I love perusing the once-yearly Black List of Hollywood’s best unproduced scripts, and there are a few in there right now that made me go WHAT and maybe YES?
And some where I’m just…nah:
If you had to have a totem animal, which one would you choose?
It would be a bald eagle telling me that I don’t have a totem animal because I’m not Native American.
Excellent deep dive on what was so fucked up at American Apparel:
Charney was also said to walk around the office in his underwear, part of the hypersexualized atmosphere he allegedly subjected his coworkers to, whether they liked it or not. Every Wednesday morning, he had a worldwide global conference call where every store dialed in and listened to him dictate how employees should dress and groom — another cult hallmark. (AA’s brand image guidelines discouraged eyebrow plucking, wearing concealer, having more than one earring per ear, and even blowdrying your hair.) And Charney didn’t tolerate criticism. When an ABC reporter asked him about the sexual-harassment lawsuits, he began yelling that it was an unfair line of questioning and almost stormed out. “A lot of people are like wounded children because they put up with this tyrant so long,” an employee told me.
The Spring Valley High School incident is appalling.
How Sexism In The Church Nearly Ruined My Life:
In the last week of July, a week before his ileostomy was set to be reversed, Dan Helland, pastor of the church, and his wife, Sue Helland, director of the school, called him into his office and told him that they would not be renewing his contract. Among his offenses were “differences in beliefs,” things I had been posting to Twitter and Facebook (including articles written for Gawker), and a short video of Daniel drinking a beer while grilling burgers on the Fourth of July—the first he’d had all summer, since he’d been unable to eat or drink real food for nearly two weeks, receiving most of his nutrients through a PICC line.
During this conversation, the Hellands accused me of “throwing them under the bus” by posting controversial things: writing that I think it’s okay for Christians to drink, and that not all Christians are conservative. Daniel said to them, “I signed the contract, not her.” They responded, “Well, you’re supposed to be the head of the household.”
One of my favourite parts of working with the redesign team were the BRILLIANT women spearheading our design stuff, and you can learn more here (this is Libby on the series illustrations she made for us):
My favorite, hands down, is the nesting dolls [used for all community series: Open Thread, Toast Points, and Link Roundup]. I love the colors, the energy, and the idea of it. When I was concepting all of the series, I kept putting that one off, until all of the other ideas were locked down. I had no clue what I should do for that one! I had to stare at the wall for an hour and just start doodling to get to where I went with it. I think it started as a line motif—a sort of abstract design—and then I started seeing the shape of the doll, and then the idea sparked. I loved having this chance to design my own set of modern nesting dolls, all with their own unique personalities and styles. In fact, I really want to start making dolls like this! I love the goth-y girl with her sturdy, fish-net stocking’d legs.
Dedicated Toasties know that I have always been obsessed with HIV denialists and their place in history (and Maggiore and Celia Farber in particular), so this Gizmodo piece was right up my alley:
And in much the same way that Jenny McCarthy became the face of anti-vaccine activists, Christine Maggiore was the most prominent spokesperson for HIV deniers. (And in fact, Maggiore was also famous for not vaccinating her children.) An HIV-positive woman who had been a successful businesswoman and promoted alternative medicine, Maggiore was an appealing presence, and she played well in the media, said Tara C. Smith, a professor of Public Health at Kent State who blogs about HIV at ScienceBlogs.
One of Maggiore’s biggest defenders, the journalist Celia Farber, wrote a 2006 cover story for Harper’s Magazine, in which she more or less accused drug companies of inventing AIDS in order to sell lethal drugs.
“Maggiore appeared in various media outlets after she refused to take medications while pregnant and breast-feeding her children,” said Smith. “She was in the media again when her daughter, Eliza Jane, died of AIDS.” (Law and Order: SVU did an episode loosely based on this case.) And then Maggiore herself died in 2008 of AIDS-related pneumonia.
Back in 1982, the New York Times‘ Nan Robertson got toxic shock syndrome (not tampon-related) and nearly died, and then lived, and wrote this SCARY and GROSS and INSPIRING tale about it, which ran at the time, but is new to me! This is before the main villain in the TSS story (those freaky ultra-absorbent Rely tampons) was taken off the market, so there’s still a lot of floaty paranoia about tampons in general here, which didn’t turn out to be a real issue for basically anyone, but it doesn’t detract from the LUUUURID NARRATIVE at all (I also loved the details about how kind cabbies were to her and her gangrene-y half-hands and how her colleagues banded around her):
I went dancing the night before in a black velvet Paris gown, on one of those evenings that was the glamour of New York epitomized. I was blissfully asleep at 3 A.M.
Twenty-four hours later, I lay dying, my fingers and legs darkening with gangrene. I was in shock, had no pulse and my blood pressure was lethally low. The doctors in the Rockford, Ill., emergency room where I had been taken did not know what was wrong with me. They thought at first that I might have consumed some poison that had formed in my food. My sister and brother-in-law, whom I had been visiting, could see them through the open emergency-room door: ”They were scurrying around and telephoning, calling for help, because they knew they had something they couldn’t handle, that they weren’t familiar with,” was the instinctive reaction of my brother-in-law, Warren Paetz.
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I love the brief period after the clocks have gone back in the UK and before they have in the US. I get the Link Roundup at 1 instead of 2! Amazing.
For me it’s 2 instead of 3, but it is still amazing (after the brief moment of panic in which I go “wait, what, is it 3 pm already?!”)
I forgot about that! I came a bit after 3 as I usually do and saw so much activity, but that does explain everything.
The only good thing about the clocks going back is that the link roundup now comes at 1pm! no more waiting to have lunch at 2! (for now at least.)
(I only just figured this out.)
Ahem. Hamiltoasts: I am putting this picture in the reply because you need to prepare yourself for it. It depicts… LMM and Groffsauce. Click through when you’re ready.
#grofflin #i’ll be in my bunk
This makes up my very first Tumblr post (I’m howdoyouwritenonnnstop). I’m so proud. I feel like it sets a tone.
Picture originates here:
@Lin_Manuel
Let’s Start A Rumor, Day 2: Just Add Groffsauce! #LookingSeason3
9:33 AM – 12 Mar 2015 <a href=”https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/status/576028331998605312?s=09″ target=”_blank”>https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/status/576028331998605312?s=09
Do you think if I stare at that long enough they’ll actually kiss??
I certainly hope so, and will give it my best effort.
‘Tis a noble effort.
This, and Friend Carrie’s puppy picture, is truly the best way to start off the morning! Thank you for sharing!
Is there something I’m missing about things like this, the Avengers gag reel fake-off kissing, and so forth? To me it’s just “hah, hah, isn’t the idea of two guys kissing really funny??!!” — but I see people I would expect to object to such things being approving, so what is the angle I’m missing?
(I think LMM approving of Laurens/Hamilton fanart is different, because that doesn’t feel like a fakeout, though I could also certainly have stood to see a little clearer nod at the historical possibility in the show.)
Maybe the fact that Jonathan Groff is gay?
But unless LMM is going to come out as bi/pan + poly, it’s still pretend.
Yeah, I think that’s part of it.
I just find hot dudes kissing (or almost kissing) hot. I am a simple creature.
To me, and I think to other Toasties getting into it, enjoying this picture is not about two guys kissing being funny. There’s not an ounce of homophobia in them doing it. What I see in it is them showing comfort, friendship, self-awareness, and joy in a playful performance that’s simultaneously sexy, innocent, and subversive.
I also love that LMM tweeted it when there are still so many people out there who would find it “gross” and probably to take it out of context and use it to smear him somehow (not you! I mean the ignorant and homophobic).
Like, SO MUCH JOY.
Needed to get that out.
Thank you, that makes sense. Also, I didn’t expect _you_ thought it was funny, I expected that the presumed audience did.
(This is part of my ongoing thing, some days I’m grateful for half a loaf and some days I’m angry about it, and apparently this is a day more on the latter side of things.)
Ahhh, I get it!
I also found it sexy and invigorating, like when we have straight people in gay If So-and-So Were Your GF installments.
Like the Ham4Ham we posted yesterday, where the humor is the JOYOUSNESS of the kings doing the sisters’ part and the sexiness of Renee being Burr.
RENEE AS BURR
/melted
HELPLESS
You saw the BET Cipher, right? Everything about her verse is amazing, but watch while Black Thought raps and she shows that little sliver between jeans & shirt…
to me in this situation it feels less like “LOL this is funny isn’t it!!!” and more like “some people on the internet are going to like this a lot, haha”. Like, the queer male/female gaze is being acknowledged rather than an unintentional side effect of a joke.
that said I could be reading into this too much. 😛
this actually just made my day wow. and it’s only 10am. you’ll be back, indeed
I, uh. Hi.
That picture was so sexy I had to avert my eyes. My eyes couldn’t handle it…but of course I will go back and look at it some more anyway.
LMM’s eyelashes are just hypnotic to me. I’m half envious, half awestruck.
Definitely be in my bunk. For about a week.
There is a Vine floating around somewhere (perhaps from LMM’s own account??) of LMM giving Groffles a big, knock him over kiss from the internet.
FOUND IT: https://vine.co/v/O30KxbauMtL
Bless you and all your line.
Litcherally the best thing that will happen to me today, brb watching on repeat forever
God fucking bless you.
Btw, this is pretty difficult for me to do, but IF any Hamiltoasts want to check out my Tumblr, you might like it! http://www.howdoyouwritenonnnstop.tumblr.com … I stick to my favorite #hamiltunes fan jokes, a generous dollop of fangirling, and analysis of the show (which perfectly aligns with my wheelhouse, ugh, ALL the feels, ALL the textual analysis!). I don’t fill it up with all the gifs and news you can find so many other places. I’m looking forward sharing the joy with more other fans without bombing my posts with @’s. Okay, am I talking too much?… I’ve never had a group of Tumblr friends before. I promise that I’ll make you all entertained!
Anyway, thanks, back to your regularly scheduled Toast.
Followed! Textual analysis of musicals is MY JAM.
Whoo! I will keep it coming. I don’t know musicals (you could help contextualize!) but I do know writing about writing, and we can all agree Hamilton is a RICH SOURCE. (Imagine all the postgrads who will have a chance to go to town on this. It is truly a gift that keeps on giving.) And I gotta get other people’s thoughts on this.
Followed!
🙂 🙂 🙂
A cracker (/biscuit as they call it in the UK), that SURVIVED THE TITANTIC, got sold for almost $23k at auction. I have so many questions but the biggest one is how the frick frack is that biscuit not moldy/rotten/crumbled into pieces after all this time???
Was it in like….a tin that formed a seal or something? That’s the only think I can think of and obviously I’m too lazy to read all the articles about it.
I don’t know! The original biscuit was just in an envelope the survivor stuck it in after he took said biscuit off a life boat. But it doesn’t say how it’s been stored since. Idk why but it amazes me, lol. A BISCUIT.
Does not speak well of the likelihood of its ingredients being organic/edible.
Ship’s biscuits are known to be hardy and spoil-proof…
THIS IS INCREDIBLE AND AWESOME AND SO SWEET AND WEIRD. Thank you for my new favorite piece of trivia!!
It’s pilot bread, aka hardtack, which used to be a significant (if almost entire) portion of the rations given out to sailors and soldiers. It’s still eaten in Alaska and Hawai’i and parts of Canada, and has also been adopted by survivalists/preppers. (I got curious about it once and ordered some through Amazon, and it’s basically just a big, dry, somewhat stale cracker.)
so um….
If it wasnt for a scholarship to Catholic school, I would have gone to Spring Valley.
I could WALK there from my house. The girlfriend (who would also have gone there if not for homeschool) and I were shocked and appalled but sadly weren’t too surprised. I have friends at Spring Valley who love it but…it’s not the best environment for everyone.
On the happier side of things, I hosted a high school senior last night! We went to go see our Fall show in rehearsals which was absolute awesomeness. I really hope she goes here, she got along really well with my friends.
Ugh I need to take a shower and thank the lord Im not staying at home for thanksgiving.
Cops in schools are a bad idea, unless, of course, you want to shorten the distance between school and prison for the students. Most cops are blunt instruments – they don’t do subtle.
Having police in schools seems like both a terrible idea and a waste of their time.
As someone who works with teens and has worked in high schools, everything about this incident is making me see red. Cops in schools are terrible.
I’m having a lot of feelings about cops/guns in schools today. My high school has security guards. Who aren’t cops. When I was there the security guards were kids right out of high school from neighboring districts, most of them have dated or were dating current upperclassmen. I really didn’t understand how fucked up that was until Spring Valley. I hope that’s changed now that the security guards are armed.
Also the school district I live in now is stuck in litigation over whether they have to allow people to open carry. In schools. Who the fuck needs to open carry in schools??
I really don’t understand, why are there cops in schools? Is this a standard thing? are cops just posted in schools now? Since when are teenagers criminals?
I thought the cop was called in especially, I didn’t realize he was posted in the school.
The only time there were police in any of the schools I went to was when they would come in and do talks about safety and show us their radios. (we were about 5.)
I think they started it after Columbine, at least where I was from. I went to a very small high school in New England and I think there was one cop who split his time between the junior high and high schools. He spent most of his time playing Magic the Gathering with a group of kids.
As far as I remember, they’ve slowly become more popular since the Columbine shootings. They’re not usually actual cops, but security guards. It depends on the school but most of them (at least in the past) are unarmed. At my high school they used to break up fights and patrol the school to catch people coming in late, or guard the doors… I think? To be honest I didn’t notice them much, I guess part of that was that I was a goody-two-shoes music dork but in retrospect I’m sure there was some white privilege involved in the fact that I never needed to notice them.
Since I graduated, that school also started mandating students wear IDs at all times, installed cameras, and I think added metal detectors, if I remember correctly. (Despite the fact that there was never a shooting there that I remember, although there were a LOT of fights and plenty of issues with students selling drugs.)
My HS had one local deputy/liaison who hung out at the back of the office and could be called upon if necessary by the security guards who we (the students) actually saw. (These included a tiny Scottish man who drove a mini-cooper [and supposedly the ‘nothing to prove’ thing was entirely true] and several motherly women who called the students ‘mijo’ and ‘mija.’ I invited them all to my graduation party.)
I only knew about the deputy because my dad was the assistant principal (we also have identical handwriting, so I made some money in high school selling forged hall passes I stole out of his desk drawer) and I’m pretty sure she was actually from Vice — I lived a 30-minute drive from the methampetamine capital of the U.S. and went to school with both the children of migrant workers and the children of millionaires. Since dealing is a lower-class crime and consumption is a middle-class crime, we had a huge campus drug culture.
I emphasize that we NEVER SAW the deputy, which I think is the very important part of this story.
Interesting, it never occurred to me that schools would have police on-site just in case they were needed.
I’m sure there have been incidents that required cops to be called at schools where I’m from, and its almost definitely happened at one of the schools I went to; but there were no security guards, just teachers and a few caretakers, we did have cameras though. Most of the stuff that went down at my schools was petty stuff like students stealing from other student, although there was a lot of drugs, but even the semi regular ‘locker inspections’ (aka drug busts.) were done by teachers.
Did that do anything weird with the teacher-student relationship? Pedagogically, I feel like a teacher would need to be able to make a snap decision about whether to report or say “Dude? Don’t do that, okay?” and it seems like that would blur the roles weirdly.
I came from a strange town, though! So I dunno. I find school administrivia kind of fascinating.
Maybe its a different culture thing, but teachers have always had a very authoritarian relationship with students where I’m from, they don’t have to ‘report’ much because they’re the ones who deal with it, and student discipline is largely left up to the school. We generally don’t call in the cops for anything, even incidents outside the school grounds would be reported to the school and students would be given detention (Most students wear uniforms, and the general rule is that anything you do while in uniform is school business and can get you detention.), unless maybe someone gets stabbed, but even assault etc would be dealt with by the school generally. Once there was a school assistants handbag stolen, and the principal was the one who dealt with it and questioned everyone. Even being found with drugs, it’d probably just be confiscated and maybe you’d get detention, the police generally don’t care about drug possession unless you’re dealing.
Culturally I think we just don’t have the same attitude to police, most of the stuff that teenagers would get up to is pretty petty (under age drinking, cutting school and bit of theft, minor drug experimentation) and I guess its generally seen as just kids being stupid. Even outside of school, if the cops are called, there’s special procedures and officers that deal with teenagers (Juvenile liaison officers, ASBO’s serve a similar purpose in the UK), and punishment generally extends to being brought home in a police car and your parents being told what you did. Its not until teens are involved in multiple incidents that it would go further than that. Sure someone might call the police on a gang of teenagers, but all the police would do is tell them to fuck off home (unless they are ‘known’ people, and then they might get searched).
Police are also not armed in Ireland (or the UK, or most of Europe afaik), I don’t know if maybe they’re trained differently, but they do act differently. I hear these stories of US police whipping out their guns and shooting and that just doesn’t happen here. I’m not saying our police are better at all, you still get the total dickheads, but they are less violent without reason. Even a cop body tackling someone without a fair reason would be pretty rare (Especially a child!).
(Sorry about the diatribe. I have many feelings about policing and I definitely think there’s a huge cultural difference between US and Europe, and I think a lot of it comes down to guns. In the US police treat everyone like they might have a lethal weapon, whereas here the most someone is likely to have is a knife)
No, please, diatribe away — I share your feelings there.
A thing I’ve noticed in this story and a lot of other coming out is that in the US teenagers (of course in particular teens of colour) are very much being treated like criminals, seriously, when did being young become a crime?
Also, stop relying on police to fix every social ill. Not everything can be fixed by shooting at it!
So I’m still thinking about this; and I’m trying to imagine a classroom situation that would necessitate a police officer being called in, and…. nothing.
Like oh this girl won’t stop texting in class, better get a cop in here to beat her up!
Ok, I get that US schools have heightened security because school shootings, but unless the kid just pulled out a gun (at which point I imagine running and screaming would be in order), why are you calling the police in to the classroom? Outside of the classroom, ok I can imagine there are situations that might get out of hand (fighting maybe, drug dealing possibly), but the girl was clearly present in class already, and sitting at a desk, so what was she doing that was so bad a cop was needed to remove her? Surely the teacher is capable of asking her to leave the room?
I really don’t understand the US over reliance on cops (badly trained cops at that) and armed security guards. Maybe train your teachers better? Or hire and train more special needs assistants (like for that autistic kid that was handcuffed ‘for his own safety’). And maybe this is where the cultural differences show up, police should be a last resort, armed police are for extreme circumstances only, and yet the US seems to rely on armed police as the first call for everything? (And it is changing in the UK, but that’s not surprising considering how close the US and UK are)
Gang violence, in our case — up to and including hazing, physical assault, racially motivated hate crimes. Which made it extra-important that teachers should NOT be the ones engaged with actual criminal activity; there needed to be semi-safe people to talk to who were not the dealers of discipline for actually criminal acts, and the teachers’ job (and duty) was not to discipline but to be those people.
The opposing holds true, of course: classroom management shouldn’t be a police matter. The teacher in the South Carolina incident, I think, has obviously MAJOR-failed in that duty. The idea of the police being called because a student wouldn’t leave the classroom is completely fucking ludicrous to me, too.
To actually answer the question, no I don’t think the teacher/student relationship was affected because teachers and students were generally on opposing sides anyway (at least in the schools I went to), and minor mis-beavhiour is generally over looked because no one can be bothered dealing with it. (To the point that students smoking weed in the bathrooms every Friday was just par for the course, although that particular school is known for the hideous amount of recreational drugs taken by the student body. I didn’t get a good education as you can imagine.)
I’ve been brought up to think of teachers more as authoritative partners than disciplinarians, so I expect that’s a huge part of the difference!
This feels like it might be a big cultural difference – disciplining pupils is definitely part of the teacher’s role in the UK, as well as teaching. (Also, when you say “report”, to whom? Generally teachers deal with most stuff themselves – I suppose if it was really serious it would be passed on to a more senior teacher, but giving someone a talking-to or putting them in detention doesn’t need to go through anyone else.)
I expect this might also be a matter of a criminal justice system that makes practically everything a criminal matter, but, speaking from experience:
When I say that a teacher’s responsibility does not include student discipline, I’m not talking about classroom management issues (talking and being disruptive, not doing homework, bothering your seatmate — all these fall under classroom management for me.) Those are absolutely the teacher’s job. (And you’re absolutely right that it’s problematic to disrupt that: calling security because one can’t control one’s class is both something I’ve personally known one or two cocky young (white male) teachers to do and something that will get your contract not renewed. In the discussed/video’d case, that got a student brutally assaulted.)
Where I think the problem arises is when teachers are expected to deal with A.) no disciplinary matters at all, see above or B.) criminal matters. Drug charges, for instance, shouldn’t be criminalized, but in a place where they are, teachers need to be able to say “It is not my role to discipline you for this; let’s talk about how you could get clean, maybe, rather than escalate this to administration and potential police report?” It’s also important that teachers’ authority be focused on classroom management and not out-of-class behavior because part of one’s job as a teacher is to be the first one likely to notice child abuse; students who have been forced into bad situations need the safety of knowing that the teacher is not in the role of disciplinarian for anything that happens at home unless it spills over into school behavior.
Further, especially in places where racially-motivated gang violence is a thing, teachers of color in high schools may be in danger of physical assault from (usually white) students with something to prove about how big of a man they are. Having the ability to escalate such a situation to a criminal matter is an important protection.
That said — again, I am aware of cases of literal assault of the teacher where the students were treated more gently and respectfully than the young woman in South Carolina who had the audacity to want to stay at her desk on a cold day, but her teacher felt zie had something to prove.
*stares up at wall of text* Apparently I have a lot of feelings about this.
My high school had police cars parked in the campus lots at all times. The (white, male) cops would patrol the campus in the mornings, at lunchtimes (juniors and seniors were allowed to leave campus during lunch, so they’d check IDs going in and out of anyone they suspected to be freshmen or sophomores, or anyone coming back late–in addition to the campus security also patrolling to do this), and after school.
A lot of students, myself included, looked down on this because the cops always managed to find reasons to be in the quad watching the color guard girls practice there after school. (I don’t believe for a second that it was for the color guard’s protection; they were the girls that no one ever fucked with, because they were always carrying massive flagpoles and wooden rifles around with them).
There was also definitely racial profiling going on with whose IDs they checked; I’m light/midtone-skinned Asian and only ever got my ID checked if I was leaving campus with friends more visibly brown than I was (darker Asians, Latin@s). In addition to all this, the cops sold weed to the students on the sly. One of my friends was a frequent customer.
Not a great educational environment!
Wow, that’s just all kinds of fucked up.
So they really just kept a deputy tucked in a room, hidden out of sight every day? That really does seem like an astonishing waste of resources, and…did he take up meditation? What did he do in that room every day? Unless he was just a well-manufactured MYTH, I dunno.
She, actually, and I believe she was in charge of keeping track of security calls and reporting any relevant statistics/incidents to the sheriff’s department in a police-report-like manner. She would also (and probably more importantly) question students caught in criminal activity that was outside the scope of school discipline, because it kept them in a safe not-the-police-department environment but allowed personnel with actual training to handle interrogation/kept the student near staff and allies who could answer questions when the parents were called in.
I’m also aware of one occasion where she did a “scared straight” visit to a juvenile offenders’ facility (edited to clarify: she took a student who said he wasn’t afraid of prison there and let him sit there for ten minutes), but no one was super happy about that, which is why I overheard something about it.
Despite my thieving ways, I hardly ever interacted with her, so this might have been less “official function” than “what I was actually aware of her doing.”
Oh, that’s interesting! Thanks for the explanation.
Oh, I forgot — she also accompanied school admin and social workers on child welfare calls.
It was pretty common to do those in partnership with the school — awkward situation once where my dad’s good friend (the AP) was told “Hey, the students from this family say hi to you sometimes, so will you come be the Comforting Presence at this home visit?” and he didn’t realize until they got to the house that they said hi to him sometimes because the oldest son in the family was dating me at the time. (I’m full of these stories.)
Our high school had a regular officer around all the time. He was friendly and got on well with the students in our case (and had our high school logo printed on his police car). It is a bit weird, thinking back on it now.
The history of cops in American schools would probably make for an interesting post/longread somewhere. There was at least one cop in my high school in Chicago in the late seventies/early eighties; he was plainclothes but not really undercover, and was probably there due to the threat of violence from desegregation busing (Chicago wasn’t as bad in that regard as Boston, but the city was and still is deeply divided along racial and ethnic lines). After that, it was probably the War on Drugs, and after that, school shootings.
DUDE a movie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not get made? Colour me SHOCKED. Also, perusing that list is a great way to see “Hey, movies are for men”because all these fucking stories are about men. Women are either moms, brides, neurotic, or objects of male attention. Or famous. Fuck Hollywood. None of those movies even sound good!
Also, apropos of nothing, my childhood pediatrician once told me I would get TSS from wearing a pad too long. Even at 13 I was like “wait, really?” And it wasn’t even like, three days. It was “a full school day,” so what, seven hours?
Don’t forget the one with the female serial killer!
(I would actually watch some of these movies (mostly the YA/kids’ movies). *hangs head in shame*)
I counted only 8 typically female names on the list of screenwriters. Out of more than 30.
The RBG movie is getting made with Natalie Portman!
Not only are they about men, but they’re about entitled jerkass men doing awful, destructive things to get their way. Like, maybe you just DON’T get to have the girl/job/whatever, dude. Get over it.
Also, anything that starts with the phrase “a dark re-imagining” should be immediately rejected.
“On the Basis of Sex?” I can’t decide if that’s a good title or intentionally misleading. It sounds like the name of the novel a stock-character sad-sack middle-aged white male English professor is trying to finish in between affairs with students.
RE: Your pediatrician. I just wrote like thirteen different replies to that, and I’m still just shaking my head, so I’ll go with this: *shakes head.*
Are you saying
“After an apocalyptic event, a mother wolf is separated from her
mate and the rest of the pack, and has to protect her cubs from
swarms of mutated humans.”
doesn’t sound amazing? cause I’d watch the hell out of that.
So I decided to do the math from the script descriptions to see who the main character is identified as. 44 have the main character identified as male, 14 as female, 8 unclear but most likely male, 1 unclear but most likely female, and 3 unknowns.
So yeah… kinda depressing but not surprising.
Wait, how has Moonfall not been made already? MURDER ON A MOON COLONY? I am assuming that moon Phrynne Fisher is there, along with moon JB Fletcher.
I would be in favor of all sorts of genre film/television just incidentally set on a moon colony. Cozy murder mystery on a moon colony! Georgette Heyer-inspired comedy of manners, set on a moon colony! Against-all-odds underdog sports story on a moon colony, completely with zero-G training montage!
And now I understand why I watched all of SyFy’s “Ascension,” even when it was not very good. I kept hoping it was “Mad Men in SPACE!”
Some friends and I were once talking about what the most “made for me” movie/tv series would be like for each of us. Mine would be a romantic comedy (heavy on the comedy) set in space.
Have you read anything by Lois McMaster Bujold? Her books “A Civil Campaign” and “Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance” are hilariously wonderful romantic comedies set in space/other planets. (The only downside is that they both come late in the series, so you probably want to read a few of the other books first. The series is the Vorkosigan Saga.)
I have not, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about her books lately! Do you have a suggested starting point for the Vorkosigan saga? I’ve found both chronological and publication order lists and I wasn’t sure if one was generally accepted as the best.
I went chronological order. I really liked Barrayar but was kind of meh on the next few books until Mirror Dance, and then I was hooked completely.
I think chronological order (so, start with “Shards of Honor” followed by “Barrayar”) but it took me a little while to get completely hooked too. If you aren’t spoiler-averse, you could skip to the middle of the series and read “Komarr” followed by “A Civil Campaign,” which Bujold has said is kind of a second entry point into the series, and then loop back around to the earlier books.
<3 Ivan. I read Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance last and was so glad I did because the whole series is such a slow burn on his character development that culminates in the awesomeness of that book.
I was going to come up with some informed response, but I’m just sitting at my desk thinking about all the great moments Ivan has in the book, and giggling. I <3 Ivan too. (And Tej! Tej was a delight.)
Yes! Everything is better, IN SPAAAAAAACE!
The Expanse (book series coming to Syfy in December) has an asteroid colony if that works for you.
Did you see High Moon? It was supposed to be the pilot for a Bryan Fuller show for Syfy, but they sadly cancelled it before it even aired. That one episode is on Amazon, though, and is AMAZING. There are colonies on the moon from a bunch of different countries, and there is an adorable gay Russian spy couple, and a robot T-Rex, and so many more fantastic things. The design was gorgeous, as is always the case from the man that made Pushing Daisies. I’m still pretty bitter that it never got a chance.
Holy butts I have recently started writing fiction for fun and several of my stories are ACTUALLY about Moon Phryne Fisher (I mean, she’s not literally Phryne, her name is Rosemary, but that’s the concept).
KEEP THE TOASTIES INFORMED because I would totally love that. you wonderful tropical fish, you.
Thanks, you fabulous dugong you! I don’t have it posted online anywhere but I could consider it (I’m nervous to share!)
If you feel like sharing, please post links!
Just popping in to say, Thank you, Toast, for being such a great website/community – everyone is working together to make the redesign going over as smoothly as possible, things are being adressed and actually getting fixed after a really short time, everyone’s getting along with each other and it’s just so nice to experience this! <3
On another note: I would watch so many of these movies. SO MANY. But what is going on with “I am Ryan Reynolds”?
“An inside look at the marriage, career, and mental state of 2010’s Sexiest Man Alive.”
WTF?
Also, “The Boston Strangler” makes me think of the “Disco Strangler” and now I can’t help but picture Captain Holt as the investigating cop.
I had two small complaints yesterday: the scores next to people’s names, and the fact that you couldn’t tell whether you had liked a comment already or not. Both have been fixed! I’ve never such a prompt response to feedback after a redesign before.
I also didn’t like the scores, and besides that I couldn’t tell how they were calculated. They seemed completely arbitrary. It doesn’t matter now, but I did spend a few minutes going wait, what does a score of 122 even mean???
According to IntenseDebate, “The reputation is an indicator of how good [user] is at commenting. Click to learn more.” The FAQ this redirects you to only says the points give the “comments more authority.” Yeah, right.
LOLing forever.
I don’t think any of us need any more authority. We rule anyway.
We might go mad with power!
She has the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant!
Maybe the Ryan Reynolds movie is our generation’s Being John Malkovich? That’s the only thing I can think of.
Yellowstone Falls
After an apocalyptic event, a mother wolf is separated from her
mate and the rest of the pack, and has to protect her cubs from
swarms of mutated humans.
Possibly the most effective movie teaser ever. Speaking for myself. GO MOTHER WOLF.
Redesign? Love it! Movies? Whatevs! But I am always here to pile on with a NINE NINE when there’s a reference in the comments. NINE NINE
I’m so glad someone noticed it at last 🙂
*fist bump* NOICE
Just loaded up The Toast on an Android phone. The redesign is brilliant. THANK YOU.
I would 100% watch a full length movie about 70s Ray Holt.
I heard about the Black List Table Reads podcast and thought it sounded interesting so I listened to the first episode and promptly peaced out. I’m sure if I listened to a different script maybe I would enjoy it, but the atrocity that is “Balls Out” just turned me off the whole thing. That plus there’s only so much Paul Scheer I can take and “How Did This Get Made?” is the max amount of Scheer I can stomach.
I bailed on that one due to how the ad copy was read. I don’t know why, but it somehow really annoyed me, and I’m usually pretty good at tuning those parts of podcasts out.
Yeah, Balls Out was a rough start. I enjoyed their third and fourth script reads- Terrible Parents and Mr. Malcolm’s List. The former is a comedy (sorry, there’s more Paul Scheer) about competitive parenting and the latter is adapted from a Regency romance and is narrated by Parminder Nagra and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Heh, I did the same thing. I then tried the second one, bailed out of boredom, and then realized that my contention that Hollywood “doesn’t make movies for me” extends to not even *writing scripts* for me.
Me too! That script was so, so bad. I was cringing through that whole first scene with the gay guy, and then when they got to the “hot coworker”, I was done. I still have it on my podcast list, and the guy did a fantastic interview with the guy who wrote Beasts of No Nation, but I think that was more due to him being interesting.
Zouks and Lapkus presence couldn’t even make me listen to that entire script. It was so so awful.
I was just skimming through the black list and NO:
WONKA
Jason Micallef
A dark, reimagining of the Willy Wonka story beginning in World
War II and culminating with his takeover of the chocolate factory.
First off, there shouldn’t be a comma between “dark” and “reimagining”. Second off, THERE SHOULDN’T BE A DARK REIMAGINING OF WILLY WONKA. Roald Dahl’s work already is dark, just not in an obvious way, and that’s what makes it great.
Trying to imagine Wonka as a marine, fighting in the Pacific theater.
There is no … world I know … to compare with foot-rot in the trenches.
#sorrynotsorry
I wondered if they were just going to crib from Dahl’s memoirs/adult work and have bizarre and “surreally” misogynistic sex scenes. Because someone who thinks Wonka needs to be “reimagined” as dark probably also has a lot of confusion on the whole author/protagonist issue.
LIke, what is the plot, even. Is Wonka a Schindler type, saving Oompa-Loompas from death? Is he a nazi? Sounds terrible no matter how it gets carved up. Grimdark is a trend I’d like to see end. Like hoppy beer.
“Takeover of the chocolate factory”….was it a WW2 munitions factory? Or….worse? “Congratulations, Charlie, the factory is yours! And you have to reckon with its dark history. But hey, free chocolate for life!”
Yeah, I thought that was super crap when I saw it. Wonka is already pretty dark, movie makers. Just let it be!
gritty chocolate?
“Project GOBSTOPPER was supposed to be a weapon of last resort. Head boffin was a chap named Wonka. Mad as a hatter, that one. At first the plan seemed sound. We knew the Boche liked their sweeties. We knew they were rationing. Wonka’s breakthrough was a harmless-looking little gob– no, it wasn’t poisoned, for heaven’s sake. If anything, it was worse. No, it was simply addictive– absolutely, catastrophically addictive. The subject would literally suck themselves to death. The perfect oral fixation. We tested it on rats, dogs, monkeys. They all died of dehydration within a few days. Who knows what would have happened, if the top brass hadn’t finally checked up on Wonka’s private research facility.
“He had– God, even after all these years, I can still– the nightmares– he had this troupe of circus people, midgets or something like, and he’d been running his own testing program. Human testing. He’d dressed them in little Nazi uniforms, and made them take his invention. Most of them were already dead, tiny stick-thin corpses, and the smell… We found Wonka crouched over one that he’d dressed up as Hitler, screaming into the little fellow’s unconscious face, shouting: ‘YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR! I SAID GOOD DAY!’
“Well, the Prime Minister shut the whole thing down the next day. I later heard that Wonka skipped the country just ahead of the Royal MP’s.”
!!!!!!!
Can’t even lie, I would watch the ever-loving SHIT out of that.
5 stars, Best Picture, Movie of the Year, Winner of the Sundance Film Festival
*proceeds to go teacher-from-A-Christmas-Story writing A+++ around the room*
It reminds me of Old Man Murray’s* review of American McGee’s Alice: The problem with making a dark and disturbing version of Alice in Wonderland is that it’s pretty dark and disturbing to begin with, which gives it little training wheels that help cultural firebrands ride it into geniusdom once every eighteen months or so. Masterminding a trippy reinterpretation of Lewis Carroll is like making a version of Crazy Traxi, only crazy! At this point, about the edgiest thing you could do with Alice in Wonderland is try to make it a little less fucking insane.
*Long-defunct gaming site whose proprietors went on to write most of Portal and its sequel.
I’m an Alice nerd and will collect all kinds of Alice-related nonsense (in all senses of the word) but you can totally tell when people are like, “OMG, this is dark as shit, LET’S MAKE IT OVERT AND EVEN DARKER (Jan Svankmajer)” and “LOL, let’s take cute children’s story and make it edgy and lo, their tiny minds will be blown.” I’ve never actually seen the Alice game (now, the Wyndham classics one, let’s talk!) but a lot of what I read about it made it sound more like category two.
NO MORE DARK REIMAGININGS OF ANYTHING.
I knew Dov Charney was an awful person because he was a predatory monster, but I didn’t know that AA was basically a cult. But man, it sure sounds like one!
Also, I was surprised to learn AA was a big fashion deal. I really never knew them except as the place that made t-shirts that CafePress and others used as their stock fitted shirts. I guess they had a whole line of Gap-type clothes?
Actually it turns out I have some polo shirts from them (made of t-shirt material). Huh.
Yeah man, American Apparel is the ones who were selling those jorts that were in the Toast ad spaces all the time. When you’d be just reading the Toast and you’d click on the link to open an article and there’s a model with her buttcheeks sticking out of her jorts right when your supervisor was walking by.
I actually really liked their leggings. :/
Agreed. Affordable and non sheer legging suggestions? I ordered some from ali express yesterday and I already regret them.
My current favorite pairs of leggings are actually L’Eggs, so make of that what you will, but they’re AMAZING.
Not sure exactly what type of leggings you are looking for, but my go-to for opaque cotton leggings to wear under skirts is Forever 21 (they are thin and will be slightly sheer if you bend over, so they are no good on their own). For leggings that can be worn as pants, Old Navy’s activewear line is pretty great (they make the only running leggings I’ve found whose crotch doesn’t slowly drift towards my knees as I run).
Probably not that affordable, but if you pro-rate your daily wear well past the apocalypse (and they will last that long), Hue makes great leggings.
Seconding the Hue rec. I have 2 pair that have been going strong for 3+ years. Colors last a long time, too.
welp i just fell in love with a $48 pair of leggings. fuck.
(ETA: and a $54 pair of ponte leggings. double fuck. i’m closing that browser window now.)
I think I actually found a pair on DSW’s site once for at least $10 cheaper. They stock Hue tights and socks sometimes, too. Might be worth checking!
I finally retired a pair of their (striped) opaque footless tights after 8 years. They were still beautiful, and I miss them.
I definitely remember them being a big fashion deal. But then, I went to university from ’08-’12 and was in a program with a very high ratio of hipsters to non-hipsters. EVERYBODY wore AA. I myself was quite fond of their bright, colourful (and affordable!) leggings and basic (yet colourful! I like colour) t-shirts that were cheap and fit me just right.
not really Gap-style. More hipster-y, very 80s. Colored skinny jeans, rompersx100, super short shorts with a stripe down the side, sort of a girl-next-door 70s/80s playboy vibe… but fortunately/unfortunately some really nice cuts to their t-shirts and skirts. Also made in LA w/o sweatshops. So much ambivalence.
In the late ’00’s I worked three blocks from an AA. By the time I was let go from that job two years later, over half my daily wardrobe was AA. I STILL wear the stuff that hasn’t worn out. It was all so flattering on me!
Wait, aren’t some of their stores still open? I swear I walked past one the other day that looked functional (Soho, NYC).
American Apparel is/was the greatest place to shop for weird Halloween costume needs. Every basic piece of clothing in every color, with some weird shit like gold lame and sparkly mesh thrown in. I couldn’t ever figure out how to wear their stuff in my everyday life (so, like, the opposite of Gap’s normcore), but they were THE BEST for Halloween.
Yeah, most of the stores are still open, as far as I know. From the article, it looks like they’ve been taken over by another CEO who is hated and reviled by many brainwashed employees.
The only thing I like about AA is that it is the one place I know where I can always find a basic (i.e. non-embellished) but well-made hoodie.
Daily ridiculousness update: Was in the ER with my five-year-old son until 2 am this morning because he wouldn’t stop throwing up. They gave him an IV and anti-nausea meds. So far this morning, he’s been okay. Thank God. But fuck, you guys – three trips to the ER for my family in eight days. Which of the gods did we piss off, and how many goats do we have to sacrifice to make this stop? I think Yahweh would understand.
Clearly your boss is an evil sorceress who has put a curse on you’re family in order to get you to quit. This is actually good news as you could probably sue her for constructive dismissal for this. And if that doesn’t work we’ll go Disney on her, round up a mob and throw her in an oven.
(Bad taste jokes are bad. I’m really sorry you’re family are going through this, I really hope it gets better for you soon; and in the mean time I’m always up for a good townspeople mob.)
Would you like me to give some candy to my household god in your name? (Maybe those anti-nausea ginger chews?) Yahweh surely can’t hold you accountable for my sacrifices to my cheap, culturally-appropriative knockoff sculpture — I will take one for the team here.
You are having the WORST luck right now, oh my God. 🙁 I’m so sorry!
Hey now, don’t ignore Hashem, goats are kosher to sacrifice! Just remember, sin offerings are totally burnt, and there is a vegan option of flour and oil. There is an app game called Leviticus! where you actually can practice sacrificing according to ritual law. It’s adorable.
On a serious note, I really hope things get better for you soon. :/
Omg I can’t believe that app exists. Rule 34 (if you can imagine it, there’s porn of it) becomes Rule 35 (if you can imagine it, there’s an app for it).
And thanks! Both kid and husband seem to be on the mend as of now. And I have two job interviews lined up. So maybe collective Toast vibes are turning this thing around.
Okay, so then all this awfulness is like a Cosmic Purge so you start your wonderful new job with a clean slate.
Credit where’s it’s due: My office-mates bought dinner for my family and are having it delivered tonight. I don’t know whose idea it was, but I’m very grateful to all of them, boss included. Still leaving though.
Get all the free dinners you can out of her, and then GTFO
Where are the nesting dolls? I don’t see them. (The redesign’s lovely, team! And the Not Crashing My Browser thing is wonderful.)
I was looking for a while too: you see them if you click on “The Jam” at the top (which, btw: great series name)
Also scroll to the bottom of the homepage! But I’m still looking for where the Butter is listed.
I expect the Butter’s archives have been absorbed into the Toast, since the Butter’s been closed down. Sad. D:
The Butter has its own series page!
Great! But…where do I find a list of all series? I just see “Popular Series” at the bottom of the homepage, so I don’t know how to find the Butter unless I bookmark the link.
They are building both an All Categories page and an All Series page.
Woohoo! Presents to look forward to. I’m glad it’s not a matter of them being extremely well hidden.
Oh, I’m so glad it’s there.
‘”Sometimes I feel like a woman trapped in a woman’s body” – Russian nesting doll’
Great Amram tweet or greatest Amram tweet?
“Aether” sounds pretty good, although it also sounds roughly like “Minority Report” backwards, which is maybe part of its problem in terms of actually getting made.
“Possession: A Love Story” sounds… in…teresting? Am I reading this correctly that the husband maybe decides… he… likes his demon wife? Does he get her exorcised and then divorce the human lady and go off with the now-disembodied demon instead? Never mind, I don’t want this to be made, I don’t think it can live up to my imagined version.
Holy shit, “Celeritas” is EXACTLY up my street, please someone make it immediately and I will go see it five times even if it’s terrible. ESPECIALLY if it’s terrible.
I would absolutely watch Beauty Pageant.
I also found Possession intriguing. But you’re right, there are several ways a story like that could go and I am not certain they would choose the direction I would like. (for the record, I like your version)
“Court documents show the officer was a subject of two lawsuits in the past decade.”
Oh hey, why don’t we put him in schools, in charge of children? What could possibly go wrong?
i almost couldn’t get this admin position because i’d been arrested for possession 14 years ago. how the hell does this cop even have a job let alone have a job IN A SCHOOL?!?!
I love how at least 50% of the deleted comments are either A. People complaining about Ronbledore not being real or B. Men complaining about us hating them, to which I always say
(ps thanks for the good thoughts, the committee meeting went okay and i am more or less relaxed for the first time in weeks and also there’s a new lisa kleypas book so life is pretty great)
Hell hath no fury like an HP fan who sees an incorrect statement about the franchise on the internet.
“incorrect”
Oh but I love the men who can read a long, eloquent, thoughtful piece of writing and take away nothing but “they hate men” from it. I wish I could bend the world to my mind like that!
I kind of get the whiny dudes, because if reading comprehension/critical thinking were in their wheelhouse, they wouldn’t be MRAs, but how do you make it through the entire HP series without at some point learning to recognize a joke?
I wonder if we’re giving too much credit. We can’t be certain they are reading more than the headline and maybe the first paragraph.
So excited for the new Kleypas! Did you see the SBTB review?
YEEEEEES ugh I am so excited but I think I’ll have to wait until the weekend to read it 🙁
Me toooooooooooooooooo
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/tampon-tax…
AW MAN.
I hate everyone in the world over this.
Petition to insist that no politician be allowed to vote on this until they can stand up in parliament and explain the function of these products and the body functions that make them necessary; They must use correct terminology, with no vague-ness or euphemisms allowed. (That would be a seriously good afternoons entertainment.)
Tampons: for when blood comes out of your whatever.
That entirely depends on the circumstances. God forbid a woman legislator says “vagina” when discussing, you know, reproductive health.
(Full disclosure: Barb is an old and dear friend of mine, so anytime this type of thing comes up, which is shockingly often, I like to revisit this story. It turned into quite a big thing. [Secondary full disclosure: I am in several of those pictures! Hadn’t seen that article before–the couple who took over my old apartment is the “I love this c**t” photo, and I’m in a couple of shots of the Monologues cast. {Tertiary full disclosure: I know that Eve Ensler is problematic in many ways; this day was, however, transformative for me in the quest toward intersectional feminism, so it’s something I’ll never regret doing.}])
Oh well clearly she was asking for it. Using such inflammatory language. Its not ladylike.
Okay but where is my Catherine the Great biopic??
YES PLEASE I WANT TO WATCH THAT and I want there to be tons of costume porn and scenery porn please.
This would have to be a miniseries to do justice to it. Something by the BBC. Her life was too big for a two hour movie.
Yeah HBO already threw million/billions/gajillions at the John Adams miniseries (which admittedly was great) so why can’t they do that for Catherine???
OH WAIT I KNOW WHY.
There was this one! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112031/ (Coincidentally starring Catherine Zeta-Jones).
And this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025746/ (starring Marlene Dietrich)
There’s a TV series in Russia that was being filmed about Catherine the Great’s life & stars an amazing actress (Yuliya Snigir) & has some drool-worthy trailers out, but I’m unsure if it’s aired in Russia yet as the release date was pushed back. 🙁 I need it in my life ASAP because it looks OPULENT!_Here’s the trailer & the official website
Glad there’s a confirmed “women run through an opulent hallway in opulent dresses playing with white fabric” scene.
Ooooooooooh.
That was the script I liked best out of that whole list. I’d watch it.
Also Toast wish me luck, I have a job interview this afternoon!
Ahh, good luck!! Knock ’em dead!
LUCK LUCK LUCK!!!
Good luck!
All the luck! You got this!
I also have a job interview! In one hour! I will share with you the highly superstitious and not at all sensical thing that I have been telling myself is lucky: tonight is a full moon night.
Good luck! The moon is on your side! Also probably witches throughout the ages!
Luck to both of you!!!!
Aah! you’re interviewing right now according to the time stamp of the comment. I hope it’s going well, I’m sending all the good thoughts!
Good luck! Tell us how it goes!!
So much interview luck to you!
Oh my gosh, breaking Hamilton news.
Broadway’s ‘Hamilton’ Will Be Field Trip For 20K Students At $10 A Pop http://deadline.com/2015/10/broadway-hamilton-new…
MY HEART IS SO HAPPY.
I think it sucks we need the magnanimity of a private charity (is that the right term?) founded by a super-rich guy to make this possible, bit it’s still awesome that it’s happening.
The next question:
I saw this Tweet by, I think a cast member, cannot find it now for the life of me but it was saying that with all the huge names they’d had come to the show, it was when they were doing it for students that he had a super hard time holding it together for how much it meant to him. So I like picturing him trying to keep it together nigh after night as all these kids keep coming! (If he’s still in it when they do.)
LMM is awesome.
I was just about to post this! Such wonderful news – I’m so glad the powers that be were able to make this a reality.
I WAS ABOUT TO POST THIS. So amazing. <3
Pretty sure that tweet was from Lin? Back when it was off-Broadway? If only because I remember seeing it and I think LMM is the only cast member that I follow on Twitter
He might have retweeted it — I saw that tweet from Renee Elise.
The tweet came from Renee Elise Goldsberry! I saw it on tumblr. 🙂 She actually said he burst into tears during “My Shot,” oh my God.
Yes, here, found it on Tumblr again!
“Can I just embarrass Lin for one second by saying: We’ve been blessed with, like – we’ve had, you know, past presidents, and future presidents, rap icons have been here – it’s been an unbelievable list of [people that have come to see the show] and he’s never been so nervous or emotional or connected as when we had our first audience of teenagers. It’s really beautiful.”
—Renee Elise Goldsberry talking about #HAMILTONpublic’s first student matinee (aka “the most important thing [that’s] happened” according to Lin himself; he burst into tears in the middle of ‘My Shot’ #factsonly) back in March 2015 ♡
http://laralaralara.tumblr.com/post/115772293409/…
YES! Thank you for digging that up.
the lede on that story tho: “American history just got a little sexier for 20,000 New York City high school students.” Lucky kids 😀
“A lonely twelve year old boy in love with his babysitter discovers some hard truths about life, love, and murder.”
what
“After an apocalyptic event, a mother wolf is separated from her mate and the rest of the pack, and has to protect her cubs from swarms of mutated humans.”
WHAT
I’d gleefully watch that one, and am almost surprised that nobody has come up with “Wolves vs. Zombies” before now.
I can’t watch zombie movies because I get too scared but I *100%* would watch this.
It’d be like ‘Shelter’ but with zombies, I guess?
I would definitely watch this one.
Been thinking a lot about what a “hard truth about murder” would be.
“It’s a real bitch when you’re caught.” Or else, “More difficult than television would have you believe.”
“Murder is … wrong?”
Today I learned HIV denialism is a thing. I really shouldn’t be surprised by that, I suppose.
I knew it existed because my aunt is one, or at least used to be ~12 years ago. We don’t talk much, as I’m sure you’ll understand, so who knows, she may no longer believe AIDS is caused by “an amino acid imbalance”.
I have met numerous self-styled radical queers who swear by Celia Farber’s book and it baffles me. Yes, AIDS drugs are an incredibly lucrative industry and there is definitely corruption within the medical/scientific establishment. No, that doesn’t mean HIV/AIDS is a myth.
Sandor Katz, who is himself positive, has a good discussion of this in Wild Fermentation. (He’s firmly in the best-of-both-worlds middle ground on pharmaceutical and nutritional treatment.)
I can’t tell you how chuffed I was by the Nan Robertson toxic shock piece…the part about the New York cabbies stepping up made me happy. There are still good people in the world.
As we approached our destination, I would hand them my wallet, tote bag or purse and they would hold up each bill and coin like a rosary or miraculous medal or baby to be blessed. ”This is a dollar bill,” they would say. ”This is a quarter,” and then return the rest of the money to its place. One driver said, ”Even my wife won’t trust me with her wallet,” and another muttered, ”Anyone takes advantage of you should be shot.”
<3
Well, or there were in the early 80s… 😉
I’m 39 and I have probably used less than one pack’s worth of tampons in my entire life, all when I wanted to go swimming, because of the terror of toxic shock instilled in mid-80s health classes. I had no idea what it was except that you could die from it if you used tampons. It was very interesting to finally learn what the disease is like! And horrifying!
That puppy throws me into an existential crisis every morning, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/what-to-exp…
This seems like it would be of interest to Toasties
The Munchkin.
I don’t usually “I don’t even”, but I don’t even.
I feel bad. . .but I really want to know about the Wizard of Oz conspiracy! I would probably read it if it were a novel.
I was like ‘oh man this sounds cool! What is is calle…. oh’
Can I complain a little here? About my life? A bit?
“Cousin has changed so much since then,” says my mother.
“You should really give her a second chance,” says my mother.
“Cousin is going through the same thing with the house SHE’S buying!” says my mother.
No, Mom. If Cousin has changed so much since she alternated between belittling me and demanding my constant attention as a child (also, what am I saying, she was cruel and irritating at my high school graduation party when we were 16 and 18 — we were NOT CHILDREN), if she has changed so much from the person who systematically made sure I couldn’t ever spend time with her brother who I actually loved because I was a girl so I had to play with HER, then it’s not a second chance. She’s a different person? Then it’ll be a first chance.
Part of that first chance going well would be acknowledging the difference between her trouble negotiating the items on the Schedule 3 as her boyfriend buys her a house they can move into after the $20,000 wedding her parents are paying for, and my trouble figuring out if the loan agent who delayed everything until we were absolutely trapped in working with that bank is forcing us into a worse financial situation because she doesn’t want to acknowledge the marriage our apartment manager performed for us in haste, fearing we’d lose our marriage equality rights again if we waited until any member of our family could be there.
But sure, I’ll be happy to give her a Second Chance and advise her on how to make the best of the significantly worse loan arrangement she’s been maneuvered into because the bank thinks her abusive hetero marriage from 10 years ago is more important than her current loving-if-relatively-poor marriage to a wo– … oh, wait.
I feel better just writing it out. But grrrrr.
Oh man, I might just be like Mom, don’t talk to me about cousin ever again.
I should. I really should. I just keep feeling like there are Magic Words to make her UNDERSTAND why I’d say that. My brain knows there aren’t.
Ugh your story is frustrating to even read! I’m sorry that this is happening to you, and wishing you the strength to deal with your mother right now.
It honestly helps just to hear that — my instinct is still “but Mom is a good mom and this isn’t unreasonable,” and the reality check of “Nope, that still sucks” is one that I really need.
Even good moms sometimes make mistakes in momming. Doesn’t make them not good moms, and it also doesn’t make the mistakes okay.
If your mother is otherwise GoodMom with a truly annoying blind spot, it may be worth trying something like “I’m happy to hear that she’s changed, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do things that were very hurtful. I’ll let you know if I’m up for a possible reconciliation with her, until then please don’t bring her up. I don’t need to you to agree with me, but I do need you to respect my feelings and wishes, and I don’t want to talk about her with you.”
If she’s otherwise GoodMom, she may be BAFFLED why you feel this strongly about this, and you may need to show you’re serious about it by just walking away or hanging up a couple times…. but it should hopefully eventually take. hopefully. eventually.
I want to see the movie about the woman who has to convince the “smart house” to turn against its owner to set her free. Maybe it would be more interesting if the “smart house” was a female as well.
More seriously, regarding sexism in the church:
Whenever my mom comes to visit, she always goes to a different church than I do, and tells me how great it is. She told me last week that the elders (all men) had met to discuss the changing role of women in the church, and after the morning services, there had been a special meeting with the women to tell them what the elders had decided. She said the man speaking seemed kind of embarrassed (AS HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN!!!) But she was all positive about the expanding role of women. I understand that my mom grew up in a church where women were not allowed to speak, so anything is gravy, but I want to tell her, “The world has come so far since then! We do not need to coddle the elders, and allow them to ‘take these changes slowly’. If they are too elder-ly to understand the concept of equality, then they need to replaced.”
It just makes me mad because I see that my mom is a very smart and very devoted woman, and an excellent speaker, and I can see how she could have done so much good if she had not been made to feel that the most she could aspire to do was lead a women’s Bible study or a children’s class. I just think of all the other women’s voices who were stifled and are currently stifled and I get so angry. I’m sure there are other Toasties who struggle with the same ambivalence toward their faith.
I think the woman who wrote that article is lucky, damn lucky, to be out of that situation. She and her husband should be very grateful that they did not waste years of their life with that school. It would have really confused their children, for one thing. I think it would have made her increasingly bitter and possibly ruined her marriage. I am really glad she found a church in which she can whole-heartedly participate, and her husband found a reasonable job.
I’m afraid my words are too strong because I feel strongly about this. I really don’t mean to offend anyone except those sexist elders.
Your words are not too strong. You sound like an excellent person and daughter with a really clear-eyed view of your mother and her talents, and the way that they’re not respected by the institution.
Holy shit, roles of women in the church. Mr. Floridagal’s family believes that women should all stay home with their straight husbands and have 8000 babies and never work or disagree with their husbands. It’s 100% patriarchy, so gross. The denomination that we both grew up in is pretty complementarian, which I also hate. Can we just admit that women are people already, I hate this. The way that denomination treats women is a major reason why we’re now Anglican. They are so chill and normal compared to what I grew up with!
I like the new design a lot. It’s so clean and bright and I find it easy to read as well as navigate.
(AA’s brand image guidelines discouraged eyebrow plucking, wearing concealer, having more than one earring per ear, and even blowdrying your hair.
Slightly horrified to realise I would probably fit in fine (as far as grooming goes) at American Apparel.
(No earrings, no makeup, no eyebrow plucking, no blowdrying. Go me?)
SAME. But I’d have to lose about thirty pounds and get some of those ultra-striated quad muscles before I could be really top-shelf AA-material (Ed.: not a life goal; at least, not for these purposes).
A nerdy high schooler, who fancies himself an amateur photographer, attempts to create a “Swimsuit Issue” featuring his high school classmates in hopes of raising enough money to go to summer camp.
This would definitely be made 100% in good faith and not at all in a sexist or exploitative manner.
In near future London, a revolutionary technology has been invented that can record sounds hours after they were made. Detective Harry Orwell, inventor of this technology, is part of a pilot program where investigators record and analyze past sound waves and finds himself the prime suspect while investigating a string of brutal murders.
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
A young woman, feeling directionless, stumbles upon a mysterious courtyard where she is transported into a sitcom-like universe, becoming a major character on this “TV show.”
SEE ABOVE
A prison psychologist has 48 hours to convince a serial killer to tell her the location of her final victim before she is executed.
I want this to be made, and to be called something other than “Matriarch,” and for none of the people involved (in-universe or otherwise) to comment on its all-female main cast, and for the actors and filmmakers to look at interviewers who ask about it like they’re crazy.
When a young boy finds out that the cartoon character he’s in love with is based on a real girl, he drags his single father on a road trip to track her down.
That father should be ashamed of himself.
A deaf computer genius’ world is thrown into turmoil when he meets a troubled coffee shop waitress whose voice turns out to be the only thing he can miraculously hear.
Looks like somebody just watched Twin Peaks. (It was me, I just watched Twin Peaks.)
A young man convinced that his mentally unstable sister needs to relive her high school prom from ten years prior to overcome her depression goes to great lengths to recreate that event.
This is definitely how depression works.
(I also just watched Twin Peaks. That is all.)
(I recently tried to watch Twin Peaks and didn’t get it at all. But I did enjoy the uber 90s intro. that is all.)
(I am about a third of the way through the second season of Twin Peaks. Last night I was scared to go to bed because of Killer Bob).
I really, really want the trope-subverting versions of the cartoon girl movie and the nerdy high schooler movie and the prom-reliving story. But even if they’re written to subvert they’re just gonna do what Paper Towns did to the MPDG trope, right? 200 pages of straight-up trope with a “JK!” at the end?
Also, that sitcom one sounds fantastic, but why a movie and not a TV show? I’d watch the sitcom sitcom.
Yeah, I could see any of those three reworked into something great, but absolutely not in the forms that the summaries imply they’re in. And that seems like a lot of effort; why not just make a movie whose existing premise doesn’t completely suck?
Re: sitcom: YES.
right? We could just, ALTERNATIVELY, make some movies about regular women that no one puts on a big weird pedestal.
HAHAHAHAA
And they say that women aren’t funny
[cries forever]
Your commentary is spot on.
A prison psychologist has 48 hours to convince a serial killer to tell her the location of her final victim before she is executed.
I’ve seen this, it’s called The Cell. It’s beautiful.
A woman held captive in the futuristic smart house of a serial kidnapper realizes that her only hope of escape lies in turning the house’s sentient computer against its creator.
How is that not a movie? That sounds amazing.
there’s nothing more cheering than teenage dances! they make people feel very at ease and accepting of themselves and others!
Oh god “concepting.” Can’t we leave the noun-into-verb thing to business jerks? Sorry. I’ll leave now.
That word sounds like it would used by a junior high schooler trying really hard to use scientific terms to describe the functions of the female reproductive system.
EW.
BUT THERE IS A REAL WORD FOR THIS IS IT “CONCEIVING” WHAT WHY.
This is totally tangential, but on the subject of movies and whether they should be made or not…
If you like silly/ridiculous movies, if you like to make fun of movies, etc., I fully recommend
AIRPLANE vs. VOLCANO
it is amazing. Like, incredible. So bad. It features Dean Cain (who has continued his string of bad movie acting, including my favorite bad movie of all time, BOA – the pitch I gave to my husband for that one was: Dean Cain. Giant Snake. ANTARCTICA. It is the best.), and is literally about trying to survive in a plane flying over a ring of volcanoes by Hawaii. So good.
In regards to good movies, though, I saw A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and it was FANTASTIC. My goodness, what a beautiful film.
in relation to this actual post, I did not know HIV Denialists were a THING, and also TSS scares the shit out of me. If I recall correctly, my mom experienced it as a teen (and obvs. survived). I will have to check out those articles eventually.
wait though, snakes are ectotherms.
You’re thinking about this too hard.
There sure are a lot of apocalypse-themed movies on the Blacklist, aren’t there?
Would See:
1. Apocalypse movie with a wolf protagonist.
2. Moon Colony Murder
3. Wizard of Oz conspiracy
4. Astronaut Twins
Would Probably Not:
All the movies about people raising children they didn’t originally intend to raise
Biopics
The apocalypse wolf movie is so incredibly, bizarrely fascinating to me. Like, would it be some weird pseudo nature documentary, or a grimdark Homeward Bound, or a CGI thing with talking animals? Does she manage to get her cubs to safety? Just how much of a threat are zombies in the Yosemite wilderness? I WANT TO KNOW MORE!
Astronaut Twins and Moonfall sound like someone took the plot for Moon and split it into two different movies (incidentally, if you haven’t seen Moon, I highly recommend it). I think I’d be more interested in Astronaut Twins if it didn’t want to go down the bog-standard “escape from the scientists” road, though. Space, time travel, and astronauts getting caught in oddities we don’t understand is an interesting niche for me. It’d be fun to stuff that plot into a sci-fi TV episode, where they could focus on the characters and the ultimate goofy alien plot twist at the end without having to put up with the escape bits along the way. Actually wait, this is already like three different episodes of Farscape, isn’t it?
Speaking of sci-fi TV shows, someone reboot The Eden Project into a Eugenics War film so that Star Trek can finally nail down what (and when) the heck actually happened there. Just… stay away from Cumberbatch this time, okay guys?
On a totally unrelated note, Hollywood sure seems to love the CIA almost as much as they love foisting children onto unwitting/unwilling male caretakers. Five of the pitches on this list involve them either directly or indirectly.
I’m imagining the wolf thing as pretty much The Grey from a wolf perspective. IDK, just regular humans are dangerous enough to wolves without putting zombies in the mix.
Also relevant tweet:
Mike F @animaldrumss Sep 17
In this zombie flick a film crew is fooled into thinking zombie movies are still cool, and they must reckon with the fact that theyre in one
I would watch the hell out of that movie.
A stickler-for-the-rules CIA director gets unwillingly saddled with his special-needs nephew on Take Your Child To Work Day. They learn about life, love, and locking your computer terminal when you walk away from it, even if it’s just for a minute.
Can we make it his ‘problematic’ nephew?
What does that meaannnn? Does his nephew not believe in intersectional feminism? What??
My overwhelming response to the Jezebel piece on sexism in the church is “what the shit”. How can it be legal for an employer to behave like that? (I also can’t help feeling that if my partner chose to work somewhere that taught that women were inferior to men, I would be really hurt and angry.)
Quick redesign question – I’m back to seeing the “i”s like “l”s and the non colour-changing thumbs. Just my work computer, or have other people found that these features have vanished again? (I assume it’s the computer.)
Did those features ever work on your work computer? I suspect one of those cache-clearing activities may be needed.
They hadn’t been implemented until well after I got home yesterday (UK timezone), so it’s hard to say. If they’re on my laptop when I get home, I’ll attempt cache-clearing tomorrow.
Try a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R).
Part of it though is when you grow up in that environment, it can be really hard to actually believe that you’re worth just as much as men. /data isn’t the plural of anecdote, just my experience, etc etc
Clean your browser cache and reload?
I didn’t even stop seeing the lowercase i as l and I’ve tried clearing my cache! I had no idea that feature had been changed already. The changing thumbs are working fine for me.
Was the i/l thing something that was addressed? Because it is definitely still the case for me.
That’s likely just the nature of the very expensive and lovely new font, and we won’t be changing it.
I thought it was – they seemed to have changed for me! But now they’re back to how they were, even on my laptop (although I’m getting the orange thumbs). It is so hard to read! I can’t help interpreting it as a mixture of upper and lower case.
It took me a few minutes to get the title “Coffee and Kareem”. Then I bashed my head against my desk.
Just read the Sexism in the Church piece and holy fuck, so upsetting. Gave me some serious perspective on how things could be so much worse. Religious organizations, truly a bastion of love and community. What a nightmare; I’m so glad they’re okay now.
Re: the blacklist, there’s one movie that would almost certainly be better the way I misread it than the way it actually appeared.
What was written:
DODGE
A genre bending action comedy about a pill popping thug who
begins to develop superpowers.
What I read:
DOGE
A genre bending action comedy about a pill popping pug who
begins to develop superpowers.
Hollywood, I await your calls.
It’s really remarkable how changing literally three letters makes me go from whhhyyyyyyy to YESSSSSSSSSS.
This is extra hilarious because I *ALSO* misread it at first, but as a “a GENDER bending action comedy”
SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE ME THE GENDER BENT DOGE MOVIE
Toasties! I don’t know what to do with this job interview I had yesterday.
I can’t figure out if I would be happier there
It couldn’t be *worse*, because the dumb questions would stop (no “helpline” support) but there would be minute-taking again (1 committee) and doing travel arrangements for a director (I’ve never done that before). Plus they said ‘it’s a busy role, you’d be run off your feet’ which, er, I don’t need that, necessarily?
I was all ready this morning to give in to my hesitations around it and send a pre-emptive note removing myself from the running, but then I got to my current job and people managed to piss me off entirely within about the first 40 minutes. So now I’m torn.
Stay in the running and keep job-hunting. Always keep the possibilities open. And if you’ve made the decision that you’re unhappy at your job, don’t let yourself get distracted from the goal of moving on.
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Stay in the running and save the ruminations until you’ve been offered the job.
I agree with everyone else who says keep your options open to the last minute. I make calculations on 4 fronts:
1. Financial: A. Is salary better? B. Will I want/get to keep New Job longer than I will want/get to keep Current Job?
2. Future: A. Will New Job look good on my resume? B. Will New Job make it easier to get Even Newer Job?
3. Commute: Better or worse?
4. Personal: Will I like New Job better than Current Job?
1A. Worse, but anything I take right now will be the same.
1B. Probably? Current Job has been annoying the shit out of me reliably for the past several years, during which time I have been looking anxiously for its replacement.
2A. It will look similar to one I had previously.
2B. Perhaps? I don’t know what I want to do/where I might be down the road, so hard to say.
3. Better.
4. No idea. Different annoyances, probably?
I really hate job hunting. Actually I’m kind of just not a fan of working, generally. *headdesk*
Then there’s the good old coin toss. If you have 48 hours to accept or decline, flip a coin at the halfway point of 24 hours. Then note how you feel about the result over the next 24 hours. If you feel happy or relieved, it’s the best choice. If you feel regretful or anxious, you know you need to choose the other way.
I hate job hunting with the heat of a thousand suns. I’m so sorry you have to go through this.
The manager of a fast food chain in Muncie, Indiana gets in over his head with some bookies.
AKA The Larry Gergitch Story.
From the Black List, the one about the guy restaging the prom for his “mentally unstable” sister is making my skin crawl in so many ways.
Guys, I just spent $198 on bras. I’ve never been fitted for a bra before in my life, nor have I ever payed more than $25 for one. I feel extremely fancy, and am also flabbergasted at my own extravagance.
WELCOME TO THE DARK SIDE
here to talk about fancy bras all day every day forever
I got a black (with pretty lace trim), a red, and a neutral. I already had a blue one I got from a friend in a clothing swap (this is how I discovered I was maybe wearing the wrong size bra), so now I have loads of options for fancy bras.
This is my local lingerie boutique. I like the array of models on their website.
For more than 2? That seems like a bargain to me! (I’m an extended size not found in most stores, so I’ve never found anything for less than $80)
3. $72, $68, and $45. Which I recognize as entirely reasonable, even for a standard size, but I normally buy cheap K-Mart bras, so it’s a bit of a shock.
Also, I’m now firmly a D-cup, after identifying for years as a B-cup. I had an inkling of this, but now it’s been confirmed by a professional.
It’s so satisfying to figure out your actual size! I went down THREE band sizes and up… I dunno, a lot of cup sizes from whatever nonsense size Victoria’s Secret was trying to cram me into and my life is so much better.
Yeah, I was convinced that 38B was the way to go. I now realize I was wrong.
YESSS snug band and correct cup size is a game changer. Makes everything that goes on top look better so they’re totally worth the money. It’s easy to talk yourself out of stuff like that because nobody will see it while you’re out and about during the day but YOU’RE WORTH IT (I stole that).
I look forward to being able to stretch without my bra sliding halfway up to my nipples. Finally, I can get through a day without my breasts trying to escape their fabric prisons.
WAIT. I just took another look at the receipt, and one is 34D, one is 34DD, and one is 34E.
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
The lady who sold me my recent expensive bras showed me that the fit depends somewhat on the style of the bra as well. Something about you have to get a tighter band if you have a demi-cup than full coverage. The size may read the same but actually be tighter… In consequence, depending on the distribution of your breasts/armpit fat/etc you might go up a cup size…but don’t quote me on that. . Anyway, the take-home was that the size may vary with the style.
In my experience, bra sizing is as unreliable as clothing sizing, in the US. I find slightly better bra size consistency in European bras, with a range like you describe here.
Yep, that’s pretty much the range of sizes I have in my official “properly fitted” bras. Different styles & cuts fit differently (also black bras are usually tighter/ smaller because reasons).
I’ve been a 36/38B since high school (or at least, that’s what I’ve been wearing). I need some time to adjust to these letters.
I went from 34-36 B to 32D/DD/30E- it’s weird at first, but now I can find bras with such reliability that sometimes I go bra shopping to get over the frustration of jeans shopping, which is pretty wild.
Ugh, jeans shopping. I recently discovered men’s relaxed-fit carpenter jeans, and it’s changed my life. “Roomy in the seat” means they’ll fit over my hips, and then I have pockets! It’s amazing.
I find that the D/E range is especially fluid from bra to bra. It seems to depend on the shape of the cup, for me, which I didn’t find to be as much of a factor when I was a lower size, but then maybe my boob shape also changed? Who knows. Boobs. ~~a mystery~~
Don’t your boobs feel amazing, though?
My ribs feel a bit pinched, but my boobs feel secure and comfortable, rather than as if they may try and make a run for it at any moment.
It took me a while to get used to how it felt on my ribs, when I started wearing correctly sized bras. I did adjust though, and I HATE anything too-tight on my torso, so I hope you adjust soon!
I do have one properly-sized bra that I got from a friend at a clothing swap (the first time I had an existential boob-crisis), and it’s really only a problem in choir, when I breathe especially deeply. I think I’ll adjust, and besides, not having to constantly re-settle my boobs after I move my arms will be AMAZING.
Why oh why did you post that Toxic Shock piece, and why, against all my better judgment, did I read it? I can’t handle things like that.
Pets + books in the same picture = perfection. Puppy is ready to discuss a book that gave him all the feels.
oh my god
this
this is
this is everything
YES!!!!
I think I have a dsyfunctional relationship with sleep. It’s all I want to do except when I’m in bed. Then I spend hours distracting myself so I don’t relive the termination again.
I have read so many terrible romance novels, y’all.
As someone who also has a dysfunctional relationship with sleep, I’m going to give you some unsolicited advice! (Feel free to ignore me.)
I really struggle with the ‘And now its time to sleep’ thing, so I sort of have to trick myself into sleeping, so I watch youtube/dvds as I’m trying to sleep. These days I primarily watch QI (shortish episodes that you can dip in and out of, plus its like learning in your sleep!), but I also used to watch a lot of stand up comedy (Again, you can easily dip in and out of it). It took me awhile to figure out the formula, but I’ve had it down for a few years now, to the point that most stand up dvds will knock me out in 5 minutes, I like to stick to comedy because if I can’t sleep then at least I’m not spiraling into dark places, and it has to be something I’ve seen before (or else I get into it and actually start watching it) but not something I’ve seen too many times (or I get bored.). I’ve also found audio books are useful (Harry Potter on youtube in particular). Its also good for when I’m waking up a lot in the night, I can just turn on whatever I was watching again to avoid falling into that 3am pit of worrying about every single thing I’ve ever done.
Obviously this solution might not work for you (I’ve been single for years, so bed partners are not really a concern for me, but I’ve done it with head phones a lot too), and it doesn’t really deal with the root of the problem for me, but its a fix for when sleep is just needed! I find the worst bit of going to bed is the bit when you put down the book and turn off the lights and then just lie there trying to sleep and my brain won’t shut up, so at least watching videos makes that stop.
So yeah, my solution is distract yourself into sleep. (And you have my greatest sympathies, sleep is the best medicine and its really shit when you can’t even get that.)
Wow, that's just all kinds of fucked up.
As someone who also has a dysfunctional relationship with sleep, I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice! (Feel free to ignore me.)
I really struggle with the 'And now its time to sleep' thing, so I sort of have to trick myself into sleeping, so I watch youtube/dvds as I'm trying to sleep. These days I primarily watch QI (shortish episodes that you can dip in and out of, plus its like learning in your sleep!), but I also used to watch a lot of stand up comedy (Again, you can easily dip in and out of it). It took me awhile to figure out the formula, but I've had it down for a few years now, to the point that most stand up dvds will knock me out in 5 minutes, I like to stick to comedy because if I can't sleep then at least I'm not spiraling into dark places, and it has to be something I've seen before (or else I get into it and actually start watching it) but not something I've seen too many times (or I get bored.). I've also found audio books are useful (Harry Potter on youtube in particular). Its also good for when I'm waking up a lot in the night, I can just turn on whatever I was watching again to avoid falling into that 3am pit of worrying about every single thing I've ever done.
Obviously this solution might not work for you (I've been single for years, so bed partners are not really a concern for me, but I've done it with head phones a lot too), and it doesn't really deal with the root of the problem for me, but its a fix for when sleep is just needed! I find the worst bit of going to bed is the bit when you put down the book and turn off the lights and then just lie there trying to sleep and my brain won't shut up, so at least watching videos makes that stop.
So yeah, my solution is distract yourself into sleep. (And you have my greatest sympathies, sleep is the best medicine and its really shit when you can't even get that.)
Five exclamation marks!!!!! “The sure sign of a diseased mind.”
there's nothing more cheering than teenage dances! they make people feel very at ease and accepting of themselves and others!