on my property, and they’d have families of at least four. In my house, there is only two of us,” Butler said. So “they’d be using a hell of a lot more water than we’re using.”
…this lady’s mouth is just the gift that keeps on giving
What the fuck, rich people?
Reading that particular quotation, I started to feel a vein pulsing in my forehead.I live in California. I’ve changed my laundry habits, my showering habits, my toilet flushing when there’s no company visiting. I would wager that four of me would not use the amount of water she is using, because I actually care how much water I am using.
It’s really not about whether she can pay for it. It’s about the fact that there are people who do not have safe water coming out of their taps, because drought, who have also paid their taxes, and about the fact that the state’s constitution defines water as a public good. Safe drinking water trumps green lawn.
Just think, if we kicked out all the riffraff, the remaining three respectable people would probably take TEN years instead of five to drain the aquifers.
Conservation!
I want to go buy a house in a suburban estate so I can rip up the lawn and fill it with native plants, and BRING DOWN PROPERTY VALUES
EAT THE RICH
Poor people invented the art of slow-cooking pig meat. I’m just sayin’.
Drink the rich?
I’m looking at the overall picture and seeing a country where rich people pay to water lawns in a desert, and poor people get their water cut off because their city is broken.
It does say pretty much everything there is to say about American class conflicts, doesn’t it?
This deserves a billion more likes. Also, I’m just gonna crawl into a cave now…
Little known fact: High property taxes mean you’re exempt from civic emergencies! Earthquakes also stop at your property line! Forest fires turn back if you look down your nose at them sternly enough!
…seriously though, I expect regular Californians to break out the pitchforks any day now.
Right! Native plants that are adapted to the actual climate of the place you live! That way you don’t have to waste water on grasses that aren’t suited to the climate, and you don’t have to spend as much time/money on landscaping/maintenance! I live on the east coast, but one of the things that does not appeal to me about home ownership is the prospect of yardwork.
I want to tell them that their property taxes don’t pay for senior water rights, they pay for enforcement of equal water rights! and watch their swollen heads explode.
Also LOL at “the overall picture” meaning “me and my house.”
DROUGHT is the overall picture, you stupid asshole. You and your four acres are small potatoes.
Just move the Detroit Airport fountain around to these peoples’ lawns! Kids can still play in it, the water runs off the kids and into the lawn.
Boom! problem solved, day’s over, I’m going out for ice cream.
PEOPLE AREN’T LOOKING AT THE OVERALL PICTURE
people aren’t looking at the overall picture
gfasldfjk
I was literally just discussing the assholes out in the estates here who have declared that they deserve more water with my doctor yesterday. She’s Canadian, so she was truly horrified.
We also discussed how she moved directly from Canada to Texas and learned about gun culture, but that’s a whole other story.
My little sister would 100% have tried to jump in that fountain when she was little. She fell into a fountain on my 9th birthday (exactly 18 years ago jfc) and I was mad at her for YEARS for ~stealing my thunder~. They no longer have fountains at that shopping center, and I have blamed her ever since.
Happy birthday!!
Thank you! The LW#2 guy appearing in the comments is pretty much the greatest present ever, so its gonna be a great day.
Gun culture is very disturbing to us Canucks. I’m from rural Northern Ontario so my Dad has a couple of long guns (bears sometimes wander onto the property) but hand guns are only for killing PEOPLE so why would you ever want to have one?
This is heavily dependent on who you socialize with, because I know plenty of Canadians with handguns for target shooting or whatever along with long guns for hunting or skeet or what have you.
I was in Winnipeg for a week the summer of 2011, and I swear there was a shooting in the news almost every day.
For me I think the difference is that most Canadians I know have guns as a hobby (target practice, hunting, etc) or other practical needs (farmers usually have a gun for livestock protection from predators), whereas there is this difference I see is the culture in America also seems to have a lot more to do with the idea of “personal protection”. That personal protection part is the part that seems scary to me, as a Canadian.
Yeah, while there’s definitely “gun crime” and “gun ownership” in Canada, there’s a much smaller, and much less influential, “gun culture” than in America.
Happy birthday!!!!! I hope you have an amazing day.
I think your doctor might be a bit naive about the asshole potentiality of Canadians when it comes to their homes … no water wars, but living in a big city, there’s an exceptional amount of entitled NIMBYism. Here’s some residents of a hoity-toity historical neighbourhood, complaing that a splash pad in a local park will lead to “a hyperactive Disneyland of waterworks” (http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/5658033-old-cabbagetown-residents-wading-in-on-splash-pad-controversy/) and here’s other residents complaining that buiding $500,000 townhouses will bring in undesirable, low-income people (http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/25/midtowners-battle-the-rise-of-the-midrise.html)
Entitled rich people are everywhere.
IS IT YOUR BIRTHDAY IT IS MY BIRTHDAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY TWIN!
Although I am the sibling more likely to fall in a water fountain, I do sympathize with having a little sister stealing birthday thunder (or thunder, generally).
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY TWIN!!!!
There’s another girl in my program with my birthday CLEARLY IT IS A DAY ON WHICH THE AWESOMEST OF PEOPLE WERE BORN
It’s my birthday, too! And the birthday of Tupac and Joyce Carol Oates.
I like that this implies that Tupac and Joyce Carol Oates got married and he took her name.
LW#2 from Ask A Manager is in the comments, I repeat, he is in the comments. As “Jake.”
Excuse me, I need to go make some popcorn.
BLESS HIS LIL HEART
Here’s the thing. I understand not naturally being good at socializing. However, anyone who’s in a professional environment (probably college-educated, probably in their 20’s) has had enough life experience to be better at reading social cues if that is a thing they are interested in being. I feel like so often, and particularly with men, saying “Oh, I’m just shy and socially awkward,” is shorthand for “I choose to ignore any social signals that don’t say what I want them to say, but I still have good intentions so if people don’t like me it’s their fault.” It’s lazy, entitled thinking.
If LW2 really wanted to learn from this, he would say “Oh, I see her perspective now, thanks. I’ll try to do better.” None of this “BUT it’s really hard because I’m still attracted to her!” or ” BUT she was being flirty with me!” nonsense.
Seriously. I love Alison’s later comment where she’s like, “Here’s a thing. SO WHAT if you’re attracted to her?”
I want to make a giant billboard aimed at men in general which just says “NO ONE FUCKING CARES THAT YOU FIND SOMEONE ATTRACTIVE.”
I just want propaganda sized posters that can be stuck in every bus station, storefront, and subway.
Underneath it will say “JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE A MAN DOESN’T MEAN WE NEED TO HEAR ABOUT EVERY LITTLE THOUGHT THAT POPS IN YOUR HEAD”
And then it will have a picture of me choosing not to show any outward indication of my overwhelming urge to slap a bro, just as he can choose not to make his own emotional whims into everybody else’s problem.
I will contribute mightily to this Kickstarter.
I always think of Pride and Prejudice here, when Elizabeth talks about how she did not know how to play piano well, and assumed it was her own fault and then decide to either work to correct it or suck it up and accept that she wasn’t good. IDK. I couldn’t find it. This places Jake/LW#2 as Mr. Darcy and I totally don’t think that, but I do believe it generally applies.
I, too, think of myself as socially awkward, so in some ways I feel for the guy, but dude, get your head out of your ass.
“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”
“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.”
agree, don’t know if I want to cast him as Darcy, but this is a beautiful take down of exactly this excuse.
actually wouldn’t it be great if thispassage started getting posted in response whenever guys tried to opt out of changing behavior by claiming social awkwardness?
you know, fellow toastrons, we have the numbers, we could do this…
You could just short-hand it with “But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault…” and we’d all know. I mean, if they’re at all literate they *might* know, but in any case, we’d know.
Yeah and it’s always only the dudes who we’re supposed to worry about having poor social skills. What about the women they are creeping on? What if they are on the autism spectrum, or have anxiety, or are introverted? I guess they just don’t even exist?
No. We are all white, popular, middle-class and have excellent mental health. Growing up, our fathers bought us entire herds of ponies. We all work white-collar ‘girl jobs’ in an office and ‘creep-shame’ men for our decadent amusement.
Raises hand.
Most of us of that mold have spontaneously combusted after a year or so of Office Life. So yeah, we’re rare birds. Only partly kidding.
“Oh, I’m just shy and socially awkward,” is shorthand for “I choose to ignore any social signals that don’t say what I want them to say, but I still have good intentions so if people don’t like me it’s their fault.” It’s lazy, entitled thinking.
You are so right and someone needs to go and shout this from all the roof tops.
You are not ‘socially awkward’ you are an asshole.
JUST BECAUSE I AM A POLITE HUMAN DOES NOT MEAN I AM FLIRTING WITH YOU.
Okay but what if you’re a polite human AND have breasts? Now what is he supposed to do???
Well you got me there
This needs to be printed out and placed next to the register at every coffee shop in the world.
Also, even if I AM flirting with you at work, that doesn’t mean it should go anywhere. I fell into work-appropriate flirting with a coworker I had been friendly with for a while, and fell right back out of it after a while. It was pleasant! But nothing critical.
Yes. And a dude at my job learned this the hard way when I reported him to HR. I am married. Just because I was nice to you does not mean I wanted your phone number so you could “buy [me] something”.
I work a charity canvassing job, and one of my co-workers recently told me that at the end of the day- when she was alone in our booth, as my shift had ended a few hours earlier- she called out to one dude, and he came over and started demanding that she give him her number. When she informed him that she did not want his number, he said “so what, you just talked to me because it’s your job?”
YES
THAT IS EXACTLY WHY SHE TALKED TO YOU, SIR
Yes! Dudes gotta understand: just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you don’t have to do it???
Like, I’ve been attracted to people at work, and it’s a STRAIN sometimes to be like, 100% on my professional game when I’m looking at their cute hair or whatever. But THAT IS A ME PROBLEM THAT I NEED TO DEAL WITH. It’s on me! It’s not their problem!
right? all his comments are like “i’m trying to and/or not to ____ but it’s hard“—cry me a river, cripes.
I do feel bad for him a bit, because aw, buddy, I’m sorry the first lady you ever asked out said no, and that must have been really hard for you to do! But maybe you should not have made the first lady you ever asked out your coworker. That is a recipe for stressful interactions!
“But I could DIE of thinking someone is PLEASANT TO LOOK AT.”
“Because it’s hard” seems to be why dudes do a lot of dumb things. It’s the boner defense.
The Boner Defense
The folks in those comments are being SO much more charitable towards him than I feel.
My fave is a response to his post: “Making eye contact is a normal part of human interaction.”
but because I know many many undersocialized guy nerds who I do like a lot, my main response is *deep siiiigghhhhh*
That Ask a Manager LW is a perfect example of a well-known creep subroutine that combines “Women are SO MYSTERIOUS AND ARBITRARY, how am I supposed to know what they find creepy?” with “If I ASK if this was creepy that makes it okay for me to keep doing it, right?” and a possible side of “I care about not SEEMING like a creep but don’t actually care if I am one.” My dude, if you’re genuinely worried that something you’re doing is bothering someone, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Sorry for the capslock of rage. I think reading through the Captain Awkward archives, plus being alive, has really sensitized me to this behavior.
We dudes are sooooo good at turning normal, neutral eye contact and nonverbal communication into “She’s saying she likes me… in code.” What is with that?
Speaking only for myself here, I don’t think Person A needs to be “getting signals” in order to ask Person B out. You can just think the person is cute/funny/sexy/whatever! But once you ask, you then need to pay attention to the answer you actually asked for. This “signals/code” thing puts everything in the wrong order. The “signal” people need to care about is, “Yeah, that sounds great!” or, “Sorry, but I don’t like you like that.”
Speaking for my awkward(er) past self, rejection was a frightening prospect, so I wanted the signals to be real to guarantee that if I asked, she’d say “yes.” (I know better now–both about rejection and about “guarantees” in interacting with other people.)
Well it’s shitty entitled thinking that comes from being socialized as being the default human, from being told in ways big and small throughout your entire life that other people in general and women specifically exist primarily to give you things, such that you become unable to hear and understand “no” in contexts where you otherwise would be able to.
For a great example of the other end of this continuum, have a terrible read (trigger warning: descriptions of stalking), or if you can’t, and I don’t blame anyone who avoids it, here’s a summary.
Just read through that guy’s blog shrieking with horror at intervals. Wow.
Right! My first thought after reading a few of Jake’s comments was SEND THIS GUY MANY, MANY CAPTAIN AWKWARD LINKS!!
I once had a stranger on the street who wouldn’t stop talking to me, ask whether he was making me uncomfortable. Which, ok, you get like half a point for even thinking about it, but then you lose fifty more points because if the answer is YES, do you expect me to answer that question honestly? If you think you might be making a woman uncomfortable, try leaving her alone.
This. Probably 5 or 6 times in my life I’ve been cornered by random men who won’t shut up at me, mostly in coffee shops or bookstores >:-( and once in a food court during my already-very-short lunch break >:-(((( and these guys ask, “Sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?” and I don’t know what the hell they expect me to say to that because it’s so obviously yes! BUT I’M NOT ALLOWED TO SAY YES, AM I DUDE???? If you have to ask that question, the answer is already yes. Walk away. *grumbles*
Even worse is when they ask if they’re making you uncomfortable and then make it YOUR fault that you are uncomfortable, that there’s something wrong with you if they make you feel uncomfortable.
You’re not alone. I wandered into the CA archives a few weeks ago and now I pretty much hate everyone.
for all the right reasons, though. i used to simply hate everyone. now i know WHY.
(and then i found The Toast and it’s very nice here on this oasis in the desert.)
At least we have tea and kittens and humor and intellect and each other here.
Where can I buy that sandwiches ring, or, better yet, one that proclaims my love for waffles?
Yes! Or toast!
If I could get a ring that says THETOASTDOTNET, I’d be one happy lady.
I’d just walk round all day finding excuses to show it to people
perhaps my desire to make a Grand Romantic Gesture to my partner is misplaced. Toast: will you marry me?
Leslie Knope, is that you??
I WISH
Thanks to my 3-year-old, I assumed the ring was a Frozen reference.
That “finish each others sandwiches” line is actually an Arrested Development reference, buried in a Disney movie.
I really, really wish I knew – googling has gotten me nowhere.
This is it, I think. So cool!
There’s a coffee one! OMG. But my fingers are so tiny. I wear a size 3.5. =(
GOD BLESS YOU
There is an Etsy shop where you can buy adorable jewelry that is scented like the foodstuff it represents (I got my roommate a waffles-and-syrup necklace that smelled like… well.)
(Or, she used to be on Etsy and now she has her own site: http://tinyhandsonline.com/)
Ok, well, I’ll never work again.
I’m here for Game of Thrones! I am shades of angry about most of this season, but to start on a good note… “baby Barack Obama” and Misandei are now the ruling couple of Meereen? Thats (ridiculous but) cool (I guess)!
Critique #1 — From the last Dany ch in the book, where the Khal finds her AND DROGON eating a horse of theirs roasted in dragon flame and covered in dirt and blood, I assumed she had intimidated the FK out of the Khalazaar (sp?) and was about to acquire a Dothraki horde to her conquest. But in the show… apparently she gets kidnapped? And both of her bfs have to quest to find her? And they are going to find a single ring in meadow to track her down?! GET OUTTA HERE.
I thought the significance of the dropped ring was so they Dothraki didn’t think she remarried or was married? Not that they would find the ring. God if they find that ring it will be so dumb.
The showrunners confirmed it in the “After Show” segment… ick…
Damn. I mean there is a giant mess of charred bones on the top of that cliff, that wasn’t enough of a clue of where she might be?
belated, but okay seriously WTFH? How do we go from “riding the back of a giant dragon who burns my enemies” to “oh, help, I am kidnapped by a khalasar, woes, someone save me?”
I am so fed up with this BS.
agreed. i think drogon will still swoop in and she’ll take over the khalasar. they just wanted to leave us on a cliffhanger.
I super read it as “Here is a clue for my master trackers!” I guess we’ll see. Did we even see Daenerys and Drogo exchange rings when they married?
A thing about Game of Thrones that I think is interesting is that Stannis — who I admit was kind of growing on me, just because of how relentless pragmatic and literal he is, and maybe we’re far enough removed that I forgot the part where he burned all his in-laws alive — is that the Stannis Business is very clearly a referece to Iphigenia, and the thing about THAT is has there ever been a Greek story where Agamemnon was remotely sympathetic?
I was trying to think of one, but that dude seems like huge asshole in literally every circumstance.
Coming here just to say liking Stannis has been FUN because he’s so pragmatically humorless and mission driven. And now its gone bc he’s a child murderer. And apparently the only emotions the show runners feel confident generating is SHOCK.
I read a great recap that called season 5 a documentary on Medieval Horror.
Oooh, link please!
literally cannot recall where I got that quote from because yesterday I read ALL OF THE REVIEWS.
Yeah it was a terrible roller-coaster from, “Your grace! They killed the horses, and stole our food!” “Fine. Butcher the horses for meat.” to…ugh. Man. His only redeeming quality was his love for his daughter!
I agree! And I still wanted him to beat the Boltons because Boltons, but he really ended up trusting Melisandre too much.
And apparently Melisandra’s magic doesnt WORK?! WHAT WAS THAT?
Apparently boning the king’s bastard son can kill three kings but all burning a princess alive will do is make the snow melt. R’hllor works in mysterious ways…
I picture R’hllor like one of those overly literal genies. “Sure, now that you’ve burned your daughter I can make the snow melt but you never asked me for your army to stay, your wife to be alive, your creepy red priestess to hang around, or to take Winterfell so…”
Maybe R’hllor really only wants the boning blood? You offer him up your lovely daughter and R’hllor is like “Woah! What the hell, dude? You totally misread me here. What… what is WRONG with you? Why would I want that, ugh, you sick fuck???”
Ha! Thats my new interpretation 🙂
I guess…an important thing though is that technically we only know for sure that evil blood magic killed one king. Balon Greyjoy got thrown off a balcony, Joffrey was poisoned by his enemies, Rob Stark was betrayed by his allies — all of those are actually very mundane and ordinary ways for kings to die.
Renly is technically the only one who died by supernatural means, and we actually don’t even know for sure that using the magic murder demon was directly connected to burning the royal blood. I mean, she definitely burned the royal blood, but also presumably “give birth to a magic murder-demon” is a different spell, right? That doesn’t automatically happen every time, I assume.
This means that we don’t actually know for sure that burning royal blood does anything, maybe it’s just some dumb and wrong thing that Mellisandre believes in.
They did conveniently leave out any mention of Balon in the show when she brought up the blood magic last time, though!
I also hold the belief that sometimes Mel sees the deaths in her flames and then manipulates Stannis to think she caused it.
I mean, both things makes sense:
1) Melisandre thinks she has to do X, Y, or Z thing to make the prophecy come true, and is just wrong. Sometimes the prophecies don’t come true because she doesn’t know exactly what they are, or what she is supposed to do, &c.
2) Melisandre is pretty sure what is going to happen anyway, and is constantly pushing Stannis to do more and more horrible things, because once he’s done something really horrible in order to secure his kingship (i.e., burn his daughter alive), he’s pretty much guaranteed to do whatever Melisandre tells him he has to after that.
Yeah, I mean, she is CONSTANTLY wrong about what she sees (“I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R’hllor shows me only Snow.” HMM what could that possibly mean, Mel?)
But it’s so interesting in the ASOIAF world since R’hllor is the only god who is actually doing things in the story, so we’re trying to figure out which bits of Mel’s magic actually work.
Also, what is R’hllor’s agenda here? that is what I want to know, what is this fire god up to
is Bran’s power something to do with the old gods? Like with the giant tree that he is merging with or whatever?
(note, I am now going to go back and reread the books, because yesterday’s discussion made me realize how hazy my memory is of the books.)
Ah, yeah, that’s true! The weirwoods definitely seem to be connected to the Old Gods. But to me it seems to be a generally passive power (seeing visions) and not an active one (bringing dead people back to life, murderous shadow babies). There’s also implications in the books and Bran and Bloodraven and the weirwoods are aligned with the Great Other, which could have a lot of implications in whatever goes down with the White Walkers.
I sort of forgot about Bran since he wasn’t in this season.
R’hllor’s definitely the most active god. I am fascinated to see if the Seven ever appear to grant any magic to their followers or anything.
Yeah, that was the messed up thing to me. Because as awful as sacrificing Shireen was, Stannis is one of the only characters who has a reason to believe what he believes. His history on this show is full of Melisandre saying “Do this awful thing and you will get the result you are after,” and him doing the thing and then the thing he wants happening. So for him to finally do the most awful thing and then have everything go to shit… Rough day for Stannis, y’all.
I’m racking my brain and I’m pretty sure there’s no story about Agamemnon where he’s not a complete and utter fuck, due to that whole house of Atreus thing hanging over him. Menelaus only made it out alive because of Helen. Stannis was never going to make out ok after burning his daughter. The original Iphigenia story was Artemis’s divine bluff- as a nature goddess and a goddess of the hunt, she hated that Troy was going to be sacked and there would be so much fruitless slaughter. So she set the price for going to Troy at the life of his oldest daughter. HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO CALL HER BLUFF because only an ASSHOLE would. Then an ASSHOLE did, so in conclusion murder murder murder bye Stannis.
Yeah, someone seriously misundersestimated how huge a shithead Agamemnon was.
Having to sacrifice Iphigenia was Agamemnon’s punishment for killing a stag sacred to the gods.
*cough*RenlyBaratheon*cough*
oof, SUBTLE
DAMN.
I feel like a lot of Greek mythology is basically “Ok, so here’s the premise, right? Ok, so now though, what if they’re all assholes? Let’s see what happens now.”
I cannot with the Cersei shame walk.
Like, there are lots of characters who are designed to be hated, and I get that she is one of them. But even fucking horrible Joffrey just got to die without some extended naked time shame excursion. Meanwhile, Jamie, (who has committed the same “sins” as Cersei, PLUS pushing a child out a window) is over in Dorne getting a hero treatment.
What. No. I just….
It’s sad that I actually feel trite complaining about sexual violence on Game of Thrones.
I am so mad though.
Yeah, that whole thing made me uncomfortable in the books, too. I get that Cersei is pretty — I actually definitely hate her! — but it seems somehow grosser that her whole character was created specifically to be humiliated in the maximum way possible.
It wasn’t really a gleeful depiction of her comeuppance though? Like even this character, who has been awful in just about every way possible, doesn’t deserve this. The whole tenor of the walk was “this is gross, and wrong, and no one deserves it and you better be careful because this lady is going to get her own pet murderous Frankenstein once y’all have given her all the justification she needs to burn this shit to the ground.”
Yeah, I don’t know, I guess so. I think it was grosser in the show than it was in the books — in the books, I felt (though this could be my imagination) that there was a repressed glee at the idea of Cersei getting what she deserved. Maybe it’s easier to feel that way when you can’t see the cow shit on her.
I think it was grosser in the show than in the books too, have been trying to sort out why. I think the show creators have a much bigger slant towards shocking viewers with violence/humiliation of women, so even when they do something that does actually push a character forward, it still seems grosser because of the larger context of the version. I do think D&D meant this to be a sympathetic moment for her, and I am totally for Cersei–who is still a terrible person–going full on Mad Aerys/BURN EVERYTHING mode.
I totally agree with lizlabz thought hat it’s bullshit that Jaime does pretty much all of the same things in books/show and he doesn’t get a very gender-specific punishment.
ETA: I needed to read more of the thread, tl;dr, what plspassthePinot said below too.
An interesting point about Jaime’s punishment. It’s not specifically gendered, but we do see how losing his hand and thus his treasured fighting ability causes an identity crisis for him that is definitely related to his inability to fulfill his gender role in the same way. The element of humiliation is definitely missing in what happens to Jaime, though.
You know, I had forgotten about how the books went the emotional/psychological impact of Jamie losing his sword hand, and thus a big aspect of his self-image and masculinity. I do think that was pretty gendered punishment for Jamie only because skillz with sword = self worth as man, but D&D only skimmed the surface of that when he was trying to practice fighting with his nondominant hand, and then kind of neutralized it when he managed to successfully fight people in Dorne.
Cersei shame walk is super bad. It didnt “work” for me, because Cersei never went full Mad King crazy in the show so it wasnt satisfying. Even her sucking water off the floor a few wks ago seemed HORRIBLE to me, bc her only show crimes are fornication and entrapping Margaery/ Loras, which fine, is BAD, but in this show there are also BOLTONS and her incest partner pushed a kid out of a window.
By not fully portraying her full violent/ crazy / paranoid rule of Kings Landing and the populaces growing intolerance of war, the entire ruling class and Lannister’s specifcally, her shame-walk seems really disproportional! Also because its a gendered punishment, even in BookPlot its supposed to feel WRONG. So in the show, where SO MUCH SEXUALIZED VIOLENCE and humiliation has been added, it pushes the entire arc way over the line. Bad.
The whole time/distance thing felt way off for me this season. Somehow the showrunners didn’t really care how long it took characters to move from place to place as long as they showed up at the right time. I could be remembering this wrong but didn’t Melisandre show up at the wall right after Davos asks Jon to get the wildlings to join Stannis’s army? Which is a conversation that I assume would have taken place pretty quickly after Davos arrive at Castle Black but he left like a day before Mel.
Really though! How did Littlefinger get from Winterfell to Kings Landing in like 1.5 episodes?! And why is he the only one in Westeros with a private jet?
And if he has a private jet why isn’t he back at Winterfell?? Why would you leave your key chess piece in the hands of a family who’s sigil is a flayed man? Assuming your network of spies hadn’t already told you they were monsters to begin with?
So re. Grey Worm and Missandei–yes that is absolutely ridiculous because why shouldn’t the people of Meereen (particularly the former ruling class) just go FULL COUP and just get rid of any and every foreign interlopers? Why would they listen to the two people who have effectively served as the muscle and the voice of their former enemy? Also, this idea that they’ll be the (pretty, pretty) faces of rule while Tyrion is the brains is kind of gross and weird from a racial optics standpoint. And I say this as someone who loves both Grey Worm and Missandei fantastic because I love how they’ve been cast and I enjoy Show!Tyrion wit and ennui. The fact that he loves playing (Sim)City Manager also warms the heart of this urban planning/policy nerd.
lol at Daario saying that the Unsullied are the only thing keeping the peace in Mereen. They are terrible at fighting and keeping the peace! Where is this evidence that they are at all effective?!
The Dorne subplot was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on television. Aside from the mangling of the book subplot, the writing was so bad and stilted. “You want a bad girl but you need the bad pussy.” What the eff IS that?
who wrote the Sand Snakes? That line was too stupid for Two and Half Men, never mind this show.
sorry, “good girl.” you get the gist.
I forget where, but there was some recap I read that basically said, “Think of all the people involved in you, the viewer, hearing that line of dialogue. Someone wrote that, someone said it, someone filmed it, someone edited the video…and apparently NO ONE AT ANY POINT was like ‘guys, maybe this sentence is embarrassing and we should take it out.'”
I enjoy Jason Concepcion’s writing about Game of Thrones for Grantland. From his latest:
A story from last year about Kit Harrington being paid through season 7. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/game-t… though it does say in the article an actor could still be killed off.
and this line which made me guffaw re: Jon Snow coming back from the dead:”And, of course, there’s always the Based LoL himself, R’hllor, the Lord of Light.”
This season was a narrative mess, just totally sloppy and not well thought out AT ALL, like, not even considering all the extra rape and shit they threw in for “funsies.”
I am especially mad about the Sand Snakes “revenge” plot BECAUSE THE WHOLE POINT OF THAT PLOT WAS THAT THEY DIDN’T WANT TO HURT MYRCELLA. And I know reviewers keep saying the Stannis plot was “Iphigenia” or w/e but honestly don’t think the GOT writers are that smart. They…barely understand the srouce material they’re trying to adapt half the time (now it’s more like 70% of the time).
Jake
June 15, 2015 at 3:09 pm
Yeah, she is the first girl I ever asked out so that could have something to do with it.
WHAT. KID, NO.
“Jake
June 15, 2015 at 3:16 pm
Thanks for your perspective. She actually transferred from another team but regardless I see your point. Point number 2 is correct but she did initiate some flirty conversation which I misconstrued. Full disclosure I don’t have good social skills.”
she did initiate some flirty conversation ohhhhh my yyyy go ddddd buddy I’m rooting for you to learn from this but you gotta take like 5 giant steps back
“She accidentally brushed my forearm with the back of her hand while handing me a copy of the company’s annual statement. My skin feels like it’s on fire where she touched me. For the first time in my life, I feel truly alive.”
“Jake/OP #2
June 15, 2015 at 9:45 pm
Thank you everyone for your feedback. I feel I can navigate the situation better now. Also, I am a guy if anyone is still wondering.”
NOPE NO ONE WAS WONDERING
One commenter (of many) mis-gendered him because the default at AAM is to refer to a poster as female, but of course Jakers had to rush to clear up any misunderstanding over his gender.
The best way to pass time at the Detroit airport is to grab a seat near the fountain, pretend you’re reading a book or messing with your phone, and watch people try to discreetly stick their hands in the fountain. Kids, obviously, but also a ton of adults who just can’t seem to resist.
I would totally do that. How can anyone resist such an amazing fountain? We have an attraction called Longwood Gardens near us which is a huuuuuugee former estate (thanks duPonts) that has been turned into an amazing garden/conservatory. It has a children’s garden with MANY water features. You have never seen such a load of happy wet children as these. The docents even have a stash of towels for the drying off of tiny soaked people.
Oh, I would totally join you splashing in the fountain. The funny thing is when people are like, “Don’t mind me, I’m just casually walking by this fountain, and I absentmindedly stuck my hand in it, and definitely didn’t mean to do that.” No, everyone knows you want to stick your hand in that fountain. Own it.
OK that would totally be me.
I’ve lived in Philly for two years and haven’t been to Longwood Gardens yet; you have just provided me with the perfect motivation to go.
I haven’t been to the Detroit airport in years (spent far too much time there as a kid dropping people off and picking people up) and now I want to go back for that fountain.
I love the Detroit airport, the fountain plus the weird tunnel with all of the sounds and lights make it fun for my kids. And me. Sometimes (around Christmas I think) they have a karaoke stage.
Between the fountain and the felafel, Detroit is my favorite airport for a long layover.
My cousins and I were obsessed with it when we were little. It is oddly mesmerizing.
How did this baseball story just get even better?
It would take more than a decade for him to confirm his “trip” to a Pittsburgh reporter working off a tip from a die-hard Pirates fan named David Lander — or “Squiggy” from Laverne & Shirley, as most of us know him.
The Dock Ellis story is so great, but also kind of sad–I read something about it awhile ago that quoted him saying, later in life after he had stopped doing drugs, that he really regretted having no memory of the greatest moment of his career.
There’s a great documentary on Dock Ellis on Netflix. It goes into what a cultural figure he was at the time, and he symbolized and led to a lot of really needed discussions/actions around both race and baseball & drug usage and baseball. Pitchers using amphetamines was apparently standard practice..
Yeah! I haven’t seen the documentary (adding it to the list) but I did read Ball Four last year, the book by the former pitcher, Jim Bouton, that the article mentions. It’s fascinating stuff.
ONE OF MY FAV BOOKS
“Right before the plane landed the guys were telling stories about how much we’d been getting on the road. And as we were getting ready to leave the plane and dash into the loving arms of our waiting wives, Pagliaroni said, very loud, ‘Okay, all you guys, act horny.'”
America’s pastime!
TOASTS. Last night I ordered wings for my shoes. WINGS for my SHOES.
In a week and a half, I am going to get to see my favorite band (The Weepies) live for the first time, and they have a line from one of my favorite songs “What can I compare you to/my favorite pair of shoes/maybe my bright red boots/if they had wings” and I bought a pair of red boots (okay, so, they’re oxblood rather than BRIGHT red, but this way I can wear them to work every day and no one cares) and now I will have WINGS to wear to the concert and I will tweet a picture of them and they often read their at-replies and MAYBE THE ACTUAL WEEPIES WILL SEE MY RED BOOTS WITH WINGS.
(okay, so, yes, there is a small part of me that hopes that the response is something like “that is so cool, here is a sekrit backstage pass so you can meet us after” but I’m excited even if that doesn’t happen)
1) I love this. 2) I am so jealous that you’re going to see The Weepies!
I HAVE SHOE WINGS AND THEY ARE THE GREATEST.
I was confused at first, and thought you meant wingtips. This is much awesomer.
Let me assure you that it can be very difficult to shop for the various shoe-wing options available in the world when one keeps getting wingtip shoes instead.
Please post that picture here. Please please please.
I will once they arrive!!!!!
I would like a link please to order my own shoe-wings. As a Gemini, the livery of Fleet-footed Mercury is my birthright.
I am buying a product called “shwings” from amazon (I thinks this one?), but I think you can get them other places too.
“Shwings”?! My inner Wayne approves.
The war on suburbia will now commence. First we shall blockade the Panera’s, then a swift strike against the municipal golf course. We have captured Michael Buble, and are holding him at the indoor kid playground by the Kohl’s. SURRENDER DOROTHY
When I was student teaching, one of my classmates had a Discipline Incident in her second-grade class where a kid was accused of having said “the b-word” on the playground. Upon investigation it turned out that the b-word in question was “bagina.”
I had a teacher in high school who had banned one word and one word only in her classroom: “bogus.”
In my 7th grade music teacher’s class, the only rule was that you were not allowed to play “Heart and Soul” on the piano.
I would 100% do this if I was a music teacher.
When I was in the 4th grade, our teacher did a lesson on “hurtful words and gestures” and asked us for examples of something you could do that would make someone else feel insulted or hurt. I said, “You could give someone the finger.” For some reason – I guess she wanted to make sure it was absolutely clear for everyone? – she pretended not to know what I meant. I said, “You know… the bad finger” and she asked me to show her. My teacher asked me to flip her off in class. I had to flip my teacher off in class at the tender age of 9, because somehow I had gotten in a situation where I would be misbehaving by notflipping her off, since she had ordered me to. The level of cognitive dissonance is something that I haven’t gotten over to this day.
This reminds me of the time in first grade where I got in trouble for accidentally flicking a kid off. I was in first grade, I had no idea what it meant. I had just gone to Disney World and wanted to show off my cool Mickey Mouse ring.
No, Miss Peters, I’m still not bitter about getting sent to the principal’s office twenty-three years later. Why do you ask?
One time, another elementary school teacher overheard only part of the discussion my classmate and I were having about astronomy. She completely misunderstood my innocent question, “What about Uranus?”
When my brother was about that age, we were on vacation with my grandparents and my brother got a cut on the back of his middle finger. My dad had a great time telling him “show Oma your owie! Now show Opa!” and watching him flip them off over and over.
My Favourite zen garden.
On Brett Barbre
O California! O mores!
wither went the water of your youth?
do the empty clouds your hopes betray?
Or are you simply blinded to the truth?
Suburban yards are dying by degrees
and money cannot cause your grass to grow
drought brings every moron to their knees
despite whatever ombudsman they know
So you think that all your wealth entitles
you to waste the water as you will
and then you treat us to your rude recitals
because you paid on time your water bill
I think perhaps your brains are even drier
than the local reservoirs have been
don’t blame us when your houses are a-fire
and there’s nothing left but dirt for firemen.
You are ON FIRE. I’ll even save some water for you, should you need putting out.
get the standards
WE RIDE TO A JUST AND EQUITABLE DIVISION OF NATURAL RESOURCES BASED ON NEED NOT CAPITAL
Is that Socialism?! Watch out, it’s SOCIALISM over here!!!
Actually I love socialism.
The fact that my favorite website The Toast loves my other favorite website AAM is either a sign that I’m entering a singularity or else just that I’m in the right place.
Same.
I always have a weird squee moment when I see someone or somewhere I love post stuff from another place I love.
I usually get a thrill of exhilaration in hopes that residual coolness might rub off on me, if I like the things people I think are hella cool like.
Alas, hasn’t worked yet.
I am also here to profess love for Alison Green and her site. Good advice, good stories, lots of tips on winning the rigged game of modern American capitalism. I recommend it to everyone.
The link to Ask A Manager has reminded me: Was there ever a follow-up to the Office Sex Club letter? Did the letter writer at least BURN THE COUCH that his employees were fucking on?
YES PLEASE I need closure on that story
No update yet! I’m dying to know what happened there.
That letter was beautiful. “Am I allowed to tell my employees to stop having sex in the office if they’re only having sex during their mandated breaks? I don’t feel comfortable dictating what they can and can’t do when they’re off the clock!”
Please link me to the Office Sex Club letter because I need to know more.
http://www.askamanager.org/2015/04/i-walked-in-on…
It is even more ridiculous than you might imagine.
WHAT IN THE FRESH HELL IS THAT.
I can only imagine what kind of a pushover manager that person must be, to let that frathouse nonsense take place AT WORK.
“Well if they have no water, then let them eat cake.” -Rancho Santa Fe Residents
“Do not become addicted to water; it will take hold of you and you will resent its absence.” -Imortan Freaking Joe
Oh God. Of course it’s RSF.
I just looked up the words “Santa Fe” to find out what they mean, and am disappointed to discover it means “holy faith”. I was hoping for “sacred (aka cleansing) fire”.
“Let them drink champagne.”
The only good thing about this is how my N. Californian relatives will reconcile their fervent if inconsistent hatred of government intervention and their conflicting hatred of all the So Cal people Stealing Their Water.
I LOVE Ask a Manager. I thought these two recent q’s and subsequent comment sections were particularly juicy:
http://www.askamanager.org/2015/03/should-i-take-… http://www.askamanager.org/2015/06/i-racked-up-20…
And if any Toasts work in nonprofits, I highly recommend the courses her training center offers: http://www.managementcenter.org/trainings/
I had seen the corporate card one and stressed appropriately. But the UoP one is a whole ‘nother level of “vitriolic LW in the comments.” I felt really bad for LW after the letter! But geez, by going ape in the comments you are not convincing anyone that it’s your alma mater that’s keeping you from getting hired…
It made me so sad because her frustration was just palpable. But…if you don’t want people answering “yes” then why ask whether you should take your school off your resume?
The credit card guy aaaaahhhhhhhhhh. How has the company not noticed?!?!
I KNOW
I KNOW
god I thought the supporting the right-to-die line was supposed to be a direct response to the question above it and I thought, that is a little cold, even for the Toast. cold but fair.
I had that same thought and was then a little disappointed.
Oh man, that Ask A Manager question has reminded me about the greatest cliffhanger of all time: WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE WORK SEX CLUB?!?!?!?! I NEED TO KNOW BC REASONS
quack
That’s a really good babysitter.
Ok another non-link roundup sanctioned link, but I cannot handle this alone. Rachel Dolezal has doubled down: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/rachel-d…
Of all the wrongheaded and insensitive things she says, this one bugs me the most: ““He said ‘you’re my real mom’ and for that to be something that is plausible, I certainly can’t be seen as white and be Izaiah’s mom,” Dolezal said.” That’s just so frustratingly illogical. It’s like a painting hung slightly askew and I cannot adjust it, so it’s just boring into my soul. I feel like she owes an apology to everyone.
Uggghhhh, don’t bring the kid into it. Cripes.
Plus, wasn’t he her adoptive brother, who means his actual legal mom is white and seen as white? I mean, transracial adoption: it’s a thing!
It really just feels like another way of saying “I used this kid as a prop so other people would believe my lies.” YOU AREN’T FOOLING ANYONE RACHEL.
I feel like she owes an apology to everyone.
Hell, I’d settle for her just shutting her pie hole already. JFC, woman, you’ve done enough damage.
I miss Stephen so so so much.
He will come again, in all his glory.
Adding in another very interesting article on the subject: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/rache…
Oh gosh, I saw an NPR piece on the interview where she was like “I identify as black.” Girl. You cannot. Nope. No.
She also sued her university for discrimination against her as – wait for it – a white woman. She claimed that African American students were favored over her.
Lady just can’t decide how she identifies but she is very certain she’s being oppressed.
I’m still kind of holding out hope that she didn’t actual sue Howard as a white woman. I have zero basis for this, other than that it really is the worst part of the entire thing. (other than maybe faking hate crimes and racist threats)
The Smoking Gun has the documents but I will not link so you can still believe in the inherent goodness of humanity.
thank you
Holy moley. You really can’t make this stuff up…
And there goes the very last shred of my benefit of the doubt, fluttering out the window.
You CAN have a kid of a different race? Adopting a child, having a child with a partner who is not the same race as you, sperm/egg donation from a donor of a different race… probably other ways my childless self doesn’t know about. Like this is not uncommon, in fact, it happens A LOT. And those parents probably have to learn how to parent a kid that is a different race, what that means for how the world views that kid, but it doesn’t change the PARENT’S RACE.
Yes, that’s what boggled my mind about that statement.
There’s got to be a mental illness component to this whole thing, right?
what has every white parent who has a kid with a black partner ever done!?The kid can and often does identify as black and the parent is still white! C’mon. She’s too smart to believe that nonsense, right?
Wrongheaded and insensitive: agreed 100%. Even in Spokane I don’t think most people would care why her son didn’t look like her. But (and I feel like I shouldn’t add to the pile of white opinions on this) I went to EWU and heard a lecture from her about her artwork in probably 2008. I remember her talking about her religious family and abuse and I think this is more a story about one woman who was raised in an abusive home with adopted black siblings than the first story of many white people who want to be black. The court case against her biological brother and the fact that the man she identified as her dad didn’t have anything bad to say about her make me really uncomfortable with all the mocking. Obviously I disagree with her actions and a lot of her statements but I see a lot of things I can understand in a person who was in an abusive religious family.
I’m putting this here because it isn’t show related ,but Game of Thrones book related. I read the excerpt from Sansa’s POV on GRRM’s website and now I’m back to being really concerned about the chances of him finishing the series in 2 more books. Seriously, what are the odds that he wraps up all these storylines in 2 books?
Waiting another 15 years for 3 more books…. is not something I relish. I would never ever ever mention this directly to GRRM, he does what he wants, but still.
I’m not a book reader, but I empathize with people who are dismayed at the amount of time it’s taking to finish this series. ASoIaF seems to be one of the worst offenders, time-wise. I’m waiting on a couple series that haven’t had new books written since the 90s or early 2000s and the authors keep saying they “will” but then they back down to “might” and then they say they’re “working on the draft!! :)” but then 5 years pass and no news, and it’s not so much infuriating as just…. exhausting, and you wonder how long you’re going to be trapped in the mental cycle of remembering and feeling hopeful and checking and being disappointed every 6 months or so. It’s a roller coaster ride, but not the good kind. So I feel ya.
I strongly believe authors should write what they want and if GRRM never finishes the series I’ll have to deal with it. He doesn’t owe me/ us anything. (You’re not saying any of that, but plenty of people do)
But as you put it well, it’s frustrating to wait so long. It’s a testament to the authors’ abilities to make us so anxious.
My daughter would have jumped in that fountain too. It’s irresistible! It looks like running through the sprinklers.
Maybe we could have a thread sometime of outrageous things kids do to embarrass their parents, because I HAVE STORIES that rival the sprinkler fountain incident.
My best friend (who is now an actress) used to wail loudly in grocery stores, “MOMMY, WHY DO YOU BEAT ME?” when she was five or so.
(I hasten to add that her mother was a lovely person who never so much as laid a finger on her).
Once, when my sister was about 7, my mom tried to feed her meatloaf and my sister ran to the windows, shouting “HELP SHE’S TRYING TO POISON ME HELP!!” One of our neighbors actually did call the cops, and when they showed up my mom was so frustrated that she told my sister to go with them – “YOU DON’T WANNA EAT MY DINNER, YOU CAN GO WITH THE POLICE!” My sister chickened out and begged to stay home.
My other sister, when she was a toddler, used to love McDonald’s hamburgers, but plain – no toppings at all. So once while my mom was ordering in the drive thru, my baby sister started yelling from the back seat “I JUST WANT THE COW! I JUST WANT THE COW!”
The ‘eye contact’ AaM letter gave me the creeps.
The Detroit airport is the best airport, and that fountain is at least 1/3 of the reason why.
Have you ever been to Denver International? It is a great airport and wikipedia hole.
That’s a good one too! It’s pine-scented inside, which is a nice touch.
Haha, we had a mini-meetup in Seattle last night and spent like half an hour talking about DIA, including the demon horse and that time the roof ripped because of snow.
I’m sad I wasn’t there! How about the crazy art, and the secret baggage tunnels/headquarters of a NWO
I was going to ask “How did I miss the awesome fountain when I was in the Detroit airport?” Then I remembered that the Detroit airport has a tunnel between concourses with LED-lighted walls that change color in time to music. And I was there before Christmas, so the whole tunnel was synced to Trans-Siberian Orchestra music. And this tunnel has moving sidewalks.
I maaay have spent my entire wait riding back and forth on the moving sidewalks and watching the light show.
I have only been in the Detroit airport once, but once I went through that tunnel, I regretted all the time I spent connecting through other airports when I could’ve gone through Detroit and seen the tunnel. It’s so cool!
Oh my god, that tunnel. The one and only time I experienced that tunnel, my fiancee and I had just gotten off a redeye and had to go through it to get to our connecting flight. It was…an experience.
Somehow I usually end up flying out of the north terminal from DTW which is not connected to the main terminal. It has no tunnel, it has no fountain, and it’s terrible in every way except for the short TSA lines.
That sounds amazing!
AS YOU DO
The number of likes on everyone’s comments in this thread right now is 5-4-3-2-1, and that’s really satisfying.
Shit, I just ruined it.
Solid life choices.
Do you feel like gouging your eyes out today? Read an insiders account of pedophiles online!
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1760-…
(I’m a bit sorry for sharing thing, but this fucking thing is like the ring, I need to make other people see it. Its one thing knowing that there are really sick people in the world, but seeing how they justify it for themselves, fuuuccckkk. That shit is going to haunt me.)
Why did your description make me click on the link?
What does this say about me as a person?
D:
Update: I got as far as the screenshot of the pedophile forum, glanced over at my little dude in his crib, got simultaneously choked up and nauseated, and shut the browser window. So.
Definitely an appropriate response. I couldn’t have read it if I had kids.
The thing about the couple that met and married specifically to have their own children ‘to raise pedo’. No. nononononononono. I don’t normally get capslock with actual rage, BUT THESE PEOPLE NEED TO FUCK OFF AND DIE.
NONONONONONONO
Hey, that’s where I got to right before I opened this tab back up to comment on that part specifically because the world is just a terrible place and we should just burn it all down!
Well… I…. read it. So.
Ugh.
I’ll read it later but I wanted to say that when I had to take my “predator awareness training” to work with kids in the Catholic Church (guys.), the curriculum they used had interviews with actual pedophiles and it was so incredibly disturbing how they justified these actions, convincing themselves that these were reciprocal relationships, they weren’t hurting anyone, it was so awful. Not my favorite day of work-related training.
In the article she talks about the two kinds of predators she encountered, the ones who believed that they were in relationships with these children and that it was just another kind of sexual orientation and the kids like it (AHHH. Fuck no.), they’re the ones encouraging others to introduce kids they know to the idea so that they are open to a relationship (aka grooming.) and then there are the guys that are totally open and honest about the fact that they enjoy raping little kids. I actually can’t. Burn it. Burn it with fire.
“raise our kid pedo”
::sobs in the shower forever::
There needs to be a word for that particular nauseous rage that sits in your stomach like a giant hairball and makes you want to vomit bees and punching.
Woah the right to die article is really intense. The idea that this kind of legislation is a “secular response to a secularizing culture” is really interesting to me. Especially this – “What is life worth when there is no God?”
I sat for a moment at my desk to think about that, since I am an atheist and have never bothered to ask myself that question because to me the answer is obvious. Everything. Life is worth everything in the whole entire universe and whatever else is beyond. I am sad, I guess, that so many people struggle with that question.
Not really sure what the point of this comment is, aside from just registering my (strong) reaction to the piece. Great link roundup!!
I think about that sometimes too. I believe that we live in a universe without a god whether we like it or not. And I believe that many people throughout the ages have lived extraordinary lives while holding that same belief, and have contributed to civilization and enjoyed loving and supportive relationships with others and found pleasure in life. I try to be one of those people.
It makes me sad too, to read about people who don’t think their lives would be worth living without the promise of an afterlife. It makes me wonder if the kind of serious existential suffering that the article talks about isn’t more common than we usually think.
Yes. Yes it is. I have anxiety–diagnosed, in-therapy-for-it anxiety. The idea that I’ve only got one shot at success and happiness in life terrifies me, however much proof there is for it. It keeps me up at night worrying and makes me hesitate to make any decision for fear that it’ll be the wrong one. If someone uses religion as a coping mechanism and doesn’t hurt anyone with their beliefs, I can understand that. (My coping mechanism is to be a timid fence-sitting agnostic, although I’ll admit that part of my disproportionate hostility toward the atheist movement comes from the fact that I was emotionally abused by a hardcore evangelical atheist.)
I’m seconding you and GreenGrasses. The value of life has always seemed inherent to me. It is its own value.
It makes me wonder if the kind of serious existential suffering that the article talks about isn’t more common than we usually think.
YES. I wish that we as a culture were better at talking about death. In the article, that one philosopher was so flippant about the idea of being afraid of dying, and that makes me a bit angry. I think it’s so natural and logical to be afraid to die! I think that most people feel that way and we all think that everyone else is just cool with it. No! We would all get along a whole lot better, I think, if we admitted how scary it is. I envy and am confused by people who say they aren’t afraid to die, so those kinds of conversations would be really valuable too.
Oddly, the thing I most remember about the longform MarsOne article that was posted here ages ago was that the author spent a lot of time really digging into the human proclivity for exploration. I think the author of that piece correctly surmised that we all want a way to live forever, and we are all chasing something that validates us even after death. He discussed his own fears, and talked about how the thought of a one-way trip to Mars brings on an existential panic. That kind of analysis and honesty in journalism is incredible.
It really is a fascinating article.
I also grew up in a family of (very left-wing) atheists, and I also took it very much for granted that there was no God but plenty of meaning to my individual life. I didn’t realize what a new concept that was to a lot of people until I went to college and took an evolutionary biology class. That professor was one of my favorites. He did a slide show at the end of the year (showing photos of his parents, grandparents, kids, etc.), and explained that, even though he didn’t think there was a God or any “inherent” reason/ purpose to life, that he nonetheless had plenty of personal meaning in his own life.
Those “non-confessional ethics” classes described in the article (kind of an Orwellian name, but whatever) are really interesting. I think that would be fairly mind-blowing to a lot of the US population.
It’s interesting how, even though the Flemish culture has shaken off a lot of strictures of Catholicism and embraced humanism, there’s still a prevailing cultural attitude (“You should keep all of your feelings bottled up”) that seems to have a major detrimental effect on their mental health. Combined with their non-existent outpatient services for mental health, it’s no wonder that assisted suicide for mental illnesses is such an issue.
Was your professor presenting the slideshows in response to questions about the meaning of life or was he trying to…convert you all to atheism? I’m not trying to be antagonistic, I’m honestly just curious, because it seems like a very personal and not-science-related thing to do in a science class.
It wasn’t advertised as a straight-up science class– it was also about the historical/ cultural/ philosophical aspects of evolutionary theory (and it was crosslisted with the philosophy dept., etc.) I definitely wouldn’t describe it as meant to convert anybody. It was just a little addendum about his own points of view, in response to students who asked about it.
At the beginning of the year, he also did a survey of the class (i.e., to see how many people believed in evolution, how many in creationism, or in some combination of both), and then another at the end to see if anyone’s views had changed over the course of the class. It was quite interesting.
I’d also venture to say if I saw such a thing, I wouldn’t see it as mutually exclusive — you can believe that the afterlife gives your life meaning but also find a lot of personal meaning in family, accomplishments, etc. I don’t think you *have* to shake off religion in order to realize life itself can have its own meaning? But that’s coming from an atheist.
As a theist, I agree–although I am often surprised what other people who ostensibly share my beliefs think about the larger questions in life, so I may not be the best spokesperson. But I think life absolutely has meaning separate from how it relates to us getting to the afterlife. Personally, I still think of it as tied to divinity (the whole idea of God creating us for a purpose), but I know everyone can find personal meaning in life whether or not they believe God is behind it.
OMG that ask a manager last letter. “Who takes calls from work on the weekends?” I mean, not receptionists, usually, because that seems to be stretching it QUITE A BIT. But I am neither a doctor nor a business owner and I work every darn weekend.
Hm, I basically refuse to take calls or check emails after work hours. I stay in the office until I’m done (which could be quite late), and when I leave, I’m off the clock. I have a deep resentment for the idea that I should work 8:30-5:00 (I don’t take a lunch break), then use my “free time” to do work when I won’t be compensated for it. I mean, I dunno, sometimes I wonder if I’d be farther along in my career if I worked 24/7, but after a few years at this company, I’ve come to conclusion that I’ll be working myself to death for nothing. So I don’t.
Yeah, from what I’ve heard from people who’ve been working a few decades, rarely is it worth it to make a practice of sacrificing your personal time for any one company. Even if your boss loves you, things happen and you may be out of a job regardless. And I don’t believe anyone on their deathbed wishes they’d spent more time working. Life is too damn short not to enjoy things outside of work, which already takes all your daylight hours five days a week for years and years and years. Ugh.
That’s what I do as well. At my first job, my boss (who had been at the company for 20 years) was very, very firm that we should never work weekends. Something along the lines of, “Once you make an exception for one person, everyone will start expecting that.” I have worked from home in the evenings a few times when there was no other option, but I am sticking with my “no weekends” policy, even if that’s not the norm in this new company.
Do you get paid for your time, though??
I work at a law firm, so I’m not hourly, but I make enough money (and I like my job enough) that it’s worthwhile.
Ah well, that’s what matters!
The “liking the job” part is really, really the key.
——————————————–
I’m hourly (so non-exempt) and was given a phone to take calls/texts/check emails from team members during times when I’m not in the office. I understand it feels normal to the salaried people I work with to be continuously responding to emails and firing things off while they go about their lives, but they’re being paid for that time, and I’m not. I have taken a strict personal policy of never answering any text or email that can’t be answered in fewer than 10 words when I’m not clocked in, and I’m not going to clock in for less than 15 minutes of work. My phone hasn’t gotten as much use as my supervisor probably thought it would when she requested it for me, but I don’t care. (And the recent email HR sent around reminding everyone in stern language that if hourly employees check emails when they’re out of the office, they HAVE to clock in and out, just reinforces my conviction.)
Oh yeah, for an hourly employee I would not want to do that unless they were clocking in. But as a salaried person it’s part of my job, and is for many people I know (not just law firm lawyers).
Most people’s salaries don’t compensate them enough for that though. Even if I were making a salary, it would have to be PRETTY DARN GOOD to be working during my free time. (Which I need for my mental health.)
I’m a software engineer, and part of my job is being oncall on weekends (though not every weekend, and we’re compensated specifically for it.) It’s not crazy! It happens to be part of my job. But it’s absurd for a receptionist to be sure.
(rubs hands together) Okay, who wants to talk about physician-assisted suicide??
** crickets **
I’m completely in favor of assisted suicide laws, but the New Yorker piece does certainly suggest that there need to be better legal safeguards in place when dealing with depression and other mental illnesses.
I can certainly accept that some people have intractable mental illnesses that make their lives miserable, to the point where allowing them to end their own lives peacefully is a merciful thing. However, it does seem like there should be better protections for the mentally ill than exist in Belgium– to make sure that people aren’t making hasty decisions at their lowest points when their illnesses could be treatable. (For instance, requiring that they’ve tried and failed conventional treatments like therapy, antidepressants, ECT, etc., for X number of months or years first).
The article points out that outpatient mental health treatment in Belgium is pretty abysmal, and that most patients with long-term conditions end up being institutionalized. Under those circumstances, it seems rather ridiculous to prioritize assisted suicide for mental illness without trying to improve the mental health system at the same time. Things are maybe slightly better in the US, in some respects, but we still have a long way to go in improving outpatient mental health care.
That being said, the Belgian system has a number of features I very much approve of (e.g., allowing assisted suicide for people with dementia, as long as they’ve specified their wishes in advance), which would be generally be considered questionable here in the US.
Straight away I thought that compulsory contacting of next of kin/family should be in place, considering that there were at least two cases of Children discovering that their parent had decided on this course of action, and gone through with it (Which is, I imagine, not a quick process), without the childrens knowledge until after the fact.
I mean obviously you don’t want to potentially give abusers control over this choice for someone, but a phonecall during the process couldn’t hurt.
Yeah, notifying next of kin seems very reasonable to me.
Even if they aren’t given a “deciding vote”, as it were, having their input could be very useful. Especially if the person’s mental health and competence are in question.
I can understand the patient having a mind set of ‘don’t bother them’ or ‘don’t tell them they’ll only try and talk me out of it’ but in those situations the doctor should have to balance what is right and fair for the family and what is a result of the patients illness (I know from experience what people will end up doing because they don’t want to ‘bother’ anyone). There was a comment in the article where one of the paitents didn’t want to contact her family because they’d talk her out of it and she wouldn’t go through with it, that’s some serious shit right there, call the family!!!!
Its a very interesting perspective from another culture, who obviously have very different attitudes to death, than the religious pearl clutching of the US/UK when it comes to death and suicide. But whenever anyone brings out the slippery slope argument, for anything, my position is always that this is exactly what regulation and a legal framework are there for. Yes assisted suicide is legal, but here is the criteria and oversight that will protect and help vulnerable people.
I think that if people want to die, and they’re making that decision from a clear competent place, without pressure (from themselves or other people) then it is their choice. But in this instance it seems mentally ill people are using it as an morally acceptable form of suicide, and I have to wonder why they are attracted to the assisted method; frankly if you want to die, there’s ways to do it yourself, and most of these anecdotes seems to be of physically capable people (where-as classic cases of assisted suicide would have involved someone incapable of doing themselves), so why do they feel the need to go through this process? Is it to feel that their choice is validated or somehow ‘Right’? I have no idea, but I’d say it needs some research.
cause it makes a huge goddamn mess for everyone when you jump in front of a train/blow your brains out in your apartment and are found weeks later when the smell pervades the building, and unless that’s really what you’re after why go out making everyone miserable when competent people who won’t be taken surprise by a corpse or fuck up and leave you merely permanently disabled and in pain can get you what you want through an ordered process
I don’t know however, how biased the article is. It seems a bit too tailored to rile up our US/UK sensibilities
I think one of the more interesting aspects of the Oregon and Washington laws is how little practical effect they have had! At least as far as I understand it, not that many people use them, over many years there have zero reports of abuse, and there’s little evidence of people moving to Oregon or Washington just to take advantage of the law. I think it’s interesting because so often people trot out a parade of horribles to oppose proposals of all sorts, and here’s a place where opponents did that but the horribles clearly never came to pass.
But this may be rather dependent on culture. Like, cultural anxiety about assisted suicide in the U.S. actually prevents the more troublesome aspects from manifesting, if the anxiety is overcome enough to pass a law permitting it.
Very true! There seem to be adequate legal safeguards in those laws to make sure that people aren’t being unduly pressured (by relatives, etc.) I’m not particularly surprised that those “slippery slope” arguments haven’t come to pass in real life.
I suspect that, for a lot of people, just knowing the option exists may make living with difficult conditions more tolerable. (Even if they ultimately decide not to take advantage of it).
Yep, in Oregon the law went into effect in 1997, 1327 people total have had prescriptions written, and only 859 actually used them. Last year there was a high profile case of Brittany Maynard (an advocate of right to die who had brain cancer) who moved to Oregon to take advantage of the law, but overall that seems rare.
Yeah, that guy who described the law as “perfect” and insisted that there were no questionable cases in the history of the law is waving aaaaaaaaaaall sorts of red flags. Law is never, ever perfect, and insisting it is as a way of justifying lethal actions is alarming.
I’m coming at this from a perspective of being a health care attorney in the US. (I’ve been working in the Medicare field for several years, have a fair bit of experience with aging and end-of-life issues, and have volunteered as a nursing home ombudsman).
In the US, the ethical issues surrounding legal competence to make health care decisions (e.g., if you’re aging and slipping into dementia, if you’re clinically depressed, etc.) are *so* complex, it just blows my mind to see them completely written off like that.
It seems like there must be a healthier middle ground somewhere between what’s described in Belgium, and the “You-must-preserve-life-at-any-costs” religious mentality that’s so prevalent in parts of the US.
Seriously! I had to re-read that section a few times because my brain couldn’t grasp someone being so blithe about the law that allows physicians to kill people. Combine that attitude with a system with terrible mental health care and a lack of palliative care, and….. eurgh, that is a really awful situation.
Quebec is currently considering legalizing assisted suicide, and I hope the conversation here can be more measured and reasonable than it is elsewhere.
What shocked me most about the case of Belgium was how flip all the euthanasia “cowboys” (an apt term used by one of the people interviewed in the article) were about the issue of whether one can choose to die. Exactly as you said– it doesn’t seem like a sanctimonious thing, “to make sure that people aren’t making hasty decisions at their lowest points when their illnesses could be treatable.” That just seems reasonable.
I’m getting through that article really slowly. I have a lot of personal connection to the issue. Like Nicole, I support right-to-die legislation because of bodily autonomy, but like any other post-mortem legal issue, decisions about it should be made when sound of mind, well in advance, and with sufficient oversight. If we can prevent most abuse of material wills, why can’t the same kinds of safeguards be used for choice of death?
ETA: Also, what did people make of the sort of ghoulish, “donate your body to the doctor who killed you” situations? Like… red, red flag.
That piece was pretty disturbing, particularly given that it seems like these doctors don’t factor in the possibility that a person who wants to die during a period of grief will eventually recover. At the very least there should be a rule that you can’t access euthanasia for psychological distress within 2 years of a divorce/traumatic event or the death of a loved one.
We have a shopping center here with a fountain like that, but playing in it is encouraged. It’s open air, and there’s all these benches and seats for parents to watch their kids. I’ve taken my kids there specifically so they could play in the fountain, and I did NO shopping. Is it … is it not like that elsewhere?
yes! Yet the askers often forget that their question is asking someone else to do emotional labor, to care for them (and the person may or may not want to actually assume that burden). I have watched older men whose jobs are in a nurturing profession draw the line at how far they will go, and it was pretty illuminating in getting me to draw the line more often too. I agree – people should pay attention to nonverbal behavior, or else just hold the uncertainty about others' minds and just try to behave well without necessarily knowing, since it's not like any of us have a right to truly know what others are thinking — that's part of why rules of politeness exist, so we can all keep that realm of privacy to ourselves and still function in society!
[The rest of my comment I edited out because I misread your comment for a sec and thought I had offended you by sounding like I was giving you advice! whoops].
WHAT IN THE FRESH HELL IS THAT.
I can only imagine what kind of a pushover manager that person must be, to let that frathouse nonsense take place AT WORK.
No offense taken at all! But I definitely appreciate that Toasties are people who generally think about these things. 🙂
I work a charity canvassing job, and one of my co-workers recently told me that at the end of the day- when she was alone in our booth, as my shift had ended a few hours earlier- she called out to one dude, and he came over and started demanding that she give him her number. When she informed him that she did not want his number, he said "so what, you just talked to me because it's your job?"
YES
THAT IS EXACTLY WHY SHE TALKED TO YOU, SIR