How some well-meaning nonprofits perpetuate poverty:
We all began speaking in her language: protective factors, asset based organizing, personal resilience. We started to absorb this woman’s idea that changing people’s behavior was the solution to their problems, which meant absorbing the idea that people’s behavior was thesource of their problems. But I knew at the core of me this was false. The problem had never been that I didn’t know the right number to call. It’s a lack of resources that produces a lack of resilience, not the other way around.
But the work of the initiative said otherwise. This is what we did: we gathered residents in the community and pointed out what their individual and community assets were. Nothing else. We didn’t provide services, or even find a way to coordinate between the different service providers.
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On having relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis:
The illness touches the body and the brain. It undermines the bridge between them. The nature of this relationship, not to mention the unpredictability with which MS works its nasty magic, also brings the mind itself into play, however, and the mind can cause all kinds of additional trouble. I should remember the body because physical problems, although frightening, allow me to give this wayward collection of symptoms a kind of shape – and because everything beyond the body involves the tricky intrusion of judgement. I have had MS for a little over a year and this has been the surprising, sometimes embarrassing challenge in my particular case: where does the disease end and where do I begin? What is the illness and what is just my maddening response to it?
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On the other hand, Seek hadn’t foreseen the emotional landscape she found herself in after adoption. The huge amount of variation between adoptions, and the gamble of entering an unenforceable agreement, involving profoundly complex human relationships, makes it almost impossible to plan for how the aftermath of an adoption will feel. After her son was born, she agonized over her choice, angering her ex-boyfriend and family, and weeping with the prospective adoptive mother, Paula, over the old zero-sum game of adoption, when two families love a child, but only one party “wins.” With characteristic beauty, Seek writes, “We stood like tired boxers, clinging to each other to stop the beating. I could end her suffering, some of it, but only at my own expense.” In the end, as we know, she lets her son go. And in so doing, she becomes a member of the sad club of birthmothers, invisible “collateral damage” in a world where adoption is thought of primarily as “a means of getting children … not [losing] them.” Though she’d decided on adoption to protect the future she planned for herself, her new motherhood convinces her immediately that she’s made a mistake. “I wished I hadn’t made such good plans,” she writes.
*
Here is a fine review of TNC’s new book, and another one, and here is a person who has not read it, but imagines he will like it less than you do. And then we all made fun of the third person on Twitter and it was the MOST fun bc he didn’t think white dude book list was funny but it was sooooooooooooooooooooo funny!
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lol this guy:
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We will shortly be featuring an interview with Sarah Jeong on her new book, The Internet of Garbage, but here is something to tide you over:
So much of the Internet is garbage, and much of its infrastructure and many man-hours are devoted to taking out the garbage. For the most part, this labor is hidden from plain sight. But in recent years, the garbage disposal has broken down. The social media companies have a harassment problem, the pundits have declared.
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Two interesting and thoughtful pieces in The Advocate! This one is about the intersection of sex work and queer liberation, and this other one is about whether there is truly a unified trans movement:
Other trans people, however — those who did not benefit from such privilege — are not only in need of much more, they are dying from a lack of it.The trans movement isn’t just a convenient narrative, it is a dangerous lie.There isn’t a trans movement, or a trans community, but rather multiple movements and communities, divided not only by race and class but also distinct histories, leaders, resources, and needs. There are of course some goals, challenges, and victories shared by all. And though there are many exceptions, the lived experiences of most trans people fall into broad camps.
ssssshhhh you’re disturbing the whales:
In fact, Parks discovered, modern North Atlantic right whales have shifted their calls up an entire octave over the past half century or so, in an attempt to be heard over the unending, and steadily growing, low-frequency drone of commercial shipping. Where right-whale song once carried 20 to 100 miles, today those calls travel only five miles before dissolving into the din. Under the right conditions, fin- and blue‑whale song can carry thousands of miles, as Clark realised while listening in on the oceans using the US Navy’s global submarine detection network. He was stunned to hear a blue whale singer on the Grand Banks of Canada all the way from Puerto Rico, 1,600 miles away. However, it’s an open question whether these performers are actually trying to be heard by their audiences across the ocean.
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The Nib has a Kickstarter (I backed it):
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
guys guys guys that dude posted a follow-up piece to the “internet storm of controversy” he caused.
Might I recommend playing “Dust In Wind” in the background while reading such gems as: “Some people say that they’re all making fun of me. But they always were. Some things don’t change.” *sigh* *tilts cowboy hat into shitstorm of his own making and stares out into middle distance*
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/07/15/i-still-like-…
I mean, it is super easy to make fun of a guy whose major output is comments on Gawker.
what the hell is his poiiiiiint
“ok well I like coates now but not as much as the people who, like, fake-like him cya”
“I liked him before they liked him, before it was even cool, so yeah.” Maybe don’t say ill-considered things in public and you’ll experience less blow back?. But what do I know, I don’t even comment on Gawker.
His point is, as always, [BONERS].
Heh. That is always going to be my first and strongest association with him– “Oh, he’s boner Freddy. How embarrassing for him.”
Is he always so wrong? Never mind, I don’t care enough to go to his website and check.
That man is just simmering in the juices of his own jealousy.
Soon he’ll be tender and ready to eat.
I bet he’ll taste bitter as fuck though.
Maybe I will cook him in grapefruit juice and a touch of fish sauce, and serve him with a dusting of parmesan and some walnuts–if it works for kale, then I’m sure it will work on his bitter flesh.
Wait what is this kale recipe???
It’s less a recipe than something Mr. Ada improvised/copied from a restaurant. Basically: blanch a bunch kale and then saute a minced garlic clove or so in olive oil before adding the drained kale. You can add a few red pepper flakes, if that is your bag. When the kale has cooked a bit, add a little bit of fish sauce (1/2 or 1 tsp, ish) and a couple tablespoons of grapefruit juice and some zested rind (orange also works OK). Once you’re done, add in a handful of toasted walnuts and once you have it plated/in a bowl finely grate some parmesan over the top.
It’s the perfect balance of things: bitter, sweet, sour, salty, umami, spicy. I’m also ok with not blanching it first, depending on how tough the particular kale is. If you julienne it first , you don’t really need the blanching no matter how tough.
This really does sound delicious.
This morning while I was brushing my teeth, I was thinking about Sady Doyle’s Freddie [BONERS] piece and idly wondering what Freddie was up to these days. And LO.
The best thing about his recent nonsense is that it led me to his beatdown on TigerBeatdown, and now I follow Sady Doyle on Twitter and everything is wonderful.
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/09/why-tiger-bea…
Beautiful!
“Shut the fuck up and let the big girls talk. Because we know way more about this than you. And every time you want to pitch in with an observation? Shut the fuck up a little bit harder.”
“The first is that I am never, ever, EVER going to fuck you, and Amanda has had a boyfriend for approximately forever as I understand it, and I have a boyfriend TOO but would STILL avoid fucking you were that not the case, so you REALLY don’t need to worry about how this theoretical feminist date of ours might go. It would always end with you not getting fucked, is the answer.”
“FREDDIE’S BONERS: THE MOST OPPRESSED BONERS OF OUR TIME.”
BEAUTIFUL.
Does anyone take this person seriously? And if so, why?
He does. He takes himself very seriously. Why? Because that’s all he has. There is nothing of substance in his life. Just his constipated efforts to believe in these fragile “masculine” constructs.
Just one of those guys who have never learned to shut up. I used to be one of those guys! If I had an opinion, the world had to hear it. It’s freeing to let go of that.
Thaaaank you. Seriously! THIS. I hate how our culture socializes and enables boys and men to insert (hmm) any thought or opinion or experience that comes to mind into any interaction, regardless of context or appropriateness or productiveness, and obviously oblivious to whether anyone there could be reasonably expected to really give a shit about whatever they are saying at that moment.
Okay long-winded sentence. My weakness.
And it’s so freeing for anyone to get to that point of awareness where you realize that everyone–including you–will benefit from you just listening, that you don’t have to say everything that comes into your head in the moment and that that doesn’t mean anything bad about you but actually enlarges your experience and connection.
So congratulations and a tip of my hat to you, sir.
Maciej Ceglowski’s second New Madrid piece is up and hits some kind of Toast trifecta: seismology, race, and librarianship. It’s absolutely worth a read (as is most of his work; “No Evidence of Disease,” his essay about his girlfriend’s cancer treatment, goes into very unexpected territory). The NMSZ is much less understood than the Cascadia fault, and evidently the approach taken in response is basically to hope that nothing terrible goes awry and build a buuuunch of stuff that will ensure that life gets very unpleasant if something does.
While there’s nothing as egregious in Southern Missouri as Stone Mountain, I don’t like that the losers of this war are given so much latitude in how to frame it. The more I see of Southern ‘heritage’, the more I develop a fondness for the old racist bastard William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman was awful in many ways, but he had strong feelings that you should fight a civil war in such a way to make it impossible to forget who won it. At the very least, Sherman would have called “no flagsies” on the Old Dominion, and spared us a century of Lost Cause mythologizing.
[The seismic historian] is no apologist for the Confederacy, but he has his own reasons to dislike Sherman. On his march through the South, he burned an awful lot of archives and local newspaper bureaus, making it much harder to reconstruct the far-field effects of the New Madrid earthquakes.
…If I go on about this stuff, it’s because the flaw at the heart of our country is not just geological. There’s some connection between our inability to confront our past and the refusal to think rationally about the future. These pockets of poverty and despair, so often black poverty, are not an accident of history. They form a vast, second-tier America that we’ve simply written off for good. In places like Cairo, Fresno, Flint, Gary, Camden, Detroit, Baltimore, the cities of upstate New York, the Indian reservations of South Dakota, Appalachia, a slow-motion disaster has been taking place for decades. There’s no need to wait for an earthquake.
Click the link!
Oooh, yes! I read that yesterday. Awesome stuff.
that writing is gorgeous. reading now!
Ooh, thanks for reminding me! I was going through his archives the other day and am most of the way through “No Evidence of Disease.”
OH. This is the same guy who wrote this totally captivating piece about visiting Yemen. I really, really need to bookmark/RSS his site.
A reading soundtrack!
Any time I run across references to the New Madrid fault, this gets stuck in my head for hoursssss.
my sweetie and I have done the Chicago (where we live) to Houston-ish (where his family lives) road trip twice now, and we’ve made sure to stop in New Madrid and Ste. Genevieve strictly for alt-country geek-out purposes. such a great song!
I started reading that article about nonprofits but I had to exit out of the tab as soon as I saw the words ‘suffering from autism’. As an autistic person, let me just say this again: autism is not a disease or something to be suffered from. It is the entire structure of our brains. Calling autism something to suffer like a disease is calling me and people like me a disease.
I know you didn’t write these articles yourself, but please take care with what you recommend. I see stuff like this on almost a daily basis but it really hurts to see it on the Toast.
Ugh this
I was talking to the bank about insurance today and getting stressed out because goddamn insurance, who doesn’t? And my Mum took the phone out of my hand and fucking apologised for me and said I “suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome,” which, yeah, fucking thanks Mum. Really helpful. Not belittling at all.
Oh, Helen, that suuucks. Hi Felix! I’m sorry. I think this is the second time I have had one slide by like that! If I had noticed, I think I still would have linked to this particular piece, because I think it’s really important, but I would have mentioned that line. Again, sorry.
The New Republic article is beautifully written, and I found this part particularly compelling: “For many birthmothers at this stage, there’s a pressure to remain compliant: to avoid complaining or talking about their regrets, and instead to practice a Panglossian gratitude, lest their relationship with the adoptive parents closes down.” That just sounds impossibly hard; to have lost access to your child and to not be able to grieve it openly. My heart goes out to everyone in that situation.
I’m a huge advocate for silence and like, quiet generally, so the idea of some dominant species running a commercial shipping operation through my neighborhood SETS ME ON EDGE. I feel so sorry for the whales! We have to be nicer to the whales! WHALES GUYS!!!!
I know!!
This part also made me very sad:
“Other whales have been more direct casualties of war: during the UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s adventure in the Falklands in 1982, two right whales – perhaps ones recorded by Clark – were mistaken by sonar operators for a pair of submarines and torpedoed by the Royal Navy; another was attacked by the ship’s helicopter.”
My co-worker said it sounded like something out of a movie. “WE are the animals!” I cried.
I hate Margaret Thatcher even more now that I know that.
It’s like nobody even watched The Voyage Home.
“WHALES GUYS!!!”
One night, many years ago, I dreamt that I was a humpback (or blue) whale; I was travelling somewhere, using my flukes and feeling, really feeling, my undulating tale propelling me through the transparent, green-blue water. The perspective was like a camera mounted just over my whale-eye: I could see where I was going, and part of my shoulder/right fluke.
It felt incredibly REAL, so real, in fact, that when I woke up, I fucking cried for like half an hour because my human body felt so wrong.
AND THAT, my friends, is why I will always be “WHALES GUYS” and will never, ever, ever watch “Big Fish” or whatever the hell that Sea World doc is called.
I was starting to get a little annoyed at how long the 5 Useful Articles hiatus was, but now that I realize that it was probably because of Sarah Jeong’s book? Totally worth it. Today in Tabs sent out a great chapter of it yesterday, too, and I am totally going to buy it. Can’t wait for the interview!
A journalist—like a good male novelist—was a man who would go away for several months on a story assignment, usually to exotic-sounding places: Borneo, Australia, Thailand, the North Pole. He would have adventures and, if he was single, might even experience a James Bond-like liaison with a lady or two.
There was also a correlation between the roughness of the reporter’s life and the quality of his work. Being in danger, or even knowing that someone you wrote about might want to confront you physically, made you care about honor and accuracy.
LOL WUT
I know that when I see the word “journalist”, I immediately picture a rugged womanizer with a three-day beard, a typewriter casually slung over his shoulder and a beautiful dame on his arm.
“everything i have ever read is true” — this fuck
Hahaha, those were the days, ammiright? A bit of spearfishing in the morning, a good shag in the evening, and TRUTH, JUSTICE, and the AMERICAN WAY all day long. Sic transit gloria, man.
Ah yes, Gloria. I met her in Manila. Or was it Malaysia? I always get the two mixed up. No wait, it was Gwen in Kuala Lumpur.
That’s probably the best response. Co-signed.
It gets 400% awesomer if you assume he’s talking about Hunter S. Thompson always.
“He would have adventures and, if he was single, might even experience a James Bond-like liaison with a lady or two. ”
This reads like how you’d explain movie-sex to a 7-year-old. “Well, sometimes when you go on adventures, you meet a lady or two, and you have an adventure with them. But only if you’re single, says dad, which is why mommy doesn’t let him go on adventures.”
My brother once told me that when our Dad gave him the birds & bees discussion, his grand opener was “You know those James Bond movies we watch?”
Did he follow it up with, “Well, it’s nothing like that”? ‘Cause that would be awesome.
A REAL journalist carries a tumbler of whiskey where ever he goes. A REAL journalist has a five-o-clock shadow that could scour an engine block, which he could also repair and carry over one shoulder in an emergency. A REAL journalist starts his morning by punching a bull in the face.
MORE TUMBLERS, LESS TUMBLRS, AM I NOT CORRECT, MY GOOD SIRS
FEWER!
YOU MAY CRITICIZE ME, EDITOR, WHEN YOU HAVE TRULY FISHED
Does it count if I’ve shot a bunch of virtual squirrels while playing “Oregon Trail”…?
::emoji of a leathery-faced middle-aged man nodding ever-so-slightly with approval::
It’s all true! Real men prove their manliness by punching trees or getting hit in the face with a large bass.
I think you meant the fish, but I’m glorying in the image of a REAL JOURNALIST being hit in the face with an upright string bass. Hard.
EITHER WORKS!
Can Toasties sign up to provide the bass face-hitting?
“That’s good bass!”
But does he scour the engine block with his face? I would pay perfectly adequate money to see that.
Let’s go back to the days of alcoholism and punching instead of the UNMANLY behavior of “Twitter wars”, where editors who have “been fishing for real” were never ever fooled by a hoax.
Also where does Nellie Bly fit into his idiotic vision of the past?
A+ like Hemingway wouldn’t have been on twitter all the time moaning about how much of a sissy Matt Yglesias is.
One could say that Twitter’s character limit is downright Hemingway-esque.
Oh man, Hemingway would be the King of Twitter.
“For sale: Sailor Moon cosplay outfit, one ComicCon ticket. Never used”.
This is somehow even sadder than the original, especially if one imagines Hemingway in the cosplay outfit.
Shit has anyone made a fake Hemingway twitter yet? They must have.
HemingwayGoogles
“the fuck is sailor moon”
There’s a @DailyHemingway with his picture, so that’s probably it.
I doubt he could dethrone Oscar Wilde, my personal theoretical King of Twitter.
Twitter Fight!!
Or Ida B Wells?
OR MARTHA GELLHORN OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG
“like a good male novelist”
rolling on the floorrrrrrrrr
Also, wow, those exotic-sounding places sure are exotic. Journalism doesn’t happen in boring places like Cleveland or Surrey.
well, nothing really happens in Surrey
Truer words were never spoken.
Guys, I’m super tempted to troll the comments and be SUPER PISSED OFF that he failed to mention Ben Urich in that piece.
As I once told an uncle after too many glasses of wine, I think most of your memories are actually fan fiction.
A++++
a REAL MALE JOURNALIST ™ conveniently ignores the existence of Yellow Journalism in his quest for honor, accuracy, and a quick piece of ass.
I definitely clicked on the “good male novelist” link hoping it would lead me to Mallory’s “Male Novelist Jokes,” but of course I knew in my heart that it would not. Would have vastly improved that piece, though.
If married, the instant he was out the door, his wife emptied all the ashtrays and settled in for several weeks’ bliss without cigarette smoke, and his entire family finally got a full night’s sleep without being wakened by his rafter-rattling snoring. No, the photographer was going to have to put up with that.
double lol at putting Christopher Hitchens in the same category of “manly journalists” as Ernie Pyle. Fuck, even Hemingway at least actually drove an ambulance in the war and got blown up by a mortar once. Hitchens’ only “manly” qualities were “alcoholism” and “contempt for women.”.
(Obviously we should be rejecting any gender-essential definition of “manliness”, and anyone who tries to come at you with the idea of “manly” in the first place is at least three or four kinds of idiot, but if you’re even going to entertain the idea for a second, then what the fuck is some drunk chickenhawk doing there?)
“earned his scars challenging the orthodoxies of popular culture” give me a fucking BREAK
Gosh, I didn’t even click on the article and yet it has given me several solid chortles thanks to these comments. Also, funny coincidence, but it’s Ida B Wells’ birthday anniversary today, and if you want to talk about a journalist with courage and commitment to truth in the face of furious opposition and threats, well, she would be at the top of my list for bravery, although like you I’m not going to bother wading into the murky waters of assigning manliness to universal human qualities either.
Ida B. Wells would dropkick Chris Hitchens into space.
I could not agree more.
With aplomb.
See also: Nellie Bly.
Now I want an Ida Wells/Nellie Bly romance novel. Dammit.
It’s sort of darkly humorous, reading her wiki, that mobs only showed up to torch her home/place of work when they knew she wouldn’t be there. It’s like they were worried she’d come outside and glare sternly at them/give them a lecture/shoot them in the goddamn face, and they wouldn’t be able to go through with their intended violent racism.
the scars are all on his liver
wounds DEEP INSIDE that he sucks up manfully
This is not a particularly with-it reference, but all I can think of is Dwight Schrute:
“I come from a long line of fighters. My maternal grandfather was the toughest guy I ever knew. World War II veteran, killed twenty men, and spent the rest of the war in an Allied prison camp. My father battled blood pressure and obesity all his life. Different kind of fight.”
This is the quote that is going to get me to click on the article because LOLOLOLOL
I skimmed the article, saw the word “grit,” and closed the tab, giggling. I love when men talk about “grit” as a facet of manliness, like– real men can be substituted for sandpaper in an emergency. Real men should be covered in cornmeal and water for at least an hour before cooking so they expel their grit.
Also, gonna go ahead and admit I have never read any of his stuff, but I have read the wikipedia summaries, and Hunter S. Thompson was just a perpetual fuck-up, right? He never did anything correctly, and that’s how gonzo journalism was invented? What does that have to do with gender? I know plenty of non-male fuck-ups.
Oh, did you catch the part with the sexual liaisons in far-off climes? I think that was my favorite bit. There’s not a lot that surprises me more than the idea that “manliness” is somehow simultaneously about both honor and the ability to cheat on your wife.
Yeah, my old professor had the dubious honor of being assigned the hotel room next to Hunter S. Thompson’s when they were both in Vietnam reporting on the war. Well, my prof was reporting; he said matter of factly that he only ever saw Hunter out of that room once, when Hunter and two Vietnamese girls strolled naked into the courtyard and ordered lunch. “The young women were…very young,” he said with distaste.
My prof, btw, was a total badass who served in military intelligence before becoming a reporter, and was then a foreign correspondent for the L.A. Times for three decades. He was in Vietnam, he was at Tiananmen Square, he covered the war in El Salvador–all sorts of exploits which he was (again) just matter-of-fact about. The number one lesson he tried to teach us, over and over again, was this: “No story is worth your life. If you think it’s too dangerous, get out.” He had a sort of exhausted contempt about the mythology. A lot of his stories about his colleagues ended with, “They’re dead now.” His eyes must be rolling RIGHT NOW about this dude.
Now THAT’S a real journalist. Many props to your prof. Hunter S Thompson was bad at his job and a garbage person.
No, but the liaisons are only “if you were single.” Manly journalists held deeply to an honorable, manly respect for their wedding vows, and never so much gazed fondly at a dark-skinned temptress while they were taming the wilds of Borneo.
Yeah I bet that is one of those machismo fig leafs though, where he SAYS “if you were single” but we all know how it REALLY was.
In the Manly Journalists’ Club, you’ve got your friends’ backs, to help them maintain the fiction that they always respect the sanctity of marriage.
Make sure you have the right grade of real men when sharpening!
always move from the lowest grit (Anderson Cooper) to the highest grit (Christopher Hitchens) to achieve a smooth finish
Omg
But then where does Anderson himself get his smooth, smooth finish?
Benjamin Maisani.
real men are 25 grit sandpaper and will really mess up your woodworking projects 🙁
Real men will be punching gorillas in foreign climes and nowhere near your girly woodworking projects.
Noted, re the soak. I was already joking about cooking and eating the Ta-Nehesi Hater, after he was done marinating in his jealousy. I don’t want my dinner ruined by some unpleasant texture. #EatAllMen
If you don’t have cornmeal on hand, I think you can just let him spit for a while in a bucket outside. Just make sure he’s submerged.
TAKE TO THE SEA. Where you can keep him dragging on the line long enough to get rid of some of that icky grit.
I always thought grit was supposed to be like, “I got the shit kicked out of me and hit the ground so hard that I have a mouthful of dirt but I’m getting back up.” Like that one scene in every Anime that is about fighting of some kind (someone gets knocked down a million times and then their non-physical powers magically increase through the virtue of perseverance so that despite being one giant walking bruise they defeat their enemies).
But I wouldn’t know, the only grit I’ve ever had in my mouth was from eating hot dogs on the beach.
I have nothing to say about that article, I just felt like talking about what I thought grit was.
Another possible explanation: Freemasons.
No, I’m serious. My logic goes like this:
In Canada we have a political party whose nickname is Grits, because one of its predecessors was the Clear Grits. According to the internet, “The name’s origin is attributed to David Christie, a party member who later served as speaker of the Senate from 1874 to 1878. He was reported to have said the only people who were wanted in the party were those who were ‘all sand and no dirt, clear grit all the way through,’ referring to the type of sand preferred by masons.”
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that this sort of masonry-based analogy was used in politics at that time because most politicians were freemasons, but I can’t find the link anywhere. Maybe I just guessed that part and then forgot that I didn’t read it. But wherever Christie got the analogy from, it seems not unlikely that other people would have used it too, and I think “grit” could pretty easily have changed over time from something you are to something you have.
*begins humming the Stonecutters’ song*
“I don’t know if they grade it but… coarse.”
I think I scared a coworker laughing about the sandpaper.
HST was a shit person but “Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail” is worth reading.
As is his obituary for Richard Nixon. It’s the most hateful, vituperative obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read; Keith Olbermann only wishes he could attain such heights of gleeful vitriol.
I liked Hitchens, but it takes more than drinking and swearing a lot to be ‘manly’, a concept I am very suspicious of anyway.
If it were only drinking and swearing, hell, I’d be manly. With my makeup, giant knockers, and penchant for textile arts.
re: manliness — I saw a prolife across america billboard in northern MN last weekend that said “Real Men Love Babies.”
SO MUCH to unpack there. (relatedly, which (again) is not all that related to the article at hand, there are many Planned Parenthood protesters on my way to work these days, which has sparked lots of uncomfortable office conversation, but one thing I learned is that those billboards allegedly work, which is why I’m seeing more of them lately. Fascinating.)
I guess I’m not really surprised that they work; as much as I don’t like the idea of masculinity as a concept, it’s in there pretty deep in the cultural consciousness.
Oh no, I meant billboards with things like “Daddy says I’m a girl” and “I had a heartbeat/fingerprints/a face/a prehensile tail at X days after conception” work generally speaking, not that one in particular.
Though you’re right, the fact that many of them directly approach the dude readers of the board is likely effective.
oh, well, that doesn’t surprise me either. People are generally very good at investing emotions into our imaginations.
It was the prehensile tail that convinced them, I bet.
And so do Real Women. Me, I enjoy them marinated overnight in a nice garlic and herb marinade and then grilled to perfection.
I’ve been obsessively watching the Month of Zen on thedailyshow.com, and I popped in once during this interview with a ludicrous stereotype of a pompous British prick (both talking over Jon and being super-condescending to the audience, practically demanding they applaud him too), and I was like GOD, who is this DICK
answer: Christopher Hitchens
hahaha as soon as you said “ludicrous stereotype of a pompous British prick” I knew
I’m filing Judge’s piece of crap under “middle-aged man still strugging with his daddy issues.” This is the same asshole who assumed that a black person stole his bike because everyone else in the neighborhood were nice Catholics.
Oh, shit, I remember that guy!
“A black guy probably stole my bike; I now feel free to hate all black people.”
Who the butts is paying this guy to write things, that’s what I want to know.
Thank you. My disgust with Hitchens and his followers has reached transcendent levels at this point. I’m oddly at peace with how high my blood pressure gets every time he is mentioned.
uuugggghhhh I honestly don’t know whether to pity or fear people who hold Hitchens up as a model of any virtue, journalistic or human…
hahahaha sorry is that ignorant fuckhead’s fucking URL in fucking FRENCH
no
if i wanted a bunch of blowhards bullshitting about a book they haven’t read while dropping some french like it’s the 1820s i would have stayed in grad school
*praise hands*
Presumably to show that they’ve been on some kind of Henry James-ian Grand Tour of Europe. Like the manliest of men.
I think that’s probably more aimed at making fun of TNC’s whole period where he was learning French and going to france and wrote about it
he WOULD know french
guys this absolutely fascinating bit of investigation was posted on tumblr a few days ago about a catfish who put an album of stolen music up on iTunes. The rabbit hole goes deeeep with this one. Pretty fascinating read if you, like me, spend hours on Wikipedia’s list of frauds.
(sorry to be OT, the adoption and MS articles were incredibly moving, but I have no intelligent or useful thoughts to share.)
“..[W]hat I do care about is their attempts to steal the legacy of legendary pop sensation Jessica Simpson”
My god, certainly the Society for the Preservation of Simpson Musicology will be all over this case!
holy shit, i just read that whole thing, THAT WAS AMAZING
Wow! Solid investigative work. They need to replace Nev Schulman with this person immediately and make that “Catfish” show legit.
I really thought the first sentence there was about an actual fish, and was prepared to be super impressed.
I totally pictured a whiskered fish with little hipster glasses flailing at the keyboard with fins.
Mr Limpet gets a laptop!
oh my god what in the fresh hell IS this
someone…has a lot of time on their hands.
oh my gooooddddd that Lucia Cole thing is the best i haven’t seen a good sockpuppetry thing in yonks, i’m not quite at the end, is there a pseuicide??? there must be?????
Last night: emptied out my closet, got rid of a few things, washed everything made of natural fibres that’s not dry-clean-only, cardio workout while the stuff was in the wash, wiped down every surface in the closet with cleaning spray while it was in the dryer, put everything back in the closet. Hopefully that will make a dent in the moth population. I saw little actual evidence of moths and the damage I saw could be regular wear and tear (a hole at the hem of a sweater, etc) but I am not taking any chances.
It’s frustrating because some people are like “Wash your clothes and throw some cedar sachets in there and you’ll be fine” and others are like “BURN YOUR CLOTHES AND MOVE TO ANTARCTICA, IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE” so I don’t know how aggressively to proceed.
I’ve gotten moth traps at hardware stores that are basically cardboard folded into a pyramid with sticky parts and moth pheromones. They work pretty well.
I’ve thought about getting them, but it seems counterproductive to use both a product that attracts moths and a product that repels moths.
It might be useful if you put the repellant item by/in the clothes and then the trap somewhere nearish so when they are repelled from one location there is very attractive death trap nearby as an alternative.
If you do get traps make sure that you get the clothes-moth kind and not the kitchen-moth kind (they require different pheromones.)
Vacuums are also a notorious site of moth congregation so be sure to throw out the bag. If not they will hide in there, presumably biding their time and talking smack about linens until the time is right to strike again.
My mom puts moth balls in the bag for this reason. Welcome to death, clotheseater.
It probably depends on the strength of their infestations and also living conditions. I live in an apartment building and the moths live in the walls and move between apartments, so I have given up on total eradication but have reached a pretty decent state of coexistence by handwashing my sweaters a lot (moths prefer fabric with dirt&body oil) and periodically putting some clothes in the freezer. In addition to the moth sachets, the cedar, the dried grapefruit peels, etc. etc. It is distressing but sometimes there is no perfect solution. I guess it is making me less attached to Things, too?
Dude. That is an impressive amount of Getting Shit Done.
I’ve never dealt with clothes moths, only the little brown moths that get into food, and “NUKE IT FROM ORBIT” was pretty much the only strategy that worked with those.
Can you train the moths to flutter around you in an ever-moving, scintillating gown? Because if you can do that you really should.
REVELATION: Freddie DeBoer is the Ralph Wiggum of the internet.
Hey now, that’s not nice. Ralph Wiggum is a perfectly cromulent character.
Ralph Wiggum is far wiser than DeBoner could ever hope to be, tbh.
I’m not sure, you need the delusion of grandeur rather than just goofery. If anything he’s Gil.
Lionel Hutz, maybe? I can definitely picture him going “Well of COURSE I haven’t actually READ it!”
Welp, I ran across the article “The Captivity of Motherhood” on The Atlantic yesterday. It provides a link to a 1961 article called “The Captivity of Marriage”.
I was thinking that a city person wrote both articles, because it’s assumed in both articles that women had access to labor-reducing things like washers and dryers and dishwashers. I think. I grew up in the Upper Midwest, and my grandmother didn’t have a dishwasher, and she had the oldest form of a washer until nearly 1980. It was the kind where you had to wring the clothes by hand, fill up the basin to rinse and then wring the clothes out again. After that, she had to hang the clothes on the line. My grandmother did laundry every day. She always had an ear tuned to what was going on in the basement with the washer, and many many times a day she went downstairs to help the process along.
My cousin, one of seven children, said her primary memory of her mother was doing laundry, every day. Wringing out endless sheets and jeans and shirts and diapers and hanging them on the clothes line.
I don’t know why I’m obsessing on this detail, except that when I had my daughter, I remember not having time to take a shower, the labor of taking care of her during the first 6 months was all-encompassing. I nursed her every 2 hours, I was sleep-deprived, and I wondered, often, how the hell a woman had 7 kids and did anything else but provide food (like a moo-cow), and clean up after messy diapers. How the hell did housework get done? How did *anything* else get done?
Anyway, the articles also speak about the loneliness of motherhood, and that’s true, I think, especially when you’re sleep-deprived and look like a troll because you can’t figure out anymore how to take a shower. Early days of feminism, also.
I found the article fascinating, for how contemporary the concerns still were, and how articulate it was on the personal challenges of motherhood. I don’t know why it was better at communicating to me than some other people who told me things like “parenthood is hard.”
Also, thank you for making a great point about the diversity of rural/urban, and class concerns (maybe a city person wouldn’t be able to afford a washer/dryer either … people still don’t!). Ruminating on that.
This quote spoke to me, so much, and was probably why I failed at being a stay-at-home mother, because I didn’t have the fortitude or brute strength. From the 1961 article:
“For another thing, the job is hardly complicated and delicate, at least at first. It is the simple, nerve-wracking, mindless, battering-ram process of trying to teach a savage to use a fork. It requires bloodless patience, a deadly will, enormous physical stamina, and a stable disposition, but no precision instruments. It takes strength and determination.”
Yes, that struck me too (even though I am childless)!
i am childfree because of this sort of realization. i am barely stable & patient on a good day at home all alone. 2 days TOPS with a tiny savage who can’t even use a goddamn fork or tell me why it’s crying and i would flip all the tables and walk into the desert to die. i just cannot EVEN how people parent *hats off*
Raising a child also requires consistency, like eating at regular times. I was in my head most of the time, and would forget lunch … I mean. So I too admire what my grandmother did, and what other women do who can survive staying at home with their kids. It is amazing and a miracle to me. *hats off* cosign.
I forgot to link to the articles:
The Captivity of Marriage, from 1961: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1961/…
The Captivity of Motherhood, yesterday: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/…
Thank you for the article!
I’ve been thinking about stuff like this a lot (I turned thirty a while ago, which means the boy and I are going to have to make the kids-or-no-kids decision before too long), and the situation in the Netherlands is a bit different, in that something like 80% of mothers work part-time*. On the one hand: it’s great that this is possible and accepted! On the other hand, it means our scores for number of women in high-powered jobs are abysmal, and that it’s harder to be taken seriously because it’s sort of assumed you’ll take a step back somewhere in your thirties.
It also means that working part-time is the norm, so mothers who DO keep working full time are often judged as not being good mothers. Some child-care places will apparently even refuse to take kids more than 4 days a week! And those child-care places? Hella expensive. To the extent that they’ll easily eat up most of one salary in a two-salary household – and you can image that THAT also plays a part in the decision-making process, because it often means that you have to love your job enough to do it for hardly any money at all. Also, guess which partner statistically makes less money, making it more “financially logical” to take a step back?
It’s a mess, basically. Which, I think, can only be solved by two things: a) cheaper child-care and b) making it normative for men as well to work part-time for a year or so after a kid is born. Oh, and wage equality would be nice too 😉
*didn’t look up the statistic, so take it with a grain of salt, but it’s a lot.
It is a mess. But I always think, erroneously, that European countries are so far ahead of the US … as far as working mothers are concerned. Parental leave and all that. But I’m also surprised at the number of companies in the US that don’t offer flex-time and work from home.
When my daughter was between 5 and 8 years old, I worked for a company that did allow flex time. I worked from 9 to 3, and then, after my daughter went to sleep, I worked the other 2 hours. I never got complaints from my managers about not pulling my weight or not being available when there were crises. (I was a research scientist at a national laboratory). But that was 20 years ago, and apparently, these types of arrangements aren’t common anymore?
*Subsidized* child care. If you do the math, those child care workers are being paid very little, after rent, utilities, insurance, and maintenance expenses. Even at your currently high tuition rate. I agree that parents should pay less. I also feel strongly that child care workers should be paid more. Good child care benefits all of society. It should be supported by all of society. Taxes for universal child care!
(former day care director steps off soapbox – for now)
Oh, absolutely! I didn’t phrase that well, I now realize: I didn’t mean to imply it was expensive because day care workers charge too much, it’s expensive because child care subsidies have been slashed in the past decade. And even if I remain childless, I’m perfectly willing to pay higher taxes for universal child care, as it benefits society as a whole, not just parents and kids.
Thank you for this comment. I can imagine your grandmother so vividly.
She is the one who drilled into my head to never depend on a man for financial support. She was also militant about telling me never to get married, never to have a child and to go to college and have a career. You can imagine what happened when I brought a boyfriend home to meet her, lol. Anyway, I think she was born in the wrong decade, and she would have had a career if women did that back then, but they didn’t.
Your grandmother sounds like mine, in a way. She STILL doesn’t have a dishwasher. They only moved into a house (in the lower midwest) with electricity and indoor plumbing in like 1956, when my dad was about 5 and his brother 1 or 2. Her thing wasn’t laundry – it was cooking or baking. Somehow she fed 10 or 12 people on a regular basis from a kitchen no bigger than my NYC apartment galley kitchen. It is pretty astonishing to think about how she could raise two boys while also feeding her husband and half the church, let alone how she did it before they moved off the farm. She doesn’t really talk about it, and I think it’s because she doesn’t find it remarkable in any way.
She has decided in recent years that she will no longer cook. There are some exceptions, like Easter lunch, and she does still bake, but otherwise it’s sandwiches, my grandfather grilling, or food someone else has brought over. Seems pretty darn reasonable to me, after decades of feeding everyone else.
I remember church and family get-togethers, where we had to make, for instance, potato salad for 200 people. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my grandmother and her sisters, peeling eggs and potatoes, chopping celery and onions; buttering buns … talking and laughing. And they also “catered” family weddings.
I also remember that summers were full of fruit desserts like rhubarb pie, apple bars and many different kinds of crisps. I was talking to my friend recently about how we took this stuff for granted. Today, I want to make a rhubarb pie, but I only have vague memories of how my grande made it. I think, when my grande died, I realized how much, more than anything, I wanted her recipes, but … like your grandmother, she thought nothing of whipping up pies and cakes and bars and crisps.
(I also just figured out how to use a dishwasher, which is another story. My daughter still laughs at me when I try to load it. Cat looks at that thing.)
He was stunned to hear a blue whale singer on the Grand Banks of Canada all the way from Puerto Rico, 1,600 miles away.
Has anyone asked if whales WANT to hear other whales from such distances? Imagine being a whale taking in the warm waters of Puerto Rico, and then all of a sudden you hear a familiar warble and think your friends have come to surprise you, but actually it’s some idiot whale in Canada singing too loudly and it’s not even directed at you. It’s like the whale equivalent of thinking someone is talking to you, but it turns out they’re having a conversation on their Bluetooth headset, except with hundreds of Bluetooth’d someones, all hundreds of miles away.
when you think about it we’re really saving them from the millennia-long plague of whale gossip
Whale in Puerto Rico: “Hey, did you hear that juicy gossip about Jim? I heard he’s only 60 feet long, and can only eat 30 million krill per day. What a loser!”
(cut to Jim crying 1600 miles away)
For those who enjoyed or were otherwise moved by the adoption article, Kathryn Joyce’s book (referenced in her bio line) is also great: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781586489427
Another difficult but worthwhile read is The Girls Who Went Away: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143038979
ALSO i’m so mad i gave that manly journalist guy a click and yet i laughed so much it was almost worth it
HIGHLIGHTING THESE PHRASES:
” journalism was a job of grit and hard effort, like boxing”
“like a good novelist”
“honor and accuracy”
“a hard-drinking oyster pirate”
“christopher hitchens”
omg help i’m CRYING
“They had been fishing for real, had been drunk and gotten into fights, had slept with women, hunted sources, and dodged soldiers in hostile countries. They knew the world. Dad would have laughed out loud if presented with a story about fishing for monkeys.”
Uggghh I have resolved not to click over, but “a hard-drinking oyster pirate”?!? Am I missing out on a pleasantly trashy romance novel? Does the hard-drinking oyster pirate have a heart of gold and a peg leg of steel? I’m torn, like a wenches bodice, about whether I should just go ahead and read the damn article now.
Edit: Also, I have been “fishing for real” and I chalk it up as the boring-est day of my life.
you wouldn’t steal a car
you wouldn’t steal a handbag
so why would you pirate an oyster
I haven’t written “rofl” since my days on AIM instant messenger in the 90s, but you’ve earned it my friend:
ROFL
this comment has made my DAY. brings a tear to my eye with memories of dashing for the DVD remote because I get that you’re upset about piracy, dear sir, but do your blaring warning-guitars have to be so dadblamed LOUD?
I literally clapped with glee! And then it made me think of The IT Crowd, which made me laugh some more.
Those adverts always make me want to shout, “You don’t know my life!” at the screen. I don’t want to steal a car, as it happens, but they can’t just assume that!
the hard-drinking oyster pirate is jack london so no, don’t click, it’s not worth it. i don’t even have the heart to point out the writer’s longing for a career just like his father’s, as Rugged and Masculine and full of easy women and anonymous natives as the world has ever known.
Oh, that is a let down.
OYSTER PIRATE? What kind of occupation is that? I mean, besides YUMMY.
“I’m torn, like a wenches bodice”
I lost it (at the office)
Thanks! I realized too late that it should be wench’s bodice, but as I am not a manly journalist, I cannot be perfect.
I went “fishing for real” when I was about 9. It was ok, and I caught a small-ish walleye, but it wasn’t, like, a life-changing event of heroism and fortitude.
If an oyster pirate can be manly, why not a monkey fisherman?
I have no regrets for reading this because it was amazingly terrible. FISHING FOR REAL
REAL MEN
REAL FISH
REAL SEX
Is oyster pirate a euphemism?
Sir could not possibly entertain the thought of allowing his language to venture out on any level but a most literal fist-shaped one.
It’s another code word for lesbian. “She was an oyster pirate who carried her own purse.”
That was what I was thinking….
I’m adding this phrase to my own personal lexicon.
had slept with women
“The Manly Journalist of yesteryear had even engaged in sexual intercourse with an adult human female.”
“Of COURSE I know how people do sex at each other. Don’t be ridiculous”.
oh my.
I thought that twitter was a joke — that it couldn’t possibly be serious.
BRB, changing my Twitter profile to “Hard-drinking oyster pirate”.
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey girl.
I can’t help myself, I’m singing that headline “Where have all the manly journalists gone?” to the tune of “Where have all the flowers gone?”
Gone to Buzzfeed, every one.
When will they ever learn?
No, no, they’ll ne-ever learn.
A lot of them apparently killed themselves.
And/or drank themselves to death.
Someone filked that in the comments. Hilarious.
MS literally does something to your mind. Instead of an “alphabet of months” I once asked my husband for a “map of the year”. He knew what I meant, and now that’s what we call a calendar.
Hi! I do an opposite type of thing, like saying “No” when I mean “Yes.” Jeesh, that sounds horrible. What I mean is more “left” when I mean “right.” I used to teach Organic Chemistry as an adjunct and I had to stop because a) no money in it b) fatigue out the wazoo and c) I kept mixing up (R) and (S) nomenclature which really, really confused my students. (It’s a lot like left and right handed. Think of screws – most screw in in a clockwise motion, but in chemistry-land there are an equal number that screw in in a counter-clockwise motion. Anyway, I would ask them to say whether a stereocenter was R or S and then they’d get it right and I’d say, “Yes! Good! [Opposite of correct answer]!”) Anyway, the neurologist said it’s just a by-product of fatigue but that it could be lesion-related and we just can’t say now. Long comment, I just wanted to talk about my early stage MS, I guess! I like “map of the year,” too. Descriptive!
That kind of “yes/no”, “left/right” confusion is also very common in people who have aphasia as a result of a left hemisphere stroke. My grandmother had that for the last few years after a stroke, which made communication rather challenging. In her case, I believe it was due to a lesion in the Wernicke’s area of the brain.
I’m picturing the scene with Judd Nelson at the end of Breakfast Club when Molly Ringwald asked him, “Did what I did with my lipstick really piss you off?” “Honestly?” “Honestly.” “Yes. *shakes head no*” Also, I’m sorry about your grandma and thanks for the info.
Ha! 🙂
Thanks very much. As it happens, my grandfather (who took care of her) had done a lot of work with aphasic stroke patients as part of his PhD research, so he was in a good position to help her. She ended up recovering a lot of her speech, even though she’d had a pretty massive stroke.
I wish you all the best– I have a number of family friends with MS, and I know it can be very challenging and unpredictable to deal with.
how many manly journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None! Manly journalists don’t screw in lightbulbs, the screw in war-torn regions of the Middle East.
A+ Phryne Fisher gif
Jack Robinson, now there’s a man.
This is the greatest comment on the internet, ever. Congratulations!
None, they’re too busy starting fist fights with bears.
None. They just drink in the dark.
Two, but the hard part is getting them in there.
Three, but it was just one weird, hot night in Cairo when we actually thought we were going to die and we have never, ever spoken of it again.
One. A man must only ever depend on himself. The bulb shattered in his grip and he thought of the war and sat in the dark. –Ernest Hemingway, probably
They don’t need electricity, they just fight a grizzly for warmth.
None, but that’s a trick question. Let me mansplain the answer.
This reminds me of the most amazing dame I met in the Belgian Congo. She had legs for miles, a mouth like a sailor, and eyes that could lure an unwary cub reporter to his death. We totally did it a bunch, in ways that made me think of and despise my overbearing mother.
Guys, so I’ve spent years of my life reading Jezebel and Gawker and a variety of sub-blogs daily, but now I’m trying to wean myself off because they’ve blocked me. I’ve never trolled. I don’t get in fights generally. The only even-slightly critical comment I’ve made in years was one in the post about The Toast, which was literally just like, “The Toast doesn’t have greys. If you’re not a willful dum-dum you can participate in the comments.” BUT I’d had disappearing comments before, so I’m not sure that’s why I’m blocked – I’m just sure that since then, I’m posting into the void.
I hate the void. >:(
I feel kind of bad about this being my line in the sand – they’ll drive away their most active community members; they’ll give Hugo a voice until he explodes, despite all the warnings; they’ll let trolls spam with violent gifs until half their writing staff quits; but I can’t post?! how dare they. Also it’s not like losing one active reader/semi-active poster really makes an impact on their traffic. So it’s a dumb personal boycott. But I’m doing it anyway!
The reason I bring this up in a link round-up: where do you guys get your, hmm, annotated news online? I’m looking for places where people discuss the daily news, with an intersectional/progressive/queer-friendly take. Like, my happy place would probably be DailyKos but also entertainment news and also all the posters are Toasties. Does such exist?
I read autostraddle for my queer news and pop culture take: http://www.autostraddle.com/ But I don’t often read the comments, so I cannot really attest to the comment sections, but judging from the articles, I’d imagine they’re friendly and progressive.
All right, noted! I’ve been linked to autostraddle pieces before but never just clicked around – thanks for the rec!
Yeah, Gawker blocked my partner too, for some very mild potty humour (like literally a poop/fart joke), and it was alienating for him too. He was a super active commenter for years. It sucked.
…Gawker blocked an active poster for poop/fart jokes? The entire ethos of gizmodo and kotaku is a giant poop/fart joke. Amazing!!
Eh, that sucks, but I don’t think you’re missing much– Jezebel is the Fox News of feminism anyway.
YES! I still do a daily Jezebel check in, but the content over the years has, uh…slid down a trashy, quick-bite slope. Except for Kitchenette and Millihelen, can’t help myself there ANYHOO Jezebel is nothing but a freaking Cosmo magazine with cute animal videos. Blech!
It’s not the same place as it was when I first started reading – the quality of writers has dropped a few notches – but I still liked it. *shrug* Creature of habit!
I can’t believe I’m still pregnant (40 + 5), but I am. Sorry for the OT, but I won’t be able to participate in the open thread tomorrow because I’ll either just have had or be having a baby. Induction is scheduled for tomorrow morning if nothing happens before then.
It’s definitely an induction of (my own) convenience–my doula starts teaching a class on Monday and I’m not enthused about her backup; my health insurance runs out exactly a month from tomorrow; and my parents leave in a little over a week. So, it’s fine, my choice, but I’m bummed–I was induced after prelabor rupture of membranes with my first, and I feel a little stupidly cheated of some sort of “natural” labor experience.
But either way, I’m about to have a baby!
oh my gosh that is so exciting! good luck, congrats!
Hope everything goes well!
Good luck! You’re gonna crush it.
Only not literally.
Best of luck! And I guess I’ll pick up your OT pregnancy thread, seeing as how you’ll be starting a new one called “NEWBORNS, AMIRIGHT?” 🙂 🙂 🙂
Good luck! You still get a sweet baby at the end, so it’s all good!
All the best to you!
Good luck! It’s frustrating when you get stampeded into a choice you didn’t want to make. Here’s hoping you go into labor naturally anyway! A friend of mine did just that – she arrived at the hospital in labor just hours before her induction appt! There was some confusion, actually, as they thought she was just early for the appt and weren’t listening as she explained, no really, I’m in labor already. Hope everything goes well!
I’M SO EXCITED FOR THE MALLORY PARODY PIECE OF THE MANLY JOURNALIST GUY. BRB ORDERING “OYSTER PIRATE” SHIRTS FOR ALL OF US.
YOU CAN PAYPAL ME THE $49.95.
I’d like a very lewd illustration as well, since I normally do not pay $49.95 for items of clothing.
“Oyster Pirates” sounds like a punk feminist band name
Oh, Ali.
I miss the ladies.
If you pair “Oyster Pirate” with an old-timey image, you know, like Drew’s Toothpaste or better yet, a Kate Beaton illustration, I’d buy that t-shirt in A HEARTBEAT.
A HEARTBEAT I SAY!
O Hemingway, where have you gone?
you writer of a manly cut
were you as manly as you let on?
Testosterone filled as a stag in rut?
was it manhood or PTSD that was your lot?
Does it take a war to create a man?
is heaven full of the animals you shot?
when you blew your head off, did they understand?
cackling into my morning coffee at this comment from the nymag article on TNC:
Freddie is lost in thought as he walks down the sidewalk. “Those commenters of TNC’s are so mad. I really got under their skin. They probably feel confused because deep down, they know I’m right, and that’s why they’re so upset.” Then he checks out his Under Armour-worn-as-outer-armour in the reflection of a parked SUV and his pace quickens just a tiny bit as he continues down the street. “You got this, F-bomb. The world makes sense again.”
wait wait have y’all read this? Meet the Manliest Journalist in America: Me Perfection.
” It takes way less manliness to wear cargo shorts than it does to wear a crop top.”
PREACH. This is so good.
Applause.
Fucking awesome. Thanks for posting.
amazing
“I used to work in a factory, which is one of the manliest jobs you can have, in Tennessee, which is one of the manliest states. I put stickers on desktop PCs, which are more manly than Macs.”
LOL’ing at this part:
“The Hitchens example helps separate the manly wheat from the chaff. The late Hitchens was of course a beloved Kissinger-bashing atheist columnist who got in hilarious fights with cable news idiots. But let’s not forget that one way he earned his scars was writing a hit piece on Mother Teresa. If you wanted to find a target who would almost certainly not confront you physically, you would pick an elderly nun.”
What’s your opinion on Hitchens? Just curious.
He was the sort of person who, even though I agreed with him about a lot of things (e.g., atheism), just made me want to constantly punch him in the mouth to get him to stop talking. There’s a way to get one’s point across without being a raging asshole.
CLEARLY THE WHALES ARE JUST TRYING TO SIGNAL THE ALIENS. KEEP IT UP, WHALES. IF THEY CAN’T HEAR YOU IT MEANS THEY’RE ONE STEP AWAY FROM SENDING THE ACCIDENTALLY EARTH DESTROYING PROBE.
*throws self into the perfection of this Star Trek: The Voyage Home reference*
SAME
MY LOVE FOR THAT MOVIE IS SUCH THAT MY EVERY THOUGHT REGARDING IT MUST BE EXPRESSED IN CAPSLOCK.
SAME. WESSELS!
HE DID A LITTLE TOO MUCH LDS.
WESSELS <3
I remember the days of real journalism, where i’d cover the county dog show with a loaded revolver on one side and a tumbler of whiskey on the other
http://publicdomainreview.org/2015/07/15/cat-pian…
On a much lighter note, here’s an article about a museum devoted to imaginary musical instruments. Cat pianos, guys!
If you want to get upset over something stupid that doesn’t matter, may I suggest the Candy Land Wiki http://candy-land.wikia.com/wiki/Candy_Land_Wiki apparently some douche named Duke of Swirl replaced Mr. Mint for a while? And Jolly’s a dino? … clearly it’s a busy day in the library…
I don’t know what dismays me more: The fact that they demoted Queen Frostine to princess, or the fact that I’m apparently invested enough in citizens of Candy Land to be legitimately dismayed by that news.
“His original design was far from a dinosaur, being a strange unidentifiable creature who wear poofy pants.” YES. That is the Jolly I remember–Possibly a bug! Possibly a golem made of gumdrops! Who knows!
But, really, can we just talk about the 2013 redesign of Mr. Mint? http://candy-land.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Mint
‘Cause I wanna feel like my childhood’s being betrayed by whatever’s going on there, but what’s going on is just. So. Fabulous. The 2013 Mr. Mint might just have become my new primary style icon . . .
Exactly! I love classic Mr. Mint but the new one has undeniable panache. Jolly had kind of a classic Elton John meets Shakespeare thing going on. He was amazing.
Clearly that Duke of Swirl guy was working for Lord Licorice who also orchestrated the demotion of our beloved Queen Frostine (long may she reign)
By God, I think you’re right. The Duke of Swirl is definitely not to be trusted. (King Kandy was either in on it or he’s just so remarkably ineffective that he couldn’t do a thing to stop the coup.)
(My money’s on that. He seems like the powerless figurehead that gets paraded out for ceremonial purposes, while Queen Frostine clearly runs the government.)
The old Mr. Mint looks like the kind of guy who would help you with difficult yardwork and then make you peppermint tea and listen to you talk about your problems. The new Mr. Mint would be great at helping you up the sequin game in your wardrobe, but would probably mostly just drag you to nightclubs and then disappear for the night as soon as you got there.
Okay, I am now officially more invested in Candy Land than I think I’ve ever been since the age of six or seven.
We got Candyland for my kiddos and I was really mad to discover that Queen Frostine and Princess Lolly were both demoted. Why would you demote the Queen? (I mean, aside from misogyny, obviously…oh wait, just answered my own question. Assholes.)
I feel like this is a good place to say that my family had an ancient version of Candy Land with no characters at all and when I saw a friend’s Candy Land game with all the characters I was pretty damn jealous.
My very favorite thing about “My Daddy Didn’t Love Me Enough, But It’s OK Because He Was a Manly Journalist” is his weird insistence that journalists of old were not only MANLY MEN! but also scrupulously accurate reporters. This is pretty much the most counter-historical claim you could possibly make. They literally lied to start wars when the news cycle was slow and the owners of their newspapers were getting restive. They colluded with governments and society figures to suppress and spin stories. They accepted bribes to provide product placement. Edward R. Murrow (and I love him, don’t get me wrong) was paid by tobacco companies to smoke on air!
The most freeing thing about learning history is discovering that there was no golden age of anything, that people are and have always been fallible. We’re monkeys in fancy clothes, just trying our best.
(Also you should read Phillip Knightley’s The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo. I think he has a new edition out, but I haven’t read that one.)
Also, the Billy Wilder movie “Ace in the Hole” is a great take-down of the “manly journalist” nonsense.
“In the Kingdom of Ice,” the book about the USS Jeannette’s absolutely disastrous polar expedition, is just chock-through with awful old-timey journalism nonsense. A newspaperman sponsored the voyage for stupid reasons, got all these guys super-dead and meanwhile was just fucking around bringing tennis to America or somesuch.
Oh, they did that sort of shit all the TIME! One of the most famous expeditions ever, Henry Morgan Stanley’s search for Dr. Livingston (“Dr. Livingston, I presume!” which is in all likelihood a made-up quote), was a lot like this. Livingston was a bit baffled by Stanley’s arrival, because he wasn’t LOST, he’d just had cholera for a while and a bunch of his followers had decided to book it on out of there instead of continuing to search for the beginning of the Nile. He was quite startled to hear that he was front-page news. I think they did get him more supplies, though, which allowed him to continue on and die in the jungle, so there’s that.
“Wait, I’m lost? But I’ve been right here the entire time, exactly where I said I was going to be. What are you even doing here?”
that MS article is fantastic, such a thoughtful pull apart of diagnosis and disease and reaction.
a good friend of my parents’ had relapsing-remitting MS, so this was close to me and a condition i’ve known about all my life. this family friend was a lovely man, who lived decades through illness with grace. happy to think about him again today and to read this articulation.
Ahem, my wildly important comment re. Whales – and begin:
https://youtu.be/yDTCXy6VQ_c
thankyouforyourtime
For Toasties looking to feast your eyes on fashion:
http://www.dapperq.com/2015/06/100-most-stylish-d…
I’ve been wanting to incorporate more button-up shirts and ties into my wardrobe, and play with texture and “menswear”, and THIS is a serious inspiration.
also esther quek is astonishing and magic
DAAAAAAAYYYUUMMM that’s some fashion right there. Thank you!
This is extremely relevant to my interests!
i need a vest, obviously.
Hildy Johnson has some words for Manly Journalist Dude:
Hildy Johnson, my forever girl. My coworkers are REALLY tired of me reenacting her scornful, “GENTLEMEN of the press.”
I think someone dropped a link to this article on spinsterhood yesterday in the comments, but now that I’ve actually gotten around to reading it, I want to talk about it! I love that it’s a celebration of female friendship and women making choices in their lives that don’t center around a man (shocking how revolutionary that still seems, when you think about it). I appreciate that it’s packed with book recommendations that all sound wonderful.
And I’m so frustrated that the essay came about because someone got a book deal to write about spinsterhood and used the opportunity to apparently write about the opposite. We really don’t all consider marriage the end-all-be-all in life. Those of us that don’t actually deserve our own book, not a book posturing to be about us that falls into all the old tropes and ideas of marriage as belonging at the center of everything. And now that this book has been written with a wildly inaccurate title (no one amongst the editors, publishing house, marketing department – any of them – noticed the discrepancy between title and actual subject matter?), a book that actually tackles the subject is unlikely to be published.
Ah well, at least the essay covered it all pretty well:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/on-spinsters
That is a fantastic essay, and it zeroed in on all the problems I had with Kate Bolick’s book. It wasn’t bad, but fundamentally it wasn’t actually about spinsterhood.
Oh my goodness. Thank you SO much for sharing that. I haven’t read the book but the review/essay says so much of how I’m feeling about being an unmarried woman and trying to unyoke my sense of self-worth from romance and male desire.
I got teary near the end too. What beautiful acknowledgement and celebration of all kinds of love. It made me think of all the (“non-romantic”) people in my life who have been or are important.
“In other words, I’m indebted to queer people and to African Americans, and to all who have seen their loves and families treated as nonexistent or pathological, and who have had marriage used as a weapon against them or as a compulsory straight and narrow path to equality. These people are more than ‘awakeners’: they have done the hard work of loving and world-making in defiance of the powers that be, and all unmarried people benefit from their centuries of emotional and material labor.”
I really loved the end too. The listing of all the beautiful things people have done for her/moments they’ve had together – lovely. I’ve always been a little confused that we put romantic love on this pedestal as the most important of all the loves, when my friendships/relationships with my brothers/love for and from my parents all easily blow any romantic relationship I’ve had out of the water and then some. And it’s definitely not because I haven’t “found the one” or any such shit, it’s because those relationships really are that amazing.
Yes! So much interesting stuff there. And I have a lot of feelings about this quote from 1936: “A woman is now a woman, just as a man is a man, and expected to stand on her own feet, as he (supposedly) stands on his.”
Well, if nothing else, I now have an urgent desire to read a biography of Ida B. Wells. Any recommendations? And also, http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=356.
I have Ida: Sword Among Lions on my Kindle but haven’t read it yet.
To Keep the Waters Troubled by Linda McMurry is a really good one.
This story is haunting me. #whathappenedtosandrabland #sayhername #blacklivesmatter
http://mic.com/articles/122384/sandra-bland-died-…
I KNOWWWW. It is in tomorrow’s roundup, I can’t stop thinking about her.
Part of Amy Seek’s book was excerpted in Vogue. It’s really good & makes me want to read the whole thing: http://www.vogue.com/13276645/amy-seek-book-god-a…
OT- I’m sitting here waiting to take the bandage off my new ink, and came across this http://www.talkofthevillages.com/forums/villages-…
To speak their words, oh bless your hearts.
it offends me !!!! Would you also accept being served by someone in a tank top ??
… yes. Are tank tops a bad thing?
Oh, Fredrik de Boner.
Also, when that guy is wondering where are all the journalists who travel to dangerous places to cover important stories, does he just conveniently forget about Anderson Cooper, Christiane Amanpour, and countless others who embed themselves in war zones and the aftermath of natural disasters? Or is the problem that they aren’t swilling whiskey and manfully fucking hot native broads while they do it?
This is your reminder that there exists video of Anderson Cooper running for help, carrying an injured child in his arms, while wearing a tight black t-shirt, while reporting on the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.
Well, you can’t count Anderson Cooper as a manly journalist, he is
[whispers]
*gay*
True, that does violate the “sexual liaisons with attractive women” clause of his Manliness Contract.
I would think that sexual liaisons with other manly men would be the manliest thing, like
MANLY MAN + MANLY MAN = THE BEAST WITH TWO MANLIER BACKS
but what do I know, I’m just a stay at home dad who dislikes real fishing
Walt Whitman = manliest man to ever man the woods of this great country.
If the movie Hot Rod has taught me anything about being a man, it’s that the woods only exist as a place to drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes, and punch-dance your rage out.
I assume this is what all of Whitman’s poems were about.
That and masturbation.
“If you wanted to do something private with a man back then, it wasn’t gay. It was just two men celebrating each others’ strength.”
(pace 30 Rock )
He LITERALLY namechecks Anderson Cooper as a non-manly journalist. While touting Christopher Hitchens’ manliness and bravery and scars. (Presumably papercut related?)
Christopher Hitchens earned his (metaphorical) scars, you see, by upsetting people. They got mad at him for saying controversial and often wrong things, which was very threatening, and almost exactly like facing down bulls and guerrillas in Spain. It was very brave of him to continue to say controversial and often wrong things in the face of all of this disapproval.
What? I feel like I am in some kind of fun house mirror world.
And I finally broke down and skimmed the stupid article because that seemed too bizarre to be true, but sadly yes. Apparently Anderson Cooper fails live up to the manly standards of the “cast of 300” which … did I miss that? Were they journalists?
Also, no mention of Christiane Amanpour, which does not surprise me, but still:
She has been there, for a wide variety of stories.
I like that, “map of the year.” Sometimes, I feel like I cast about for English words the same way I do when speaking in a foreign language, and I don’t know the correct vocabulary word. Except it’s English, the one thing I’m supposedly really good at.
And the typos I’ve started making, and smooshed together words… it’s frustrating. And puzzling.
Yes! I can't be the only person who will not drive if I've had even a single drink in less than 8 hours. That's just what I'm comfortable with. I also shouldn't have too much caffeine and I get a little bit tired of 7-Up.
Thaaaank you. Seriously! THIS. I hate how our culture socializes and enables boys and men to insert (hmm) any thought or opinion or experience that comes to mind into any interaction, regardless of context or appropriateness or productiveness, and obviously oblivious to whether anyone there could be reasonably expected to really give a shit about whatever they are saying at that moment.
Okay long-winded sentence. My weakness.
And it's so freeing for anyone to get to that point of awareness where you realize that everyone–including you–will benefit from you just listening, that you don't have to say everything that comes into your head in the moment and that that doesn't mean anything bad about you but actually enlarges your experience and connection.
So congratulations and a tip of my hat to you, sir.