Our perfect and beautiful Nikki Chung on her work/life balance:
I don’t think I was ever cut out for a life solely focused on family. It can be such a blessed relief to drop the kids at school, return home to my MacBook, and immerse myself in work. The pressures of managing a website often pale compared to the job of raising a neurodiverse kid in a neurotypical world, or finding ways to challenge a precocious and frequently bored second-grader. It’s not that my work prevents me from thinking and worrying about my kids; I am their mother, so it will be my privilege to do those things for the rest of my life. But work has always been my best distraction, as well as the thing that makes me feel most competent, in control. I love collaborating with the brilliant, funny women I work with*, editing and planning for the site, talking with writers all day long. I love everything about this job, and I know that I sometimes hide in it as well.
*like meeeeeeeee
Last year, HSN (once called the Home Shopping Network, now known simply by its initials) sold $2.5 billion worth of merchandise — one steamer, one blender, one treadmill at a time. The 33-year-old company knows what sells and, more importantly, who it’s selling to. You’d be hard-pressed to find another company more loyal to, or obsessed with, its customer.
“We love her. We talk about her all the time. There’s not a minute of the day that goes by that we’re not thinking about her,” Katherine Rush explains at HSN’s St. Petersburg, Florida headquarters one morning in August. The VP of marketing is sitting across from me in one of the many green rooms usually reserved for on-air talent. “Everything we do and everything we curate is with her in mind.”
If you’re in the Bay Area tonight, maybe check out “Hella Asians On TV” at the Asian Art Museum!
On Robin Coste Lewis’ Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems:
Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems consists of three parts. The long title poem is bookended by two sections of more traditional lyric poems, and Lewis frames “Voyage of the Sable Venus” with a thorough prologue that details her methods of composition. She explains that “Voyage” is “a narrative poem comprised solely and entirely of the titles, catalog, or exhibit descriptions of Western art objects in which a black female figure is present, dating from 38,000 BCE to the present.” Lewis then goes on to catalog the rules by which she composed the piece. Here are some: though she altered grammar via changes to punctuation and spacing, “no title could be broken or changed in any way.” She interpreted “art” broadly, including not only paintings and sculptures and photographs, but also unexpected objects like table legs and combs. Where museums had quietly erased terms such as “slave” and “negro” from original titles and archives and replaced them with the “sanitized” term “African American,” Lewis changed them back. She also decided to include titles of artwork by black female and queer artists, whether or not they represented a black female figure in their work.
This is good advice but if I find out I’ve been cheated on, I’m gonna pull a this and then the world will explode and couples counseling will cease to be necessary for anyone. “Your Nicole is a jealous Nicole” – The Bible:
Janelle Monáe talking about fashion:
You don’t seem to be swayed by trends, though, so what do you look for when assessing the new styles on the runway?
I’m swayed by art. I, of course, am looking for iconic artistic black-and-white pieces but when something is striking outside of that palette, I allow myself to wear an honorary color. Red has been catching my eye as of late. I love to see an entire designer’s collection and appreciate each piece they create. I love listening to the music, taking in the platform where the show is taking place, the crowd. It’s all-encompassing. The experience as a whole is what makes attending shows so great.
This story is B A N A N A S (also, at least one of those horses they’re posing with is severely underweight, but they do not strike me as the type to ask questions about things like that):
Abe Zeines’s hilltop mansion in Puerto Rico looks like a frat house after a rager. A wrecked golf cart blocks the driveway. An SUV with a blown tire sits on the grass out front. A porch overlooking the Caribbean is littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts.
It’s a Monday morning in June, and Zeines is lounging in boxer shorts in his living room, drinking a Blue Moon. Two girls in bikinis are cooking breakfast for him and Meir Hurwitz, his best friend and business partner. The men, natives of Brooklyn, N.Y., are complaining about the restaurants on the island they’ve decided to call home. “There’s no item called eggs,” Zeines says. “You have to get the eggs with ham, hold the ham.”
My friend Carrie’s new puppy enjoys the classics:
James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson are prepping for a new play, and talking about their lives and work, and it’s GREAT (I saw Tyson star in the African-American Broadway revival of The Trip To Bountiful, which was incredible, and if you’ve never seen the 1985 movie with Geraldine Page, grab all your crying materials and do so. Something that happened during Tyson’s run, and not in previous stage productions, was that there were WAY more people of color in the audience, obviously, and so more people who knew the hymns Tyson was singing, so people SANG ALONG during the SHOW and it was magical and great and transformative to Foote’s play, and there we are, I’ll stop):
Tyson took a more overtly political approach — not by carrying a picket sign but by taking parts that articulated the cause. “I really could not afford the luxury of being an actress,” she says. “I had some issues that I really wanted to address, and I chose my career as a platform.” In the ’70s, her roles in Sounder and Roots made her a civil-rights icon. Only over the past decade or so has she been willing to take roles that are less message-driven, partly because she feels that the opportunities have expanded. “I don’t have to point out to you what’s happened on television as far as blacks are concerned, virtually taking over,” she says.
Beloved Friend of The Toast Lindsay King-Miller on what she hears when you say “a child deserves a mother and a father”:
I can’t help but notice that the people making the “children deserve a mother and father” argument are also the ones most frequently arguing and voting in favor of cutting welfare and other forms of support for struggling families, suggesting that they think children deserve a Leave It To Beaver two-parent family more than, say, food. They also tend to be anti-abortion and pro-adoption in the case of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, overlooking the fact that both relinquishing parents and adopted children tend to have lasting emotional repercussions from the event.
Why don’t the family values crusaders insist that those children deserve to be raised by their parents of origin, and work to create more robust social support systems for low-income parents and families? It’s both inconsistent and telling that the same people who are anti-same-sex-parents and anti-abortion usually oppose increased welfare benefits, free child care, and other options that would make it easier for families to stay together.
Hunger Games are gonna be dope this year pic.twitter.com/rNEvcCPDe8
— Daniel Kibblesmith (@kibblesmith) October 8, 2015
Wikipedia says silent film star Theda Bara‘s birth name was Theodosia Burr Goodman. Can anyone confirm? If so, can anyone explain? I seems awfully specific to be a coincidence.
Google suggests she was named after Theodosia Burr (the daughter), but does not explain why other than “people liked her story a lot then”.
She was also born in Hamilton County, Ohio ;D
ETA: You got me curious, so I did some digging. Best theory I can come up with is that Theda Bara was born in Ohio, where both Aaron and Theodosia (the daughter) spent some time in 1806, when Aaron was trying to gain land/political influence there. So… there’s a geographical link, and perhaps there’s a portrait of her or a street or park named after her that Bara’s parents were aware of and thought the name was nice.
Haha, I missed that!
My first thought – she can’t be related to Aaron Burr – she’s white!
Her father was born in Poland, and her mother in Switzerland, so she’s pretty unlikely to be actually related.
Janelle Monae links every day please thanks.
I’m VERY obsessed with the idea of her being the scarecrow in the upcoming live version of the Wiz.
I once sent in a demo reel to HSN. I didn’t get a callback, even though I think I sold my TomTom VERY well.
whoa. I have SO MANY OPINIONS. Two of those links strike way too close to home. And, nothing personal, but the author of the cheating article gives off the whiff of unreliable narrator to me. (feels like it’s a cheater’s list of telling the cheated-on how to act) .
hmm.
Today I’m supposed to be career-oriented and not get distracted by personal things. This is going to be difficult, I can see.
How do people who work from home compartmentalize? Because I have guilt over it being a kid-free day, guilt over not being at work even though they will only pay me for half the hours I am at the conference today and tomorrow, guilt over not doing career-things, guilt over being in the house and ignoring the state of it to do the career things, and itchy from poison ivy (that last one is unrelated, but not helping my focus any).
I need to be networking and polished by 5 pm today for a conference. I have been out of the academic world and underemployed for a year. I either have to work hard on getting published or networking to find a better job, work on setting up a collaboration with some of my still-grad-student friends, or decide whether to throw in the towel on full employment and go back to continue the research I really miss. While not sounding like an idiot who’s been working in an outdated office for a year. I think I better go lock myself in my bedroom and pretend the rest of the house doesn’t exist.
I kind of get that same ‘whiff’ on that cheating article, but idk. I think it was all the mentions of: oh, maybe it was a spurr of the moment thing where they kissed/whatever someone at a bar/club! You should forgive them, it wasn’t planned.
Nope. Bye.
Yeah, the focus on “how severe was this betrayal” feels a little off. “Welp, let me get out my ruler with flirting-at-a-party on one end and has-secret-second-family on the other!” Like, an impromptu kiss at a party sounds totally forgivable…but maybe it’s part of a pattern of skeevy behavior and therefore shouldn’t fly under the radar….
(As for working from home, getting dressed in Work Clothes always helps me focus. That and a browser extension that blocks pages like the Toast, not as if I ever leave that turned on…anyway, best of luck getting down to it, you got this!)
Like uh, no level of cheating has to be justified / ENOUGH to determine a breakup. If you don’t like that your SO kissed/eyed/touched/approached someone and want to leave… you can leave. It’s that easy. No measuring stick needed.
right exactly, it’s not about what THEY did so much as what YOU can’t deal with.
AMEN. (though on the above scale of betrayal, mine was “has secret family” with even more on the side. I may be biased against cheaters)
I’m so sorry. That was my dad too. It was hard as a daughter, but I can’t imagine how much worse it would be as the partner/spouse
It’s been 6 years, and he blew up both his little nests, so I’m mostly ok now. I do think it was hardest on my eldest son, because he still has to keep him as a dad. I only have to not kill the idiot for another 6 years. (I probably shouldn’t after that, either.)
Yeah my father came up to my mother one day and was like “well I think the Bible says I can have more than one wife at a time, surprise, I’m seeing another lady and I’m going to marry her, hope that’s cool.” From what I understand, he only confessed under duress (my mother knew something was up and forced him to speak to their pastor about whatever it was going through, and the pastor was like “either you tell her or I will”), and he really truly still thinks his actions were good, because he intends to support my mother for as long as he is financially able to.
This all went down 5+ years ago, he lives overseas with his new wife (and her two children from a previous relationship, who are – eerily – the same age as my brother and me) and I haven’t spoken a word to him since. Some people and their compulsions to cheat, I swear.
I realize this is naïve of me but I seriously had no idea people (men) still managed to get away with that sort of thing nowadays!
I think I can compartmentalize fairly well in part because I had practice working at home for years (telecommuting, traveling to the office once a month or so) even before we had kids. Long before I became a mom, I had to learn how to ignore things around the house and just WORK even if the mess or my hobbies or whatever beckoned. I also have laserlike focus when it comes to my passions, and I’m fortunate that my job is one!
As for guilt over house/kids, when it comes to the house itself I reject guilty feelings utterly. I wish we had more help and family support, etc. — I wish my husband and I weren’t always exhausted and doing a million things at once — and, sure, I wish I never had to put on a movie for the kids so I can get work done. But I have figured out what my strengths are, and being the perfect homemaker is not one of them, apparently. (It’s a bit disappointing to me at times, of course, because our house is neither as clean nor as cute as some of our friends’ houses, but… HOW MANY OF THEM WRITE AND PUBLISH BLOG POSTS ABOUT THEIR JOHN CHO FANTASIES? #blessed) Maybe someday I will truly be able to do it all with aplomb, but for this time, this season in life, I’m focusing on keeping the kids in good health/spirits and doing a job I like, and kind of giving myself a pass on most other things.
I do worry about my husband sometimes; this would be where the occasional guilt creeps in. Not guilt because I work — and we both want and need me to work anyway — but guilt because he just carries a lot on his shoulders. He worries about me too. We do a lot of check-ins (like seriously, once a week or more often, if things are really crazy) to make sure the other one is really okay, and take time to decompress and talk about the things that are stressing us out, while acknowledging those things are not going away any time soon.
Well, I never feel guilty about the movies. I firmly believe that they would be no current 12-16 year olds if it hadn’t been for Blues Clues, for instance.
I have made my list. It is broken down by time. I am on “eating breakfast” and “installing software”. I have crossed off “clean up the dining room crafts” and made do with just making a smaller, less noticeable pile on my desk and using the other half of it (it is a big desk). I have also crossed off “make cake” (not gonna happen), and “make coffee” (done).
I just don’t think it’s fair that we get imposter syndrome at work AND at home.
I have not cheated or been cheated on, so obviously I am speaking theoretically here, but I always circle back to the Dear Sugar column about cheating. I’ve told myself a lot of the same things she did – if I were with someone, I would end it, that’s it, we’re done, pack your shit and get out. But…I haven’t had that happen to me. I haven’t faced the prospect of building a life with someone and then having to choose whether to throw it away or not. So I don’t have any sympathy for cheaters, but I have a lot of sympathy for the cheated-on who have to make those hard decisions, and I try not to judge where they come down on that.
I WFH. I always get up, shower and dress properly – no pyjamas unless the alarm clock dies and I am up late. I’ve got a work table and chair, and have music or radio on – no TV, nobody is allowed to come and distract me.
My job has a lot to do ‘visibly’ so everyone in the team woul know if I weren’t getting stuff done, which helps. We have X amount of work to do in the mornings, the whole team stays until everything is done and up on the website, so when the list goes round of ‘these things are left, who wants help’, if they were all mine every day alarm bells would ring. So that helps. From a personal point of view, working at home is really valuable to me and I don’t want to jeopardise it by taking the mickey!
Also I don’t do guilt or pressure, so that helps. I am as much ‘at work’ from 8.30-4.30 as much as I would be in an office, and from 4.31 I’m as much ‘not at work’ as I would be if I were an hour away from said office.
>> How do people who work from home compartmentalize?
I don’t. I do everything wrong. But I’ve been doing it for two years and they don’t seem to hate me and they keep paying me so I guess it’s ok?
I’m with you on the cheating, Nicole. I respect people who can forgive cheating partners, but I once told my husband that if I found out he was cheating, I’d throw his cat out the (4th floor) window. (I would not have. But I really wanted to impress The Crazy upon him.)
*nods sagely*
Yes. Exactly.
Oh, don’t take it out on the poor cat! Throw him out the window instead.
I have a friend who has told me that should Mr. Thuja ever hurt me in any way, she will help me hide the body. Those are the good friends in life
::nods:: This is why I have sisters, basically.
I know someone with a rather ordinary sedan, but it has a surprisingly large trunk. She told a mutual friend, look how big my trunk is! Keep it in mind if your husband ever hurts you. (No one likes her husband. She knows it. She’s working on being financially able to leave him.)
I have to say a couple of things. The Link roundup is the best part of my morning. Also, I read Nikki’s essay on work/life balance yesterday, and I just…so beautifully articulated! Nikki and Nicole, I follow you both on Twitter and I feel such an affection for the both of you! Thank you for making me laugh and making a desk job less annoying.
<3 !
A+++++++++ name.
“tax-haven sex mansion”
TAX-HAVEN SEX MANSION.
It’s the American Dream!
Band name!
Oooooh the horses in that article about the rich dudes – so many of these tourist trail ride operations just do not have the standard of care that I consider like, minimally acceptable. Deworm, feed, and condition your animals, tourist trail ride operations! It’s not that hard! It’s cheaper than breaking down one horse after another! C’mon!
Some part of my soul is and always will be the 13yo girl mucking stalls in exchange for lessons, dreaming about riding a beautiful horse along the beach, but the rest of my soul is the 10yo sobbing over Black Beauty.
I mean, also everything else about those dudes makes me ragingly angry, but there’s only so many times I can get ragingly angry about the shittiness of these fuckwads and their ‘frat rager’ lifestyles before it gets boring. Money is meaningless, merit is nothing, get dudes out of positions of power, FEED THE DANG HORSES.
FEED THE DANG HORSES. Yeesh.
It’s real easy, right? You just put out the food and the horses take it from there!
Horses are pretty good at eating, turns out!
#feedthehorses
#eattherich
I like your platform and hereby nominate you for House speaker.
OH THANK GOD, we’ll be able to raise the debt ceiling after all.
I loved Jonathan Chait’s tweet: “Just spitballing: what if, instead of a traditional Speaker, Republicans just had gangs riding up and down the House aisles on motorcycles?”
Feed the rich to the horses? I know they’re traditionally vegetarian, but my old git stole enough bacon sandwiches out of my hands during his lifetime for me to be fairly sure they’re at least a bit flexible.
Considering my horse lived on a diet of fizzy cola bottles, crisps, and ice pops (his choice not mine.) a few rich blokes probably wouldn’t kill them.
I would like there to be a The Toast survey of how many of you had daggone horses because I feel like it is a lot.
I did not have a horse but I went to a summer camp every year which heavily featured horse riding, and I took riding lessons for a while. Having a horse was my most precious dream.
meeeeeeee & if I am ever a rich lady with land in a pretty place I will have one again!
That’s what I thought; Unfortunately these horses look like typical beach tourist hirelings. Tack that doesn’t fit, bad condition, badly ridden. Poor chaps. (Unfortunately a lot of the general public also wouldn’t know what to look for or notice that a horse was in bad condition, so they give these people their money anyway because they think ‘Ooooh pretty ponies.)
Exactly. That’s the thing, these operations survive by the unwitting ignorance of folks who, if they KNEW what condition the horses ought to be in, wouldn’t give these people a dime – but they DON’T know, so they hand over wads of cash.
These are cute little horses, too. Not that cuteness makes them more feedable, but it makes it easy to see how great they’d look if someone cared. Pretty ponies indeed!
If that little chestnut is even old enough to be carrying riders a) that heavy b) for hours, I’d eat a bale of hay myself.
Same, he’s either very young or a pony who shouldn’t be carrying a man that size.
A good sign of a reputable-ish trekking place is somewhere that makes you wear a helmet and boots and has weight limits on their horses.
A sidenote for people looking for horseback treks that don’t involve mistreated horses: Equitours has made it easier to find rides with well-trained, well-cared-for horses in good tack (there are similar businesses, but I haven’t used them, so I can’t vouch for their standards, which may be just as high). They do a fantastic job of describing the horses, tack, difficulty level, number of hours in the saddle, and accommodations; their outfitters care at least as much about the horses as about the riders; and the biz offers a variety of difficulty levels and options worldwide.
OMG this is the greatest thing. Thank you for posting it.
Thanks! Horse riding is on my list of things I would like to try someday, but I certainly don’t want to be a part of the problem, and I wouldn’t know what to look for on my own.
I used to teach lessons, and we had a lot of adults come to take a lesson or two before going on vacation. I highly recommend this method! Call some local farms that do lessons and ask for a tour – they should be willing to walk you around, and if it’s a good place, I bet whoever you’re talking to will hardly shut up about their horses. Then take a lesson or two so you can gain some good skills and also learn how to recognize healthy happy horses.
Brilliant! It’s more of a fuzzy distant dream right now, but when it moves up to the front burner (next summer?) I’ll definitely use this method. Sounds like a great way to get comfortable beforehand. As a camping enthusiast, it’s always about how the more you know, the safer you are. I’d imagine the same goes for being around horses.
I immediately went to their page for rides in Iceland – which is my dream – and died over the round little Icelandic ponies. Perfect. Thanks for the link!
I just came back from a week-long sheep roundup tour in Iceland offered by Ishestar and I am very happy with my experience. They were professional, the gear was good and the horses were excellent. On this particular tour, many of the horses belonged to farmers, so I can’t vouch for the horses that are used on the day tours, but the overall experience was very good.
Those little horses are both comfortable and bomb-proof, so I never felt like I was in any danger from bad horse behavior (unlike most of the school and trail horses I have encountered here in the U.S.).
Linky: http://www.ishestar.is/tours/sheep-round-landmann…
Brilliant link, thankyou!
I have always gotten their catalogs and they make me DROOOOOL. A horse vacation is the best vacation!!
one of those dumdums is literally wearing flipflops so I hope the horse at least stepped on his foot
I just found out the other day that there was a production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic in 2013 with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones as Beatrice and Benedick, so I’ve spent most of the rest of the week regretting that there is no time travel for me to be able to go back and see that. I bet it was INCREDIBLE.
If it makes you feel any better, my theatre-reviewer housemate at the time saw it and said it was terrible.
Hrm. That’s disappointing. The version that’s happening in my head right now is SPECTACULAR.
In which case: It was during previews! But the end it was probably excellent.
I really can’t imagine that it could have been very good. Vanessa Redgrave can be sassy, of course, but James Earl Jones? The man can do a lot of things, but that is not the role for him.
RE: The cheating article: It seems like there are two options presented: relationship is 100% over, or work to make relationship the same (except without the cheating part).
That seems silly. And no, this isn’t “but what about poly”, because, honestly, *cheating* to poly usually doesn’t work. But what about things like “I want to continue being your best friend, coparent, and roommate, but our romantic and sexual relationship is over”?
I’m not caffeinated yet but also the whole “what about poly” thing is not a solution to cheating because often, people who like cheating like it for reasons that aren’t going to be satisfied under a poly arrangement. If that makes sense. (Plus, of course, it’s not going to fix the trust issues that cheating creates and is doomed to fail.)
Yeah, agreed. While cheating is nearly always about some sort of unmet need, sometimes that unmet need is “doing this thing I’m not supposed to do”.
“Cheating to poly” generally only works when the “cheating” discovered is something that was against the agreed upon norms of the relationship, but the cheated upon partner discovers that they actually don’t feel all that upset about the cheating. (IE- A and B had a sexless marriage, A wants sex, gets sex elsewhere, B finds out, B realizes they’re actually perfectly okay with A getting sex elsewhere as long as the rest of the marriage doesn’t suffer, and, quite frankly, feel sort of relieved rather than betrayed). Even then, there are still plenty of trust issues that can still pop up. And this sort of outcome is really really rare. and. and. and. and. and.
But, yeah, “what about poly” is often pretty silly, especially because it’s often the cheater saying it to the cheated upon, rather than the cheated upon coming up with it themself.
But… “you’re an adult, are there parts of this relationship that are going well, that you want to keep? Can you disentangle those from the parts that aren’t working? If you thrown out all the rules, can you build something that works for the people?” That might end up with leaving. It might end up with fixing it but keeping things mostly the same. Or it might lead to creativity, especially when kids are involved.
Speaking as someone who struggles with monogamy (and am thankfully married to someone who monogamy is not that important), I think the betrayal of trust that cheating involves requires some kind of relationship reset — it’s not going to be the same as it was before, if it’s going to continue, it’ll be in an entirely new form.
and “poly =/= no rules”. poly people still have boundaries. they’re still capable of cheating.
cheating isn’t just about someone putting their body parts against the body parts of someone they shouldn’t have. it’s about the betrayal of trust, about breaking promises, about complete disregard for your partner. switching to poly won’t change the fact that the cheater is the sort of person who is willing and able to do shady shit.
(edit: for full transparency, i speak from the POV of a reformed cheater. i cannot fathom continuing a relationship with a cheater because i know there was no way i or my exes could or should have ever trusted me again.)
Agreed. Most cheating involves people deciding to do things that are clearly against agreements. However, some “cheating” is based on a couple having poor communication skills and different definitions of monogamy.
In college, I dated a guy who is now a close friend, in a sort of default mono relationship. I also had a very close friendship with a woman- both of us are bi, and most of campus thought she and I were in a relationship, because we went everywhere together, were often holding hands, we snuggled, took naps together, but we didn’t have sex. In retrospect, I’d label it as romantic, but not sexual, but definitely an important relationship. My mono boyfriend knew about this, and didn’t have a problem with it, and didn’t consider that closeness as cheating.
But. We never talked about it. He and I never discussed what was acceptable with her and what wasn’t, what would have been cheating. In retrospect, that wasn’t a great move. We were lucky enough that no one involved crossed some sort of boundary that created problems, but if one of us had, it wouldn’t have necessarily meant someone was a bad person, that situation was a place that honest misunderstanding could have easily happened.
And that was a supposedly mono relationship. Once you get into the larger world of “ethical non-monogamy”, there’s even more opportunity for honest misunderstanding to happen. Which makes it that much harder to separate {people trying their hardest in good faith but sometimes making mistakes} from {people who will push boundaries or just disregard them entirely and see what they can get away with}.
” Once you get into the larger world of “ethical non-monogamy”, there’s even more opportunity for honest misunderstanding to happen.”
I’m mono. Partner is not (as he determined nine years into our relationship). After I calmed down, one of the things I asked for was “Tell me first, please, when your feelings for someone else are changing. I don’t want to feel like my desire not to disrupt a relationship you’ve already de facto established with someone else is being leveraged to make me act okay with things before I’m okay with them.”
Partner at some point in November asked, “What do you think about my talking with OSO about feelings?” I said, “Feelings sound good.” What I should apparently have said was, “Is there a particular feeling you want to tell me about?”
And that was how Partner told me he’d told OSO “I love you” six months before OSO finally convinced him that he really needed to let me know, while not feeling that he’d ignored my request to be informed first.
I’m pretty sure that was honest misunderstanding? But it still really sucked.
Ugh. Mono/poly is especially hard. (if you haven’t come across Kimchi Cuddles, I’d highly recommend it– one of the central characters in this poly-centric webcomic is (mostly?) mono, in an evolving relationship with a poly woman, and the questions, concerns, and conflicts that come up are treated very lovingly).
I love KC! I am inordinately invested in the relationship between the two characters you’re talking about, because I have so few examples to look at that haven’t ended in flames and recrimination.
* {people who will push boundaries or just disregard them entirely and see what they can get away with}.
= my most recent ex. Who tried to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about when I called him on ignoring boundaries I’d clearly communicated, cause he’d been in the poly community longer than me and knew poly better. #nothowitworks
The statistic that cheating occurs in about half of all relationships (the research it links to is about MARRIAGES, not relationships, but sure, I can buy that it carries over) blows my mind a little. It sounds so high! Though of course 50% of all relationships could mean only ~25% of married partners, which sounds more believable even if it’s the same thing.
Or it’s like that often-repeated stat about how half of all marriages end in divorce…it may be true, but it’s more because of serial divorcers/remarriers than some widespread social inability to stay married. We’ve all known at least one serial cheater, right?
There’s also interesting questions about what counts as “cheating”, and who’s doing the defining.
yeah, the article that statistic links to is pretty clear on “we can’t really know for many reasons, here are some numbers researchers got when they asked various questions.” Some of those questions looked pretty vague to me, like, maybe an intense crush would count? or flirting? And if you did expand it to relationships vs. marriages, no one would ever agree on when an exclusive relationship officially starts. I’m half thankful, half disappointed that my job does not involve designing questionnaires for cheater research!
Thabo Sefelosha (NBA player from Switzerland, who is black) was acquitted on all charges after the NYPD charged him for resisting arrest. The NYPD broke his leg in the middle of the NBA playoffs last year. Now we wait to see if Thabo decides to sue the NYPD.
https://twitter.com/Lahlahlindsey/status/65248633…
If he hasn’t already filed a notice of claim, it’s too late for him to sue the city, though, I think, not too late for individual officers.
You know, I really hate Komen and the whole pink-ification of breast cancer “awareness”, but this BS really takes the cake. http://jezebel.com/massachusetts-police-force-wil…
…is this real life
Can we work on breast cancer treatment? Pretty sure we’re all AWARE of breast cancer, lets help people pay for treatment instead.
Or (pertinent to Texas at least) let’s stop closing clinics where people go to get early screening. You know, screening that helps people be AWARE in a useful way. Not that I’m not preaching to the choir here, but *primal ugggghhh*
Have we already posted this story about online scammers? http://www.wired.com/2015/10/online-dating-made-w…
I read it last night and I’m still sitting here like “what the fuck?”
Same. I read it the other day and it definitely occupied my headspace for a while. It’s one of those situations where unfortunately for people outside of it, there’s not much you can do but wait for the victims to come around.
Oh, so much rage-flail about how “pro-life” seems to end at birth.
I think Trevor Noah’s (who’s been killing it so far, imo) “human life only holds value until you take it out of the package, and then it’s worth nothing” remark on the Daily Show was the most cutting and accurate summation of the entire “pro-life” movement I’ve ever seen.
y’know, I went looking for that clip to include, but then I stumbled into a whole “Trevor Noah is WRONG, I’m pro-life and pro-gun because guns protect INNOCENT LIVES” thing… g’ah.
I’m still on the fence about Trevor, but that bit was excellent.
Oy, the Bloomberg link. Yet another article that makes me wish the Jewish people had an annual draft and could ceremoniously kick embarrassingly awful Jews out of the tribe. I should bring it up at the next International Banks & Media Conspiracy meeting.
Apropos of Internet, here is a picture of our new cat Louisa, who is more perfect than any human:
Yes she is!
aaaaaah
eeeeee symmetrical cat face! that lil face-stripe is gonna get her so many nose-pets.
oh her tiny FACE
She looks SO SOFT.
I really just want her to be curled up and purring on my lap with the little rattly kitten-purr of baby cats oh my god
She’s so pretty!
aaaaaah my cat has the same face! You’ll just have to take my word for it until I figure out how to post pictures. She’ll be a great conversation piece!
Eeeeeeeeee! Kittyface!
Eeeeeeeee!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The symmetry! Torties are the best.
Dawwww I love cats with a split-face color pattern! It’s my favorite kind of cat face!
The pink to gray line right down her nose! How precious. Torties are the sweetest of all cats.
So, this picture has convinced my partner to agree to get a cat. SUCH IS HER PERFECTION.
“There’s not a minute of the day that goes by that we’re not thinking about her”
To paraphrase an old saying:
Women get the kind of attention from HSN that Englishwomen only hoped to get from their butlers
It makes me happy that Friend of the Toast Shrill is now getting into baseball. Makes me think I should try getting into basketball, as a kind of Sports Exchange Program.
You definitely should! We are in a golden age of basketball right now; there are so many young, fun players and fast, fun teams to watch that it’s overwhelming. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that anyone hopping into the sport right now follow my team (because the Bulls at the moment are not very fun to watch and are frequently kinda sad to watch), but if you’re at all interested, you should catch a few games and see if you like it.
The WNBA finals game 3 is on tonight and the series is tied 1-1. Might be worth checking out, since it’s very high level basketball. I will be rooting for Maya Moore, who is awesome.
Thanks for linking to my article on “Voyage of the Sable Venus”! Toasties, check it out! Here’s the final paragraph of the review as a teaser:
In Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, Robin Coste Lewis shows us the possibilities of a conceptual writing—as well as a more traditional lyric—undivorced from the social realities of language. The reality of the black female body is very much not transcended, and the result, quite simply, is astounding.
You can also read selections of the poem here: http://lithub.com/voyage-of-the-sable-venus/
That is AMAZING. Thank you so much for the review and the link to the poem.
Read this interview with Richard Kind and try not to hear it in his oh so distinctive voice.
http://www.avclub.com/article/richard-kind-red-oa…
“Bing bong! Bing bong!”
PETA is an awful, awful organization. They are self-serving. I believe that they do love animals, but they don’t know how to love animals, because these horses were treated with such care and such love. Everybody on the set who worked with the horses, they loved horses more than these PETA people. PETA people, they love animals and they beat their breast about it, but horse people live and die horses. They live with them. They bunk at the stable. They talk to horses. They love them. That’s what horse people do.
I didn’t read the whole thing, but this is just so spot on. I’ve been trying to explain this to people for years. PETA make a big fuss, but they don’t actually know animals or live day in day out with them.
Haha it is definitely reasonable advice for everyone who has been cheated on to “take a week off work”
Wait no that is the opposite of reasonable
“Was this a planned affair, or something that “just happened”? There’s a big difference between someone signing up for an Ashley Madison account and kissing someone in a drunken haze at a party.”
Nicole I love you but I just can’t believe that this article was written by a human from planet earth
,i.”Was this a planned affair, or something that “just happened”? There’s a big difference between someone signing up for an Ashley Madison account and kissing someone in a drunken haze at a party.” ,/i.
only in that one is kissing and one is sex.
if you hump your drunk party makeout buddy, it’s the exact same thing as your Ashley Madison hook up. there are no orders of magnitude for how much you sexed someone you weren’t supposed to.
Depends. There are people who care about the premeditative-ness of something. For example, if someone is propositioned for drunken makeouts, and does it 3 seconds later, there isn’t a whole lot of TIME involved to come to the conclusion that it was a bad plan. Whereas, if someone spends 3 months actively looking for someone to have drunken makeouts with, and then hangs out with that person a couple times until they’re both drunk enough and THEN drunken makeouts happen…..
Not everyone thinks the difference is important, but some people do.
It involves a different level of deception, so there’s that. Any kind of premeditated and/or prolonged affair means prolonged and continued lying.
Even if taking a whole week off work is possible, why would that be helpful?? Wouldn’t that just provide more space for destructive behaviors rather than healthy self care? Isn’t finding some sort of routine in turbulent times helpful??? I can see taking a couple days to DO something, like go to a beach or visit your parents or plant a garden or whatever centers you, but I know that I would just have a pity party on the couch without showering or putting on clean clothes or taking to people. A weekend of that is fine. A week of doing that for several hours a day, also okay. 7 to 9 straight days of that? …. less good.
“I would just have a pity party on the couch without showering or putting on clean clothes or taking to people”
It me.
Actually, I would do that on any occasion when I had a week off from work, even if I hadn’t been cheated on.
So I know this kid with two lesbian moms and a gay dad (don’t ask me about the moist logistics, I don’t know because I don’t wanna know) and that kid is one of the most irritating, bratty kids I know! And he’s got TWO MOMS AND ONE DAD FOR A TOTAL OF THREE PARENTS.
Just sayin’!!!
There’s definitely a strong trend of little girls who dream about riding horses/growing up to be Alanna the Lionness actually growing up to become women who read the Toast. It’s a pretty good trade off.
That was my very first thought, too! I love comment threads on the The Toast.
The phrase “every child deserves a father and a mother” definitely has appended to the end of it, in invisible but loud writing, “whether they want or need one or not.” It makes my skin crawl.
Those dickwads in the tax-haven Puerto Rican sex mansion story are the ACTUAL REAL LIFE “Rich Dicks” from the Kroll Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZB5BgGKNwI
Right, poly under duress usually just leads to an eventual break-up, after some time being dicks to anyone who tries to date either of you.
ETA: This belongs in the thread started by cosetthetable above.
I can’t believe how fascinating I found the HSN article. I have a real soft spot for HSN and QVC – they’re awfully soothing to watch considering their entire purpose is to sell you things – and I’m actually a bit surprised at how successful HSN is.
I’ve never watched it but the article is totally competence porn, it’s great.
Competence porn!!! That’s a great expression.
I love infomercials because in the world of infomercials all problems have obtainable, affordable solutions.
Down the hall, Hurwitz produces a leather whip from a bedside drawer. When he shows it to the women he brings home, he says, “they’re frustratingly blasé.”
Breaking News: Rich Dude’s Kink Not as Shocking as He’d Hoped.
Regarding “children deserve a mother and father” — isn’t the current state of the science that all children would be better off raised by lesbians?
The channel broadcasts 1,344 hours of live TV per week, with midnight EST being peak viewing time.
Can someone please explain this to me, because I am having difficulty understanding how a channel can broadcast live TV for this many hours a week, unless by “week” they really mean 2-month period?
On 8 channels maybe?
I mean, all children also deserve medical care, plenty of food, good schools, and the knowledge that their parents aren’t going to get arrested and/or shot for bullshit reasons, but hey, y’know, whatever.
This this this.
On his blog at Slog, Dan Savage regularly posts news items about children abused by their opposite sex parents with the tagline, “Every child deserves a mother and a father.” 🙁 #onpoint
He also maintains a “Youth Pastor Watch,” posting incidents of youth pastors or youth group leaders abusing their charges. He has often said, “If kids got raped at Denny’s as often as they get raped in church, it would be illegal to take your kids to Denny’s.” Damn, I’m gettin’ teary.
This this this.
On his blog at Slog, Dan Savage regularly posts news items about children abused by their opposite sex parents with the tagline, "Every child deserves a mother and a father." 🙁 #onpoint
He also maintains a "Youth Pastor Watch," posting incidents of youth pastors or youth group leaders abusing their charges. He has often said, "If kids got raped at Denny's as often as they get raped in church, it would be illegal to take your kids to Denny's." Damn, I'm gettin' teary.