I spent most of yesterday reading Judy Oppenheimer’s now out-of-print biography of Shirley Jackson (Ruth Franklin is working on a new, definitive one as we speak), and it was such a mixed experience. I am truly and genuinely obsessed with the genius and majesty of Shirley Jackson, and I enjoyed all of the dishiness and the information and the background I picked up, but it’s also full of frustrations. Oppenheimer spends so much time on Jackson as a limited mother (her daughters’ tangled hair, their messy home – her husband never raised a finger to help), an angry wife (constantly cheated on by that same husband, but very “jealous” of other women), and…fatness. Fatness described with an air of grotesquerie (“by now, she was almost TWO HUNDRED POUNDS DUM DUM DUM”) and as a pathology and a horror and never just as a physical descriptor of one of the greatest talents of the twentieth century. Some of it was delightful: who doesn’t love knowing that Shirley kept six or seven identically-colored cats because her husband said she could have no more than two cats, and this kept him from knowing?
But I want to see her given her due, and I’m excited for Ruth’s book, and now I shall re-read everything Jackson ever wrote.
ALSO, I was super emo about it on Twitter and ACCIDENTALLY said “I Capture The Castle” instead of “We Have Always Lived In The Castle” and now all is ashes in my mouth.
(This Laura Miller essay on Jackson’s skill as a writer is great.)
Shirley Jackson, a genius, an epic troll:
Things that cost a penny in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.
This is a funny and beautiful comic about trans identity and grandmas and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
I was delivering some depressing Network-esque diatribes about the state of indie media on Twitter and The Billfold decided to see who else has/doesn’t have money.
How the Italian-American New Jersey accent came to be:
“Don’t eat gabagool, Grandma,” says Meadow Soprano on an early episode of The Sopranos, perhaps the most famous depiction of Jersey Italian culture in the past few decades. “It’s nothing but fat and nitrates.” The pronunciation of “gabagool,” a mutation of the word “capicola,” might surprise a casual viewer, although it and words like it should be familiar to viewers of other New Jersey-based shows like the now-defunct Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey, where food often drives conversation. The casts are heavily Italian-American, but few of them can actually speak, in any real way, the Italian language. Regardless, when they talk about food, even food that’s widely known by the non-Italian population, they often use a specific accent.
If I lived in Austin, I would be eating pie right now.
Deleted comment of the day:
I enjoy this song, and purchased it after hearing it on the radio:
It’s just as good live:
I feel really uncomfortable with that Shirley Jackson prank being posted about positively, when it seems to be absolutely gaslighting to me? Anyone else feel this way?
That was my thought too.
I’d be convinced that I had early onset Alzheimers, which is my not so secret fear alongside a million other hypochondriac things. So it seems pretty horrible to me, but I don’t like pranks at all, even silly whoopie cushions in a chair type ones.
Yeah that’s like textbook gaslighting. It’s interesting that she did that, but it’s not fun.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of pranks like that.
It’s totally gaslighting and I had the same reaction when Nicole posted about it on Twitter. The thing about the multiple cats all the same color seems in the same vein to me, as well.
Based solely on the bits here and on Twitter it sounds like her husband was kind of an asshole and they possibly had an unhealthy and adversarial relationship, but that behavior is definitely unhealthy and not funny.
And it’s not mitigating that her husband was an asshole, in my opinion, it just makes the whole thing worse. People don’t earn abuse, which gaslighting is, by being unfaithful or generally shitty spouses. No question his behavior was good cause for divorce or separation or couples’ counseling, but I’d be so embarrassed if I thought I was telling an anecdote about something that didn’t exist.
DEFINITELY.
Like we should definitely not switch from “gaslighting is bad” to “gaslighting is bad if it’s directed at people we like”
Definitely! I think the cats thing is different, though–if she had three different colors of cat and always insisted that she only had the two colors that happened to be in the room, that would be worse, since it would make him doubt his memory unfairly. If he’s not paying enough attention to tell one black cat from another, it seems less like gaslighting and more like common or garden lying to your spouse, which is still a pretty awful thing to do.
I don’t… get… the cats thing… I mean, I think it’s hilarious, but how on earth did she communicate to the cats that there could never be more than 2 in sight at all times???
This is a good point that I had not considered. 0_0
We only have two cats, but they are both black and look similar; when we lived in an apartment, the lady in the office when we signed our lease actually told us to put down that we just had one cat (cheaper), and no one ever figured out there were two living there, because one always hid from the repair guys.
YES YES YES
I guess I assumed that that was some sort of running joke, because what are the odds that there would never be more than two cats in the room at any given time?
Apparently one man had four identical ones and they were never in the same room for five years: http://imgur.com/gallery/wtE59Bw
That is awesome.
now THAT is just straight-up hilarious.
One of my favorite bits o’ internet.
I feel like the cats thing could be a couple in-joke. “That movie you talk about never existed” part trips me up more because I really am afraid of things like loosing my mind or having a stroke and not knowing that I’m having a stroke. Again, I’m really not the prank audience, but that would freak me right out. Multiple cats, I could kind of get, although I don’t think I would be amused. Similar accounts I’ve read of gaslighting include people moving household items or putting things in pockets/taking them out of pockets or sending texts and deleting them off phones later and then denying it. Those things just make me feel so unsettled because it’s so needlessly malicious. Like, does the person who I’m living with want to make me miserable? I sleep right next to them; they have so much power in my life. It’d freak me out if they were using that power to fuck with me.
“moving household items or putting things in pockets/taking them out of pockets”
This is, in fact, exactly what happens in the movie.
Yes that was exactly my thought.
Yeah, nothing about that is ok.
I don’t know if it’s quite fair to put manure on that list, because Francie and Neeley collect a shoebox of manure for their grandma and are paid a penny on delivery. I wonder if “Grandma cost” is in play here, like when my grandma would pay me a quarter to sweep her garage because I thought it was fun at age six.
Also I have read ATGIB enough times to pick that out so maybe I should read some new books.
Sometimes, deleted commenter, things are exactly as they seem.
No, but that doesn’t make sense. Because it was written by, to all appearances, a woman.
And everyone knows women can’t deploy sarcasm.
This comment seems sarcastic…
SO what you’re saying is that with the $10 I have in my wallet, I could have a whole harem of men to read fine literature to me?
I may need to reconsider purchasing breakfast this morning…
*slaps a dollar in front of the organ grinder*
I WANT……A HUUUUUNDRED MONKEYS to dance for me
*waves a 10 in front of the shopkeeper*
one…..THOUSAND POLITICALLY INCORRECT MASKS
“Shirley kept six or seven identically-colored cats because her husband said she could have no more than two cats, and this kept him from knowing?”
#lifegoals
The cat story is awesome! The “prank” gaslighting story…. less so.
Yeah, I read that and had lots of gaslightling alarm bells going off in my head. It sounds from the rest of the information in the post like a bad relationship all round, though, so I don’t know if his behaviour was the same/worse (not that that’s a reason).
He was incredi-the worst. Big old serial cheater (with his students, no less, who Shirley was then expected to play gracious hostess to.)
I just got to the part in Raising Demons where he’s a Miss Vermont judge and a contestant, who lives in the area and may or may not attend his college, drives him to to the contest, and the entire town calls her up with jokes, and I got so angry I had to close the book.
That one was SO awful, how she frames it as silliness on her part and … It wasn’t at all, and she knew it. Ugh.
I am with you on this goal! Maybe I will reverse image search petfinder later and see what I can come up with.
Sir or madam with that sentence you are now an honorary librarian, and if you were a librarian already you are now everyone’s boss. Congratulations *fireworks emoji*
I knew someone who had 2 black cats. And then one day, she posted on Facebook, that at some point, they had acquired a 3rd black cat. But she didn’t know when the 3rd cat had started living with them! The theory: it followed the others inside one day. It could have been there for months!
When I was 10 or 11 my family was at a church meeting and a cat with identical coloring and markings to my cat walked in. We assumed Princess had gotten out and followed us so we took the cat home. Princess was inside the house waiting for us and after a side-by-side comparison we realized this other cat was roughly twice her size and also a boy. We called him Prince and he stayed for a week until Princess had enough of sharing her throne and chased him off.
I love this story with all my heart.
This happened to my family as a child, also with black cats, and later to my grandmother who looked up one day and saw two tabbies instead of one.
My in-laws have a dog. She is sort of an Australian shepherd mix, black and brown and medium-sized. One day she wouldn’t stop barking at her reflection in the sliding glass door to their deck. Only upon opening the door did they realize it was actually ANOTHER DOG, exactly the same as theirs. The only difference between them is floppy ears vs pointy ears.
They adopted the second dog also, and now they have twin dogs.
Millions and billions and TRILLIONS OF CATTTTTSSSS
That book contained a lot of life lessons, tbh
I know someone who does this with horses.
Identical coloring could trip me up, in horses. But I would certainly notice the sudden increase in farrier fees, feed expense, and vet bills.
Speaking of keeping many cats: http://laughingsquid.com/a-massive-19th-century-p…
Thoughts upon reading the Billford piece:
– Keep on keepin’ it real, Autostraddle
– Who the fuck are all these women reading Bustle? I would bet anything it’s Bryan Goldberg hitting refresh every waking moment.
– Ugh all the good websites are struggling while the worst have VCs and live on*. Douchebagocracy.
– I don’t mind Buzzfeed’s inevitable reign over us all? There are some great women and POC giving quality content over there. Also I took the Hamilton Schuyler sister quiz and I’m Angelica, so.
– Gawker has grown from plucky little rag to the wooooorst.
*ETA: The Toast being the ultimate exception, of course. Pretty sure Nicole’s husband is not a douchebag.
AUTOSTRADDLE THO
Ever since the toast pointed it to me its where I do my studying for Intro to Queer
I have this daydream that one day I will meet all the amazing people who live on autostraddle and also live on the toast. Downside to the daydream: only possible end is me having a panic attack.
My favorite story to tell is over the summer when I fell in Roomie Love with the Roomie,
when I kept linking her to pieces of Toast and she just responded: “I just want to be at college but have all the Toasties there”
That’s the dream.
Well, you could go to A Camp
Oh, that’s the plan. 🙂
I dunno, I’m pretty dedicated to reading both sites constantly and I am deeeeeply uncool, if that’s any consolation to know. 🙂
Back in June I got to go to A-Camp and meet all the wonderful Autostraddle people. It was amazing and I did have a couple of panic attacks.
I hope that they’ve gotten better, but a while back they had a pretty fucking terrible editorial support system for a close trans pal of mine and essentially did not protect her from RadFem trolls in comments and eventually said she was too queer, too radical, and upsetting to their readership…. after they asked her to write about her experiences being a radical trans fag witch. Left a bad taste with me and I haven’t really been back since.
Autostraddle actually pointed me to the Toast! Which was nice for me because I’m straight so it wasn’t appropriate for me to get into the comments on Autostraddle, though I love the content. Also it seems like the Toastariat are generally closer in age to me (32) and there’s some cultural at-home-ness in that.
The world is a wonderful place.
Yeah, Buzzfeed has quietly put together an actually pretty great group of writers that cover important issues. (Although I basically only read stuff that’s linked to me.)
Hah, yeah, I recently had to explain to my mom that Buzzfeed secretly does some really legit journalism. She was so confused like, “But all the cat pictures?”
I know, Mom. The internet is a weird place.
Yes, I am in the same place as your mum. I’ve read some really well done long form journalism linked off Buzzfeed, but when I go to the site to look for more, it’s all “which of Kylie Jenner’s outfits are you” and I back away slowly. I don’t know how to Buzzfeed :((((
I never go to the site, but I did subscribe to their BuzzReads newsletter. That and links from various other newsletters I subscribe to (they are legion) keeps me up on the good longform stuff they do without having to actually search for it on Buzzfeed.
Buzzfeed’s business model runs on using the income generated by advertising/page views on their trashy listcicles to fund their actual journalism. That’s why they have such a weird mix of content
Live happy knowing that every shitty ‘which Kardashians boob are you’ post is paying for someone to write a long form article about interesting things.
I read somewhere that they have a “two for them (audience), one for you (writer)” rule of thumb, which I think is a great model. I’m not a writer, but I imagine that would help make the listicle-cranking-out seem not so soul-crushing.
I figure the ad revenue from the cat pics and the quizes pays for the longform stuff, which is really good and interesting, so it all works out.
There’s a college acquaintance of mine who is well respected in the legit journalism world for his expertise on LGBT legal issues – won various awards for coverage of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, etc. A few years ago, he moved to Buzzfeed to become legal editor and lots of people who knew him were like “…… really?” But his stuff there is still pretty freaking amazing. http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner
I just think of it like the comics/puzzles page of the paper, or the human interest stories. Except that our local rag is basically ALL human interest stories, and they are LESS interesting than a buzzfeed listicle, so it’s a win-win-win-win for me!
Buzzfeed is the only site on that list I read occasionally, but like you, only when linked to articles. Actually the only sites I really visit regularly are here and AV Club for TV reviews.
I agree, and they often have breaking news more quickly than “reputable” news sources like the NYT and Washington Post. This is also rather true of the Daily Mail, lamentably.
Oh man. My productivity for the morning is SHOT. I hadn’t even thought about Buzzfeed Hamilton quizzes, but there are several. Schuyler sister – Angelica. Hamilton character – Hamilton (which I realized upon answering the first question was inevitable).
Also, totally agreed about Buzzfeed. I was concerned about them early on, and their community posts continue to be, in large part, content scraping nightmares. But they do have quite the collection of progressive, talented writers to generate actual journalistic content. It seems like every week I see another writer I enjoy/respect announcing they’re headed to Buzzfeed.
I always feel so betrayed when I accidentally click on an article and it turns out to be a community post. WHERE IS THE BACK BUTTON UGH NOOOOO
Now I’m confused. My Hamilton character is Angelica, but my Schuyler sister is Eliza.
Both are wonderful, of course, but can both be the same woman? Is that woman me? AM I AMAZING?
I took two different Hamilton character quizzes and ended up as Hamilton in one and Washington in the other. Am I my own mentor?!
My Hamilton character is Eliza, but my Schuyler sister is Peggy… I am also confused.
I think the only answer in your case though is that yes, you are amazing!
I know nothing of the Hamilton or Schuyler. But this I know with utter certainty: You are wonderful and amazing, dakimel.
<3 you, too!
I got Angelica as Hamilton character too! WORK!
I appreciate the hard hitting pieces Buzzfeed does like this informative and incisive piece on Daveed Diggs. http://www.buzzfeed.com/annamenta/whaaaaaaaaaaaaa…
I miss when Jezebel was great. Like in 2008 when I’d read their articles about re-reading their favourite YA novels. Or the time they went to American Apparel and tried on terrible clothes.
Jezebel is SUCH a train wreck these days. They have so many articles where I agree with the basic point but it’s so obnoxiously written that I feel weird and bad about agreeing.
Lizzie Skurnick’s book of the collected Fine Line columns is pretty fun–Shelf Discovery.
I miss a lot of the commenters from 2008-2010ish? I stopped reading when they did the redesign, which seemed in part to make it a lot harder for commenters to actually connect with each other (and notice when the mods were treating someone–especially a WOC–particularly crappily.)
I think a lot of us are here now. I know there are many of us on tumblr, too. (Former jez commenter HerGrace, left around when Dodai and Anna left and all the WoC were being run off.)
No dog photo? Sadness …
I feel like the puppy is in there somewhere among the leaves – the cutest of all Where’s Wally type scenarios.
I THOUGHT SO TOO BUT I CAN’T FIND HER AGHHH
maybe the puppy took the photo?
I’m actually glad of a break in the dog photos, since I got to the point where I couldn’t work out which Link Round-ups I had read as THEY ALL HAD A PIC OF THE PUP. Even if the pup comes back, I can at least use this one to differentiate between older and newer pup-headed LRUs.
who doesn’t love knowing that Shirley kept six or seven identically-colored cats because her husband said she could have no more than two cats, and this kept him from knowing?
I like this because I like to imagine her husband wandering through their house, just baffled all the time.
“I swear to god, I *just* saw that cat in the kitchen. What is happening here? Am I losing my mind?”
sometimes, they’re all in the same room, but she’s convinced him they’re very fast cats
Like that last episode of The Flash!
YOU ARE STANLEY, I HOPE YOU FORGET YOUR OWN NAME, STANLEY
I think my favourite part is that apparently no one knows exactly how many there were. Definitely more than two. Maybe six? Seven?
Hey, Lake Street Dive! Their record label is in my town. They are EXCELLENT live.
I saw them at a music festival this summer and they are indeed EXCELLENT live.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of my favorite books! Forever disappointed I can’t buy that much candy for a penny anymore.
This summer my husband and I vacationed in the same town my family did when I was a little girl, and I was devastated to find out that the penny candy store was gone. 🙁
I love that book–I’m always amazed by how smart and worldly and relevant it still feels. So many scenes just rush back to me–leaving her short story in the carriage belonging to the single mom, her horrible teacher calling her stories sordid, the flowers on her desk at graduation, and the conversation she and Katie have after she meets that two-timing soldier.
I always remember the scene where Francie is thinking about how Jewish women always look so proud to be pregnant, because they might be carrying the messiah. I dunno, it always stuck with me, as a Jewish person. Also the one where she’s in her office and she sees the first headline about the war, and she takes a moment to clip the heading and press her lipstick to a tissue and do something else, and save it all to remember.
Ugh such a good book, now I need to reread it for the eleventy billionth time.
I mean, I’m not telling you how to live your life, but you should really embrace the pie dream, wherever you are. Don’t let geography keep you down!
Hey, I am in Texas, and I don’t even have to go to Austin to live my pie dream. The #1 on their list is just some offshoot of the original, best pie shop in, far as I can tell, the world, Royer’s Round Top Cafe.
And I’m basically next door to Round Top when I visit my parents, so – even if I’m hesitant (for reasons) to visit my parents, I know I can get amazing pie.
It is not yet 9am in Minnesota, but I would probably shank someone for pie right now. Or, you know, go across the street and exchange money for pie, which has a far lesser risk of prison time.
I’ve been there! Those pies are extraordinarily good, buuuuut there’s another pie shop on 290 or maybe 71 about halfway between Austin and Houston that has the best pie in the world. It’s a coconut merengue. Angels wept, and then their tears were whipped into the foamy peaks atop a custard of coconut magic.
My pie desires will never be fulfilled because I am watching Twin Peaks and lust after non-existent pies. And damn fine cups of coffee.
Shirley Jackson and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Is this Link Roundup dedicated to Books I Read on Trains Sophomore Year?
I’m starting to miss all the books I left back at home.
Nicole, can I thank you for being so straightforward about how the money works? Because while it was inspirational to hear Mallory’s talk about the origins of The Toast, it did leave me feeling a little like I should go kick rocks because what is wrong with me that I wouldn’t be able to come up with the money to found a website myself.
Uh, I hope this doesn’t come off as rude because it’s certainly meant in the best way possible.
“I’m a woman blogger in a world where my only option is to marry rich…..”
That talk was 💯 but yes, not sure the financial side was meant to be more than just motivational, as opposed to a blueprint because not very many of us have 200k hanging out for whatever. I really appreciated Nicole’s tweets about the financial side, and applaud any time Mallory highlights how Bustle got all that VC cash. Where’s that pic of the dude with his laptop on someone else’s lap, or back?
muchísimas gracias
I’m voting you up because I love your username.
yeah, Nicole’s chat was a great corrective because I am a big loud IDEAS TRAIN and sometimes forget about things like MONEY IN THE BANK or PEOPLE’S NAMES and Nicole can very Spockily just add like, “Okay, and here are the special, extenuating circumstances that put us in that position,” and I’m like “oH RIGHT I FORGOT.”
It’s lovely (and instructive), though, to see how the dynamic combination of Big Ideas + Necessary Nuts and Bolts can result in creating new things!
Thanks for this comment–I was actually going to suggest in this very LR that more information would help some of us make further sense of that talk, and that articles about the nitty-gritty finances of things like this are something I read with wide-eyed wonder and a notepad at the ready. Glad to know I wasn’t the only one feeling a bit confused.
On a similar theme, here’s a link to an article about why some people become entrepreneurs and some only dream about it. Spoiler: people are much more likely to go for it if they have money.
I think I read a better article about this study somewhere, but I can’t find it now.
OH MY GOD there is an animated kids show with trans characters?!?!?! This changes everything, particularly how I will feel about my kid whining “I want teevee….” once I find a way to watch said show.
My nonbinary kid LOVES Stephen Universe. It starts off this goofy random show– with three non-gender aliens who present in female-looking bodies and live together so that’s fairly decent already– and evolves over time into something very poignant. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good and it plays with gender in some interesting ways.
It’s on Cartoon Network and the first two seasons are on Hulu. We currently buy a season pass on Amazon so we can watch them as they’re released even though we don’t have cable.
Steven Universe is mostly great. It has used the “man in a dress” trope as a joke at least twice in past episodes, which is really offensive to trans women, and is honestly also bad, boring writing. However, they’ve recently had Steven wear a dress in a genuine and endearing scene, so it seems like they are getting better on that front.
GRIMES’ NEW ALBUM IS OUT
GRIMES’ NEW ALBUM IS OUT (for streaming)
(no i am not grimes, but i wish. just very excited and wanted to share) (she skipped my town on her tour so i am not seeing her and i am vry sad about this)
Love Grimes.
SHE IS EVERYTHING. them Dolly Parton vibes on “California” are killing me rn. I’m like a tween girl when it comes to Grimes. LOVE HER SO MUCH.
I am Italian-Canadian but like, Northern Italian, like, one of the parts where dialect is super French-influenced. My one aunt by marriage is from the south and she talks like the capicola/gabagool article when she’s speaking Italian, always dropping the end vowels and making Ks into Gs and generally being more guttural, and it drives my mom UP THE WALL. “I can’t understand a word she says! What does she think she’s speaking, Hungarian?”
I understand that in an unhappy, unhealthy relationship Shirley’s prank on her husband is more than a wee bit problematic, but out of context I think it’s hilarious and I kind of want to try something like this on the Burgomaster. Someone tell me I’m not alone finding the humor. Where my Slytherins at?
I mean, I adore my spouse, but he does tend to tell a lot of stories. And people seem entertained, but people don’t live with him and haven’t heard the stories for 20+ years. I know I get that sickly indulgent look on my face when he starts in on one, and I think a Shirley-level prank would be a much better option.
Also, sometimes he flat-out makes up shit about his homeland, and sometimes he tells me weird but true things, and he delivers both kinds of info in the same biting-back-a-laugh way, which means I challenge him on it all, and then it turns out there are Sea Scouts in Ireland, and seven years later when we walk past a Sea Scout vessel in Dun Laoghaire harbor, he gets to point at it and laugh and laugh.
Oh, shit, did I marry a Slytherin?
I think you might have, bb. Congratulations and good luck?
Well, it’s been 22 years & I’m still alive, so, yay me!
DURMSTRANG
Totally worth it, would do this to my dad in a heartbeat and it would be totally out of love. “Dad, Beckett never wrote Watts, you just made that up for all of your silly what/watt puns.”
Should definitely try on my landlord, who has an absurd “only one pet” policy in the lease.
(Are we sure gaslighting is a real movie)
I also think it’s hilarious. I know it’s technically gaslighting, but honestly, it seems harmless to me. My friends have done similar things to each other, though we don’t usually keep the ruse going on for so long. We once convinced one friend that “discratic” was a word.
For real, though, I took the Pottermore quiz assuming I would be Ravenclaw, fearing Hufflepuff, and ended up sorted into Slytherin. My immediate thought was “Hey!! I’m not…oh, yeah, that seems about right.”
I knew well before I ever took it that I was Slytherin, but I was surprised I scored so low on Hufflepuff. Once someone has my loyalty, it’s pretty fucking impossible to shake it. I’m also tenacious as hell.
All of my sorting quizzes ever, up to and including Pottermore, have sorted me into Slytherin. I have given up searching for a different answer, and have chosen to accept my lot in life.
Can I just watch that gif for the rest of the day, instead of working?
[Idris just gave me a thumbs up, so I guess so?]
I was transfixed for a solid 5 minutes before I noticed anyone had posted below that gif.
This seems different, though, since when someone is introduced to a new word it’s “Huh, I didn’t know that,” not “Holy cow, I can’t trust my memory and myself anymore.”
I still regret not truly committing to my plan to convince my Dutch friends that “cromulent” and “embiggens” are real words.
Ok, that’s definitely different, because “cromulent” and “embiggens” are real words.
Oh, I mean, I once convinced my roommate that something that really happened was a dream b/c she wasn’t supposed to see it and I didn’t want her to go blabbing to everyone, and we laugh about it now.
Of course, you couldn’t pull the same move now because we have the Internet.
she went to the library
the books were checked out for over a year
i can’t but respect her psychotic attention to detail
That’s taking playing to win to a higher plane.
I’m not saying it was a kind thing to do but in long term relationships lots of people are unkind to one another in much sloppier ways.
The only thing stopping me from pulling a similar prank on my fiancee, who I love utterly, is the knowledge she would do the exact same thing to me and do it better.
Honesty about one’s own limits and abilities is crucial.
I have always found gaslighting-type behaviour makes me really uncomfortable, even when it’s completely harmless (as a child I would feel like I had to explain to those around me if I did anything like change my clothes partway through the day, because what if they saw me wearing something different to what they remembered and thought they were going mad?), so I would not, but I accept that I have weird hangups about this. (On the plus side, it means my partner and I are both great at communicating with each other what we are doing and why.)
I’m glad your partner recognizes that about you and would never subject you to something like that.
The Burgomaster knew what he was getting into from day one.
I loved it. It reminded me of when my boyfriend once tried to convince me that Jimmy Cagney was in a film called “I Eat Nothing But Grapefruit”. (He’s very good at saying ridiculous things with such a completely straight face that people often believe him).
I wouldn’t have kept it up so long, but if I pulled that one off on my boyfriend I’m very sure he’d love it. But then, me and a couple of friends once convinced some friends visiting from Denmark that there was this big, complex Canadian holiday called Canada Goose Day that they just happened to be visiting for. It involved doing a big barbeque in someone’s back yard with a friend’s dad’s goose decoys as decorations, and making up “traditional” food and games all with a goose theme. I was kind of amazed they fell for it, even after we told them things like “At any time, you can point to someone and yell ‘Goose Goodness!’ and they have to think up something good about geese.” They seemed to find it funny when we came clean at the end of the day.
Omg, “Goose Goodness”! I am dying of laughter.
I am American and since we are Canada’s neighbor you would think I would have enough cultural awareness to know that is a joke, but nope, you could have told me about Canada Goose Day and I would have believed you as well. In fact, now I’m a little sad it doesn’t exist!!
This reminds me of the Documentary Now! episode about a festival dedicated to Al Capone in an Icelandic town. It’s played so straight you can totally believe it is real.
Some people juggle geese!
Right here with you.
I would like to talk about the throat singers from Trudeau’s swearing-in ceremony please! Watch this video and tell me these little girls aren’t the best thing that’s ever happened in Canadian politics.
And then listen to this adorable interview with them and their mom.
And then die of #giggles.
I would like to watch this over and over and over again. I WILL watch this over and over and over again. In between the #giggles.
Plus, Degrandpre is a boss surname. I’m sure Cailyn’s partner will enjoy taking it, some day in the future, should she wish to bestow it.
I was ready to lean in to giggling, but then I got weepy and felt a little silly. Still, it’s sweet and beautiful and giving me a buoyant feeling, now that I’ve stopped sniffling, so 10/10 would watch again.
Kids today!
Also, I just went off and learned so much about Inuit throat singing. I love learning about the musical traditions of different cultures, so thank you for that!
They were on q as well! And did a mini-performance! (As I post this, audio isn’t up yet but will be later today.)
If you loved Cailyn and Samantha, definitely check out Tanya Tagaq.
I second the Tanya Tagaq recommendation. Her music is intense and amazing.
Yes! Tanya Tagaq is great! I also saw her this summer (at the same festival I saw Lake Street Drive coincidentally!) and Tanya was a very intense musical act to see. She did some amazing throat singing.
That part in Raising Demons (or is it …Savages) where Shirley describes talking to his college students, and their dreamy questions about him, you KNOW she knows, she knows and trolls them so hard, but that dude has them eating out of his hand. Fuck him and his study and his inability to drive himself to judge that beauty contest.
It is INFURIATING.
And the part where Shirley goes on one vacation in her entire life, for a single weekend, and has to call up all of her children’s friends to see if their moms will host sleepovers for the Jackson children because obviously her husband can’t take care of his own children for 48 consecutive hours. And you know, and Shirley Jackson knows, that he is absolutely taking a student home for the weekend.
Ugh I hate him I hate him. Frankly, it’s incredible that Shirley raised 4 kids essentially single-handedly and wrote these incredible stories and essays and then EVERYONE is just like ‘man but did you notice she was FAT??’ I feel like there’s an undercurrent of ‘well of course Stanley cheated, she didn’t maintain proper fuckability ‘ to it.
<3 Tiny Pies place it is the BEST
It’s my experience that while practical jokes often sound like a good idea, they seldom are.
I really loved Dylan’s comic about trans identity and representation. Not just because I wanna high-five his grandma, but also what he says about representation in media because it reminds me of some young’uns on places like tumblr that I’ve seen trying to erase things like Rocky Horror from significance. Like, I get that most of the older texts that feature non-cis representations of gender or that explore gender do not fit the current landscape (in terms of things like terminology and understanding). And I get that, like most older texts, there’s problematic elements. But, at the same time we should be looking forward and seeking out new and better texts, we have to acknowledge that things like Priscilla or Rocky Horror or even To Wong Foo were really important at one point in time to people who felt completely lost and alone. Yes, we need to push for more and better representation now. We need to discourage the constant of casting cis actors for trans roles. But, we can’t just forget the past and what it meant to people.
Haven’t read the comic yet, but as an older queer piece of toast, I thank you for this comment. I no longer weigh in anywhere when people are prepared to raze things that were important to my growth because being shouted down as a TERF (I am the farthest thing from a TERF imaginable) gets tiresome, but tilling history under generally serves to help the worst parts grow back stronger while the people who wanted to be your allies feel unwelcome and thus stand by and watch.
Oh, deleted commenter. Maybe you’ll get up to speed soon.
Lake Street Dive is SOOOOO GOOOOOOOODDDD you should listen to their whole album!
(I am not in any way affiliated with the band, I am just a fan)
Speaking of money in online media… Does anyone know if Edith is permanently back at The Hairpin now that the two most recent editors up and quit with no explanation last Friday? She’s posted a couple things this week, but it doesn’t seem like it’s a permanent thing.
Oh Hairpin, first love of mine, I wish you’d come back to us. You’ve been a mess for far too long.
I’m so confused by the whole situation, it’s like some weird performance art.
Yes! Even Choire’s statement seemed….flippant? Needlessly obtuse? I don’t know, maybe I am a humorless hag, but it’s just all seemed very odd to me. :/
Wow! What is going on over there? I miss the Hairpin. I don’t want to cast any shade at Haley and Alex, who seemed like lovely people, but I had zero interest in the stuff they were posting over there (seemed to be writing for a very different demographic, frankly) so I basically hadn’t read for months… Hope things work out for them/the ‘pin.
Totally agree.
100% agreed on content. I also think I hate their redesign, especially when (for a LONG time! LONG!!!!!!) the comments were severely fucked up.
I have no idea what’s going on. It seems like she’s just putting random content up until someone else comes along to take over, which is sad and confusing. I got SO EXCITED when I heard she was back.
I feel like this link might be of interest to Toasties: people who have reported made-up criminals to the police in order to avoid punishment for things they have done. The Brittany Norwood one seems particularly creepy. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34729001 (Also of note, although sadly unsurprising: the fact that these imaginary perpetrators are so often black/Hispanic men.)
I was looking through a book on forensic linguistics at work recently, and it talked about the Susan Smith case. When the story was still that she had been carjacked, her “appeal” to the public – unlike her husband, who did not know she was responsible and appealed to viewers “not to give up on these two little boys in the search for their return safe to us”, she just talked about howw unfair it all ways, rather than actually saying anything concrete to the public. RED FLAG. (Google Books, Forensic Linguistics by John Olson and June Luchjenbroers, 3rd edition.)
See also: Ashley Todd.
Forensic linguistics is my dream job.
This is by far my favorite instance of that phenomenon, because it is nerdy rather than racist:
Explanation from tumblr: “THIS ONE TIME A KID IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD WAS LATE GETTING HOME BECAUSE HE WAS BUYING DRUGS SO HE TOLD HIS MOM HE GOT KIDNAPPED AND SHE MADE HIM REPORT IT TO THE POLICE AND HE DESCRIBED THE KIDNAPPER AS COUNT OLAF AND THEN THIS HAPPENED”
(Argh, sorry for the HTML fail!)
*cackles wildly* I adore this.
Kids shouldn’t walk outside in that neighborhood. They might experience Very Frightening Danger.
Cornelius Eady wrote a book of poems called Brutal Imagination from the perspective of the man whom Susan Smith made up. It is brilliant, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the last few days.
oh, the Charles Stuart case is one of my mom’s go-to stories. (Her little sister moved to Mission Hill right around the time this happened, and some family members were Very Concerned about it being a dangerous neighborhood where (black) criminals ran around shooting pregnant white women, and then it turned out the actual murderer lived 5 minutes from the family home out in the suburbs.)
I am 100% on board with cruelty to Shirley Jackson’s husband, but even if you aren’t, I feel like lying for years about how many animals live in your shared home is actually more gaslightery than telling him he made up a movie?
Yes, I was on the maybe the cats thing is OK if they’re indoor/outdoor and there really are only two inside the house at any given moment, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a big fuck you to someone’s explicitly stated boundaries …. which is not a healthy at all for a relationship. So call me a big flip-flopper, but I am now on team both of those are just honestly gaslighting and should not be tolerated any more than cheating or other relationship breaking behavior. But I think the cats would make me less scared I was loosing my mind? I think most cats are pretty interchangeable because I am not a cat person. Still, I’d feel pretty bad if my partner did that to me, but more in sense of wondering a who is this person? Is it safe to eat anything in my home? Should I be worried about being smothered with a pillow too? Which goes to show that I tip towards the paranoid.
I hear you, but it really seems that when your partner is serially cheating on you and otherwise treating you like trash…fucking with their explicitly stated boundaries in the area of “how many pets are in the house” is not that despicable. Especially when he’s not paying enough attention to the house to realize that there are more than two, which is really what it comes down to.
When you’re in a marriage like that and feel unable to get out for whatever reason, sometimes you’ve gotta take some ground back where you can. And I don’t see the point of continuing to respect his boundaries forever when he’s not respecting yours or you.
I regret that I have only one like for this comment.
100% agree.
“But I think the cats would make me less scared I was loosing my mind”
Yes–both are awful, but the movie is more gaslighting and the cats is more boundary-violating.
Yes to Lake Street Dive. Most of my musical taste ossified decades ago, but I still occasionally find new artists that I like (“new” in this case being “has done some of their best work in this millenium”).
Why does gaslighting seem insidious in most cases, but somehow adorable when Shirley Jackson does it to her philandering husband?
It depends on the people in the relationship and how vulnerable they really are to gaslighting. A lot of people would be genuinely disturbed and suffer from this; others would find it very funny and not be troubled at all. Nicole mentioned above that on the basis of the very long book she read, Stanley would be in the latter category.
Yeah, I think my response has to do with what seems to be the balance of power in the relationship. Like if it really made him doubt his sanity and that was her goal, it’s fucked up no way you spin it. But if it was like a little way for her to take some power back and fuck with him playfully when he was regularly fucking her over not-so-playfully, it strikes me as less insidious.
I agree entirely! Balance of power is a great way to frame it. Also, I completely misread the tone of your first comment (like…judging others who found it adorable, lol).
Ah, I can see how it would be easy to misread it that way. Nope, as someone who has been gaslighted, I still found it sort of playful and very clever.
I dunno, it still strikes me as creepy. I think part of it is that it doesn’t actually fix any of the problems in their relationship, unlike other power-balance-changing things like putting your foot down about your own boundaries.
Stanley: HOW DO THESE TWO CATS POOP SO MUCH, IT IS A VERITABLE OCEAN OF POOP IN HERE
Shirley: _(ツ)_/¯
I posted about this in Cocktail Hour, but if anyone has read the novel Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell can we talk? I’m so, so confused about how I feel about that book, as a concept and in execution, and none of the reviews I read seemed to have the same weird feelings of unsettling voyeurism and general weirdness.
The consensus I've seen on tumblr (and from at least one of the animators, but it was in tumblr a while back) is that Stevonnie is nonbinary, which, as an nb adult who came to that realization later than I might because I literally didn't know it was a thing, I appreciate. I also read Steven as, at a minimum, comfortable with femininity, and possibly some flavour of transfeminine.
Thank you for confirming my thought … kids these days don't understand Crap Marriages of Yesteryear.
I'm voting you up because I love your username.
Also BMO in Adventure time is non-binary, and clear about it.