Sansa is very fluffy at six weeks old, and I sense that if I picked her up and grasped her firmly and lovingly, as I would very much like to do, and then blew at her like she was a birthday cake, eighty percent of her body would drift off in the breeze.
Gawker canned a bunch of great folks, poorly, and you can learn more here.
This Nigeria bombing is horrible.
SYLVIA EARLE (Ian Frazier’s writing can get a little fanciful, but I genuinely enjoy him and always have):
And yet, somehow, there’s also a sense that nobody is listening. Sometimes, Sylvia’s sea blue eyes have the same gentle sorrow with which wise and kind aliens look at foolish earthlings in movies. “Many people I love have no idea of the trouble we’re in,” she says. When she started talking about the decline in fish populations, 25 years ago, the number of bluefin tuna remaining had fallen to about 10 percent of the total when the species was healthy. Today only about 3 percent of bluefin tuna remain. She keeps on telling us; we keep on not listening. She is like a bright red stop vehicle immediately light that’s been blinking on the dashboard for 25 years. But the car seems to keep going, so we keep on driving.
Jeb, Cruz, Kasich currently competing to see who can make Christianity/The United States/button-down shirts look worse.
Leslie Odom Jr was so good on Seth Myers I wanted to cry but only yelped.
Our own Caroline Crew, who wrote this lovely poem for us, is launching a collection into the world this month. It’s called Pink Museum, and you can pre-order it, and it will include “Plastic Sonnet 32.”
Lisa Hix on racist antiques (1. There are some truly, truly awful things in here, as you can imagine, so decide if today is the day to read it, and 2. I really appreciate how good Collectors Weekly is on this stuff, I’ve read such thoughtful work by them):
Pilgrim first encountered a piece of so-called “black memorabilia” at flea market in Mobile when he was a little kid. “I remember purchasing a ceramic Mammy salt-and-pepper shaker, and I broke it in front of the seller,” he recalls. “I would like to think it was an act of philosophical integrity, but in reality, I probably just hated the thing, if you can hate an object.”
But Pilgrim, who sometimes refers to himself as a “garbage collector,” became fascinated with these grotesque racial caricatures, and by the time he was a teenager, he had accumulated a small collection of them. When he attended Jarvis Christian College in the late 1970s, a historically black college near Hawkins, Texas, he got more serious about his collection, buying what he could afford on a tight budget—the most brutally racist objects were usually prohibitively expensive. At the same time, his studies at Jarvis delved into the history of black activism, from the well-known heroes like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois, to the sharecroppers and domestic workers who put their lives on the line to fight segregation.
Jessica Pan went to elf school and also disabused me of a fond notion I had about the Icelandic people and their whimsy:
Elf school in Iceland costs $48. This would be a steal if you walked out of the classroom transformed into a full-fledged elf; however, nearly $50 to listen to a non-elf tell you about Iceland’s so-called “hidden people” does not seem like a great tradeoff.
Infamously, 54 percent of Icelanders are said to believe in elves. (Icelanders protest that this ‘fact’ originates from a very carefully phrased question which asked, “Can you be 100 percent sure that elves do not exist?” Logically, 54 percent of them concluded that just because they have never seen an elf, that doesn’t mean that elves do not exist).
Maisonneuve looks at the risks and benefits of morcellation, and also the fight between a very outspoken husband/physician and his colleagues:
ABOUT HALF A MILLION American women have their fibroids or uteruses removed each year according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2014, some one hundred thousand of those operations involved morcellators. In Canada (not including Quebec), about forty thousand women have these surgeries annually and less than five thousand of those use the device. For the vast majority of women, minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery (which sometimes relies on morcellation, but not always) will mean less hospital time, less bleeding, less infection, smaller scars and a quicker return to normal life. A subset, however, of which Amy Reed was one, will have a hidden cancer lurking inside them. And grinding it up could bump them from stage I cancer, with fighting odds of survival, to stage IV, a virtual death sentence.
As recently as October 2013, when Reed had her surgery, women all over North America were being told that their risk of being in that unlucky subset was about one in ten thousand. But after Reed’s diagnosis, Noorchashm, now on leave from his lung transplant training, started poking around medical databases and he got a sense that the risk might be higher. He was particularly startled to discover that an important paper on the subject by Brigham researchers had been published one year before his wife’s surgery. And among its authors was Michael Muto—the very gynecological oncologist who had cleared Reed for morcellation.
All of this is delightful (also, the God part is the MOST upper-crusty-English thing I have ever heard):
One of the great pleasures of such research lies in the unearthing of half-forgotten writers who have lost much of whatever fame they once had. Augustus Hare, whose heyday was the 1890s, was a traveller, art lover and eccentric. Somerset Maugham, who knew him, described a visit to his country home during which the younger writer noticed that the wording of the prayers at morning worship for the servants was unfamiliar. “I’ve crossed out all the passages in glorification of God,” Hare explained. “God is certainly a gentleman and no gentleman cares to be praised to his face.” Like God, Hare was a gentleman but he was an impoverished one and he was obliged to churn out vast amounts of writing to keep himself in the style he wanted. He presents his supernatural tales as events that really happened to friends and acquaintances, although sceptics might like to note that The Vampire of Croglin Grange, the story I included in my anthology, bears a number of similarities to events in Varney the Vampire, a gore-filled penny dreadful of the 1840s.
Digging deeper into the PACE study on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (which purported to show that psychotherapy and exercise are the best treatment for CFS):
The PACE researchers have refused to release the data in the past, arguing that “activists seeking to discredit the PACE trial and its researchers” would somehow decrypt the anonymous details in the data and publish the names of participants. And White told me that the changes to the original protocol “improved the science and interpretation. We see no reason why we should do a further analysis based on an inferior method.” Horton, editor of the Lancet, didn’t respond to my request for comment.
“The Lancet needs to stop circling the wagons and be open,” says Bruce Levin, a biostatistician at Columbia University who signed the open letter. “One of the tenets of good science is transparency.”
Davis, the Stanford geneticist, has a son with ME/CFS so severe that he can’t walk, talk, or eat. Davis goes even further: “The Lancet should step up to the plate and pull that paper,” he says. “It has lots of flaws, and I worry that it hurts patients.” Davis has now started his own effort to find a cure for the disease, called the End ME/CFS Project. He is collecting a vast amount of data on severe patients like his son, who have almost never been included in studies because they are too frail to go to a doctor or clinic.
Bill Simmons asked Obama a lot of questions I didn’t care about and then went for my feels:
I’m two years away. Is it better, worse, or the same than what you expected when everybody told you, “Oh, just wait—just wait till they’re teenagers”?
My daughters are amazing girls. They’re smart, they’re funny. They take after their mom, and Michelle’s done a great job with them. You get these teenage moments—they love you, but what I think really affects you most is they just don’t have time for you. It’s not an active disdain for you. It’s just their calendars start filling up and they’ve got all these friends who are much more interesting.Yeah, you’re not the coolest person in their lives anymore.
And you just have to let go, you have to acknowledge that if you say to them, “Hey, you want to go watch this movie?” or “Hey, you want to go take a swim at the pool?” “No, sorry, Daddy. I love you, though. See you tomorrow, ’cause I’m spending the night at somebody’s house.” The golden age is between, say, 6, 7, and 12, and they’re your buddies and they just want to hang out. And after that, they will love you, but they don’t have that much time for you. And my understanding is, based on friends of mine who have older kids, is that with a little bit of luck, as long as you’re not so completely annoying during these teenage years, they’ll come back to you around 23, 24, and actually want to hang out with you. But that stretch is painful. The compensation you get for the fact that they don’t have time for you is: Nothing beats watching your children become smarter and cooler than you are. And you suddenly will hear them say something or make a joke or have an insight and you go, “Wow. I didn’t think of that.”
Hi, I didn’t expect these feels about Obama as a father this morning and I can’t handle it.
I want to go hug my dad now.
Also, those PACE researchers can straight up go fuck themselves. I’m a skeptic about a lot of not-so-proven medical conditions, but my mom has had CFS since I was in middle school and no fucking way would she have been better if she exercised and gotten therapy. No. Fucking. Way.
Yeah, I’m not even gonna read that article because just fuck a whole bunch of that for real.
My mom’s been diagnosed with Fibro and CFS for about 20 years now, and oooooh do I have feels about it that I don’t have time for this morning.
(shortest possible version: people are very clearly genuinely suffering and we don’t understand it. being chronically ill is hard, obviously therapy helps a lot of chronically ill people. what we call “fibromyalgia” and “cfs” are probably several different things we don’t know how to distinguish between, plus some things we can distinguish but maybe a particular doctor can’t. health care is a human right. we need to dramatically increase funding for basic science research. science based medicine. it’s a bit more complicated than that. Big Pharma, Woo, no such thing as alternative medicine, snake oil salesmen are evil, ableism, spoons, aasdkfja;sdglhs;gohye;ogh;g)
(and that was the shortest version of that rant.) (sigh.)
I reaaalllyy want to brain-dump everything in my head in a huge comment, but I have a deadline tonight, so I really shouldn’t. Let me just say this though: as a student in a relevant field who is also a Tired Person (I don’t have CFS but do have a disability that makes you tired and increases the risk of CFS), these studies and the surrounding ableist rhetoric feel, uh, weird.
“Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that—”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they are getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . .”
— Terry Pratchett (in “Carpe Jugulum”)
Behaviorism is observing people mechanically, trying to reverse-engineer their mechanisms. This actually is pretty great as long as you remember the “as if” part. Good CBT is good, yes, but when you do it badly, it’s dehumanising. Bad behaviorism is the worst thing in the world. Because it’s treating people like things.
The good (by which I mean non-evil, not necessarily correct) version of this CFS model is something like this: something happens to make you extremely tired, and you cope by going easy on yourself. You’re scared that you’ll get sicker, and you’ve often experienced that you do get sicker if you push yourself. You draw the conclusion that it’s dangerous to push yourself at all. Your body’s inflammation and/or stress hormone levels are already out of whack, and stressing about having to push yourself makes it worse. This maintains the fatigue you started out with, and you get trapped. You never build up your strength, so you can’t get better. Possibly, you’ll get worse, because lack of exercise and activity does make people tired.
And the non-evil reasoning behind the treatment model is: we already know that people behave like this when they get injured (you spare your foot when it hurts, which can make you need physical therapy to build up your muscles later), so it’s not unique for CFS sufferers. Obviously, what you need is graded exercise therapy to build strength at a gradual pace, and CBT to help you cope with being sick and to help you dare to try out new physical behaviours. It’s very logical, very reasonable, very standard thinking. If CFS is at least partly caused and/or maintained by losing strength, this should help at least partly, while just adapting to a lower ability level should maintain the illness or even make it worse. The actual scientists never claimed that the fatigue itself is caused by fear or lack of exercise, only that it’s being maintained. And they only said that the fatigue gets better, not that it goes away.
HOWEVER. This gets bastardised to “CFS is a fake imaginary fairytale illness, go talk to someone about your feelings until you stop believing that you’re tired” and “CFS is just lack of exercise, stop being a wimp and get out of bed, that’ll fix you”. Who cares how people feel, as long as they do what they’re supposed to? If they refuse to try, they don’t deserve sympathy! That’s pretty much the angle the media ran with, and lots of people in the healthcare system seem to believe this too, because the healthcare system is ableist as hell.
I eventually accepted that there was some good thinking behind it all, so it feels crazy that the PACE study apparently doesn’t hold up. Did I do all that emotional work for nothing?! I mean, I don’t think the PACE study was the only one, I’m pretty sure I spent hours combing through PubMed last winter and that everyone seemed to agree that if anything works it’s graded exercise and CBT, and they can’t all have been part of the PACE study, right?? But I don’t have time to check right now. Uuughgh.
yes.
100% with you on the PACE garbage. I don’t have CFS, but I do have Hashimoto’s – an autoimmune disease that has many similar symptoms of CFS. I was so sick at one point (and all my doctors thought I was just being a hysterical girl, of course), that I would sit in my shower and cry because it hurt too much to lift my own arms to wash my hair, and I was so tired from trying. Bear in mind, up til this point I was hugely athletic and healthy (in mind, spirit and body). The change from health to Hashimoto’s was dramatic. My last endocrinologist, when I complained to him that despite all the meds, hey, guess what! I still feel like shit! recommended I exercise more. Um, yeah. That’s what people who can’t walk more than a couple blocks without aching all over should do. Just move some more, it’s good for you.
I wish I could exercise like I used to. I miss it. I was a ballerina all my life. Now I go to the occasional yoga class, but losing my ability to move my body was like experiencing my own death. I don’t think modern medicine docs realize that we would give anything to move and be well again.
Anyways, my prayers are with your mom. May she be well and find comfort in your love for her!
That morcellation article was incredibly painful to get through. Equal parts painful and horrifying.
Guys, PLEASE someone else read this and tell me your thoughts. I read the whole thing and now I feel like I’m drunk. http://thewalrus.ca/playing-god/ Life is a rich tapestry, etc., but what the fuck.
I tried to read it. But the smugness got to me. Run, Litia, run! When I read that he sells her things to finance his stupid village — no. He should move back in with his mom.
Also, his tone throughout is so incredibly disrespectful of his wife. And really, everyone.
The horrifyingly obvious disrespect is maybe the worst part of a terrible, terrible set of plans. You STEAL SOMEONE ELSE’S THINGS for your hobby? Usually they call those people junkies, but a Christmas village is not like meth.
On that note, they did include “addiction” among the tags at the bottom.
And yes, run, Litia, run.
Unless it has too many pharmacies, apparently:
“Functionality, by contrast, requires a more seasoned eye. ‘What kind of town has this many fucking pharmacies?’” I once asked my friend’s mother, who had recently begun her own collection. ‘A town populated by meth addicts, Sharon. That’s what you’ve built here.'”
Fuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuu, dude.
I was hate-reading from “Voltaire Viaduct” on.
Dude. It is one thing to have hobbies. It is another to steal your wife’s clothing to pay for your all-consuming escapist fantasy.
Run Litia!!
#savelitia
He wonders how his parents feel about his village but is apparently not too terribly concerned about how his wife feels about him selling her clothes. Ugh. His writing style reminds me a little of David Sedaris and I can only hope he’s embellishing to make himself sound more offbeat than he is, but still. Still.
‘at least I’m not my fucking brother, who was off having sex like an asshole while I was stealing shit to pay for my precious toys’
Right?
My awful brother, who bought me the worst figurine ever! They were wearing GORETEX
What happens when his brother reads that?
I also tried to read it and the tone threw me completely off. I also don’t like David Sedaris, so I guess I learned something about myself today. Which is that my patience for quirk, offbeat, whimsy, and kooky is even less than I thought.
Also this guy’s wife needs to pack her bags and move away.
You can be quirky, offbeat, whimsical and kooky without being AN ASSHOLE.
I’m not sure you can be extremely deliberately so, though
Sure but I’m still not gonna read you.
yyyyyeah my patience for that stuff declines the more I learn about people who initially came off as offbeat and quirky. Manic pixie dream boys are terrifying.
I really like David Sedaris, but then all of my interaction with his work has come through his radio shows, so maybe it’s the tone? I think I read one of his books and didn’t really like it, but when he reads his own stuff it seems a lot more… self-aware than it is on the page. Like, it doesn’t sound offbeat and whimsical rather than ‘I’m such an asshole, Jesus.’ I think he also does a good job of not romanticising his sister’s mental illness while still describing what was engaging about her.
Yeah, I’ve only explored Sedaris via audiobook, and I think that was the right choice. Some of his stories are still hard, or I’m not fans of, but even when he’s being an asshole, I don’t get the sense that he’s making excuses for himself. He’s just really unsparing in exploring the weaknesses of human character (his own).
I also love how he says the word “homosexual” when imitating judgmental homophobes, lol. This was my favorite bit from Let’s Discuss Diabetes with Owls, when he’s shopping at Cosco with his brother-in-law:
Putting the [giant package of condoms] in the cart, I thought nothing of it, but a moment later, walking down the aisle with my fifty-nine-year-old brother-in-law, I started feeling patently, almost titanically gay. Maybe I was imagining things, but it seemed as if people were staring at us — people in families, mostly, led by thrifty and disapproving parents who looked at what we were buying and narrowed their eyes in judgment. You homosexuals, their faces seemed to say. Is that all you ever think about?
My brother-in-law is around my height, with thick, graying hair, a matching mustache, and squarish wire-rimmed glasses. I’d never imagined him as gay, much less as my boyfriend, but now I couldn’t stop. “We’ve got to get something else in this cart,” I told him.
Bob disappeared into the acreage reserved for produce and returned a minute later with a four-pound box of strawberries. This somehow made us look even gayer. “After anal sex, we like shortcake!” read the cartoon bubble now floating over our heads.
I’ve tried and I just don’t get what everyone finds funny and engaging about the guy or his sister.
As with everything, YMMV.
You are not the only one. I can’t stand him.
This is the best Watson gif I’ve ever seen.
It really sounds like he’s trying to emulate David Sedaris. But I don’t find myself reeling back in horror when I read David Sedaris’s stuff.
Same.
I read that the other day and had a little twitter convo with the Walrus tweeter about it, it’s so interesting! I have to buy a copy of the mag to mail to my mom, she has an ever-expanding Christmas village – including a still, so she’ll especially appreciate the gin still moment. and Litia, man she must have the patience of a saint (I assume they had some couples therapy after the secret selling of the clothes.)
Oh. My. God.
Insufferable and self absorbed. I wanted to light him and his village on fire before I was halfway through.
My father has a big Christmas village, that has grown inexorably from one Canadian Tire Christmas train set; and he loves it and I don’t think it would fit on TWO dining room tables, but that article drove me nuts.
Like. I get what you mean by feeling drunk. I kept scrolling to the top and bottom thinking “Surely this is fiction. Why is the memoir tag? NOooooo”
Right??? I’m still not convinced it’s not fiction.
Walrus tweeter is saying it was fact checked.
I would read a story about fact-checking that story.
Seriously, there is now a “what his mom really thinks” shaped hole in my soul now.
I’ve met moms of NEET type shutins before, I’ve got a general concept of how parents of kids who stop growing up at 14 cope, what I wanna know is what Litia’s game is here.
Yes. Litia. And her striped top.
Seriously. How has he “never asked Litia what she thinks of the village”? I try not to judge other people’s marriages but like… do they talk to each other?
Jesus. I was counting on it being fiction, for the sake of my sanity. WTF.
I am still hoping against hope that this is an attempt at the little-known genre of Christmas horror.
Okay I am like TWO SENTENCES IN and WHY is your mother just resigning herself to your behavior
Everything PRockette said.
Also terrible: his mother is “insufferably supportive of everything I do”. Okay, would you rather she condemned everything you do? And I wonder what, exactly, it is she’s supporting since he’s apparently not really doing anything except deceiving his wife and waiting for christmas all year round.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for useless art degrees and writing poetry, but he doesn’t seem to contribute anything to their lives.
And I really hope they don’t have children. He’d probably sell the child as well.
He’s worried about the fact that his wife will love her child more than him: “But I’m also afraid that I’ll be heartbroken when Litia loves this new thing more than she loves me.”
Gaaaaaaaah
Because he definitely wouldn’t know anything about loving something more than his wife…
I had to stop reading after he described dating his now-wife as “no longer getting the milk for free”. I mean, whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own home, fine, but you just called her a cow to a pretty major audience.
I am done with you, and your budgeting of her earnings.
I always hated that way of describing sex. I did, however, come across a delightful comeback a while ago: “Why buy the pig when you can get the sausage for free?”
*snorts* My least favourite sex euphemism? Rutting. Just… ugh. No. Never ever.
See, that was the part that made me start reading closer, because I was like “wow, if you were trying to craft a selfish misogynistic but in a jokey ‘my wife is cool with it, we say things like this, lol I’m so awful (but I’m ACTUALLY awful)’ way narrator, this guy has NAILED IT. The creative writing professor gives you an A! Wait, is this not fiction? Shit. Okay, now the creative writing professor is gently asking probing questions and forwarding the piece to campus security.”
This took me on such a wild ride. I was like “is this real? this can’t be real. i hope it’s real. i hope it’s not real.”
I’ve landed at the conclusion that it’s embellished, but mostly true, and that this guy is pretty terrible.
I can understand the Christmas village appeal because I love miniatures, have always wished I had the room for a dollhouse, and collect building- and people-shaped knick-knacks on my travels which I’m assembling into a sprawl I like to call the International Village (except it’s not very well thought-out, I have a matryoshka doll which towers over the tallest building there). So I get it! But dude needs to at least TRY to get a damn job so that his wife isn’t stuck supporting both of them while he STEALS HER CLOTHES to finance his hobby.
Me too! I love the Thorne rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Colleen Moore fairy castle and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death and I obsessively read almost any book that features a dollhouse (if anyone wants to talk about Sylvia Cassedy I AM HERE). . .but omg this guy is the worst. And every time I thought he’d defined “the worst” he proved me wrong by being the worst + n.
Ahhhh I loved that piece. I mean, hated the guy for sure, want him to leave his wife, definitely, but also … I just loved reading about it. My only coherent thought at the end was run Litia!!!
Absolutely! I don’t need to like a character (real or fiction) to be interested in reading from their perspective. (Like Roxane on Unlikeable Female Characters, right?) This guy is horrible and the piece is still fascinating (to me!)
I keep picturing an ending of her smashing the village with a sledgehammer or something. And setting the shards on fire.
Okay no this man is AWFUL. He SELLS HER CLOTHES WITHOUT TELLING HER, obsessively cuts their finances while working as a dogwalker, references “getting the milk for free”, and writes this sentence: “If only I could’ve been lucky enough to have lost a loved one to a horrible disease and then channelled that inconsolable grief into miniature streets of snow-tipped cedars.” He’s disrespectful of his wife, his mother, flippant toward the grief of a stranger, he writes nasty things about an old woman who can afford a piece he can’t, says nasty things to his friend’s mom about how many pharmacies her village has??? and when people buy him the wrong pieces for his village because they care about him, oh my god I hate this person maybe more than I hate the AirBnB people from that billfold article.
Why doesn’t he a) ask for specific pieces as gifts or b) sell the unwanted stuff? Might be a tad better than selling his wife’s clothes.
Play your cards right, and you might even get terrorism. All the interesting places have scars on them. And I like to think my village does, too.
I have never wanted to scream “GET A JOB” at someone until this man.
He reads as one of those guys who is far too interesting to be a wage slave. Years ago, my creative writing professor wanted to know why I was engaged to a blue collar guy instead of trying to find a fellow writer. This essay pretty much explains it. Not all creative writing guys, but enough of them.
Oh, I get it now. This dude is obviously @GuyInYourMFA.
Clearly his mayoral duties take up too much of his time. . .
I was skimming and saw the ‘milk for free’ line and assumed I had skipped over the part where she was some kind of milkmaid and they met when he bought milk from her at the farmers market and now that they’re in love she gifts him her hormone-free organic milk but apparently it’s a gross sex reference, OF COURSE, ugh, men, etc.
Is this real? If it is, I feel ripped off by the lack of photos. And lack of follow-up piece about the wife and parents.
I hope hope hope most of the piece is exaggerated self-deprecation for effect. But that’s the same part that makes me go “this can’t be real” because no one would be that self-centered, or confess to stealing their wife’s things and shifting Mom’s dinner to the kitchen counter in print (oh god what is he NOT confessing to???)
As a work of fiction, it’s great, and I’m sticking to that opinion, fingers in ears if necessary.
he’s definitely playing up what a garbage dude he is for comedy but it don’t look like it’s fiction
i actually reverse-google-imaged the photo hoping to find it on a stock photo website or something. No luck. [petulant foot stamp] I just want to knooooow so badlyyyyy how awful he reeeeally is! Seriously, this will haunt me forever (realistically, the rest of today).
https://vimeo.com/20628033
oh dang can’t watch video right now but i willllll
THIS IS THE WORST. He has the gall to talk about “historical amnesia” but he said this in the train article?!
“I’ve chosen the Victorian era for three reasons: First, it’s the classiest. Second, since I’m not a James Dean enthusiast, McCarthy sympathizer, or closet racist, I have no interest in the 1950s. And third, if I were satisfied with living in the modern era, I wouldn’t need a miniature Christmas village in the first place.”
Because there was no racism in the Victorian era?!?!
I can’t.
maybe he just looks down on all those other racists who don’t have the guts to be out and proud about it?
Walrus tweeter said it was really real memoir.
Please, please tell me that is not real.
I read that whole thing muttering “no no no no no no no no no” under my breath. I hope his wife crushes his skull with that distillery he’s so taken with.
YES.
my favorite/least favorite line in the whole piece: Play your cards right, and you might even get terrorism.
That sounds just like me at age 10 playing Simcity. C’mon meltdown!
I recoiled when I got to that part. Like, I can see how some of the piece might be embellished to make it seem funnier, but that sentence took him from “trying too hard to sound quirky” to “complete self-absorbed asshole” to me. You just know he thought that was so EDGY.
Thank you for sharing that, it is absolutely BANANAS. I was equal parts fascinated and appalled, and I think the people in the next office over might’ve been able to hear me whispering ohhhh nooooo a few times while I was reading it.
I sold my wife’s clothes to build a Christmas village in my parents’ basement
…aaaaand we get the “Christ, what an asshole” moment with the subtitle.
This is not even close to the most horrifying part of that, but anyone who uses the phrase “getting the milk for free” gets the electronic equivalent of throwing the book across the room. UGGGGGGH.
I read this whole thing through thinking “this is what serial killers are like before they actually start killing people, isn’t it?”
Can we talk about “I know his older sister is a total babe”?
As part of a broad national security plan to defeat ISIS, Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich proposed creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world.
… yeah, because nobody with (or purporting to have) Judeo-Christian values has ever committed acts of terrorism. SOLID PLAN.
(This is not a dig at Judaism or Christianity, both of which have many great values! But I am pretty sure they, like many religions, have had some pretty terrible acts committed in their names.)
Like, say, the Crusades?
The Oklahoma City Bombings and the siege at Waco also spring to mind. I’m sure there are others, but it’s too depressing a topic to go seeking out just now.
The Spanish Inquisition. The KKK. Anders Breivik.
The Troubles (at least in part. There’s a lot more than just Protestantism vs Catholicism going on, obviously).
I mean, one could argue that the State Department/CIA already exists primarily to spread good ole Judeo-Christian ‘Murican values (sometimes by force, how exciting), but I doubt John Kasich is aware of that.
Yes, yes, good Judeo-Christian values like turning away refugees. Do go on.
Also, um, to the extent that “Judeo-Christian” is a real thing (and someone on twitter pointed out the other day that it is a phrase used only by Christians and never by Jews), isn’t Islam a Judeo-Christian religion? Or does that somehow mean something different than Abrahamic?
As far as I can tell, it means “Christian but with a fig leaf of inclusiveness because we feel kinda bad about the Holocaust and/or Israel needs to exist to trigger the End Times”
^ That, basically. It’s usually said by people who basically know nothing about Judaism.
But they think they do, because they think the Torah=the Old Testament and therefore Judaism is just like Christianity but without the sequel. :eyeroll:
I interpret the use of the phrase “Judeo-Christian” to mean: “I a Christian, am about to say something that most Jews disagree with vehemently, but although I know few Jews and know nothing about Judaism I want to claim that they agree with me to make myself look less narrow.”
+1.
Jews generally don’t say “Judeo-Christian values” because we keep being reminded of the days Christian values included killing Jews. :/
(Not ALL Christians, mind. Generally the Christians who had those values are the ones who say “Judeo-Christian values.”)
Yeah, I am pretty uncomfortable with this thread actually for that reason. Using “Judeo Christian” as a term to condemn various genocides and hate acts is pretty loaded, in my opinion. Especially considering the history of Jews as an oppressed diasporic people who were/still are often turned away as refugees… It leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth to lump them in with the Crusades or the KKK, as some people have done up thread, especially as Jews are/were victims of those _Christian_ movements, just as much as Muslims and other minorities are/were.
Honestly, as a Jew, I feel like the longer we all let Israel carry on towards the Palestinians the way they are, the more we deserve to get lumped in with the Christians re:atrocity committing.
Wow. I have to disagree pretty strongly with you. I’m not going to deny that Israel’s actions and attitudes towards Palestinians are quite often atrocious.
However, the nation-state of modern Israel is not synonymous with the Jewish people, and it the conflation of the two is often deployed in hurtful and frankly anti-semitic ways.
But regardless of how we may feel about the state of Palestinian-Israeli relations, implying that they are a product of the same “Judeo-Christian values” that led to the Inquisitions, the Crusades, and the KKK is to me, incredibly offensive.
The term “Judeo-Christian” is generally used by Christians as a way to exclude Islam from the Abrahamic faith tradition while pretending to a commonality of background and theology between Christianity and Judaism that is near to non-existent. While Islam, Judaism and Christianity do share historical links and have undoubtedly influenced each other as they developed, modern Judaism and Christianity do not share some sort of exclusive set of values that promote oppression of others.
Modern Israel is certainly in many ways, an heir to Western colonialism. Historically, that colonialism did not exactly favor Jews or draw upon their theology and practices as justification for its practices. To retroactively create some set of “common religious values” and apply them as a lens to understand both Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and and Spain’s expulsion of the Jews (for example) is, to me, reaching at best, and certainly unnecessary. There’s no need to lump us in with Christians to condemn Israel’s policies.
Well said.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Politicians, Y U SO STUPID?
Going back to this: it feels like Kasich is saying that the main problem is Islam, and replacing Islamic values with “Judeo-Christian” (as other people have pointed out, an odd term to use) ones will solve everything. Which is bollocks; Islam and Islamic values are not the problem, terrorism is the problem, and no religion has a monopoly on that.
Oh man, the Vampire of Croglin Grange! My dad used to tell that as a campfire story when I was in the boy scouts.
I guess I thought he’d made it up.
Jane Marie is no longer at Gawker.
hint hint nudge nudge
Please, someone hire Jane Marie! Also, apparently Millihelen – arguably the best and most interesting part of Jezebel in the last few months – has been shut down? What the hell?
I also read somewhere that Gawker is going to launch a new health and beauty products site… which… that is Millihelen? It exists already?
seriously! what is the deal with this? Fire Jane, the best beauty writer ANYWHERE, so that you can re-create a new shittier version of what she was already doing? This makes absolutely zero sense.
Whatever-wherever Jane Marie goes-I follow.
She implied on Twitter that she wasn’t enough of a “shill” for Denton’s liking.
/infiniteheaddesk
That sounds about right :/
the most depressing part of that is that they aren’t doing those bonkers makeup tutorials anymore
And bring over the lady who did the ridiculous over-the-top makeup tutorials too! They were fantastic.
I want Jane Marie to bring the whole Millihelen site over here, especially the product diaries. I LOVE the product diaries.
I am also a sucker for the beauty box subscription reviews.
Millihelen is literally the only reason I venture Jezward these days. You gorgeous creatures fulfill all my feminist/random scholarly needs. As is proper.
Thirded. The Mall Makeovers and thorough examinations of vintage eyeliner! And Jane Marie is such a good writer!
THE VINTAGE MAKEUP POSTS. I’m not going to be able to handle it if she never has a chance to show me the 70’s and 80’s in makeup.
I can’t believe exactly how upset I am at this. Jane Marie was one of my favorites over there. I liked pretty much everything on millihelen. I can’t remember how I lived without it.
Hello, lovely links, yes, but HEY GUESS WHAT!! I finally finally found someone to take an interest in my terrible cat, and she got him in to another vet (who is very far away and I lost THREE HOURS of my life yesterday driving back and forth in a terrifying downpour at rush hour but whatever it’s not like I had anything better to do) and this vet found that the poor fellow has been walking around with a stitch still in his former penis for the last 17 months and it was infected and he took it out and now it’s fine and I feel like such an asshole for not getting a second opinion sooner BUT Y’ALL I THINK MY CAT IS FIXED! He used the litter box exclusively last night. I am cautiously delighted. But also very sorry I was so neglectful.
I’m so sorry your cat went through that! I do not think you should be too hard on yourself though; it’s natural to assume that veterinarians are DOING THEIR JOBS which means NOT LEAVING PENIS STITCHES IN.
Continued recovery to your cat and good thoughts to both of you!
I have a friend who had to have her cat spayed twice because the first time around, the vet forgot an ovary in there.
Gah! I certainly hope the vet did the follow-up surgery free of charge.
When I had my pet rabbit spayed, the vet’s office called me midday to ask if I was sure she hadn’t already been spayed, because the vet couldn’t find the uterus. I sputtered a, “Um, no?” and they later called back to let me know they’d found the uterus and removed it and everything was cool.
Maybe we SHOULDN’T be trusting vets.
Well, you know, it’s all pink and mushy in there, so hard to tell one organ from the next…
Being fair, this was true of the frog I dissected in high school. Frogs don’t have distinguishable organs, they just have frog gloop.
That happened to us when I was a kid, except with a cat! My parents spent their childhoods in rural areas during grim Communist times, so their attitude toward animal care was mostly “Take it to the vet? Have it vaccinated? Vets are for important animals like cows and horses. When I was your age our cats just roamed the village and nobody knew or cared if they had feline leukemia” etc etc. They didn’t have our cat spayed until she’d had a litter, and they didn’t neuter the kitten we kept until his aggression and spraying finally got to be too much for them.
The day of the operation, the vet called my mother to ask if we were sure he hadn’t already been neutered because they couldn’t find his testicles. They wanted authorization to bring in a cat endocrinologist and run some tests. It only cemented my mother’s theory that vets are just crooks hell-bent on fleecing the naive.
I’m sorry the opening sentence of “This happened to us except with a cat!” made me think that you were worried that people would think that it happened to your brother.
In defense, the fun thing about rabbits is that usually, when you cut them open, the uterus comes popping out like a snake in a can. And underneath the uterus-snake is the cecum, which you are Not Supposed to Touch because If You Touch It the rabbit will get GI Stasis For Sure if you are lucky and, if you are not lucky, A Perf, Septic Abdomen and then Death. So, if given the choice between farting around pulling on the cecum looking for a uterus-snake that isn’t where it’s supposed to be and calling the owner to make sure I actually need to be doing that, I would probably choose to call even though it would make me look like a jackass. (Which, yup, totally understand that it made your vet look like a jackass.)
source: will be vet in six months, have watched a few rabbit spays, am too scared to do one myself yet because Death, as previously mentioned
Yes, especially since he’s been back to visit, oh, six or seven times since then? And also one visit to a different weekend emergency vet. (This cat could be gold-plated by now if I’d spent my money on that instead of veterinary care.)
NOW the question is, what do I say to the old vet about this??
I’d probably write to them – less emotional and you can state your case clearly without being interrupted. I’d emphasise how long your poor cat has been in pain and how this is not even slightly the standard of care you expect and what are they planning to do about it.
I agree with Es_Petal–write to them, and ask for reimbursement for all the follow up visits to that vet (unfortunately that won’t include the emergency weekend vet, but it’s a start. They AT MINIMUM owe you that. Then I’d call in a couple of weeks when they don’t get back to you and ask to speak to the office manager or whoever is in charge to follow up on your letter.
Oof. Yeah, with one of my parents’ dogs, the vet basically accused my parents of being abusive, because they didn’t understand how he could have ruptured his spleen just by falling off the bed or so my parents said, and then once they did the actual surgery, called my parents back like “Oh hey! This is actually really interesting!” Apparently, he was born with a congenital defect where his spleen and most of his stomach had herniated through his diaphragm, and so was essentially a ticking time bomb of when that was going to try to kill him.
So. This is depressing:
But I am happy to see that Pennsylvania is standing firm on the pro-refugees position.
(It is certainly true that governors have no power to accept or refuse refugees, so this is all a lot of political posturing meant to alienate and incite fear and hatred for them. I.e., the worst kind of political posturing, because it cannot accomplish its stated goal, and can only make the world worse.)
Yes to PA! I was so relieved to hear that Wolff wasn’t going to be an asshole about this–can you imagine what Corbett would have been like?
ughhh yes I can definitely imagine what Corbett would have been like, and also I wish there was a way to tag his name with the blistering disdain I have when i say it out loud.
I was so glad to see my state (CT) being pro-refugees, too, whew.
I like this spin, and it’s totally true. We should make slogans.
Do YOU want to let the TERRORISTS win? No? Befriend a Muslim TODAY!
Let IS cut off its nose to spite its face – they can’t have a state if all their citizens leave!
So you want to give us the most courageous, driven and freedom-loving members of a generation? Thank you Mr Terrorist!
Don’t let Daesh order YOU around – refuse to believe their propaganda!
THEY think they can make you fear the mere mention of Islam. Let’s show them we don’t scare THAT easily!
Edited to add: I’m envisioning spoofs of WWII posters, but I suck at Photoshop, so if you like this idea, feel free to run with it
I love this idea, and I wish I had the graphic design skills to pull it off.
Me toooo, I’ve downloaded a bunch of pictures to make posters out of but I can’t make them look pretty 🙁
“Don’t give into Daesh–let’s embrace our Syrian brothers and sisters!”
“The people of Syria are voting with their feet – 4 million people have left the Islamist terrorists behind”
I made a pretty
Hey, can you post a link to that map? Can I share it on Facebook? Thanks!
Hm, can I? Here, is it this:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153407318448558&set=a.10150465581678558.374627.505228557&type=3&theater
Goddammit Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. Why do all of the states I’ve lived in have to be full of chickenshit asshole ‘leaders’?
Refugee One LITERALLY has families that are supposed to be settled in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend–their apartment set, “good neighbor” volunteers in place–and this bullshit? Fuck Rauner.
Also fuck Huckabee for his bullshit about how Syrians can’t handle cold weather, English, and Christianity–I would say he should come meet some of the Syrian refugees here in Chicago, but they don’t deserve to have to be in the presence of such an asshole.
Huck, you do realize that we have indoors up here, right? The northern states are not populated (solely) by ice golems.
Also, you know, people deal. Minnesota has a huge number of Somali refugees and Wisconsin has a lot of Hmong and you know nobody expected those climates but, you know, a church will buy them parkas and boots and it’s all good.
So disgusted by Massachusetts today. Fuck off, Charlie Baker.
Did anyone hear the brief interview with Washington’s governor on NPR this morning? He gave such a great defense of why letting refugees in was so important. That guy should run for president.
This one?
Yes! I think that’s it.
I hate Charlie Baker so much, and I hate his stupid voice that sounds like he’s talking through a smug smile exactly 110% of the time.
When the facebook arguments of the night involve your partner reminding someone of blood libel and then you both get blocked, you know it’s a good night.
A friend posted a screencap the other day of her getting “preemptively blocked” for being an “obvious social justice LUNATIC” and my only thought was, “wait, we aren’t warriors anymore? I only ever want to be a melee class!”
I am strictly a social justice fire mage, myself. It’s good to diversity the social justice classes!
I’ve been multiclassing as a social justice pally, because the party needs some tanks.
I’m trying to figure out my SJ Pal/Rogue build, because (a) skill points are awesome and (b) sometimes the path of Good involves knowing when the law is there to keep people down.
I’m also a Social Justice Rogue. This mostly involves hamstringing the Patriarchy and stealing its wallet.
Oh, my primary is definitely a Social Justice Paladin, but sorrycassandra is right: it’s important to tend more towards neutral good, sorry strict class definition rulebooks.
I tipsily babbled recently to a friend who does cartoon art/graphic design for a living about my wish for a “Social Justice Paladins: Tanking for the Cause” t-shirt. I’ll let you all know if this comes to a thing.
PLEASE LET THIS BECOME A THING I WILL BUY 10
I want to wear it to ALL the cons, not that I attend all that many. But I also think he could make a bundle if he tabled with a few variants.
I dunno what any other class’s slogan would be, though?
“Social Justice Berserker”
“Social Justice Priest”
“Social Justice Wizard”
“Social Justice Rogue”
I will totally sign up for social justice rogue.
We get automatic sneak attacks against Patriarchy.
I want to recruit at least one Person With a Period as a SJBerserker, because Blood Rage.
Social Justice Thief
Unfortunately, governors can bar Syrian refugees from state programs meant to help them get settled and/or provide them services. (Source)
God, I wonder what it would be like to live in a state where my governor didn’t take every single opportunity to hatefully grandstand against vulnerable people.
Yeah, I know, I work in the state welfare office.
Fortunately, I work in the Pennsylvania state welfare office; this is going to be a mess, of course, but at least we’re trying.
Sorry if that sounded all “well, actually” at you! I didn’t know until I read that article so I thought other people might not, either. I’m glad there are states that are trying and I’m glad you’re part of it!
No, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound snippy; when this first came up, I was pointing out to a lot of people that I have a lot of firsthand experience with just how much a governor can spitefully fuck up the lives of refugees despite being unable to formally reject them.
It’s good for people to know that this isn’t completely harmless posturing.
Every single state I have ever lived in is on the surrender list. I mean, so is most of the country, but still. JUST ONCE could we do it right?
(Born in Oklahoma, Kansas was/is home until three months ago, currently in Texas. Tbh, all three of these states are constantly Doing It Wrong although my ignorance of Texas politics has been a refreshing change from almost daily “Oh god, what did Sam Brownback do THIS time?” Eventually I’ll catch up.)
I’ve lived in Texas most of my life. Ignorance of the day-to-day while voting whenever possible is probably your best option.
I’m so mad (as you probably know from my many tweets) that MD’s governor (who has generally given a middle finger to Baltimore City) was pretty much like “I know I can’t do shit but I’m going to be a public asshole towards accepting Syrian refugees cause why the fuck not, it’ll shore up my base!*”
Also dude is married to a naturalized Korean American, so there goes the whole “maybe if people just knew more immigrants or refugees, they’d have more sympathy” argument. (lets face it, many immigrants are economic refugees)
*his base seems to be “racist people who don’t like government spending on things they don’t understand or agree with?”
I have a friend whose family came to the US to escape the collapse of the USSR, and she’s against taking in Syrian refugees. It’s so frustrating when people refuse to have empathy for others, especially people who have experinced somewhat similar situations.
I’ve been worried about talking to my sister about this for exactly this reason. She’s said some not very pro-immigrant stuff in the past (ironic, since she fled VN as a kid) and that combined with a very significant fear of Daesh (she’s much more politically conservative and lives in metro edge of Atlanta), makes me leery of talking to her about this..
I’m really, genuinely curious as to the thought process in cases like that. I don’t know any anti-immigration immigrants so I can’t ask any personally, but I’ve heard about it so often there must be a reason for it.
From the people I’ve spoken to who have similar positions, it’s essentially, “Well, I came over and worked my ass off, but we all know those people will just come over here and slack off and leach off the government.” And now it’s got the extra helping of Islamophobic, “They might be terrorists!!!!11!!” special sauce. It’s a fundamental failure of empathy, but it’s got a long history here. My German-American great-grandmother was apparently convinced that Italian-American immigrants were going to corrupt her little Iowa town.
Mostly I think it’s Islamophobia/other prejudice. My family and all their friends are Jewish immigrants from Russia, and they’re terribly against the refugees, because they were Islamophobic for ever, and being an immigrant doesn’t automatically make you a better person.
God, I really need to move to Minnesota.
Granted, Minnesota isn’t always a progressive paradise (google Jamar Clark or the recent assault on a Muslim woman in Anoka), but when I look across the border at Wisconsin, I renew my pledge to eat of their cheese and drink of their beer and never, ever live there, or at least until Scott Walker is abducted by aliens.
I’m happy to be in Minnesota but also starting to feel a little weary of the “well, at least I’m in Minnesota” feeling. I never wanted to be that parochial.
Not to mention that a black man in Minneapolis was killed by police last week, so I can’t really feel self-righteous about our social justice situation.
I’m glad to see South Dakota on the list of confused states. Probably because they’re like “Uh….Why would you want to live here anyway?”
This is all so shitty.
In 2013, the US accepted almost 20,000 refugees from Iraq and another 2500 from Iran. The media didn’t publicize it, so no one got upset about it.
I think very highly of everyone over here at The Toast, but I am strongly inclined to think that a lot of the rest of the world is comprised of Hot Garbage.
#banGovernors
Terry Branstad (Iowa’s governor) is a sack of shit, has been a sack of shit for decades now, and will presumably be a sack of shit until he dies and goes to hell.
I love this, thank you for posting it! I must quibble with some of the info listed – the Oregon governor did. …eventually. .say that we would accept refugees.
*sighs*
Governor Snyder, when you tell us you want Michigan to lead in things, leading the charge against refugees was not what we thought you meant.
Or leading the country in levels of lead in tap water, either.
*sighs*
A friend of mine lives in Flint and has been very active in the lead levels in water stuff. That is SO MADDENING.
Whenever Jerry Brown gets on my nerves I have to remind myself that he does things like this. Heck Jerry would probably ask for more refugees.
This article has an updated map with a noticeable amount more green on it.
This is the greatest infographic I’ve ever seen. I’m both completely unsurprised (yet somehow still disappointed) that my birth state of Kentucky is on the “total fucking surrender” list, and intensely pleased that my adopted home state of Washington actually understands what “whatsoever you do to the least of my people” means.
Fuck’s sake, I just made myself furious imagining how many anti-refugee assholes in that swath of red will be singing the “whatsoever you do” song at church this weekend with pride in their hearts at being total shitheels. RRRRRRRRRRR
Although Oregon governor Brown didn’t immediately weigh in, there wasn’t any doubt on her position. She said yesterday: “Clearly, Oregon will continue to accept refugees, They seek safe haven and we will continue to open the doors of opportunity for them. The words on the Statue of Liberty apply in Oregon just as they do in every other state.” And then wrote to a Oregon Republican representative: “As Oregonians, it is our moral obligation to help them rebuild their lives, in Oregon we will continue to abide by federal laws regarding resettlement. Oregon does not have a direct role or act independently of the federal government.”
An awesome woman named Harley (http://tumblinguistics.tumblr.com/) did a dissertation on Tumblr Linguistics, which can be read in a google doc. I got halfway through it last night before I had to go to bed, but it’s very interesting, PLUS, she references an old article from The Toast (Your Ability to Can Even: A defense of internet linguistics) which was unexpected and made me smile.
This is lovely and I’m enjoying it, but I just got to the sentence “Aside from the very occasional
promoted post, a user’s Dashboard is comprised solely of items posted or reblogged by whomever he or she follows.” and I’m pawing nostalgically at that “very occasional” and weeping at the current state of tags in tumblr-land.
Hah! If you use Chrome or Firefox (it doesn’t work on mobile sadly), have you gotten New Xkit Extension? They have extensions that hide the recommended posts (including the new ones from your tracked searches), and they have another extension that puts tracked tags back on the sidebar; they link to the actual tags, not the search, and even have the little number bubbles to show you new posts. Among a lot of other great fixes tbh; it’s built off the original Xkit which got abandoned.
http://new-xkit-extension.tumblr.com <- The best! 😀
Ooh, I haven’t updated it to see the number bubbles yet. I know what I’ll be doing when I get home…
Alas, I usually do my morning tumblr catch-up on mobile, so I get a faceful of all kinds of recommended posts. And one of the fandom tags I track is not highly active, so this happened a few days ago, referring to a post I made: http://toushindai.tumblr.com/post/133261150140/im…
Yes! Definitely get that extension in New Xkit. I can’t remember what it’s called and I’m at work but I THINK it’s “Tag Tracking+”. New Xkit is the best. But whenever I go on mobile I forget and them I’m like WHAT IS ALL THIS CRAP.
Eek, will try! Thank you.
I’ve only read some of it, and it’s really interesting, but there are a few points where the author seems not always aware where something is particularly a Tumblr thing and when it’s just an internet thing. She includes smh as a Tumblr abbreviation when I see it more on other sites like Imgur (which suggests a Reddit connection? idk).
So funny though that some of the kids on Tumblr think they’ve invented a whole new form of internet speak. No you didn’t kids! It comes from Livejournal and IM! I’m only 23 and I know this! We all came from LJ to build your beautiful world. I’m not saying there’s nothing new in Tumblr speak, but it’s very much an evolution of an already existing brand of CMC Especially the fandom stuff, there’s that one person who posts a sentence saying ‘There’s no way someone not on Tumblr would understand this!!!’ and it’s like, anyone with a working knowledge of fanfic knows what you’re talking about, and also WIP is not fanfic specific. Anyway, it’s all really interesting, thank you for sharing!
Agreed, I had the same thought while reading. Most of the “tumblr” abbreviations are ones that originated before it and are more widely used. I used pretty much all the ones she listed pre-tumblr. I do think there ARE some tumblr-only ones but I can’t think of them right now. Stuff like “af” is newer but I’m not sure whether that originated on tumblr or not. Mostly it’s more slang/phrases used as memes, or the way things are typed that originated on tumblr. Anyway, I think I enjoyed more the linguistic analysis than anything else, so far anyway.
And yes haha, please, the origination of fandom on tumblr came from Livejournal uses (who were all active IM users) migrating over! All your fanfic terms came from that! The kids are cute about it.
The other half of Tumblr users are OVER 25. A good number of them may be, and likely are, LJ transplants.
Some of those words (OTP, shipping) pre-date Tumblr. For sure.
And I wonder if some other words or phrases (e.g., bae, ______ has no chill) are rooted in AAVE and have been appropriated.
Yeah like so much white and/or mainstream culture, I see a lot of influences/borrowing/appropriation from AAVE in the memes. (I still have no idea what the “bae” thing is or where it comes from. I’ve ended up googling several abbreviations, too.) When I actually think about it when talking (as a white lady) there is such a huge amount of Black-originated speech in my vernacular (often via the beats) that it seems pretty difficult to excise it, if that would be appropriate. Sometimes the line is hard to find.
The only really widespread American English development in recent years (not sure how to phrase that) originated by white people that is really used by everybody is “like.”
I first saw “bae” used by black USican people on Twitter, I think? It’s used as an affectionate term, as another way to denote a significant other. A quick googling also reveals that: 1) it stands for “before anyone else”, and 2) it’s Dutch for “poop”.
I think I’ll stick with other terms. 😉
ALSO Usenet. I started out on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc (RATMM!) when I was an adolescent back in the late 90’s. Usenet seems like the grand-daddy of internet-speak (though I’m sure there’s sme earlier roots, of course…). I wasn’t around computers when the whole LJ thing happened, but Tumblr has not been too hard to jump into. Basic principle of new phraseology and abbreviations (and fandom) is the same.
Thanks for the pointer to the Toast article! As anyone who’s seen my comments in the last month knows, I’ve jumped into Tumblr for the sake of fandom in the last month and learning the written communication style and the protocol for jokes and comments on content (which includes not just phraseology but also capitalization and punctuation choices) has been interesting and fun. Effective writing is my JAM (as they say!), and on Tumblr I actually get to use that and SHARE it and it’s pretty great.
The article says there are many more adults than teenagers on there, but I wonder how that may vary by niche/fandom. There seems to be a lot of teenagers in Hamiltumblr (a word only I use), and they are so cute. I’m getting used to the “trash” moniker, and am pushing hard for the words “linnamon roll” and “lintrash” to become a thing/tags. Someone else originated linnamon roll but I can’t find them again because Tumblr’s search function is truly awful but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.
WELP I know what I’m talking with my hysterectomy surgeon about when I see her next Tuesday for my pre-op consultation.
Hi, I had the same surgery this summer (Aug 18th). My doctor felt strongly that the best way was to do it abdominally. My case was a bit complicated and he felt this was the safest. After reading everything I could I felt the same. As far as recovery I went back to work at 4 weeks but really felt absolutely fine by 6 weeks, and now I feel great. Best of luck to you!!
Thanks for the input! Two years ago I would’ve been adamantly opposed to any visible scars but at this point IDGAF. I just want whatever is going to be the simplest and most effective method in regards to long-term healing.
As a former stalwart videogum monster, I get a little worried whenever I see gawker troubles. I hope Kelly is doing well! I still love you Kelly, even if I won’t visit you in your new internet home! Nothing personal, I am just not super into gawker.
Okay, is it just me or does “clearing the path for Jezebel to become the primary voice for celebrity and pop culture coverage in the network” read as “LADIES LOVE GOSSIP, AMIRITE”?
It’s totally that. And I mean, Jezebel had already lost much of its former luster, but I think this means I’ll finally really stop visiting.
ughh I stopped visiting jezebel about 3-4 years ago with the exception of a once-in-a-great-while (basically, annually) scroll that leaves me lamenting the fierce jezebelity of c2004. in my opinion, it’s finished over there and gawker can just fall off the face of the internet earth and continue belittling women/being generally obnoxious all by their own selves.
Not just you.
I had the exact same thought, especially considering they’re hiring an editor for a “style and beauty” section of Jezebel. Because ofc, that’s what ladies want! Fashion, makeup, and celebrity gossip!!
But at the same time, they’re shuttering MilliHelen, which makes no sense whatsoever.
So, I’m ashamed to admit that millihelen was my favorite thing over there at this point and now that it’s gone I might not be going over there so much (I hate when I am a stereotype). But also I don’t get why they are hiring an editor for a style and beauty section when they got rid of millihelen presumably because it wasn’t that popular or wasn’t working or something.
Emma Carmichael edits Jezebel now? She didn’t do much with the Hairpin so I am surprised to learn that that is where she went. (No, I do not follow industry news much.)
and the gross converse “Gawker is totes serious now,” as if it wasn’t always 75% gossip.
For me it’s the phrase “self-care”: that means losing weight. I know it, you know it, they know it, advertisers know it.
Okay, I do not have that association AT ALL, so thanks Toastie bubble!
me either! self-care to me is much more “go on a walk, have alone-time with tea, read a delicious novel/watch a delicious film” etc etc. no part of that involves weight loss – usually, if I’m honest, it involves cookies. 😉
maybe it depends on context?
because in communities that are friendly to chronic illnesses of all stripes, self-care definitely means what you’re saying. but when i see it on self-help/beauty/fashion sites, it refers to all the things you must do to maintain the fashionable look – which includes losing weight or exercise as a chore, but also hair removal and teeth whitening, you know?
i definitely prefer spaces where it refers to cookies and naps instead of kale and running tbh
this is a good point.
I do my best to keep my energy in positive spaces that radiate kindness towards all bodies and their myriad of complexities – shape, size, energy/fitness level, illness status, etc – and have minimal interest in the type of beauty tips usually masked as self-care in some types of publications, so insularity for the win here I guess?
I admit I’m a wee bitty-bit sensitive about that – it’s just that when combined with pop culture, gossip, health and beauty that’s what it ends up meaning. Either that or “health” gets to be code for weight loss and “self care” becomes “buy things”.
I am so pissed off about the Gawker situation. Like, they’re killing Kitchenette? They’re rolling io9 into Gizmodo? Gawker itself (which I don’t even read) is…becoming a politics blog? What the hell?
Wait, I completely missed the part about io9. That is terrible! Gawker hates happiness, don’t’ they?
Yeah, I don’t think it was in the Awl article, but I read about it in the NYT last night.
MOTHERFATHER, IO9 IS MY FAVORITE.
Noooo! I love io9!
io9 was pretty much all I read over there, until the redesign that brought the dreaded Kinja, which not only made comments unreadable, but messed up the article formatting on all my browsers so it was hard to read anything. I think it’s somewhat fixed now but I still never visit anymore.
The boy is going to be so sad about the demise of kitchenette. It’s the only reason he visits Jez at all, and basically his go to for relaxation reading.
What am I going to do on Mondays if I don’t have Behind Closed Ovens?!
I will miss it tooooooo! It’s like they don’t even know why ppl go to their site.
Right?! They are getting rid of 2 of the main things I actually visited Gawker sites for. I occasionally hang out at Jezebel – I enjoy Jia’s and Anna’s articles, but mostly I scanned millihelen and kitchenette and now both of those are gone. Boo!
I’m sad because I am just now discovering Behind Closed Ovens.
I really hope the guy who writes it takes it elsewhere, because I love it.
I can understand getting rid of Kitchenette as a thing because aside from BCO and those cocktail recipes that are always impossible to make, there’s not a lot on there, but are they for real getting rid of BCO? That must be one of their most popular series. I started visiting Jezebel as a whole regularly thanks to reading BCO
I don’t know! I hope they at least keep BCO around, but I’m assuming that if they’re firing Pinkham (which…possibly they’re not, I can’t tell) then BCO will go too.
Looks like Pinkham has been fired, but is looking for another home for BCO.
I just hope he can take the archives with him, though I doubt it.
I had only a passing interest in this whole thing until I realized they’re killing Kitchenette. How will I ease into Monday by reading crazy restaurant stories interspersed with my emails? THERE WILL BE NO EASE.
Pissed/sad about Gawker but my biggest reaction was to losing Kitchenette’s Behind Closed Ovens. What will I do with my Mondays???
They used to have a politics blog and then they let it go! lolol
I’m just kind of “…” to Gawker becoming Wonkette. Because the world needs more snarky politics blogs to make fun of Ben Carson? I suppose their traffic is telling them so, but blah. It’s easy and cheap, I guess.
I’m side-eyeing the part of the memo that claims there has never before been an election so ripe for satirical commentary. Where the hell have they been for the entire time democracy has existed?
Actual LOL. And what happens after this singular election in human history is over, I wonder?
What’s beyond stupid is that I started reading Jezebel in their political heyday of 2007-8. Bless Megan Carpentier and Crappy Hour forever and ever, amen. That was the election ripe for satirical commentary. Plus, with Erin/MoGlo leaving at the end of the month, I think Jez is truly dead to me.
It’s a calculated decision to capitalize on the next year of election insanity. If they do it right, I’m sure it’ll make for a good business year, but it’ll be telling what direction they turn in 2017.
I can only hope they branch out and cover stuff at the state legislature level, because shining a light there would be actually useful, rather than just ad nauseam on the presidential candidates.
Lol, I don’t actually read anything on Gawker, I just have thoughts about political coverage (especially the highly sought-after satire realm. Of COURSE they specifically called out The Daily Show as their model, because who doesn’t want that success? Good luck actually attaining anything that isn’t a shallow mimicry).
You just distilled down all my thoughts, including the fact that I don’t really read Gawker. 😛 So I acknowledge they probably couldn’t care less what I think.
It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Snarky-but-not-as-good-as-Jon-Stewart-level political coverage seems like a crowded field, but they’ve got history in that arena and a name brand, so I think you’re right that they’ll do well with it in the next year.
Specifically, state legislature stuff beyond “look what this bumbling fool said about gay people today!” *everyone trashes the state the bumbling fool is from in the comments*
The Vane! I loved reading Dennis’s articles.
I know! I felt like his articles were important not just from a weather information standpoint, but a public safety standpoint.
I think most of the io9 writers will keep their jobs (though Annalee Newitz is leaving), at least.
I think I’m most upset about losing the Vane and Jason Parham. Terrible mistakes on Gawker’s part.
I for one am THRILLED to see Kitchenette go. Pinkham had a known history even before he was hired to write Kitchenette of being verbally abusive towards women, especially women of color, when they disagreed with him. He’d tell them to “get fucked by a rake” or that they were “literal human garbage and a waste of air”. Back when he was just a commenter, he’d even follow them around to harass them on other comments. Getting that column just gave him the opportunity to do all that, and then dismiss their comment so that no one could see it.
I despise Pinkham honestly but I read BCO religiously every Monday and reread the archives frequently. The other commenters are hilarious.
If I can’t have my Monday morning BCO from Kitchenette anymore, I will probably have to quit my job.
I love that quote about Icelanders and elves. It reminds me of my favorite WB Yeats story. He was off collecting tales about the wee folks and so on in rural Ireland, and he asked an old woman, do you believe in fairies? And she said, no, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Tom Hiddleston’s response to a question about believing in ghosts (on the press circuit for Crimson Peak), was that it’s more fun to believe in ghosts than not to believe in them. What a charming answer.
My very favorite attitude toward ghosts came from House of Spirits and Shadows, a memoir about living in a real-life haunted house: the author talked about lying in bed at night listening to creepy noises downstairs and decided right then and there that she believed in friendly, benevolent ghosts, but she did not believe in nasty ghosts that might threaten or hurt her, because that was the only way she was going to sleep. I love the honesty in that.
Smart woman!
There’s an excellent David Rakoff (RIP) essay about Icelandic belief in elves. I think it’s in his first book, Fraud. There’s also a This American Life version: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/ep…
I’ve always been a fan of straightforward agnosticism.
The profile of Patricia Highsmith in NY Mag this morning is everything I wanted and needed; perhaps it is also what you want and need: http://www.vulture.com/2015/11/frank-rich-carol-i…
(Sorry for lack of embedding.)
Artsy dirtbag historical lesbians 4 lyfe.
That was indeed delightful. She was such a strange and fascinating person.
I literally just squealed with happiness. It almost makes up for none of the local theaters getting Carol this week. Almost.
Yeah I was so excited to go see it and then I looked up showtimes and it’s not showing here either 🙁
OMG yes!
I don’t know if there are s significant number of Toasties with a drug exploration period in their poast (or present) but I found this look into the go-to drug site Erowid really fascinating.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/the-…
I am also here for elves in Iceland! I was there in September and was really taken with the prevalence of Icelanders half-joking, agnostic references to the existence of hidden people. I interviewed the curater of the Icelandic Phallalogical Museum on my radio show and when I asked him about the room he has devoted to mythological penises he was totally deadpan, like “of course I have those penises, they are invisible but I have some molds and art representing them; I even have a merman penis.”
Thanks for the link! I used to read that all the time in 1999 and early 2000. Not actually a doer-of-the-drugs myself, I just like knowing things. And I really appreciated the way they made it clear that some things were Not A Good Idea – the experience recounts from nutmeg & morning glory seeds were particularly harrowing.
PS Perfect radio interview moment, congratulations.
I weaned myself off Gawker last year (so, so many terrible editorial decisions and horrible responses when called out for said decisions, guys) except for Millihelen and the occasional swing by Deadspin. So I’m pretty bummed that the last good part of that media empire has been excised and burned, although I hope all the editors and writers for the sub-blogs can maybe find a way to set up shop under a less awful umbrella?
(Also, I have not been a professional for very long, but disabling people’s accounts without warning seems like a really short-sighted thing to do. At least give your people time to save off their documents and contacts, jesus. Aside from being common courtesy, it’s a good idea to let your former employees keep records– you might need them some day!)
Yeah I actually only ever check out Deadspin now because I really prefer snark with my sports news and ESPN just isn’t right for me. But I can’t remember the last time I even glanced at Gawker or any other site on the network. Jezebel has long been a not very feminist space that is in no way remotely safe from rape apologia and nastiness, so you know, I’ll just give this a big frowny face and stick to places with high-quality content and proper comment moderation.
It’s actually incredibly common to suspend people’s access to email and internal documents when they’re being laid off, and it’s a good business practice. That being said, that account freeze should happen during the meeting where you inform them of what’s going on, and not before.
I’d cut back to io9 and Deadspin, and I don’t even follow sports. They just had the best writers.
One of the best teachers I’ve ever learned from (Michelle Frank, 19th c. American Lit, I am grateful to her to this day) talked in the context of our class about buying and owning racist antiques. Horrible 19-year-old me blurted out, “But why wouldn’t you just melt it down?” Dr. Frank looked me dead in the eye and said, “Too much has already been melted down.”
Amy Jill Levine, awesome biblical scholar, says something similar – when we gloss over or expunge the anti-Semitic passages in scripture (Gospel of John, I’m looking at you) – we choose our own comfort over the hard conversations and critical consideration.
Also, when you start erasing these things from existence, you allow people to erase it from the past. “Seeing is believing” an’ all that. It is really damn easy for people to diminish or deny pains of the past if you can’t point directly at stuff like this.
Yes. If we erase the awful bits of history, how do we discuss the still harmful impact?
See: Residential Schools, Canada
And then when people say ‘hey, that depiction of that black person is not really cool’ people can say ‘what are you talking about? It’s harmless!’ (See all the comments from white people re: monkey Obama)
When you see the history of Coons and have to look that in the face, and then you watch a tv show where all the low-level thug criminals are black people… well. It’s much harder to dismiss.
I run into this in Australia a lot where people do a tonne of not-ok stuff, partly because ‘white people, amiright?’ and partly because they just lack the context to know why those things that seem innocuous to them are actually very aggressive, not ok things. And they do NOT want to know when you tell them, and you get a lot of that ‘you’re reading too much into it’ guff.
(I am white, btw, I think that’s relevant to the conversation)
Another Australian Toastie! Hi!
(Everything you’ve said there is gospel truth, also. ‘It’s not a big deal/it’s just a joke, relax!’ are the two most common responses when I try the old ‘Hey, not cool’ thing. Maddening.)
Wait, what’s in the Gospel of John?
I was thinking of the readings for Good Friday, and the passage between Pilate and “the Jews”, where the latter clamour for crucifixion.
The synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) tend to use “the crowd”, “the people” or “they”; but John uses “the Jews” as a refrain.
It is awful to read from the pulpit; especially given the history of pogroms and other Good Friday violence.
Oh, that’s really interesting! I never thought about it that way. I imagine a great deal depends on the tone of voice in the person reading the passage, which, thinking about decades past in certain parts America…oof.
Noooo not Kitchenette, why! Behind Closed Ovens was my favorite non-Toast thing to read. So sad now.
Collectors Weekly is fantastic – but goodness that article is tough reading.
Between this article and the other one Nicole linked a while back, I want to high five the writers/editorial staff of that magazine.
Yes, I’ve spent far longer than I’d ever have expected reading articles on there.
I look forward to reading: “If President Obama Were Your Dad” any day now.
dad rolling up to his birthday dinner drunk and pouring a beer all over the cake we made cause he didn’t like the candles wouldn’t have been the most awkward moment of the night if he’d bombed a hospital and had the fleeing patients killed afterward
The Toast should be legally obligated to hire you now, you have so profoundly understood its ethos.
She saw the job. They have to hire her.
Jesus, Gawker is a house fire right now. How can anybody concentrate on purporting to do good journalism when they’re “restructuring” every five goddamn minutes? Yeesh.
I’m hereby formally asking for replacement site recommendations.
News/Politics: pretty much everywhere. I assume everyone has some places they go to look for whatever’s happening now, even if it’s just scanning the NYT and the Journal. The Atlantic, sometimes. Many places are “sometimes” recommendations, unfortunately. The Nation, Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, Jacobin.
Sports: SBNation, Sports on Earth, Edge of Sports. SBNation is a pretty solid one-stop shop for your favorite teams, and they also have the single best sportswriter in the business as one of their top editors. Sports on Earth is solid, Edge of Sports is good for the places sports intersect with the rest of the world.
Tech: HackerNews (skip the comments, tech geeks are the worst), and the Verge
Feminism: HERE! THE FINEST SITE IN THE LAND! And a bunch of other places; again, like politics, this seems to be pretty personal. I’ve found that a lot of my politics/feminism/racial justice reading seems to be coming from Twitter lately, rather than specific sites.
And if you aren’t, you should be on Metafilter, which will serve up both a constantly interesting variety of interesting links and provide a space for one of the few mostly excellent comment sections on the internet.
Adding to this list Nate Silver’s 538!
Thank you both!
In almost as fluffy as Sansa news (I swear this is related! really!): my family got a puppy two days ago.
Meet Charlie Potato Hashbrowns:
He is very small and very wriggly and he went on his first walk last night and I had to carry him home under my coat because it got too cold. It was possibly the cutest moment of my life.
Puppy!
I have been a cat person all my life, and would never trade my two stinkmonsters for a dog, but the constant puppy barrage is definitely affecting me.
I grew up in a house full of Labs who were pets but mainly hunting dogs and therefore absolutely fixated on my dad, their lord and master. I’m an unregenerate cat person, but it took me decades to realize that I have rather a fondness for smaller dogs (the ones who are roughly cat-sized, which constitutes the Perfect Pet Dimensions)–dachshunds and corgis in particular. The two long-haired dachshunds in the movie Hugo are now my Platonic Ideals of dogdom.
See I am the opposite. I grew up with NO pets, but lots of friends with small dogs. Turns out I really really love big dogs, like Labradors. Or I guess medium big ones like sheep dogs. Alas, I will never have one because Labradors are too dumb and destructive and sheep dogs too smart and destructive.
Luckily I like BY THE DOG BEACH and it’s a delight. (Protip. When going to the dog beach while on your period, proceed with extreme caution)
I actually said “oh my goooooooooooood” reverently under my breath
POTATO HASHBROWNS
He came home with the name Charlie Brown, but my family has severely underestimated my need to have a dog named Potato. And since I’m pretty much guaranteed to be the one filling out his registration paperwork…
That is a perfect dog name and your family will be incapable of having alternate opinions because they’ll be too busy looking at what an adorable ball of fluff he is!
I have been slightly won over by Charlie (saying “good boy Charlie!!!” feels adorable every time) so it can stay but he deserves to be Potato.
You can call him ‘MY LIL’ TATER TOT’
Ahhhhh! I’m so jealous! I want all the puppiesssss!
AWWWWWWWWWWW!
I just whimpered in delight oh my awwwwwwwwww Charlie Potato Hashbrowns is adorable and I LOVE HIM
OH MY GOD I JUST WANT TO SNUGGLE HIM FOREVER LOOK AT THAT NOSE IT TAKES UP LIKE HALF OF HIS FACE
I KNOW it makes him look like a stuffed animal. He has a dark brown patch RIGHT THERE that makes it bigger looking.
he’s so cuteeeeee
please keep us updated on Mr. Hashbrowns
I haven’t been able to stop talking about him for like forty-eight hours so DON’T WORRY
This is an Excellent Pup. Thank you.
WHAT A GOOD NAME
I am so angry about the Gawker thing right now. One of my friends who writes for them may be getting laid off too. I read The Vane and Kitchenette a lot, and they helped me learn about a lot of shit I would otherwise not have know about. I also loved io9.
Jezebel really helped me make the transition from a third wave college feminist to a feminist woman in the world, taught me some shit about intersectionality, and made me feel like I wasn’t alone when surrounded by doofus bros or clueless Boomers at work. I know people might laugh or dismiss me because of that, but knowing it’s just going to devolve into a tabloid is upsetting. The Toast has really taken over for me on that emotionally, but it’s still like watching a longtime friend succumb to her worst impulses.
That last sentence is so spot on. I read Jezebel religiously for a while, and it was definitely formative. It hasn’t been that in a long time, but it makes me sad to know it’s only going to get worse from here.
Yeah I feel kind of the same way — Jezebel was really the place where I learned the difference between that kind of “I am a feminist in theory” and “oh, wait, feminism is something you have to actually do.”
The gossip / celebrity stuff was always the part I was least interested, it’s disappointed to see the site devolve to that.
What I will always be grateful to Jez for is introducing me to so many delightful people online, whom I’ve followed across sites and social media, even when I haven’t seen them in months (or years!) I know there’s at least a couple Jez expatriats here that I’m always happy to see.
It’s the same feeling I had about the Hairpin all over again. I get it , you’re a business, but still.
what exactly is going on with Hairpin?
inquiring minds want to knowwwwww
Seriously, that last sentence! I know folks rightfully point out a lot of issues with Jezebel, especially its version of feminism, but I feel like there weren’t many spaces on the internet where you could read about those issues AND laugh about them like they’re an in-joke with other feminists. It really does feel like that friend you’ve outgrown but they were the coolest back in the day.
I’m about to hit thirty and I’m mostly through the cycle of losing all the college-and-immediately-after friendships into the ether, and I think it’s so amazingly similar to this feel. Hairpin was this thing you describe for me, so my grief was not really prolonged, but yeah. So weird to feel, if anything, more disconnected from my early-20s humans and internets and etc than my childhood ones.
Now that Jane Marie is available. I 100% support a new beauty vertical headed by her. It can be called “The Jelly” or the “The Preserve”. You’re welcome.
I would love love love to see a Friday bargain bin. I need to know what to hate buy.
I was going to pitch it as The-Sprinkle but yes, totally agree. If I could read mall makeovers and product diaries and Jane Marie in general here I basically would not need the rest of the internet.
Preserve was the name of Blake Lively’s now-dead “lifestyle” site. So let’s go with The Jelly!
Toasts, what do you do when you’re in a terrible mood and virtually every interaction you have irritates you even more? I need to get in a better headspace and stop wallowing in my grumpiness because I feel like I’m seconds away from snapping at people.
(I don’t care about your kid’s bowl-a-thon fundraiser for whatever stupid camp they want to attend over spring break! No I won’t proof-read your email because you’re not sure about the phrasing – you’re a grown-ass woman and you should be able to string together 50 words! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ )
Go for a walk in the woods.
Also, I get much snappier when I’m hungry, so.
Agreed. Eat something and if at all possible remove myself from interaction with other humans.
Yes, this. Eating protein is key. A little fat helps by giving a good mouth-feel and full-tummy illusion. Nut butter is the most efficient delivery system for this strategy, in my pantry. Feel better, Toastfriend.
That’s such good advice, reminding me to reach for a bit of fat, rather than a hit of sugar.
And thus the perfection that is the Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup.
Seconding what the others have said. Eat something. Remove yourself from people for awhile. Watch or listen to something that will put you in a good mood or calm you down. I recommend The Joy of Painting. Bob Ross is great at making me less likely to punch someone!
I’m a fan of Going Deep With David Rees as calm-down, happy-making TV. He teaches you how to be better at doing everyday things like lighting matches and tying your shoes. Last week the new season kicked off with an episode about how to pet dogs, and it was so so cute, and David Rees is just really funny.
Snack. Walk. Put some headphones on and listen to something really loud and sassy. Like, listen to “Cell Block Tango” or the Rocky Horror soundtrack or Scissor Sisters or something really loud and lip-sync to it (or, if away from people like in your car or something, sing it super loud). If you’re alone and have room, dance some of that frustrated energy off. Bad dancing works great for this.
Years ago when I worked at a summer camp we had a system called the “purple bandanna” so that when one of us was at the end of our rope we could say “I need to get a purple bandanna” and that was code for “I need to go ELSEWHERE for a little while before I explode and drench you all in the gasoline of my rage.”
Yes, listen to something soothing. It doesn’t have to be like, ocean sounds or thunderstorms or whatever. A podcast or a show I love does the trick for me! Something where you can zone out and not have to interact with anyone is a good bet
Mentioning only that which has not already been said:
1. If I’m stuck at work, I’ll actually stick in the earbuds and listen to my ANGRIEST music as loud as is comfortable. Screaming death metal that pours its way into my fingers will take the very sharpest edge off, often.
2. I once came off a really bad rage-spiral by pulling out a piece of blank paper and drawing a giraffe giving face (based on a reference photo). The tactile act of creation (without the requirement of being a creative place) held me in a zen enough place for long enough to be able to face humans.
I try to determine root cause- if hungry, snacks, if tired, coffee and an early bed time. If generally pissed off, going to judo and throwing people works wonders (or other forms of exercise, but I highly recommend throwing people). Sometimes walks, especially if there is sunshine.
A) eat something and drink a glass of water
B) deep breaths
C) go for a walk, or close my office door and do some yoga
D) Music
E) sometimes I just need to sit down for a minute, reconfigure my desk, and do a few methodical things – check my email, put on my make-up, make a to-do list so I feel less frazzled, etc.
I’m there too today. Little things have been really making me grumpy – an overdue check finally came in (yay!) but because the client paid for two months in one check I had to drive to the bank to deposit it rather than using the mobile app (boo!). My new HOA has informed me that garbage and recycling bins must be stored out of sight in my garage or yard, even though that’s very much not the norm for the neighborhood (that one makes me as confused as it does grumpy). Neither of these things is big problems (and one of them is literally the money I’ve been waiting on and stressing over all month), but man, if they didn’t just put me in a shitty mood today.
It’s gray and overcast and my coworker is a shithead and I don’t think my boss understands that I’ve been accomplishing things and I too am in a table-flippy mood that I don’t know how to get out of. Normally I would pick a straightforward task to throw myself into, but all my current tasks are fiddly or in the large scale drafting stage. 🙁
This may not be applicable to you, but maybe it will help someone? I’ve been feeling like this a LOT lately, with way more anxiety as usual too. Turns out it was linked to a B-12 deficiency, which was making me cloudy-headed, anxious, and generally pretty short with people. Maybe look at diet, etc. if this is happening to you a lot? I hope you find something that works for you!
<iframe src=”//giphy.com/embed/13c2YVh83qgJRS” width=”480″ height=”272″ frameBorder=”0″ class=”giphy-embed” allowFullScreen></iframe>
uhh hello yes you are correct never underestimate the magic vitamin b power.
also, vit d now that it’s grey season here in the northeast.
edited because I am failing at gifs and give up. 🙁
So I just read the daughter of a revoloutionary peice from yesterday http://thebaffler.com/salvos/revolutionary-daught…
Its crazy good, and reminds me a lot of Shappi Korsandi’s autobiography, anyone read it? I read the entire thing in a day, its a beautiful journey through her family coming to the UK from Iran around the time of the Revolution. Her father was a satirical journalist who criticized the Ayatollah and had to flee the country, and now she’s a stand up comedian!
I didn’t know she’d written one but I will certainly go and find it now – I saw her live a couple of years back and she was great. Also a lot of similarities to my family revolution-wise.
I only picked it up by chance, I’d seen some of her stand up and thought it would be funny. I didn’t know much about her (or the Iranian Revolution TBH) and it was just so good! The way she talks about her family and life in Iran is really beautiful
All that business about Gawker said, though, I really like Alex Pareene, and am looking forward to him running a politics blog with somewhat-serious cachet.
As Josh Fruhlinger pointed out on Twitter, it’s like Wonkette’s decade-in-the-making long con to devour Gawker has finally succeeded!
Regarding Gawker: I only regularly read Millihelen and Kitchenette (because all my other favorite parts had died out a while ago) and now I need new Fun And Lighthearted things to read on slow workdays. Suggestions?
(Obviously, I will read The Toast. I will always read The Toast.)
Yes! I also want to know what other sites others read, especially now that Jezebel is diminished and The Hairpin has been confusing for a while.
I read TheCut not-often-but-regularly, and enjoy it.
Cracked has gotten a whole lot better in the last year or so. They actively try not to be misogynist, racist, homophobic, etc. Some folks in the comment section are mightily butthurt, which can be entertaining in itself.
Even their comments section seems to have gotten significantly better. I actually have been reading the comments on some of the articles and enjoying it.
I regularly read anything Jolie Kerr writes at Ask a Clean Person. It moves around a lot but can always be found through her tumblr.
The Adequate Man subblog over on Deadspin is actually pretty great a lot of the time, and I think it survived the cuts? Even the pieces that are pretty dude-focused are still often good reading, and it’s where a lot of Jolie Kerr’s Clean Person stuff lives now.
I also find some stuff I like on Broadly and Clutch and the Establishment and Reductress.
I think what we really need is just more Toast, though.
The Mary Sue is a good one (pop culture, geeky stuff, feminism)
Oooh, I’d forgotten about the Mary Sue!
http://www.theestablishment.co/category/verticals…
This is excellent, thank you!
I love Ask A Manager and Captain Awkward. Neither are exactly lighthearted, but the bonkers wackadoo shit that goes down in workplaces and homes around the world is just fascinating to me.
Seconding both, especially since Ask a Manager updates so frequently.
HIRE JANE
ok yeah but what happened to The Hairpin?
GOOD QUESTION it just keeps getting weirder over there.
It fucking exploded my Feedly this morning. I was full of confusion.
Mine too, and then when I opened the site, all those articles were all from Nov 2nd and 3rd, and nothing’s been posted since then.
I stopped reading sometime after Jane Feltes/Jane Marie left. I feel like the writers are high all the time and I’m not in on any of the jokes.
The Hairpin was the first website to make me feel Too Old to get it.
I have a conspiracy theory that it is mainly a bot posting that has been given Edith’s name to lure people back!
i actually do an internet search about this more than once a week
Toasts! Please help me with my hair!
This afternoon, there will be People With Cameras in my office — they are there for other people, I’m going to be in the background of shots if I’m in any at all. No big deal.
Except! There was a bug in my shower and so I did not wash my hair this morning. (It is dead now.)
I feel like my options, in escalating sitcom hilarity, are:
– dry shampoo? I … have never used it.
– wash hair in sink at work and hope no one walks in?
– pay for expensive haircut an inevitably-snooty salon near work
– purchase hat, scarf, glasses, adopt new identity
Suggestions welcome! My hair is short but not quite pixie, if that matters.
Dry shampoo should floof your hair right up and take care of any greasiness problems. I only wash my hair 2-3 times a week and use dry shampoo the rest of the time. Batiste is the best kind by a mile, in my experience.
My hair is blonde-ish, but I have heard people with darker hair complain about dry shampoo leaving some white residue, so there’s that to consider if you’re more on the brunette side.
Thank you! My hair is brunette, but my also-brunette sister says she has used it with no problems, so I am optimistic!
I am too, and I use dry shampoo! I find it works in best with a bristle brush. Can you run to the drug store? I have shoulder length straight hair, and I turn my head upside down, apply to roots, work through with fingers, stand up, and brush in and style with a bristle brush. Good luck!
I have almost black hair, and also only wash my hair every other day. I also ALSO swear by Batiste. You just have to really work it in with your fingertips & be careful about spraying too much on.
– get a comparatively less expensive blowout at the inevitably-snooty salon
– spend all afternoon hiding under your desk
– come down with a mysterious illness that requires you to go home, immediately, right now
These are also excellent options!
Its probably not as bad as you think! I only wash my hair 2x a week and its fine, I also rarely ‘do’ my hair, usually just a ratty bun.
There’s always photos/videos being taken in my office, if you’re in the background its unlikely you’ll be in focus and you won’t be recognizable to anyone but yourself.
Thanks! Yeah, I’m sure I will continue my long successful career as Background Office Worker #7.
“its probably not as bad as you think! I only wash my hair 2x a week and its fine, I also rarely ‘do’ my hair, usually just a ratty bun.”
hello, myself.
Fascinator? Distracting statement jewelry? I’m not much of a hair expert, but those ideas sprang to mind. Or maybe just brush and some mousse to hold it in place? I think the general shape will be visible, but unless it’s extreme close ups, it won’t be under much scrutiny, relative to everything else going on.
Ooooh, I have been looking for an excuse to get a fascinator.
I always pin it back in a weird bun-like-thing with a few bobby pins and then wrap a scarf around the rest.
(take a square scarf, turn it diagonally so it hangs like a triangle, then fold it up until you have a long flat headband-like rectangle, then wrap it around your head twice, knot the ends, and tuck the tails under itself.)
I SWEAR I am the laziest person ever and this is much less complicated than it sounds.
Would a hairband help? I have a couple, ranging from swank lululemon to emergency drug store.
THANK YOU TOAST FRIENDS!
I ran to the store and found dry shampoo (thanks for the Batiste rec). My hair is shiny and organized and does not look like l went from “slept-on” to “vaguely brushed post bug-killing.” I shall toss it insouciantly in all y’all’s honor.
Just FYI, the Zoolander 2 (2oolander) trailer is out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CL4LNWHegk
I’ll be over here.
BENESNICK BUMBLEBATCHES WHY ARE YOU IN THIS MOVIE????
Binglecramps Crabapple for every movie! Weird melted faces for all!
I AM HERE FOR THIS.
Also the other day I had a mental freakout because I couldn’t remember what the correct term for a investigatory journalist and then thought maybe that was actually right.
I am *hoping* that Cumberbatch’s androgynous model will poke fun at fashion’s superficial embrace of thin, high-cheekboned trans and/or non-binary people and not those folks themselves.
no luck, considering that cumberbatch’s appearance is immediately met with a joke about genitals and he’s being presented in line with the stereotype of trans women/amab transfeminine people as “things trying and failing to look human” (which isn’t difficult for cumberbatch anyway since he’s a lizard person in a poorly designed mask, but it is a really pernicious and pervasive stereotype in depictions of trans women)
NO MORE BLUEBERRY PUMPKIN PATCH FOR MINORITY ROLES.
Goddammit. We can do betterrrrrr
STOP BLECKYWHITEBOY CANTBEKHANORATRANSFEMININEPERSON 2016 AND BEYOND.
Speaking of Gawker stuff, did people read Dayna Evans’ piece two days ago?
At one point I was advised by a male superior — a man I like and consider a friend, and who is both progressive and feminist — to not “dick-measure over salary” when I became aware of distinct difference in pay among writers with equivalent jobs.
I…think it would be safe to say that the person who said this to you is neither a progressive, nor a feminist? Or to steal Jay Smooth’s formulation, the things they are doing are neither feminist, nor progressive.
YES. I thought it was just my (non-media) industry that was sexist. But wow, that was a whole level of professional sexism that I didn’t entirely know still existed. Ouch.
I don’t want to intrude on anybody’s threads lamenting the loss of certain Jezebel sub-blogs, but I found Behind Closed Ovens/its creator reaaaally off-putting (his history of misogynistic and racist comments), and it made me a little sad to see so many Toasties supporting him. I know it’s not support for those comments, I just didn’t realise that he had support even in these spaces, if that makes sense.
I’ve enjoyed BCO, but I had never known that he had said gross stuff, and I imagine that a lot of other people did not know that either.
Oh yes, definitely. I wasn’t trying to be sanctimonious or pull people up for it (although I guess it reads a bit like that), I just wanted to make people aware of it since I’ve seen a lot of posts talking about the loss of BCO.
Really! I didn’t know that. I’ve only been reading BCO for about a year and don’t recall anything terrible enough to stand out.
http://clashtalk.kinja.com/evolution-of-a-writer-… People have recorded some of the instances here (there’s more in the comments too). Some of the stuff is nasty, just as a warning.
Wow! I had no idea. I guess he can turn it off for long enough to write blog posts? Thanks for the link.
Yes he is the worst. So glad I’m not the only one who isn’t sorry to see that particular blog go.
Honestly, I’m conflicted. I love the concept of BCO (and of bad customer stories in general–I was an avid subscriber to the various customers_suck LJ communities back in the day, and I have spent hours scrolling through back pages of Not Always Right), and a lot of the commenters there, but I have trouble reconciling that with the rest of his online presence. I do read the column frequently, and I can sort of justify it in my head by reasoning that although it is facilitated by someone who seems like an asshole, 90% of the content itself is reader-submitted. But yeah. I can definitely see why people would choose to avoid it.
I enjoy reading BCO but I do not enjoy Colin. I think he’s bred a toxic situation in the comments where anyone who disagrees with him gets jumped on and made fun of. While I’ll miss reading other people’s crazy restaurant stories, I will not miss Colin.
This is how I’ve felt about BCO, too. As actualmeg said above, the fact that most of the content is submitted by users makes it better, and the comments are often hilarious, but god is he an asshole and wow is it frustrating to see his asshole comments responding to people who didn’t love one of the submissions getting +153 likes from the readership and sparking a whole thread of pile-ons in his wake. Gross.
Yes, agreed. I loved BCO until I read more about him, and I was sorry to see such a fun idea associated with someone like that. I stopped reading it a while ago because there are so many other fun things to read that are written by people who aren’t unapologetic jerks.
After weeks of trying to pry info of any kind out of my English department (first time adjuncting, city community college), I just got the topics my students have to write on for their exit essay, including a very stern note telling us not to use any of these topics all semester. It’s week 14! It’s sheer luck I didn’t–two of the four were on my short list, with a variation on the third and I always ended up using a different prompt instead.
Apparently comma splices are the hardest thing in the world to understand, but having finally gotten some sample essays to look at, I think my students are slightly better prepared than I thought.
Am I reading correctly the article about the Nigeria bombings? A tweet reads:
241 women & children freed from ‘terrorist camp,’ 43 potential #BokoHaram militants arrested
I don’t think they’re referring to the same group.
Thank you for Wolfdog puppy picture, it helped balance slightly the somewhat depressing stories today. Although, I will say that Collector’s Weekly was a pleasant counter example to the general rule I always ignore of “don’t read the comments’ (I write, whilst commenting).
– Noorchashm and his crusade/vendetta against the morcellator is kind of awesome.
He also thinks about the career that he could have had. “I was on a trajectory to become a Harvard professor,” he reflected. “I had friends who were pretty powerful in the medical establishment who I’m pretty sure don’t want anything to do with me now. It’s not a pleasant place to be.” But he doesn’t hesitate when asked if his campaign was worth it. “I did step outside professional boundaries,” he told me. But he doubts that he could have achieved what he did while on his best behaviour. “The only way was to use a sledgehammer.”
– The article about the Jim Crow Museum reminds me of when I was in Memphis and cruising around Beale Street, browsing in some of the shops. (For those not familiar with Memphis, it’s a short street just a couple of blocks south of downtown Memphis proper, and was the de facto African-American downtown during the Jim Crow/segregation days; now it’s basically a blues-themed tourist trap.) One tchotchke/souvenir shop had a whole shelf of this sort of stuff; I don’t know if they included it for historical purposes, or what, but it was kind of jarring to see it displayed almost literally a stone’s throw from the motel where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot (now the National Civil Rights Museum).
– I’m kind of detached from the whole Gawker shake-up; they’ve done some good work in the past, here and there (I found the recent Deadspin postmortem on Grantland pretty good, and even oddly sympathetic given the number of potshots they’ve taken at Grantland and Bill Simmons in the past), but there have also been any number of instances in which I would have embedded my iPad into the sheetrock if I’d been reading their site on it. Putting Alex Pareene in charge of the main site is encouraging, though; he’s usually been one of the best things about the various sites he’s written for in the past.
My grandmother (no idea why) had a number of the Little Black Sambo books, and my sister and I LOVED to read them when we were kids. She didn’t have very many childrens books, and they were bright and colourful.
Now they have been passed down to me, mostly because I couldn’t bear them being thrown out. But what do I do with them? They are racist as fuck. And yet I’m sort of attached because of the childhood memories? They are currently on a bookshelf hidden behind other books.
I also loved this story before I grew up enough to understand how racist it was, but are you familiar with the reworking that was done to make it the Story of Little Babaji?
No, I hadn’t heard about that. Thanks for pointing me to it, I’ll have to find a copy.
That article on black memorabilia, wow! I went over to the official Aunt Jemima website to see what they’re up to now. They have a “history of Aunt Jemima” page, and it’s so whitewashed that’s there’s almost nothing substantive there. But it’s all still so racist! Even the recent stuff, for example this note:
1986
Another campaign, “Nothing Could be Finer” promoted all of the Aunt Jemima products.
These are the opening words of a song titled “Carolina in the Morning”. So that means that they named a campaign after a song that begins “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.” It’s not a racist song in itself (it’s a pretty bland love song and originally comes from 1920s vaudeville). But it explicitly references how lovely it is in the South. And in 1986, a marketing team consciously chose *that song* for a campaign centered around a black mammy character.
Three years later, they remove her do-rag (calling it a “headband”, as if!) and give her a pearl necklace, as though that makes things better. And then they clearly called it day because nothing has changed in the nearly 30 years since.
Quaker Oats has owned that brand for 90 years now. More like Cracker Oats.
Eek, will try! Thank you.
ALSO Usenet. I started out on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc (RATMM!) when I was an adolescent back in the late 90's. Usenet seems like the grand-daddy of internet-speak (though I'm sure there's sme earlier roots, of course…). I wasn't around computers when the whole LJ thing happened, but Tumblr has not been too hard to jump into. Basic principle of new phraseology and abbreviations (and fandom) is the same.
The amount if adults vs teenagers definitely varies by fandom, I think. And sometimes it's just hard to tell how old people are, haha. I've had some tumblr friends who seemed SO MATURE and I was convinced they were in their 20s and then I found out they were like 15 or something and it was shocking. (But it also goes the other way around, there are some ridiculously nasty/immature 30+ year olds on there!)
My personal dashboard tends to skew a bit older, probably because I'm older tbh.
Thanks for the pointer to the Toast article! As anyone who's seen my comments in the last month knows, I've jumped into Tumblr for the sake of fandom in the last month and learning the written communication style and the protocol for jokes and comments on content (which includes not just phraseology but also capitalization and punctuation choices) has been interesting and fun. Effective writing is my JAM (as they say!), and on Tumblr I actually get to use that and SHARE it and it's pretty great.
The article says there are many more adults than teenagers on there, but I wonder how that may vary by niche/fandom. There seems to be a lot of teenagers in Hamiltumblr (a word only I use), and they are so cute. I'm getting used to the "trash" moniker, and am pushing hard for the words "linnamon roll" and "lintrash" to become a thing/tags. Someone else originated linnamon roll but I can't find them again because Tumblr's search function is truly awful but that's a whole 'nother thing.
Sorry had to delete that comment to edit it. Better version below.
Yeah like so much white and/or mainstream culture, I see a lot of influences/borrowing/appropriation from AAVE in the memes. (I still have no idea what the "bae" thing is or where it comes from. I've ended up googling several abbreviations, too.) When I actually think about it when talking (as a white lady) there is such a huge amount of Black-originated speech in my vernacular (often via the beats) that it seems pretty difficult to excise it, if that would be appropriate. Sometimes the line is hard to find.
The only really widespread American English development in recent years (not sure how to phrase that) originated by white people that is really used by everybody is "like."
I first saw "bae" used by black USican people on Twitter, I think? It's used as an affectionate term, as another way to denote a significant other. A quick googling also reveals that: 1) it stands for "before anyone else", and 2) it's Dutch for "poop".
I think I'll stick with other terms. 😉
STOP BLECKYWHITEBOY CANTBEKHANORATRANSFEMININEPERSON 2016 AND BEYOND.