Oh, girl, I do NOT like this guy! Go with Captain Awkward (as a Professional Internet Person, I definitely understand both sides of this, and I try not to be weirded out when I meet a stranger who feels like they know me, because, well, they kind of do, but this is just giving me bad feelings):
My Twitter is open, it’s a mix of personal and professional stuff as I have developed a group of followers who are interested in my life. So it’s open for him to read. But as Doug keeps insisting, he has not got an account himself so it’s not like I am one of the folks he’s following. I find it creepy that he is reading everything I write there and commenting on it, that he calls me by my user name and the fact that he tells me about it makes me feel surveilled. He never ever comments on the professional stuff, which I would have found totally fine. It’s always the personal stuff and he always reinterprets it through this “poor little stressed lady” lens.
Trolling done right:
Once I was in charge of the group I decided to take it in a new direction. The Confederate flag, I felt, had become a toxic brand. And all this South-rising-again business was a sure loser with swing voters. A top-down rebranding was in order. After rigorous focus-group testing, I decided to align the group with LGBT rights, Michelle Obama, Judaism, miscegenation, and the victorious Juche ideology. And that is how “confederate pride, heritage not hate” became “LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama and Judaism.”
no no no no no no no do not want fix your life get a real job cut your hair stay away from my daughter why are you making me voice such reactionary sentiments i resent you for it:
3:30 p.m. We do a college-radio-station show. There’s a cute girl working there. She’s in college, so that’s a little weird. But she’s definitely over 18, so it’s probably okay. Her name is Melinda. She is fair-skinned and somewhat “mushy,” almost like she hasn’t lost her baby weight yet, but in a hot way. We flirt a little and I invite her to the show. She says she’ll “try.”
Speaking of being a Professional Internet Person, do you use a Twitter blocklist/auto-blocker? I have one, and I DO notice that if a friend is tango-ing with a troll, the troll is usually already blocked from me, which makes it well worth the price of admission (zero dollars.) There are a few false positives, of course: I had a reader email me because she was blocked and couldn’t figure out why, so I looked at her timeline and merrily unblocked her. Anyway, the new thing trolls are doing is getting SO MAD they’re auto-blocked and claiming it violates their something something, which is silly, and I enjoy it greatly.
What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name:
I sent the six queries I had planned to send that day. Within 24 hours George had five responses—three manuscript requests and two warm rejections praising his exciting project. For contrast, under my own name, the same letter and pages sent 50 times had netted me a total of two manuscript requests. The responses gave me a little frisson of delight at being called “Mr.” and then I got mad. Three manuscript requests on a Saturday, not even during business hours! The judgments about my work that had seemed as solid as the walls of my house had turned out to be meaningless. My novel wasn’t the problem, it was me—Catherine.
I wanted to know more of how the Georges of the world live, so I sent more. Total data: George sent out 50 queries, and had his manuscript requested 17 times. He is eight and a half times better than me at writing the same book. Fully a third of the agents who saw his query wanted to see more, where my numbers never did shift from one in 25.
Today I have two good causes I would like to solicit your Good Vibes and Prayers and Money for! My dear friend has a friend who is a single mom with a sick baby, a combination of words that make me come unglued. And, if you remember our darling, sweet Toastie Ella telling us about her sick boyfriend, here is a great place to help if you are UK based! They are already raising LOADS of money for this worthy cause, not just for John, but for everybody with his condition. Ella is going to be writing about the whole thing for us, in her perfect and wonderful way, and my dream is for the final installment to be “John’s magically great now because a British Toastie was a perfect match, so I’m too busy having celebratory sex with him to write anything else, shove off.”
Also, again, what is DESPERATELY needed is more bone marrow donors (one of the rare times a charity truly needs YOU more than your money for a cause!) and my cheek swab could not have been an easier process!
Her own show was an instant hit online in 2011, and soon a number of networks and production companies expressed interest in adapting ‘‘Awkward Black Girl’’ for prime-time TV. To Rae’s disappointment, most wanted to completely rework the show. Rae recalls a phone conversation with a network executive who wanted to make it into a pan-racial franchise operation, starting with ‘‘Awkward Indian Boy.’’ Another suggested Rae recast the lead with a lighter-skinned actress with long, straight hair — in essence, the exact opposite of Rae. She turned down the offers.
‘‘They wanted to make it as broad as possible, broadly niche, but I was like: No, that’s not what this is about,’’ she says. Another botched opportunity came in the summer of 2012 with Shonda Rhimes and Rhimes’s production partner, Betsy Beers. Rae pitched them a show called ‘‘I Hate L.A. Dudes,’’ a comedy about a woman trying to date preening, image-obsessed men in Hollywood. Rhimes and Beers loved it so much that they sold it to ABC. But Rae had trouble getting the script ready for pilot-reading season that winter. She recalls fielding constant, sometimes overlapping and contradictory notes from the network and Rhimes’s team. (Rhimes declined to be interviewed for this story.) In the end, her treatment fell short of expectations, and the pilot wasn’t picked up. ‘‘I compromised my vision, and it didn’t end up the show that I wanted,’’ she says. ‘‘It wasn’t funny anymore.’’
I just hired a sixty-something husband-and-wife team to do a one-time massive deep clean of my house (baseboards! fridge! stove! the chandelier made of fake antlers! the weird reindeer head above the mantelpiece! the little circular worms that wander eight feet into the house twice a year by the hundreds and then die!), and they came out yesterday to scope the joint, and they are killing me, literally killing me, because they are SO nice, and SO heavily LDS (dropped a reference to the temple, had super-obvious garment lines under their clothes), and they are so! passionate! about! cleaning! and also sort of amazingly gossipy? Like, they’ll drop client names, and they’ll tell stories, but they won’t tell a story CONNECTED to a client name. So, I’ll get something like “some of these big houses…I won’t say WHO, but let’s just say that one of the Utah Jazz players had a jetted tub that was black on the bottom, and they had a live-in gal, and they told me she doesn’t ‘do’ tubs, and I wanted to say ‘well, darlin’, what do you do?”
So, TL;DR, there is a devout pillar of the faith wearing a backpack vacuum like a Ghostbuster and standing on a terrifying ladder scrubbing out my light fixtures while dispensing folksy grandparent wisdom, and I want him to live here forever now.
UPDATE: he took all the shelves out of my fridge and washed them and then organized my fridge (yes, I have a lot of dairy products)
That poor sweet baby! WE CAN HELP!!!
Speaking of trolling, here is another pretty interesting thing, about a fleet of anti-misogynist spambots designed to attack misogynist twitter trolls!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-medi…
Imagine! Something good coming out of a German art collective!
Don’t read the comments there, unless you want to feel sick!
That diary is the skeeviest thing I’ve encountered in months. Ew ew ew ew EW EW EW EW EW
SO SO SO SKEEVY UGHGGHGHGHGHHH GROSS GROSS GROSS
The excerpt is skeevy and then I read the web link. NOPE NOPE NOPE
He’s clearly trying to humble-brag, but honestly, his life sounds depressing and exhausting to me. Does that mean I’m officially a grown-up now?
Dude, exactly. He’s going SO hard for a world-weary “life of the artist slash rockstar” I just have to sleep with all these women but…..that sounds horrible. And not like great sex, either.
When I saw the title, I automatically thought, “who cares what a man thinks?” and didn’t click on it. I feel good about that.
That is the perfect response. A++++ toasting.
You truly are The Best of Us All.
Melinda, honey. You can do.sooooooo much better.
One of my most precious family members fits Melinda’s description almost perfectly and I was so worried until I got to her age/year. I need to erase this from my mind immediately.
YES UGH and so. many! of the commenters were like “eh seems like a pretty decent dude. boring, but that’s why he’s in a band!” ffjdkfa;hjfkhfd;ghdf;ja’ha;ddj BURN IT WITH FIRE
Yeah I’m pretty sure I got herpes just reading it.
Heyyy just popping in here to say that while I agree with the sentiment, maybe it would be good not to equate herpes with skeeviness? Since herpes is super-common and easy to get even without sexual contact. Plus, STI-shaming feels un-Toast-like.
I hear you. What would be a better skeeviness-equation?
Oh my goodness, there are so many fine examples in the comments on this round-up, I don’t think you’ll have to look too far for some vivid phrasing that doesn’t shame anyone but the diary dude. I just scrolled by gloriana’s “I closed the browser tab, then the browser, then my life” which seemed so evocative to me that I scrolled back up to share it here.
I have to read things like that diary with my hands well away from my keyboard, because otherwise I can almost feel the Do Not Want crawling up my arms and towards my face, like when Willow absorbed all of that Dark Magic.
“My genitalia jumped off my body and ran away”?
Yeast infection?
I read that with an ever-escalating “ew ew ew EW EW EW” yesterday in the waiting room at the ophthalmologist, and when I got to all the “this is a good guy” comments, I broke out into an audible WHAAAAT and then was boggled at by a roomful of elderly people with dilated pupils.
All of the sex diaries this summer have been hella skeevy. I had to stop reading them because I was like, “There have GOT to be less creepy/gross/depressing ways to have casual sex, RIGHT?” I mean, I think there are. Just not being had by anyone who agrees to write for NYMag.
Anyone who is doing casual sex right is having too much fun to require validation from the trollish commenters at NYMag. And is probably also too busy to write about it.
There are. It’s just boring to write “Traded emails and photos with a guy, he seemed nice, we met for drinks, had a good time, he seemed like a good person, had sex (protected), I came first, said bye, and I got to sleep in my own bed. Went to work the next day.”
I’m reading it and like, I want to keep scrolling but at the same time I’ve pushed myself so far away from my desk that I can’t reach the keyboard anymore.
I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT DIARY SO MUCH.
Should have known from the title: “The Indie Rocker Who Prefers Women With Pubes” which make me want to VOMIT (not because of pubes, but because of every stereotype this man is) & it just got worse.
whywhywhywhywhywhy (are there *any* good guys out there? asks the single girl who is not a casual sex person at all. There must be, right?)
Yes. Just … yes. I met a guy who was prepared to make paella for the first time for me. He was sweet.
I’m 100% sure none of those women actually came.
OH THANK YOU I thought the exact same thing
I was always pretty faithful, save a few random make-outs on the road.
There was a cute bartender in D.C., but she mentioned a boyfriend, so I backed out of that scenario fast.
Because women who belong to somebody else are major drama, but he can go for a bit on the side and it’s just, like, whatever.
i thought the antler chandelier was real? i don’t know what to believe anymore
The antlers are a resin compound! The reindeer is def a dead reindeer.
buuuuut if you want to see something somewhat similar and imo very terrifying: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/6983714929_c0f…
The keratin throne.
Anthony Nolan didn’t want me to register for stem cells because I’m over 30, but I am already a registered bone marrow donor. That would be weird!
You have a lot of the right dairy products by which I mean there is no such thing as enough Fage yogurt to satisfy my tastes, but you appear to be making a solid effort toward that goal. WELL DONE.
HELLO. I have lacked internet since Sunday’s crazy intense storm, and we are all OK and only one person was injured and our house is still standing. MrChouffe is doing some evaluation for FEMA dollars and there’s some very, very scary stuff out there. We got very lucky. The worst of the weather hit the town where my mother works, which was completely cut off for two days due to downed trees and power lines. Several of our friends are going to lose their homes. It’s the kind of thing that just kind of doesn’t happen around here.
I missed you, is what I’m trying to get at here.
I was thinking about trying Siggi’s – seeing it in Nicole’s fridge is pushing me a little further…
OMG eat it eat all of it it is so so good (also made around where I live!).
For a while it was hard to get, but now suddenly even “regular” closet-sized NYC supermarkets (not Whole Foods, iow) are starting to carry it.
Siggi’s is SO GOOD. Get you some of that coconut flavor, slice a mango on top, and sprinkle with cardamom. You will not be disappointed.
Oh my goodness I didn’t know about that storm! I was up near the peninsula just last week. I’m so glad your house is still standing and sending lots of vibes for quick recovery of health/homes/power for everyone!
I was thinking about you the past few days and hoping you and yours were okay.
Thanks. It’s been A Week so far for sure but at least we’ve got a roof.
Glad you are OK! I was wondering how you had fared. We lost power and a couple trees but the house is OK. It was crazy though–it came and went so fast and suddenly everything was topsy-turvy…and so many people weren’t as lucky as us.
I know. My friends in GA keep posting pictures and.. ugh, I can’t even believe it.
Glad you’re unscathed. Plus, hey, free firewood…?
I definitely admire your commitment to kefir, and would love to y’alls stance on kombucha (AKA slime pop AKA wonderdrink for meeeee).
I like it, personally. I have a jar of mother lurking in the back of my fridge and it’s worrying.
“I have a jar of mother lurking in the back of my fridge and it’s worrying.”
that is just a worrying sentence (if you don’t know kombucha, but still)
Especially if you use the Buster Bluth pronunciation of mother.
Normally I love things that taste like vinegar but there’s something about kombucha I just can’t deal with. It tastes like feet.
Same! It sucks because I know it’s good for you, but the taste makes me gag.
Have you tried RISE kombucha? They have a hibiscus flavour that has zero ferment taste to it
I’ve seen that at my store so I’ll give it a shot! Any particular flavor?
Hibiscus, and also the ginger, are both very strongly herbal and not sour. The blueberry/maple, rose and lemongrass flavours have the most typically kombucha taste, but they are still quite sweet compared to GTs
I can sort of take the taste in small doses, but it does discomforting things to my digestive system, so … no.
I didn’t care for it the first time I tried it, but now I LOVE IT. It satisfies my desire to drink something more flavorful than plain water without being packed full of sugar, and even if it is mostly a placebo effect I like to think that it is doing good stuff for my digestive system. Am thinking about trying to DIY some because it is so, so expensive if you buy by the bottle.
I was spending a fortune on GT’s – I ordered a DIY kit and am just waiting for the SCOBY to ship.
I drink kombucha whenever I start to feel a cold coming on and sometimes the cold… goes away? WHO KNOWS, BODIES ARE WEIRD.
I have SO MUCH SCOBY sitting in the back of my fridge. I probably have about 4 pounds. If any Montréal toasties want SCOBY, please let me know. I am producing 6L a week and it will just not stop growing
I love kombucha and have been brewing my own for years. (Fun fact: every brew session produces a new SCOBY and I am happy to ship one to any Toasties who are booch-inciined!). However, I find it crucial to strain the beverage after second fermentation/before I drink it because I cannot with the stringy slimy SCOBY poop.
OH MAN I wanted to send the essay about submitting under a male name to the Toast yesterday! But it made my stomach hurt and I knew you’d find it anyway. UGH MY HEART AND UTERUS.
That article made me so angry/sad. I re-read “Male Novelist Jokes” and the second comic here: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=224 as some sort of worldview-repair.
I agree that the “freelance client” talking to the woman who wrote in to Captain Awkward is SUPER CREEPY, but I also don’t understand how people are surprised when others read their really personal, but still public, social media posts? I have a great memory, I remember everything I read, and have referenced people’s posts to their faces, and am always received with shock and surprise and “I didn’t think people ever read what I wrote!” so now I don’t say anything and pretend I don’t see what people are writing, but that seems counter intuitive? Maybe I am a creep.
There’s a different between acknowledging what you read and letting what you read guide conversations. I tweet and I blog, and I’m happy to talk about either IRL, but for the most part, I expect that if I tweet, people will respond to those tweets via Twitter; if I post a blog, I’ll either get a comment on the blog itself or on Facebook.
I think it comes down to relationship. If you’re close with someone and you see an upset-looking tweet, you can totally be like, “Hey! I saw your tweet! What’s going on?” the next time you see them. On the other hand, a client? With whom you’re ostensibly working? And who would likely want to keep convos focused on work-related topics? Probably less eager to delve into twitter minutiae.
Yes, this is the thing.
I don’t think I write anything terribly personal on my Twitter and blog, and in my opinion the more people who read those feeds the better. But in my old publishing job I occasionally dealt with authors or scholars who would cite things from my Twitter that just didn’t make sense in our professional conversations. It was a little like being catcalled–a little power play, like the caller just wants to let me know HE CAN SEE ME, as though that puts me at a disadvantage. It’s kind of gross and more importantly it really throws off the dynamic of our conversation about the work we’re trying to do, which I have to assume is the point because why else do it?
Right! If it weren’t a creepy power play, it would come out a lot more like “Hey, sorry if this is weird because we’ve never talked on Twitter, but I saw that thing you posted last week about ___ and it was cool!” Not like “I’m at the edge of my seat waiting for a chance to say I READ YOUR TWITTER.”
And it’s not just that he’s referencing it, but that he’s using her offhanded twitter comments to build this totally other version of her that he gets to project his paternalism on, and he’s only engaging with his fantasy stressed out lady that he can possibly rescue
YES, this x1000
Combine it with the “funding problems,” and this guy just seems like very bad news to me.
I do think the “I saw your tweet” part of the conversation is key, and from the description at CA, I didn’t get the impression he was doing that part? Talking to someone and bringing up “hey, I saw that thing you posted” is different from seeing someone’s basically broadcast post and acting like that was information you got from a personal interaction with them (x1000 if you didn’t actually have an interaction with them online about it, either).
Well, probably because like Kai_Ko said, they’re expecting to get responses to the stuff they write on those platforms. Why would you assume people are reading anything you write if nobody ever comments on it? I have to say referencing it in conversation is probably a varsity-level social interaction and could definitely come across as creepy, especially if you’re not interacting on the “home” platform.
yeah, I feel like we, as a society, have a lot of scripts for bringing up “that thing I/you posted on facebook” in conversations, probably because we know most of those people IRL. twitter though? (and probably Instagram and tumblr?) twitter is public and tweets are so fleeting and half of them are jokes and some people tweet 500x a day and some once a week and there’s no way to know whether a given person saw a given tweet so how do we even talk about twitter IRL? Advanced etiquette for sure! I bet there are lots of well-intentioned non-creeps being super awkward about someone’s public posts in an in person conversation every day.
Luckily the creep alert gut feeling applies no matter what other awkwardness is going on, good on that LW for listening to it.
So, I expect that people who have actual accounts and are following me are reading what I post. Like, I expect my Facebook friends and Twitter followers and what not to know what I am up to in terms of what I have shared on social media (to the point that I have been known to get annoyed at people for asking small talk questions covering stuff that I have already covered on social media).
I also know that my realname Twitter is public and that means that anyone could find it via google, and that I need to be accountable for what I say there.
But I don’t expect people who don’t have relationships with me on social media to be following my posts, and I don’t expect them to bring it up in real life. So, for example, if I mentioned on my real name Twitter that I was going to a movie, and someone who I knew had Twitter said “oh, hey, how was the movie?”, that would be okay, but if one of my coworkers said the same thing, that would weird me out, since they’re not following me.
If you’re talking about a blog, if people don’t comment and you don’t track your page counts, it’s easy to think you’re just spilling into the void. You know that in theory anyone COULD read it, but you don’t think anyone really is.
Thank you for clarifying this. It helps. I mean, so many people have this knee-jerk “everything you post on the internet is public so why do you care when people read it” but it really does matter which people and in which context.
Kind of like if you had brunch out with friends and were talking about your plumbing issues with your friends in public at your table and your coworker overheard you from the next table over and then emailed you later like, “Hey, so I heard you talking to your friends this morning about your plumbing stuff. What’s up with that?” It would be totally weird and inappropriate, right? Even though you were in public, that conversation was off-limits to that person.
I think it probably also depends on how well-known you/your account are. A person like Mallory with tens of thousands of official followers probably has many “ghost” followers without Twitter accounts. (Like me!) A person who has like 130 followers, many of whom are people they know from real life, will reasonably not expect to have very many dedicated “ghost” followers, because a lot of what they put out is not intended for public consumption.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently creepy about “ghost” following people if you’re not inclined to get a Twitter account, but you shouldn’t then use that to force a level of intimacy that your acquaintance hasn’t chosen to extend you.
I think it’s all about what it adds to the conversation. Before I made my account private I had a number of friends who read my tweets without having accounts themselves, and when we would get together they might say “hey, I saw you tweeting about the raccoons under your porch this weekend, did animal control ever show up?” or whatever. Or “I read that article you posted and I, too have opinions about how to make sangria.” But there’s a difference between using the internet to keep up with your friends and enrich your conversations, and using it as a shortcut to get inside a person’s head, I guess? Most of my tweets are really silly and I’m not trying to project my true inner self or give anyone the critical details of my life, I’m just trying to make my friends laugh. So if somebody thinks they’re all up in my personal life because they read my tweets, it seems misguided at best.
I think you’ve nailed it.
Also, a lot of us have different personalities that we project to the Internet, especially if we’re the shy/retiring type who feel more comfortable interacting semi-anonymously with strangers or whatever. Just bringing up stuff that is mentioned on social media (maybe it was a joke or a passing thought or a comment about your identity that you don’t really bring up around family because ~~awkward~~) is uncomfortable and really not showing a good understanding of TPO.
See, this comment is an excellent illustration of the difference between being creepy and being socially awkward/making social mistakes that the CA commenters are talking about there (and that the Doctor Nerdlove post one of them links to discusses in more depth). If someone gets negative feedback from an interaction and internalizes it, and in the future modifies their behavior accordingly even if they don’t entirely understand the problem, that’s not creepy; that’s human, and it’s how society works.
The difference between reading someone’s blog and reading their Twitter account is that it’s creepy and kind of rude to read someone’s Twitter when you don’t have your own account and follow them with it and use it for your own shit! HE IS GOING ON TWITTER FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF STALKING HER TL.
Caveat: Less creepy if the person is famous or is your IRL friend.
See, if he’d focused on her professional tweets (“I saw that you worked with so-and-so on such-and-such. I thought such-and-such was really interesting; how were you involved in the project”), that would be perfectly normal. But he’s striving for this level of intimacy, based on her social media presence, that doesn’t match up to their real-life relationship, and it’s awkward at the very least.
That Capt Awkward guy has creeped me out so much I want her to never talk to him again.
How can I hire this couple??? I need a fridge like that. Need! Are they in Toronto? Please tell me they are in Toronto.
That’s SO MUCH KEFIR, you are amazing and kefir is amazing. I get the strawberry stuff but I’m the only one in my apartment who drinks it, and I try to make a jug last at least 3 days. It’s hard, though, I could probably drink one a day.
And although I wish I could partake in Toastie twitter, between the Captain Awkward and the need for auto-blockers, I’m really glad I made my twitter private when I made it & haven’t looked back since.
(we have lots of folks on Toastie Twitter who have locked accounts…)
how does a protected account join toastie twitter? as of now I just watch kinda longingly… AM I THE CREEP FROM CAPTAIN AWKWARD? OH NO.
You are not the creep! Basically, you just follow people that you want to follow, and if they have protected accounts, they will give you permission (or not) as they see fit. The people you follow may or may not follow you back, and you give them permission (or not) as you like. I will say that if you are going on a follow-spree, it is helpful if you have “toastie” or something in your profile to indicate that you are One of Us. The excellent @embryoconcepts has a list of Toasties here: https://twitter.com/embryoconcepts/lists/toasties…
yassss join ussssssss
Not to say that you should join us if you don’t want to, but private accounts will not prevent participation!
Just joining in to say that I have a protected account and it does not prevent me from participating in toastie twitter. (What usually prevents me is forgetting I have a twitter).
I’m a private Toast Twitter-er and have many Toast followers! @noxmunk if you want to add me.
Oh. I had a surprisingly physical reaction to the sight of that organized fridge. I need a lie down!
Yesterday I read that article about the author submitting her book under a male name and I just got so frustrated. If it had been a physical piece of paper I was reading, I’d have thrown it down in anger, but alas.
Seriously though, I’ve never really thought about writing with an intent to publish mostly because of the sheer amount of work involved, but this just seems like another weight on top of all that.
That Captain Awkward letter reminds me of the “give your money to women” movement. Like, no way would Mr. Potential Client be doing this to a dude.
It’s linked in the comments. LW is definitely doing emotional labour for that guy.
Which gave me a chance to read some of the more clueless comments on that post, which was fun.
Issa Rae is so funny and good at making tv shows and I really hope HBO gets her a show on air. This part made me want to throw rotten vegetables at various HBO execs,
“She had a wish list of people she liked — primarily young women of color — but she soon found out HBO had little interest in hiring them. Generally, an HBO spokeswoman said, the network wants people who have experience.”
I would bathe in that kefir drink if I could. It’s so good! I ordered some kefir grains from someone on Etsy so I could try making my own. Hopefully the little guys made it through the post all right.
I remember once a guy was trying to ask me out and he had basically memorized my facebook profile (back when it still had interests and likes) and kept bringing parts up as a way to show we had sooo much in common, when really I only had a lot in common with myself. I think the issue with the guy isnt that it’s creepy that he is reading it, it is sort of creepy that he is using it to build an artificial intimacy.
That’s such a good point about artificial intimacy. That’s exactly what’s bugging me.
This is half the reason that I made my dating profile kind of jokey and didn’t include a list of books/ movies/ albums. I didn’t want anyone to think “ah, yes, we both enjoyed Transformers 2, that will surely be enough to fuel a dinner conversation.”
*of course I still got those people because there are a lot of boring dudes out there. I put some stupid aside in my profile about how the bartender at my local bowling alley knows my name, which led to more than one tedious conversation about proper bowling technique.
This makes me want to make a dating profile where the only movie listed is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, because if mediocre joke references to 90s one hit wonders don’t float your boat then we are doomed from the start.
Who is actually interested in reading some indie-rock dudebro’s sexual exploits? Not only does he come off creepy as hell (the nagging chorus of “…but it didn’t bother me at all” eeeeuuuughhhh), but it’s not exactly a remarkable sexual week? There’s nothing INTERESTING about that story.
Agreed! I was interested at first, because the way he was writing about meeting girls and anticipating dates reminded me strongly of how such inner monologues are written for female characters. I met a cute girl! She’s so cute I hope she likes me! Oh man she didn’t respond right away! That was interesting, coming from a dude.
But I got bored during the self-congratulatory sex scenes and came back here to enjoy snarking on it instead.
Oh man, the “but it didn’t bother me at all”s were making me want to beat this guy to death with my smart phone when I read this yesterday. If it didn’t bother you, why are you harping on it?? Also the part about where he described one woman as “very sexually experienced, but in a classy way” (after several other poor attempts to convey the same thought) were just…why don’t you just come out and say “she had expressed sexual desire by that point, but like, not a whore-ish way? Like, I hadn’t completely lost respect for her yet–EVEN THOUGH she wanted to sleep with me. Is that a thing? Hahaha it was so weird, guys!!!”
I saw the “classy” bit and closed the browser tab, then the browser, then my life.
I applaud your restraint. I, on the other hand, read the whole thing, despite wanting to claw out my eyeballs for most of it….
he describes a girl as “mushy”
-.-
So is New York Sex Diaries like “boring letters to Penthouse” or something? Who is corroborating these stories?
Imagine being the New York Magazine intern who has to call up Melinda and Tally for fact-checking! Ethics in sex-diary journalism!
“Hi, this is Hunter from New York Magazine, I’m calling to uh. I’ve got to…to fact check some…we have an article about the…uh. Could you tell me how you keep your pubic hair? It’s not for me! We just want to publish something about it in the magazine.”
Interestingly enough, I remember NY Sex Diaries before they discontinued it, and there would be a regular group of people who would always comment. They were often really snarky and mean, and there was one guy in particular who was always way over the top. He’d brag endlessly about his sex life and give really condescending advice. Then, during Hurricane Sandy, he tweeted (I guess his handle was the same as his username) a bunch of false stuff that sent people in a panic, and he was outed as some Republican hedge fund manager. Oh the internets, the wonders never cease!
I remember that guy, that was the guy who was “trying to prove a point” by saying a bunch of lies about where there were fires in order to confuse emergency services.
I guess it’s not surprising that that guy was 1) a Republican hedge fund manager, and 2) pathologically lied about his sexual history in a public forum.
I forgot that he’d done it in order to confuse emergency services. Maybe he can do a NY diary on what it’s like to go through life as a garbage human?
Yeah but you know if a dude like that wrote a diary, it would be, “What it’s like to go through life when everyone is a garbage human except for ME.”
What point does that prove? That he doesn’t mind if people die as a result of his actions?
I think he said he was trying to prove that people shouldn’t believe things that they read on the internet without checking on them first, but deep down what I think he was trying to prove is that he’s smarter than everyone that ever hasn’t been impressed by him.
If they aren’t invented by a committee tasked with generated angry pageviews, I don’t know what to think.
OFF TOPIC THREAD I AM SORRY.
GULP ok so today is my last workday of the week (I’m taking a 4 day weekend trip with friends in the mountains) aaaaaaaaand in 5 minutes I have a meeting with the CEO to discuss me taking on more responsibility and becoming the media contact, which is a position that does not exist yet but maybe I can create it? I have been here for 3 years now and as of tomorrow I will be the longest-tenured admin, and I’ve been slowly waging a campaign to get a new title and different responsibilities and ahhhhhh I am nervous even though I know the CEO loves me. Please throw any well-wishes/good karma/prayers my way!
Goooooooood luck!!!
Good luck!
Good luck! I hope it goes (went?) well!
You’re probably in the meeting right this second so I hope it’s going well! Enjoy your mountains!
Sending good thoughts!!
Good luck!
Thank y’all so much! It went very well… We decided that I am going to be managing my other admins whenever their bosses want to talk to the press, which is fairly frequently and a big step for me. I am great at execution but not great at teaching & managing, so this will be a really good way to start moving towards actually being able to manage a team someday in the future. Now to start creating flowcharts… 🙂
Thanks to low-level but consistent Toast encouragement, I have signed up for the bone marrow registry! Eagerly awaiting my cheek swab kit!
Yay!!!! Thank you so much!
Awesome! Well done!
I signed up thanks to The Toast too! I was at a concert last week and normally I would not have stopped and waited in line when my favorite band was about to hit the stage, but I stopped and did the whole form-filling/swabbing thing in honor of The Toast.
you are making me so happy today!
I just signed up too!
Yes! It is SO simple to register for the National Marrow Donor Registry. I was on the registry for years without really hearing anything, and then one day got the call that I matched and was able to donate peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) for a patient with blood cancer. It was such an interesting process. If you haven’t registered, please visit https://bethematch.org/ and register today!
Also, if you’re intimidated by the idea of registering or of what it’s like to donate, I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have from a donor standpoint.
yay i just did this too. excited for my swab kit
I am interested in what the donation process is like!
Does it cost anything?
Can you donate while pregnant?
Does it hurt real bad?
I will probably sign up regardless – my friend’s dad recently was treated for leukemia and got marrow through the national registry, and I thought that was so amazing and wonderful (he’s in remission now!)
I am interested in does it hurt real bad. I sent in my cheek swab last week and I’ll still donate if called, but I’d like to be prepared.
Speaking specifically to the PBSC process, it’s not a terribly painful process. The drug they administer to produce the excess blood stem cells they collect does cause some aches and pains, but they’re mostly managed by OTC pain meds. The bone marrow donation, from what I’ve read and heard, involves and anesthetic, so you don’t feel the pain during the procedure, but there is some soreness and swelling during the post-donation period. Ultimately, it’s up to the individual donor whether the amount of pain is worth it, and it’s something you can discuss with your donor services representative if you match.
I have some more detail in a comment downthread if you’re interested. If you have other questions, feel free to ask!
https://storify.com/thisgreyspirit/leukaemia-stil… This is a really great Storify from someone I know vaguely- one of the only people in the world to undergo BOTH methods of stem cell donation.
Thank you all, so much, for everything. Every single donor might be a match for John, but more than that (because we don’t know if he’ll be able to have one yet), it might be a match for somebody- and that fact is what’s keeping both him and I going in here with all the beeps and wires.
Thank you so much for sharing that! It rang so true in so many ways from my donation experience.
I actually did get tagged as a match to donate again (to a different patient this time), though I don’t recall if they were going to do the bone marrow or the PBSC again, but they called off the procedure because the patient was not ready at that time. I still wonder if they’ll come back and ask at some point.
Like the person in the Storify link, I take every opportunity I can to encourage people to register. It was such an incredible (and emotional) experience to donate, and doubly so once I received the letter from my recipient telling me how the procedure had saved his life.
I can really only speak directly to my experience with the PBSC donation (as opposed to the bone marrow extraction), so keep that in mind, but:
There is no cost to you as a donor. All medical tests/procedures and travel costs (to get to testing centers, donation centers, etc.) are covered by the recipient’s insurance or the marrow donor program. They provided me with a special card to present each step of the way informing the practices I visited that I was not to be charged.
Because of the process involved in collection of PBSC and marrow, I do not believe you are able to donate while pregnant, though you can sign up for the registry while pregnant.
For the PBSC donation, most of the pain was prior to the extraction. You receive daily injections of a drug that increases the number of blood stem cells in the bloodstream, over the course of a week. This can cause flu-like symptoms of aches and weariness, and for me, made me very, very tired. The pain level is slightly higher in those with longer limbs, due to the way the drug stimulates blood cell production. However, it was all fairly easily managed with normal everyday pain medications. The donation itself is relatively painless, and is essentially the same process as doing a double red cell/apheresis blood donation. I still had some minor pains the day after my donation, but that was pretty much it.
It is my understanding that the marrow collection is the opposite, in terms of pain. There is not as much in the lead-up to the donation, but there is more recovery time necessary, as the procedure is slightly more invasive. You receive anesthesia for the donation, so there is no pain during, but afterward, I believe you deal with some soreness at the donation site.
All in all, the ratio of pain/inconvenience to the benefit to the recipient was well worth it to me, but each individual will have their own feelings and opinions. One of the great things is that you are assigned a donor services representative who walks you through the entire process from initial match to post-donation follow-up, who can answer any questions you have along the way.
Hopefully that helps!
I pass out every time I give blood so the blood donor people kindly asked me not to come back – I’m assuming that kind of thing would disqualify me from donating any kind of blood product?
I imagine it would complicate things, but I also think they might be more willing to work with you to make you comfortable with the donation process, as it’s less of an in-and-out process than the usual blood drive/donation situation. It’s also a longer process. Because they’re collecting specific types of cells, it can take several hours, or even two sessions. For me, I was in a comfortable chair/bed with whatever music or movie I wanted playing, and the whole thing took only a couple of hours on one day.
The process does involve several blood samples for match confirmation testing, so that’s something to be aware of, too.
I noted it down on the form – I assume they’ll exclude me if they think it’s a problem 🙂
Did you guys hear about Chris from Steven & Chris? I definitely cried a bit.
Super sad. 🙁
It just feels like a sad death week in Ontario all round.
Yes, it was like a punch in the gut when I read about his death in the NP yesterday evening. And the scene of his passing was so…weird. Found in an alleyway near his residence. Was he out walking, suffered something fatal and collapsed in the laneway? God, what a terrible blow all around.
I know! It was like one punch in the gut when I heard he died (push notification from a news app on my phone) and a second punch when I learned the circumstances (when I had a chance to actually sit down and read an article about it). My first thought was something other than natural causes. I hope not.
Oooh, my first thought was “drugs (or something far more heinous)”, too…here’s hoping for natural causes (which reads kinda callously, sorry).
Sent from my iPad
Everyone I work with thought he got beaten to death for some reason (????) but still very sad. I hope it wasn’t suicide or something. (I feel like if it was natural causes they would have said so by now?)
Unrelated things I feel a great need to share: I am seeing Hamilton in less than four hours. Happy birthday to me yesterday, and today my parents are on their way to NYC and taking me to the theater and to a nice dinner at Dirt Candy and OMG HAMILTON TODAY. Lin Manuel Miranda is out sick for the matinee, says his Twitter, but hey: if his standby is good enough for the President, he’s good enough for me!
AHHHHHHHH HAVE SO MUCH FUN IT’S THE BEST AND I’VE HEARD NOTHING BUT AMAZING THINGS ABOUT JAVILTON
We had Pippa Soo’s understudy when we saw it at the Public and she was PHENOMENAL so clearly Javi’s gonna blow us all away
I SAW IT AT THE PUBLIC TOO! I didn’t get any understudies that time. I have heard awesome things about Javilton too and I am just SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS AHHHHHHHHH.
Have fun!!!! I just got tickets for over Christmas (since I live in California and am so far from Broadway) and I’m PUMPED even though it’s like 5 months away.
That Captain Awkward is exactly why I’m relatively quiet on Twitter; even when I want to jump in to the fun Toastie conversations. I feel weird reading other people’s tweets and not contributing but I’m just terrified of Creepy People on the Internet.
A couple of years ago, I was in the room at an office when the two supervisors were looking up job applicants online. They literally just started googling names and then digging as far through what they could find of these people online as possible. And, for the job in question, the vast majority of this stuff was completely irrelevant. Like, what did their opinion on the latest blockbuster or how they dress their toddler matter to our crappy little office? But these guys – and they were guys – were SO judgmental. About everything. It made me supremely uncomfortable. Now that I’ve been unemployed for awhile and looking for work, I’m in this constant state of wondering if the hiring people on the other end are just ignoring my resume/credentials and looking me up on social media instead. And I worry that, because I’ve kept my real name online interactions on the relative down-low (no Facebook, etc), that I’ve screwed myself because they feel like they “don’t know who I am.” Long-term unemployment breeds hella paranoia.
I had the opposite experience when applying for my current job. I mean, at least twice they were surprised at things and I thought “well, it’s not exactly a secret, it’s even in my twitter profile”. YMMV, I guess.
I do remember my boyfriend’s house mates googled me when we had just gotten together, but apparently I was deemed sufficiently cool.
I don’t know–I kind of feel like it goes both ways. It’s one thing if you’re constantly posting stuff that is offensive–that, I think, would be a legitimate reason to reject someone’s application–but an organization that is going to hire or not hire me based on whether I liked Age of Ultron or what jokes I retweet is probably not an organization with an office culture that I would like to be a part of.
And it’s fine to be locked down too! Even if a prospective employer can’t find a lot of public info on you, that’s what interviews and references are for.
When you’re unemployed long enough, you don’t really feel like you have the option to be choosy about office culture. You just want someone to pay you so your bills get paid on time and the screaming void of depression in your skull is quieter. Like, the amount of jobs I apply to vs. what I get any sort of reply from (even a computerized auto-reply)? It’s insane. I’m registered with two employment agencies and I never hear from them, either.
That’s fair. That sounds a lot like what my last job search was like, including the total lack of response from employment agencies. I hope something comes your way soon.
I try to keep my personal stuff locked down and my professional stuff out there (in my field/specialization it’s basically expected that you’re engaged in stuff online and follow the right organizations on Twitter and participate in the right hashtag discussions) but I did have a conversation with one of my old bosses that was like:
Her: “So… you probably wouldn’t be too surprised to know that I Googled you before we hired you.”
Me: “No, it seems like standard procedure honestly.”
Her: “Right. So… did you really write a paper about [cool thing I wrote a paper about when I was an undergrad that ended up on the department website for some reason]?”
Me: “Yes…”
Her: “THAT’S SO COOL! TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT!”
Thank you for the reminder! I just logged into facebook and edited my timeline a little. I will have to do a lot more of that before applying for a post-school job, though!
I feel like I feel less creepy when I reply to people? And if they reply back, eventually we develop a friendship! If they don’t reply back, I stop replying. It’s not that different from saying hi at a party, except for that it is a million times less terrifying.
I love this link roundup. I love the Troll article, and that i’d been thinking about mentioning the Pseudonym article but decided I needn’t bother because someone else would, and I love Toastie Ella, and I love bone marrow/stem cell registries and the helpful reminder that I ought to make sure they have my correct contact info (they should have the right email and phone, but definitely don’t have the right address), and autoblocking and the darling LDS cleaners and the nearly-all-dairy fridge and The Other Captain and
SO MUCH LOVE.
Which I needed, this morning, because weather in southern New England was INSANE yesterday. For me, home and work are very close, and they’re sort of between Boston and Providence. In the morning, in the Providence direction, a tree nearly fell on my parent’s house, and instead fell on their car (smashed windshield, some paint damage, but largely fine, they have two cars and are a two car household for convenience, not necessity)– so they seem to be fine, although they don’t seem to have power back yet?, but they have a generator and my nephew lives pretty close and has grown up to be a Good Bro.
That afternoon, in the Boston direction, Mr. Table had multiple troubles with the commuter rail, and then got caught outside in golfball sized hail, and separately got soaked, and got home safe, and there really was only some light rain near us all day, but then after dinner and everything, we lost power, for, i don’t know, 2 and a half hours? which is not as bad as what was going on in terms of power to the south of us, but we have municipal electric in our town, and the “report if your power is down” line appears to be one guy. when we finally got to him, he barked they knew about the outage on XXXX street and hung up…. but we’re about a mile from XXXX street, so we didn’t know if they even knew we were without power, or why we were without power since it’s not like there were obvious downed trees/etc near us. And we have all sorts of refrigerated medication and uuuuuuuuuuuuugggggh. And it could have been way worse but grumpgrumpgrump.
BUT THIS IS LOVELY.
I too experienced the crazy Providence storm yesterday morning – it was like a twenty five minute hurricane. There are tree pieces of varying sizes EVERYWHERE.
In Boston, and yeah, that was a crazy afternoon hailstorm! Sorry that it had some serious consequences for you and yours.
As a semi-LDS person myself, your love for your cleaning people has filled me with joy and thanksgiving this morning. LDS grandparent types are the WEIRDEST and MOST DELIGHTFUL. I hope they do move in with you forever so you can write a weekly column about their adventures.
Seconding this, that would be a phenomenal series.
HOLY SHIT. I used to work with John Underwood! What a strange small world we live in. He was a delight to work with – we used to mime along to Britney Spears and sneak muffins. I’m all signed up for the bone marrow registry now and looking forward to swabbing my cheek.
Yep, that is the John Underwood we know and love. He did a top lip-sync to Cilla Black yesterday.
Good to know he’s still keeping his hand in! Wishing him strength and plenty more opportunities to lip-sync!
Off topic but this is so weird. I work in combined admin/teaching position in an academic department in a university. I put an undergrad in touch with a grad student who I thought would be a good match for her as a thesis advisor (based on his stated interests; I don’t actually know him). He is a UU pastor in addition to being a grad student.
Anyway, he signed his email to both of us “love, [name].” The first email, I assumed it was accidental and out of habit from writing personal emails. But then he signed another email to me that way. Who signs professional emails to strangers “love”??? I assume it’s a religious/spiritual thing, like signing emails “peace” or something, but it feels strange and also quite inappropriate, especially when that email is coming from a potential advisor to an undergrad.
Am I missing something? Is this A Thing?
HA! Yeah that was pretty much my feeling about it too.
“I was always pretty faithful, save a few random make-outs on the road.”
THAT IS NOT WHAT FAITHFUL MEANS YOU MORON.
“PRETTY faithful”
[gets red pen] ahem, that is like being “very unique” or “somewhat pregnant”
Just the fact that he mentioned that at all, when there was no specific question about his faithfulness, seemed weird. Like, dude, are you bragging? Pre-emptively denying accusations of long term, extended cheating, which you somehow suspect to be forthcoming? I don’t get it.
As a literary agent (who sometimes reads upwards of 50 queries a day), I don’t think I pay any attention at all to an author’s gender when I am deciding to reject or request. Maybe my subconscious is up to tricksy things, but honestly, I generally skim the letter and jump straight to the material anyway. If I like what I’ve read, THEN I’ll hope back up to the letter to get a fuller picture.
Just having some trouble fully believing this George experiment truly being a marker of the real picture. THIS, however, I fully support: https://medium.com/@kelliagodon/submit-like-a-man…
The thing that always gets me about these “submitted under a male name” stories is how does the contract work out once you’ve been accepted under a false name? Do you have a really awkward email exchange at some point? Because if you never tip off the publisher, how do you cash the check that is made out to “George Manly” instead of you???
Using a pseudonym is common enough that you should be able to clarify at contract-time that the work is by George Manly but everything that follows from it is signed by and paid to Betty Ladyface.
I’ve always assumed there’s a DBA (Doing Business As) involved.
Nicole, did you intentionally move/hide the beer and other refrigerated alcohol out of LDS consideration? Or do you just not keep it in your fridge? OR HAVE YOU NO BEER?
I do not really drink beer! Sometimes there is beer, but usually there is just wine. And gin.
GIN! Sooooooo good; so good, in fact, I have to keep away from the stuff lest I go looney tunes with it. I swear it’s the juniper berries that make it so *tasty.
*the iPad suggested “toasty” instead of “tasty”…awesome.
Hey not sure if this is the right spot for this but:
I love the Toast and the Butter, but I have been reading less and less of late because they consistently crash my iPad browsers at home and make my work computer run sooooooo slowly that it’s honestly not really possible to do both. I mean, I guess I could close my browser but that’s not really how internet reading during my work day works.
Any advices?
Make a monthly donation to support The Toast and use an ad blocker. There’s a button on the right side of the page that says “click here to support the toast” that you can use to make a donation
Maybe I’m a total idiot, but I can’t download adblockers on my ipad, or install any kind of software on my work computer, so I’m a bit stuck. I think maybe I can just use adblock in chrome, but I tried before and couldn’t make it work.
Can you disable flash on your browser? I’ve got it set to ask first on Safari and Chrome, but I don’t have an ipad,
The same thing happens for me, whether I use ad blockers or not. 🙁
I block ads and flash, and that seems to have done the trick. (in Chrome, on a desktop running Windows 8 – not sure what mobile solutions would work).
With adblock and flash blocked, The Toast crashes safari and firefox but mysteriously works on chrome/chromium on my Android phone and Linux Mint laptop – but crashes on Windows?
That Captain Awkward guy reminds me of a dude I almost dated (I called it off) who proceeded to like every post I made on Facebook within MINUTES of me posting it. No matter what it was, there’d be that “X liked this post” notification before I even had time to refresh the page. And of course, there’s nothing explicitly creepy about liking someone’s Facebook posts . . . but man, I was creeped out. So I unfriended him. And within twelve hours, I got a message from him saying how he TOTALLY DIDN’T ASK THIS QUESTION, USUALLY, but he’d noticed I’d unfriended him, had he done something wrong?
So I blocked him and went to take a shower. Life’s too short.
My ex, when we were dating and friends on facebook, had his facebook account set up so that every time I posted he got a notification. So it was the same thing – I’d post, he’d almost immediately like it or comment on it. I actually asked him to stop because I found it creepy and weird. Like he was always hovering in the background waiting to chime in on my life. (Which I guess he kind of was, which was also problematic.)
I just figured that was Nicole’s designated dairy fridge, like some people have a special meat freezer in their garage where they keep the 1/2 cow they buy in their meat share CSA. I mean, there’s no visible meat in this fridge and Nicole has made her dedication to those little burgers she posted the recipe for pretty clear so this can’t really be IT.
We have an old fridge in the garage that is used only to hold beer and ice.
I have learned that is a southern custom. I grew up with the same situation, with the addition of a half-gallon water bottle for each family member, their name Sharpied on the outside in two-inch tall letters. So when you come in from playing outside in the heat, you can open that blessedly cold bottle and slam a refreshing quart of water.
Any Toastfriends know of Yankees or Europeans with this tradition? I don’t.
My childhood home in CA (both parents native Californians) had such a fridge.
*nods* The ingredient-specific refrigerator!
We have a chocolate fridge– The Partner is an amateur chocolatier, and he’s got enough of the good stuff to warrant keeping it in a mini fridge with the thermostat set at 60 F.
A former housemate who home-brewed had a contraption that was part keg-sized fridge, part tap.
Other freelancers here read that Captain Awkward letter and thought “why the fuck are you meeting multiple times in person with someone who’s not even paying you?”, right? I make a point to minimize meetings with clients that pay well and insist on phone calls as much as possible. I might meet with a potential lead in person once, if they really insist, but anyone who expects me to take time out of my day on multiple occasions so they can chat about work that may or may never happen is likely to be an awful client.
I’d stay the hell away from that one even if they were paying (for all the other reasons the letter writer describes, but even just the expectation of unpaid meetings would be enough), but would definitely not give them an ounce more of time without a contract and advance in place.
All of this. And I strongly suspect that the “waiting for funding” thing is a front, and that he’s (best case) dragging this out to see her more or (worst case) not actually in a position to hire her at all.
Not on topic for the link up, but I thought the toast would approve: http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2014/12/mom-cspan-… (especially, “Mrs. Woodhouse is the real MVP because more people need to tell smug men to shut their asses up in public.”)
How long is the Go Fund Me thing going for – is it like Kickstarter with an expiration date? I’ve never done one. I can’t donate this week but next week I could.
the little circular worms that wander eight feet into the house twice a year by the hundreds and then die!
WHAT. NO. WHAT.
Yeah um.
I’d like a great deal more detail on these worms .
I choose to believe that this is a localized Utah phenomenon, and that these mysterious worms are not something the rest of us will ever have to worry about.
Let’s keep telling ourselves that. (rocks back and forth in corner)
OK it is late in the morning but in case anyone wants to see someone AWESOME, here’s a really good profile of Jennifer Thompson, the best powerlifter in the entire world of any gender.
JT benches almost 145 Kg (almost 315 lbs) at 63 Kg (139 lbs) body weight. She is a masters-level (>40) athlete who dominates against women in their 20s and 30s. And she is super nice to everyone.
We just had a farm meeting with a county conservation district representative. The goal of the meeting is to describe what we want the farm to look like and then she helps us prioritize projects and gives us ideas and keeps an eye out for funding. Instead I feel like I just listed a million things we need to do and I don’t know where to start and really what we need is a giant pile of money. 🙁 Now I am discouraged.
Key word: Prioritize. I don’t like to think of you discouraged, but I understand the feeling. Farms will always be infinite to-do lists. So prioritizing is key. When do you hear back from this rep? I’m hoping for a tidy priority list from her and for peace for you.
Yeah, what we’ll get back from her will help. I don’t know how long it’ll take though, so for now I feel like I just exposed all the flaws with no resolution or solutions. Grump.
We did get some good ideas for housing the pigs over the winter since their normal barn flooded this year and now we need to move them before the rain starts again. (If the rain ever starts again.)
Thanks as always for your encouragement. I owe you an email!!
Haha, I see that Kottke and BoingBoing have linked to Mallory’s “How to Get Rid of Clutter and Live Abundantly” today. Welcome to all new Toast readers!
That troll article was comedy gold. I am crying with laughter. Comrade doggo, rappers shooting Nazis, GLBT furries. That article had everything.
Rhik Samadder slices bread.
RHIK IS MY NEW FANDOM
Oh my god, me too! “Before I dismiss this futile bread-shelf as another marker of civilization in decline – which, don’t worry, I am about to do – I’ll admit I wasn’t always brilliant at cutting bread. Early attempts were too thick at the top, tapering into transparency halfway down, like a sarcastic slice of the world’s driest cake.”
OH MY GOD THAT CONFEDERATE TROLLING ARTICLE WAS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED. I’ve been bummed out since realizing that not just some, but ALL of the old people I love are racist (Facebook will break your heart, which is why I avoided it until I moved far away and wanted to stay in touch with everyone I knew back in Houston). I’m not going to do this to them, but it was still really soothing to read.
Also, Nicole, where do you even find a couple like that to deep-clean your home? That sounds amazing.
I went on Thumbtack! You describe the job, and it shows you ALL the quotes, so you do not just get shunted to the person charging the lowest amount of money.
Agh, creepy client dude, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. Run, LW, run! I work in a largely male-dominated field, and recently went to a week-long trade show where I interacted only with other people in the industry (most of the other women I saw that week were sales reps). Awkward men in male-dominated fields don’t refer to women as “sweetheart” in a professional setting, or try to force weird emotional connections with them, unless they are also creepy men in male-dominated fields. Reactions I got from awkward dudes at the show were along the lines of “I don’t want to stand too close to you in case that would be weird, so I’m going to stand just outside a normal personal bubble so we have to raise our voices awkwardly in the hallway” or “I am going to be overly enthusiastic about your technical questions, woman-person, look how excited I am about the opening up of the industry.” Those are awkward dudes who don’t know how to correctly interact with a woman in a professional setting. They get over it.
OH THANK YOU I thought the exact same thing
There's an old fridge in my parents' garage that holds overflow food/drinks for the grandkids/party food, etc. or any other big item that would take up too much space in the main fridge. (Like a large side dish for Thanksgiving or something). But in the winter, we can keep soda and beer in the garage itself and it'll stay cold enough! (Because PA winters suck).