This is my puppy, Sansa. She is only three weeks old in this picture (she’s five weeks old now), and she’ll be living with her mom until she’s twelve weeks. I talk to her like she’s already here. We have had dogs, but this is my first puppy, and I would love your Puppy Book Recommendations.
Since I specifically wanted a Puppy Who Would Become The Size of A Brontosaurus and also Live For A Thousand Years (I adore big big dogs and they usually keel over tragically soon), I wound up choosing a breeder who has a specific big-dog-longevity-and-no-fucked-up-backs-and-hips bent and a two year waiting list, and have donated the same amount I paid for her to my local municipal shelter as a dog carbon offset. Which is unnecessary to mention, really, and sounds defensive, but I don’t want people to think I’m just merrily swanning around BUYING DOGS like a MONSTER without making some ethical tradeoffs and thinking about it with seriousness and intent.
Me right now Q: What IS she, though?
A: Fuzzy and genetically diverse, like a cuddly FrankenDog.
Michelle Goldberg did a really good job parsing how SOME Sanders supporters criticize Hillary in a straight-up sexist fashion:
But it’s a different thing altogether to be contemptuous of the desire to break that ceiling at all. It’s a different thing to act as if women’s weariness at being always and eternally ruled by men is inherently elitist. The problem with the progressive men who’ve lately become experts on feminism isn’t that they won’t vote for Clinton. It’s their defensive petulance at any mention of anti-Clinton sexism. “Are you planning to vote for Bernie Sanders when primary time rolls around? If so, I am discouraged to report that you are a sexist, and also tremendously uncool,” the MattBruenig.com post says with peevish sarcasm. The writer sounds like a conservative grumbling that you can’t criticize Obama without being called a racist.
NICHELLE FOREVER
Laura Ortberg Turner on the Storyline controversy (if you are a Christian or just interested in the issues of racism and homophobia in Christian culture, make sure you follow Jeff Chu on Twitter, he’s great):
Public critique of a public event is not shaming, nor is it unloving or inappropriate. Our history as Christians is shamefully full of racial exclusion and outright racism, and the homogeneity of the church will be its death if nothing changes. “By 2040 the racial demographics of this country will no longer be predominantly white,” W. Anne Joh wrote in the New York Times. “If any church group, including U.S. evangelicals, wishes to stay apace with this momentous change, and welcome nonwhite members, its leaders and members must listen to the experiences of these new groups.”
Children of same-sex couples will not be able to join the Mormon Church until they turn 18 — and only if they move out of their parents’ homes, disavow all same-sex relationships and receive approval from the church’s top leadership as part of a new policy adopted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In addition, Mormons in same-sex marriages will be considered apostates and subject to excommunication, a more rigid approach than the church has taken in the past.
The new policies were contained in a handbook for lay leaders that was disseminated on Thursday to those who administer the church’s 30,000 congregations around the world. The church made no public announcement of the change, but it was leaked to the news media and confirmed by a church spokesman.
The candidate who was so bad that “nobody” seemed like a valid alternative to voters (HT: Ren):
Over 40 percent of voters in his district voted for nobody instead of him. No other candidate for council in Boston registered anywhere near the number of blanks Linehan received. An additional six percent of voters wrote-in someone else. If blanks alone were counted as an actual opponent, the District 2 race was the most competitive in the city on Tuesday, even more so than District 4 where an incumbent lost to a challenger.
Friend of The Toast Christina Tesoro on falling in love:
I lost my innocence — not my virginity, but my innocence — to a boy I met that summer. He was my first skillful, enjoyable kiss; my first hot-and-heavy make out session; my first date (Central Park, where I got to second base for the first time, and was simultaneously thrilled and ashamed that it had happened in public). He was a boy I hardly remember now, except for a vague sense of irritation and wounded pride. At the time, though, there was no one more compelling: “He lives in Brooklyn, plays the trumpet, sings like Frank Sinatra, has smoked pot and gotten trashed,” I wrote in my diary, emphasis mine circa 2006. Sweet summer child that I was, he was the epitome of sex, drugs, and rock & roll.
If you have not read this feature on attending Beyonce’s dad’s horrible seminar, BUCKLE THE FUCK IN:
It’s hour six of Mathew Knowles’s day-long seminar “The Entertainment Industry: How do I get in?”, and he is yelling across the theater at an usher who just told him new microphones are “on the way.”
“If this were a Beyoncé show and you said it was ‘on the way,’ your ass would be on the way,” he shouts at her from the stage. It’s not the best burn, but we get the gist.
The room is silent until another usher appears with two fresh microphones so the audience Q&A can get going. Weirdly, it takes a few minutes before the crowd loosens up.
Lisa Kolb on the second year of being a widow:
Year One is a struggle merely to eat, merely to get dressed in the morning, merely to think straight while confronting a crushing list of knife-twisting administrative to-dos, like car title transfers and insurance claims and endless calls to robotic customer service reps to tell them to cancel your husband’s account/subscription/delivery because he is dead.
By Year Two, those things are largely resolved. No small feat, yet it is all replaced by an equally daunting, though less obvious, list of second year to-dos, like learning to live with a new, solo identity after years of partnership. Like knowing that other people must think you should be functioning and working at a back-to-normal level again, and being ashamed and frustrated that you are just not. Like facing the immutable truth that he is still — still! — gone, always will be, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Tyler and Joel’s “Who Would You Rather” column has come to an end with one final, majestic entry: The Rock or Vin Diesel?
Joel: I understand that, and goodness knows I appreciate a lot of things about The Rock. His massive forearms, his painted on hair, his love of French culture. But I also feel like you’re giving Vin a bit of a bad rap. Sure he seems unpredictable, but there’s a real innocence about him that contrasts with his rough exterior that I find truly endearing. I love that he records really earnest dance videos to Beyoncé songs. I love his insistence that Furious 7 will win an Oscar. I love that his strong ties to his chosen family. All his weirdness suggest a depth to me that the Rock simply does not posses. As kind as he is, I think what you see is pretty much what you get with dear old Dwayne, whereas Vin is like a puzzle you pick up at a Cracker Barrel gift shop: simple and wooden, but impossible to solve!
TIL that Daniel Craig is rocking out to Enya in his downtime. pic.twitter.com/TvDfPvx9xd
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) November 8, 2015
I bet that sexy fucker has CANDLES and cashmere throws and shit, too.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) November 8, 2015
Look at that fluffpuppy, though.
I have such Sansa envy. Is she a Shiloh?
I think she’s a direwolf.
She looks like an American Alsatian to me.
I am being DELIBERATELY VAGUE bc I do not want my breeder to get a lot of traffic from The Toast and realize a horrible misandrist is taking her puppy and claw her back, but you can email me if you want to know more!
OH MY GOD SANSA
i can barely form words that puppy is so cute soon the link roundup will be 100% puppy pictures all the time and i cannot wait
(also I finished Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries this weekend and I need to talk about it/get fanfic recs/someone please tell me there’s a series four coming at some point PLEASE)
SQUISHIEST FLUFF PUPPY
LET US BECOME FISHERS OF MEN
(always down for the miss fisher)
Most erudite smut I have ever read was a MFMM fic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3198410
Every Cloud is apparently working hard to make season 4 and/or a movie happen, no definitive news yet, though.
I watched it online via Tunnelbear (international VPN) when it first aired in Australia and basically wailed at my friends until they caught up (via the same method) because I HAD FEELS and needed to talk them out. So. I feel ya.
Enjoy!
I have also read this fic and can recommend!
Also, please to enjoy this vid which is fluffy and fun: https://vimeo.com/144976639
There is some SOLID Mac femslash out there if that is your thing. (it is mine and all I want is more of it and also more sherlock femslash, because the rare bird that is sherlock femslash is also the best bird.)
I can’t believe I haven’t even thought to go looking for that. I shall have to remedy that this evening after work.
Yes! And then come back here and tell me all your feelings. Mac is just such an underappreciated gem of a character who needs her own spin off.
Everyone talks about Phryne’s wardrobe and I do love it, but Mac’s suits are JUST as fab.
I’m really tempted to try and put together a Mac cosplay for Emerald City Comicon this spring…
I can’t believe no one has snapped up the chance to do a 1920s lesbian lady doctor solving medical mysteries show. I would watch the hell out of that.
All the Mac femslash I’ve found is Mac/Phryne, which just doesn’t work for me for some reason. Have you read any good Mac/OFC?
This one is gr8 http://archiveofourown.org/works/4945849
I spent most of my last week of unemployment writing and researching the history of gendered Happy Meals in the US and am super proud of it. I’m on mobile so I can’t properly hyperlink, but: http://tattooedtrilobite.com/2015/11/07/barbie-or…
I also find this incredibly interesting! We generally get Happy Meals when we’re on long car trips (frankly, a hamburger, milk, and apples is better than a lot of road food out there), and it’s been split whether I’m asked about “boy” or “girl” toys or given the actual toys to choose from. I was also recently pleased to find out that the toy was just “Dracula,” with no options. Once I was actually pushy about it, since the cashier did *really* want to give us a girl toy (lady, it doesn’t affect you!), but it was a crappy pink barbie car, instead of a cool yellow car, and L wanted the yellow car. Also, she’s 2. She barely has hair. She doesn’t know what Barbie is, and I’d like to keep it that way.
I’d be really interested to see if McDonald’s works as a microcosm of the larger timeline for gendered marketing of children’s toys, and whether it’s a follower or a leader on that front.
What always bothered me as a kid was that whichever gender toy you chose, the other gender was underrepresented. For example, I only ever could get one male doll for Polly Pocket. For My Little Pony, I just assigned a male gender to two of the horses since I think they were all female. For Barbie there were a few Kens but they were so similar I couldn’t tell them apart. I had to make do with a Princess Leia doll to go with GI Joes. I always just wished my toys could reflect the real life situation where there people come in several varieties. Also, of course, they were almost all white…
Most of my Ponies had absent husbands in San Francisco for this very reason. They were working unspecified jobs in order to support their families back in Ponyland. The one definitively male Pony I had was the doctor, because doctors were boys.
I have no idea why childself seized upon San Francisco (a place I have still never been) for this, or why it seemed equitable to farm one entire sex out as essentially indentured servants so their spouses and offspring could live in luxury back home. I don’t think I ever went to a female doctor in early childhood, so I suppose that explains that bit.
Have spent entirely too much time over the course of my life thinking about the gender dynamics of late 80s MLP, yessirreebob.
My favorite McDonald’s happy meal toy moment ever was when they were running a superheroes set “for boys” a couple years ago (it might have been alongside MLP “for girls”). The cashier asked the mom in front of me if she wanted to boy or girl toy. Her little girl proudly proclaimed that she wanted Batman, and the mom just looked straight at the cashier and said “she’ll have the Batman toy.”
Bless you, awesome mom.
This is about gendered clothing, not toys, but it weirded me out when I was working in a clothes shop, and I realised all the clothes aimed at girls said some variation on “I’m pretty and well-behaved” and all the clothes aimed at boys were basically saying “I’m cool and badly-behaved.”
This was from age 3 upwards. It’s ridiculous.
It’s the same thing for infants these days! I was trying to find clothes for my niece-to-be at several stores lately, including Target and Kohl’s and Carters, and it’s SO HARD to find anything in neutral colors or otherwise not plastered with BOY and GIRL. My sister-in-law really likes the super-girly things, but I was trying to get a few onesies to start the collection before we knew what sex organs the baby would have.
Wow, I didn’t realize that gendered happy meal promotions had actually increased since the Barbie/Hot Wheels era when I was young. That Spider-Man one in particular has me kinda stonked and wondering about What Even Is Our Culture.
Yeah, that one REALLY threw me for a loop when I saw it. I couldn’t *not* mention it!
I would’ve given that ish back, and gotten a real spider-man toy. (I was a…rather self-assured 8-year-old)
I was a pink-loving girly girl (and also a self-identified feminist!) who had zilch interest in cars or robots and even I would have thought that was bullshit.
(I did, however, as a teenager, have to go to. . .I think Wendy’s? to buy all the Wishbone toys. Those were pretty solid.)
Oooh, I’m excited to read this. As a girl who enjoyed Hot Wheels more than Barbies as a child, I was always so embarrased when my mom would request “one boy happy meal and one girl happy meal” for me and my sister (embarrassed because of the confused/concerned looks from the clerk taking our order, not because of my mom).
What a great mom.
Such a great article!
That’s a really interesting piece! I’m a marketing nerd so I eat this stuff up!
Have you read about the rise of gendered toys in general? AFAIK the theory goes that as ultrasounds became more popular in the late 70’s/80s, people started buying more gendered baby things, since they now knew the gender of their unborn child. Prior to this baby stuff was generally gender neutral because no one knew what was going to turn up!
This also had a correlation with the rise of demographics and marketing to children during the 80s/90s; the general theory in marketing is that the more accurately you can target someone and create a product just for them, the more likely the are to buy it (or some bullshit like that, I have a degree in this crap); so as children became a more and more profitable market, marketers started targeting specific groups of children more, the easiest of which is Boys vs Girls.
Prior to the 80s-ish, most toys were pretty gender neutral in colours/look (although there were ‘boy’ toys and ‘girl’ toys, if you look at pictures there was much less PINK FOR GIRLS and BLUE FOR BOYS. A lot of toy versions of things (kitchens, hoovers, whatever) were the same colour as the full-sized version, none of this hot pink play kitchen business). And prior to the 70s-ish children weren’t really a market that anyone paid much attention to, that changes when marketers realized that parents would buy pretty much anything if their children annoyed them enough.
Personally Happy Meals weren’t a big part of my childhood, McDonalds was an evil to be avoided at all costs. Occasionally I’d get one of the toys from a second hand shop, but I clearly remember realizing they were shit and didn’t do anything and I’d rather have the real toy please.
I used to work in a relatively upscale independent book/toy shop, and the politics of gendered displays and hand-selling were really weird sometimes. I always felt relieved that girls seemed to have no problem going into what I was told to set up as the “boy corner” with pirates and spy gear.
OTOH, I do think I noticed that in certain categories the pricier/posher versions of toys are less gendered–the wooden play food we sold was pretty much all boxed bright neutrals, as opposed to the pink plastic ones I saw other places.
Oh, yes. The more money you pay, the less gendered toys are. We have become minimalists in my household thanks to this.
Don’t get me started. Its a class conspiracy, working class people are trained (by eachother) to keep everyone down and fulfill the prescribed roles for them, including gender. Middle class children get high-quality toys that stimulate imagination and freethinking, working class children get crappy made plastic toys that reinforce thought patterns about being told what to think. Middle class/affluent children get to be whatever they want to be, working class children are told to NORMAL.
(Think I’m kidding; find a high quality, expensive, toy car, its probably made of wood, natural colours and a bit shapeless, this is so that a child can look at it and fill in the details with their imagination. A cheap, plastic toy car is rigid, clearly defined and over-stimulating, it tells the child that it is car, what type of car it is and what colour it is.)
This sounds a bit tin-hatty I know, but I grew up kind of between both classes and have seen it in action.
I see this kind of thing and it’s really obvious when you connect the dots that what you’re saying is true, but it horrifies me that there are people out there actually talking about this or planning it out. Are there? Are there people pulling the strings and laughing maniacally as they do? (Likewise with GOP programs to ground down the poor, or religious stuff that specifically harms women, even as both say words that seem to be otherwise.)
It’s kind of terrifying, but probably even more scary if it’s subconscious by the people with the money, both the ones who own everything and the ones who make the decision of what to buy for their household.
It’s true though. It will only become more obvious as the hollowing-out of the middle class proceeds apace. Upper-class kids are trained to imagine and risk, while lower-class kids who don’t have safety nets are trained to normal, as you say, to be rigid and not to take risks (and then get blamed for not being the flexible innovators the future claims it wants in its workforce).
OMG, this is one of the reasons why I mostly hate toys. Thank you for articulating it.
My first nibling is incoming; I will *not* be That Aunt who buys her loud plastic crap, not least because it will all be HERE IS HOW TO GIRL, SMALL GIRLCHILD!!!
(I’m pretty sure my mom will be That Grandma, though, so it’s gonna be a tough row to hoe)
My people! I love when I say something pretty out there on the toast and I find people who feel the same!!
I have the opposite problem SIL is committed working class and consumer, so the kids have more clothes (in gender prescribed colours) than they’ll ever wear and so much cheap plastic toys that get played with once before they either break or are replaces by something newer and shinier. Grandma on the other hand isma total hippy who can’t keep her feelings to herself. Family gatherings are fun. Granny likes to turn the kids clothes inside put if there’s a logo on it or big seams.
I’m somewhere in the middle, I live abroad so I always want to bring presents, but I want it too be things that will last and that they will love. I tend to buy books, but I did get my nephew new dolly clothes for Xmas last year for the Steiner doll granny gave him, and this year I got him a ‘girl’ toy for his birthday (goldiblox, its an engineering toy made for girls, but it s also just a really cool toy!)
Pitting one side of the market against the other (boys v girls, you must pick a side) is a great way to sell more stuff, because it reinforces the idea that the things we own are signifiers of who we are, while simultaneously raising the stakes on owning the right things, lest we be misidentified, mocked, or excluded.
Boys-v-girls marketing also enabled manufacturers to effectively sell the same thing twice to each family; back in the day they’d have been able to re-use the neutral baby clothes from Baby1 with Baby2, regardless of gender, but now? God forbid you cross the streams and use BabyGirl’s old stuff with BabyBoy. You have to buy ALL NEW STUFF! because babyBoy gives a shit if his boppy is blue. (Of course he doesn’t, but your friends and neighbors, not to mention the grandparents, apparently do, and will judge you accordingly!)
I don’t know why people don’t see this!!! Its so blatantly obvious.
There was a recent second baby added to the family, a girl coming after a boy. Now their mother is a very practical woman, but she’s also a total consumerist. Before baby: ‘NewBaby will wear FirstBaby’s clothes, I don’t care if its a girl, I’m not spending money’ After baby: Explosions of pink! BabyGirl was in a dress at 4 weeks old! I swear to god, the child has never worn a single thing that wasn’t pastel coloured, and her big brother never wore anything that was a solid boy colour.
sigh.
I mean, not that this makes any of it okay, but some of those dresses are so damn cute. 🙂
In seriousness, it’s part of the problem; we’re not somehow un-conditioned because we’re able to recognize in any moment that the Way Things Are isn’t necessarily the best way. So we say “Oh no, it doesn’t matter, my baby will just wear whatever I love or have on hand,” but we might also walk into the store and see the adorable dress and be like, “Squeeeeeeeee!” Since you describe your friend as a consumerist, there’s a little more conditioning going on here than simply gender roles, but the same argument can be made.
My point: even the most brilliant among us (yes, hello Toasties, we are all brilliant) get sucked into the things we’ve been taught, and it can be a slippery slope of constantly second guessing yourself. Maybe you just like pink dresses? (“Oh but why, WHY do you like them?! Aaaauuuuggggh!” you ask yourself)
…and even now I feel like maybe I’m not being clear on my stance about gender roles and expectations and colors and toys and clothes and equality, but instead of blathering on in an attempt to prove my feminism and progressivism, I’ll just back away slowly from the keyboard and get back to work.
Some of Bernie’s hardcore supporters really REALLY remind me of New Atheist Bros. It’s uncanny.
I’m sure there is a big overlap in that Venn diagram.
Imagine if Hillary was even half as cranky or loud as Bernie is. They would tear her down to shreds. God bless Bernie, I love that guy – but he doesn’t have to watch every fucking thing he says or every gesture he makes like Hillary has to do. It’s insane. Also I posted this after reading all the misogynistic shit people are writing about Hillary on Gawker. Why did I do that to myself?
I support Bernie, but I am so done with being talked down to and insulted by Bros when I say that their line of criticism is misogynistic.
I am like, the hard-core leftist/happy-to-call-myself-a-socialist in most of the circles I run in, and yet, I’m so fed up with Bernie’s supporters that I’m basically full-speed behind Hillary. The logical contortions you see when people try to explain why their critiques aren’t really sexist are fucking ridiculous, especially when there are so very many legitimate things you can and should criticize Hillary for.
I was at first going full throttle for Bernie. Then a few black activists interrupted him on stage. I don’t know what to think of the incident itself, but the next day I witnessed some of the craziest liberal racism on FB and Twitter from Bernie Supporters. Made me realize fast enough that we were dealing with a whole subset of Bill Maher type dingbats.
I’m at “Meh, he’s our best option, I guess” now
I WANT WHAT CANADA HAS, I WANT JUSTIN TRUDEAU you guys
is that too much to ask for fuck’s sake
I’m thinking it’s more of a circle.
Nah, some of the atheist douchenozzles are too libertarian for Bernie.
I get the feeling that some of them are just so relieved not to have to get behind a lady candidate.
The relief is palpable in among the lefty bros I know. It’s confirmed what I sort of already suspected, which is sad but also… ugh, not surprising, actually.
I know, right? I understand that some of us are to Clinton’s left. (I’m better aligned with Jill Stein, who’s the presumptive Green party nominee, than with either Sanders or Clinton.)
If I *had* to choose between Clinton and Sanders, I’d choose Clinton in a heartbeat. I value her diplomatic experience (and believe that she’s capable of and interested in diplomacy, to a greater extent than any other major party candidate). I’ve had enough of yelling dudes who are never wrong to last me the rest of my life, TYVM– I don’t want them in public office representing me.
I sort of took him more for a lefty Ron Paul personally
In non-link roundup, continuing open thread, news: I finally asked for a raise! And in a very ironic way, its equal pay day today!
I was no where near as scary as I imagined (I knew this would happen), and I got a sort of yes. My manager has to go to the higher ups, but he agreed that it was due. We also didn’t talk figures, but I’m going to let them offer what they think I’m worth (or what they think they can get away with), and I have an almost definite job offer that’s a 4k bump, so I can throw that in their face if they try to under cut me.
(This sounds very combative, its not like that at all, I’m just in a very ‘FUCK YEAH I’M GONNA BEAT YOU’ mood. and using a job offer to get a raise is the usual tactic in my company/industry, so I’m not worried about going there.)
Yay, congratulations on having the guts to ask!! I hope it turns out well.
That does not sound combative! At least, I bet no one would say it sounded combative if a dude said it!
I hope they offer you a respectable figure and/or you are able to negotiate something that highlights/rewards how awesome you are.
It doesn’t sound combative at all, this is just seems like basic, reasonable negotiations to me. Good work!
Thanks! I’d been struggling to come up with a way to ask, like should I try to be polite? should I justify why I want more money (rising costs blah blah blah)? Should I go straight to threatening to leave?
Eventually (with much Toast support!) I kind of realized ‘I want more money’ is a valid enough reason to ask for more money. I don’t work here out of the goodness of my heart, and sure I’m grateful to be a graduate with a job, but there’s plenty of jobs in London and I’m currently being paid a pitifully small amount, so they should pay me more.
So yeah, my argument was essentially; I’ve done good work this year, I’d like more money. Lets just hope it works!!
Yeah! And you know, they don’t pay you out of kindness, either; no one’s giving you a job, they’re paying you to do work that they need done! If you do it well, and you could get paid more for doing the same work elsewhere, then yes you absolutely should get more money.
Hooray for capitalism!
well, look, let’s…let’s not get carried away here
Hooray for YOU
Hooray and congrats! My own experience is that having done it once makes it easier the next time and the next. And you shouldn’t apologize for feeling combative one bit on this one. So much of capitalism in general/employment in particular is set up to be adversarial. So, FUCK YEAH, BEAT THEM GOOD!
Thanks! I knew it’d be easier to do than all the thinking about it, and I know it gets easier with practice, but its just another one of those things that no one teaches you in school! So much of this adulting thing you’re just expected to know how to do!
Ugh, it’s so easy to see how this is one of the best examples (ie, totally *the* worst) of CaptialismPatriarchy. Because yeah, learning how to shop for a mortgage or attach a new button are skills that we really should all be equipped with, but it’s also a thing where everyone at some point is like, ‘ugh this needs a new button’ and we can go find a youtube video or hire someone to help us out and the thing gets done.
But not only do we not tell people *how* to ask for a raise, we don’t tell people that we’re *supposed to* ask for a raise. We don’t tell people how to be asked for a raise, we don’t tell people how gender intersects with how we hear and make requests. We tell people that raises and professional advancement will go to those who are good workers, we perpetuate the myth of an omnipotent, meritocratic workplace.
Which of course perpetuates the reality of an unexamined, institutionalized set of norms that favor those that have always been favored.
Oooh, wow, apparently I needed to write a righteous rant today. Thanks for being here for me, Toast.
I need more thumbs.
Wow, good points! The sort of generic, thrown-around idea of good work = you will be successful only works if you act a little demanding and entitled to it at some point, which people rarely address. Hard work + humility will not get you there.
I wrote a whole thing last night but couldn’t log in so I think its been lost to the internet forever.
Basically I agree with you completely and its been fascinating to see the conditioning and instincts I have as a woman in action and I can totally see how the pay gap is a thing now because a lot of woman wouldn’t put themselves out there like I’ve had to because they don’t have anyone cheering them on and telling them its ok to act this way.
Stonnie Dennis’s videos about training puppies and working dogs are pretty great, IMO, and his croons of “oooh, lil Malinois puppies! ooh lil puppies!” are stupid cute.
Hi Toasties! I have missed you all!
I had a baby 3.5 weeks back. She is perfect in every way, the cutest baby ever made. She is also a tiny tyrant who rules with a wee iron fist, employing against me various techniques banned by the Geneva Conventions, including but not limited to sleep deprivation and nipple biting. Long may she rule.
Congratulations!
YAY BABIES!
I’m sure she is absolutely perfect.
Awh yay that made my day
Congratulations!
Aw, I’m so glad to hear about your new overlord! Congratulations & here’s a free pass to laugh like a maniac at the next person to suggest that you “nap when Baby is napping, dearie”
SERIOUSLY THOUGH.
Congratulations!
Thank you, everyone! Toasties are the best.
Here is a pretty good post about football players at University of Missouri going on strike until the university president resigns due to his failure to address racism:
http://www.thenation.com/article/black-mizzou-foo…
I don’t actually care about colleges in Missouri (even though this is the one my parents went to) and I SUPER don’t care about college football, but man do I care about black people and strikes.
Shut that motherfucker down.
“man do I care about black people” reads a lot weirder than I thought it would, but I dunno. I stand by it.
I was listening to NPR’s coverage of this this morning! I actually got a little teary listening to it. I’m actually mostly an anti-football person but the team (the striking players and their supportive teammates) definitely have my support.
This. The fact that the coach and the athletics department are supporting them does feel meaningful, and it surely says a lot to the protesters and particularly to the football players that they are valued as people.
Gary Pinkel (Mizzou coach), for whatever personal issues he’s had, seems to be a pretty good person. Especially on the “coach of a major CFB program” grading curve. Between this and the Michael Sam saga, I’ve been impressed with him and his staff.
These guys are amazing! A lot of athletes/teams would probably keep their heads down and think ‘its not our problem/place’, but these guys are realizing the power that they actually have! Football brings in huge money for colleges in the US, if you want things done you have to hit the people at the top where it hurts!
I like that both many of their white teammates and the athletics department administration are joining them in solidarity, too.
These guys are always saying about how football builds teamwork and so forth, this is what you guys get.
They seem to understand that what really makes a strike work is solidarity!
I really hope this works (which is should, the board of trustees or who ever is going to look at how much money they will loose and immediately fire that racist prick) and then I hope that a lot of other movements can learn from this, always hit them in the pocket;
Like did you know that professional cheerleaders earn almost nothing! I wonder what would happen if they unionized and went on strike (Or even better went on a ‘work to rule’ protest and only did the work their paid for!)
The Board of Trustees at Mizzou is already meeting to discuss it. I bet that the guy isn’t going to get fired; they’re supposed to be offering a “diversity plan” or something to address the problems. Honestly, getting something in writing might be better than specifically getting rid of this guy, especially if this makes it clear exactly how much college football players have.
Pretty much everyone in my life is a rabid Mizzou fan and as a football-hater I’ve always resented it, but yesterday my this news was wall-to-wall on my facebook feed. I… finally feel like I have some connection to the social institution that I’ve barely tolerated for a lifetime?
And now Mizzou president Tim Wolfe has resigned.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/university-missouri-pr…
I was about to come in to post this. Tell me again about how ineffective protest movements have become.
Wowza. You know, when I lived in MO, I was absolutely pessimistic about the political scene in the state. Figured that if I wanted to work in activism I needed to get out fast, because politics in that state is a godforsaken black hole and there was no way anybody could ever make progress. But since I’ve left, a lot of people have accomplished incredible things. Still a loooong way to go, but I’m proud.
Yeah, it seems like the racist portion of Missouri society might have made a huge mistake building their entire culture and economy off of labor that black people were essentially providing for free.
Not to mention that the corrupt, sleazy old man contingent (i.e. most of the ruling class) may be realizing that they can’t just spend their time philandering and dining with lobbyists while openly resenting the very existence of the people of the state?
*did I mention that I’m still bitter?
That was pretty much my thought top. Football is not my thing. Colleges I didn’t go to just aren’t something I pay much attention to. But I’m still really glad to hear this is happening! I hope it sets off protests at more schools. Football players at colleges that really care about football have some real power they can wield if they choose to do so.
Toasties, I spent the weekend in Brussels! Unfortunately, I managed to catch a terrible cold right before I left, so I couldn’t do all the cool things I wanted to do. I still recommend Brussels! There are a lot of really beautiful turn of the century houses, which is basically what I’m looking for in a city.
AND being indisposed meant I got to spend a considerable amount of time in my friend’s luxurious apartment, watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, because Belgian Netflix actually has season 2, unlike the (sometimes) useless German Netflix.
And in major German news today: There is an ongoing process against a terror cell called NSU (two years now I think), and the main defendant is finally going to give evidence!!
Hope I’m not out of line here but can we talk about this? http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/slate_fare…
WAIT WHAT
*hyperventilates*
*scrambles for a pen and paper*
*writes down all my problems*
That is fake, Mallory Ortberg isn’t real.
Obviously. I mean, she could be. I always thought she was a character created by Nicole and a team of writers.
This sounds made up
GET OUT
WHOA whoa whoa. First thought, this can only be good for the advice-seekers of the world, second thought, but the commenters at Slate are so MEAN.
Gosh I hope they don’t come over here!
Neither my work or home laptops will load Slate comments, and from the snippets you see on the page, I can only assume that’s a good thing,
I am so amped to delete them I cannot EVEN. Imagine our Deleted Slate Comments Of The Day.
Now I feel reassured. Was starting to wonder if I still had a safe place here. Should never have doubted.
Awesome, there’s something about the particular brand of Slate self-superiority that’s going to be so great to see deleted.
Somebody over there was already complaining, at under 100 comments, that Mallory is too young and her picture is terrible. They’ll adapt, though.
Wat
OH MY ACTUAL GOD
…so this is apropos of literally nothing but I was at a bottle shop with my boyfriend the other day and saw a beer called Houblon Chouffe and stared at it all weird. Boyfriend was like, “What?” And I was just like, “I recognize her from the Toast!!!” Needless to say, he was very confused.
This is literally the best compliment/recognition in my whole life <3
WHAT I CAN’T EVEN WHAT
this came out of NOWHERE but I am here for it
!!! I have long read Prudie for the horror, now I will have to read her for the delight. Yay, Mallory.
Hooray! I can finally read Dear Prudence without guilt over giving pageviews to the slut-shaming, rape-apologist temperance monster Emily Yoffe!
YES I CAME HERE TO DISCUSS THIS ALSO! What???
AHHHH I THOUGHT THEY WERE ANNOUNCING LATER IN THE DAY! YESSSS!!!!
Mallory will not be doing any less here at The Toast, but who could say no??
HOLD THE FUCK UP. This is exciting, but now those crazy LWs will be receiving good advice instead of Emily Yoffe’s particular hit and miss brand. For instance, I honestly don’t know how someone who has been paid to give advice for TEN YEARS would suggest it’s toooootally not an issue that your husband is asking you to dress up like a minor acquaintance of yours in bed, and that’s your problem and you need to get over it. I’ll miss that.
Truly I will not miss Prudie’s horrible work advice, nor her “Girls, don’t ever drink!” advice, or practically anything else.
Ugh God yes ‘You were drinking so really you need to re-evaluate your terrible life choices before I even attempt to address the problem. Here’s a link to AA.’ Fuck off.
Can we have Mallory spend her first couple weeks (months?) going back and re-answering all the letters Emily fucked up??
I forgot about that one, how can she be so wrong sometimes.
> , I honestly don’t know how someone who has been paid to give advice for TEN YEARS would suggest it’s toooootally not an issue that your husband is asking you to dress up like a minor acquaintance of yours in bed
What the hell..?
Bless that Slate writer for throwing in the link to the twincest letter because that is the crown jewel of Dear Prudie letters.
See that one is great, but my heart will always belong to the woman whose mother in law was poisoning her – the resulting follow up made that easily the best situation I have ever read about in an advice column, and I am addicted to advice columns.
Oh wow, I missed that one. Time to go searching.
Me, too.
For anyone else, here’s the direct link to the original post: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
Followup http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
I couldn’t find it on Slate, but it was on a message board for moms, and I found it as a syndicated post on the Star Tribune: http://www.startribune.com/turns-out-that-mom-in-…
Basically, the next chance she had was an Easter buffet with prime rib, etc. EXCEPT THERE WERE PLACE CARDS at the table settings, each with a little ramekin of horseradish and another of au jus. So while before her husband got to their seats, she swapped the ramekins, ate a delicious meal and her husband had the explosive diarrhea instead of her this time.
Apparently he really did know the entire time that something was going on, but didn’t want to admit to it??? because he was furious with her for not just accepting her fate, so she went out for divorce papers ASAP.
This is my most favorite Dear Prudence letter ever because MY GOD, WOMAN. I just re-read it and it is even more horrifying than I remembered.
Also, what is UP with her husband? Were he and his mom just in cahoots to slowly poison the wife? Had he taken out a life insurance policy on her recently? I MEAN.
I wonder about this ALL THE TIME!!! STILL!!!
Maybe she is still a Prudie reader and Mallory can put out a call for an update? I NEED TO KNOW HOW THE DIVORCE TURNED OUT AND WHETHER SHE PRESSED CHARGES.
Pleas let this happen!!! There is still so much that we, the world, need to know about this!!
I need follow-up on the LW whose creepy uncle wouldn’t let anyone go in his house, and the family was debating on whether to go in there or not.
(I remember that Prudie tried to follow up with them and they never responded. WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM??)
WHAT OH MY GOD
WAIT
I live in Canada and slate has decided non Americans don’t deserve to see content without paying for it, and we get only five free articles a month. Now I have to be careful and ration to read Mallory! AUGH
I don’t know if it will be the same for you, but here in the UK it always says that and only lets me read five articles in a session, but if I go back on it the next day it seems to have reset and tells me I still have five articles left in the month.
I don’t know if it will work for Slate, but my local newspaper has an article limit and I can get around it by using incognito mode/private browsing.
I get around my paper’s limit (which is really dumb because we SUBSCRIBE to the dang thing) by turning off javascript on the site. Bonus: it also removes pop-over ads and auto-play video! (which my newspaper site is RIFE with, also it stops Slate’s comments from loading)
my fave complaint in the comments so far is : “Yes but how many [comments] will leave when the advice is ‘Go find yourself a new man in tindr girrrrrrlllllllllllllll!’ ”
Mallory– pls respond
Ok I wasn’t gonna read the comments over there but if that’s the kinda response people are having, I need to witness it
I LOOKED FOR IT BUT COULD NOT FIND IT, bless himmmm
YES dogs the size of brontosauruses! I fear my husband will never agree to another dog, because our last dog was mostly Rhodesian Ridgeback and certifiably insane … he was beautiful and huge and sweet but made for life on the savannah, not the city. We expended a huge amount of effort exercising that dog to little avail, and I don’t think my husband believes that there ARE dogs that will be happy with a single walk a day. Nicole, please post copiously about how wonderful Sansa is so I can use your experiences as ammunition to wear him down over the coming years.
Ditto, this, but with a border collie surprise (“lab mix” …riiiiight).
HA, that’s how we ended up with our ridgeback … a lab rescue claiming he was a lab mix with a lab temperament. Yeah no. Will not be shopping with that lab rescue again.
Yeah, our dog now lives out with my dad (who has an acre of land in a semi-rural area), and no longer has panic attacks about the stairwell, garbage trucks, subway grates, thresholds, shopping carts, and balloons. I miss him, though 🙁
Aw, we’ve got a lot in common, unfortunately — Our dog knocked our toddler down a (luckily short) flight of stairs while being neurotic after he’d just come in from an hour of exercise. We realized we couldn’t keep him safely and that he was showing no signs of mellowing in his middle age. We found a ridgeback rescue and he now lives on a literal ranch and is probably 1000% happier. I still hate myself for failing him, though, and miss him a ton.
That sounds about like every border collie I have ever known. Poor skittish critter!
I live in an apartment with a no-pets lease, but in my imagination, I have a border named Basket, which is short for Basket Case.
I am no dog expert, but I have heard that greyhounds are actually quite lazy and docile.
Boxers, too, for big dogs who prefer to snuggle on the couch instead of dashing around all over the countryside. They don’t live very long though 🙁
My greyhound is super lazy and docile (granted, he’s super elderly now, but he’s always been that way). Plus you can pet him without having to bend over. Perfect for people with back issues! My standard response for people who ask if he needs a lot of exercise is “He takes his retirement very seriously.”
I want a greyhound one of these days, though right now I am very happy with my wee mongrel who loves naps. (She also loves walks and is very happy exploring the outside, but she really, really loves naps and blankets and warm human bodies to cuddle up to.)
They are! They can run very fast for about a quarter mile and then they would like to go nap for the remaining hours of the day.
My SIL has a greyhound and that seems to be very true!
Greyhounds are the greatest city dogs ever. Our late beloved Houdini only barked once in four years, and it was in her sleep (and scared her out of the room). We took a morning walk and an evening walk, and Mr Ipo once tried to take her on a jog but she made it half a mile before lying down and refusing to get up. She slept about eighteen hours a day and was scared of our cat. Downside: she’d been crated (first as a racer and then as a brood mom) for her first nine years, so she had degenerative spine issues that ended up paralyzing her on her last day with us. My husband cried more when she died than when his grandfather died (as did I). I can’t wait to get another greyhound, but we’re waiting for the youngest baby dude to be a bit more steady on his legs before a dog is subjected to our house.
This may not apply to greyhounds, but a lot of people think this about big dog breeds like great danes; Yes they are lazy and docile in character, but they do still need a lot of exercise! I learned about this after my brother talked about maybe getting a great dane because they had been told this, they live in an apartment and both work full time!
So lazy yes, inactive no!
(I love big dogs so much and one day I will have a farm and a pack of rescue giants patrolling my perimeter.)
“A lot” for a greyhound is a walk a day and maybe on the weekend you find a nice fenced-in baseball field or something where you can let em off leash and watch them zip around in a circle until they fall over, and otherwise they’re furniture that farts. Temperaments vary but the rescue grey I had growing up got sick of our walks before I did, generally.
they’re really not typically doglike in a lot of ways, especially the rescues, who have been specifically bred and conditioned their whole lives to chill in a crate all day and occasionally come out and chase the thing with a bunch of other dogs.
Greyhound *puppies* probably are a terror, but ex-racers have typically aged out of that stage by the time they are adopted. Most greyhounds will get tired of their walk well before an average able bodied adult human will.
Word, I took Dini on a 2-mile walk once and I thought she would murder me in my sleep. And there was a stop halfway through for an hour.
Ok but you gotta pick The Rock, right?
Don’t get me wrong, I love Vin. I love his dancing to Beyonce and Groot as much as the next gal but…the Rock’s arms are the size of my head! It seems important to investigate that..for science.
The Rock for sure but possibly just because I first became aware of him when I went through a wrestling phase in university, when my libido was both strong and impressionable.
I am with you on this. I don’t even LIKE biceps on a guy (I want them skinny AF until we get to the lower half of the body) but something about Mr. The Rock really does it for me.
You crazy person, biceps are the best.
Well, shoulders. Shoulders are the best. Bitable shoulders. But biceps. Yep. Lots and lots of biceps.
Rock 4ever.
I really like “The Dog Who Loved Too Much” (and its companion, “The Cat Who Cried For Help”) by Nicholas Dodman. I’ve heard his later stuff is less compelling. And John Bradshaw’s “In Defence of Dogs.”
SANSAAAAAA.
Hello, my golden-brown and delicious Toasts. I am in SF and spent yesterday in Napa doing typical Napa things. Today we voyage southward and I get to figure out how to write a resignation letter BECAUSE YOUR VIBES WORKED AND I HAVE AN OFFER LETTER IN HAND
ILU all, you are the A+ best.
Hooray!!!!! Enjoy your fabulous honeymoon flavored with the sweet, sweet taste of impending “fuck off, terrible job, you can no longer ruin my life.” (Would that be a suitable resignation letter?)
It’s… tempting. Can’t lie.
Yeeeeesssssss! Congratulations!
Sending out vibes into the Universe that your new job will be all that you hope and dream! Congratulations!
Congratulations! You deserve all the best things!
Nice!! Way to go. May this job have zero interns and a million colorful paper clips.
(Colorful paper clips do a strange amount of making me happy at my desk.)
Law clerks, instead. Fingers crossed.
YAY!
Toast Vibes are powerful.
And this is awesome news!
You are my hero for today, as I am trying to achieve the same goal! If you have any leftover vibes please send them my way!
Those eyes on that puppy!
I bring Monday morning Hamilton and LMM gifts. It was a big weekend for Hamiltonians! LMM was on Jimmy Fallon on Friday, 60 Minutes featured LMM and Hamilton last night, and poet Sarah Kay did an amazing reading at the Friday Ham4Ham. Gifs and video links in reply. Warning: LMM reached near-lethal levels of adorability on the Tonight Show.
if i had to describe lin-manuel miranda in 3 words tbh
And, because I love it:
Lin right after killing his first freestyle reacting to being praised by Jimmy Fallon
And the 60 Minutes stuff from last night:
The broadcast segment (with transcription)
The making of the Hamilton cast album (!)
“Hamilton”: The backstage tour
Great, except that I had to note this:
Um, did I miss it where a SINGLE ONE of the women in the cast said anything on any of the 60 Minutes segments?? Not feeling very great about that right now. Not even a close-up of one of the women in the studio.
Wtf. What the effing fuck. 🙁
I really worked to not equivocate or apologize for that statement, too. For making the observation. Ef the patriarchy.
On a sunnier note, you owe it to yourself to check out the short vid of this #Hamiltoddler:
@littlebrownjen’s Tweet
I’ve created a #Hamiltoddler, @Lin_Manuel. She also doubles as a Hurricane. All. Day. Since 7:45a. cc: @DaveedDiggs (Daveed retweeted it, because of course)
The vid’s only playing on my phone when I open the link in the app
Ugh, LMM, you need to STOP IT with those faces, you are too adorable.
Speaking of, someone’s working on the “If Lin-Manuel Miranda Were Your Boyfriend” article, right?
Right?
Also also – agreed with the lack of ladies saying anything. It was the only thing which bugged (okay, that and the EXTREME CLOSE-UPS. I want to see the staging! I want to see the cast!) Three different segments and you couldn’t show Phillipa or Renee Elise answering at least one question?
Speaking of, someone’s working on the “If Lin-Manuel Miranda Were Your Boyfriend” article, right?
YES YES YES tweeting this now
ETA: YES
And yes to everything you said about segments.
SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THE 60 MINUTES THING. (and by thoughts, let’s be honest, I mean “rant”)
Yes, there was one really weird close up of Renee singing, which was super weird because it was clearly not, like, in the studio, but when she was ON STAGE and SUPER SWEATY because that’s what theater DOES TO YOU, but was just WEIRD. Which, okay, whatever, fine, I have barely done any video projects at all, but I get that sometimes you don’t have the footage you wish you had and you pick something that’s less bad, and who knows, maybe otherwise she wouldn’t have been in there, or there was something in a wider frame that 60M didn’t want to show, or whatever, but… WEIRD. And I’d give them a pass on, except…
That they didn’t include much of anything from the actresses was annoying, but it was MUCH MUCH worse given that they actually, seriously, really really said the following:
“In “Hamilton,” women get equal time.”
No. No they don’t. Look, the women get WAY more time and importance in this show than they did in my AP US History book, they are real characters with agency and motivations and I love them, but it barely passes the Bechdel test. And this has to do with the material and story LMM was telling, I do think he did pretty well with what he had, but they don’t get equal time. But if that was true, if that was even CLOSE to true, why did the piece basically ignore them? Way to fucking undermine your GOD DAMNED POINT.
And then, in the bonus online content, they were, what, INTERVIEWING EACH OTHER? So rather than share the interesting content they got where they filmed the making of the cast recording, rather than sharing what they were able to film when they took time away from the actors, they interviewed each other about interviewing these people???? Which is weird enough, but when you add the racial politics about a bunch of white people in traditional media (with the power that comes with that) interviewing a bunch of scrappy, up-and-coming people of color? rather than showing the actual interviews very much????? Whaaaaaat????
This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the info. There were some really great shots of the set/props/etc that I looooooooved as a technical theater enthusiast, I loved LMM talking about Camelot, I loved the shots of the cast recording….
And my favorite bit, the bit that will stick with me for a VERY long time, was LMM talking about how he went to high school with people who were smarter than him, CR pushed him on that, a bit, because by that point, you can tell that CR is pretty freaking impressed by LMM—
Charlie Rose: So why do you think I’m sitting here talking to you and not sitting here talking to one of your classmates?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: ‘Cause I picked a lane and I started running ahead of everybody else. So I, that’s the honest answer. It was like, I was like, “All right THIS.”
“I picked a lane.”
….
“I picked a lane.”
Damn. That exchange. Damn.
(okay, i’m going to go do some work now).
I noticed that “women get equal time” line as well, because- yeah, it’s just plain not true. I don’t think the show treats women badly (though I have some friends who’ve seen it and were not impressed with Maria Reynolds’ role) but they certainly don’t get equal time.
Excellent rant.
Which is weird enough, but when you add the racial politics about a bunch of white people in traditional media (with the power that comes with that) interviewing a bunch of scrappy, up-and-coming people of color? rather than showing the actual interviews very much?????
Yes, that was SO terrible. Can I quote any of y’all’s comments here on Tumber (with whatever attribution you want)? I want this to be more a part of the conversation.
go ahead, and i’m cosetthetable all over the internet, including my mostly ignored tumblr : )
Awesome thank you!
ETA: Tumblr is being stupid at the moment. Will post link here when it uploads.
Here we go http://howdoyouwritenonnnstop.tumblr.com/post/132…
I included the positive stuff too so we don’t sound (as much like) cranky feminists. *eyeroll*
ETA: Oh damn, I’m sorry, I spaced the part where you have a Tumblr and didn’t link it to you at first. Just corrected that, but it’s already been reblogged once. Sorry. 🙁
hahah, don’t worry about it!!
The “women get equal time” bit feels sort of like what we started hearing after Sotomayor and Kagan got appointed to the Supreme Court- oh, look, we actually have multiple women! They’re doing things! Equality!!!!
Except we all know that more time and equal time are very different things.
Um, did I miss it where a SINGLE ONE of the women in the cast said anything on any of the 60 Minutes segments?? Not feeling very great about that right now. Not even a close-up of one of the women in the studio.
Wtf. What the effing fuck. 🙁
I’ve been feeling that with all of the media coverage I’ve been seeing. Tons of interviews with LMM, naturally, but also a number with Leslie and Daveed. GIMMIE MORE RENEE AND PHILLIPA PEOPLE
GUYS. I have no idea where these came from, but some cut Hamilton songs drifted across my dash yesterday. One’s Congratulations, an elaboration on Angelica’s part in We Know. It’s fantastic, especially when compared to the soaring rhetoric in Hurricane. Hamilton, you DUMMY.
There are some other cut bits posted on that tumblr, too, but I don’t have the links on hand. You’ll find: a version of Burr’s ten things you need to know that rewinds and lets Hamilton have his say, a better copy of the John Adams rap, and a cut reprise of Dear Theodosia that makes me want to cry.
Dear Theodosia (Reprise) http://broadwayreprise.tumblr.com/post/1296418749…
The Adams Administration http://icantbelievemientuscalledmeadick.tumblr.co…
Ten Things One Thing
warning: this is different version of Ham’s speech before the bullet, so lots of feels http://icantbelievemientuscalledmeadick.tumblr.co…
Congratulations http://icantbelievemientuscalledmeadick.tumblr.co…
In general I find these much more explicit than the material in the show, which is great for me to hear as a fan and even cathartic (especially Congratulations!) but I think cutting them was the right choice. Moreorless.
I think they might be from a reading, or readthrough. Not sure.
I just like the lyrics. I mean, who wouldn’t have fun chanting
You nuisance, with no sense
You’ll die of irrelevance
Go ahead you can call me the devil
You aspire to my level
You aspire to malevolence
I LOVE THAT SONG SO MUCH. I’ve listened to it enough to nearly have it by heart, too. It’s so great, especially the gumption it takes to tell the sitting President of the United States “you’ll die of irrelevance.”
Btw I meant explicit in the sense of about the background or exactly what is going on and what the characters are thinking. Just in case that wasn’t clear. I love me some ambiguity in my art.
Yes, I agree that cutting “Ten Things One Thing” was the right choice, though i love getting to hear it as deleted material!
REALLY hoping he gives us one day that Benjamin Franklin “diplomacy happens at night” song he mentioned on Twitter.
that Benjamin Franklin “diplomacy happens at night” song he mentioned on Twitter
Ohhhh man yeah. I bet he had so much fun writing that.
Also LMM has some of the demos on his SoundCloud. Him singing all the parts, it’s fun.
I WAS THERE THIS WEEKEND. Sarah Kay was fantastic, and of course Hamilton was everything I wanted it to be. I have not yet seen the 60 Minutes thing.
Eeeeeee amazing! That’s great.
The Fallon interview was fairly annoying because he barely let LMM get a word in edgewise, but the freestyle portion was fun.
As an Australian for whom Hamilton has no meaning, I read “LMM” and thought “Lucy Maud Montgomery”. SUUUPER confusing that she would be on Fallon. (Though if it could be engineered, I’d be there for it.)
Oh. Oh… Daveed Diggs. In reply. I’m gonna say NSFW?
And
Oh. Oh.
I am at work you can’t just do this to me
*devil emoji*
oh.
oh my.
Gnh
You are doing heroic work here. *insert heart-eye emoji*
It is my extreme pleasure.
MY HEART
Hi, yes, emergency?! I’m currently suffocating on the tiny squeaks of delight I’m trying to suppress at work.
I know, you warned me. But I was Not Prepared.
How could anyone be.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE NEW DEAR PRUDENCE?
Mallory is the next Dear Prudie!? How could something so wonderful happen to meeeee
http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/slate_fare…
The Rock or Vin Diesel is a very hard choice but I have to agree with the logic above.
If this is all hypothetical anyway, I don’t see why choosing is necessary.
We too got our dog 12 years ago from a breeder (really, like a family on a farm) and I’ve gotten flack for it, but I had reasons. I like the idea of your donating to a shelter the exact amount you paid. That was nice.
Anyway, we went out to visit the family on the farm and got to meet the mother of our pup and the aunt and the granddaughter of the breeder, who took care of our pup and his siblings (and cried when we took him home) and this was basically how we did things when I was a girl (way back in 70’s and 80’s) and how my mom’s family had done things when she was a girl (and on and on) and I don’t know if we’ll do that again with our next dog, but it was nice for me and everyone involved.
We just lost Rusty (said puppy) and we’re all going through a lot and honestly, I regret nothing. Well, I mean I do regret ever having to put him in a kennel when we went on vacation, because he hated it, and I do regret dog-sitting for a truly horrible dog that one time after Hurricane Sandy because he bullied Rusty, but I don’t regret how we got him.
Anyway, gist of it is, so happy for you Nicole. Long live Sansa!
We have one rescue and one from a breeder (a corgi), similar to where you got yours (they also breed cows). She (the dog) was going to to be kept for breeding but that didn’t work out for some reason, so they made her available to buy.
I’m ok with people getting puppies from breeders only because I’ve dealt with enough rescue dogs with aggression and dog fights are awful and trips to the emergency vet cause the shelter didn’t bother mentioning to your roommate that his new dog that’s 10x the size of mine has a history of aggression. So, um, feelings on this.
Not to discourage people from getting rescues, cause that’s an awesome choice to make, but you do have to be prepared for the risks that come with that and shaming people who want to have a better idea of what they’re getting (or, rather, the chance to raise the dog themselves so they don’t have latent issues that pop up from past abuse) is a totally valid choice. <rant over>
Yea, my mom had a nightmare rescue dog, sadly, and so I saw it first hand. That was a big thing, because this was my first dog at a new house, my husband’s first dog ever and I was working and trying to get pregnant and just, really, so much going on. It felt like the best option for us. Even typing that comment above, I got so nervous that this was going to blow-up on me, but I mean, if Nicole could talk about it, so could I! Also, thanks for your support.
My partner preferred this route with our current puppy. He wants to “know where it came from and what it has been through” because my partner and I prefer dogs that resemble small elephants. (current puppyface is 120 lbs of energy) We reason that bigger dogs are judged more harshly if they have behavior problems than smaller ones, so we would rather not face the heart ache of defending a dog that might bite or nip due to a bad past or incomplete training. If we get it as a puppy and ensure proper training and behavior corrections, then we feel more confident in our dog and his behavior.
It sucks because we often feel we have to defend the fact we went to a breeder, but he’s perfect for us, and I think there are many different ways to complete a family with a furbaby.
Thumbs up to this. 90% of dog stuff I stumble on on the internet are about people bragging that own a rescue dog and they are the best humans in the world for doing such a wonderful thing.
I fully support rescues and would love to get a shelter dog one day if I can, but as someone with pretty bad allergies (and as someone who never owned a dog before) there’s a very limited number of breeds I can choose from. It bugs me when people go over the top with their pride in rescues and using “friendly social coercion” to shame people who get dogs from breeders. Like, there are reasons! I don’t see a lot of people having to explain why they chose to become pregnant instead of adopting so I really don’t see why that culture needs to exist for dog-owning.
I have a squooshy teddy-bear faced dog who I love with my whole heart. I might never have been a dog owner if one of my student’s parents hadn’t brought puppies to the classroom to show the kids, and if I wasn’t able to ask about her family – all non-shedding – yorkies and shih tzus, size and trainability – my puppy was very trainable which was important because my family are not Indoor Small Dog People and I had to win them over with adorable tricks and good behaviour.
The good: my best friend’s wedding was beautiful! I looked great in the tuxedo jacket that the Inexplicably Smug Tailor sneered at (“It’s a wedding, you should wear something…nice”), thank you very much, and everything went off smoothly!
The bad: a friend just uninvited me from an event I’m co-hosting at her place NEXT WEEKEND due to a fight we had six weeks ago. So now I have to uninvite the people I invited, and it’s super awkward, and I had a panic attack about it that did kind of ruin the last day of the wedding.
I’ll just be here looking at floofy Sansa for awhile.
What. That sounds like a friend/party you are better off without, TBH. (FWIW, I would uninvite them by saying something like, “hey, long story short, we are all ~uninvited~ to X’s party; wanna come meet up at Fabulous Bar with me instead?” And I bet they all will say, “Totally weird. Fabulous Bar sounds great!”)
Thank you! Yes I was thinking I might give them the option of going anyway, after checking in with the other host? It’s a whiskey potluck, and it’s so fun, and there will be other people who don’t know anyone, and I was just talking it up to Possible New Friends this weekend.
But getting dinner or drinks with ME is a better choice.
I am nervous that my copy of Fallout 4 has not shipped yet and it is supposed to be here tomorrow!
Amazon’s telling me Thursday. I will be…displeased…if that is the case.
Mine still says tomorrow, but I am worried. Especially because (first world problems ahead) after convincing me to take the Amazon deal and get a hard copy for the PS4, my fiance decided to do the digital order for himself on the Xbox so his is already preloaded and ready to go at midnight. I will be so jealous if he gets to play tomorrow and I don’t!
Crossing all my fingers for it to show up on time. I’m looking forward to the steam controller that is supposed to show up at my house tomorrow.
Also, in regards to your comment on the open thread about Tales from the Borderlands, I finished it over the weekend and yes Eps 4&5 were amazing. Now I need to go back and replay it and make other choices. Although the person who died on the rocket? Still not okay with that.
I have it pre-loaded already (I don’t think I’ve bought a physical game copy in years). So excited. My wife has to leave town Thursday – Sunday so that’s my week right there.
There were many things that convinced me to go PC this generation cycle, and my experiences with a Disc that went in my Xbox over Skyrim were definitely very many of them.
…with the rest being that so many of the legacy series that I play being PC-only, so I’d need to keep a reasonably up-to-date PC either way. Which is my way of getting to rant about WHY BLIZZARD do you hate Starcraft so much if you had just RELEASED IT LAST WEEK I wouldn’t be dealing with this tug-of-war for my soul tomorrow.
Oh god, yeah Starcraft is this week too isn’t it? There goes all my spare time (I mostly play 2v2 with my friend with that, so I’ll just save the campaign for later and play mostly Fallout I think).
If you like Bethesda’s games PC is definitely the way to go, if only for all the mods.
I am sad that my PC is almost certainly not powerful to run Fallout 4, and even if I bought an Xbox One or PS4 I’d also have to find a decent TV too. So I’m just going to picking up on second-hand enjoyment like a child with his face pressed to the window of the toy shop.
Also, the launch trailer was corny as Kansas in August, but I loved it anyway.
Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa Sansa
I just wanted to say that thanks to a link roundup from a few weeks ago, I found out that there is a place to donate books to women in prison like 5 blocks from my house. So I took a donation there and they wanted to know how I’d found out about them, and I mentioned the Toast, and this old lady gasped and said “We’re on Toast??!?!?!!” and was very delighted.
(I didn’t specify that they were essentially linked from a link, because she was so excited and I didn’t want to be a bore.) So anyway, thank you!
THIS FILLS ME WITH JOY!!!!!!!! Also, good for you!
Thank you for this reminder! I saw the link at the time but it had no Canadian organizations and I thought “there must be some here, I should look them up, for my bookshelves are groaning with double-stackedness and require a purge.” but forgot until now, so I’m putting this here: http://www.prisonjustice.ca/organizations/b2p.htm…
For any Canadian books to prison donations.
That’s the best story of the day (non-Mallory-division) (but who would want to compete in the Mallory division?)
That story made me smile and get those little happy chills you get sometimes 🙂
I found this article in the Guardian this morning, and I want a billion more articles on the subject: a trunk filled with letters from the 17th century were found in the Netherlands: excerpt from article:
“An appeal for help from a desperate woman has been opened and read more than 300 years after the man it was sent to refused to accept delivery – not surprisingly, since the wealthy merchant in The Hague must have suspected it contained the unwelcome news that he was about to become a father.
The letter is part of an extraordinary trove of thousands of pieces of correspondence, never delivered, many still unopened and sealed closed, found packed into a leather trunk and stored away for centuries in the Netherlands.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/08/unde…
I want to know if the descendants of the writers and recipients can be found; I wonder if the entirety of the letters will be published in book form. I want to know everything!
Oh, they so need to follow up on that dickweasel’s descendants!
official letter informing them that they are 300 years late on their child support payments
An appeal for help from a desperate woman has been opened and read more than 300 years after the man it was sent to refused to accept delivery – not surprisingly
I am so upset about this 300 years too late.
And “not surprisingly”–accurate, I suppose, but not the adverb, of the many apt adverbs available, that I would have chosen.
Oh man, that dog is too cute. I hope she gets lots of Link Roundup pictures!
Anyone want to talk about the new Mormon policy? I’m a relatively recent ex-Mormon, but all of my family and most of my friends are still pretty devout. I’ve pretty much had to avoid Facebook since Thursday, because for every thoughtful or empathetic thing someone has posted, there have been five “it’s for the good of the children, isn’t it wonderful to have old men who want to help the kids of the evil gays” or “people who are against this policy are the real bigots,” or even “I don’t understand the policy, but I fully support it because the church can literally do no wrong.” It’s awful. And I haven’t said anything because I’m living with my extremely devout mom right now and don’t want to cause real-life fights (and probably because I’m a coward). But in a long history of the church doing awful, bigoted, harmful things, this one might take the cake.
I’m not Mormon and have only known a handful throughout my life, but I was raised conservative-evangelical Protestant and am Catholic now, so I know from homophobia. I read the article this morning and am horrified and disgusted, and honestly surprised, because there is enough hatefulness in this world already and I really thought that most religious traditions were making steps toward progress, not away from it. I agree that this does so much more harm than good, and it’s so OBVIOUS that I can’t figure out why the synod (or… whatever you call it? I think synod is right? Council?) hasn’t figured it out yet. Just … arrrrgggghhhhhhhh.
I’m really surprised too, because the Mormon church has actually been taking baby steps towards more inclusivity and understanding in recent years. Everything with Prop 8 was terrible, but since then they seemed to have been moving forward ever so slightly. They openly supported anti-discrimination legislation in Utah, and one of the leaders recently came out in criticism of Kim Davis. This new policy came completely out of nowhere, and undid all of the good work progressive Mormons had done in making their church a more welcoming place.
It’s truly horrifying, especially when you consider how they’re using children as pawns. The apologists act like this is just going to be about people investigating the church, to protect children from having to choose between their parents and the church. But that ignores the many children of gay parents who are already involved in the church. For years, church leadership instructed gay members that their orientation was a choice, temptation that could be overcome by entering a straight marriage. So when these marriages failed (and most do), there are children who have one parent in a gay relationship and the other still in the church, and these children will now be excluded from their religious community for nothing that they did. This could also be seen as using the kids as leverage over those gay members who are still in the mixed-orientation marriages, to prevent them from getting divorced or leaving the church in fear of retaliation on their kids. There are so many fucked-up permutations of this policy, it’s sickening.
Lifelong Mormon who’s been hanging on just barely; because as a woman, liberal, feminist and queer (although I’m asexual, so mine is a very different struggle from LGB Mormons), the church has consistently shown it doesn’t want people like me here. But I’ve hung on because this is MY church too, and I feel like I can make things change from the inside better than once I leave, etc. But this, this may be what breaks me. It’s absolutely horrifying and I’ve been sick to my stomach since Thursday when it was leaked. There have been some very small positive steps by the church in the last few years towards tolerance and inclusion of outsiders, but then they spectacularly fuck up with something like this. And it goes against so many core doctrines. There’s some talk, I don’t know how reliable, that this was done as a legal maneuver because if same sex marriage/relationships are classified as apostate, they can’t be sued for not performing same sex marriage. Don’t know if it’s true, but considering proclamation to the family was a legal brief written for the marriage equality bills in Hawaii and elsewhere, it wouldn’t surprise me.
The good news is that nearly everyone I’ve seen online is appalled by it (unfortunately one of my TBM sisters and her husband are trying to, but the rest of my family that I’ve talked to about it are not). Even the more moderate and conservative Mormons are having a hard time reconciling this. The big blogs in the bloggernacle have been posting non-stop about it. A few Mormons started a petition on change.org to get the NCAA to boycott BYU. Lots of Mormons held vigils around the world yesterday, many people trying to come up with ways to put pressure on the church to reverse this.
“they can’t be sued for not performing same sex marriage.”
They couldn’t be sued anyway because of the First Amendment, though.
Not saying I agree there was a basis for it–after all if churches can refuse to perform interracial marriages, if the Catholic church doesn’t have to perform marriages for divorced people, if Catholic hospitals can refuse to do abortions, if the Mormon church never had to endow or ordain Black members, etc; I don’t see why they would need to do this to support their stance of no marriage equality. But that’s just one rumor from people trying to understand what in the hell the reasoning was.
If not preforming same-sex marriage were an issue, they would just move to their European system of preforming sealings but not weddings, and requiring a civil marriage beforehand.
Seriously. I hate that they still punish couples by making them wait a whole year in the U.S., but allow the separation of sealings and civil marriage elsewhere. It clearly can’t be argued as doctrine and only serves to alienate non-member relatives who can’t see their relative getting married.
Exactly. They have a clear system in place to avoid legal action against the church. This just seems punitive, petty, and aggressive on the part of church leadership.
“The big blogs in the bloggernacle have been posting non-stop about it.”
Can you link to some of those? I’m very curious about the conversation going on internally.
Thank you so much for sharing your stance. Best of luck dealing with all of this going forward.
These are the two biggest Mormon blogs, and both have lots of posts about it: http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/ http://bycommonconsent.com/
And then a few others (I don’t know how many links will throw the comment into moderation, so I won’t link, just the names of the blogs):
Zelophehad’s Daughters
Young Mormon Feminists
FEMWOC
Rational Faiths
Wheat and Tares
Thank you!!!
Here are a couple that I saw. It’s heartbreaking to me how many have so many disclaimers about how they still love and believe in the church. If they don’t have those kinds of things, their well-reasoned thoughts and legitimate complaints will be written off by many with a “well, you just don’t believe in the church, why don’t you leave?”
http://rationalfaiths.com/some-thoughts-questions… http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/2015/11/t… http://www.patheos.com/blogs/aestheism/2015/11/do… http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/2015/11/p… http://rationalfaiths.com/9-facts-about-the-churc… http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kiwimormon/2015/11/s…
Thank you so much! I anticipate wasting many hours reading these and their comments. 🙂
I have so much admiration for people like you who try to stay and make the church better. I couldn’t, mostly because I realized I don’t believe any of it, but the people who stay and work to try to change it or at least make it better for those still involved are so wonderful and necessary. I feel like this will be the final straw for many. And maybe that’s what church leaders are really after, which is truly disgusting.
I have seen the theory that it’s a legal ploy, too, and it makes sense. Not because they would actually be in legal danger (Obergefell used the 14th amendment, so the right only applies to government action), but I can see them fearing they would be (that persecution complex the church has can be pretty blinding). I can also see it as a less defensive and more aggressive legal tool, if they are interested in preventing gay parents from getting custody of their Mormon children, but that might be too cynical on my part.
I’m glad you’ve seen pushback from members though. I have a few friends who are clearly upset about it, but so many of my TBM acquaintances are either silent or keep posting articles in support (I’ve had about thirty people post Christofferson’s video response and say “Well this explains everything, it’s a great policy.”). It’s incredibly disheartening.
I believe the basic core stuff, it’s just there’s so much patriarchal, sexist and homophobic bullshit that’s been built up that wasn’t there at the beginning. And that’s what I stay to fight against. But there’s a lot of days lately that I’m not sure it’s worth it anymore.
And yes, the persecution complex is so blinding and ever-present. And such crap. Another theory is that they “have” to oust LGBT members from their wards, because if the average TBM actually saw same sex couples in their ward who were happy, married, devoted, raising good kids; their nuclear family rhetoric will be blown out of the water. And more people will begin to question the church’s stance on marriage equality.
Sadly, one of my sisters and her husband are TBMs who are posting some in support; but I’ve got some other sisters who feel the same as I do, so we’re pushing back on it. Surprisingly my extended family who are usually incredibly conservative have almost universally been silent–which isn’t great but better than seeing homophobic rants supporting this.
I was raised in the LDS church, and still consider myself a Mormon though I can’t remember the last time I went to church and I disagree with a lot (well, most) of the church’s political stances.
This, though, this was horrible. I cried all day friday. I cried for my LGTBQ friends, I cried for their children, I cried for my devout LDS friends and family who were struggling with trying to reconcile this obviously discriminatory policy and the gospel that they believed. I even cried for the church leaders who put this policy in place because can’t they see what they are doing??
This weekend has been a draining one. I hope, I truly hope, that this policy will be short-lived. Or, that the church will make it more fair by becoming even more exclusionary (for example, any couple cohabitating, whether same-sex or not, would be considered apostates).
The correct answer to “The Rock or Vin Diesel” is to change that “or” into an “and” and have them BOTH.
I don’t know how to embed a gif, so I will just leave this url here: http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lksbwuKIM91qgvo…
Oh my! You might be crushed to death, but you’d enjoy it.
Both is good.
This sounds like so much to handle thought. Sooooo maaaany muuuuuuussccclllees.
I am confused about how political campaigns purchase their calling lists. Somehow, I received a robo-call from Dr. Ben Carson’s campaign despite being a life-long registered Democrat. I mean, I’m a black lady, so maybe that’s how it happened, but so random.
I think it’s the demographics thing more than your registration. My mom’s a white woman living in the suburbs in the Midwest, so every Republican ever calls and hits her up for money and she has to explain to them that she’s been a registered Democrat since the 1960s and would rather die than give a penny to a Republican.
That just seems so inefficient. Do they actually do any testing to prove that this is an efficient method of outreach/recruitment?
I do direct mail fundraising for a living, so I do this kind of thing in a non-political context. People often (daily) complain that we shouldn’t send them mail because we should save our money. What they don’t realize is that we spend pennies on that mailing, and, ultimately, it does make us enough money that we keep on doing it. Do political campaigns have similar metrics? I am so curious.
I’ve only worked on one campaign, and it was in the general election on a close senate race, so strategy was very much in-line with what the career “professionals” would do. I don’t know much about who is working on Carson’s campaign or calling the strategy shots.
Human beings’ time, even and maybe especially volunteers’ time, is a limited resource that should be targeted as best as you are able. How that targeting worked changed as we got closer to election day, but money definitely went towards figuring out exactly which phone numbers should be auto-dialed when a volunteer was holding a phone at our end.
But robocalls? Robocalls are cheap and require no investment in a human from the other end. I don’t know exactly how cheap they are to blanket everyone vs buy the voter registration lists, but it doesn’t exactly surprise me that the robots are calling Ev.Ery.One.
Pretty much. I’ve done a lot of campaign work, although not at a high enough level to know specifically how they cut the data. There are all kinds of people on this earth and some percentage of them are likely to be moved by a phone call or a house visit. The ones who aren’t probably won’t, like, protest the polls or switch affiliation solely out of spite towards the person who called their phone. So you just kind of pick the rough demographics that suggest that a person might be a voter and then you spray human interaction randomly in every direction and hope something sticks.
*And in reply to Runbug’s reply above– yeah, they do all kinds of testing. I’ve been through campaign trainings where the main goal is to make sure the voter you’re talking to repeats a specific phrase like “Yes, I’m going to drive to the polling place before work,” because if you can have the person affirmatively state their plan it raises turnout by 1.3% or whatever. Or gone through rounds and rounds of phone calling scripts where they’re testing whether it’s more effective to ask if the person knows who they’re voting for before or after you ask if they need an absentee ballot, and so on.
I live in Iowa–first in the nation caucuses (CRAZY) and the republicans. will. not. stop. calling. I told the last one I would rather vote for a dead poodle. (Politely, cause it’s not like it’s the phone surveyors’ fault. Also she laughed and said that was not a common response.)
*nods*
The Partner is often assumed to be a Republican due to being a white man of a certain age, but is not. So sometimes I field frightful calls from people who are breathless about how terrible Obamacare is, and how [people without papers] are taking over the country, and “we” have to take it back, and when they pause for breath, I say, “I hope that your employer did not pay a lot for this phone number, because y’all are very confused about who actually lives here.”
Addendum: Everything about this made me so angry:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/books/review-a-…
Related: Thanks for the puppy pics, from me and all the people I didn’t yell at today.
Oh, hey, a dude invented “dark” fairy tale retellings! This is totally new and original and mind-blowing, and it is totally not weird that either the book or the review seems focused on the most potentially grotesque and misogynistic angles of these stories!
(that’s what I’m mad about, at least!)
Also: “He’s missing a lower leg; she’s missing sentimentality.” Just.
Paging Angela Carter.
No puppy book recommendations, but really my only and most important puppy advice is a) kennel or crate train, because it will make your life so much easier down the road, b) come up with a schedule for the puppy, and stick to it. She’ll need to go outside to pee a LOT, like probably once every couple of hours, and the more consistent you are with this the less likely she will have an accident in the house. Then as she gets older and her bladder gets bigger, you can start cutting back on how often you go out until you have the normal dog outside schedule. Also decreases accidents if you have set mealtimes and do not let her free feed throughout the day. And c) Bitter Apple. So much Bitter Apple.
We tied a bell to the door knob and every time we took my puppyface outside to potty we rang it. Eventually he got big enough to nose the bell himself so we knew to take him out. Then, we removed the bell and he will nose the doorknob and we know for sure it is a NEED for him to go outside when we hear that particular metal clinky sound. I will wake from my deepest sleep if he noses the doorknob, but he rarely abuses the tactic. We have trained each other and I would have it no other way.
I tried to teach my parent’s dog to do that but the cat figured it out instead.
MALLORY IS DEAR PRUDENCE?!?! (but but she’s not cringey! only cringey people have been Dear Prudence! The status quo is upset!)
Hamilton Everything certainly helps me remember the show so much better these months later. Very pleased.
Ohhhh, my god, Beyonce’s Dad…
The video starts again, and this time it goes perfectly from start to finish. We wait in the dark momentarily, and we hear Mathew over the sound system again.
“That’s my light cue,” he says, audibly irked.
The lights remain off, but Europe’s “The Final Countdown” begins playing at a high volume, and you can see Knowles’s shadow crossing the stage in the dark. When the spotlight turns on, it finds him waiting at center stage.
He thanks us all for braving the weather to come out and tells us how excited he is to start the day, when yet another male voice booms over the sound system. It’s God.
“Hi, Mathew with one T,” God says.
Mathew chuckles and says hey to God, who it turns out is a fan. The two chat about how great this seminar will be, and the conversation ends with God saying, “Mr. Knowles, I have something to ask you: can I get a picture?”
Then a phone camera sound effect blasts through the theater.
We are 10 minutes into a seven hour day.
LOSING IT
So much is going on today, but if you have just under a minute go watch the Google animation for Hedy Lamarr’s birthday. It is both poignant and kickass, and very Toast-esque in spirit.
I watched it last night, and it is GLORIOUS.
That was beautiful, thanks for telling us about it. She was something else.
It’s so short, but so well-paced. Just as I was noticing that she seemed sad in her limo, boom! Sly grin/science things eyebrow! So I’m giving the big G a pass on all the data mining today.
I’m gonna take one for the team and murder Beyonce’s dad.
Is it terrible to think that this would give her a lot of material for songwriting?
Sounds like he’s already murdered his own reputation. I really feel for the people who traveled all the way to Houston to pay to be insulted for pursuing their dreams.
I can’t believe Would You Rather is over, especially before we got to hear them choose between Aiden or Daniel on Revenge (Aiden, Joel? Really?? I mean, the correct answer is clearly NOLAN FUCKING ROSS).
Right? All the pairings that we’ll have no answers for. All the missed opportunities to laugh out loud on the bus while reading Would You Rather.
No-LAN! No-LAN! *picketing*
I liked the monk dog book (The Art of Raising a Puppy) although it is weird and superior-sounding in strange ways, like about how great and important breeders are and how German shepherds are THE BEST. If your general attitude toward monks is *affectionate pat on the head* it works well, you’ll learn a lot about puppy development.
Also I write this from my phone with my puppy lap-napping on me, because he is a True Millennial with 80 allergies and a gluten sensitivity and the new treats we gave him this weekend made him sad and sick. 🙁
Oh god our dog used to have a wheat allergy that gave her eczema. She was very happy to be left at home with my dad, because he let her eat as much bread as she liked and took her for long walks. When my mom returned, the dog was completely bald.
aww dad, come on, there’s being the permissive parent and then there’s making your dog go BALD 🙁
As the companion to a 120 lb German Shepherd, i am full #teamRinTinTin. There is no other puppy type for me. I was firmly a cat person until I got a German Shepherd, so I am a full dog convert.
I cannot envision my life with out a German, now that I have had one.
Join our cult. The puppies look like bears and their floppy ears are the greatest and more soft than bunny ears.
I’m sure you’ll get flooded with puppy advice and here’s more from a (working line) German Shepherd Dog owner 3x over:
*start your obedience training immediately! At 12 weeks, keep your commands & training sessions short and sweet but as they grow older, you can up the commands and demand greater focus. By 6 months, you should have a very responsive dog that will be very easy to handle when they become adults. And trust me, this pays off when you’re faced with a situation where you need your dog FOCUSED on you, ie. crosswalks, heeling politely beside active young children, etc.
My intact, high drive 8 year old GSD always get compliments on his manners and well he should because we both worked at it. Is he perfect? No, but he is controllable and that’s the main thing. Owning large herding/guarding breeds comes with certain responsibilities, just saying!
And crates are great but please don’t abuse them, too many people use them as prison cells because they can’t be bothered to raise a well mannered family member. My former best friend being one of these people, ugh.
Fellow GSD owner. I cannot imagine my life without one. I was not a dog person until I got a GSD for my partner and now? He’s sleeping next to me on the couch while my partner is away on business and sometimes i just gaze at him and cry because he’s so beautiful.
I know The Toast loves The Establishment, and they have an important article today on Margaret Cho and sex work: http://www.theestablishment.co/2015/11/09/margare…
I don’t know enough to recommend her technique, but here for your viewing pleasure is a video of Barbara Woodhouse teaching William Shatner to train his Dobermans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGjHf5-vQ6k
I love how Mr. Knowles acknowledging he can’t afford to have high standards for his program is considered a burn against someone else.
God his awfulness is bottomless. How do people even.
Writers who win the World Fantasy award will no longer get a statue of HP Lovecraft’s racist head as a prize: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/09/worl…
Amazing! I’ve wondered for a long time why Lovecraft of all people was the World Fantasy Award trophy, and it’s excellent to see the genre moving forward.
*eagerly awaits the outpourings of rage from Lovecraft dudebros*
Can the Sad Puppies get sadder?!?
You can’t even assume an SF novel will be The Space Adventure Of Awesome Whiteguy! What is the world coming to?
Even Warhammer 40,000 has novels about women warriors! HERESY!
We can only hope
TEAM VIN & IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE WRONG I DON’T EVEN CARE
What do you guys think about this?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/…
I don’t know. I do think these students are out of line, but I just refuse to think of this as symptomatic of a larger trend. I just refuse.
Ohhhhh wow. I apologize for what is going to be an emotional and not-very-articulate comment. My voice is not especially central to this conversation (I’m a recent grad, I live abroad, and I am not a person of color) and I’m not trying to speak for anyone at all here, but I am just going to say that most students on campus consider this article to be an absolutely hideous misrepresentation of what’s been happening. It *is* a hideous misrepresentation of what’s been happening (it is also insultingly condescending!). Christakis’s email was a microaggression, experienced as an act of aggression, pure and simple, and as an act of erasure of culture and lived experience by what this article calls a “faction” (actually a significant percentage of students of color) at Yale. I’m really sorry, I just…there is a right side in this argument and the Christakises and Conor Friedersdorf are not on it. I’m watching so many of my friends hurting, and hearing that they’re “out of line” is…not right.
No, very helpful and relevant comment.
I apologize for that language– and I really appreciate your perspective.
Spitting on people is bad and wrong (if it happened, I am perhaps overly skeptical about claims of being spat on, given the fact that “vets being spat on” is a lie that’s been used before to discredit liberal protestors). The email that was sent was stupid and thoughtless. The student response might be over-the-top, or it might be a reaction to a lot of incidents boiling over at this one. Conor Friersdorf (straight white dude intellectual) being really concerned at the possibility that somebody might be upset at a white person somewhere is par for the course.
That isn’t to dismiss all complaints by Yale students. If contested claims that black students were turned away from a party due to their skin color are true, for example, that is outrageous. If any discrete group of students is ever discriminated against, or disproportionately victimized by campus crime, or graded more harshly by professors, then of course students should protest and remedies should be implemented.
“It just totally sounds exactly like this, but that’s not what it is!”
As for a trend…I dunno, maybe. There’s a trend that traditionally marginalized people on college campuses don’t just eat shit with a smile for four years anymore. The woman from Yale wrote this, and Conor quoted it approvingly:
American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.
This is just a load of shit. That was only ever the case if you were a white guy. Ask black college students in the ’60s is transgressive behavior was accepted. Hell, ask black college students right this minute whether transgressive behavior is accepted. I suspect non-white people living in a white supremacist society might have a slightly different view of this position than white people living in a white supremacist society.
Ugh, I’m having flashbacks to an editorial during the “No means yes” debacle claiming that “we all” agree on gender equality and the on-campus feminists were doing the “wrong kind of feminism” to associate these guys with rapists when they had probably “partied in their basement.” (I was able to find the quote because I still remembered the mind-boggling ignorance it has to take to live on a college campus and have no sense of overlap between “rapists” and “guys you meet at parties.”)
Well, I think there is a problem with the particular culture that arises from youth-dominated Internet spaces concerned with social justice. (I’m thinking about Tumblr here, but I also think Tumblr can’t be the only space involved.) Often, social justice discussions in that kind of context are all about pointing out that injustice exists, without any very clear means of combating it. That’s not surprising when the people feeling angry are teenagers and the entity they’re angry at is, say, the Disney corporation–there’s such a huge power differential there that saying “don’t see this movie” or, more generally, “cut this content out of your life” is the only action item anyone can think of. But that mindset is not useful when you get off the Internet and into, say, Yale and are in the same room as a person you disagree with, who is actually trying to engage in a conversation.
I don’t think this really covers the issues raised by the article, but it’s about as far as I feel able to go based on my own observation and experience…
Maybe it’s the embittered state school grad in me, but “hyper-elite private school students do something = alert the presses!” always kind of rubs me the wrong way. How do we know if this is a larger trend if all the stories about this stuff focus on a tiny subset of American students? Think of all the crap that happens on every lesser-known campus, not to mention out in the wider world, every day that will never get anywhere close to the national news. I’d much rather talk about how people who don’t have the benefit of Ivy League connections and cultural capital resolve problems and react to conflict.
It didn’t give any examples of the students who are supposed to be out of line? But it is clear that the article’s point of view is ridiculous and pretty smarmy on top of that. Seriously, what’s wrong with this:
From the original e-mail:
Halloween is also unfortunately a time when the normal thoughtfulness and sensitivity of most Yale students can sometimes be forgotten and some poor decisions can be made including wearing feathered headdresses, turbans, wearing ‘war paint’ or modifying skin tone or wearing blackface or redface. These same issues and examples of cultural appropriation and/or misrepresentation are increasingly surfacing with representations of Asians and Latinos.
Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.
It happens, and it’s hurtful, and it’s something college students at the very least should learn is wrong. With the conversations on social media in recent years, I have personally realized that a previous costume I created and really enjoyed was wrong to do (dressing as Kali–who is a goddess from a real religion practiced by people who have been oppressed by white people like me).
From the article:
Those who purport to speak for marginalized students at elite colleges sometimes expose serious shortcomings in the way that their black, brown, or Asian classmates are treated, and would expose flaws in the way that religious students and ideological conservatives are treated too if they cared to speak up for those groups. I’ve known many Californians who found it hard to adjust to life in the Ivy League, where a faction of highly privileged kids acculturated at elite prep schools still set the tone of a decidedly East Coast culture. All else being equal, outsiders who also feel like racial or ethnic “others” typically walk the roughest road of all.
That may well be true at Yale. [emphases mine]
…
Yale administrators face huge opportunity costs as they parcel out their days. Many hours must be spent looking after undergraduates, who experience problems as serious as clinical depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, and sexual assault. Administrators also help others, who struggle with financial stress or being the first in their families to attend college.
It is therefore remarkable that no fewer than 13 administrators took scarce time to compose, circulate, and co-sign a letter advising adult students on how to dress for Halloween, a cause that misguided campus activists mistake for a social-justice priority.
Rolling my eyes SO HARD now.
From the linked Washington Post article actually quoting students:
“I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours,” wrote Christakis, a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center and the wife of Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician and the master of Silliman College. “Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”
Students at Thursday’s protest said the e-mail ignored the way people of color experience such insensitive characterizations, and they recounted how students have faced threats of physical violence when they have questioned their classmates’ costume choices.
“There was so much coded language in that e-mail that is just disrespectful,” said Ewurama Okai, a junior.
How dare those students.
The “out of line” part, as I saw it, was calling for their resignation as opposed to demanding an apology and/or dialogue, which seems like a much more effective tactic. I agree that her letter was ridiculous and offensive and included a whole bunch of feigned ignorance (“But an 8-year-old can dress as Mulan!”) that was just not appropriate at all.
One of the things that I find frustrating about conversations like this is (1) the extent to which they become conversations about specific tactics, behavior, and incidents and (2) the impossibility of determining with any degree of accuracy what has actually gone on, the extent to which that is actually characteristic of events, and to what extent that bears on the claims made by the group in question. Like, this piece – it’s essentially about how students at Yale have acted in response to these emails. And so to engage with it requires making a judgment about how students at Yale have actually acted, and trying to figure out how realistic and representative reports about their behavior are, despite those reports being both conflicting and biased. And I’ve never fucking been to Yale in my life. So how am I supposed to do that? Am I just supposed to take this person at their word that the reaction has been bullying? I don’t feel comfortable doing that. I certainly don’t comfortable dismissing the concerns of every Yale student and the individuality & particularity of their responses on those grounds.
It’s kind of like how people will talk about “Well, Twitter is terrible, Tumblr is terrible, because they did these things”. Well, what kind of a conversation is one supposed to have about that? Whatever experience people had there, I don’t feel confident saying that it never happened; there are shitty discourses & communities. At the same time, none of those judgments could possibly account for the whole scope of those platforms. And it seems people nearly always fall victim to the urge to generalize across the particularities of what the individual people are saying and doing – you know, the kind of thing where the most extreme, insupportable response gets treated as the median response. It’s kind of like the blind man elephant thing – every one of has these very particular experiences, and we use them to draw conclusions. But all of our experiences are partial and specific and basically non-representative.
So basically what I have to say is: I think the emails were objectionable. I don’t know whether the response was proportionate or not, because I’m not on the Yale campus. The most I think I can reasonably say is that the emails were bad emails and that some measure of reaction to that is justified. Beyond that, how the fuck should I know? If people are spitting on people, obviously that’s fucking wrong, but I don’t know anyone involved so what the fuck can I say about it?
What I would say about the piece specifically is that its tone is so obviously partial that it does not give me a great deal of confidence in its conclusions. But that’s just a reaction to Friedsdorf.
Sorry to write so much but I think about this a lot.
SANSA IS ADORBS.
SANSAAAAAAAAAA
Busy but very good! I got to see Part 2 of the fantastic Brave Spirits Theater’s Re-Gendered Henry IV, and that only made me completely comfortable in my choice to drag all of my friends to it this upcoming weekend http://www.bravespiritstheatre.com/current.html (BTW, DV/NoVA/MD area Toasties, go see this! It is fantastic and they deserve a packed house!)
Then Saturday morning I made tried out for and made a roller derby team! This will be great!
Then in the afternoon looked at houses, and one I kept saying “I REALLY like this one” but I’ve only been looking a few weeks soo I don’t want to jump yet. If it slips away I won’t die of sadness, BUT I did like it a lot.
Then I drove two hours to spend the night at my mom’s, have pizza and movie night with my sister (we watched Rango) and the next day went to lunch and Suffragette with my mom (which I liked .. but didn’t love.. and kind of wanted to love?) and then drove home.
And tonight I took a nap after dinner which I kind of felt like I needed.
Hi Nicole! Congratulations on your newest family member! I work with household pets full-time and spend a lot of time wondering why folks don’t invest any time or energy into preparing for and then actually training their new furballs. Thank you for being a thoughtful *and* considerate human.
Ian Dunbar has a website full of well-researched, scientifically founded, easy to understand, and easy to implement information about every aspect of having a dog in your family: http://www.dogstardaily.com/ There is a free ebook you can download there in addition to dozens of blog posts about specific dog training questions. He’s of course done a TEDtalk as well: https://www.ted.com/talks/ian_dunbar_on_dog_frien…
Dunbar is a veterinan and animal behaviorist and he is a dog trainer’s trainer. His style of training is all about being aware of your relationship with your dog (versus physically forcing your dog to “submit” to you a la Cesar Millan and the Monks). A big reason I hope you read some of his material is that he stresses the importance of training and socializing your dog at an early age in order to avoid common issues that are far more difficult to rehab once you and the critter are more set in your ways/relationship/experiences.
A handy book for dog training is Christine Dahl’s “Good Dog 101” – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1872083.Good_D… . I recommend this book to most all humans because once you get past the heavy-handed foreward, there is a helpful summary of the history of contemporary American/European dog training before delving into the meat and potatoes. The actual training sections of the book are very specific and break things down into simple, easily repeated steps, which is important for those of us with lives outside of the family dog.
I realize that as a human with a job and young children this next part is difficult, but the most helpful thing you can do is take some time to observe dogs interacting with each other and humans off-leash in a dog park or dog day care. (I’m sure we could find some YouTube videos as well.) The caveat is that you can neither interact with the dogs nor narrate it to yourself internally. Just watch dogs! Do your best not to anthropomorphize the pups, just let them be dogs. The more you observe dogs in general, and eventually your own dog in particular, the easier it will be to understand what they are actually doing and responding to as opposed to the nonsense we humans assign (“She’s so spoiled.” “He is trying to be dominant.” “She doesn’t know who the pack leader is.”).
Have a blast!
My people! I love when I say something pretty out there on the toast and I find people who feel the same!!
I have the opposite problem SIL is committed working class and consumer, so the kids have more clothes (in gender prescribed colours) than they'll ever wear and so much cheap plastic toys that get played with once before they either break or are replaces by something newer and shinier. Grandma on the other hand isma total hippy who can't keep her feelings to herself. Family gatherings are fun. Granny likes to turn the kids clothes inside put if there's a logo on it or big seams.
I'm somewhere in the middle, I live abroad so I always want to bring presents, but I want it too be things that will last and that they will love. I tend to buy books, but I did get my nephew new dolly clothes for Xmas last year for the Steiner doll granny gave him, and this year I got him a 'girl' toy for his birthday (goldiblox, its an engineering toy made for girls, but it s also just a really cool toy!)
I wrote a whole thing last night but couldn't log in so I think its been lost to the internet forever.
Basically I agree with you completely and its been fascinating to see the conditioning and instincts I have as a woman in action and I can totally see how the pay gap is a thing now because a lot of woman wouldn't put themselves out there like I've had to because they don't have anyone cheering them on and telling them its ok to act this way.
GRAHHH I had to work all evening yesterday and so couldn't be around for Link Roundup and the fact that I missed the Miss Fisher chat makes me sad…
Also I am harbouring hopes that the puppy is a Leonberger because I LOVE THEM but they are too large for me to ever seriously cope with so I will imagine Sansa as a happy Leonberger safe in Nicole's care. Vast quantities of puppy pictures will help me with my little head fantasy.
I tried to teach my parent's dog to do that but the cat figured it out instead.
Congrats. You mean Sansa is a giant in the making and she is quite cute. Looks like a sable German shepherd.