1. “You seem like the sort of man who would prefer Arlo Guthrie’s ‘City of New Orleans’ to Steve Goodman’s.”
2. “Oh, you think you’re a Fool Saint like the insane minister’s wife who enacted miracles in the life of Robertson Davies’ Dunstan Ramsay? You’re just a fool, son.”
3. “I look forward to reading your book, should it ever be a $1.99 add-on when you purchase a 24 pack of recycled paper towels from Amazon.”
4. “You know how I can tell you’re not a book about Jesus’ love by the late Roman Catholic priest and thinker Henri Nouwen, who struggled with depression and his repressed sexuality but ultimately was infused with the goodness of the Lord? Because I CAN put you down!”
5. “Yeah, Henri Nouwen would see The Beloved in you, but I really struggle with it!”
6. “You remind me of David Caruso’s character in First Blood, in that you have red hair and lack moral courage.”
7. “Listening to you is like watching the flawed 1964 masterpiece Zulu, because you create an entertaining and false narrative of being an underdog in a system which is actually wildly tilted in your favor by distilling the larger story into a single unrepresentative incident.”
8. “You think you’re Joe Biden, but you’re really just an old white man who says weird things without regard for the people around him.”
9. “I don’t care enough to subtweet you, but I would favorite someone else’s subtweet about you if I was bored and casually watching TV while scrolling through my timeline.”
10. “Remember how margarine used to be sold as a white lump with a little dot of yellow food dye you stirred in after purchase? You clearly lost your yellow food dye before it could be stirred in.”
ZING
#8 is so real.
I feel like 8 is actually pretty widely applicable.
I’m so confused by the margarine thing. Is that real? Is there any reason it was like that??
Yes, it was real, and it was to keep consumers from confusing fake butter with real butter. That went by the wayside after World War II.
huh. thanks for the answer!
I think I learned this from the Moffats books!
Also, my lawyer dad defended “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” from the butter lobby for misleading use of the word “butter.” IDK, I was eight or something. It meant we had ICMINB coupons we had to use for the next decade, though.
According to my stepfather, yup! The dairy lobby apparently forced through legislation back in the day that mandated that margarine had to be sold white so it would be less appealing than butter. The margarine companies then put the dye in the package so people could finish the coloring process at home, where it was legal. It’s kind of nuts how powerful these groups are.
The dairy lobby and their massive power are how we got so many cases broadening the power of the dormant commerce clause past all sense and reason. It is how the FBI got enough power to punish people who grow marijuana for personal medical use without ever accepting money, which is so patiently absurd that I curse the dairy lobbies at times for the Wickard line of decisions.
According to my dad, margarine was sold like that in Chicago ( maybe post WWII) because of the Wisconsin dairy farmers lobby (this is one of those dad-isms that I have never bothered verifying so take it with a grain of salt or a dot of food coloring).
My high school bio teacher (very smart lady, good teacher, I tend to trust stuff she said) told us the same thing. We were in Minnesota; I was never clear if that only happened in the vicinity of Wisconsin or nationwide.
It’s still illegal for restaurants in Wisconsin to put out margarine for patrons. They can provide it if people ask, but the only thing they’re allowed to preemptively keep on the table is butter.
Fear the Wisconsin Dairy Lobby, for its reach is wide and its memory is long!
That is a fact that I am very glad to have learned!
where do they stand on non-dairy creamer vs those little cups of cream?
EIther there isn’t a law or every restaurant I’ve been in here ever is in flagrant violation, because non-dairy creamer cups are everywhere.
My dad was from Wisconsin, born in 1934, and this was definitely A Thing when he was a kid. And yes, because of the dairy farmer lobby.
My dad grew up in California and reports he and his sister used to fight over who would get to mix the dye into the margarine. Also that the dye wasn’t always yellow; sometimes it was pink? He doesn’t repeat the story about the pink margarine as often as he repeats the story of fighting with his sister, so I’m less clear on that point.
My mom also reports fighting over who would mix the dye – I believe this was in Ohio in the late 40s.
I had the notion that it was pink too? But I have no idea where I learned that, so who knows.
he and his sister used to fight over who would get to mix the dye into the margarine
This is so Tom Sawyer I have trouble comprehending it.
Yes, pink, again so it couldn’t be confused with REAL butter.
Mental note: do not mess with Wisconsin dairy farmers.
Audre Lorde actually references it in one of her essays.
As others have said, they weren’t allowed to make margarine yellow to distinguish it from butter and this was their work around. I’m just chiming in that this phenomenon made it as far as London, Ontario, Canada! My dad has told us stories of the several different iterations of the yellow packet (liquid, powder etc).
Don’t diss Arlo, dammit.
I grew up on Arlo and his version of this song…I…I had no idea it was someone else’s first. I’ll love him forever, though.
Agreed. Someone needs to go to the Group W Bench.
Arlo me boys, Arlo…
#7: yes yes yes yes yes.
#10: what? really?! I mean, yes, that’s a definite burn but no idea that used to be a thing!
Number 3 is the most beautifully written insult I’ve ever seen.
I want to re-learn to cross-stitch and make six copies of it to put in every room of my apartment, even my roommates’ bedrooms. I want to tattoo it on my stomach and the exhumed stomach of my eight years dead grandmother. I want to learn how to fly a plane and spend every mid-morning Monday flying around the DC area with that as a banner streaming behind it.
Ideal target for that burn: pretentious, bloviating academics.
I’m hearing it in Niles Crane’s voice.
Nouwen references. This is too much.
*Immediately sends article to the archivist for the Nouwen collection*
Tell the archivist that he or she is doing the world’s most important work!
I will!
And here is more information about the Henri Nouwen archives! http://stmikes.utoronto.ca/kelly/nouwen/default.p…
Lovely!! Most of my aunts and uncles are grads of St Mike’s at U of T, btw!
Ah! This used to be my job until the media conglomerate that owned my imprint laid me off because they didn’t care about Nouwen until they realized lots of people care about Nouwen so moved him to a new fancy imprint, not his 60 year old publisher… So much love for Henri!
“I look forward to reading your book, should it ever be a $1.99 add-on when you purchase a 24 pack of recycled paper towels from Amazon.”
OUCH.
#9 is actually my favorite though, I feel that way about SO many people.
I’m with you on #1! Team Steve all the way.
Perhaps the only good thing about the Lite FM station that my longest lasting retail job played constantly was that they played a lot of Steve Goodman (this was 1990s Chicago). The Lincoln Park Pirates are we!
Number 8 is special for Prince Phillip.
These are going to be my new Happy Place when I have to spend time with my in-laws.
re: #3: https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/bookofmyen…
‘The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered’
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life’s vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one’s enemy’s book —
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.
NGL I actually do prefer the Arlo Guthrie version to Steve Goodman’s.
Now I will spend all day trying to think of Ramsay’s foolsaint. I can remember Liesl and Paul, Boyd…even his brother Willie. I REFUSE to surrender to google.
She was the one who was hit in the head with a stone in a snowball by the bad boy Boyd and so gave birth to Paul too early. She then became simple and very very nice.
But it is fiction, so it doesn’t need to be analyzed.
Mary Dempster! Poor, poor Mary Dempster.
And Liesl! She’s got a pretty good burn herself : “But you have no art of dealing with such a situation as a man of fifty, so you are thrown back to being like a little boy. Well, I am sorry for you. Not very much, but some.”
Thank you! And yes, Liesl is generally pretty good with the burns.
Now I want to go home and read the Depford Trilogy again. Stupid work.
As someone who has read a lot of Henri Nouwen, #4 and #5 particularly slayed me.
Brb sending #7 to some people who it could have been written for.
Willie Nelson’s City of New Orleans, anyone?
Also, Nicole has convinced me to read some Nouwen, but I’m not sure where to start. Recommendations appreciated. 🙂
OKAY! I rec Life of the Beloved, and Return of the Prodigal Son, but also The Inner Voice of Love, and basically anything, he is a gem.
Never did I ever expect this to exist, especially with a windblown photo of Henri Nouwen. But it was an answer to a prayer I didn’t even know I had prayed.
Robertson Davies! He is my hometown county’s claim to fame, as he too was born in that part of the world. #2 feels particularly on point, as I was just telling a friend about how Davies based Deptford and the neighbouring hamlets and towns on the area. It wasn’t until I revisited that book in my 20s that I realized what he was truly saying when he named my hometown Pittstown in the book.
My hometown is Kingston, which is Salterton in Davies World!
#3!!!!!
I might get to use this TODAY.
My whole family has one that we use far too often when dismissing somebody’s pinterest platitudes: “Oh, is that Paulo Coelho?”
There have been huge fights in my family that erupted after one person would “suggest” a book to somebody’s new partner and therefore imply they are simple or basic. I’m afraid to bring my current fling around because no matter how sweet he is to me…his favorite writer is Chuck Palahniuk. I’m hoping it’s a sign of lack of exposure to others and not terrible taste. 🙁
*saving 7 for all discussions with MRAs, Gamergaters and related ruling social class being the victim of the poor marginalised people conversations*
Oh no, I think 6 is me.
I will judge you SO HARD for #1.
5. “Yeah, Henri Nouwen would see The Beloved in you, but I really struggle with it!”
This is something like my own version of “bless their heart,” which is “[x] is a beloved child of God.”
I use “precious child of God” in the exact same way, high fives.
I haven’t seen your name in my inbox lo, these many years! I’m meleth over on LJ.
Oh my gosh RANDOM TOAST REUNION.
Reunited and it feels so good…
One of the leaders of my church youth group used to say “so and so is proof that God exists” with the clear implication that so and so was too flaky/naive/whatever to survive without God’s intervention.
I was just so glad that someone else loves Robertson Davies. I was feeling all alone in the world.
One of the leaders of my church youth group used to say "so and so is proof that God exists" with the clear implication that so and so was too flaky/naive/whatever to survive without God's intervention.
I wish I would have known about
_8. “You think you’re Joe Biden, but you’re really just an old white man who says weird things without regard for the people around him.”_
earlier today, when some geezer on the subway felt the need to yell at me _to go back to kindergarten to learn some manners_ because I committed the atrocious crime of yawning. Alas, I only managed a weak _”you, too!”_
What are italics even? Grr.
I wish I would have known about
_8. “You think you’re Joe Biden, but you’re really just an old white man who says weird things without regard for the people around him.”_
earlier today, when some geezer on the subway felt the need to yell at me _to go back to kindergarten to learn some manners_ because I committed the atrocious crime of yawning. Alas, I only managed a weak _"you, too!"_
What are italics even? Grr.