What the ACTUAL fuck is this nonsense:
On-duty police officers appear to be eating edible pot products—OC Weekly transcribes words they spoke while egging one another on. (“Those candy bars are pretty good,” one said. “I kinda feel light-headed though.”) Other dialogue offers a number of insights into the subculture of this narcotics unit. Take the woman with an amputated leg that police encountered on entering the dispensary. “Did you punch that one-legged old benita?” one police officer asks another. The other cop laughingly replied, “I was about to kick her in her fucking nub.” These are people Santa Ana taxpayers empower to use lethal force at their discretion.
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“She once said ‘death and birth are important and free diving is just a game for adults’. That kind of sums her up. She talked about her children with immense love. Free diving was a curiosity she pursued with passion, but it was not the be-all and end-all in her life.”
Campbell added: “I asked her recently ‘what makes you keeps going?’ and she said it is not world records, just that was she curious about what she could do. She wasn’t sure how long she would continue, but she gained so much pleasure from doing what she did and from teaching and sharing.”
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Health care professionals who can’t deal with trans people.
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Reddit has pulled the plug on Coontown and its mirror subreddits. Good! Super entertaining Reddit links are now welcome in the roundup once more. It still has plenty of bad subreddits, but I am happy to offer them the soft bigotry of low expectations in this matter.
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Agreed, lawns are stupid, do away with them. This chick’s got it.
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A Toastie’s sick baby cousin could use our help, and Esther Uwifashije needs help to pay for a kidney very very badly, and is the only one of her mom’s kids who didn’t die in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, so, I MEAN, gosh, what a good thing to do, if you can!
Again, I am SO HAPPY to signal boost donation opportunities you have personal connections to, email me any time. And for those of you who just plain do not have any spare money for donations, know that adding these names to your prayer lists (if you pray) or forwarding to people who DO have money, or just thinking nice thoughts on their behalf are also things that are worth doing.
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The Artist Statements of the Old Masters (actual lol):
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Are you in Chicago? Will you be in Chicago on August 21st? Go hear Kate Harding read at Women and Children First Bookstore! Also, what a good time to buy a copy of Asking For It!
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This is the first paragraph of the Spectator‘s review of a new book about Dusty Springfield, which is…an interesting choice:
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Email from my daughter’s grandmother in response to my report that “Yesterday at preschool, Mason hit Amelia with the Talking Stick for being too loud, she has a bump on her head”:
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Oh, hellllllll no:
a)
b) 
c) 
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Anyone up for getting super-stabby early in the morning? Here. Ross Douthat is being quite particularly infuriating today and claiming that increased contraceptive access doesn’t have anything to do with abortion rates, so. Happy Thursday?
My browser promptly crashed when I clicked on that link. My browser is wise.
Ok, I read it (I, unlike my browser, am not wise) and now indeed feeling super-stabby.
An analogy mr. Douthat would probably not follow: I am very fastidious about taking the pill because I’d rather not have an abortion, because it’s not a particularly pleasant experience. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have one, or that I’m not really happy the option exists! It’s rather like the fact that I take precautions not to get a UTI (drinking enough water, wiping front to back, peeing just after sex, taking the occasional cranberry pill) because I’d rather avoid having to go on antibiotics – but I’d still get the antibiotics if necessary. What exactly is so difficult to understand about that?
Also: the Netherlands, easily accessible contraception, easily accessible, free (I think) abortion (within 24 weeks), and A VERY LOW RATE OF BOTH UNWANTED PREGNANCIES AND ABORTIONS. So, y’know, douchehat’s probably cherry-picking his statistics. I also strongly suspect that people from “red” states may be getting their abortions in “blue” states now, but I don’t know.
</rage>
Also re: red/blue abortion divide, does he really think that people just aren’t getting them? Might be interesting to factor in any increase in the rate of women showing up in the ER with sepsis.
I know more and more stories are surfacing about people ordering the abortion pill online, and isn’t THAT a great development.
I mean. What could possibly go wrong.
Your comment made me go looking for stats on how many women cross state lines for abortions, which, turns out, don’t really exist. But I did find a pretty good 538 piece that talks about some research trying to quantify it… long story short, it’s a lot more complicated than Douthat wants it to be.
Which is funny, because conservatives are usually able to argue ’til they are blue in the face about gun control laws, that they won’t work, that people will cross state lines or still manage to get weapons, and yet put full faith in abortion bans, even though a lot of the same complexities (and total lack of data) are at play.
This is purely anecdotal, but my parents live quite close to a Dutch abortion clinic, and there were often lost looking foreign girls at the train station. I know Irish women often go to England, too.
I have an English friend who volunteers for a charity that gets pregnant women and girls from Ireland over the England so they can get abortions.
Is that the Abortion Support Network? They do such important work.
Yup.
In ‘lengths people will be driven to’ news, just to bring the rage up more, has anyone else been following along with the Tuam Mothers’ and Children’s home news lately? Makes me hope there truly IS a god because SOMEONE better be on top of sorting that injustice out.
Okay, I usually don’t read anything by Ross Douthat, but I had to click on that one. So it seems that what he’s arguing is that highly restrictive abortion policies are more effective than contraception in preventing abortion? As in, regardless of how much people are using contraception, there are fewer abortions in states where you can’t get an abortion. No shit! Most of the states with the most abortion restrictions and lowest contraception access also report the highest rates of unintended pregnancy, which suggests a serious disparity between supply and demand, but hey, that’s no issue when your NYT columns are padded out with sensationalist descriptions of abortion as ICKY GORY MURDER
Which I guess is the problem with “safe, legal and rare”– you’re arguing with people whose position is “NEVER, NEVER, AND OVER MY DEAD BODY, YOU WHORE”
And that’s also fewer reported abortions, not necessarily fewer abortions.
Yeah I can’t find any exact data but I’m pretty sure that the reason that the abortion rate is lower in, say, Missouri than Illinois is that a) parts of the state have a more Bible-Belt culture that might inspire people not to talk about the fact that they had an abortion and b) when you live in a large state with only one clinic, there’s a good chance that your closest provider is actually in a different state?
*part of the reason. I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that there are lots of women living in states with draconian laws who want an abortion and can’t fucking get one, which is why I’m willing to call Ross Douthat on his bluff and say that yes, I actually do believe that we need to perform more abortions in some places.
Yeah, that’s working so well in places like El Salvador and Nicaragua…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/world/americas/…
He’s obviously not familiar with what’s happened in Colorado
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/colorado…
Well, I have one good thing to say about this: If you’re the type of self-doubting writer who’s always thinking, “I’m not sure my arguments here are precise and well-researched enough, maybe this piece isn’t ready,” read some Ross Douthat and remind yourself that this level of intellectual discourse is deemed publishable by the New York Times.
Thank you, this made me laugh SO hard. Because truth.
This is my new official favourite deleted comment! The unwarranted snot about Canada on THE TOAST! Lololololololololololol YOU HAVE COME TO THE WRONG PLACE, BUDDY.
That someone has attempted to mansplain YOU about CANADA is everything we need to know about mansplainers in one comment
And really, we didn’t need to know a lot about them…
Also!
Our next-door neighbor has actually complained to the police about the appearance of our yard, which is honestly very pretty and filled with wildflowers and milkweed plants, because it doesn’t get TruGreened and seeded to death and professionally mowed. There are voles and rabbits and toads and deer and butterflies and a juvenile bald eagle that circles around screeching and it’s all very pleasant, and all fits into the fact that we live on a sand dune between 80 acres of forest and Lake Michigan.
I mean… I understand when people complain to Homeowners Associations. But do your local policepeople actually have any power over the appearance of your yard??????
Nope!
She was trying to tell the police why we’re horrible neighbors, never mind the fact that MrChouffe called the cops in the first place because she’d spent so much time screaming at us over the fence.
needless to say we do not have the best relationship with our neighbor
We have asshole neighbors behind us (we share an alley, onto which our garages open). I feel that neighbor pain. Fortunately all of our other neighbors know how to neighbor, so we hang with them.
A lot of municipalities have ordinances that give them the power to force you to clean up your property. If you have an overgrown yard, let’s say, they can fine you and force you to do it yourself or they’ll send in a crew and then send you the bill. They can even lien your property if you don’t pay up. It makes sense in instances when a property owner really is neglecting a parcel and it’s becoming a dangerous eyesore, but that’s clearly not the case with people who just don’t want lawns.
In my experience, the places that have town ordinances that don’t just have the sort of “dangerous eyesore” types of restrictions, but instead have powers more similar to HOAs are generally not ALSO the sorts of places that have 80 acres of forest.
And if that sort of place existed, I would want to stay far far away.
But the voles and rabbits and such sound so lovely, like it’s the setting of the adult coloring book I’ve been enjoying recently…..
There’s a county ordinance for eyesore yards here, but it’s a) rarely if ever enforced, and b) intended for yards that are piled with rusting farm equipment and broken cars. Definitely not flower/milkweed places.
I remember reading about a long-running court case, where a woman was trying to explain to the city what “ornamental grasses” were and they kept ticketing her because they thought they were weeds.
There are wildlife habitat certification processes that can protect you from these kinds of fines, to some degree. Obviously it varies from place to place, but this shit is CONTENTIOUS in Chicago, and every little thing helps. (Check out local native habitat restoration groups for more info on how best to protect yourself/ the environment.)
I understand it in principle. I mean, here (Australia) there are rules if you live somewhere rural-ish about how you have to keep the perimeters of your property, including keeping it free of weeds, because of fire risk. It’s enforced with fines, and a good thing too. But there’s a REASON for that, apart from just ‘I don’t like it’ or ‘I personally think it looks bad’.
I’m terrified my neighbor is going to make a stink over the state of my yard. I moved in less than a week ago and I’ve already seen him mow his yard twice. My lawn was overgrown when I moved in and it will be at least another week before I get a lawn mower. Too bad neighbor!
Wildflowers and milkweed sounds like my ideal lawn.
…………… If your neighbor makes a stink (or even just a sort of polite but sort of pointed comment) over your yard that soon after moving….. just ask to borrow their lawn mower. If they care THAT much and they’re not a complete and total asshat, they’ll probably say yes? Especially if you phrase it in a way of you wanting to be the best neighbor you can be, and complimenting how lovely their yard is and ask for advice? I bet this dude has really involved thoughts on the length one should cut one’s grass to at various parts of the year.
Oh, I’ve already decided if he comes over to talk to me I’ll preemptively tell him ive been meaning to ask if he know any neighborhood teens who mow lawns. I also already know there are none and he’ll either have to offer himself or shut up!
<3
This might be a little something to tuck in your back pocket for later? I do not have a lawn myself, so I cannot vouch for it personally, but I love the idea so much.
When I was 8 months pregnant, had a toddler, and my husband was away for a month helping his family with a crisis, our neighbors called the police to complain that our grass was too long. They knew our full situation, and they had a riding lawn mower so they could have gotten our grass down to their standard in like 15 minutes, but instead they called the police. I know it was them because this was right after the real estate bubble burst but they were convinced their house wasn’t selling because the neighborhood didn’t look good enough and they started calling in everyone for B.S. reasons.
Thankfully the office was instantly embarrassed when I explained that I couldn’t manage the mower and my spouse would be back in a week.
Oh my godddd what dicks. Why would they not just offer to mow your lawn? And bring dinner over while they were at it.
I hope they did sell their house eventually just so you don’t have to be anywhere near them anymore.
They did sell. The next owners were great. We have since, very thankfully, moved far far away from that town though.
This sounds awesome. Can i come live with you?
If you don’t mind the cats.
I’m in!
Conversely, my next door neighbor is an old man with no other purpose in his life but to meticulously care for his lawn with a variety of loud-motored machinery. At least once a week (sometimes more!) he is outside with a lawn mower, followed by a weed wacker, followed by a leaf blower. Once it’s fall, he’ll be out there with the leaf blower at least once a day. It’s angering from both a noise and environmental standpoint, and when I work from home I spend a lot of time silently seething about the suburbs, men, etc.
My current lawn plans for when I actually own my own place are to replace the whole goddamn yard with moss, assuming sufficient shade. If there is not enough shade, I will plant more trees. And buy a fucking rake to remove the leaves in fall.
Moss lawns now, moss lawns forever!
That sounds incredible, is that something you can actually do?
Yep, its all my mom can grow iin her front yard. And it’s all volunteer–she weeds it and mows once in spring and once in fall.
Oh god, is there anything worse than men endlessly leaf-blowing the teensiest patch of land? Just thinking about the combination of obnoxious noise, environmental disregard and straight-up futility is making me a little rage-y.
I deeply regret the invention of leafblowers. (I mean, it wasn’t me, I just regret that it happened on behalf of all humans who enjoy quiet.)
And geez, guy, if you are removing leaves every day there can’t be THAT many at one time. Would it take that much longer to use a rake?
He sounds a bit like my grandma, who did not use motorized anything and, living in Queens, did not actually have a lawn. She did, however, have a sycamore tree out front which she would vigorously brush with a broom on a near daily basis. If my grandma could ever have been said to have an arch-nemesis, it was the naturally peeling bark on that tree.
Any time I hear a leaf blower, I get instantly irrationally angry. At the apartment that I just got done living in (the same one that had the car go through the front wall), the maintenance people would always do their lawn care stuff at 7:00 am sharp every Tuesday. In the summertime, I guess I can excuse it because your skin melts off your face if you go out at a later time in the day, but in the winter there’s no reason to start that shit that early. And of course, they would always start off right outside my window. First the maintenance folk would yell to each other despite standing five feet apart, then they would mow the lawn, weed-wack it, and then finally use the leaf blowers for about three hours, even if it was a windy day.
…I guess I’m still pretty angry about it.
My last house was near a plastic recylcing plant. They were (ironically) super terrible about polluting by dropping plastic everywhere all over the place. Which they then cleaned up by leaf blowing it, either into little piles where they would leave it so it would blow back out again, OR INTO THE STORMWATER DRAIN which LED TO A WETLANDS.
Also they would use the leafblower at, like, 3am. It was an actual nightmare and I’m still traumatised by it, six months after moving.
I live at the top of the stairwell, and the exhaust from the gas-powered leaf-blower that the maintenance folks use collects outside the door to my apartment. Every week, while working with earplugs in, I start getting irritable and headachey, as the fumes start coming in through the gaps where the door doesn’t quite sit right.
I hate this gadget with a passion.
Leaf blowers are the worst, why! Burning a bunch of gas and making constant annoying noise to blow leaves around. Ridiculous.
Why do we have leaf blowers rather than leaf vacuums? It would be more efficient to suck them up into a bag or something once, rather than blow them around all the time
I’m trying to slowly replace my entire front lawn with moss (the great sprawling oak tree out front limits the light enough that the bald spots never grow in). I’ve gotten a manual lawnmower, and am no longer letting my downstairs housemate take care of it, since he rakes too vigorously after mowing, and it rips up the moss.
Overly fastidious people, those who give daily attention to lawns, leaves, etc. need to talk to a librarian. You know they are not reading. Probably have no clue that there are thousands of kinds of literature, that there are bound to be a few dozen that appeal to them.
tl;dr: Be kind to your neighbors! Read a book!
(Feeling grumpy today.)
I would seriously, actually vote for someone if they ran on a platform of banning leaf blowers. I am 0% kidding about this, at all.
YOU HAVE A BALD EAGLE IN YOUR YARD?
Also, we had a neighbor who never mowed her lawn when I was in high school (not out of ecological reasons but because she was an elderly woman with mobility issues) and instead of screaming at her about it we offered to mow it for her. By we, I mean my dad offered, and I was the one who had to do it. Neighborliness! Dadditude! It works better than yelling!
There are two nesting pairs within a quarter-mile of us, one to the north and one to the west. One of the pairs is trying to kick out their juvenile, so it keeps flying around complaining. Last night it couldn’t have been 30 feet above our roofline. It was very very cool.
We also have been seeing ravens pretty frequently in addition to our heaping population of crows and blackbirds, so now we have three sizes of corvid living across the street. I’m not sure whether to be super happy about this development or really, really freaked out by it.
Corvids are amazing and super intelligent! I would be pretty pumped, but keep an eye out in case they start stockpiling their own weapons or something.
seeeeee that’s what I’m afraid of
You should probably start making little offerings to them now, to stay on their good side…
Just this morning I gave some crows some almonds from my morning snack, because I want them on my side. Just in case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26crow….
Good thinking!
Oh man, I love ravens. Back when I was trapping fish in the UP one used to come hang out while we emptied the net, probably because we very occasionally got a dead fish. I swear he enjoyed sitting there and showing off all the sounds he could mimic. We recognized bald eagle, red tailed hawk, and chainsaw pretty easily but there was once noise that took us weeks to figure out. It was the sound of cars going over the old wooden bridge a half mile upstream of the nets.
I love everything about this.
There are some birds in my neighbourhood who know how to mimic:
-car alarms
-house alarms
– actual wake-me-up-in-the-morning alarms
I would like to strangle said birds.
Your yard sounds so pretty! We live in a fairly urban neighborhood (was the suburbs in the 1950s, now consumed by city), so I am just unreasonably excited that we have at least 3 garter snakes making themselves at home in the back garden. Which is 100% weeds right now, to my FIL’s dismay. But if it weren’t weeds, where would the snakes live?!?
ahhh your yard sounds perfect. My parents have a big patch of unmowed prairie, and I understand their neighbors (in a little cul de sac development amid the cornfields) all admire it but none of them are about to go through with it themselves.
One place I lived in had a huge patch of mint that took over a lot of the grass (tiny postage stamp yard, so it didn’t take much to take over) and smelled amazing when we mowed and since then I’ve harbored a little fantasy about an all-mint lawn. All fragrant and a constant source of tea or mojito fixins! Yeah, I know, even if there were nothing else wrong with this idea the neighbors would fear and loathe my spreading mint menace.
You could sink lawn edging down into the ground around the edges, maybe? Mint will go under but not over, so if you sunk it down say four inches it would probably be fine?
Pictures? Your yard sounds lovely!
I can’t find any good ones that actually show the work we’ve done this year! 🙁
I took some last night/this morning just for you!
And honestly, I will FULLY admit that it doesn’t look its best right now because we’ve had a super dry summer. My favorite is the middle of May, especially in the back yard, when it’s just a carpet of violets.
Back yard–we inherited a weird concrete statue (left) which MrChouffe’s father and stepmother have named “Maudlin Madge, the Michigan Mermaid,” also our composting bin looks awful here. But you can see the white flowers everywhere and that’s what I was going for. Our entire yard is sand, front and back, and very shady in the back because of the woods. Just to the right of the compost you can see our garden (currently the only things growing are onions and shallots) and a huge green swath of day lilies and hedge roses.
The front yard facing the house: Very sunny, still made of sand. We planted some zinnias and poppies and suchlike along the driveway and have a little container of begonias by the front porch. I’m trying to line the front walk with lavender plants, which are currently slightly past their best and difficult to see. MrChouffe took out two gigantic/dying burning bushes along the front of the house this spring and I think the forsythia is next. We have been on a mission to destroy the English ivy and juniper under the porch for three years; when we first moved in, the entire rock wall was fully covered in ivy. It’s also very obvious which parts of the yard have been getting watered.
And for good measure, here’s the yard and view from the front porch facing the street. Zinnias on display, also whiskey (this was taken Sunday night, just after the huge storm rolled through).
Christ, neighbors with too much time on their hands. My parents live in a neighborhood with a HOA that 1. gave itself the power to, if your lawn is too long, hire a mower to forcibly trim it and send you the bill and 2. has successfully sued a neighbor to force them to tear down their garage because, in a neighborhood that was three-quarters cow pasture five years ago, it looked too much like a barn and was upsetting people with its uh pastoralism or something. Thus far their hidden patch of jack-in-the-pulpits remain safe, but probably only so long as they don’t invite over any neighbors who’ll snitch
The wildlife in my yard last night was, sadly, two teenagers, a dog and a skunk.
They all slept outdoors.
My neighborhood has a lot of yards like this one:
Native plants are gaining popularity again, which is great, since they use less water and SLC can be pretty dry. I love the little old houses with wildflower yards. Someday I will buy one.
Sigh. That is so lovely.
Salt Lake is really a pretty place
God that is SO beautiful.
There are a lot of native plantings here (Australia) because we had pretty severe water restrictions a few years back and lawns died. Added benefit of a garden like that: it makes your house a lot cooler in summer. Some people paved over their lawns when water restrictions happened, which is INSANE to me because in a 40 degree heatwave it means your front yard is, like, 50 degrees. But with a front yard like that it stays a lot cooler and cools down a lot faster when the sun sets.
When we moved in to this new house it was all just huge expanses of grass. Now the backyard is coming along nicely with veggies, although there’s still some grass. And the front yard is still grass. I have Plans, for native shrubs in the front yard and more veggies and trees in the back and NO MORE GRASS. I’m contact allergic to it so even if I thought it looked nice and wanted to lie on it or whatever, I couldn’t. I’m MUCH more likely to get joy from hanging out in a rambling, overgrown yard (I can’t waaaaiiit. Just gotta wait for all the roundup the previous owners sprayed to wear off)
that sounds freaking amazing I want to be you when I grow up.
no no no no no that implies I’m a grown up
Man, Michigan even has a grant process for doing what you guys have done! http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-58225_67… (It’s weird to me that it’s for game species but whatever.) Suck it, evil neighbor lady.
*takes notes*
In what universe would someone say, “call me a crazy old physiognomist” and mean it?! Who in the last 100 years (ugh, probably more like 50 years, that was over optimistic) has used that word to mean anything other than “racist crackpot clinging to a discredited vestige of colonial shittery practiced by only the most vile and hateful of people”?? I’m flabbergasted. It’s like “I’m not X but…” is not enough for these fools anymore. They have to declare themselves as complete asshats.
Well, in this case, it’s really more sexist and homophobic than racist, so….
So…?
So this guy has offered up so many different ways to be problematic in one sentence! He doesn’t even have to choose!
Oh yes, agreed! Although he sure did hit the racism hard “Celebrity Eskimo” for example, when nobody else on that list is given a discriptor or qualification, not “Famous White Person (you may or may not have heard of) Ellen DeGeneres” or “British TV Personality Clare Balding”.
And physiognomy has enough historical roots in racism that any time anyone gives it credence, like say in some “funny” observation about women’s faces (which is yes, also sexist and homophobic) that credence sits on a huge pile of white supremacist baggage which includes the “criminality of the Irish” and a whole mess of other racist/imperialist poop. So I’d say that invoking physiognamy, even in arguments not directly addressing race, is indeed racist because of the history of that particular pseudoscience.
But yes, that pull quote is a hot mess all around; it rings all the bells; it is the full monty of awful.
The amount of people I’ve encountered who unthinkingly believe and VOCALISE physiognamy-based racist statements in a way that would make a 1888 phrenologist pause is getting pretty alarming. Especially when it’s not just older people. ESPECIALLY when they get offended and defensive when called out on it – called out on something that is so Obviously Racist, in fact racist in the most unvarnished, old-skool way – and honestly seem to believe that saying stuff like that is Just Factz and Not Racist At All and Why Are You Being So Irrational?
Really brings to the fore how much unchallenged ignorance and bigotry is still out there, among people who otherwise seem thoroughly 21st century. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
in an era of earnest HBD dudes offering their profound outsider perspective on genetics it’s kinda refreshing to come across someone holding forth on the jaw shape of a homosexual and nasal bridge of a murderer like a 15th century barber-surgeon
Did Amelia’s grandmother censor ‘fudge’?
That story about the pot-eating cops made me censor a few words myself. The fact that they think they can call on privacy to protect them! What – you guys acted like literal movie gangsters; surprise, now you’re being watched. Deal with it, f*****os!
Whilst reading your daughter’s grandma’s email, I got a sudden vision of the future, re: exactly how my mother will deal with having grandkids. 😛 (also we all are trying to not wish bad things for Mason, but highly suspect he is a little snot.)
I mean, he got mad at a girl for being too NOISY – that’s a big ol’ red misogyny flag and I hope the lil snot grows out of it!
Much respect to the late Ms. Molchanova, who is (was?) an amazing athlete and, enviably, got to share her career with her son. But as a sport, freediving is terrifying. http://www.outsideonline.com/1896841/open-your-mo…
Like, up there with wingsuit flying.
So maybe I never want to go underwater again after reading that.
I amazed I got through that whole thing without nopetopusing out. That is not what the ocean is there for, and even sea creatures know to stay in their own lane, pressure-wise.
*googles “wingsuit flying”*
OH NO 🙁
That actually makes wingsuit flying sound pretty sensible and safe.
I’m not up for any activity that I couldn’t conceivably walk home from, if need be.
OK, so, 100% freediving is terrifying, coming from an enthusiastic scuba diver.
But, on the other hand, my brother (scuba instructor, dabbled in freediving), once took me through some of the breathing exercises, on dry land. After about ten minutes of slow breathing, I’d easily doubled the time I could comfortably hold my breath.
I guess my main point its, when I’m watching people having their heads held in buckets in movies, they always drown WAY TOO SOON. People have quite a lot of air in them!
I haven’t seen this expose on the Chicago police posted nearly enough: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/homan-square
“We now know that more than 3,500 people have been detained there, “82% of whom a Guardian independent investigation found to be black,” and there have been “only three documented visits from lawyers to the building since September 2004.””
I love how the police are like “oh no there’s nothing here” but if you look back in time you could fill every year with a scandal that was going on at the time, even if only discovered later (Burge, SOS, etc.). Why should anyone believe that, at the present moment, the CPD aren’t doing anything awful that will later come to light?
Especially since the one investigator who suggested maaaaybe some shootings by cops might not be justified was just unceremoniously fired by the “independent” review board.
http://www.wbez.org/news/city-fires-investigator-…
The Dusty Springfield review was published last summer and that twit lost a book contract over it, so justice does sometimes prevail. Unfortunately sometimes not til after press time….
OMG, in the Washington Post article about why lawns are bad/unnecessary, right in the middle of it, was an ad for Scott’s Lawn Care. Perfection!
Some day, the internet will learn that keyword advertising never works as intended. But until then, we’ll always have Scott’s Lawn Care, I guess.
The phrase “celebrity Eskimo” (especially in relationship to this previously-unknown-to-me but cool-sounding lady) has me wrinkling my forehead in what-the-actual-fuck bewilderment.
I know actual Eskimos (I understand that this is a deprecated usage in Canada, but this is not the case in Alaska). Does this garbage person think they don’t exist? Would he describe John Boehner as a “Celebrity Navajo”? Because that would be about as weird and racist. Except that John Boehner is a man, so probably not.
To answer your first question, he probably doesn’t, nor does he actually care if they exist. Maybe to him Eskimos are myth, like King Arthur, or heterosexual women with strong chins.
To answer your second question, I 100% believe he would also refer to Boehner as a Celebrity Navajo, for he is an ass.
And wrong, Boehner is clearly a Celebrity Carrot.
Toksvig is Danish. Which, in Rupert Douchington’s mental atlas, appears to be close enough.
Guys, I know we were just talking about amazing celebrity profiles, and we may have to add the Esquire profile on Miles Teller to that list. Because holy shit this guy:
You’re sitting across from Miles Teller at the Luminary restaurant in Atlanta and trying to figure out if he’s a dick.
You’ve just told him, by way of making conversation, that according to legend the champagne coupe in your hand is shaped like Marie Antoinette’s left breast, and he tells you the highball glass is modeled after his cock. Then he tells the waitress the same thing.
Also, if you want them, my college friends and I have drafted a Republican debate drinking game. Engage at your own risk.
*opens esquire link*
By Anna Peele
I don’t know this “Anna Peele” person, but, not being Saint Edith, I will set my expectations accordingly. It may be really good, but probably not life changing.
Your drinking game would legitimately kill me if followed in full.
That’s what happens when your drinking game is crafted by three political nerds, one of whom was a gov major and one of whom was secretary of the Young Democrats (I’ll let you guess which one I was).
So, the game is basically “one continuous beer bong chug”?
Go big, or go home.
Especially when I have to purposefully watch the Fox News Channel.
That part where he got in the accident and lost all of his friends made me feel for that guy. I hate the second person point of view way that profile was written in. Can that stop being a thing yesterday, please?
Watch Whiplash and The Spectacular Now if you haven’t already.
…. yeah, I don’t know. So, obviously if someone dropped me as a friend because I caused some insurance premiums to go up– they were a pretty bad friend in the first place. But honestly, it doesn’t really sound right to me. I can definitely imagine that a bad enough accident plus lawsuits flying around could tank one friendship, and that that friendship getting messed up could result in losing several friends, sure.
But all of his friends from college????
I mean, I guess he says that he wasn’t doing much other than getting high in college, so maybe his friend pool was really really small to begin with. But given how unsympathetic he sounds generally, I could easily imagine people using the lawsuit drama as an excuse to get him out of their lives…..
Okay, so, I just finished the piece. And I read this with pretty much NO context whatsoever. Haven’t seen anything he’s been in (despite really meaning to see Rabbit Hole), and haven’t really followed anything Fantastic Four related whatsoever (despite meaning to see the stuff with CE in it), OTHER than the fact that those characters show up in fic from time to time.
So, I’m reading, and thinking “wow. this guy really sounds like a dick.” And at some point, there’s a sentence about Fantastic Four, and I start wondering what his connection to the project is, and then it mentions he’s Reed Richards, and my response is OH IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE, because, of course, all I really know about Reed Richards is that even fanfiction Tony Stark thinks that RR is an insufferable tool.
OT but I need to vent: My aunt’s dog is missing. She lives half a country away so there’s not a ton I can do but she’s terrible with technology so I volunteered to post to craisglist, the local animal shelter’s facebook, etc. The number of dudes who took their time to write messages telling me I should look into making flyers is out of control. Also one dude took it upon himself to let me know the dog had probably been killed by coyotes. In an area of the country that has few if any coyotes. I’m far enough removed from the situation that I just ignore them but I can imagine if my aunt was getting her hopes up every time she got an email notification only to see another “FLYERS??” email she would be pretty disheartened.
omg that is the worst! HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THIS OBVIOUS THING YET? This thing you specified you can’t do from where you are? I am just TRYING TO HELP.
[[sending good dog vibes to you & your aunt!]]
Ugh, men. I hope your aunt’s dog comes back! My cat was missing for less than 24 hours earlier this week and I was a mess already, it really sucks when you don’t know what happened to your pet.
Also, incidentally: twitter toasties were a model of how to respond to such situations, namely with compassion instead of useless unsolicited advice that assumes you’re stupid. Look and learn, men. Look and learn.
I would respond with “are you in the area? If so, could you do me a solid and put up the flyers yourself? Since you seem so interested.”
hey I don’t know u but I heard ur dog is missing so I bet it’s dead. I’m a helper!
Is that…is that guy trying to tell you that First Blood actually takes place in Canada?
Because what a weird fucking hill to plant a flag on.
I think he’s saying that actually, we will find that it is Canada who is racism.
celebrity eskimo Sandi Toksvig
What the actual fuck? I realize that sentence is troublesome on as many levels as there ARE levels, but, is there some sort of British trend I missed of misusing “Eskimo” the way us assholes across the pond misuse “leprechaun”?
I have never heard anyone use the term “Eskimo” to mean (as this writer seems to) “Scandinavian/Nordic/Northern European person”. It’s bizarre.
Is she Sami? It’s still wrong, if so.
Not that I’ve ever heard.
Your grandma and I are of one mind. I had to work so hard to tamp down my over-protectiveness when the kid was little.
OTOH the kid has never really needed protecting. Her response in Pre-K to being pushed and hit by a bully was to grab him and throw him headfirst into a wall. Perfect, IMO.
Where I live now, our grass doesn’t need to be watered at all. We get plenty of summer rain and it’s great. I like having a good space for the kids to run around. We’re near the ocean and there is a big push right now for people to stop chemically treating their lawns because of the runoff, so having one of those signs in your yard plus a bunch of dandelions is practically a status symbol at the moment. It’s pretty great.
But, yeah, pouring a lot of water and chemicals into lawns is so ridiculous and wasteful.
I’m in drought country, and a brown lawn is a point of pride. The green lawns and clean cars are getting a lot of sideeye here in Southern California.
I enjoyed this spoof Bad Blood video in which lady comedians have names such as Heavy Flow and Madame Ovary and sing and rap about how tampons etc have 5% VAT in the UK and how that is ridiculous! My fave bits were how the rapper goes, “Until the menopause comes to. save. the. day.” in a super cocky way and the way one of them breaks off the top of an ice cream cone to make a Moon Cup.
Awesome! I love the drinking out of menstrual cups at the end. I saw this advert https://youtu.be/X3j2KteYaKs yesterday and have watched it like a million times already — it makes me so happy!
Okay, I can’t watch this now, but I WILL watch it at some point today even if it kills me. This sounds BONKERS AMAZING.
Haha! It really made me laugh and there’s quite a lot of jokes packed in to the video so I’ve watched it about five times now to get them all! Also, the way they suggest malt loaf as a tampon substitute. Soreen!
I too am looking forward to getting home to watch this thing.
(yes, this comment is at least in part so that I will remember to go back and watch it).
I mean, I had the exact same reaction as Amelia’s grandmother, except for the bit about the schools.
Re the police video article: What the actual fuck. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in places like your HOUSE. You do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in places like a PUBLIC BUSINESS. Because you know it’s PUBLIC and ANYONE CAN SEE YOU. I keep thinking these stories can’t get more ridiculous and here we go…
Also, lolol at the idea that someone’s going to say, “whoah, I never would have committed all those crimes if I knew someone could SEE ME,” and then the police force is just supposed to pretend that they didn’t see them and let them keep their jobs?
ugh it’s like they think there are a whole lot of people out there who will defend literally anything on the basis of “they’re cops.”
uuuuuuuuugggggghhhh.
In other Canada news, Health Canada finally approved Mifepristone! Yaaaay abortion access!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/abor…
I can’t believe that! I AM OUTRAGED. Amelia!! YOU BE LOUD, GIRL. LOUD AND PROUD.
When my eldest was four and in preschool, a boy pushed her down on the playground and she came home with scraped knees, ripped leggings, and tearstains, and all her ridiculous teacher had to say to me was, essentially, “Boys will be boys and you need to teach her to stand up for herself.” Nice, Montessori preschool, REAL NICE. (In hindsight I still can’t believe what we paid that school.)
(looks around shiftily)
mason is the teacher’s son
OF COURSE HE IS
That is the least surprising thing I have read all day. Possibly all week/month/year.
So, SO not surprised by that.
And she is the MOST tender-hearted of things! Yesterday, I said “Amelia, is this a happy face or an angry face?” and glowered and she said “I DON’T WANT YOU TO HAVE AN ANGRY FACE” and burst into tears.
🙁
my kids are both sensitive, too, and totally bewildered by physical aggression/violence; they just don’t Get It At All.
Unfortunately, at 37, I am still your kids…. 🙁
Awwww, baby. 🙁
I would like to say that I was a stone-cold badass as a child, but actually I just cried whenever I got pushed around (which happened . . . a lot) and once asked my mom “if you’re supposed to feel bad when you lose at sports, does that mean the winners are supposed to feel good because they made the losers feel bad?” I did not last long in gym class.
I had really thought she was going to be a bruiser, but she is so so gentle and reminds me a lot of me as a kid. She is VERY easy to parent! If we say “oh, that makes us sad” she runs over and covers us with kisses.
A bad boy pushed my little Warrior Princess and she scraped her hands and knees, so she gave him a bloody nose. The school was mad at her for doing that but I thought maybe if it happened more often guys would stop being jerks.
Anyway, my daughter grew up to be a badass and once knocked out a police office in self defense class; Blake G from preschool made it possible
When I was a wee thing I was very polite and sensitive. And one day I apparently freaked out, bit another kid, and then ran screaming and crying and locked myself in the bathroom. The parents and teachers involved quickly assumed that if I had that kind of reaction then the kid I bit must have done something especially heinous. So the next day his parents made him apologize to me and give me a gift.
Being a horse person makes you a bit of a grass nerd, and there’s nothing prettier than a good meadow. You do need to mow it a bit to get a thick base sward going on, but it looks great after a few years. Better than a shitty patchy lawn anyway. (Living in London is killing me, partly because the grass quality in the parks here is a disgrace. Most of its dead in the summer, and there’s barely any grass coverage anyway).
I don’t have a lawn, but I do have a garden, and went through a phase of garden related madness (This ended when all the weeds I removed grew back and I lost the will to live.), and after I nearly decapitated a frog living in the weeds, I specifically made a ‘wilderness corner’ with a big pile of branches. There’s now a 6ft thistle living there 😀
I live in an especially fertile area of Arkansas, and I really don’t like mowing my lawn. Despite my best efforts- never watering anything, never fertilizing, being really stompy when I’m walking on the grass- the grass continues to thrive and grow at a terrifying rate. Whenever I read articles about people having to spend hours chemically treating their lawns just to keep them alive, I just laugh a bitter, hollow laugh
Thanks very much for the signal boost for my baby cousin. We’re so worried about her, and it really stinks that instead of just being able to focus on her baby, her mom is worrying about bills. If anyone can help or repost, that would be so very great.
Re: Catholic School for Small Children:
In the first week of Catholic Kindegarten, we were given a set of 16 Rose Art crayons. There was “red” and “red violet”, and I couldn’t yet read well enough to really get “violet”, but when we were given an apple to color, that said “red” on the piece of paper, I could certainly pattern match to find BOTH crayons that said “red” on them, and I also knew that the apples I ate were not all one shade of “red”. So when I colored, I used both the “red” and the “red violet”. I got the paper back, corrected, in red pen- “Just red next time, please”.
which is to say:
NOT HOLY NAME OF MARY. OH GOD NO.
I got dinged for coloring all of the grapes at once rather than each individual grape in public school (yes I still remember this at age 35 and I really want to send them a copy of my tax returns to be like LOOK WHERE COLORING ALL THE GRAPES AT ONCE GOT ME), so I’d say basically all kindergartens are made to turn children into robots.
I still have the “incorrectly” colored apple sheet.
I will keep that piece of paper in a safe place for the rest of my life. Formative experience, etc etc.
I’d like to do the same thing to the preschool teacher who scolded me for cutting out my paper giraffe with scissors on our first day of class. SEE, I AM A RESPECTABLE LAWYERPERSON AND HOMEOWNER NOW, BOOYAH
I will join you for the preschool teacher who in a wrongheaded attempt to make me right handed kept me in from outside playtime until I could cut my shapes neatly with my right hand. THANKS FOR THE LIFETIME OF SPATIAL DISTORTION BUT I STILL BECAME A LAWYER AND I’M STILL NOT TOTALLY RIGHT HAND DOMINANT.
On two different occasions I used words in a poem that the teacher didn’t know (Vole, and Burly respectively) and both times she told me that they weren’t real words. At age 8 I wasn’t smart enough to go and get a dictionary, but I stood my fucking ground and had a shouting match over it.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking either of these poems were very good. The the burly one was about a horse, it contained the line ‘he’s very burly’, it wasn’t good, but my teacher’s solution to me using a word that doesn’t exist (to her anyway) was to change the line to ‘He’s like a curly wurly.’ I don’t know if you can imagine the look of derision my 8 year old face managed to conjure up, but it was pretty bad.
So yes, schools attempt to bring all children down to the average and stamps any and all creativity in the name of ‘discipline’ and ‘applying yourself’. And I’m still totally fucking bitter over my school experience because I was desperate to learn as a child and they stamped it out of me to the point where I couldn’t even finish school and missed out on a lot of important adolescent experiences because of it.
“He’s like a curly wurly.”
THAT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE. I am retrospectively outraged on your behalf.
That was my response, ms fucking eejit goes ‘well his hair could be curly.’ I have never given a colder look in my life.
In fourth grade, I used the word “rime” in a limerick. The teacher told me I’d misspelled “rhyme”, which, y’know, pretty good guess, only I meant “rime” and not “rhyme”. So I told her to look it up, and, to her eternal credit, SHE DID, and despite the fact that it was a smallish dictionary it WAS IN THERE and she was pretty gracious about it.
Ngl, i had to look up rime. Yay new word!
Even at the time, I realized it was not exactly a commonly used word. It’s pretty much just “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” keeping it afloat. But it worked in the rhyme scheme, and I’d recently learned the word, and i liked it, and I didn’t want to have to rework my damn poem.
In 5th grade, I used “ineffable” in a book report that was a letter from a character who’d been on the sinking of the Titanic. My teacher (whom I generally liked) crossed it out and wrote “inevitable.” For years, even though I didn’t see how “inevitable” made sense, I thought I’d misunderstood the word and avoided using it. Then I looked it up and realized I’d been right. Like…if you have a student whose reading/writing levels are way above their grade, maybe don’t assume they’ve horribly misspelled a word that doesn’t even fit? I also had a middle school English teacher accuse me in front of the whole class of cheating because my in-class analysis of a book we were reading was too good (but she was just a generally horrible teacher).
In college, as part of a training course to help students with writing, we had to write our personal history of reading/writing. Mine turned into a contained vent session of all the nonsense teachers had inflicted on me over the years. (To be clear, I have a ton of respect for teachers, but encountered a lot who did not want to/didn’t know how to deal with a gifted, spacey student.)
Seventh grade in Rhode Island (very late 90s). Two page long short story assignment. Teacher originally from Pennsylvania. I included a vague allusion to organized crime, in a way that was very Rhode Island— probably some throwaway line about someone being “scared of The Mob”. Only my teacher wasn’t familiar with the local history, or the local paranoia where you didn’t really talk about it too much. So he had no idea what the hell I was talking about, and I didn’t REALLY know enough to be able to explain and also I knew I wasn’t exactly supposed to be talking about it, so when he asked I think I just did a deer in the headlights thing, because— at the time— I didn’t realize that since he was Not From Around There he probably just lacked context for organized crime generally, and wasn’t asking me for details about a particular crime family, or trying to enforce the taboo of not discussing it.
I avoided the hell out of the topic for a LONG time, unsure about what was my misunderstanding of the topic vs. other people’s.
I have no respect for the particular teachers I had. I really hate when teachers get personally offended when a student corrects them. Yes I was an arrogant little snot rag with no tact whatsoever, but they didn’t have to tell me I was stupid and disruptive, plus I was always (and I mean always because if I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t say anything) right.
The school system I went through exels at fitting students into a very narrow margin, if you fall out of that you get cast aside. Eventually, in a very roundabout way, I got to college and could use words like nefarious and be applauded by my teachers nor told to shut up.
My seventh grade music teacher accused me of plagiarizing a two-page report on Francis Scott Key. Never mind that I was already blowing through her class with more than 100% because I’d been in music classes since I was 5, so I was demonstrably a good student. Apparently it was “too well-written for my grade level.” I’m pretty sure I gave her the same withering glare that comes to mind every time I remember this incident. I may have also told her that she could give me a zero if she wanted because I’d still have an A.
Also in seventh grade, I wrote a report on Andrew Lloyd Webber for English class (I don’t remember why), and I got an A, but at the top my teacher wrote “But what about Les Miserables?” I had not discussed Les Mis in the report because…Andrew Lloyd Webber did not write it.
I am so thankful for the good teachers I had, now that I see some of the people from my generation who became teachers. I had a high school teacher the other day try to argue that rubber conducts electricity. He’s teaching children currently.
Whereas, I was disappointed as a teen when my teacher didn’t know that “Cats” was based on T.S. Eliot. Not that bad in retrospect.
In sixth grade I wrote a gothic-style scary story about a man from olden-times who was the only survivor of a ship that went down in a storm. It was first person from the character’s perspective, and he was uneducated, so instead of using the word “hypothermia” (which I knew, it was one of our vocabulary words, but the uneducated 18th century character didn’t know it), I wrote something like, “I shivered uncontrollably from the cold.” I got dinged for not using the word “hypothermia.” I kind of get it (although the assignment said nothing about using vocabulary words), but 25 years later I still feel bitter that I was penalized because my reasoning was more sophisticated than the teacher’s.
Man, even if he WAS well-educated and familiar with not only the word “hypothermia” but its symptoms, what kind of terrible writing advice is “Don’t describe how he’s feeling, just tell us his clinical diagnosis”?
I mean, it is terrible advice, but I think it fits pretty well with the standard pro-saidism stance of elementary school teachers.
n grade seven I wrote a short story where one of the characters had an epiphany. My teacher marked it in red and deducted points with the note “Epiphany is a religious feast day and cannot be used to mean a ‘sudden realization'”. I complained but it wasn’t in the dictionary… The grade seven vocabulary dictionary.
The next day my mother, a high school English teacher, sent me to class with our huge Funk & Wagnalls, with a sticky note marking the page that had “epiphany.”
In the Catholic school my sister and I went to in Belgium, I was in the pre-K class’ little outbuilding, and my older sister was in the main school in 1st or 2nd grade. For some reason I had to stay late and wait for her one day in her classroom, and the teacher gave me a diagram of a flower and some crayons to color it in, to keep me occupied. I was feeling creative and colored the flower petals green, and was yelled at in front of my sister’s entire class 🙁 I’m still bitter about this 34 years later!
Um… does that teacher think that green flowers don’t exist?
Well, this was all pre-internet, so maybe she was just really sheltered. /s Seriously, what a kill-joy that nun was. When we moved to the States and I started in a private kindergarten (since I was too young for American public school), I was FLOORED that kids were allowed to sit on the floor. IN SCHOOL! And there were toys! And no one yelled! And you could go to the bathroom whenever you asked!
My partner is colourblind and got yelled at a lot as a kid for colouring in ‘wrong’. Every time he talks about it I want to go back in time and wreak physical vengeance on those teachers.
Like. Who. Cares. If. The. Petals. Are. Green. Jeezy creezy there are like one million billion other more important things that what colour a kid uses.
First week of first grade in a Lutheran grade school (circa 1982) I got in trouble for using the “brick red” Crayola instead of just red, since I liked it better. (I also preferred pine green, midnight blue, “maize”, red-orange, and the deepest purple that came in the box.)
I hate dogmatic color choices. Look, I obviously know the names of the colors and how to tell them apart. Don’t be picky about the hues unless you have a really good reason. Which you don’t. [still bitter after all these years]
I read somewhere that what children remember most from their childhood are the injustices and unfiar ways their treated and I completely relate to that!
I wonder do teachers know how much of a lasting influence they can have on children with a passing comment or small thing that seems like nothing to an adult. I think it’s because children believe that adults are always right and don’t understand that adults make decisions emotionally (pride, embarrassment etc) instead of logically.
Dinging a kid for using the wrong red is just too existential for a child to understand
Now for something completely different. Adam Scott & Scott Aukerman finally got to interview U2*!!! Apparently they got their T-shirts. You have no idea how pumped I am to listen to this.
http://www.earwolf.com/episode/episode-22/
*The band consists of Bonobos, Thedge, Larry Mullen Sr.’s Son & Adam Clay 2000 Pounds.
Heyyy, I think I’ve seen you (or someone else with that avatar) in the forums!
Inspired by ppyajunebug’s post, and also all the CanCon, does anyone else feel like putting together a drinking game for the party leaders’ debate tonight? I found this one, but it’s really long and overly silly. Cherry picking items from it might work, though.
One rule: drink enough as it takes to blot out the memory of the past ten years of government.
Take a sip every time Stephen Harper mentions the Economic Action plan while answering a question not in any way related to the plan.
BUT THEN YOU’LL DIE!
My game is easy- One drink every time you want to yell at the TV. Two drinks every time you smirk at the thought of Hilary running against any one of them. Finish your drink when you stop smirking because you realize there’s a chance that one of them could actually win.
I am in Chicago on August 21 because I hardly ever leave during the summer as I have learned that I typically regret doing so. But Aug. 21 is a Friday night. Spending Friday night at a Feminist Bookstore, be still my little heart!!
I’m 100% down with the idea of getting rid of my lawn, but I’m (a) kinda broke and (b) hate going outdoors or doing any actual gardening myself.
Do you folks have any advice on the cheapest and easiest way to get rid of a lawn, and replace it with something else that’s low maintenance? (I live in the Great Lakes area, so xeriscaping isn’t much of a “thing” here, although it’s probably possible).
Thanks!!
Honestly, what we did was buy a giant bag of mixed wildflower seeds at Lowe’s and used them like grass seed.
Hmmm, maybe I’ll try that! My mom and I once bought an actual product called “Meadow in a Can”, but it didn’t work that well, sadly.
Did you have to rip out your existing grass first? How big a job is that, and can an out-of-shape, 35-year-old lawyer do it herself, do you think?
You might be able to do the thing where you cover it in a few layers of cardboard or newsprint and then some mulch or dirt or something? I don’t garden much, but the other people in my building do, and I think that’s what they’ve done for our newest trees and one new raised bed, and it looks like it’s worked pretty well. It also seems to still be a lot of work, but probably a lot less work than actually ripping out the grass. You’d need a lot of cardboard, though. And I don’t know how much mulch costs.
Thanks! 🙂
Do you know what kind of grass your lawn is? If not, can you do a picture? Some lawn grasses you can just sew with other things, but some are pretty aggressive and you’ll need to mulch/smother out like Absotively says.
You’ll get into shape ” right quick”, as my great grandmother would say. I’m on my phone, but I live around here and have garden training. I can advise/ be a resource
Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but…
Ok, you’re a crazy old physiognomist.
I still hate the teacher's son from kindergarten. I can't remember why any more, but still. Fire of a thousand suns.
n grade seven I wrote a short story where one of the characters had an epiphany. My teacher marked it in red and deducted points with the note "Epiphany is a religious feast day and cannot be used to mean a 'sudden realization'". I complained but it wasn't in the dictionary… The grade seven vocabulary dictionary.
The next day my mother, a high school English teacher, sent me to class with our huge Funk & Wagnalls, with a sticky note marking the page that had "epiphany."
I'm in!