I read this whole long thing on suicide and depression and Elliott Smith and there were things about it that really bothered me and parts that were really great, too:
You know how it feels to deprive yourself. But Elliott was a virtuoso of this kind of privation, on a scale beyond (at least my) capability. He funded the substance habits that accelerated his misery with the music about that misery. He was fascinated by self-destruction. One of his best songs, “Needle in the Hay,” is a paean to heroin he wrote five years before heroin ever touched his bloodstream. One of his girlfriends left him because, among other reasons, he couldn’t shut up about wondering what it would like to be a heroin addict. Lou Reed once said: “You know, some people got no choice / and they can never find a voice to talk with that they can even call their own / So the first thing that they see / that allows them the right to be / why they follow it, you know, it’s called bad luck.”
This is about Lamar Odom, and it’s great, and really sad:
“Be nice to everybody,” his mother told him on her deathbed, and he followed those words like gospel. He invited D-Leaguers to expensive dinners. He paid private-school tuition for kids he’d never met. He incurred fines for holding up theLakers bus so he could sign more autographs. He invested in one cockamamie project after another, from the T-shirt line to the fancy restaurant. “No was not in his vocabulary,” an Odom confidante says. His benevolent spirit earned him every benefit of the doubt. Questionable behavior was chalked up to loveable eccentricity. Blow off a meeting? Oh, that’s just Lamar. Report to camp hopelessly out of shape? Oh, that’s just Lamar. Skip out on the Mavericks following the All-Star break? Oh, that’s just Lamar. I once heard him ask a locker-room attendant to fetch $60 in Red Bull. Again, Lamar.
Being black, but not TOO black in the workplace:
In particular, black professionals had to be very careful to show feelings of conviviality and pleasantness, even—especially—in response to racial issues. They felt that emotions of anger, frustration, and annoyance were discouraged, even when they worked in settings where these emotions were generally welcomed in certain contexts—think litigators interacting with opposing counsel, or financial analysts responding to a stressful day on Wall Street. Interestingly, this often played out at trainings meant to encourage racial sensitivity. Many of the black professionals I interviewed found that diversity trainings—intended to improve the work environment for minorities—actually became a source of emotional stress, as they perceived that their white colleagues could use these trainings to express negative emotions about people of color, but that they were expected not to disclose their own honest emotional reactions to such statements.
I love Jim Croce:
My friend Carrie’s new puppy has ears:
Effie Brown is great:
“I had no choice really. I’ve been black and a woman all my life. I have worked in this business for 20 years. I’m 43. It was one of those things. Literally in that moment, was I going to risk public humiliation, bringing up this opinion, or deal with shame and excuses: ‘You let that go by?’ That’s a big responsibility. I was more afraid of my mother: ‘That’s how we raised you and sacrificed, that’s it? When the time was for you to stand and be counted?’ That’s all that went thorough my head: damned if I was going to do that. At the same time, Matt was the biggest movie star in the world, he could win the Oscar with ‘The Martian,’ he’s incredibly thoughtful, so smart, so sensitive. Before that all happened, I am with Jason Bourne and Batman, I loved it. It was disheartening, to be ‘Oh, like, ok.’”
The Intercept’s massive treasure drove of FUCKED UP INFORMATION about the drone program is incredible.
This is HUGE and really important and great:
A new report from the U.S. government calls for an end to the discredited practice known as conversion therapy for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youths.
The report released today by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) comes less than a year after the Obama administration endorsed efforts to ban the practice, which aims to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
“Conversion therapies or other efforts to change sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression are not effective, reinforce harmful gender stereotypes and are not appropriate mental health treatments,” said SAMHSA Special Expert on LGBT Affairs Elliot Kennedy.
Here is a great piece of writing about zombies:
For some a contemplation of the apocalypse functions as abject wish fulfillment. Petty frustrations and mundane realities of real life all disappear, as do the complexities: this is often the set-up of many of these stories; say, a divorce proceeding is the most traumatic experience of a hero’s life right up until at that exact moment the world is invaded by aliens or nuked into oblivion or a disease wipes out almost everyone overnight, making this interpersonal pain insignificant in the face of their new task of saving the world. Apocalypse stories enduring appeal as a genre is in the thought experiment undertaken by the viewer or reader: if this actually happened, what kind of person would I be?
After the fall no one will care about your outstanding taxes or your unserviceable student loans or the job that you hate, or your failing relationship, or the family you cannot make peace with—they’re all gone. In this world civilization might have fallen, but so have all your debts. Your very existence might be threatened in your every waking moment, but you are made new. No trees may ever grow again, but who cares, you can prove your mettle against the world with nothing but a golf club at your disposal and see how far you get.
This is the end of the world as escape fantasy.
Historic black cemeteries are overgrown and used as trash dumps, Confederate memorials get government funding:
In the community that helped the Black Lives Matter movement grip the national conscience, all three commercial cemeteries founded for the burial of black bodies have fallen into disrepair. In the 1990s, one of these was dug up to make room for an airport expansion. In Greenwood, in the bareness of winter, fallen gravestones can be spotted through brittle reeds. By summertime, they’ve disappeared. Barbara Harris’s story is repeated by one St. Louis family after the next: visits to loved ones’ graves thwarted by overgrowth and poison ivy.
It’s the same across the United States. “This is the situation we observe: There’s a black cemetery on the other side of the hill, and it began around the same time as the white one, and the white one is in fine shape—the black one is not,” says Michael Trinkley, whose South Carolina–based Chicora Foundation conducts archeological studies of cemeteries. Their decline is tied directly to past and present patterns of investment: Memorials to white lives are left in trust, padded with private and public wealth; collective memorials to black lives fall into the red financially and slip from view. “The underlying problem is that black cemeteries have been left without the resources necessary to operate,” Trinkley notes.
Guy Professes Undying Loyalty to Original Version of Fictional Character, Misspells that Character’s Name pic.twitter.com/TMEQRuQ8Ra
— Cohen is a homestuck (@skullmandible) October 15, 2015
It would be best if the Die Hard prequel was just about John McClane solving a regular New York crime, like a feature-length episode of Law & Order.
Or like an actual cop on the beat – John McClane Takes a Police Report, Files in Triplicate. With a Vengeance.
Act I
John McClane sees some kids smoking outside the 7-11, tells them to move along.
Act II
John McClane sees someone stopped on the LIE and checks to see if they’re okay. They are, and are waiting for a tow truck.
Act III
John McClane goes to the bar instead of going home after work. He is a bad husband.
Fin.
Thing is if you put a brooding Bruce Willis in an undershirt doing that I’d watch all day.
The Wire Special: John McClane replaces Lester Freamon on the pawn shop detail.
That would be actually kind of brilliant? I’d see it, anyway.
It has to be right? The whole premise of die hard 1-3 was that he was a schlubby every day cop entirely out of his element. If you make him super cop prior to die hard 1 you invalidate the entire idea.
Definitely. And I, for one, have a hard time believing that a film studio desperate for a successful tent-pole that can be easily based on a pre-existing intellectual property would sacrifice that kind of character devleopment and narrative consistency just for the sake of a cynical cash-grab.
Film studios have never let me down before!
Only if they have the “DOINK DOINK” sound effect, though.
Re: Zombies-
It’s always been my impression that gun hoarders and ‘preppers’ are not afraid of civilization’s fall – they WANT it. They want the complete simplification of life: A man, a dog, a gun. And everyone who ever looked down on them at their mercy.
My brother is a prepper/survalist type person (although not a gun hoarder because that’s illegal, but he is an Airsoft hoarder.), and while I do think there’s an element of wishing for a simpler life, I also think he mostly does it as a way to fight the anxiety and instability we experienced as children, and the anxiety about how fragile your modern way of life really it.
If you own land and can be self-sufficient you will always be safe no matter what happens. (I have just realized that my brother and I, while very different, have ended up with a lot of the same afflictions, just dealt with them very differently.)
I feel like I disagree that, in the event of catastrophic systemic collapse, owning land is necessarily to your benefit, on the grounds that is it even possible under those circumstances?
I suspect to keep anything you’d need to be part of (if I may use the phrase) a well-regulated militia. Otherwise roving gangs would simply kill you and take everything.
In order to protect your land, you have no choice but to monopolize methods of violence; civilization is inescapable.
I don’t know if it would actually work or keep you safe; but I think that is the thinking behind the behavior of the people who buy into this behavior (and yes I suppose you would need to be able to defend your property, so hoarding guns makes sense in that situation)
I think the idea is ‘No matter what happens I can feed my family, keep them warm/sheltered and protect them’, owning land might not be part of that for some people (I only said it because that it what my brother is currently obsessed with, but they rent a council flat, so anxiety about the permanence of their home is probably playing in to that, other people might obsess about tinned food or guns).
Basically the point I think I’m trying to make is that prepper/survivalist thinking comes from anxiety and wanting to do something about it (I can’t do anything about the companies and governments robbing the world, using all our natural resources and threatening to blow everyone up, but I CAN make sure that I will always have food, water, a house, whatever it is that makes me feel safe i.e. guns.)
yeah, I agree, I think most of it is a combination of alleviating anxiety and of disentangling oneself from systems that are perceived as unreliable. I think — not to say anything about your brother, I don’t know what he’s up to — a lot of the notable preppers here in the US don’t actually have a good idea of what kind of consequences we’d be looking at if civilization really collapsed.
I read somewhere that the idea of lone survivors battling against other survivors in the event of an apocalypse is incorrect, history shows us that in order to survive people have to pool resources and co-operate.
So if society did collapse we’d likely go back to something like an early agricultural society with small communities working together and trading with other small communities; or it’d be something like nomadic tribes/hunter-gatherer type societies. (This may have come from Cracked.)
Either way, people would need to co-operate to survive.
ETA: There it is, first entry! http://www.cracked.com/article_21251_5-things-eve…
Yeah; US survivalists often have these anti-government tendencies, like they think that “governance” is this evil system that was imposed on them, and not a natural outgrowth of very ordinary solutions to problems with survival. It turns out a bunch of rubes living on their own farms and only making exactly as much as they need to feed their families actually aren’t that good at surviving.
This comes up explicitly in Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids – the protagonists discuss how if they stay in their current smallholding and attempt to survive, even without the marauding man-eating plants they would eventually die out as the demands of growing enough food to live would mean their children would live narrower and narrower lives as time went on.
That was such a great book.
Also, they’d get the ultimate “I told you so.”
For some, definitely. The one I’ve known best was serious about her food growing and storage, passive solar heat, and all that, but her eyes also twinkled a lot when she imagined protecting her land with a shotgun from the urban refugees…
Supposedly she’ll be growing her own ammunition when her store runs out…
Ha, indeed!
I watch Walking Dead, so I know that the post-zombie apocalypse world comes with an unexplainable unending supply of bullets.
They may not be the whole of it, but they’re definitely a big part of the Venn diagram. I used to work with a woman whose husband was a prepper/white supremacist; he was legally blind and about five foot two, while she was scared of anyone who spoke above a murmur, but hell if they didn’t believe they were the master race and the caretakers of future civilization. (I would sooner take my chances with the walkers/zombies/Cormac McCarthy characters than live in whatever world those two had charge of.) But they felt powerless in this world and wanted to imagine a situation in which they were respected, and so The Coming Pockyclips was their religion.
one thing that has stuck in my head from my online dating times was the question on OkCupid: “On some level, wouldn’t a nuclear apocalypse be kind of exciting?”
I can’t imagine anything more boring than wake up, check radiation levels, eat breakfast of canned tomatoes for the 374th day in a row, don’t talk to anyone all day, see if I’ve managed to grow any food, eat lunch of canned beans for the 374th day in a row, reread one of five books in my possession, sleep, repeat.
Years later I’m apparently still thinking about this question and why someone would choose “yes,” like, assuming they put some thought into it and weren’t on there drunk late at night like “ok dumb question, post-apocalyptic books/TV are fun, yes.” Maybe I should join OKC again just to have this conversation.
I said yes to that question, when years ago was OKC-ing. I was responding to the idea of watching the mushroom clouds, the fire and destruction.
Your view moves past fire and destruction to the new mundane life. If the question were phrased like you put it, I bet fewer people would say yes.
true, it’s a vaguely worded question! and “exciting” is technically neutral, not necessarily exciting in a FUN way. having grown up with TV and later internet I know there’s some weird lil thrill among the sadness of watching awful things happen.
I think it’s a test of whether “exciting” is the primary adjective you’d endorse for a nuclear apocalypse, rather than “horrifying,” say. Like you, I’d be averse to anyone who actually agreed with that, but you never actually know what’s going through anyone’s head when they answer questions like that.
The thing that gets me every single time about the apocalypse fantasists is that they never think they will be the ones to die or turn into zombies or whatever. I have no illusions. If the big earthquake comes, I will probably die in a BART tunnel, or fall into the Bay because 30% of the east bay is bay fill. If the zombie apocalypse comes, I will sicken and die and become a zombie because, between school and work and public transit, I come into contact with the public 98% of my day. If it’s nuclear war, I will probably get killed since nowhere I spend time, including home, is very safe from either radiation or a large impact. Just saying. No illusions here.
But it is also really creepy to want everyone else to die so you can have some quiet and hang out with your dog in the wilderness or whatever.
I live in Portland OR and both my apartment building and where I work are close enough to the river that a Really Big One would mean major liquefaction issues. On top of that–I may end up moving to the coast, and there it’s tsunamis. I’m not likely to make it, one way or the other.
And even if you do get an “exciting” apocalyse – roving bands of survivors killing each other for supplies! The constant threat of radiation sickness! – it sounds horrible. I have no desire to make a detailed plan for How I Will Cope After the Apocalypse; I would almost certainly just kill myself as painlessly as possible. (I am scarred for life by reading When the Wind Blows – a drawn-out death in the aftermath of a nuclear attack would be very bleak.)
Whoever wrote that question was certainly not a child in the 70s or early 80s, when the possibility of nuclear apocalypse was a little closer to reality than it might be today.
This is why I almost never answer questions on OKC! Because I end up qualifying my answers so far that they become meaningless, and I can see why someone else would choose a different answer so I tick all the boxes for answers that I’d accept, and then OKC tells me they’ve marked it as “irrelevant” 🙁 It’s a complete mystery to me how I get any match percentages at all.
I’m sure that there is a large group of people who fit that mold, but there are certainly those who long for simplification may just want that: politics and corporations out of the picture and a chance to actually engage with their daily life (growing their own food, making their own clothing, etc.). I’m really neither, but the idea of prepping has been very interesting to me over the years but I would hardly say that I want civilization to fall or to punish people who “done me wrong”!
I live in Utah, where food storage is considered pretty important, in case of emergency (natural or financial). Guns are also popular here, and sometimes you run into someone that says “I don’t need food storage, I’ve got guns,” with a creepy smile on their (usually his) face. I’m immediately afraid of them. Like, would they shoot someone for canned goods? Or are they planning on hunting raccoons?
Jim Croce is everything that was great about the seventies in one wonderful person. I could listen to Operator 50 times a day and still not be sick of it.
So if you could save time in a bottle, there’s one thing that you’d like to do?
I would save every day till eternity passes away, just to spend them with you.
But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you wanna do once you find them.
This was my parents wedding song, and still is their sappy love song, so I love it.
Jim Croce is the American equivalent to Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. Yes or no…LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
(For the record, love both dudes)
A resounding Yes.
A landlady of mine so loved Gordon Lightfoot that she named her huge cow cat Gordo. I don’t remember whether the kitty’s meow was baritone, but any reminder of Lightfoot’s greatness was welcome in 1987, when he was all but forgotten here in the States.
Jim Croce is so comforting; listening to him makes me feel like everything is easy and it’s all going to be OK.
“I Got a Name” and “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” are special to me.
Me too – they invariably remind me of my dad.
I can’t even get through that zombie article because I’m too busy appreciating the shade against The Walking Dead, tbh. Well, appreciating, laughing, briefly becoming a bit sad, then laughing again.
The Walking Dead’s version of the apocalypse LITERALLY MAKES NO SENSE. Like, I cannot BELIEVE they couldn’t quarantine that before it became a problem.
The puppy does indeed have ears! I would like to scritch them.
Carmella is in lanky-adolescent phase! Such a good girl.
My friend got a new puppy and it is a baby puller dog:
Learning to puppy is p hard so she takes a lot of naps.
Puppy!!! That earnest puppy smiley face!
I am not even much of a puppy person tbh and this one has got me in the feels.
PUPPY!!! Oh my gosh I love it. Being a puppy IS hard, you DO have to take lots of puppy naps!
!!!!!!
Puppies, man. I have to politely feign interest in other people’s babies, but get a puppy and I will happily spend hours listening to you talk about it in detail. (I love my own kid just fine, despite not being a baby person.)
HELLO LITTLE FRIEND! what blue peepers you have. <3
I made this face 😀 at my desk right now.
CUTE OVERLOAD!!!! Oh my, this is wonderful.
Operator vs. Bad Leroy Brown. GO.
Bad Leroy Brown b/c that karaoke scene in Sneakers
Baddest man in the whole damned town.
Badder than old King Kong, meaner than a junkyard dog.
Well, I never had to learn a line dance to “Operator” for middle school gym class, so I’m gonna go with that.
(Also “Operator” is one of the great Jim Croce songs for singing along with driving alone in your car at night, pretending you have a lot of tragic lovelorn feelings to express.)
(Although maybe “Lover’s Cross” is even better for that?)
What do you mean, pretending?
Bad Leroy Brown because we had to learn it in Grade Six guitar class (Mr.Boss, you young, draft-dodging American and beautifully bearded idealist, who drove a Pony Pacer and loved it despite the endless ridicule from students and staff: you were the best, even when you lost it in Guitar because the rowdy boys were deliberating singing like assholes and you stopped the class and lectured everybody how good we got it in a world of injustices, blah, blah).
Whoa, what was the question again?
There were a bunch of dudes who got into teaching in the late sixties and early seventies to stay out of the draft. I moved around a bit when I was a kid, so I don’t remember the names of a lot of my teachers, but I wish I did so I could look them up and ask them if that was it.
“Don’t Mess Around With Jim” (doo doo doo do-doo do doobee doobee do). Always and forever, with “Roller Derby Queen” a close second.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/a…
I wish I was as intelligent and articulate as this woman! This article expresses so many feelings I’ve had about feminism recently! Women need to stop playing by mens rules and calling it ’empowerment’.
I get so frustrated when people talk about how women need to act more like men For Equality and stop the conversation there. Have they noticed what the world looks when it’s run by people following Western masculine values? How will more people acting like that solve anything?
I know right! If I see one more article telling women to act like me in order to get ‘equality’ I’m going to scream.
The boys rules are stupid, WE NEED TO CHANGE THE RULES. When people (usually men.) start bitching about how women want ‘equality’ but they only want the high paying corporate jobs, not the shit jobs like being in the army/being a police officer etc, and that’s why there’s more men in those organisations (ie its the women’s fault really.) I just want to scream MAYBE THOSE PLACES ARE FULL OF MACHO BULLSHIT THAT WOMEN DON’T WANT TO BE PART OF. (I apolgise to police officers/soldiers, those were just the easiest examples I could think of)
The older I get the more I think its not about getting ‘more women in the work place’, its about recognizing (and paying for) the work women already do. Women who aren’t ‘working’ in the traditional sense are usually not sitting at home watching tv, they are mothers or carers, or they are doing community work and charity work. These are all highly valuable things we need for society to run, PAY FOR THEM.
Awhile ago in Ireland there was talk about making child care tax deductible or providing benefits to families to pay for child care (and I think nursery is free for a year or something), basically it was all about how the government can help women get back to work sooner so they don’t ‘just stop working’. But I thought why do women have to go straight back to work? Universal child benefit is already a thing in Ireland, but why not give families income so that one parent can stay at home with the children if they want to? Why do both parents HAVE to be working? more often than not the womans salary is only paying for childcare so she can go to work anyway!
Its a very left wing idea, but I don’t see why parents/carers who want to stay at home shouldn’t be paid for it! It would make a lot of people much happier, and I’d say a lot of women would take more time out from work and then go back when they wanted to and be happier about it, rather than being forced to go back because they need the money or are afraid they’ll loose their job. And fathers would feel able to take time to care for their children because they aren’t loosing (as much) income. And it would free up a lot of jobs for people who want to have them.
(Sorry, totally rambling. I’ve probably said something super offensive in there, but I really feel that care work/emotional labour should be paid and recognized, especially in a left wing socialist society. Seriously, fuck capitalism, I am not defined by my economic output.)
Yes yes yes. Why is our society dismissing the work of *raising kids,* arguably the most important job we have as a species? This is a tangent into my own personal passion, but one thing I’ve noticed in fantasy fiction/superhero films is that the biggest push for representation in fantasy is people going “But women can be warriors! Include women in these warrior-centric stories! Make sure you have your woman who kicks ass and takes names alongside all the men who kick ass and take names!” And yes, that’s true, we should have women warriors in fantasy. But you so rarely hear fantasy fans and critics go, “Why are all these fantasy stories about fighting and war in the first place?”
(Also, re: women in the shit jobs, I saw a great tumblr post busting those arguments–for example, women in the construction industry were a huge force behind getting better safety regulations to protect construction workers. I can’t find it while at work, but that information is out there somewhere.)
YES. Why is being a mother/parent seen as ‘not a real job’!
One of the comments in that article (i think) was saying that job-shares/part time executive roles would be stupid, and women insist on being treated differently, for example his boss will leave work at a moments notice for petty children things like plays/sports/doctors appointments.
…..
Seriously dude? WOMEN ARE LITERALLY CONTINUING THE HUMAN RACE. how is that ‘petty’? I really hate the modern idea that having a children/family is important, but work is more important. You have put your flesh and blood into a little person, of course that’s going to be the most important thing in the world to you!
‘Yes women, have babies! then immediately give the baby off to a paid stranger and get back to work! And don’t let that baby change your life in anyway. Having babies is so important!’
I don’t know where my life is going to take me, but one of the things I am very sure of right now is that if/when I have children, I want it to be my choice how/when to do it, and I want to be able to take the time to be a full time mother for as long as I/my children need me to.
I know everyone’s situation and choices are different, but it really breaks my heart that women are forced to be away from their children when they don’t want to be because of money and children are being raised by strangers who are being paid to be there when they have a whole family of people (one person can be a family), including their parents, who would gladly care for them if they were financially able to.
All these politicians talk about being ‘for families’ and ‘supporting families’ and then refuse to support families staying together. Put your money where your mouth is and provide an income for family members to care for children!
I agree with all your comments and wish I could like them more.
I agree with that we should value the work done in the home more. Please remember though that the income that would allow you to stay home with your children would come, in part, from the income I and others earn by not doing so. And we are still “full time mothers” while we are working for pay, and we’re not leaving our children with “strangers”, paid or otherwise. We’re simply doing one piece of the essential work of parenting, and that is providing food, clothing and shelter for our children. And also, doing what we can as community members to help financially support those who can’t do it themselves. There is other essential work of parenting and being a community member that is not currently paid or sufficiently valued; however we needn’t disparage either–we can support both.
“Please remember though that the income that would allow you to stay home with your children would come, in part, from the income I and others earn by not doing so. ”
I really have to disagree with this. Someone staying home is not taking money out of your pocket. Raising the next generation is a necessary, unavoidable cost of business, and it’s high time we stopped letting business externalize this cost.
As an example, suppose you’re a business buying some desks. Everyone down the line gets a cut for their contribution in the creation of that desk, from the woodlot owner to the factory people to the retailers to the marketers to the delivery people. Nobody is expected to work for free. The same isn’t true when we look at workers. Business expects to hire people who are functioning adults. Many people get paid for their contribution to this person’s development, educators and childcare workers, for example. But not the parent who raised the kid from infancy. All that labour – nada. So what’s actually happening is that the business you work for has been taking the income that should have gone to these people, and distributing it amongst everyone else. To go back to the desk example, it would be like having a setup where everyone gets paid except the woodlot owners, then when they start agitating for compensation, the retailers saying, “You do know that money’s coming from me, right?”
This zero sum game approach, where fair treatment is viewed by the person who has more as a loss, that something has been taken from them, is not dissimilar to the complaints from men about feminism, ie, affirmative action is taking away their jobs or their spot in college. In a sense it’s true, something is being taken away, they are losing something they used to have, but it utterly ignores the tilted playing field.
I guess what I’m arguing for is a discussion that steps outside the framework provided to us by the neoliberal capitalists, which has at its foundation an unquestioning acceptance that women will supply caring work for free.
Your comment made me think of a Lois McMaster Bujold novel — Ethan of Athos — where the main character, an obstetrician from a world where there are no women and so men do all the work caring for babies, wonders how any planet can afford to raise a military force when so much of the economy is focused on raising children to adulthood. The female soldier he’s talking to responds, “in most worlds it’s women’s work and thus unpaid.” He’s flabbergasted. And it’s just such an awesome way to look at the world, and to imagine what the world could be — if raising children wasn’t considered basically under the table but an active investment.
Well I just added Ethan of Athos to the top of my next to be read book list.
I find good in parts, but also really annoying. So we can imagine a world with space travel, but not a world without homophobia. Marvellous.
But I think it was originally written in the eighties, and the author genuinely couldn’t imagine her “normal” society (which the male-only society is contrasted with) without normalised male homophobia.
Oh yeah, that was great.
The Stone is the best part of the Times.
She is articulate, but a lot of it rings hollow for me.
Her answer about rape culture bothers me so much. I can’t really pinpoint why.
Her not considering that pay equity criss-crosses with race (only Asian-USican women make more vs. a white man’s dollar than white women do), physical and mental ability, sexual orientation and gender identity (it is still legal in roughly half the country to fire or refuse to hire anyone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity) is very concerning, as is the fact that some women cannot escape an abusive relationship, especially not straight away (see the Twitter hashtag #whyistayed).
It would have been a much more interesting and challenging interview, to me, if the conversation were between her and another woman/other women, especially young feminist women of colour. Especially ones who have been pointing out a lot of this stuff for a while now.
Hamlet-goers – what did we all think? I really enjoyed it, especially as the ghost was in Hot Fuzz, and I’d been listening to the audiobook of Rivers of London on the way to the cinema, narrated by Laertes.
The only thing I found a bit jarring sometimes was Cabbagepatch’s occasional physical comedy moments and little comic asides, it seemed to be a momentary flip into a totally different acting style? Just me?
I LOVED IT OMG
I know exactly what you mean about the little blips, but it read to me as Hamlet’s descent into a level of madness. (Speaking of, Ophelia, holy shit!) He was starting to lose track of appropriate reactions to things, so these occasional little bits would come out of him.
OH, that makes sense! I was just reading it as ‘suddenly he’s acting like he’s on TV and not on stage, oh no, we’re back’.
And yes, Ophelia, cripes!
She was just amazing. Spectacular performance, and the little details… oh man, it gives me the chills. The small bald spot on the side of her head.
I found the sets very effective, but a little distracting. There was so much going on.
But it was awesome.
The sets were really, really spectacular, but I see what you mean, yes.
The apocalypse is a fantasy reboot of Civilization, going back to an imaginary past where the biggest and strongest made the rules. There are people now actively trying to make this happen, because it hits the RESET button on everything they dislike about modern life: Women having equal rights, the damn govt telling them what to do, teaching their children things they don’t approve of.
They LOOK FORWARD to the End Times. They are READY NOW
I sometimes fantasize about the apocalypse because then, you know, I won’t have to work in a cubicle. But then I realize there’ll be no more diet Coke.
Same but for coffee.
Also, kudos to Emily St. John Mandel for realizing that gasoline goes stale in a few months?? Haha all these tough guys running around empty landscapes in pickups.
Same goes for The Dog Stars, that is a great piece of post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn’t gloss over the how-is-everything-working or the godawful tediousness of survivalist life. This whole thread is making me want to re-read it (but that doesn’t seem fair to Station Eleven which has been languishing on my to-read list for far too long).
Same but for unmedicalized childbirth. And coffee.
Also, truly: Parable of the Sower/Talents really cured me of any sort of romantic post-apocalyptic daydreams.
There was one review of Mad Max (specifically about the backlash) that had a line that gave me pause: “Maybe in the apocalypse, women won’t turn to men for protection. Maybe men will be the thing they need protection from.”
I had to sit and stare at the wall for a few minutes after that.
Have the MEN thought about how if every woman is armed and dangerous in their post apocalyptic dystopia that they would need protection from US?
Clearly, no.
gonna make a killing selling tickets to laborrelax in my postapocalytpic roleplay getaway camp, a giant day-labor plantation with barn-barracks and guards on horseback and this on repeat on loudspeakers set up on, IDK, skull poles or whatever
Most of all, they can shoot all the people of color and whatever because they’re zombies now, right? And every man for himself, etc?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/perfect-simon-a…
For anyone who’s a bit weary of the world today (I know I am); this is literally making my cheeks hurt with laughter. I miss Simon Amstell so much. Tonight I am going to re-watch the episode when he cut his hair, and then maybe the bunny episode.
Oh man, I go through periods of forgetting about Simon Amstell and then being delighted when I remember he exists in this world. Did you ever see the sit-com he wrote/starred in?
He is a snarky bitchy joy and a gift to the world.
Grandmothers house? YEAH AND I LOVED IT. I don’t remember much of it, but I remember the bit where he bought his mum a car and her new boyfriend shit all over it (heartbroken doesn’t even begin to cover how i felt.)
Thank you for this! I love him!
Those are awesome. Do you like QI, too?
Don’t be stupid, everything I know I learned from QI. I usually watch it to go to sleep, and have done so for about 5 years, so I’ve seen every episode ever multiple times.
I was already an encyclopedia of obscure facts, QI has only made it worse.
(THERE IS NEW QI TONIGHT AND I AM SO EXCITED.)
The sound of Stephen Fry’s voice is soothing…
I feel like it makes me smarter while I sleep. (I’m not even kidding, the QI intro will knock me out in 5 minutes flat.)
I quote things from the Amy Winehouse episode all the time. “Is that all your hair?” “Yeah, it’s mine, I bought it.”
Did you watch Grandmother’s House? It’s a delight! I also saw him live once and he’s the tiniest man alive. A slight breeze could blow him away.
Thats only my favorite thing that’s ever happened. My friends and I used to wear a lot of hair extensions (Don’t ask.) and our hair idol was Amy Winehouse.
I saw him live when he recorded his DVD in Dublin. He’s very pointy IRL. I saw him walking down Oxford Street awhile ago too, but I was only bus so I couldn’t say anything. I think he was funny on a panel show interacting with people, but his stand up spoke to me somewhere deep down. (He talked a lot about social anxiety and then did a bit about how he was a 30yo dating an 18yo, and I was an 18yo dating a 30yo. Plus it was a joy to hear him talk about being in bed with a man and all the hard Dublin Lads in the crowd cringing loudly.)
Ahahaha, yes, “pointy” is definitely the best description of him! His stand-up walks the perfect line of hilarious and heartbreaking. I will never get tired of his bit about meeting Jared Leto:
That’s the only thing I can think of whenever I see/here about Jared Leto.
You look like Jared Leto.
I am Jared Leto.
I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR THIS.
(I too want a Jared Leto. And am still curious to know who the ‘young Jared Leto’ actor he met was.)
I always thought it was Ben Winshaw, but Google tells me it might have been Toby Regbo. THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW
Wishaw/Amstell.
I ship it.
Oh, thank you ever so much. NMTB and Simon Amstell was my favorite distraction my first year of graduate school. My roommate could hear me laughing throughout the apartment.
gosh, I need to rewatch the donny episode. I think that’s the one I’ve seen most but I never get tired of it.
I wish I was kidding, but I once copied Donny Tourett’s hair.
“That’ll show Thatcher!”
I got into the show during the Amstell era, but Lamarr might actually be my favorite host? Genuine music nerdery really tips the scales for me.
Elliott Smith’s death is one of those rabbit holes I have very consciously refused to let myself go down too far. I love his music. I think that, on the surface, both the “he committed suicide” explanation and the ” the he committed suicide explanation sounds pretty fishy” explanation are preeetty rational sounding, honestly.
Anyway, BBL, charging my decade old ipod so that I can more easily listen to XO at work.
Ha, I do that too! I haven’t had iTunes for years (because it’s a horrific thing), but I do still have an old iPod classic that holds its battery for about 2 albums worth of time, filled with the music I used to love 10-6 years ago. Including XO, Figure 8, From a Basement on the Hill, New Moon and some unsorted songs.
I bought the iPod Mini the day after they announced it was being discontinued because I had finally decided that that was the one I wanted, and, dammit, they weren’t going to make me have to re-do all that research.
I have replaced the battery myself at least twice, so once it’s charged it’ll play for a while, but even if fully charged it’ll be dead a couple days later, so I just leave an old charging cable at work for when I don’t want my phone in my field of vision but want to listen to my music. i LOVE the damn thing so much I ought to just buy a few more battery replacement kits, as well as whatever i need to switch it to solid state because I’m frankly shocked the drive still works, and I love this thing.
I am never giving up my iPod Classic, at least until it physically stops working. The most expensive iPod Touch costs $400 and still doesn’t have as much storage as the 160 gig iPod Classic did, and it has a bunch of crap on it that I don’t need on my iPod because that stuff is already on my phone! Or I could shell out hella bucks to get extra storage on the iPhone (which is still far less space than the iPod Classic) but even then having a bunch of music on your phone cuts into your app/photo space. I really wish they would go back to a big-capacity iPod that is just for music and is not an iPhone-lite.
And there’s no other easy solution! I hate being tethered to iTunes, but I haven’t been able to find an easy-to-use alternative that will hold all my music, and I don’t want to listen from the cloud because data and also because I want my music to keep playing when I’m somewhere with bad reception.
I have some friends who are still rolling with a Zune, but of course it’s completely obsolete and unsupported now! The one thing the Zune had that I always wished the iPod had as well, was a simple AM/FM radio.
Yeahhhh I feel the same way. Elliott Smith was/is one of my favorite artists ever. I saw Good Will Hunting when I was like 13 and bought the soundtrack. I used to turn it down when he sang “situations get fucked up” because I thought my parents would care for some reason? But my middle school soundtrack was basically pop music on the radio, Hanson, and Elliott Smith.
YES THE GOOD WILL HUNTING SOUNDTRACK YES.
My CD of that soundtrack finally started skipping, and I caved and bought it on iTunes. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SOUNDTRACKS OF ALL TIME.
I had the misfortune of having just been getting really into Elliott Smith when he died, and also of being 17 at the time so I couldn’t help but follow the hubbub surrounding his death religiously. I even read the damn autopsy report. Being in his online fan community in the year or so after his death was pretty intense, with people falling firmly on both the suicide and murder sides. I can see points from both but the idea of him having been murdered and the murderer getting away with it is more upsetting to me than the idea that he killed himself which it seems like is the opposite of what the author of that article feels.
i completely agree – unsolved murder does not make me feel any better. I never got so far as the autopsy report, but this is one of those things in life that I just don’t know.
(Also a little curious as to what he finds to be the two prevailingly happy songs)
I actually love hearing about and talking about dreams but I know most people don’t so SORRY but I had a dream about a zombie invasion last night! It turned out that my boyfriend, a guy who looked remarkably like Topher Grace, was behind the infestation. Thank goodness I escaped the first wave with my best friend who was secretly in love with me, a guy who … looked remarkably like Topher Grace. We ran and ran and slowly I fell in love with Topher Grace #2. Alas, we were finally caught, and Topher Grace #1 asked me to join him and rule over his army of zombies at his side, or die like the others. A hush fell over the zombie army as they waited on my answer. I considered my options… and walked to Topher Grace #1’s side. Topher Grace #2’s heart broke before my eyes. But it was a ruse! I was going to infiltrate his ranks! There could only be one Topher Grace, and I would destroy the evil one and stop the zombie army from the inside.
I woke up mad for two reasons: I wanted to see the end of the story, and how freakin’ bad is my imagination that I had to re-use the same guy I don’t even find attractive to play my two love interests??
I am always here for dreams because I have crazy, complexly plotted ones too! This goes to multiple interests of mine because I just started watching iZombie on Netflix this week, and I am guessing based on this dream that you are familiar, but if not, please get on it!
[Also strongly recommend iZombie to Toasties who are not partial to zombies but may be partial to Veronica Mars!]
I will be shouting explanations for my overuse of exclamation points in the OT later on!
I absolutely love hearing about people’s bizarre dreams, and that was a great one. Thanks for sharing!
Elliott Smith
oh man
nothing to say but I’m off to listen to Waltz 2 on repeat
Pregnant lady threadjacks to vent because she can’t drink (i apologize if this becomes habitual in the coming months):
Uuuugh I just officially told people at work I’m pregnant and you guys, I don’t know what’s worse – people asking you if you’re pregnant when you’re not, or people saying when you tell them you are, “Oh I could tell!” For the record, I’m 13 weeks and all I’m “showing” is the same belly fat left over from my last two that was there three months ago. I’ve gained three lbs. Guess I should just strap in for six more months of trying not to punch people. I know it shouldn’t bother me so much, but trying to have a positive body image on my own is hard enough without this bullshit.
Can’t we all just agree to not give unsolicited fucking comments on other peoples’ bodies? Why is this so hard?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE!!
Yes! No unsolicited comments on other people’s bodies, period! Spouse had pneumonia once and lost 20 lbs, and people kept asking him if he’d lost weight and telling him how great he looked. Like, I think he’d rather not have had the pneumonia, tyvm…
Maybe they mean “I could tell because you are GLOWING!” which is also annoying.
Still better than “I could tell because I’m totally judging your waistline!” though.
(BTW, I <3<3<3 your user name so much. Trois Couleurs pour toujours.)
Hey, went to edit but it wouldn’t let me:
I think that in venting my own insecurities this comment may have come off as fat-shaming. This wasn’t intended, and I apologize. What I’d really like to discuss is why people feel entitled to comment on other peoples’ bodies – and also why it hurts when they do – i.e. how we (I) can work to get over our (my) internalized societal body-shame.
People should know it is very bad manners to make any weight comments AT ALL. I lost 25 pounds due to the effects of my MS medication, and when my neighbor asked my weight loss secret only the manners my mother had drilled into my head prevented me from saying “The Incurable Disease Diet’, you nitwit”
When someone commented on how my grandma had lost so much weight, wow! I said yeah, the cancer diet. (they knew she had terminal cancer, how dare they!)
They didn’t talk to me for the rest of the afternoon but I regret nothing.
HERO
Yeah how is it that if someone asks me if I’m pregnant and I say “no, just fat”, I’m the rude one??
I’m pregnant AND fat. They don’t know what to say to me. 😀
My cousin is just pregnant enough to show a little, but not pregnant enough to change into the maternity Air Force uniform. She has taken to telling people who ask that no, she is not pregnant, because she likes to watch their faces. Some people have no manners.
Just for the record, deitybox has gained no weight and does NOT look pregnant.
Also just for the record, I think she should tell people that she’s not pregnant right up until we bring the little fishstick home from the hospital.
Well hello there wonderful supportive spouse! Guys this is really him – no one else would know that our toddler named the fetus Fishstick.
Awww! You found one of the few Good Ones. Your manperson shall be spared in the coming misandrist revolution.
A TSA agent congratulated me and asked if it was a boy or girl after I opted out of the scanner. I was like “I’m not pregnant.” He said “I didn’t say you were. Sorry. Ma’am just stand there until an agent is available.” And I was very very angry and it was very very awkward. Since I am foreign, I did not complain, as I fear the TSA’s wroth.
My husband is firmly in the camp of “Unless you see the baby currently emerging from the lady’s body, do not ask if she’s pregnant, but stand up as though you’re getting off at the next bus stop if you see her on public transit just in case” camp. It’s a good camp. I like his camp.
This is my answer all the time now! (And I get asked all the time too. Our just assumed, I.e. “congratulations, when are you due?) (It’s a way better response than I used to have, which was just crying.)
My ex (who lives with depression and occasional suicidality) has had people compliment on her weight loss and ask how she did it, to which she has sometimes replied, I got depressed and wanted to die.
I’m a firm believer in the shock people into never asking these fucking questions again camp.
Speaking as the child of my (wonderfully strong and fantastically amazing) mother: this kind of shit can be incredibly damaging. When my parents split up, I was 10. Subsequently, my mom fell into a deep depression, started smoking again, and lived on popcorn, chips and salsa, coffee, and Jim Beam/Diet Coke until I was 16. She went from a very healthy and normal weight to catastrophically underweight and every single time she’d come to a school event, someone’s mother or a teacher or a friend would compliment her on how great she looked. I was a normal, slightly chubby but certainly healthy kid until that started, and it led to some pretty unhealthy body image and food relationship things that I’m dealing with still, at age 34.
There’s exactly one comment allowed on other people’s bodies. It goes like this, “You look great,” and absolutely nothing else: no specifics, no clarification. Spread the word
I would also allow “Are you bleeding?”
Had a coworker tell me this morning that she’s pregnant (also 13 weeks like you – congrats!). I said congratulations, asked how she was feeling, told her that I would happily take shared work out of her hands, and added that she could come to me if she ever wanted to talk about pregnancy/parenting (I have a preschooler). I will never talk to her about it again unless she brings it up first or to inquire broadly after her well-being.
THAT IS IT. THAT IS ALL YOU HAVE TO DO. THE END.
I’m trying to find a GIF of Tig Notaro from her doc where she talks about a shop assistant telling her she has a great body/lost weight or something and she responds with ‘Thanks, I have cancer.’
A few years ago I was super stressed and waitressing, and I had lost a bit of weight; a friend of my boss came in and said ‘OMG you have lost SO much weight’ I was like ‘Thanks, I don’t eat anymore.’
Her response was ‘Oh thats not good’. I’m like no shit lady, how about you talk to your lunatic friend and tell her to stop making me so stressed.
TL:DR don’t comment on peoples bodies.
deitybox, I support any approach you choose. I’m sorry your coworkers are so rude. I’d offer to loan you my evil-eye look, but I suspect you have one of your own that is at least as effective.
I like to daydream what would happen if a pregnant person could, without repercussions, respond to all inappropriate workplace comments like this:
“I’m not pregnant. Stop talking about my body.” (Until returning from maternity leave. “Yes, I have a new baby. Stop talking about my personal life.”
-or-
“I don’t talk about my body at work. Stop talking about my body.”
N_O_P_E! This is my least favorite thing in the universe. I had something happen like this after I’d given birth and it was like “So because I had a child, you have the right to comment on my looks?” What if I hadn’t had a kid??? How is anyone else’s body any of your business???? I got so fired up about it that I started a blog. I am so sorry. People are morons. Keep on keeping on, pregnant sister!
Ahhhh this is why I’m 20 weeks and haven’t told coworkers (except my boss) and try to just wear large tunics all the time so I can luxuriate in the privacy as long as I can. I met my boyfriend’s dad for the first time about a month ago (wasn’t actually showing, just had some extra weight in the stomach) and after we shared the news he said he had suspected, because I looked like I maybe had been eating too many brownies….WHAT.
Someone I know is pregnant and she’s down to talk about it, but people are still so inappropriate. “Oh! How far along are you! You look just about ready to pop!” UGH WTF does that even MEAN
I’m 14 weeks! And I totally caught a coworker who had a baby earlier this year checking out my belly yesterday. Nobody watches other women’s midsections like women who gave birth in the last year, holy cow. She’s tactful enough (& has been through this recently enough) not to say anything till I volunteer the info but I’ve been a woman in a mostly-male field for a decade+ now, so I’ve gotten really good at noticing when someone is ogling below my neck.
Strap in for 6 more months of restraining your violent impulses. Just wait till they start trying to touch you, is all I have to say.
Anyone want to talk about their fears, hopes, dreams for Monday’s Canadian election? I’m terrified that Harper’s going to win again by the left vote splitting.
I’m just keeping my hopes pinned to the unpredictable nature of the Canadian voter: among my friends and family, there’s lifelong conservatives who are voting NDP, card-carrying dippers who are voting for Trudeau, and people who’ve never bothered to vote before registering and getting out.
I legitimately have no idea what to expect, and it’s exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time?!? I have a goddamn WEDDING that night so I’ll just be glued to my phone.
I love my local Green candidate so I’m pretty sure I’m throwing my vote their way (I’m in a Conservative-heavy area, but there are rumblings that that could be shaken up).
Oh, that poor couple! Imagine planning a wedding and having Harper mess up the date with an election!
I’m in a riding that’s almost certain to be Orange, so I feel a little like my vote doesn’t matter. I might just be vote Liberal because of Justin’s pretty face, and fulfill the Conservatives worst nightmares.
Hopes and dreams? That the under 40 crowd actually gets out and votes.
This, right here (although the over 50 crowd are conversely crotchety).
I feel pretty confident about the Liberal minority. The NDP had this race and lost it through a bunch of really stupid decisions. I was a card-carrier before, but fuck it, I mean business about “anyone but Harper.” And if they did, too, they’d have conceded in a bunch of ridings and asked everyone to vote Liberal. They didn’t, because politics is dirty bznss through and through. We need electoral reform, first thing.
I’m feeling pretty hopeful. There’s been a lot of effort to get the message out to populations that don’t normally vote and to help them overcome barriers. I went to an advanced poll on Thanksgiving Monday right at noon when it opened and there was a line up. Of course, I’m stressing hard about it. I really, really don’t want the left to split. And yet. And yet. I may have contributed to the split. The NDP candidate in my riding has handily won every election since 1997. Yet he’s the walking-talking embodiment of white male privilege and has said some incredibly offensive things in the media. And the Liberal candidate is new to federal politics and is amazing and idealistic. And I voted for him.
I’m feeling hopeful, with such a high turnout for advance polling. It wasn’t the Conservatives who needed to get out the vote. A few months ago I would have been outraged at the thought of a Liberal government (even a minority), but at this point, all I want is to see Harper out.
I don’t know what to think. I’m just glad I don’t have cable anymore so I can’t have the tv on after work obsessively watching numbers in ridings.
I’ve actually signed up to work at my poll on election day, and I’m worried I will get yelled at and be unable to take bathroom breaks! I am also worried that the Green candidate will split the vote in my riding, AND I’ve heard rumbles she is anti-abortion although I can’t seem to confirm.
I have citizenship but haven’t lived in Canada since I was a toddler, and am ROOTING SO HARD FOR ALL OF YOU UP THERE. The Harperization of Canada has just been heartbreaking to witness from this side of the border.
Dammit, the left vote splitting, now my stomach’s churning…always voted Green, even in the face of “why waste a vote, stoopid” but this year, perhaps it’s better to go NDP.
The media needs to stop calling this kind of thing an apology:
“I believe deeply that there need to be more diverse filmmakers making movies. I want every young person watching Project Greenlight to believe that filmmaking is a viable form of creative expression for them too. My comments were part of a much broader conversation about diversity in Hollywood and the fundamental nature of ‘Project Greenlight’ which did not make the show. I am sorry that they offended some people, but, at the very least, I am happy that they started a conversation about diversity in Hollywood.”
It’s not apologizing for what he did. I haven’t seen the show, so I can’t say definitively that I think he has something to apologize for–though it seems likely–I just know that this is not an apology, it’s PR as usual and it’s really frustrating that this kind of thing is described in reporting as an apology.
TBH this is why I have not made an effort to see The Martian yet. I don’t usually let stuff like this influence my enjoyment of a film, but god damn.
This is one step above “I’m sorry you’re an idiot.”
Yeah, that wording is skirting awfully close to “I’m sorry you were offended” rather than “I am sorry that I offended you.”
Ugh, Dick Masterson. He’s one of those uber-misogynist “personalities” or performance artists or whatever. I think he’s supposed to be funny or something.
Fun Fact: Die Hard in German is titled ‘Stirb langsam’ which translates more as ‘Die Slowly’
In French it’s “Piège de cristal”, which means Crystal Cage. Since that made no sense for the sequel, those were renamed 58 minutes pour vivre (58 Minutes to Live) , “Une journée en enfer” (A Day in Hell) and… “Die Hard 4: Retour en enfer” (Return to Hell) and “Die Hard 5: Belle journée pour mourir” (Beautiful Day to Die). I especially love how the mix capitalization conventions in those two last ones.
I find it fascinating how things get translated across languages! I like how by the 4th and 5th Die Hard the French just were like, ‘I guess we can include the English ¯\_(ツ)_/¯’
Hamilton question of the day: How is Satisfied staged? How do they show the “rewind” to the first meeting? What exactly is Ham doing while Angelica is explaining her thoughts? Are they frozen or like pantomiming in the background or what? I love the song but I just can’t envision what it looks like, and since I’m not going to make it to NYC anytime soon and the video won’t be made or released for a long time, I’d love to hear a firsthand account from Toasties who have seen it. I will never be satisfied until I can visualize this!
Helpless and Satisfied and their chronology mystified me on the first two listens, until someone explained the rewinding thing. I’d love to know how it was staged, too.
In addition to this, I am also curious how the audio “rewind” works live. It doesn’t seem likely that the performers are making noises backwards, so is there a standard track that gets played each performance, or is that bit recorded live for each performance and then “rewound” live?
There are some recorded/vocoder bits in various songs (“Wait For It” had some), not just in “Satisfied”. I don’t know if it’s all pre-recorded (precorded?) or not, I guess if they pre-record it, which is my guess, they also need to do one for every understudy/standby too.
I’m not the best at describing things like this but I can give it a try. Basically, during the “rewind” portion of the song, there’s a surreal few moments where it wasn’t immediately clear what was going on, with the lights swirling and people kind of spinning in a wide circle around Angelica, until they arrived in their places and the lights came back up to normal and everyone was back where they had been during the party, and the scene started again from Angelica’s perspective. All the parts where “Helpless” and “Satisfied” overlap are staged exactly the same both times (“Where are you taking me,” “I’m about to change your life,” etc.). In between those, the chorus is backing her up on the parts where you hear them (e.g. “three fundamental truths at the exact same time”) and I think otherwise they either stay still or keep acting like they’re at the party–I’m not totally sure, as my attention was completely fixed on Angelica the whole time. Hamilton and Eliza are off to the side, downstage, and Angelica’s mostly at center stage when she sings her verses, so you’re not really looking at all of them at the same time.
The sound during the “rewind” portion seemed to be recorded and coming from offstage, which was part of what was so surreal about that moment.
This is a good summary, it’s what I saw at the Public. Angelica and Hamilton are talking during Helpless, too. I can’t tell if Angelica is doing something different in the “My sister!” exchange when it’s revisited in Satisfied, or if our greater knowledge of her emotions makes me think it’s different.
That’s a great description! Thank you so much for sharing the details — I’d been wondering too.
I keep seeing “Lamar Odom” in the news and thinking it’s “Leslie Odom” and that something happened to Burr. My full sympathies to the Lamar Odoms, but I’m really glad Burr’s okay.
You had me at Jim Croce.
I’m physically restraining myself from the world’s biggest UM ACTUALLY about the Fallout New Vegas inaccuracies in that zombie article hnnnnnggggg
“Lone Wanderer”
(this is one of my favorite games, I had to close the tab for a second when they mentioned the Enclave, heh)
My strongest reaction to the article is, “District 9 is not even remotely a post-apocalyptic film – did you even watch the movie??”
absolutely nobody who has something to say about District 9 on the Internet has seen that goddamn movie
it’s not about apartheid either, geniuses
I did see the movie and I thought it included strong allusions to apartheid at the least, so I’m curious what you think it was actually “about.”
That shantytown Blonkamp puts in all his movies is a real, unaltered, modern suburb of JoBurg, not a CGI model or a recreation of what it was like in the 80s. The story of South Africa mistreating alien refugees is, fairly straightforwardly, a story of actual South African mistreatment of alien refugees. It resembles apartheid inasmuch as all racialized caste systems resemble apartheid.
Ah, I see – thank you for explaining. I thought there was an element of how refugees are mistreated, but I wasn’t sure whether my awareness of the newest refugee crisis was affecting my recollection of the film.
Just randomly jumping in here – I recently bought Fallout New Vegas in vague curiosity about the Fallout universe before (inevitably) playing Fallout 4. You sound like someone who has thoughts on the game, so…how much should I be trying to get through it before the new one happens? Do I want to play it at all? I love RPGs and dislike zombies but can probably get past that, or at least try.
I think it’s a great game, but it’s set on the opposite coast from Fallout 4 so plot tie-ins will likely be minimal. I’m just speculating; I’m keeping myself away from potential spoilers for the new game so I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think you need to rush to the finish to make sure you get all the references or anything. In fact, New Vegas was developed by an entirely different studio (Obsidian, not Bethesda). Take it at your own pace!
Also, it contains 0 zombies. Just… if someone tells you to watch out for Deathclaws, *listen to them*
They have most of a game engine and a general retrofuturistic apocalypse setting in common and that’s about it. It’s probably not worth playing Fallout 3 right before FO4 comes out (it’s probably not worth playing Fallout 3 at all). There’s minimal zombies in New Vegas, IIRC mostly restricted to one area/subplot
I loathe post-nuclear holocaust apocalypse settings with a passion, and even *I* thought Fallout New Vegas was awesome. Fun, snarky, thoughtful, and great NPC interaction. For the record, I have never played any other Fallout game and have little interest in doing so.
Related to many Toasties interests, it would appear:
Amen.
From your lips to God’s ears, Hank Hill.
Always a thumbs up for KOTH (last two seasons, though? Luann and Bucky, ugh).
Same.
“There is a Jim Croce video in the links” was the best news I’ve had all week.
It depresses me to think of all the amazing music we missed out on because Jim Croce died so young. Same with Otis Redding, Stan Rogers, Buddy Holly.
And Amy Winehouse. What a loss.
Her too. I see now that my list is all men who died in plane crashes (well, Stan Rogers suffocated in an onboard fire while the plan was grounded, horrible!). But yes, all those artists who died too young, whether through transportation accidents, drug overdoses, illnesses (mental or physical) etc. Amy Winehouse would have likely gone on to very interesting projects.
STAAAAAN.
Freddy Mercury. Can you imagine what the original Queen would be recording now? I can’t either. But it would be amazing.
“These kinds of fictions are no doubt vastly less appealing to anyone who has ever had to actually live through a real natural or ecological disaster, military incursion, displacement or act of terrorism. They are thrilling only if your life has never been threatened in actuality. When that isn’t the case, they provide a pleasurable venting of anxieties in a pretend confrontation with our own demise.”
Congratulations, you have unveiled the terrible secret of all fiction?
I mean this is probably accurate but if “pretend confrontation with our own demise” is to be lamented then there goes the entire Western canon, you know?
I’ve been trying to remember for weeks to post in the open thread and ask for the Toastie who was studying apocalypse fiction. I swear there was someone who posted about that once, but I keep forgetting.
I read the zombie piece but I still have questions, because I know literally nothing about interpreting literature! Why is EVERY movie suddenly about a huge, civilisation-crushing disaster or a terrible dystopia? What does it mean? When did it start?? Is this about 9/11? Or has it been going on for longer than that? Is it really climate change? I didn’t think people took climate change seriously enough. Of course everybody was scared about peak oil in the 70’s, because it actually had a day-to-day impact, but climate change seems unreal even to many people who realise it’s happening. And why are there so many fantasy stories about violent revolution? Violent revolution by small groups of teenage guerrillas?? Can kids no longer have adventures in the real world? Why are the imaginary worlds political dystopias?
It’s not just the fantasy of every man for himself in a world without consequences (and I still don’t get why that fantasy is happening NOW, but, whatever, feminism and comfort killed manliness or whatever those guys usually say). There are so many other tropes. What are the zombie hordes about? Is this a first world fear that other people may need “our” wealth and resources? Also, why is everyone so into the Hunger Games franchise when it’s completely obvious that the West is the Capital? Or are my interpretations completely wrong??
help i need a liberal arts major
There is a Liberal Arts major somewhere in Williamsburg who’s spidey sense is tingling.
They look up from their minimum wage job as a barista in a fair trade organic coffee/bike shop and think ‘Finally.’
*I apologize to Liberal Arts majors. I was a business major, I was indoctrinated to laugh at you and your lack of economic worth.*
It’s ok. We understand.
tbf I love doing this to my humanities friends. I’ll even play a little more helpless than I actually am just to see the glint in their eyes when they straighten their backs and finally get to say “well ACTUALLY…”
they always explain so graciously too! it’s like they studied stories or something
I think the thing about dystopian fiction is that it’s a framework that is weighty/compelling by virtue of its sheer extremity (everyone dies! civilization collapses!), but is also versatile enough to support whatever concept you’re interested in exploring, whether that’s terrorism, corporate greed, climate change, revolution, mass ennui/cynicism, government surveillance…you get the idea.
Zombies are similarly versatile. Want to tell a story about how we’ve become mindless shuffling consumer hordes with no initiative of our own? Also zombies. Want to talk about our inefficiency in combating viral pandemics? Zombies. Different segments of society cannibalizing each other? Boom. Zombies.
I have a simple theory: apocalypse scenarios have such great appeal because it is easier to imagine the death of humanity as a whole than it is to imagine that we, as individuals, die and the world continues on without us.
We are all Pharoah and we carry the world into our tomb.
I think, for a lot of people anyway, the Capital isn’t the West as a whole, it’s the 1%.
So, the thing is that this kind of story typically goes in cycles. Apocalyptic fiction is usually popular in conditions of comparative affluence, and I think more often expresses less an anxiety that the world will be destroyed, and more of a displaced need to define oneself through the struggle that affluence has alleviated (for reference, it’s important to remember that the driving factors of popular media are not necessarily the opinions or lifestyles of the public at large, but of the segment of the population most readily able to buy movie tickets).
(A good point of reference for this is this great review by George Orwell of Mein Kampf http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/george-orwell-…
The need for struggle and angst becomes profound the more thoroughly the system we live in successfully solves our problems for us; it’s also coupled with the legitimate fear that everything might be taken away — or, maybe more accurately, a feeling among the creators of this body of work that the public is insufficiently scared that it will be taken away. (In other words, I don’t write a zombie apocalypse movie because I am afraid of what civilization will be like when it collapses, I write it because I don’t think you are afraid enough).
Zombies themselves are really a plot device and their sudden popularity is interesting. Obviously, this isn’t the first upswing on the zombie pendulum since George Romero basically invented the Zombie Apocalypse, but they do seem pervasive now in a way that wasn’t common before. I think there’s a couple reasons for this, and it’s to do with a lot of drivers that aren’t necessarily visible. For one thing, zombies were a common and easy-to-reproduce and explain tool in the survival adventure games of the late 90s. For another, they’re implicitly apolitical in a way that apocalypse by military misadventure or climate change aren’t, which makes them both more appealing across political lines among audiences and (maybe more importantly) more appealing to studios who think that the best kind of story to tell is one that doesn’t have an agenda.
The thing about teenagers is also interesting; I got an idea about why dystopian worlds are so popular among teens. A thing that I think we tend to forget as grownups is that while we live in a nominally-free society, teens don’t — they don’t get to vote, they don’t get to decide who their bosses are, they have little to no control over the shape of their lives at all. A teenager’s life is completely circumscribed by both explicit and implicit rules and expectations, often nonsensical, and almost always that they had nothing to do with.
Teens, in other words, already live in an Orwellian dystopia that they are automatically set into constant rebellion with; for them, apocalyptic scenarios probably look like the only way out. Certainly, imagining the destruction of society at large, and imagining the basic freedom to solve all problems with violence, is easier and more straightforward than more complex adult solutions, which I think is what is behind a lot of these “teens blow up the Capital” stories.
I think you’re definitely onto something with teen life these days = dystopia already, and from that, the rise of dystopian YA does seem to track with the increase in the circumscription of young people’s lives. I can’t imagine what it’s like to go to a school where you have to go through a metal detector to get to class and there are cops on campus, where your parents are looking over your shoulder every minute, where every minute is scheduled–I was probably around the beginning of the end of free-range childhood and I think part of the reason I haven’t had kids is I couldn’t raise people into the way kids live today.
But I also think, especially in movies/tv and commercial fiction, there’s so much emphasis on “how do we top the last blockbuster” that you can’t go anywhere but bigger and bigger explosions, whether literal or metaphorical. One of the things I loved about Buffy the Vampire Slayer was its ability to take apocalypses light-heartedly–what, it’s the end of the world AGAIN?!–but ever since the Welcome to Sunnydale sign fell into the pit, it just seems like you’re not allowed to take things ironically anymore. It’s exhausting.
The idea of affluence -> apocalypse is interesting but I kinda wonder how that maps to, say, all the flying-car utopianism of the 50s and 70s, or the cyberpunk and space fiction of the 80s and 90s. While there were apocalyptic stories then, they were a tiny subset of science fiction, whereas now ruins and totalitarianism are the monotone depiction of anything set in the future unless someone’s going an ironic haha-people-really-believed-this sendup of previous eras, and I don’t get the impression it’s because we’re that much more bored and satiated now than ever before.
I don’t think it’s because moviegoing Americans feel all that much closer to apocalypse than ever before, either – now, when our analogue to Nazi invasion or nuclear extermination is some hillbillies with AA guns on trucks getting blown up on the far side of the world, and the biggest pending threat just means, to most First Worlders, shitty weather in their lifetimes. But I do get the feeling that the sheer monotony of it might point to something, a real narrowing of the horizons in mainstream thinking and the ability to conceive of anything different from what is or has been, especially anything better. Easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, and all.
It’s true that the apocalyptic fiction was a small subset during the 50’s and the 80’s, but there was also a big uptick in that kind of story during those periods, too — I think their relative proximity to periods of disorder probably ameliorated the tendency towards the apocalyptic in fiction; where the 80s and the 50s were affluence following hardship, the 2000s and the 2010s are sort of affluence following mostly more affluence.
But, like I said, I think that there are also a lot of subtle economic drivers that shape the landscape; I don’t think that there’s actually a reciprocal arrangement between what people want and what movies get made, such that studios are often partially responsible for shaping the public’s tastes.
The biggest economic crash since the Great Depression is affluence following more affluence?
I don’t know, man, I don’t think the last couple years have been exactly concomitant with the 1930s. Or even the 1970s, when they had that oil embargo and &c. I think a lot of the people who drive popular culture were maybe insulated from the worst effects of the Recession.
(sorry everybody, Real Life happened right after I posted my comment! didn’t mean to disappear)
I agree that the “powerful teenager” trope is about adolescents’ loss of freedom during the last few decades (a favourite ranting topic of mine). However, what I don’t get is why 1) all the stories are about a specific type of armed revolution and 2) the stories set in this world use magic (Harry Potter) while the stories where they only survive because of their guts and wits are set in made-up worlds (Divergent, Hunger Games, etc). I can think of ONE book series set in the real world where the teens use realistic resources, and that’s James Marsden’s “Tomorrow When the War Began” – and they don’t rebel against their society, they fight a foreign invader.
Imagine a story where a group of helicopter-parented friends band together to stand up to their paranoid parents and their oppressive schools, or where teenagers growing up in a really strict religious community or abusive families help each other run away and learn how to function in mainstream society. I’ve read stories about these problems, but they’re always about individuals, not friend groups, and the problem is always solved either by the main character leaving (moving out, graduating, being accepted to a school far away), or by friendly adults who fix everything, or by the villain realising that the main character is right and they really are being too mean. (When I became a Troubled Teen, I actually found way better support and advice in fantasy stories than in realistic books…)
I must say, “Ben Affleck was the cat who had my back” is not a sentence I ever expected to read. I guess he’s a dick in his personal life but cool to his work partners while Matt Damon has a good private life but a shitty approach to the workplace?
Toasties I am really NOT OKAY about Lamar Odom. His life has been so sad and if ONE MORE headline describes him simply as a Kardashian I will lose it
I thought this was great about the differences in intent between apocalyptic fantasy for adults versus apocalyptic fantasy for children. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/06/14/fres…
In short, apocalyptic fantasy for adults is a cautionary tale. Apocalyptic fantasy for children is a metaphor for high school.
Certainly I see the appeal of the escape from certain modern burdens in post-apocalyptic fiction, but since my apocalypse survival plan is “find someone bigger and stronger than I am and trade sexual favors for protection”, I’m not that eager for it. Not to mention that I am currently listening to Valley of the Horses as my bedtime book and there is a LOT of work involved in living off the land.
The record turnout for advance voting has me really hopeful already that the same will hold on Monday.
I was reasonably confident about voting NDP in my riding without risking vote splitting but the Liberal candidate has made some gains…planning to stick to Orange though and just bite my nails all day.
You and the Blue Jays fans!
I just need you to know, that your friend Carrie’s new puppy looks so much like my old puppy, Perdy, that when I see her it both makes me sad that Perdy is gone but also makes me smile because I imagine that’s how Perdy might have looked like when she was little. She, too, had ears:
I’m afraid this will be buried, but the full Effie Brown interview excerpted in Nicole’s link is great and covers a lot that I haven’t seen mentioned on other sites> http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/th…
Whoever wrote that question was certainly not a child in the 70s or early 80s, when the possibility of nuclear apocalypse was a little closer to reality than it might be today.
Me too – they invariably remind me of my dad.
Still better than "I could tell because I'm totally judging your waistline!" though.
(BTW, I <3<3<3 your user name so much. Trois Couleurs pour toujours.)