This is fucking horrible. Also, my family has been helped by a very similar non-profit center, and reading about the kinds of services they provide made me so swamped with waves of anger and sorrow for the victims and their loved ones I could barely breathe:
It is one of 21 regional centers run by nonprofits across California. According to the California Department of Developmental Services, the centers provide a range of services for individuals with disabilities and their families, including counseling and genetic counseling, family support, assessment and diagnosis, referrals to other agencies, early intervention for at-risk infants, training and education, legal and civil rights advocacy, and help connecting with community resources.
Its website was down on Wednesday afternoon, but its Facebook page said that the agency hopes to “help provide each individual with a service system that helps identify and eliminate barriers for individuals with developmental disabilities and their families so they can closely live a typical lifestyle.”
There was also a shooting in Savannah.
The story about the Dothan County cops systematically planting evidence on young black men is absolutely horrifying, and I’m impressed by the whistleblowers:
Several long term Dothan law enforcement officers, all part of an original group that initiated the investigation, believe the public has a right to know that the Dothan Police Department, and District Attorney Doug Valeska, targeted young black men by planting drugs and weapons on them over a decade. Most of the young men were prosecuted, many sentenced to prison, and some are still in prison. Many of the officers involved were subsequently promoted and are in leadership positions in law enforcement. They hope the mood of the country is one that demands action and that the US Department of Justice will intervene.
The group of officers requested they be granted anonymity, and shared hundreds of files from the Internal Affairs Division. They reveal a pattern of criminal behavior from within the highest levels of the Dothan Police Department and the district attorney’s office in the 20th Judicial District of Alabama. Multiple current and former officers have agreed to testify if United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch appoints a special prosecutor from outside the state of Alabama, or before a Congressional hearing. The officers believe that there are currently nearly a thousand wrongful convictions resulting in felonies from the 20th Judicial District that are tied to planted drugs and weapons and question whether a system that allows this can be allowed to continue to operate.
Noted murderer and paranoid racist Oscar Pistorius has been recognized as such on appeal, and it is good (thank you so much to the literally seven Toasties who emailed or texted me the news so when I woke up, I could scramble for my laptop to update the roundup):
South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the lower court did not correctly apply the rule of dolus eventualis – whether Pistorius knew that a death would be a likely result of his actions.
The minimum sentence for murder is 15 years but judges can apply some discretion.
South African law does not make provision for someone to be placed under house arrest for more than five years, so Pistorius will be going back to prison, reports the BBC’s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg.
Anthony LoFrisco had been waiting almost 70 years to find another 1,000-pound provolone. He just didn’t think he’d have to make the seven hour, 673-kilometre drive from Wilton, Connecticut, to Ottawa to get it.
“It’s incredible beyond belief,” said LoFrisco, who arrived in Ottawa on Monday night with his son, Anthony Jr., to get a glimpse on Tuesday morning of the 1,000-pound provolone that came by boat from northern Italy and was delivered by truck to Nicastro’s Italian Food Emporium on Merivale Road. It took six men to unloaded it.
In May of 2008, the style blogger Michael Williams posted a few dozen scans of an obscure 1965 Japanese photo collection called “Take Ivy” to his Web site, “A Continuous Lean.” The images documented a golden age of Ivy League campus life—young American men strolling across the quad, eating hot dogs in dining halls, and studying for finals in libraries. Most importantly, the students dressed in the pinnacle of classic Ivy League style: madras cotton blazers, oxford-cloth button-down shirts, khaki Bermuda shorts, and patinaed penny loafers.
The photos went viral and, two years later, the Brooklyn publisher powerHouse released “Take Ivy” for the first time in English. The book sold over fifty thousand copies worldwide and helped usher in a wave of neo-Ivy style. Ralph Lauren and J. Crew stores proudly displayed copies of “Take Ivy” on their shelves, while magazine editors and retailers championed looks taken straight from the photos. Yet even at the height of “Take Ivy” mania, few asked why exactly a group of Japanese men travelled to Ivy League universities in 1965 to make a photo collection of campus style.
Friend of The Toast Lyette Mercier made a Hamilton Gift Guide and it’s A+++++
Matt Zoller Seitz recently linked to an older piece of his on what would now have been his late wife’s 45th birthday, and I cried AGAIN, because there’s so much here about love and marriage and loss:
Some of Jen’s things, our things, I’ve revisited with gratitude, affection and joy. Others I’ve engaged with reluctantly and emerged on the other side unhappy but unscathed.
Others are radioactive, and I haven’t gone near them because I’m afraid they’ll contaminate an otherwise happy, functioning life.
I can’t see the Disney logo without thinking of Jen, or watch a Jackie Chan film, or attend a musical. The associations don’t destroy any possibility of enjoyment — the acclimation process has gotten easier and quicker with time — but they’re still a psychic speed bumps that I have to get over. Sometimes it’s easy. Other times it’s impossible.
I took my daughter to see Tim Burton’s film version of “Sweeney Todd” at the local multiplex on opening weekend. I thought it was imaginatively directed and did not disgrace Sondheim, despite casting performers that were better actors than singers. But I still couldn’t wait to get out of there.
I had a large mug of hot water with lemon to start my day yesterday, and I honestly feel like I am now the world’s healthiest woman. I woke up so early that no one else saw me drink the water, and it’s killing me to have done something so Gwyneth without an audience to approve of me.
Also, at least twice a week, I google to see if I can watch Crimson Peak on iTunes/Amazon/a projector screened on Tom Hiddleston’s back yet, even though I know I can’t.
I am excited to tear into Buzzfeed’s 24 best (fiction) books of the year.
ohhhh right i hate holiday parties:
A HOLIDAY PARTY. Because that’s just what you need in chilly mid-December, more than anything else. You need to choose between three or four weak-sauce holiday parties all happening on the same night. You need to hire a fucking babysitter or worse yet, drag your kids out of the house with you, just so you can stand around sipping mulled wine and nibbling stale cookies and smiling a pained smile as you watch some little kid in a green velvet dress twirling and twirling and twirling by a Christmas tree. You need to smash some Brie onto a tasteless cracker and break the stupid cracker and then shove the whole mess into your mouth in the middle of a strained conversation with some dipshit from your friend’s office whose lackluster baritone drone blends seamlessly with Perry Como’s baritone crooning of “The Little Drummer Boy,” so that you can’t make out a single dipshitty drummer-boy word.
Yesterday the Diocese of Oxford published a blog post on creating a “man-friendly” service for Christmas Eve. It remarks on the fact that 30% of the average Anglican congregation is made up of men, and that Christmas Eve is one of the times when that proportion will change. There is a list of tips to ensure church services are suitable for men.
Let’s go EXTREMELY light to close:
Something I did the other day because there is no light at my house from November to March (we are in a canyon) was get into my car, put “Zadok the Priest” on loop, and drive around aimlessly drinking coffee and imagining that I was being crowned Queen and was also married to Chris Hemsworth. I had not thought I would be inheriting the throne bc I had a younger brother, but the succession rules changed and so I had to give up my exciting career as a director (I made the Daniel Craig* Bond movies and the Avengers movies and also Sherlock and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and since Chris and I were dating at the time, I gave him the chance to bail out, bc being the royal consort is kind of a shit job, but he loved me so much he still wanted to get married. I did this for…forty minutes? Thank you. You can imagine he looked INCREDIBLE kneeling before me and pledging his fealty, which is a thing your spouse has to do when you are made Queen.
If you, too, spin elaborate grandeur fantasies, please share them at this time.
*Nicole, why not marry Daniel Craig, then? I am not going to marry a DIVORCED MAN, I am the MOTHERFUCKING QUEEN, you gotta have protocol boundaries even in fantasy. Obviously, in this scenario, Daniel and I had a lot of really tense, charged moments, and he was in love with me, but ultimately acquiring a large Australian husband briefly invigorated the flagging popularity of the monarchy in Australia and also he’s very convivial, whereas Daniel seems a trifle melancholic?
1. Nicastro’s!!!!! God I would kill to be able to go there and get some of their amazing meats.
2. In my elaborate grandeur going-to-bed imaginings I am the empress of some fantastically wealthy and safe country and universally beloved and I spend most of the time detailing a variety of gowns and furnishings. Gems feature heavily, as do silks and various expensive woods.
Mine usually involve dealing my with my night anxieties of someone breaking into my house by imagining that I have telekinesis and can stop bullets and hold people in place and therefore I can overpower the home invaders and am safe and happy and powerful.
Somewhat related to this, but there is a short story I read in high school (in my actual text book, no less, though it wasn’t actually taught in class) that was called something like “Rape Fantasies” and it was three or four women describing their rape fantasies, which I hadn’t known was even a thing before that, and the first ones are kind of generic, but the last one says she imagines that someone breaks in but is really sick and coming down with the flu, so she tucks him into bed and feeds him soup and stuff. It is all really odd, and no one seems to recognize it at all, so I would love confirmation that this is an actual story that exists and that I’m not crazy. (I’m far to scared to try to google it.)
It’s by Margaret Atwood! I read something about how several of the women in the story imagine using stereotypical female traits to diffuse the violence, as we so often have to do. Such a good story. Maybe weird for a high school classroom though.
Ah, you are awesome! Also, since I had only vague memories of it, I was afraid it might turn out to be deeply problematic if I read it now, but I can probably depend on Atwood to keep it smart and nuanced. (Also, definitely weird for a Texas public school – my best guess is that no one in authority actually noticed it in the book.)
One of my favorite elaborate imaginings is that I win the lottery at one of those times when it gets up to a bananas amount like $800 million and then I make an obscenely huge (no really, massive, like the upper end of 8 or maybe 9 figures) donation to Planned Parenthood to be used primarily for providing free abortions to people in need, or for updating facilities to comply with bullshit Republican regulations designed to put them out of business.
Then probably I would have to use the rest of the money on a top-notch security team but it would be made up of ripped Chris Hemsworth and Channing Tatum look-a-likes (or, hell, I’d have a lot of money, maybe I could hire Chris and Channing), so that would do a lot to make up for the decrease in freedom and likely threats to my life.
My delusions of grandeur mainly involve being extremely good at a job for which I am respected and acknowledged by my peers and also people I have never met, and living alone or with a collective of close friends in a house, which I own, from which I cannot hear my neighbors and can also see something stunningly gorgeous from the many windows which provide an ample supply of natural light to every room, and all my furniture is tastefully curated but not in a way where I have to think too much about anything, and I pay someone a living wage to clean stuff, and I am pack leader of a number of large, fluffy, immaculately trained dogs, and I am not in debt, and my favorite foods no longer make me enormously gassy.
It’s going to be really pleasant.
ETA: I FORGOT THE KITCHEN the kitchen will be so spacious and bright and well-appointed and also self-cleaning because even my beloved hypothetical professional cleaning enthusiast should never have to clean a kitchen because it is the worst thing.
My god, that sounds pleasant.
This article made me so nostalgic for Nicastro’s and the time in my childhood where it was the ONLY PLACE you could buy panettone and orangina and nutella.
I’m a republican (in the British sense, VERY MUCH not in the American sense) but I would be the first to pledge lifelong loyalty to Queen Nicole and Prince Chris.
The overlapping terminology is very annoying. I describe myself as a republican a lot, and always feel the need to add “SMALL-R REPUBLICAN!” just in case.
I do this too.
My grandeur fantasies usually involve being a very powerful evil sorceress who is also a very good boss- I wear a lot of velvet and take care of my henchpersons (give them great health care and high wages and a solid pension) and they in turn are devoted to me. I have a huge library and the exact same clawfoot cast-iron bathtub from my parents’ house and a solar-powered lair that’s always at a comfortable temperature. And I can turn people into little piles of dust with my mind.
ETA: I hope I wouldn’t actually *do* that last bit because it would be murder, but it would be great to know I could. I’d appear in a flash in the offices of various politicians and CEOS in my country and turn things to dust before their eyes in a significant fashion.
This is the greatest thing. I hope you don’t mind that I will be stealing your fantasies of grandeur, because wow, well-done indeed.
Thanks! The more evil sorceresses in this world keeping everyone in line, the better! It’s like the witches in Discworld, but more comfortable.
I too would like to join the union of evil socially conscious sorceresses, and I already have my own clawfoot tub. A+ fantasy of grandeur.
But of course you have a majestic tub. I would expect no less, given your username.
It makes an excellent starter lair.
My family has whole conversations about how, even if the house needs to be demolished, the tub must be preserved. Those tubs are aces.
Pretty similar to Elsa, then, except for turning people to dust instead of freezing them solid? You just KNOW Elsa could flip over to evil-sorceress mode in half a second if she needed to, and she’d take no prisoners.
That last scene, with her using her amazing powers to .. build a skating rink .. was so disappointing. At the very least she should have a fabulous ice palace all year round!
I have feelings re Frozen, because it’s the last kid movie I could watch with a kid who was young enough to be able to enjoy it unironically on its own level.
Not that my going to sleep fantasies involve being Elsa or anything because I am a grown-up. Ahem.
Well, one of the many enjoyable things one can do in a nice big old-fashioned bathtub is sing “Let It Go” in it 😉
I mean, I was thinking something between Jadis with better impulse control and a female, magical version of the charming Lex Luthor as played by John Shea on the first season of “Lois and Clark” (he was the only TV villain I’ve ever seen who was good to the people who worked for him! What is so hard about this?) but Elsa is also in there. (There must be people who ship Elsa and the White Witch.) No high heels, though. Even in my fantasies I fall off high heels.
Yesterday was hard and today will be hard and I spent last evening in bed with sour spaghetti candy and The Great British Bake Off and I will spend today with Jim Dale reading Harry Potter to me for as much time as humanly possible.
Let Channing set you off on a good note this morning:
I introduced my sister to the GBBO after a tough tgiving. It’s the perfect way to detox from pretty much anything.
How do you watch GBBO? I tore through the only season on Netflix… do I need to buy it? Are all episodes streaming somewhere (please say yes)?
I still have cable so we watched a few episodes on demand. Every single episode used to be on youtube- there are some still there but you have to dig for them. Not great for bingewatching an entire season but fine for when you just need a little Mel and Sue in your day.
There might be some episodes on PBS website still? They recently aired a past season.
I just watched the finale on the PBS website, but I think it’s just the last two episodes that are still there. Still, always good to have an entirely legitimate way to watch GBBO.
GBBO is so good for my stress levels that I wish there were infinite episodes. Just an infinite loop of Mary Berry telling people to chin up because at least they tried.
My new manfriend is deeply stressed at the moment about his job situation, and we both are deeply distraught and angry and sad about the general state of the world, so last night I introduced him to TGBBO. And for a brief period of time, the world looked a bit brighter.
Blush. THANKS CHANNING!
The Jim Dale readings of HP are perennial favorites at my house (my teen-aged children require them to go to sleep to. Every. Night.), so I totally get them as aural comfort food. I also love the Tim Curry readings of A Series of Unfortunate Events, although they’re better during happier times, obvs.
Taking note! I have recently started walking for exercise, with audiobooks, and am finding that depressing books are too depressing. Or serious books are too serious?
I’m here for all recommendations of funny and/or light audiobooks, read by good readers, please and thank you.
I am currently listening to various Miles Vorkosigan books (author Lois McMaster Bujold), which I have already read. But they are charming and absorbing to revisit, and available from my library system.
Excellent, thank you! Does it matter where I start in the series?
I’m currently listening to Rainbow Rowell’s “Landline” (based on Toastie mentions of how great the author is), and I think it’s good, or at least not bad, but I’m finding that I can’t really deal with someone’s unraveling marriage at 6 am.
If you just want to dip your toe in without committing to the series, Ethan of Athos stands alone pretty well, as does the short story collection Borders of Infinity. But I’d recommend starting with Cordelia’s Honor or Shards of Honor. Cordelia’s Honor is an omnibus that includes Shards, an excellent short story, and the next book in the series.
You can also start the Vorkosigan books with The Warrior’s Apprentice. Or there’s sort of a mid-series reset at Komarr (it’s richer if you’ve read the preceding books, but you can start there and then go forward to A Civil Campaign, which has the funniest dinner party ever).
If you like Rainbow Rowell and she is just lovely, I would recommend Attachments, which is much lighter. Also, I personally am obsessed with the Victoria Bliss mystery series read by Barbara Rosenblatt. Victoria Bliss is an art historian who somehow manages to get sucked into investigating various art mystery/crimes all around Europe and Egypt. Written by Elizabeth Peters.
My most elaborate fantasy involves winning $300 million dollars in the lottery and turning it into a kind of general fund where I buy up distressed properties and commercial real estate in West Philadelphia / Overbrook to put into a land trust for the people to live in and also pay out shares from the profits of the fund.
Also, I want to buy a big building that has a bar at the bottom (Belle Savage) where I make fancy hamburgers and elaborate cocktails, and a theater on the floor above it, and a kung fu / yoga studio / makerspace on the floor above that and then artist housing above that (in my imagination it is a gigantic old warehouse/office building), and then I could let local theaters / maker collectives / yoga schools use the space for free as long as they ran classes for kids in the local schools.
Oh man, I have never told anyone about this fantasy, it feels nice to get that out there.
If your dream comes true, I will turn up at Belle Savage to take notes. I have a *very* similar fantasy I’ve been working on since grad school, even with the ground floor bar at which Mr. Ada and I shall make fancy cocktails. I have this thing planned down to the foot rails on the bar and up to the airy top floor studio workbenches. (This may be where things fall apart–Mr. Ada has a very specific hypothetical bar of his own.)
The only difference is that I’m probably more selfish–my building complex is to be inhabited by all my arty friends, for whom I’ve created endowed, renewable fellowships. They can give up the fellowship when they become too fancy and famous for my art-friend-utopia, or just hang with me in genteel obscurity until we all bite the dust. My one act of actual generosity is that the fellowships would remain for future arty folk–but not even, because I’ll be dead and who cares?
Yeah, I got a buch of artistic friends but I am worried that my complex would lack diversity if that happened, so I was going to reserve a few of the spaces for local artists that I am friends with and then creating rotating, 2-year fellowships for the other spaces to try and stir things up a little bit.
I love how detailed and responsible your fantasy is!
Also, the hamburgers I make are so good, I can’t cook anything at all without setting something on fire or putting too much salt in it et cetera, but I can make the hell out of hamburgers.
I got a pretty good grasp of cocktails, too, but I’m limited by the fact that I despise the taste of licorice, and for some reason everyone wants some daggone anise in their liquor.
I am down for your burgers. I will not be the chef at this bar–that honor goes to Mr. Ada, who is making me more and more dissatisfied with dining out by perfecting my favorite dishes. I will do insane desserts though. We shall both do cocktails. I will probably use so much Chartreuse, I will guarantee our non-profit status.
I think you can find some anise-haters to come be your regulars. I often forget that some people do hate it, and it really gets in the way of my love for classic cocktails (GIN AND ABSINTHE FOREVER) and my new crush on Genepy.
I will cater to a niche crowd, after I perfect my custom Wudang Style Cocktail Bitters.
Not me! I want cocktails that taste like desserts. Aniseed is horrid.
That fantasy sounds awesome. i hope it comes to fruition in some small or large way.
Well, I forgot to buy a lottery ticket the last time it was up over $300 million, so hopefully next time I will remember.
I read your second paragraph and was just like, ‘why doesn’t braak buy the Divine Lorraine?’ I mean, it’d be a lot of work fixing it up, but even so.
Oh shit, before someone announced that they were developing it, the Divine Lorraine was EXACTLY the building I was going to buy with my $300 million in lottery winnings.
There’s actually an old opera house near there that I have my eye on, and an old Verizon building up in West Philly, too.
Just got to wait for those tickets to pay off.
Lottery-winning fantasies are my FAVORITE. I don’t need to be Ruler of All (that is clearly better left to Nicole anyway) but I could do so much GOOD in the world if I won a couple hundred million bucks.
I have actually got several degrees of fantasy, based on how much money I end up with, in order to maximize its effectiveness.
Dang but I was born to be an idle rich person who just had enough capital to do any of his ideas at any time, you guys don’t even know.
One of my dearest friends told me that I would make a great socialite – he quickly clarified that he meant I would be very good at being a rich lady who threw a LOT of charitable soirees. My passion in life is planning things, especially events, so I was immensely flattered. My kingdom for a … well, for a kingdom. (Queendom.)
I love playing “if I won the lottery, what could I donate to?” I could build a school in Kenya! I could set up a fund for underprivileged schoolkids to go to the theatre! I could stock a food bank! I could pay for upgrades to public housing! The possibilities are limitless.
(Speaking of charity: check out this cool thing the Stratford Festival is doing for disabled patrons this year! http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/landingpages/giving-tues... )
You are wonderful. i am so proud to internet-know you.
I am not going to lie, a big part of this fantasy is the knowledge that UPenn and Drexel are slowly gobbling up property in West Philadelphia, driving property values up and forcing residents out, and then thinking that could quietly buy up the properties in patterns that would make this impossible (the Bulwark Project) and then laughing at them when they realize what’s happened.
A lot of these plans involve laughing at developers, actually. Also at banks.
Largely unrelated thought of the day: it turns out I still can’t read “West Philadelphia” without getting the Fresh Prince theme song stuck in my head.
I can never read “I regret nothing” without imagining that the speaker is being blasted into the air or falling down a drop – “I REGRET NOTHIIIIIING!!!” (CRASH!!)
I hear it in the voice of HedonismBot.
Same. It’s distracting.
So, basically, an updated version of this:
Yes but also with the Eye of Sauron on top.
Ooh I feel like fantasy me and fantasy you could do business, as my fantasy involves having a lot of money and buying a nice, moderately-sized house somewhere not too urban and not too rural, with a nice cool basement which I outfit with a giant gleaming stainless steel kitchen of wonderment and make sausages and pates and other cured meats to sell to only a select few.
Mine is to win similarly large amounts of money and then create a foundation dedicated to giving it away.
I would buy a big building for the foundation’s offices. The first few floors would be for a Y that would be an affordable gym, and also have space for their after school programs and other community spaces, we would have our offices, and then the rest of the building would be mixed-income housing. There would be garden plots on the roof, employees and residents could use the Y gym for free, we might buy a lot next door for bike parking and more green space. And of course foundation employees would receive sensible salaries, great benefits (including paid family leave) and only have to work 30 hours/week (to improve work/life balance and/or allow them to pursue other interests or education).
We would give our money to: fine and performing arts, education (including arts education), scientific and medical research, and certain political causes.
I often like to imagine that reincarnation is demonstrably real, and that I am one a few handful of people who can remember, with perfect clarity, every life I’d ever lived. No one knows this, except the small community of others like myself, but it makes me particularly wise and also easily amused at media representations of the past. I’m not quite sure what makes this so appealing to me, but there it is.
I have a weird fantasy where I go back in time a few centuries and explain things like germ theory to the general public and they laud me as a genius.
I’ve always wanted to be granted the gift of going back in time to the deathbeds of great, at-the-time underappreciated geniuses and whispering in their ear, “People will speak your name for centuries.”
Like that Dr Who ep with Van Gogh!
Clearly you need this poster of all sorts of useful science. (You can also get it on a t-shirt, to make sure you’re carrying it.)
I posted the Oscar Pistorius news story on Facebook and my dad’s response is a thing of beauty: Go to jail go directly to jail do not pass go do not collect £200 you horrible lying murdering twat. While this will immediately identify me to anyone who knows me IRL (or on Facebook, I suppose), I felt I had to share.
I had a large mug of hot water with lemon to start my day yesterday, and I honestly feel like I am now the world’s healthiest woman. I woke up so early that no one else saw me drink the water, and it’s killing me to have done something so Gwyneth without an audience to approve of me.
My mother starts the day with hot water and lemon (or just hot water)! But she is also the least Gwynneth-y person in the world.
I like your dad. And your mother.
Oh, Toasties. I woke up so angry today. Furious and exhausted. Things need to change.
Anyone have links to scripts for the calling of senators/congressmen/other elected officials re: either gun control or refugees? I appreciate having scripts because they keep me from getting frustrated/angry with poor underpaid political staffers who man the phones.
I feel you! After Oregon, I called up my reps and was like, “I’d support anything gun control-y,” and they were like “….ok?” So that wasn’t too helpful. Unfortunately, there’s never any specific legislation to tell them to support because everyone sucks.
I’m looking around for scripts and found this from Medium, which is a start. I think this time I’m going to have the extremely low-bar goal of urging them to earmark money for the study of gun violence instead of the current de facto ban. I’ve gotta go do life stuff now, but I can come back in a bit and post the wording I end up using if that would help anyone.
Thanks for posting! It would be incredibly helpful of you to post the wording at some point. I’m at work so I won’t be calling anyone until a bit later anyways.
“What to say: ‘I’d like the Senator to know that I support tougher gun laws including universal background checks. [Optional] If the Senator doesn’t change his position on this matter, I will donate to his opponent in the next election.'”
From here:
https://medium.com/@shannoncoulter/meet-the-39-u-…
Alright, this has been road-tested with the aides of two Democrats and a Republican. It’s a mash-up of stuff from Medium and also the group Doctors for America, which has some great guidelines here: http://act.drsforamerica.org/call/call_congress_G…
“Hi, I’m calling to register an opinion about gun violence, am I talking to the right person? OK, great! I just wanted to say that I’m a constituent of [REP/SENATOR] from [CITY] and my name is [NAME]. I’m very concerned about gun violence and I’m calling to urge [REP/SENATOR] to take action to solve this problem. I know that yesterday, the group Doctors for America petitioned Congress to end the de facto ban on the CDC and NIH conducting gun violence research. I am in full support of this petition and would ask [REP/SENATOR] to work to pass laws to earmark funding for federal gun violence research, treating it like the public health crisis that it is.”
To my Democratic senator and representative I added: “I’d also support background checks for all gun sales, including private sales, as well as a ban on military-style weaponry and ammunition. Finally, I’d like to see an expansion of mental health services to help not only those who might be considering mass murder, but the much larger number of people who ended their lives by suicide using guns.”
I possibly should have said that to the aide of Cory “Fucking NRA Endorsed” Gardner too, but I felt like I would have been wasting my breath. YMMV.
To anyone who hates talking on the phone, don’t be afraid to call! Aides have always been polite to me even when I descend into babbling incoherence. It’s their one job, and you will almost certainly not be the weirdest person they talk to today.
This is awesome, thanks. Mind if I cross-post to other social media platforms if people ask for a script?
Go for it!
That is perfect and thanks. I may use your words as a base to build my own. I plan to call on friday to try and keep momentum going. Also if anyone wants me too, I can post the text I sent to senators and my rep last night. Just gotta get to school first.
So, I kept the last two sentences of that helpful prompt from Medium and changed the rest of the language to reflect my thoughts. In case it’s helpful to anyone, this is the text I sent to my representative/senators last night:
Dear [Their Name],
I am writing to urge you to start a dialogue about the reduction of gun violence in our state. Gun violence has become a public health epidemic of epic proportions. I am asking that you, as an elected representative, take on this issue and talk about solutions that go far beyond extended background checks. Most guns used in mass shootings were legally obtained.
We need to talk about the fact that civilians can purchase weapons and body armor developed for military situations, and that they can buy ammunition in quantities massive enough that 14 people can be murdered in five minutes.
Background checks are not enough. It’s time to end the epidemic of gun violence in our country. Thank you for doing what is right for the people of [Your State] and the United States.
Thank you,
[Your Name]
Everytown for gun safety has a brief script on their website here http://act.everytown.org/call/call-demand-a-vote-…
Also the learn section of their website has good (or rather horrifying) statistics to use.
For refugee stuff the international refugee committee has a solid script -http://cqrcengage.com/theirc/app/write-a-letter?0&engagementId=148493
I hadn’t come up with a good fantasy about elaborate grandeur, but now Chris Hemsworth kneeling to pledge fealty is definitely in there.
The Diocese of Oxford link doesn’t work. Do you think they took it down in horrible embarrassment?
It looks like they did take it down, hopefully because it was so ridiculous. The blog post about it (linked at “my face right now”) is still up, though, and has some choice quotes and commentary.
They did! Says so in the “A Very Manly Christmas” blog post.
Some depressing news that I didn’t see mentioned in the roundup: the UK government voted to carry out airstrikes in Syria last night, and they’ve already started. My MP voted against, but that doesn’t make me feel that much better.
Its fucking disgraceful. Thats about as articulate I can get about it.
Plus the Guardian reported the other day that Labour is ‘woefully out of touch with public opinion’ because they’re swaying to much to the left. What? Labour lost the election because they weren’t left enough, and I think you’ll find that most people are sick of the Tories and their bullshit and in fact Labour are much more in touch with women and young people than the current government of malicious rich pig fuckers.
#anger.
I don’t understand it. The vast majority of my friends, though, are young, politically-engaged and left-wing, so I sometimes suspect that my view of public opinion is skewed (because the situation seems so hopeful, and then stuff happens to prove me wrong. My Facebook feed before the last general election was full of people talking about how they were voting Labour! And then the results came in).
I don’t understand how the Tories are still in power. It’s infuriating.
Mine voted for. Bloody tory stronghold.
My parents’ constituency just went Conservative at the last election after being Lib Dem (Labour is too much to hope for in most of the south-east) for years. My mum seriously contemplated moving to Sunderland as somewhere that actually elected Labour MPs.
Mine voted against, and he has actually been working with Syrian groups here for the past couple of months, so I am far more impressed with him than I was when he was elected and I thought he was another bog standard New Labour twat.
That does sound promising! Hurrah for your MP.
Thank you for sharing your driving around fantasy! I fantasize like that a lot, especially in winter, and sometimes I feel bad because I should living in the REAL WORLD and doing SERIOUS THINGS so I’m glad that someone as illustrious as you also does this!
My current favorite elaborate fantasy is the one where I have won enough money to buy a house out in “the country”– the country being a vague green sort of place where the nearest town is close enough for groceries but I have no neighbors super close by, yet of course there is also wifi. I have a charming little farmhouse with a wraparound porch and/or a nice, creaky old Victorian house, depending on my mood, and it is filled with crackling fireplaces and one room devoted entirely to books. Because I love animals, I have numerous cats, some of those adorable hoppy pygmy goats, bunnies, a few dogs, and horses. But since I do not like cleaning UP after the horses, I have a ~man~ to help around the house. He is sort of like a stablehand but he does all sorts of odd jobs for me (in the summer he mows the lawn shirtless and I bring him lemonade but it is not all innuendo-y it is just a nice pleasant moment) and he currently looks like Jason Momoa. Maybe he even IS Jason Momoa, I am not sure. Perhaps Jason Momoa would like to give up acting and come be a strong silent handsome presence who cares for goats and horses. Anyway, he is quiet and polite and warm and friendly and he always knows when I am Not In The Mood for human contact, yet also when I am in the mood to sit at the kitchen table with him and drink a cup of tea and stare admiringly at his large and burly frame, or sit by the fire together and talk about books. Over time we fall into a nice comraderie and a quiet, companionable sort of love, and we are basically partners. It is a relationship which may or may not become physical, but he doesn’t pressure me because he also always understands that frequently the idea of a physical relationship makes me very anxious, and he is okay with this as he is a sweet gentle giant of a man without brutish urges. (Though he does like cuddling when I am In The Mood for that.)
Also he’s really fucking cute with those damn goats.
The “can’t see the neighbours” / “also has wifi” Venn diagram is very appealing.
This is just as important as the strong silent farmhand aspect to me, tbh.
I know places in that Venn overlap and they are GLORIOUS.
Is he essentially Westley?
BASICALLY. But much bigger, and he wouldn’t run off to be a pirate or anything, haha. Though no one would ever dare bother me at my secluded country home because he’s very brawny and intimidating to everyone but me, as I know he has a Good Heart within his large exterior, of course.
Big and brawny, you say?
HAH! I do love that movie.
But currently big brawny farmhand is more like this: http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads…
So tall. Yes good.
If you need a non-big non-brawny person to stand in for Jason Mamoa until he gets there, I will do it because this sounds like my dream job.
I mean when you think about it, caring for cute animals, doing minor home repair jobs, and then drinking tea and talking about books DOES sound like a pretty good job, haha.
if I ever win the lottery, you’re in! 😀 I promise to make great pitchers of lemonade and also tea.
I feel like I would want The Rock for that job, but maybe just The Rock’s exact clone, because I also want to see more movies starring The Rock and read his wonderful Instagram page frequently. So, maybe if we did a Doctor Who Clone!Ten kind of thing, that would be best.
Please clone Nine.
Thank you fellow Nine lover.
Andre The Giant! How could you not love someone shaped like a giant teddy bear?
Goodness, we need to have a device that can replicate your fantasy into real life! I think many of us would love to jump into our own version of this fantasy. Seriously, this is nearly perfect for me, especially the Jason Momoa part. 🙂
Although [TW physical relationship stuff] in my case with a much, much more, ahem, physical relationship that may look on the outside brutish, but is actually deeply respectful. And on my own terms with still lots of introvert-y time [/End TW}
But I also definitely want your happy space of cuddling, too. Thank you for sharing, you have made my daydreams better today. 🙂
Right??? I really need this to be real.
I do reserve space in my fantasy for the idea that the physical stuff may change after we fall into the aforementioned companionable deep love. But for me one of the best parts of said fantasy is that this version of my handsome Jason Momoa farmhand never pressures and would be completely happy with our relationship even if it was just cuddling only! He’s a good man, my fantasy farmhand.
Please sign me up for EXACTLY that scenario, thank you ever so much *fans self*
I must brag. I have my own version of the lawn-mowing man. I pay a very nice, moderately handsome firefighter to mow my yard. He does so in sleeveless tee shirts. I bring him a big cup of ice water if I’m home when he’s sweating on my lawn. (Central Texas summers are long and brutal.) We chat pleasantly for half a minute. but there are no fantasies, because he talks to me as if I were one of his aunties. ::sigh:: He’s that young and I’m that old.
This is amazing.
Ah mah gah this sounds so nice. WANT.
*steals fantasy*
Well at LEAST clone it, lol. 😛
I would also like this, please, only with Richard Armitage.
(although I would be willing to entertain the occasional brutish urge)
I have a very similar fantasy, but it involves a large desert ranch that has no livestock, only eccentric and friendly ranch dogs, and no rattlesnakes or coyotes or other predators. It’s always reasonably warm, rather than boiling hot. Also there’s wifi and sweet well water, and the nearest neighbor is an hour away by car. The ranch house has nothing but books in it.
If you choose your eccentric, friendly dogs carefully, some will kill all the dangerous snakes for you.
Over time we fall into a nice comraderie and a quiet, companionable sort of love, and we are basically partners. It is a relationship which may or may not become physical, but he doesn’t pressure me because he also always understands that frequently the idea of a physical relationship makes me very anxious, and he is okay with this as he is a sweet gentle giant of a man without brutish urges. (Though he does like cuddling when I am In The Mood for that.)
Whoa, this kind of put into words a part of my fantasies I’m usually too uncomfortable about to even verbalize in my own head.
I have only recently been able to put it into words, so, I understand! Now if only I could make this (I mean, even the aspects of the relationship you quoted above, not the Jason Momoa/cottage bit lol) a reality and not just an elaborate fantasy.
I am SO HAPPY that man found another large cheese! And that his son drove down with him to see its debut! And they got to try some even! MORE WHIMSY THE WORLD IS SADNESS AND DISASTER.
I read the Pistorious news and immediately thought “I hope someone told Nicole.” The minimum 15 yr sentence for “Mr. one year of a five year sentence then very comfy house arrest” pleased me particularly. Also I ate a chia pod for breakfast and it was horrible beyond belief but I, too, am now the healthiest woman in the world.
My elaborate fantasy involves somehow making money doing animal rescue after also winning the lottery. I have precisely apportioned the lotto winnings to various friends’ and family’s student loans and debts. It’s kind of a boring fantasy, but there are lots of cute animals involved.
I saw it and immediately started writing an email, thinking NICOLE MUST SEE THIS.
Today’s one of those days where alllll the news is terrible, so naturally I zero in on the most frivolous article–the holiday party screed–to get really shirty about. I guess it’s the opposite of the “guys, I’m really unique in that I prefer netflix in my bed and hate spending time with people I voluntarily associate with” response to social events, but my thoughts about it are similar. DON’T GO. Do your own thing. And then discard of your terrible friends who won’t accept an RSVP of no.
The one and only time I hosted a holiday party, a bunch of friends of a dude who was only obligation-invited in the first place crashed and acted like assholes and removed my iPod, which was playing a carefully curated playlist, to plug in their own and play shitty dance music and ever since I have not participated in any holiday parties thrown by people my own age because life is too short to not say no to things that you know in advance aren’t going to be fun.
The only time I hosted a holiday party, I got hit on in a very unwelcome manner by my roomate’s ex boyfriend who absolutely would not leave me alone (in front of both my roomate and my boyfriend). I have since sworn off hosting holiday parties.
I threw huge house parties in college, and by party #2, if any of my friends saw a rando reaching for the iPod dock, they would DIVE in front to spare them from my terrible wrath. I’ve also found that bluetooth speakers help this a lot too – they come in discreet enough shapes and sizes that you can tuck one on top of the books on the highest shelf of your tallest bookcase, which should theoretically deter all but the assholiest of assholes from grabbing, syncing, and playing their own music.
But good lord do I agree with your last sentence. I’m so glad the concept of FOMO is basically foreign to me – I usually prefer the company of my couch to dumb holiday parties where everyone is just wasted and uncomfortable in their party heels.
I’m just reading it like…what are these parties? Are like several dozen of your friends throwing mediocre office-style holiday parties, with weak booze and sugar cookies in the break room? How do you (a) have that many friends throwing actual parties in (I presume) New York, land of tiny apartments, and (b) have no friends who know how to throw one? Is this actually a problem, is what I’m asking.
Yeah, I didn’t know this was an issue. But the holiday parties that my friends throw are only distinguishable from the other parties they throw (which are basically ’15 of us are going to hang out and eat and drink’) by the Christmas tree in the corner and the occasional holiday song popping up on the playlist.
Having been to an annual Christmas party that can be described as “smashed brie on milquetoast” for several years running, in a tiny condo, with a gaggle of babies that the adults just stand around staring at….yes, this is a real problem.
Last year I solved it by getting very drunk, but this year I’m pregnant, so….let’s hope the cider had a few extra days in the fridge to get really fizzy, if you know what I’m saying.
smashed brie on milquetoast
This is a great, vivid phrase.
I agree! I don’t even mind office holiday parties, because usually you get at least a free meal, if not free booze. And I’m not too proud to admit that I am willing to put up with awkward small talk for free food. (Also right now, I am the youngest in my office besides our interns/students, so this makes people feel like they need to send me home with the inevitable leftovers. Obviously I do not complain about this either.)
You’ll need this advice when you age out of inevitable leftovers: Let be widely known among your coworkers that you do not, cannot cook, are mystified by everything in your kitchen other than your toaster and microwave. It works for me. Been in the work force for decades, but I still get sent home with leftovers.
I bow before your wisdom! I shall keep this in mind…
I kept my best pal co-worker alive for a couple of years, while he was working full-time and going to school at night.
I agree 100%. My group of friends and I Throw Down when we have parties and we also show love and compete with each other via food, so it’s always a glorious spread with everyone trying to take the crown of best in show. Next weekend is our first Cookies and Cocktails party and it’s already shaping up to be a grand old time.
For real, if you don’t want to go, then…don’t go. Or go and leave if you’re not feeling it! Just like any other party! People usually get that there are multiple parties happening on any given December weekend, anyway, so: built-in excuse if you want it.
I can understand that point of view. But I have quite a few friends that throw not-so-great holiday parties, and I can only say “no, but thank you” so many years in a row before they start feeling hurt. So I either have to tell them that their parties suck or go and not enjoy it. Ditto for work holiday parties. And the older I get, the more this is true.
I don’t know why so many of my acquaintances treat holiday parties as a special species of party that has special meaning and therefore the hurt is greater if you don’t go, but they do. It’s like how not going home for a random weekend to see your parents isn’t a huge deal, but not going home for Thanksgiving can be. And my friends are otherwise great, so I don’t want to trade them in for friends who don’t have holiday parties.
I’ve been to more than one party, holiday-related or not, where it was clear that everyone, including the host, in attendance was treating it as a terrible obligation to the dark god of Friendship to be survived, narrowly. I’m not sure what happens if you just don’t go to those goddamn parties but it must be awful, I’m not taking any chances.
Yeah, agreed. I like hanging out and watching Netflix as much as the next person, but I’m also an extrovert who needs time with people, who likes and is good at small talk, and who enjoys getting to know my coworkers’ spouses. I am glad that introverts are getting more accepted recently, I really am, but the constant refrain of “people suck let’s all go back to bed” has been making me feel really weirdly isolated.
I love going to my husband’s office party! The open bar is well stocked, the snacks are good, his coworkers are strange, but generally interesting and enjoyable people- I’ve even gone with miserable head colds and had a lovely time. The part where the CEO gets drunk is always amusing, and the company band where my husband’s boss does an Elvis bit is particularly enjoyable. (They’re pretty darn good musicians for software engineers)
My spouse has the coolest coworkers but he HATES parties so we never go 🙁 Your husband’s parties sound great!
It’s nice to hear that some people actually enjoy office parties. I’m stuck on the planning committee since my office has the party budget and planning holiday parties and summer barbecues for 350 people is soul-sucking. You get maybe two compliments or people saying thank you and a ton of complaints no matter what you do. The unofficial theme of this past summer’s barbecue was ‘I don’t care anymore. Just shove some lobster in your mouth and stop bitching.’
I stopped after “People are fucking lazy and they’re needlessly anxious about hosting” because I feel like, how can it be both? If you’re going to judge my parties and think me lazy because I didn’t do X right, then isn’t my anxiety about hosting you, um, completely justified?
That story about the Japanese interest in Ivy League style was very good, but after
“few asked why exactly a group of Japanese men travelled to Ivy League universities in 1965 to make a photo collection of campus style”
I guess I was expecting some kind of ghost scandal or something.
And then they mentioned “plainclothes detectives” and upped my hopes further! I was expecting glamorous prep murder.
I definitely am happy with the knowledge that in 1965, Tokyo police believed that young people in chinos and oxfords were some kind of public menace.
But we know those prepster types are a public menace!
I always think of Bradley Cooper in the Wedding Crashers as the face of pure prepster evil.
As an American in 2015 who has experienced these “Ivy Leaguers” firsthand, I can confirm that young people in chinos and oxfords are definitely a public menace.
My crush on Tom Hiddleston often devolves into fangirl fantasy territory and it makes me feel rather pathetic. But he’s just so dreamy…
I had dinner with his mother once. She is perfectly lovely, as one would expect. It would be very difficult to imagine her raising a douchebag (the circumstances that led to me dining with her also give me some ongoing inputs into whether T. Hiddles is a good human, and generally the consensus is almost certainly).
So fangirl on!! He is an A++ fantasy target.
ngl I definitely have an elaborate fantasy where I somehow meet Prince Harry and we become ~best friends~ before inevitably ~falling in love~ and there is much angst and drama but we eventually get married and I have my wedding tiara all picked out.
omg are you me?
It’s a super good fantasy, right?
Does Kate like you in the fantasy? What about Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie? I always felt like Kate would be chill but that the York princesses might be kind of snobby and mean.
Kate is super supportive and helpful in terms of assimilating into the royal family and dealing with paparazzi and things! Beatrice and Eugenie would like me better if I could ever tell them apart.
Nice! Bea is the slightly gingery one with a bit of what some people have dubbed “resting WTF” face. (Her eyes are larger and often open very wide, as if someone has just told her something really bonkers.) Eugenie has dark hair and is a little curvier. But I think they are both really good friends with Cressida? So… I’m not sure how friendly they will ever really be to you.
The moment Prince Harry realizes he’s in love with me is when I sing “How Do I Get You Alone” on karaoke. Which I picked because it was a nice power ballad for mid-range belting, not because I was trying to subtly inform him of my secret feelings for him. But partway through we make eye contact and I realize what I am singing and sort of falter, but have to go on singing, trying not to let my inner emotional turmoil show!
This was my literal dream when I was 7 & I have to admit that I haven’t stopped dreaming that dream…
“Sir, what is your reason for wanting to enter Canada today?”
“I HAVE TO SEE THIS GIANT CHEESE.”
“… sir?”
“IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE THE CHEESE THAT HAS HAUNTED MY DREAMS FOR MORE THAN SEVENTY YEARS.”
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to pull your vehicle over.”
I think you misspelled “God speed you, sir! Your destiny awaits!” in that last line.
When he finally makes it to the cheese:
Do you think they cover cheese-related incidents in border guard school? “But what if they’re coming for curds?” “Curds are okay. Anything more exotic and you need to look out. The cheese watch list is distributed quarterly….usually it’s provolone, Brie, Gouda, and Havarti, but you’ll have to use your own judgment.”
Cheese thefts are A Thing in Canada, so I would think they’d be extra careful!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cheese-heis…
Still doesn’t hold a candle to the dramatic heist at the Global Maple Syrup Strategic Reserve, though.
(shakes fist) Those sticky bastards!!
My uncle once made the mistake of saying the purpose of his trip to Canada was to buy Ovaltine. It was perfectly true, but it did not go over well.
“Ov…al….tine?”
“Do you have anything to declare?”
“Just my love for your fine country.”
I am an American and I am so depressed.
Here are two great things to read if you want to feel more depressed but also informed and perhaps ready to argue with that one libertarian in your extended family: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/nr…
and http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/…
I don’t understand this world we are living in.
I am having a very physical depression reaction to the two mass shootings yesterday, so today I’m focusing on vulgar celebrity gossip. Specifically, I’m over-excited about the news that Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor are dating, and I don’t know why? http://www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/they-ship-it-too#…
OK SAME! I like both of them fine, but like…I feel so strongly joyful thinking about them dating!
I have so many “We become best friends and just, you know, hang out” fantasies about celebrities. Lately I’ve just wanted to pinch Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s cheeks and poke his dimples and ask him to teach me how to backflip (which, according to a GQ story I read years ago, he does all the time for no reason).
I also have this really elaborate, pretty romantic one about meeting Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) at a bar and sharing a cigarette (I don’t smoke) in the alley outside, then going back to his place. For what? NO ONE KNOWS.
I have had elaborate fantasies about JGL putting me up in a ritzy apartment in NY, taking me to repertory cinema and aside from that just encouraging me to write. I’m not even that attracted to him (he’s not unattractive, of course, but there are other actors I feel way more lust for), but somehow he fits into that patron of the arts/muse slot very nicely.
uh, if I could do a backflip, I would do it all the time, too. Being able to do a backflip is reason enough I think.
Sticks that fuckin’ landing like it’s nothing.
And in a suit no less!
Yeah, my fantasy about Lin-Manuel Miranda is basically hanging out drinking cafe with him and his wife and playing with their son and their dog and being best friends.
I’ve had several just hanging out dreams about Bret and Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, us just dancing through the streets singing “Ladies of the World” together. Sigh…
In my own JGL fantasy we’re best friends and every so often I get to raid his closet, because I would wear his entire wardrobe. Or maybe he just takes me to the place where he gets his shoes and introduces me to his tailor and then I look effortlessly spiffy for the rest of my life.
I want to have a party with Daniel Radcliffe and a bunch of my friends. The kind where you play party games like Cards Against Humanity or Charades. I just feel like he would be fun to hang out with.
Good morning.
My co-worker is playing that “Christmas Shoes” song on his computer right now, and he is enjoying it, and I am losing a little bit of respect for him, and that is unfair of me, but I really dislike that “Christmas Shoes” song.
Perhaps I’ll get him some headphones as a gift.
Literally the worst Christmas song.
Sort of a race to the bottom IMO.
Like, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” makes me actively ragey.
Although this seems as good a place as any to preen over my holiday card for this year:
Preen away. You speak the truth.
Have you heard the Puppini Sisters’ cover? So great.
That card is amazing! Where did you get it? I’m always in awe of people who find cool, not-cheesy holiday cards .
Why thank you!
It’s from Sapling Press, from whom I have purchased many, many cards.
This was my gateway drug:
I don’t think that’s unfair of you at all. That song is categorically The Worst.
THAT SONG IS THE DEVIL. Have you read “I Hate Myself and Want to Die: the fifty most depressing songs of all time”? (I think that’s the title)? He does a number on that song.
The &*%$%# Cat Carol also sucks- it’s “The Christmas Shoes” but trying to manipulate a different demographic.
I have never heard the Cat Carol, and I am trying not to let curiosity get the better of me.
A cat is shut out of a house during a blizzard on Christmas Eve, meets a mouse, curls up around the mouse to keep it warm instead of torturing, then eating it, freezes to death, and is placed in the sky as a constellation by Santa Claus to remind her mouse friend of her love for him. Literally everything is wrong with this song, and now you don’t need to listen to it and have the droning tune and the singer’s slightly flat voice stuck in your head.
That is horrible. Thank you for summarizing it so that I can continue avoiding the song for as long as possible.
“is placed in the sky as a constellation by Santa Claus ”
oh…mygod. I want to say something about Santa’s new found celestial being powers but just…oh my god.
those evangelicals who were up in arms about Santa making kids revert to paganism were right about everything
shit, now I want something in the American Gods universe where Santa is Zeus in disguise (or maybe Apollo, with the whole chariot in the sky thing) and has stayed powerful by getting people to worship him via MATERIALISM.
This is genius.
Puts “Santa Baby” in a whole new light, certainly.
(Now I’m imagining Zeus’ attempted seduction of Eartha Kitt, and her telling him what was what. Christmas is strange.)
no no no zeus don’t come down the chimney no zeus I don’t want you to know when I’m sleeping or awake
so true.
But of course the singer is flat.
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE
NO
NO
NO
i was here to hate on the “christmas shoes” song and this just took the wind clean out of my sails.
Christmas is supposed to be a season of joy! I get that it isn’t always for people, but the point of winter holidays is “we will survive the darkness and the sun will come again! Now let’s huddle together for warmth and eat some food”. Winter is depressing enough, we do not need sad Christmas songs.
There are a couple (mostly the ones written during WWII; some of the hymn-type carols) melancholy ones I love, because they honor the fact that there are often people you really miss during this time of year, and you wish you could be with them and cannot. But this deliberate attempt at manipulation, no.
I bought that book for my boyfriend (recording engineer/music snob extraordinaire) for our first Christmas as a couple. He (and his dad, also a music snob) both loved it and I’m pretty sure I cemented my status as His Awesome Girlfriend.
Ooooohhhhh, that is a great idea. Stealing it for my music snob boyfriend!
I assumed you were talking about that album where Christmas carols are recreated with auto tuned cat noises, but Google tells me that that one is called “Meowy Christmas,” and that it was the best-selling holiday record of 1993.
That’s what I thought too, and I was like “…it’s not THAT bad, surely?”
It is the worst of all Christmas songs. Did you know it also had a terrible Lifetime (I think) TV movie made?
I know it exists. I’ve actively avoided seeing it!
This is a good life choice.
You can get the highlights from Nostalgia Chick, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bujD4gzeuBg
I watched it with my BFF from New Zealand who is now in NYC and I’ve been bewildering her by randomly texting the plot summaries of Lifetime holiday movies.
There’s a book, too. No idea which came first, but I assume they’re all equally terrible.
My friend and I once drank a lot of wine and watched it, because we wanted to mock it incessantly. I think the wine worked too well, though, because my memories of it are foggy sort-of fever dreams (mostly vague feelings related to “WHAT EVEN” and “ROB LOWE WTF”), which is probably for the best.
This is a thing my friends and I do every year. Not The Christmas Shoes because we don’t hate ourselves. Hallmark releases 12 Chistmas themed movies every year. They are often delightfully stupid. Also there are no gay people and like 2 PoC in the Hallmark universe. And no one even hints at sleeping together, even if they are dating. And apartments in dense metro areas (like NYC) are huuuuuuuuge. It’s good times. The one coming out on the 19th stars and was directed by Mariah Carey!
I heard about the Mariah Carey movie and have never regretted our decision to cut cable more!
I LOVE cheesy Hallmark/ABC Family Christmas movies, because, as you say, they are delightfully stupid. One of my friends just doesn’t. Get it. She says it’s because you know exactly what’s going to happen, and that they’re entirely predictable, and to that I *blow rasperries*. Because a), who wants a Deep Thoughtful Twisty Christmas Movie NO ONE THAT’S WHO, sorry you don’t know joy, and b) as if 90% of all movies aren’t predictable in some way (the Hero wins! or the Hero dies! either way, he gets the girl!)
Anyway, I’m hoping I can find the Mariah Carey movie streaming online so I can torture everyone I know with it.
So many Christmas Carol remakes! Tori Spelling as an egomaniacal talk show host! Vanessa Williams as a diva! Carrie Fisher! I don’t even know!
Also, a movie where Winnie from the Wonder Years meets the King of Winshire, whose name is, I kid you not, Maximillion. Yes, with an “o.”
ALSO, somehow Kevin Sorbo gets turned into a “Santa lookalike.”
It’s all glorious!
Also, so many princes! Often pretending to be not princes!
OMG! They are literally playing Christmas movies all day every day until Christmas… This is the perfect way to deal with my slight depression and missing my ex. I’m so excited. Though not as excited as I would be if I had ABC Family too… but still excited!!!
Totally fair. That song is the worst.
Commenting only to say that your restraint in not smashing his computer into tiny pieces is admirable. That song is horrible and drains all my Christmas spirit.
Oh God no.
I am not familiar with this song, but anyone who plays anything out loud from their work computer is committing an act of violence and must be stopped.
Yes this.
For reals. Get some headphones! We are not animals!
i whole heartedly support your platform and will be voting “lemonadefish 2016”.
Yeah, if that is not illegal it should be.
Oh my god, I think that qualifies as a hostile work environment, that song is the WORST. I hate it almost as much as I hate “Christmas in the Northwest” (which since I now live on the East Coast, I never have to hear again).
I am suddenly counting myself very lucky for having lived in the PNW for 8 years now without ever hearing it or realizing it exists.
Honestly, it may just be a Portland-area thing? But even so, you live a blessed existence, may you continue to be free from the scourge of that song for the rest of your days.
I lived in Washington and no, that scourge of all that is lovely was played on the radio up there too.
Is it as bad as “Christmas in San Francisco”?
“Christmas in the Northwest” is god-awful and now it’s stuck in my head, but really, anything to drown out the sorrow of knowing what the Cat Carol is.
nothing is any good. 🙁
I used to work at a Fred Meyer.
Like I was a cashier for five years.
That song is THE WOOOOORST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq10bz3PxyY
Patton Oswalt on Christmas Shoes. Patton is sometimes trouble (oh Patton, we need to talk). But damn do I love this. (I also need to mention that I still cry thinking about this even through Patton being funny.)
I’ve had the good fortune to miss whatever he does that has proven problematic. And I have never heard this song and now feel I know all I need to about it, so I’m winning all over the place today.
That song is hysterical. My high school calc/physics teacher had a couple topics that, if deployed at the right moment, would derail him entirely and send him off into a tizzy/rant. Christmas Shoes was #1. He would yell about how it was an elaborate conspiracy, the dad was in on it with the kid to steal shoes, there was no mom in the hospital… it was so great.
At one point I had the list of all those topics, but it’s been since lost to the wind. I think I might’ve found a way to tuck it into the spine of a textbook so other students could benefit.
I had to go buy a bra yesterday and break my “avoid all malls at all times but especially the holidays” rules, and what is playing as I desperately search for my size (of which they ended up having, no shit, literally one – not one brand, one item)? Fucking It’s Cold Outside, the Christmas Date Rape Song. I was so unhappy.
I got a b+ on that twelfth night draft paper. I both “subverted and exceeded” the professors expectations *shrug*
This really needs to stop, America. We’ve had vigils every week for the past month at my school. It’s too much.
Thank you for putting into words what I feel. And am ashamed of feeling because people are dying. Every good thing or milestone I have achieved this semester including finishing my comprehensive exam has been overshadowed by men with guns murdering people. It feels like we can never be happy about anything again.
My husband’s work is doing some A+ holiday party planning this year. Instead of the traditional party they have rented out a theater so we can all watch the new Star Wars movie on the Saturday morning after it opens. It will be at the Alamo Drafthouse so there will be good food as well.
That sounds amazing.
My fantasy involves me having wiry-yet-somehow-still beautiful hair, and sitting at the kitchen counter of a farmhouse where I live with my husband, our three children, and some extremely well-trained dogs. I sip jasmine tea out of an artisan-pottery mug and watch the sun come up over the field. This house is one of several scattered on the land, as well as a community-style hall, where we and the friends we bought the land with can all gather and drink craft beer/homemade mead/kombucha and we can talk about our independent screenprinting ventures, our child-care co-op, our latest critically acclaimed story collections, and the local playhouse’s winter lineup, which is magically cheap, extremely entertaining, and also culturally impressive.
My fantasy is pretty simple in that I have boundless wealth, unlimited access to ethically produced cheese (if it’s a giant provolone, all the better), a stomach to hold the full capacity of all the world’s best Mexican food, and great sex with lots of hot ghosts and book characters. Like real sex, not the imaginary kind. That’s all, really.
In my elaborate fantasy I live in a beautiful cottagey house near some woods with no immediate neighbors but which is not in any way the kind of house you would probably get murdered in if this were a movie, and I have a home recording studio in which I produce my very critically-acclaimed AND commercially successful music. I’m not married but I have a string of relationships with extremely handsome Hollywood stars like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sam Rockwell who are, of course, perfectly willing to travel hundreds of miles to see me so I don’t have to come to them and be plagued by paparazzi. In this fantasy I also know how to cook and my house is beautifully decorated and always tidy, which is probably the most outlandish part of the whole scenario.
This is the house in my fantasy too, haha. I mean I assume yours also conveniently has wifi despite the lack of neighbors nearby.
Oh yes, of course! And it is easy driving distance from anything I might need, but there is no visible or audible evidence of any human life when you’re in the house.
Do you have any tips on how you manage to make your house “in the woods but not a horror movie” in your fantasy? That is my ideal, but I always end up wondering, “Well how will that work…”
Ah yes, the part of fantasizing where you get bogged down in things like “details” and “realism.”
Through sheer power of will? That will also be how I keep forest critters away.
Oh, in my fantasy, I can communicate with the forest critters, and we are excellent friends, because Disney princesses continue to be a major influence on my life goals apparently.
Or actually, a staff of robot servants who are trained in combat might also work (but then I guess I have to worry about them gaining sentience; you just can’t win can you).
“my house is beautifully decorated and always tidy” is not outlandish. It’s my dearest fantasy. I’d give up any number of budget items to pay someone to follow me around my house and discreetly organize and put things away.
i marry Sidney Crosby, bringing honor and pride to my Pittsburgh-based family members. I keep working but only during the academic year because Sid and I travel the world during the off season; we are especially fond of visiting historic sites in Europe and Civil War battlegrounds. Sometimes I bring my students to Penguins games and they get to go to the locker room to meet Sid after the game. We give money to my alma mater for a hockey-specific athletics facility with dedicated space for the women’s team and they name the building after me. I think about this A Lot 😐 😐 😐
on an unfun note, we had a student death and a former employee killed himself on campus this past week (I work at a university), and everything has felt particularly heavy. Really ready for this weekend/the holiday break.
As more and more years pass, my Pittsburgh-based family members are starting to realize that despite living in the same city and being close in age (the only criteria any relationship needs,) it’s possible that I won’t end up marrying Sidney Crosby.
(edit: that’s also terrible about your university. i hope you are doing well!)
I believe in my secret heart of hearts that he would love me if only he met me, like, in a situation where we run into each other at a coffee shop and he mistakenly grabs my drink or something.
Thanks! <3 It’s been weird/rough – my office wasn’t directly impacted by either situation, but it’s just very sad.
Let’s have a CBUS toast meetup!
Or… actually perhaps we are already buddies, upon rereading your post!
Yes!!! A Cbus meet-up would be great.
Not sure if we know each other, but if we don’t, I feel like I should be friends with your friend.
I would really love a Cbus meetup. And I just followed you on Twitter, if you want to chat about making that happen.
Oh hiiiiiii Cbus people!!!! I would also love a Cbus meetup! I’m also on Twitter (same user name).
Alright! Let’s do it! Also on twitter, same name. I’d be happy to organize something for January.
That’s funny, I ALSO marry Sidney Crosby occasionally! He is very supportive of my athletic pursuits, despite being clearly the best at everything, and laughs at all of my dumb jokes with his silly giggle.
(I’m sorry about the happenings at your university! 🙁 )
A++ Pittsburgh fantasy, only would be better if you could also hang with the Polamalus occasionally.
And if you stop and have pancakes at Pamela’s.
I find holiday parties so horrible that I was relieved that I’d miss the worst one because I’m going to a Memorial Service on the same day. (it helps that I didn’t like the deceased that much. Who was kind of a jerk, but in this one last gesture, had his service so I could miss the holiday party I dislike the most.) RIP, God Rest His Soul.
(my grandma would always cross herself and say God Rest His Soul whenever she referred to a deceased person she disliked very much)
Your grandma sounds wise.
Fantastic, now I know the posthumous equivalent of “bless his heart.”
I wrote a story for myself and a friend when we were in HS that involved my elaborate fantasy at the time: us traveling to England, accidentally getting into Stephen Fry’s taxi, and then having him just be so OVERCOME with affection for these young American teenagers that he invites us to stay with him for our trip. We meet his boyfriend, who bakes excellent foods, and also Hugh Laurie, and also Hugh Laurie’s sons who are obviously our summer love interests.
Now I tend toward brief, not well-thought out fantasies- one where I have a wonderful menagerie of impeccable well-trained dogs and a few cats and they all love me DEARLY and cuddle up to me when I read or sleep, and never poop anywhere they’re not supposed to, and the next one of course is that Rachel Maddow and I become close friends and hosts dinners at her house in Western MA where I can come and she makes cocktails and explains politics to me in a non-judgemental, simplistic way that helps me form opinions and also asks me questions about stuff I know.
Impeccably well-trained dogs and cats who “never poop anywhere they’re not supposed to”. You’re so close to one of my fantasies. If only you had added “and they pick up and dispose of their own poop appropriately.”
oh yes I should have added that too
My fantasy is living in a happy, drama-free poly family that consist of just me and two handsome intelligent men, and there is great “adult time,” and it also gives me the freedom to stay home and read and cook and make homemade everything and meditate and pet my cats all day, and I have just the right amount of alone time and people time, and we all live back in my old town where all my friends are. We have enough money to not have to worry about debt, and we own a house, so there’s no dealing with crappy landlords, and the money also enables us to travel a lot. My kitchen is beautiful and large, and stocked with all the best spices and teas. I have even more cats than I have currently, including a hairless one and a super fluffy one. Maybe two ferrets too.
Mine involves a similar poly family with two men, but we also live in a giant house/complex with my sister and her partner(s) and various other friends and partners, which sometimes allows one of them to stay home or just allows all of us more flexibility with our careers and lives in general. And we can have dogs and goats and children without them absorbing our whole lives because there are so many people around to take care of them. And we have guest rooms and enough time and spare funds to have people stay with us for a while when they need help, or to foster children, or just be that house where everyone can wander in and get what they need (while still having individual private bedrooms for everyone with plenty of alone time).
Yes! It’s funny, I love alone time and need a lot of it, but i also love the idea of having a lot of really close friends/family living together and helping out. I see my friends with kids, and I think about how much easier it would be if there were four adults instead of two. And it makes sense economically too! I wonder if it’ll start becoming more popular again with the economy sucking.
This sounds like my (admittedly never going to happen) retirement plan. Except i have sister-wives, because HELLS NO i am not doing laundry for any more ppl.
Also, my friends and i live in an Exclusive Village where Douches are Not Allowed.
My biggest fantasy is to have time to read all the books I want to read, watch all the tv shows I want to watch, see all the movies I want to see, and yet still feel like a productive member of society.
Completely impossible, of course. But a girl can dream…
My current elaborate fantasy is being best friends with James Mcavoy and Anne-Marie Duff, and somehow getting a reputation for my quick-wittiness and become a staple on panel shows where I wow everyone with my humor and good sense. And I get to hold hands with Ellen Page.
That response to the man-friendly service was excellent, in that it calmed and articulated my vague WHAT NO ARGH response but was also thoughtful enough to not inspire bitterness / anger / self-satisfied vindication.
“A church of “women and children” is exactly what the Classical writer Celsus sneered at Christians in the second century. He also added “and slaves”. It’s something we’ve been historically rather proud of, because Celsus was listing people who had no power, whom society ignored when it wasn’t brutalising or exploiting them.”
um, but like, what if, you know, hypothetically, there was another universe where hugh dancy was a well-respected poet and creative writing professor and at a university that had just hired me and we became close friends but never acted on our secret feelings for one another until one day his agent submitted the wrong poem to a literary journal and it was clearly ABOUT ME and his feelings toward me and he didn’t know until it landed in his office inbox and all our associates were like “um, wait a minute” and handed it to me and i was like OH my god ??
That Hamilton gift list was the best thing I’ve seen since I searched for “Mad Max Fury Road” on Etsy. You won’t be sorry.
None of my friends/close relatives have kids* and it is making me really sad, because I want that Dear Theodosia print SO BADLY. I may buy it and just save it for (other peoples’) eventual babies.
*my cousin has a 1-year-old boy and I’m pretty certain they are just not the kind of people who would appreciate musical lyrics and flowers (gasp!) in their Son’s Bedroom. Ugh.
As a superstitious person, this would give me the heebie-jeebies, knowing that Theodosia herself died so tragically. But maybe that’s just me.
Oh, noooo. Dammit, you make an excellent point.
That’s hilarious, because I got the idea for the gift guide when I idly searched “Alexander Hamilton” on Etsy and found the picture of Aaron Burr with the octopus on his face.
I mean you can search for literally anything on Etsy and find something with an octopus on it.
AHam bobblehead not nearly attractive enough. 🙁
Clearly I have been thoroughly indoctrinated by Hamilton – when I saw that bobblehead my first thought was “That looks nothing like Lin Manuel Miranda!!”
The #YAYHAMLET shirt is amazing but also this shirt is GREAT. I’m buying it for my best friend even though we agreed on no presents this year. I’M HELPLESS.
my elaborate fantasies all involve me and my husband living our normal lives while someone else watches our kids.
Yeah, mine are like, “Going out to a bar and being able to afford a cab home.” or “Having a hangover in peace.”
or now that i am not in college and am starting to get hangovers, “not having a hangover at all”
Is anyone else having trouble writing in HTML links in the comments? The last three or four times I’ve tried, it won’t work at all
my fantasy involves having a big old house with a vast library and a well-stocked kitchen, and friends from all over the world (friends of friends, even!) pass through town regularly and know they are welcome to crash on the many spare beds/couches with no notice, and when they do we pop open several bottles of wine and cook massive meals and stay up late talking by the fireplace. I just finished reading Tender at the Bone and some of Ruth Reichl’s apartments sound just like this fantasy.
It’s entirely incompatible with my *actual* desire to live in a reasonably sized place and make it into my little introvert nest, but gosh I love the mental image of sweeping about my estate with a perma-wineglass in one hand and my phone in the other, going “yes, of course, please come over!”
I think the beauty of fantasies is that they don’t need to align with what would be practical. For instance, above I talk about my fantasy about someone taking care of me and encouraging me to read. In real life I’d never want to be that dependent on someone, I always want to pull my own weight financially. But in a fantasy you don’t need to take those things into account, and it’s very liberating.
I have trouble remembering that sometimes, though. Many times when I’m deep in a day dream about living with some celeb, I suddenly wonder how it is that I’m not with the boy any more, and thinking about what may have broken us up never fails to spoil the day dream.
yes, this fantasy definitely does not include my sweetie. I guess I think of it as more of an alternate reality, where one of the many differences is we never met. Honestly, typing this out feels like a great way to identify what appeals about it – between this and the holiday party thread I’m like…oh yeah, I miss the heck out of a close group of friends in the same city, and maybe I should work on that.
Oh, this sounds so nice, particularly because I never really learned how to entertain. I need to:
(a) Organize my living space so other people can be in it
(b) Practice entertaining until it feels comfortable for me
(c) Actually do it enough so I get a reputation as a host
…but I really want to skip over all of that.
The great thing about your idea of a big house, though, is that you could fix up a little introvert garret on the top floor for when you wanted to be alone. (Maintenance of the rest of the house would of course be taken care of with Fantasy Money.)
Not that we need more awful news-heaping, but I’ve been surprised that there hasn’t been more mention here of the crazy shit going on in Chicago (outside of someone’s comments over the weekend that I saw in between protests; The Toast a salve for fury, always – thank you, friend). The police coverup of Laquan McDonald’s murder, the protests here in response to it, the murderous policeman out on bail. There must be some way to collect our fantastic brain energies here and do something in response to all this horror. But keeping the joy alive, as you guys do, is part of the work of protest/disobedience/life-giving of course too.
I was going to ask about the possibility of and forms that a Toast-centered political action might take, in part because I’m curious as to how “loud” and effective we might be. And I’d love for it to be something smart that has the potential to change entrenched thinking and move things in a just and positive direction. But when I try to envision what that might look like I come up short. Here for the joy, too, but I’d like to be doing more.
Want to think about this? I feel like there is enough brilliance, good humor, common sense & passion here to do something (even more) politically meaningful & generative. This is already a main the place I come to for such thought-processing (being able to count on one site for total justice-coverage and snort-laughter day to day? in every link roundup!! god yes.) But perhaps even just collecting relevant writing/sources in a more concentrated, locatable justice-oriented thread way? Or writing, just writing more. Which is what I’d like to do. HM. I will think.
More writing and easily located resources, definitely, but I’m thinking–or trying to–even bigger. Like, if there’s a way to use humor (or just extremely succinct messaging) to make something go viral that prompts people reading not to simply look and laugh but ACT. I wouldn’t want to make light of anything that’s been happening but use humor to disarm people so they notice, and then ta-daa–link to possible action they can take. Chewing on this and will continue to do so.
Yes – I was (implicitly?) thinking of leading to action as well. I’ll chew too.
It was in yesterday’s roundup, we talked about Rahm needing to go and the superintendent getting the boot and also Homan Square (which is something we’ve returned to a lot.)
Oh, that was not meant as a BUT WE HAVE TALKED ABOUT IT comment, just that if you missed yesterday in the roundup, check it out!
AH, wonderful. Yesterday I was so zonked after teaching for 3 hours straight that somewhere between 4.30 and 6pm I became convinced it was already Thursday? So, yes, totally missed it. Yes to all of it & thanks again. Goddamn do I love you, Toast.
Has anybody else seen their previously-reasonable parent/grandparent/friend descend into total conservative loony toon madness in recent years? I’m not sure if it’s just an “getting older” thing or a symptom of how insane the rhetoric is in this country right now, but its gotten to the point where any time I try to talk to my dad about ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY POLITICAL I end up appalled at the things he actually believes. I was trying to explain yesterday how it’s human nature when we hear about a shooting or another tragedy to think “well, that will never happen to me” but more and more every day I realize that its very possible that it will happen to me one day. And all I got in response was “that’s why everybody should own a handgun and carry it with them at all times” ??????? It makes me sad, that I can’t have any kind of current events discussion with somebody whose opinion I used to value highly, because it descends into lunacy so quickly. I try to avoid talking about it, but even when I try to just make it about my personal feelings like I did yesterday, we somehow end up in the Politically Conservative Garbage Swamp. Blergh.
Last week, my mom, who I love very much, literally said the words, “There’s nothing wrong with poor people, but do they have to live on my street?”
So, uh, yeah.
Yes. I have seen this described as “Fox Geezer Syndrome”. My parents have always been Republican, but in the last 10 years or so they’ve gotten irrational about it. Mom totally buys into the War on Christmas nonsense, and she is not even religious! WTF?
The thing is, my dad is a lifelong Democrat, which just makes me even more confused. My very liberal aunt (who seems him pretty rarely) chooses to believe that it’s all some sort of elaborate prank/joke, and I don’t have the heart to tell her he really does mean what he says. It is garbage!!!!
I had a friend who was taking a turn from progressive Democrat to someone with a bit more of an “us” versus “them” attitude with regards to Islam (yes, the whole entire, very diverse religion… I was at the point of pulling out my hair the one time I broached the subject with her). And I think perhaps it was from watching too much talking-head news and being a bit scared by current events too. And then she read “Lawrence In Arabia” by Scott Anderson, and it’s like a switch flipped. She was back to her usual compassionate, inclusive self and not making some weird part-for-the-whole fallacy anymore. I haven’t had a chance to read it myself, but I will soon because I was so, so grateful to not have to hash it out myself with her over coffee or something.
I don’t know if there’s a similar book that would make the counter-argument about the importance of gun control, but I did want to share that tiny message of hope. I think sometimes there’s a kind of deluge of fear mongering journalism that can sweep a person up, and then there’s a reasonable book that can come along and scoop them up back onto the shore of rationality. Anyway, I hope it clicks, because I do know how frustrating it is to watch a reasonable person get wrapped up in unreasonable ideas.
Thank you <3 that does make me feel better, honestly. I hope one day we’ll be able to have an honest discussion, but it is encouraging that you know somebody that had a change of heart.
thank you for this, buying it for my dad now for SIMILAR REASONS
That makes SO much sense. My mom who is otherwise lovely has absorbed a lot of nasty things from the constant stream of Fox news that is on in the house. It’s really depressing.
Salon featured a piece called “I Lost My Dad to Fox News” that captures this phenomenon exactly. http://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_…
OMG this person could be writing about my parents, my in-laws, and a few cousins sprinkled in. Sooo depressing.
Solidarity fist-bump. I’m pretty sure my dad was always on the conservative side, but now (and especially now that he’s retired) he is full on Tea-Party Fox-News Bill-O’Reilly Is My Hero conservative (I don’t live with my parents anymore, but even before I moved out, the fastest way to clear a room in their house was my dad coming in and turning on the TV, because you knew he’d land on Fox News eventually. Even my mom can’t stand it). Honestly, he and I were never close, but our relationship now has been reduced to “hey, my car needs work. I called the mechanic; can you pick it up so I don’t have to take off work? Thanks.” We’re at the point where we know we won’t change each other’s minds, so we just…don’t talk. About anything. It sucks, to say the absolute least.
In short: The Garbage Swamp is real 🙁
My dad is like this too. We just agree to disagree, since he’s pretty liberal when it comes to issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc.
Apparently my sister-in-law has taken to listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, because she has limited contact with anyone other than her Calvinist Republican husband, his Calvinist Republican family, and his Calvinist Republican church. I am like, greeeeeat, teach your four small children hate speech so they grow up learning to hate people like their aunt and uncles.
I have tried talking to her. She doesn’t talk about anything but child stuff and craft stuff and cooking stuff. I spend a lot of time talking about ideas and experiences and philosophy and theology, so I feel totally at a loss. I just don’t understand people shutting off their brains and shutting out most of humanity as worthwhile people to care about.
Yes, like another correspondent above, my dad has been worse and worse about this since he retired. He sits around the house all day listening to right-wing talk radio trash, and switches to Fox news in the evenings – pretty much any time he’s alone at home or in a vehicle he is listening to this garbage. When my mom is at home she switches it to anything else.
Dad has gone from conservative but tolerable to more conservative and more frightened. He was really, genuinely frightened that Obama’s election in 2008 would be TEOTWAWKI, and that’s never really gotten better. I’ve had to set very strict boundaries around what he is allowed to share his opinions about in the presence of my kids, and he seems to be able to adhere to that. But, as you noted, that means I can’t talk with him about any sort of current events, because it ALWAYS runs spectacularly off the rails.
My mom and I both think Dad is depressed (in part due to this rabbit-hole thinking/living, plus some other behaviors displayed), but whenever Mom tries to raise it with his (white, male, older) doctor, both Dad and the doctor pooh-pooh her concerns. It’s exasperating for her to live with and for me to hear from halfway across the country. 🙁 You have all my sympathies.
OMG YES. My family has always been conservative, but the kind that would collectively and immediately shut my grandmother down if she even hinted she wanted to “just ask a question” about POC. Even in the privacy of our homes, my family was unwilling to sit there politely horrified while my grandmother went down that road.
But lately? I’m seriously thinking about skipping Christmas. It’s as though when my grandmother died, the racist, crazy conservative part of her spirit was scattered into the the bodies of my relatives. Thank God my sister and I were late to the funeral. We apparently missed that part.
My parents are like this, only instead of political garbage it’s paranoia about technology.
I work as a software engineer, so this gets VERY exhausting, because they don’t believe me most of the time when I try to address their concerns which have increasingly become the only topic of conversation.
Strangely, my dad is heading in the opposite direction–he was a registered Republican when I was growing up and has become distinctly more liberal as he’s gotten older. Sometimes I think he tries to pick fights with me about how awful Republicans are, as if he thinks I’m going to defend them. We have issues, but somehow politics isn’t one of them.
My parents have both become far more liberal in the last few years, to the point where my mom voted for Obama last election and my dad almost did. If you had told me a decade ago that either parent would vote Democrat I would not have believed you!
i have a very real fear of this, and have been arguing preemptively to try to head it off. without any shame i will resort to tears/emotional appeal, because if that’s what it takes for MY DAD WHO I LOVE to come around on gay rights, goddamnit, it’s worth it.
luckily (?) my grandparents have gone off the Fox News Donald Trump Deep End, and my parents think it’s bonkers, so i feel like that is also a good sign.
I just don’t talk about anything remotely political with my uncle who apparently believes everything the climate change denial bullshit machine spews out. I’m afraid it’ll end in shouting (mostly on my side).
A few weeks ago I was talking about something related to my teaching job and my mom said she felt “a lot of sympathy for that police officer in South Carolina.”
Also, my dad literally thinks Obama is the worst president ever, and at least once has said we should just bomb the Middle East indiscriminately to get rid of terrorists.
I try really hard not to talk to them–especially because my mom considers herself liberal.
UGH, yes, this is the realest/worst. My parents have always been Republicans, and my mom is just as moderate and reasonable as ever, but my dad is slowly creeping his way into the deep end. After Paris he sent around a thoroughly awful anti-Muslim article on our family email thread, and it was all I could do not to call him up and yell at him for several minutes.
On the plus side, he’s reasonably good about respecting our differences in opinion when I make a point of fighting about it. I responded to the aforementioned email by asking him to please not send me such things anymore, and he’s been true to that agreement.
Thank you for tuning in to my daily job drama. I told the company that offered me a job that I can’t work Friday nights, or Saturdays before sundown, due to my Sabbath observance. The need to do so wasn’t in the job description and didn’t come up in interviews, but suddenly this might be a dealbreaker. It’s a theater, so maybe they thought this went without saying, but it’s an office job that they advertised as 9-5 with “some evenings and weekends”. I told them I can do Saturday nights and literally any other evening. I find out tonight and until then am a pool of anxiety.
Ack! You made a really reasonable (and common, I imagine, or at least not unheard of) request, I hope they find a way to work with it. 🙁
Ugh, the assumption of weekend work really shouldn’t be a thing in a 9-5 weekday job. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
Oh, shit, that sucks!! I hope it works out! (Edit: did you give notice at the old place already?)
My ideal life fantasy has a lot of overlap with braak and burningupasun’s. Right now it’s that I move to an organic lavender farm in Vermont (most of Vermont is outside the appropriate climate for growing lavender, but not in this fantasy), where I have a pack of rescued dogs (mostly pit bulls and hounds with friendly eyes), plus a bunch of pygmy goats and maybe a pig because I feel like the pig would understand me on a level that the dogs and goats couldn’t. And an outdoor cat to keep things in order. The house is very cozy and colorful and has a lot of quilts and fireplaces and books and a sunroom and a cuddle room that’s just cushions everywhere.
I would try to help fund your home for pibbles. I encountered one at the dog park yesterday who continually returned to me, waited for me to bend over to pet her, then popped up to kiss my face.
Wait, Daniel Craig & Rachel Weisz divorced? Or, *would* divorce in order to accommodate Nicole if she so desired? (I only know about this celebrity marriage because Weisz is jewish and went to Cambridge. And I appreciate Craig’s trifle of melancholy.)
This is from his first wife, Fiona. He and Rachel have never been together in my fantasy, bc I respect her too much.
wonderful. she is so wonderful. (as are you! ah! i’ve been reading, thinking, laughing with you for the last 5 or 6 years? so, via yr offering of this bit of daniel craig biography I thank you for doing what you do, every day! will now stop my self from going on here, but thanks truly.)
You are so sweet! xoxoxox
Re: San Bernardino – my facebook feed is full of people saying it’s obvious that the shooters are jihadists, and that violent Islam is threatening the US. Okay, even if they are (which you obviously can’t assume just because they’re of Pakistani descent…), they’re not even a drop of a drop in the bucket of who is carrying out mass shootings in America. White Christian manhood is the biggest violent threat to the US, and it’s overwhelmingly obvious. I think I need another facebook fast.
I’ve said it elsewhere: really, this should please the people who are worried about other cultures fitting into the US.
They decided to shoot a bunch of people because they were pissed off at their co-workers. You can’t get much more American than that.
Is it terrible that I am hoping that racism will finally lead to a cross party discussion of fun control?
I fell into a comments vortex last night wherein Sandy Hook and most other mass shootings were all staged government training exercises carried out for the sole purpose of more gun control legislation being passed, thus restricting our liberties. At first I wrote it off as local lunatic fringe stuff, but an article in the New York Times had the exact same BS running through it, as well as the absolute certainty that if the people in the building had been armed, lives would have been saved. The only instance I’ve heard of where an open carry enthusiast tried to be a hero ended with him being shot and permanently disabled & hitting nobody himself. Why are people so married to this idea?
Geez. How have you not rage-deleted everyone in your feed? I got rid of a lot of people from my high school years a while back (and have unfollowed a lot more) … it wasn’t even related to unsavory political stuff, but it certainly did take care of all the unsavory political stuff.
My fantasies involve winning either an Oscar or Nobel prize and getting someone to design me a beautiful gown, or being able to apparate. I spent a lot of time the other week fantasizing about being able to magically pop down from Disney World and strategizing about where to do it so that nobody would see. Thinking about this now, what I should be doing is apparating into one of the Harry Potter lands at Universal, hanging out there for a while, and then driving over to Disney.
Ok I just read the man-friendly service article and what I’m taking away from it is that the perfect Christmas service would be to consign all female attendees to a small enclave behind a curtain where the men won’t have to see them, and then have male parishioners put on a pageant wherein there is no Mary, but instead Jesus springs fully-formed out of a ball of fire (picture Connor’s post-hell dimension entrance on Angel) and he and the Wise Men team up to take down Caesar Augustus with a combination of karate and automatic weapons, all to a soundtrack of Bon Jovi songs.
I love you.
Even I, a lifelong atheist, would feel compelled to attend this. It sounds amazing.
I’m worried about whether the curtain will obstruct my view, though.
Do you think a stick-on mustache will be sufficient disguise to get a good seat?
I think there is a lot of potential for this to turn into a monstrous regiment type situation with lots of men turning out to be ladies in disguise.
Everything after springing out of a ball of fire was basically my thought too, but that’s also my ideal Christmas service and I am not at all a dude.
Like, these guys could just to go a conservative Protestant evangelical American church and they’d find it’s already MEN MEN MEN all the time.
I mean, I’m pretty sure there are at least a few Victorian iterations of “muscular Christianity” that at least approximate this aesthetic.
I want to go to this service. Wearing a strap-on so I can claim dudeness.
I am appalled that you are all so willing to listen to Bon Jovi for an hour.
Just when I thought nothing could induce me to attend a church service again…
Hamilton Toasties:
Has anybody done a mash-up of the Hamilton squad with Magic Mike XXL? If not, WHY NOT? It’s perfect. Just think about it!!
This thought brought to you by a middle-of-the-night revelation inspired by last night’s viewing of Magic Mike XXL (for the first time), and me coming back from the bathroom to hear my husband quietly singing “The Story of Tonight.”
You want it too, right?
My fantasy is such:
I am at an age where I look impossibly good all the time: clear, dewy skin; no bags; lingering hormonal zits nonexistent. I only own clothing that fits well and flatters my physique. Despite numerous commitments I find the time do everything, every day: career, hobbies, friends, good food and good booze. I never get exhausted.
After meeting and befriending an eccentric old woman in a local pub, I am left millions of dollars in cash and investments when she passes away. Her will has one request: be happy, and make other’s lives easier. I set up safe housing for young people in the city, providing a safe, supportive environment for anyone who needs it. I fund workforce development programs for everyone, free of charge, so they can easily start or change their career path and make a livable wage. I create safe, empowering spaces for girls and women, and together we lead the fight for equal opportunity worldwide. I convene meetings with policy makers, subject matter experts and community leaders to create solutions to violence, the cycle of poverty, access to education, hunger, abuse, inequality. All of them are eradicated.
I am respected and my inheritance has somehow reached millions around the world. I pass off my many companies and non-profits to able hands, who think creatively and with a good heart. Money and funding for programs is never a problem because it’s been invested and spent wisely. I retire. I travel everywhere I want, with my incredibly handsome husband who still can’t believe he ended up with me. We eat good food, have amazing sex, and climb lots of mountains. My life is quieter, but full of good.
My fantasy is that I will become a famous singer, most well known for my ability to sing tenor through soprano, and for my striking, dapper androgyny that is attractive to pretty much everybody. I’d get to collaborate with all sorts of slightly-offbeat artists and creative types; I’d cut an album with Dessa (which would in turn allow me to meet the rest of the Doomtree crew), and create a mixed media project with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. These collaborations would occasionally involve sexual liaisons as well, and everyone would be okay with being polyamorous and there would be no jealousy.
I know this is stupid so I’m burying it in the comments here but I was so scared to leave work yesterday. My emotions were in overdrive and I couldn’t stop crying.
I feel a little better now, but I know I tend to react super emotionally to situations like this and the feeling doesn’t go away that easily. Does anyone else get like this? I feel like I could cry at a pin’s drop right now.
The story about the big cheese helped, though. I’m so happy for you, cheese guy.
Not stupid at all. I’m not quite on pins-and-needles, but keeping an eye on the coverage yesterday was one of the first times I can remember having a really distinct “I’m not safe because nowhere is safe.” feeling since maybe Columbine. Do what you need to do for self-care.
honestly it feels weirder that not EVERYONE is freaking out and crying. yesterday I felt like…I know how harrowing it will be to read news or twitter, so I’m choosing to avoid it, oh how fucked up is that that I can practically recite the narrative by heart now but at least I have that choice because this time no one I know was in the area.
I don’t know if this was the tipping point or if it was earlier but it is really starting to feel inevitable, and that’s not an easy feeling to take in.
I hope magical devil whisk Elyse helped <3
Yeah, exactly. Like, I hop on Facebook and there’s just…crickets. It’s everybody’s day-to-day. We’re just kinda used to it now, I guess. This is just a thing that happens.
I predict we in the US will not reach a tipping point until a senator’s (white) son is gunned down. Not that I wish this on any senator’s family, or on anyone at all. But it seems nothing happens here until it affects the 1%.
I have saved that tweet to print out once I get my Wall Of Good Tweets up and running again!! It really did help a lot, actually.
Not stupid–I was up at 2 AM yesterday all “shit I will never be able to leave my house again.” This helped somewhat: http://ramblebrain.blogspot.com/2015/12/mass-shoo…
Thank you, that is a good way to make my brain shut up a bit.
I grew up in that town and one of the wounded is a longtime family friend so I’m an emotional disaster today, quite simply.
Sending good thoughts to you and your friend, and best wishes for their recovery. Please take time out to be kind to yourself.
I went out to get a beer with a grad school friend but debated whether to go because the shooters were on the loose for a while and my city is about six hours away by car. I saw a therapist this semester for a short time and when I talked to her right after one of the shootings about how upset and scared it made me feel she was confused. “Why, did you know someone there?” I am afraid to go to movies on opening nights. When I am at school, at work, I find myself looking for exit routes in case there was a shooter. I do not think I am insane. I think we all live in a warzone.
You are not insane. The world is insane. I’m so sorry the therapist made you feel that way.
I definitely get this way too. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me from a total meltdown is “Everything is shit and I could die any moment, but I’ve got great music and the weather is lovely.”
Take care of you and do what you need for self-care. <3
In my fantasies I buy a charming craftsman bungalow, restore it with my own two hands, fill it with Maine Coon cats, and eventually become so beloved in the neighborhood that I get elected to city council or something.
When I’m in a certain mood I imagine survival scenarios where I outsmart bad guys and survive in the woods with nothing but a machete and a lighter.
I will be your home restoration assistant, babysit your enormous cats, and also tend the little walled English garden that I’m sure your bungalow will have.
When it comes to the bad guys and the machete, you’re on your own, though.
Thanks for the offer! In this fantasy I have about 60 lbs worth of cats and an extensive vegetable garden, so my hands will be pretty full.
60 lbs of cats is a life goal for me, NGL.
“my hands will be pretty full” =
Man friendly Christian services drive me crazy. It isn’t enough for men to be at services that are probably run by men, saying prayers and liturgy probably written by men, singing hymns probably written by men, hearing readings out of a holy book largely compiled and translated by men, praying to a God that has been almost exclusively characterized as male since the inception of the religion. Isn’t that manly enough for fucks sake?! Meanwhile people jump down my throat for wanting to call God Mother once in a blue moon. Wtf.
My crush on David Tennant (or at least his Broadchurch character) has been interrupted by his terrific but totally creepfest performance in Jessica Jones. Sticking with Alec Hardy is the right bet.
I can’t decide if his run on Who would be a good Jessica Jones chaser, or if I want to finally succumb and watch his Casanova. Tennant being charming is sexy enough, Tennant being sexy might be enough to kill me. It’s rather alarming.
Pretty much every Christian church service is man-friendly, IMO, even if the majority of the congregation are women.
Even the majority of contemporary praise and worship songs are written by men. The militaristic overtones and undertones throughout the Bible, and in songs, are stereotypically masculine. The entire Trinity, not just God the Parent, are referred to by he/him/his pronouns and are characterized as male. The most cited and remembered characters in Scripture are men.
TL;DR: Christianity is still uber male-centric, and I wish it’d stop being so.
Refer the people to Hosea 13:8, where God is likened to a Mother Bear who protects her cubs.
An elderly unknown distant relative leaves me a great deal of money. I pay off my student loan debt, buy a house, and go back to school to finish my Ph.D. in classics. My translation of Ovid’s Heroides becomes a surprise crossover hit, and my novel about Dido, Queen of Carthage gets turned into a movie. Latin regains popularity in American schools and I am charmingly famous and endow several scholarships at my alma mater.
This sounds so great. I want this for you.
this sounds absolutely perfect. i would be first in line to read your ovid translation (and swoon over him/mourn his loss, if you are so inclined).
long live dido; fuck aeneas; end scene.
I am sorry everything is horrible right now, if you would like a distraction please enjoy this video of a crow taking public transit (and apparently does it on the regular):
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2015/11/crow-rides-sky…
That is a great story, corvids are so smart. Also, i misread your post at first and expected to see pictures of a cow riding public transit. I might need more caffeine today.
Me too. Just waiting on the subway platform, respectfully behind the yellow line. Then hopping onto the A Train and fluttering to an empty seat. Our intrepid corvid yields her seat to a pregnant woman at the next stop.
That is awesome!
I read the holiday party screed as more of a call to arms (sigh, I need a better phrase here) to stop throwing bad parties. I think my beloved Ask Polly needs to find some friends who actually know how to throw a fun party! Like she says, it’s not exactly rocket science; who are these people? Buy some booze. Then, buy some more booze. Buy some chips. Then, buy some more chips. Buy salsa, hummus, etc. Make a dip or two if you’re feeling fancy. Maybe throw some cookies in there. Play some music. Loud enough for it to be lively, but not so loud that people can’t talk. Drink, mingle, chill, dance, do whatever, and be merry!
“If you, too, spin elaborate grandeur fantasies, please share them at this time.”
Oh god, someone finally asked. I have been WAITING for this moment.
So, i sort of lucid dream sometimes, and also I tell myself these sorts of elaborate fantasies in order to fall asleep (a sort of self-bedtime story), so it’s sort of unclear where the line is between “thing I am consciously making up” and “thing my subconscious gives to me as a gift”….
The old standby is that I’m part of an elite design team doing production design for the movie versions of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall movies. I mostly do visual research, drafting set pieces, and creating models. I am never asked to sketch humans.
The new and fun one is, as follows: I have been allowed to pick one cast member of the Avengers to spend roughly 12 hours with. I choose Mark Ruffalo. He asks me why. I talk about how he seems to be the one that I’d actually enjoy spending time with even if he wasn’t famous (this is a slight oversimplification, but, whatever), and also we have evidence he once read a piece from The Toast, so, he was my pick. He then confides in me that he checks in every so often. and is sort of sad that he hasn’t been part of the if X were your Y series. I tell him that I’m pretty sure that he and I could fix that, and I suggest that he and I work on it together. He’s all modest and all “but it’s not the same” and my response is, okay, if you’re worried, we can definitely pitch it first before we write it. I then make Mark Ruffalo stand there with a piece of paper in which he’s written “Hi Nicole and Nikki, I love Helen Cho too!” and add that picture to an email, with subject line “URGENT PITCH I AM WITH MARK RUFFALO”. As I write the email pitching possible angles Mark and I could go with, he looks at me, and says “Are you sure you want to spend our time together this way?” I look at him, sort of baffled. “Well, there are only two other things I can think of that would be better than this, and I’m pretty sure that we have enough time to do those two things AS WELL as this, although I doubt you had those planned anyway.” He then asks me what those two things are.
And that, my friends, is how I, in my partially asleep state, imagine Mark Ruffalo and I pitching a piece to The Toast, then going to see Hamilton together, followed by wild sex in a limo on the way back.
That is a fantastic fantasy. And then to end the night nestling in his glorious chest hair…
“I have been allowed to pick one cast member of the Avengers to spend roughly 12 hours with”
*coughs discreetly*
It should be noted that I spent SEVERAL nights considering my options.
Second place is Chris Evans, as the Edith Zimmerman piece has a very special place in my heart, and I sort of imagine that Evans is sort of similar to my circle of friends who went to UMass, only better looking, but I’m already friends with those dudes, and meeting Evans might just lead to me realizing he’s just not as cool as i’m imagining, and that would be sad for me.
Third place is RDJ. Again, I have this detailed imagining of the sort of person he might be, only here I am CERTAIN I am imagining a much cooler person than he actually is, and also it seems like spending that long with him might be exhausting, for both of us. Like, I imagine he has a much more involved “being a famous person” facade that he puts on than Ruffalo, and while that is part of his JOB, I… am sort of not interested? Like, I find him FASCINATING, and if it was a choice of “spend 12 hours with RDJ or spend it at work” I’m picking RDJ easily, but.
I have also, separately, thought about which *character* I would want to spend time with, and that would be Pepper Potts, because then I’d try to swing that into her giving me a job at SI.
I have an elaborate fantasy that I’m dating (married maybe?) to Sandra Bullock and we live in a gorgeous house in Vermont that over looks a lake and we have two big dogs and cook fantastic dinners for all of our friends in our stunning kitchen. We leave the door to the balcony in our bedroom open until late November because we love the smell of the woods in the fall. I teach her the ways of black hair for the kids.
Pleasepleaseplease name something Sorrow Floats. Maybe it’s the name of your Vermont estate.
That’s lovely and I endorse it 97%, but you do not want to leave the door (or window) of a Vermont house open until late November. Your heating bills would be unfathomable.
eta: I’m sorry, I know it’s a fantasy!! But my inner Vermonter can’t let that stand? Maybe in mid-October you could gracefully transition from the smell of the woods in fall (which would mostly be the smell of wet leaves from snowmelt at that point) to the smell of the small, toasty brick fireplace in your bedroom?!
From that excellent article reacting to appealing to men at Xmas church services:
“Play a video clip from an action film as a metaphor.
“No reason why not. Preaching can use a variety of props, … The only slight reservation I have about this is the assumption that “an action film” is going to appeal to men and particularly men. … I have to refer them to my female colleague, whose field [action movies] this is.”
Toastfriends, which Furiosa scenes would be best? Shall we make a recommendation for action film scenes featuring a kick-ass woman with which to illustrate a sermon?
I’m pretty old-school. Can we use Ripley in the power-loader suit (Jesus) protecting Newt (weak and helpless mankind) from the Alien Queen (Satan, the temptations of the flesh, video games, whatever is evil that day)?
I like the way you think! Ripley is so badass and cool.
What about Sarah Connor (humanity) doing pull ups (good works? prayers?) and then escaping from the hospital (worldly sin) by beating the orderlies and terrible doctor (Satan?) with a stick (of righteousness).
Yes! Linda Hamilton was the first mainstream muscular woman I had ever seen. She made me reconsider my own physical strength. My sister and I had endured school taunts for how naturally strong we were, but Sarah Connor helped me find pride in my body.
So few movies with kick-ass women. Might have to go to TV: Buffy, the Chosen One (Jesus), mentored by Giles (Johns the Baptist) and assisted by her friends (disciples) routinely destroy vampires & demons (devils and, um, demons) to save Sunnydale (the world) from being sucked into hell. Angel (Satan) and Spike ( also Satan) regularly try to tempt her away from her duty.
My current fantasy is a full night’s sleep, but usually my elaborate fantasy is being a best-selling author for my controversial YA novel and being able to answer all of the critics in such a logical yet emotionally compelling way that everyone realizes I was right*. Then I get to attend the Oscars and win for Best Adapted Screenplay of my YA novel but I also get to avoid the red carpet because that seems stressful.
*this line says more about me than I realized.
Yesterday the worst thing that happened to me personally was that I found out Trader Joe’s discontinued my favorite thing — a mocha-cappuccino mix that is amazing — and I wish that it was still the worst thing that had happened. Except I wish that hadn’t happened either. Any substitutes people can recommend?
They’re discontinuing the mocha cappuccino powder???? Noooooooo.
I do like the Spiced Chai powder, but all the other instant powders have been garbage (the pumpkin chai, the gingerbread drink thing, the green tea latte…all disgusting).
Ugh, Savannah.
I can tell you exactly why the shooting didn’t get a lot of initial coverage:
-shootings are tragically commonplace in Savannah.
-this particular shooting was outside of the Historic District.
/INFINITE headdesk
Well, I have a bunch of fantasies but I’m WEARING AARON BURR UNDERPANTS IN ALL OF THEM from now on.
My fantasy is now going back in time, finding Aaron Burr, and informing him that one day there’ll be underwear with his name non-metaphorically on it.
“I am the one thing in life I can control. I am inimitable, I am on underwear.”
This is not the legacy you were supposed to protect, Burr!
being on underwear is a good way to ensure that one will generally be in the room where it happens.
CAN I STEAL THIS? I am interviewing the makers of the Aaron Burr underwear for my blog, and that is the perfect image caption.
Do it!
Better Aaron Burr than these terrifying things.
That said, Dorothy could be very effective as a boner-killer.
None of my fantasies are particularly elaborate, but I do have a lot of little ones:
1) I am hired to write & produce a Kate Bishop/Young Avengers series.
2) I meet Chris Evans and don’t act like an idiot, remember to tell him that I loved him in “Sunshine,” and he tells me my daughter is adorable.
3) My husband gets me Hamilton tickets for Christmas. (This one is even more farfetched than the Young Avengers one, I know.)
Unbeknownst to myself, my husband has been befriending a stray kitten at his job and has only just revealed his plan today TO COTCH HER AND BRING HER HOME tomorrow. I CANNOT contain my excitement! Live updates in tomorrow’s open thread. If he has trouble I get to go on my lunch break and try the “lay face down and make meowing noises” approach. I can’t wait to attempt kitten cotching!
Yes, we already have 2 adult grumpy old men cats and one large dog in a small house so she will have to be adopted out post-cotched, but be still my heart!
IMPORTANT QUESTION: will he be taking pictures of the cotching process? You know, for science?
Yes! He posted one picture and a video of her on Facebook. If I knew how to add videos I would. Picture to come post-haste!
Good luck!
Yeah, we had five other cats when the feral kitten was cotched here – four years later I’m thinking we may have missed our adopting-out window. Looking forward to pictures of your new feline overlord.
Yay kitten-cotching! Yay for kitten-cotching-husband!
So you’re living the fantasy, is what you’re saying
It is not exactly elaborate, but also it is true: last night Mr LF and I pulled the wishbone from the chicken we had just eaten, and I won, and my wish was that the baby would sleep all night, and she did! A few more nights of that in a row and maybe I can work up to wanting something more.
My elaborate fantasy right now is so tame! I just want my novel to be finished and to be interviewed warmly and intelligently by Eleanor Wachtel. And then of course, it becomes a best seller. And it gets picked for Canada Reads. Gah. I’m so Canadian, it’s a little sad.
Would also accept having my emotionally needy Lab/Akita mix meet Tom Hardy so I can watch her soak up his puppy love. And I can stare at his perfect lips.
As soon as I saw Crimson Peak, I went home and preordered the Bluray because velvet and satin covered reasons with copious ghosts and feckless Tom Hiddleston’s butt.
My most common grandeur fantasy: somehow, I acquire a large manor house or castle (usually through inheritance, thanks to an obscure and castle-owning distant relative) that a) is far away from other habitation (on a lonely moor, say), b) has a large and well-appointed library, and c) never needs cleaning/is outfitted with a fleet of silent and diligent servants that know exactly where and how things in my home should be. I live there, sometimes alone, sometimes with my dearest love, but always with a pack of at least three Irish wolfhounds. We stride about the moors in the fog and gloom (sometimes I am also riding a horse) and are very grand and ominous. Also, I am independently wealthy. Of course.
Honestly, you could just ride one of the wolfhounds.
This morning I ate a bearclaw, drank two cups of coffee, and started dismantling my FB account, which makes me the healthiest person on the planet, or at least in this chair. Yesterday was the final tsunami of stupid for me. I’m just pre-menopausal, so a long, probably permanent break from dealing with FB, and internet comments of any kind outside of the Toast is just safer for everyone.
One good thing happened to me yesterday that meant I could go to bed happy. My cat Nijel the Destroyer, missing for two months after we moved across town, came running up to me when I went to check our old neighborhood on the off chance that he had made his way back there. Skinny, but very happy to see me. Ate enough for four cats, stayed right next to me most of the night, and gifted me a fat, headless mouse sometime in the early morning. So not everything in the world sucks.
Except for the mouse. Sucked for him.
HURRAH!
#bestest! Welcome home Nijel!
A Toastie that I cannot now recall shared this Chrome or Safari extension that you may find useful: Shut Up.
Perfect! Thank you! Until they create the ap that reaches through the screen and delivers a punch to the throat of the comment-troll, this could help me keep my sanity. Keep me from giving in to the temptation to hate-read, which always gives me the urge to create and release a Stephen King’s The Stand-type virus.
Oh man, one of our Toastie developers should get started on ThroatPunch.
I’d fund that effort.
I’m so glad you got your cat back!!!
HOORAY HOORAY SO HAPPY FOR YOU!
Is…Is this a safe place to tell my fantasy?
Wait, it’s the Toast. Of course it is.
Massive applause breaks out as I sweep onto the stage to give the closing speech on a conference about Good Science. “So impressive”, the crowd mutters. “The driving force of a revolution in medicine. And her dress looks /incredible./” Down in the audience, my husband Chris Evans discreetly wipes away a tear. “I’m so proud of her- and so glad I left the pressures of Hollywood to be a stay at home father so she could pursue her career. I’m going to take her to our home on the New England coast after this and build her a new reading nook in the library while I wear tight plaid shirts. She deserves it.”
*waves fairy godmother wand*
let it be so.
Can the sleeves of his tight plaid shirt be rolled up to reveal just the right amount of forearm? Not that I’ve given much thought to his arms or anything…
Lately I have been fantasizing further adventures for the player characters from my D&D campaign that ended earlier this year. One of the other characters had a Mysterious Past involving escaping from the evil assassin cult that raised her, which my character was the only other person who knew about, and I was deeply disappointed that we never got around to dealing with the assassin cult in-game so I have been working out the details in my about-to-fall-asleep fantasies.
I’ve done this with my giant genderless robot character , because its backstory was AWESOME and we never got around to doing anything with most characters’ backstories. It’s so disappointing when you have all these awesome details and they stay inside your head. (especially when it’s because your fellow players would rather screw around visiting space-strip-clubs.)
Dang other players! In our case I think we would have gotten to the assassin cult eventually, except that the dude who was playing that character had a baby and no longer has the free time or energy for a regular game. Maybe I can convince the same group to play a sequel campaign in a few years. (No, I secretly like my going-to-sleep fantasy version better, because I am in control of the whole story and no one can ruin my climactic fight against my nemesis by rolling a lucky critical and one-hitting her NOT THAT THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED OR I’M STILL MAD ABOUT IT OR ANYTHING.)
I was particularly proud of the Dwarven ranger I played in a campaign a few years back. Her story was that she suffered from severe claustrophobia, and was cast out in disgrace to seek her fortune in the wide world. She had a badger familiar, which gained wolverine powers at one point. It was badass.
I was so happy to see the part about your fantasy! I read that article in The Atlantic earlier this year about maladaptive daydreaming, and I was all, “Oh noooooooooo, I think I have that.” Then I told myself that I’m just composing a lot of novels in my head that I’ll never write down? Anyway, when people spend a good chunk of time constructing a detailed fantasy, that makes me feel not so weird.
I believe Dothan is named for and associates itself with the bible verse “Joseph went into Dothan, and he found his brothers there.” But what they tend to gloss over is that as they saw him approach, his brothers *plotted to kill him*. So yeah, sounds like Dothan.
YOU GUYS. I… don’t have fantasies of grandeur like this AT ALL?! It hasn’t occurred to me to tell myself a story on that scale since I was a teenager. And I am a person who very much lives in her own head and loves stories. Is something wrong with me? (A: Yes, obviously, but I knew that before.)
No, don’t worry, all my fantasies are spent on my favorite characters instead of myself. (Except for the ones I’m about to describe in my own comment, but those are a different form of fantasy and channeling rage.)
Me, too. A lot of the time I don’t even have the same name.
Mine are nearly all Mary-Sue fantasies – I never had the self-confidence to put myself in the place of someone who could kick-ass or attract fascinating celebs. Now, my Mary Sues have some amazing adventures.
I’m totally with you. My fantasies consist of: A fireplace. That’s literally it.
Me neither – I am a bit concerned now. I do fantasise a bit, but only about fictional characters, not myself.
YES I am also scouring the internet, hunting down a legible version of Crimson Peak that I can throw money (and possibly, my body) at. I went through a rough breakup yesterday and now I NEED to mend my heart with the scene of Tom Hiddleston’s divinely arched back rolling into that girl PLEASE.
This is also the first time I’ve had my heart broken in, uh, a millennium, and I’m trying very hard to be Liz Lemon about it. “It ok, don’t be cry.”
I’m so sorry about your breakup. I think THiddles will be a balm to you, and I wish you luck on your quest to find the movie!
I have many very elaborate time travel fantasies, but the basic plot of all of them is that I buy an enormous amount of spices (in the modern day) and go back in time to the late middle ages, where I sell them all, and then travel forward (or back) in time to my real destination (which varies) with an enormous amount of gold. My current favorite destination is 17th century France, where I will be a mysterious but wealthy woman with an enormous library and all the most beautiful and fashionable clothing I can get my hands on. I will be widely respected for my deep intelligence and sparkling wit, and my salon will be the most popular in all of Paris. I will also run a school for women of all classes, which will have a tasteful and attractive uniform provided for free. I will be in good favor with the King, and my opinion will be valued by him enough to give me a little power, but not enough to make me the target of political machinations. Because of my obscure birth, I will not be a target for social-climbing suiters, but I will have enough wealth to make an eventual marriage to a brilliant and affectionate playwright financially practical.
My other fantasy involves becoming famous enough to be a guest on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year/The Graham Norton Show/QI, where I will win the esteem, admiration, and friendship of Noel Fielding/Stephen Fry/Graham Norton. Daniel Radcliffe will also be a guest and we fall in love and spend our life together reading poetry and being humble about our enormous success and cultural significance.
Wow I really love the spice scheme idea! I might borrow this one…
I have a similar spice scheme idea, but it’s bring spices, etc back in time & “artifacts” like clothes and shit forward in time, donating it to museums, selling to private collectors. The museums & collectors, of course, fully believe me but don’t question me too deeply.
there’s a series of novels with time-travelling cyborgs that do that, by an author called Kage Baker. You may be interested in checking out her work…
My fantasy has a fairly specific mental picture to go with it. I win the lottery and buy a townhouse in Chicago, and furnish it sparsely but well; the largest room in the house becomes the library. There’s also a rooftop deck, and on a winter day when it’s snowing big, fluffy flakes, I go up there. There’s a semi-reclining metal mesh chair, and I brush the snowflakes off and sit down. I’m wearing a large robe of my own design; it’s black, made out of a quilted comforter with a Gore-Tex exterior so that it sheds moisture, and has a big hood. Plus, of course, I’m wearing fleece pajamas and shearling slippers, so I’m quite cozy. I sit in the chair and sip from an enormous mug of coffee and just watch the snow fall on the rooftops of my neighbors. I catch some movement out of the corner of my eye, and look next door to see a family–the ones who just moved in–on their own deck, looking at me. It occurs to me that they probably can’t see my face, and I’m not really in the mood for conversation, but neighbors is neighbors, so I wave, and they wave back, but don’t say anything.
A few days later, I hear the rumor that my building is apparently inhabited by a Sith lord, but that he seems nice enough.
Toasts I’m posting anonymously for reasons that will become clear but my husband and I are under investigation by CPS for harming our baby, which needless to say we did not do.
At first I assumed this would all be cleared up quickly but it has not been. They are threatening to take our children away. (We do now have a good lawyer.) I am in hell. This is hell.
I know this doesn’t even begin to encompass it, but I am so, so sorry. You’re in my thoughts.
Oh Toastfriend, this is terrible! I believe you when you say you never harmed your children. All the Toasthugs.
Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I hope that this gets cleared up for you soon. I have a friend who is kind of metal and tattooed and swears a lot but she’s a damned good mom who will do anything at all for her child, and she got investigated by CPS at least once when a prudish fellow parent or something called them on her. Best wishes with you and your family.
Oh no, oh no. Let us know if we can help in any way.
oh my god I am SO SO SORRY. that is awful – what the hell. i hope whoever reported you contracts shingles all over their body for the rest of their life.
Oh no oh no oh no! I am so so sorry this is happening to you. You have all of my sympathy and support.
I’m so sorry this is happening – please, please say if you need anything, even just someone to listen.
Oh my gods, what a nightmare, I’m so, so sorry. I really hope it gets cleared up soon for you. Sending good vibes.
I love this idea of sharing your fantasies! Here is my latest: I inherit/buy with money I win or inherit a working small farm. I move there (it is far but not too far from a major city…like maybe 2 hours driving) and begin to foster inner-city youth in small batches. Maybe 4-6 at a time. All different ages so the older ones can help with the younger ones. We are somehow able to do all the chores for the farm with this labor force but it doesn’t matter if the farm makes money, I am independently wealthy enough to keep it going because it teaches the kids responsibility and gets them out of poor neighborhoods and teaches them respect for the earth and for their food choices, etc. Maybe I have a husband but he mostly just helps with the farm work. After many years I am old and happy and we have reunions of all the kids and their families and it is wonderful.
Also the floors are hardwood and always clean and the windows are huge and they open easily and there are always sweet breezes to ruffle the curtains and there is plenty of space and time for alone wanderings. The kids, the farm, the husband mostly take care of themselves. I show up to make pies occasionally and help tutor in basic algebra.
The Buzzfeed list reminded me that Goodreads just released their best of 2015 list, which includes a monstrous, killer mermaid novella that may be of interest to Toasties everywhere:
I…would not have titled it as such, but I’m reading it now and so far it’s delightful. I am always on board for killer mermaid media. She Creature, for example, is criminally underrated:
The title and the cover mermaid holding an undersea starfish-phone (so 90’s!) to her ear a la “Hello” just cheered me enormously. Not sure about the screaming murdery one.
The secret is that the mermaid is about to kill that person though.
Screaming, murdery movie features Rufus Sewell and Carla Gugino as turn of the century carnival flimflam artists who somehow end up with a real, live mermaid that ends up much more murdery than it says on the tin. There’s also some lesbian undertones and a monstrous mother bit. It was billed as “Mermaid Chronicles Part I” and I may be forever miffed that there wasn’t a part II.
You had me at Carla Gugino. Also flimflam. Must see.
Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire is a goddamned treasure.
I am especially enjoying that the deep sea sciencey stuff seems so reasonable and well-grounded!
ROLLING IN THE DEEP is so freakin’ good. Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire in general is so freakin’ good.
The Brooklyn store mentioned in the cheese article could very well be my Grandmother’s family store! It was DePalo’s, and located in Brooklyn during the same time period. This makes me very happy.
My elaborate fantasy these days is that I get three wishes. My first is that all guns suddenly cease working. Forever. Like, every time a gun is fired it jams, or out pops a flower. My second wish is that anyone who is about to do something violent to another person is teleported 5000 miles away. As many times as it takes. My third wish is to speak and write all languages fluently including plants and animals.
OK, maybe instead of teleport they are surrounded by an impenetrable bubble? I don’t know.
Oh Toast, I have to make a large decision and plead my case to a semi-authority figure in 5 hours and I have no idea what I’m going to do or what the right thing to do is.
The world is a mess and one falling-apart woman’s decision to stay in the city she recklessly moved to or go home is not all that important in the scheme of things but it is my whole world right now. I have talked and talked and talked and thought and thought and thought and written and written and written and I have no answers (or too many answers). I am disgusted with myself and bored with my disgust and too busy wishing for impossible things to make my actual life better.
I don’t envy your situation–your description sounds a bit like the inside of my own head and heart most days, and it has not been a fun place to dwell. Is there one path that offers a more gentle transition/softer landing/better long-term possibilities than the others? If you can sense your way into it, just try to plead on behalf of your serenity or your basic right to exist and work toward being happy. I’ll be holding a good thought for whatever the best outcome might be to open up for you, plus a side helping of impossible dreams realized.
I wish you serenity. And your decision to stay or go *is* important, because you are important. However, there is no wrong decision. You’ll be OK either way. You have strengths you have forgotten or are dormant. And you have Toastfriends.
Nothing to do with anything, but last night on the trail, I discovered my hearing isn’t shot yet. 😛 There were some dueling trains on the train tracks below, they were moving cars or something, with lots of horns and banging and clanking. But I kept hearing a little ‘jingle, jingle, jingle’, like some reindeers were about. 😛 I was trying to figure out what on a train would make that noise, then I felt like the noise was higher up, nearer me. Then I was all ‘no, all you can hear right now are the noisy trains’. But. ‘jingle, jingle, jingle’. Reindeers or a cat with a bell. There’s a cat around somewhere, lost in the woods? I kept going, and was trying to decide if my ears were just mis-interpreting some of the banging and clanging as jingling, then, trotting out of the woods, came a little dog, with a cat (dog?) bell on her collar, as well as tags, so it was making ‘jingle, jingle, jingle’ like a whole set of reindeer bells, ha! I asked the dog where her people were, but she just grinned at me and wanted me to pet her. She was a very stout Jack Russell, ha! She trotted happily along with me, and I was trying to decide what I should do with her, when, finally, about another quarter mile down the trail, we ran into her people and another, even stouter, Jack Russell (who was trudging along, he was DONE with this stupid woods idea). Jingle bell girl was quite happy, running back and forth between me and her people, and even the grumpy dog came up and smelled my shoes.
I had a little conversation with her people, and it seems that she takes walks in the woods as an opportunity to hunt, as Jack Russells love to do (though apparently she is not a successful hunter, fortunately, just a busy body). Even as we were chatting, she was snooping around a packrat nest, and trying to get her buddy to help her dig it out, though he was having none of that! So my hearing was not going wonky, and the Jingle bell dog was not lost. 🙂
Hooray for working ears and jingle bell dogs!
The hearing thing is a low level worry I have. I do have some hearing loss from being on headsets where some people would always whisper and some people would always scream or whistle, so volume was a problem. But, my sister has bionic ears (the bones in her ears have been replaced with high tech tiny bits of metal because the bones fused together) and that is a genetic thing, so I worry whenever my hearing seems to be doing something strange. yeah, I get my hearing tested, but I still worry.
Though my sister is fine now, it was a long, hard road that I selfishly would prefer not to travel, not least because I could not afford the surgery.
My actual fantasies are spent on stories and favorite characters rather than myself, but occasionally when I’m feeling particular rage, I have specific ones.
I am a journalist who does not stutter and has no fear of confrontation. I get close enough to Donald Trump to ask him if Jesus was a loser because he allowed himself to be crucified. (Mostly, though, I don’t fantasize myself as a journalist, because I actually just want to get away with physically assaulting people like Cruz and Huckabee.)
My other main fantasy is about succeeding at writing enough to do it for a living, so I never have to wake up before 7 or work in a cubicle with glaring fluorescent lights again.
I am also successful enough to make it onto Stephen Colbert’s show, where I can critique his career to him directly. (“I like you, but stop tracking how many billionaires you have on your show like they’re worth more than other people. Yes, I know they’re literally worth more in a monetary sense, but stop acting like that means anything.”)
Also I get to meet Jon Stewart at a time when he doesn’t mind talking to me, and I’m able to coherently express what he’s meant to me.
Are you me, or am I you?
Hi toast friends,
I had a miscarriage on Tuesday, and am now home from the hospital recovering physically but mentally/emotionally feeling…not ok. I am planning on staying home and watching netflix all day. Does anyone have recommendations for slightly absurd or fantastic movies to watch? So far I have watched The Baker, Dark Crystal, and The Labyrinth, which were all perfect, but I’m not sure where to go next. Any suggestions?
Also, if anyone has been through something similar and has any links they found helpful I would love that.
Hey, sending out all my warmest internet hugs to you.
Any or all Studio Ghibli movies might be what you’re looking for– Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle are the two I’d start with, although I’m not sure what’s on Netflix. Magic Mike XXL is also both absurd and fantastic.
Sorry to hear about your miscarriage, and that you’re having a hard time. My current go-to comfort films are Sleepy Hollow, Can’t Hardly Wait, and Clueless.
I am so sorry you are going through this. I found a lot of great support on the babycenter.com pregnancy loss grief group, but that was years ago. Honestly, one of the reasons I love the toast is the supportive community.
As for ‘take me away from all this’ movies, i love to rewatch (& read again & again) Pride and Prejudice when ever my mental health gets a bit dicey.
Hi there! I’m so sorry to hear about your miscarriage. The blog A Cup of Jo gathered together the stories of three women (plus tons more in the comments) if you feel that would help you right now: http://cupofjo.com/2015/11/miscarriage-stories/.
As for movies, sausagedog’s rec of Studio Gihbli is right on, and I would throw in my all-time favorite movie, the 1999 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream starring Stanley Tucci, Anna Friel, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kevin Kline. It’s truly a delight, and the costumes/scenery are incredible.
Be well <3
Thanks everybody. <3
I’m really sorry to hear about your miscarriage. It’s so painful. Make sure to let yourself feel it as it comes…some moments you may feel very sad, and other times you may wonder how you can feel so distant from sadness. If you have a partner, he or she may feel things with a different intensity or schedule than you do, but all but this is normal.
This is not a link, but when I lost my first pregnancy, my husband and I planted a little garden and it really helped us feel like “Life is still growing at our house.” Obviously this is not the season for a garden, but maybe you could do a indoor window box garden or bonsai.
Or you might consider volunteering at a place that you feel promotes life, like a no-kill animal shelter. I’m not recommending signing up to volunteer today, obviously, but just thinking about what you might be up for in the near future.
I am so sorry.
I find Stardust a great fluffy movie to curl up with. My other go-tos are Great Mouse Detective and Shop Around the Corner (which is seasonally appropriate!)
I’m so sorry, I’ve been there a couple of times myself and it just… sucks, all around. I’ll second Stardust, and the Studio Ghibli movies, maybe along with Mirrormask if you can find it somewhere.
I found out the hard way that you should be careful going in to forums about miscarriage until you feel you’re ready. I wasn’t ready to read about other people’s miscarriages when they happened in different ways than mine. At the time it just made me feel worse and unsafe about the future, so just a word of caution there.
Elaborate fantasies? I have an entire mansion of those. Superhero/magical/time traveling/dimension hopping/musical-themed/specific fandom-themed… I have a elaborate story that will never happen for every situation!
My current one is that someone makes a musical of Over the Garden Wall (OH MAN IT WOULD TRANSLATE SO WELL INTO THEATER) and I play the Woodman’s daughter (despite not being able to sing at all) except – surprise twist! I’m actually the Beast in disguise. Awards and praise roll in for me. Then I meet Yuga Yamato and I don’t embarrass myself while talking to her despite the fact that I turn into a puddle of extremely gay goo every time I see a picture of her on Tumblr.
Dream I didn’t know I had until yesterday–write a story that is illustrated by someone else into a graphic novel or comic book. And a short, happy story on a very sad day: Went out yesterday to buy a paper and ran into a friend who lives around the corner from me, a sweet older woman with a tiny, vicious dog who only has one tooth. We exchanged pleasantries, I went on my way. On my way home she flagged me down and loaded me up with a bag of groceries while I tried to turn her down. I did turn down the bill she offered me to buy a lottery ticket because I already had one, but as I was leaving and thanking her she told me, “Win the lottery!” And I got the Mega number! So I’ll roll it over tomorrow and on Saturday night I can buy the first Toast rooming house. It’s all coming together.
Thought of you Nicole, when I heard the Pistorius news.
Oh god, the Savannah article – did anyone else notice that the Twitter pullquote was from an individual identified as “Drunken Dipshit”? COME ON.
Not really fantasies, but in my brain I have a few vague ideas that I think would make fantastic TV shows but for all intents and purposes are impossible.
One involves melding the world of Pushing Daisies with the world of Hannibal where all the Hannibal characters for some reason end up stuck in Coeur d’Coeurs indefinitely and help Emerson Cod and his gang of misfits solve crimes.
The second one would be called White Bishop and it’s about Walter White joining forces with Walter Bishop and building up a meth empire in the Red Universe of Fringe.
Another one is just new seasons of 30 Rock with everything the same as if it had never ended.
My favorite elaborate fantasy (besides the lottery-winning one) involves being suddenly and unexpectedly caught in a massive blizzard and finding shelter in an abandoned cabin… hunkering down together and keeping warm with ~*~body heat~*~, etc etc. Occasionally the cabin has a bearskin rug, and it ALWAYS has a roaring fire and a mysteriously-sufficient amount of chopped firewood. The other person in this fantasy varies, but has included people in my actual real life as well as famous people.
Hey so this probably will not be seen by anyone but are any East Bay Toasties interested in meeting up sometime in December? Suddenly I have ALL THIS TIME (at least, after the next 1.5 weeks).
Hello fellow East Bay toastie! I am currently unemployed and job-hunting and would love to meet fellow toast-readers! You might have better luck on the Friday open thread —- post again then!
Yes!! I’m on the google doc thing, but yes generally. I’m free most frequently on Mondays and Sundays.
In addition to my “living in the country with wifi and goats and a helpful Richard Armitage around the place” fantasy, the same thing but with Delia from Call the Midwife would do quite nicely.
The closest thing I have to a Fantasy of Elaborate Grandeur is triggered by working in various coffee shop/waitress/shop assistant positions. During particularly boring moments I imagine what it would be like if someone like Daniel Radcliffe/Chris Evans/Jensen Ackles came in. They make light conversation with me as I prepare their latte/serve them quiche/wrap their packages and are so charmed with my wit that they give me free access to their vacation homes forever after and invite me to all their parties.
Oh, this just reminded me that when I used to work retail I had a great running fantasy where I would shut down a really rude and aggressive customer effectively and calmly, then discover that the person behind him in line was [rotating cast of hot celebrities] and I had impressed him with my poise and my refusal to take any shit and now he would like to buy me a drink.
I have ones like that too, but they happen when I get trapped in an elevator for a few hours with (insert fun celebrity here) and I charm them thoroughly.
it’s pretty late in the link roundup, but here i am, to share a link.
when i feel bleak and tired and like we should probably sink our entire civilization into the sea, i like to read anything written by alex balk. this in particular brings me comfort on a very deep level: http://www.theawl.com/2015/07/weakness-revealed
who knows why.
My random fantasy involves:
1) Living next to a big forest with my friends and growing vegetables, while also looking after lots of rescued guinea-pigs in a big field that we’ve reinforced so that nothing eats the guinea pigs (and segregated so that the guinea-pigs don’t just breed hundreds of baby guinea pigs). Also, I drive a war-rig.
2) I become much better at playing guitar, and find other people who also want to form an aggressively feminist, radical environmentalist Black Metal band (not like, evil fascist Black Metal. I hate Nazi Black Metal). We are invited to go on tour with Wolves In The Throne Room.
My delusion of grandeur is to have a perfect little house downtown which is paid off in full (possibly because I did some act of kindness for a wealthy and elderly person who then made me the sole heir of millions of dollars*). I have no student loan debt. I have a tenured professorial gig at the stylish-yet-quality university, which will be in walking distance of my home. There will be a florist placed at exactly the midpoint of the walk between, with a greenhouse so that I can buy irises and white tulips every day of the year season be damned and arrange them in black glass vases around my house and office.
When overwrought students come into my beautifully-appointed office I will make them a cup of tea and calm them down and send them on their way, and then solve their “I can’t afford tuition next quarter” or “I can’t go present at this conference that would be so helpful to my career because I can’t afford airfare and hotel” or “I can’t finish my homework because I’m working to put myself through school” problems with discreet applications of money. Everyone in the department will know that I am doing this and will help smooth out any paperwork processes that go along with this but no one will ever reveal that to the students and we will just say that “our department takes care of its own.” I will also endow two or three scholarships.
My showers will mysteriously never grow mold. My mirrors and windows won’t be streaky ten seconds after I’ve cleaned them. My tater tots will never fall apart when I try to spear them on a fork. Daylight Savings Time will finally be abolished. I will always have perfect hair and nails, and wear lots of gray cashmere and ridiculous high heels.
*Why do I always default to inheritance rather than lottery fantasies? Because then I can believe that I can create this outcome by being kind to others, rather than relying on random chance. This says a lot about my control issues.
Fantasy: I live in a very small apartment with one interior brick wall. I never run out of new episodes of the Office (seasons 1-5 quality). I never have to do laundry because I only own one outfit – a gray t-shirt and the best fitting pair of jeans you’ve ever seen. I guess maybe my boyfriend is there too. I always feel well-rested.
Ooooh, can I adapt that one to add “only one set of dishes per person so no dishes every need washing ever”?
There is no excess ever.
My most involved fantasy, which is ongoing and essentially my imaginary friend life, is that I am a singer in an awesome folk/pop band with a bunch of my (imagined) college friends–basically I have actually written about 70% of Dar Williams and 50% of Nerissa Nield’s catalogs, with considerable rifling from Lucy Wainwright Roche, Lucy Kaplansky, Susan Werner, Richard Shindell, and a bunch of other people, but organized into weird themed narrative albums, and an intern on the Colbert show (original flavor) heard us and took a CD to Stephen who loved us, invited me to play the angel on his Christmas special, and basically I got to be really good friends with him. And we record long podcasts about the politics of gender-bending cover songs, and give ourselves challenges like working “hegemony” into song lyrics and yet no one finds us insufferable at all. And later it turns out my 1 straight guy bandmate has kind of been in love with me for years and a whole bunch of songs he wrote were secretly about me. (This fantasy has been worked on so long that I can actually be depressed in it and then write a wildly lauded CD about it, and date wrong guys and be totally miserable because in the end it will all work out, and with no medical intervention I’ll get pregnant with twins, and my husband, looking at the sonogram (because he’s also an MD/PHD and we are basically the most overeducated band ever), says “Well, it’s either twins or a time lord.”
Somewhat less elaborately, I finish my novel and it is published to such great acclaim I immediately get job offers to teach at a small liberal arts college, OR I meet a guy who is like “that book is me,” and I’m like “it’s also me,” and we get married and he earns enough money so not only can I stay home and write and teach exactly the amount I want, we thinks getting a housekeeper is a totally worthwhile investment in my not wasting my energy/spoons on keeping the house from falling into chaos. Also, he is Perfect at knowing when I am in pain/tired and always does exactly the right amount of helping so I never have to ask and never feel like a burden or like I’m being condescended to. We have a house with a beautiful garden that I only have to tend if I want to and for once in my life, enough bookshelves. I have enough friends to throw dinner parties but somehow the dishes never need to be washed and the kitchen is always spotless and smells like fresh-baked bread.
Between these two I also manage to write a Tony-award winning musical adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Geez, this is getting me into Feels territory.
I want all your albums!
A+ for “either twins or a time lord.”
Hi guys! I am part of an internship with an organization called Ma’yan that is doing a research project called “Sexism and the City” on incidents when people (women, girls, gender nonconforming peeps) have experienced sexism in the NY-metro region. It would be SO AWESOME if any New York toasties could take five minutes to participate! Also please share the link with any awesome NY women or gender nonconforming people you know! Thank you all! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SY8ZB5F
I realize it is the end of the day, but work has been swamping me and I just really want to share, in terms of elaborate fantasies, that
1. I have them ALL THE TIME especially while falling asleep
B. I know How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran isn’t always the best in terms of its feminisms, but it is often HILARIOUS, and her chapter about her elaborate train fantasy almost made me pee with cry-laughter and shame-recognition, highly recommend
Cat. Last night I dreamt that I had the power to turn into Cate Blanchett at will and now everything is disappointing in comparison
Maybe I’ll bring this to the link roundup tomorrow
This article made me so nostalgic for Nicastro's and the time in my childhood where it was the ONLY PLACE you could buy panettone and orangina and nutella.