Sansa is wandering around our post-blizzard backyard like, I know I had a pee spot but now I can’t find it.
Nichole Perkins’ conversation with her mother about their mutual depression and anxiety issues was incredible:
My mother punctuated my childhood with phrases about her nerves: “Don’t start getting on my nerves,” when we made too much noise; “Oooh, my nerves are bad,” any time she had an upset stomach. My older sister, younger brother, and I assumed this was just a part of the vocabulary of black motherhood. Mama is old-school — a working-class woman who believes nothing should stop you from providing for your family — so, to her, depression was a luxury. When I started having depressive episodes of my own, I didn’t feel like I could talk to her about them in detail. She didn’t know the thoughts that left me stuck in bed or zoned out in front of the television. All she knew was something was wrong.
By the time my mother was 60, her nervous stomach was causing significant, unexplained weight loss and bouts of vomiting. She turned to her doctor for help, and began taking medication for anxiety and depression. Now a year later, I thought it was time to sit down and finally talk about this open secret between us.
Josh Groban is going to be in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway! I saw it when Phillipa Soo was still Natasha down in the meatpacking district and they served you booze and pierogi, and it was so much fun, and Sonya Alone is a really beautiful song. A college friend produced it at Ars Nova, and I had dragged my feet a little about going bc of the constant ads in the back of NYC cabs, assuming it would be too cornball, but it really was a great time, and I hope it translates well to Broadway.
INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE, HOLY SHIT
son, you may think you are a dark-arts wizard, but there is only ONE true dark-arts wizard, and it ain’t some broseph trying to foist Republicans onto America:
Or look at the network being built by Elliott Management founder Paul Singer. In 2014, Singer created the American Opportunity Alliance, a group of roughly 40 Republican financiers who gather regularly for secret meetings with candidates. This fall, Singer threw his weight behind Marco Rubio and urged his members to do the same. In the general election, Singer will be a player with America Rising, the opposition-research firm headed by Romney’s dark-arts wizard Matt Rhoades. Instead of funding TV ads, Rhoades’s group offers Singer more predictable returns: It is narrowly focused on digging up dirt on Democrats, for example by sending video trackers to events in order to build a library of unflattering material.
Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed Fifty Shades of Grey, is in talks to direct Apex Entertainment’s feature Chappaquiddick.
Mark Ciardi is producing the project, with its script just named to the 2015 Blacklist. Campbell McInnes of Apex Entertainment and Chris Cowles of DMG Entertainment are also producing.
“I’ve done a lot of true life stories, many sports stories, but this one had a deep impact on this country,” said Ciardi. “Everyone has an idea of what happened on Chappaquiddick and this strings together the events in a compelling and emotional way. You’ll see what he had to go through.”
he killed that poor young woman and didn’t report it to the cops, they called HIM after he went back to his hotel room to sleep it off IF YOU THINK HE WAS SOBER I WOULD LIKE TO SELL YOU A BRIDGE THAT TED KENNEDY DIDN’T DRIVE OFF DRUNK AS A SKUNK that’s what he WENT THROUGH oh oh he didn’t get to be president wahhh wahh wahhh he got to die a billion years later, rich and a senior senator and with people jizzing all over him like they did his WHOLE MEDIOCRE NEPOTISTIC LIFE, like EDUCATE YOURSELF, PEOPLE, his OWN STATEMENTS ARE RIDICULOUS
I MEAN, SO MUCH FOR THE FUCKING KENNEDY CURSE, he got his DRIVER’S LICENSE suspended for six months:
(nicole trails off into gagging noises AND JOE SENIOR WAS A LITERAL MONSTER WHO LOBOTOMIZED HIS OWN DAUGHTER LEST SHE EMBARRASS THE FAMILY)
Cool interview with Fargo‘s Zahn McClarnon on his character and what it’s like to be a Native American actor:
Hanzee’s Native American heritage has become a large part of who he is and what he stands for, whereas earlier in the season, his background was more of a mystery. Did you create your own story for this shift in his character?
I did. Like you said, there wasn’t a lot written on the page about him, other than he was adopted at nine years old by the Gerhardt family, which was actually going on a lot in the ’60s and ’70s — a lot of kids being adopted out of their families into other families and relocated into other environments. So I know he went through that. And then being in the war, you know, that would have a big impression on anybody. He was this tunnel rat in Vietnam, sending the Indian down into the tunnels. I also drew from my own experience growing up in the ’70s as a Native American, being on the reservation and also living on the border of a reservation, and experiences I had with racism, on both sides. Being a mixed Native American, because my father was an Irishman, I saw both sides of it.So that racism is vivid in your own memory?
It’s very vivid. Not being served in restaurants in the early ’70s. I remember it vividly. They didn’t come up and say, “We’re not going to serve you,” they just left us sitting at the table and then didn’t ask for our order for 45 minutes.
My emails lit up like a Christmas tree because the LA Times asked (“I’m just asking questions!” – Cartman voice) if Serena Williams or American Phoenix was the REAL SPORTSPERSON OF THE YEAR:
Now, y’all know I love horses! And I would stump happily for SECRETARIAT IS A BETTER ATHLETE THAN LANCE ARMSTRONG, sure, but I MEAN, comparing a BLACK WOMAN to a FUCKIN’ HORSE like that isn’t FUCKED UP?
they can do this, yes, it’s fine:
I have a question regarding privacy at work. Recently, while I was out of the office, my boss switched out a two-drawer lateral filing cabinet that I was using. The documents in it were work-related. He asked another coworker to witness him exchange this out. He replaced it because he wanted all the cabinets in the office to be black, and mine was tan. I did not find out about this until the next day when I returned to work. Was this a violation of my privacy at work? He didn’t discuss this with me at all. The worst part was that the cabinet he switched it for was a broken one, although he did put in a request to fix it.
Artistic process, yo (music seems kind of hard):
“The ending [time signature] was in nine. That came about because we didn’t have an official ending. It was probably going to end up that we just fade it out which can be boring. Sometimes it’s exactly the right thing but often it feels like you’re giving up. And so I think we were working with John McEntire [of Tortoise] and he said, ‘So how’s it going to end?’ And we ended up trying a fade out where we go to a different time signature or different number of measures. We tried it at six, then seven. Eight is normal. And then we tried it at nine and he liked the nine.”
This Vows column is absurdly sweet:
The comeback of Iran Barkley began five years ago at a nightclub in the South Bronx, a short jog from the gang-infested neighborhood where he first learned to use his fists. It was a skill that would eventually help him earn three world boxing titles and what he estimated to be more than $5 million.
Seated across the bar that February evening in 2010 was Pamela Graham, a widow from Brooklyn with five children whose interests did not include sports.
“A friend of mine said, ‘Hey, the champ is staring at you,’” Ms. Graham, 47, said of the incident. “I was like, ‘The champ? The champ of what? Who’s the champ?’”
She looked up and made brief eye contact with Mr. Barkley.
“On Asian Women, Feminism, and My Grandmother”:
Whenever someone mentions the stereotype of the acquiescent, Asian woman, I think to myself that they should have met my grandmother. My grandmother was no stereotype. She was outgoing, generous, creative, ambitious, and open-minded. She learned to travel through all of New York and Northern New Jersey without ever learning to drive. She constantly made new friends with strangers on the street (to my great embarrassment when I was a kid). At seventy, she decided to go to a community wine tasting event and got drunk with (mostly white) people two to three decades younger than her — she giggled when she told me about it the next day, about how she couldn’t stop her drunken laughter. When, as a teenager, my brother visited her with bleached-red hair, my grandmother stared at it before breaking into a grin. “I like it,” she said. “I don’t understand it, but I like it.”
Friend of The Toast John Leavitt sent me this disgusting and fascinating Ask MeFi post about infections pre-Germ Theory:
A rule of thumb about illnesses such as infections is that eighty percent of them get better on their own. The remaining twenty percent don’t always kill; they often become chronic. There were a lot of our ancestors who picked up something like a UTI when they were fifteen and had it right up until they died in their fifties, the itching, the burning, the pain, the infertility, the difficulty peeing… Never got better but it never killed them either.
It’s a lot more dramatic to talk about how somebody got this wee little puncture wound… and they were dead in three days! Than it is to talk about how somebody got this wee little puncture wound and it turned into a nasty disfiguring scar and six months later they lost their sight in one eye because the infection got into the wound and it was four years before the wound was finally scar tissue and not oozing any more.
Yesterday was my sixth wedding anniversary. It was also Alexander and Eliza Hamilton’s wedding anniversary. This is so meaningful to me, minus the cheating.
Please send some of your snow to me. PLEASE.
Seconded. Our forecast for Xmas Eve is FORTY SEVEN DEGREES
Where I’m going to be, it’s supposed to be in the fifties. Here in DC, I think it’s going to be sixty. I AM SO UPSET.
This morning, as I was getting dressed, I realized that I was at the dregs of my sock drawer, and I wasn’t really relishing wearing two socks that kinda sorta matched. So I said “fuck it” and wore sandals. On December 15. It is INSANE (I mean, the forecast for DC is 62 today and 58 tomorrow, which is possibly a little cold for sandals, but I am wearing a sweater). Last night my phone was saying “oh, it’s gonna be 8 degrees colder tomorrow!”. Yet it will still be at least 60, so…
One of my housemates relishes in wearing open-toed shoes as much as possible, so she’s doing great here.
And its going to be 55 today in Phoenix and my car was covered in ice this morning. This isn’t how this is supposed to work.
I’m in south Florida and it’s going to be 85 on Christmas. I would kill for 47! (but I still validate and feel your pain…)
Midwesterner’s first Christmas in the South and I am NOT OKAY. It’s currently 54 degrees. Will be in DC for Christmas, and I am mad as a wet hen.
I am so sorry. It is miserable here.
If it makes you feel any better, it’s not much cooler in a lot of the midwest.
I drove back to IN for Thanksgiving, having packed my winter garb, and was like “….what. WHAT.”
brb, moving to Russia. 😛 (except not because Putin and I don’t speak Russian.)
That’s not too far off from the temps in Vermont right now. Don’t feel too bad.
Save some for me too, please!
I dunno, I live in upstate NY in the lake effect snow belt, and while I agree that this weather is a little alarming and weird, I really can’t say I miss the snow, the dangerous driving conditions, the having to dig a hole in a 4′ snow bank at the end of your driveway because your plow guy is a stoned loser nephew of your landlord’s friend, heating costs, frozen pipes, wet feet, shoveling, pulled muscles from shoveling, getting stuck in your own driveway, getting stuck half in the street trying to get IN to your driveway, and cold numb hands.
AGREE. The ecological implications are worrying but not having to shovel my driveway is pretty great.
Yeah, I was just saying to my spouse, I think people who are sad they don’t have any snow are also people who’ve never had to figure out what to do with four feet of snow at a time. A couple years ago, about 45 minutes north of me, people and communities were trying to figure out how to deal with the NINE FEET of snow on the ground.
Not really. I had 22′ of snow year before last and live in the middle of a lake effect belt. We live in Northern Michigan, that’s more or less what we signed up for. I am more scared of losing another entire year of crops than I am grateful to not have to shovel.
How did you only get away with 22″ is what I want to know. Hope your crops are ok, everyone has different priorities, life is a rich tapestry, I have to drive a LOT this time of year etc.
That’s feet, not inches. 22 feet. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. Last year we had about fifteen feet, which is more normal for the area.
OH yeah I totally misread that. I was like “22 inches is like two weeks in winter usually?”
And I’m not like, saying that a drought is an acceptable compromise, but I am saying it’s a nice break from the constant stress and exhaustion of dealing with so very much snow. Not to mention I have not slid off the road or gotten stuck AT ALL this winter yet.
BRB moving in with you because SNOW. I love snow so much that I even love shovelling snow. SNOWWWW.
Yeah, I am going to Utica for Xmas and while I would like a white Christmas I am glad that the weather isn’t supposed to be crazy.
I’m also glad that California is getting rain. But I am worried about what a warm winter with no snow will mean for the east coast in terms of depleted snow packs and low reservoirs.
I want the snow! But I also live in Chicago, so when we get three feet of snow overnight, it’s usually business as normal in a day or two.
I was in Toronto once when they got, like, a foot and everyone FREAKED OUT and it was a huge mess and I was like “don’t you guys deal with this a lot?” Upstate NY is pretty good about it, until it gets to the point where there’s no more room for the snow you are plowing out.
When I was but a wee punctuation mark part of southern Ontario got so much snow that they didn’t have enough crews to keep highways clear, so Rochester sent some plows. Yeah – we’re the city that CANADA calls when they get snowed in.
I somehow accidentally deleted my other comment I left here, but I was born and raised in Syracuse, and spent the vast majority of my life there, and if I could convince my partner (who will never be swayed because she is the more sensible of us, and also the issue of jobs), I would move back in a second just for the winters. But I do sympathize with the fears of climate change meaning MORE snow in places where they very much Do Not Need More Snow, and that’s a real problem.
I just like winter a lot, and CNY winters are my happy place.
Oh, Intense Debate, never change.
I have lived in Syracuse for almost 20 years, and I HATE the winters here and would move if I could. I hate driving in the snow, it’s terrifying and dangerous. I hate shoveling, it makes my wrists and shitty shoulders hurt. I hate being cold. I hate it that a simple trip to Wegmans, one mile from my house, is a stressful white knuckle nightmare. Maybe we can switch places?
I would be down. Or at the very least, if I was there, I would definitely offer to help shovel, as it is, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, a task that I love to do. I’m sorry you can’t move away!
IT ME
I mean, I usually don’t mind the cold and snow. And by living in MI it’s very much what i signed up for. But we’ve had 2 years of just soul crushing winters here. This lack of winter is super going to fuck up agriculture and the lakes but I’m selfishly relieved to have a break.
YUP
Same. I want a couple of inches of snow to be decorative, but I’m in no rush to have to deal with it.
Seconded! I’m from California but I’m at school in Upstate New York, and at the end of the week I am going home to CA to FIND SNOW. That’s not a sentence I ever expected to write.
(Also, the forecast is predicting snow for Saturday, when I’m flying. Like, fight me, Rochester. Put ’em up, let’s go.)
It’ll be clear because I’m flying IN on Sunday. And I am forever doomed to have No Snow Wherever I Am.
So many movie trailers holy shit. Independence Day Resurgence! Star Trek Beyond! Fantastic Beasts! I am…neutral to most of them. And I’ll probably see all of them.
(what i really want to talk about is the trailer for season 3 of The 100 HOLY SHIT THIS SHOW IS GOING TO DESTROY ME THIS SEASON I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS CLARKE’S HAIR THO)
I am interested in Stark Trek Beyond but basically only because I don’t understand the point of it. If you want to get the director of The Fast and the Furious to do a space movie, why wouldn’t you just do Space Fast and Space Furious? How does this make sense as a Star Trek movie?
Established, popular director of high octane action flicks + popular sci-fi franchise being revived/revamped in modern era of high-octane action sci-fi flicks. Star Trek’s always had some thinky/talky bits, but it’s also always had some dumb punch-up/sexy bits. I think there’s a lot of rose-colored nostalgia glasses going on when people think back to old Trek.
I disagree that my perspective on Star Trek — original series or otherwise — is primarily rose-colored. In the first place because I don’t think that the cerebral stuff is necessarily better than high-octane action (I would, in fact, be first in line to see Space Fast and Space Furious), and in the second place because I think that the emphasis on cerebral sci-fi is a significant and explicit part of most of the incarnations of Star Trek, and was key to some of the best films.
halp the 100 is going to kill everything I love
The 100 gives no shits for our feelings about characters, which is why I love it so much.
CLEXA THO
Clarke is getting under *someone* in the trailer and it looks like a woman someone and I hope it’s Lexa!
If this show gives us legit LGBT representation rather than just the 1-episode thing it did in season 2 before shutting it quickly down, I will be SO HAPPY.
*logs in furiously* YES The 100 is going to tear my heart out every episode and I will still want more. I cannot believe how invested I am in these characters – Clarke and Lexa meeting again, Jasper grieving, Octavia DISOWNING Bellamy holy shit!
In short, I am here for this.
I am still so confused on how season 1 of The 100, with make-outs in sparkly butterfly fields, turned into this epic show.
I’m in about the middle of the second season of the 100 and surprised more people aren’t watching it. It’s got such a Battlestar Galactica kind of feel to it and keeps surprising me. And damn, some of the darker parts are dark.
Woke up to discover my favourite pancake restaurant BLEW UP in the middle of the night!
Happy Anniversary Nicole! And hope you both enjoy many more!
wait, nicole, i’m sorry, i know this isn’t funny but i am sitting in this completely silent classroom while my students take a GD final exam and this just made me snort aloud.
OMG thank GOD No one was in it. It could have blown up with people in it! It was a ticking time bomb!
The ROOF BLEW OFF
This has happened to a couple of buildings near me! So now I am the crazy person who calls the fire department if I even smell a little bit of gas when I am out and about.
They’re usually really nice about that! They would much rather send the guy out with his fancy wand-thingy to check for a leak than to have something blow up.
I’m currently watching season 1 of Elementary, so I strongly suspect Lisa Edelstein was behind this.
That’s upsetting!!! That is the last thing favorite pancake restaurants should do!
OH NO! Joanne’s is great. Guess you’ll have to settle for waffles at Bruges?
I immediately thought “You mean in the way that it suddenly became really popular, not that it actually exploded in fire and fury, right?” No, it actually blew up. Right.
WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET SOME OF THAT SNOW?
Seriously, I got snowflakes on my manicure yesterday because I’m pretty sure it’s the only snow I’ll see on the East Coast this year.
I LIVE IN AN AREA DOMINATED BY WINTER TOURISM. DOES THE WEATHER NOT GET HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS? JOBS ARE BEING LOST. GET WITH THE PICTURE.
HEAR HEAR
I’m in the Boston area, and this is eerily reminiscent of last year around this time. And to that all I have to say is PLEASE GOD NO – NOT ANOTHER HELL WINTER.
Yeah, it didn’t snow a flake between early November and late January — and then it all happened at once!
I’m glad someone understands me. When I complain about the lack of snow at work everyone glares at me. BUT IT’S NEW ENGLAND AND IT’S DECEMBER AND IT’S ALMOST 60 OUT.
I was complaining last week when it was raining, but then I woke up to snow on Monday and got my car stuck twice. I still want MORE snow, but I think I’ll take the train
“During her birth, the doctor was not immediately available and the nurse ordered Rose Kennedy to keep her legs closed, forcing the baby’s head to stay in the birth canal for two hours.”
WHAT
What the HELL. Just deliver the baby! There’s “trying to hold on for a minute so the baby isn’t born in the hospital car park” and there’s the “crossing your legs for two hours just so a doctor can sign off on stuff”.
This story makes me wonder how humankind even survived the OBs of that era. (My grandmother about died of PP hemorrhage because the doctor who delivered my uncle was drunk as a skunk and didn’t check that the placenta was intact.)
Yea, I stumbled upon the Wikipedia article a couple of weeks back and it left me feeling ill :O
Rosemary’s life was continually punctuated by the worst elements of the era: shitty medical care, HORRIFIC surgical care, ableism, sexism, paranoia around female sexuality, and Joe. Fucking. Kennedy. Senior.
I think about Rosemary about once a week.
Jesus God I really didn’t know anything about her but I’m at the Wikipedia point where they’re lobotomizing her while she’s AWAKE and I’m gonna have to go back to that tab later, when I’m more prepared.
The history of lobotomy is a horrorshow, in general. Many, many people were lobotomized for what would seem like unbelievably trivial reasons to us now.
The male privilege and disrespect for women and children as human beings in that sentence is astounding. *This baby being born now is inconvenient to a man. So you wait.*
Its not even surprising to me.
I’ve heard anecdotes of women in Irish maternity hospitals being scheduled for inductions/c-sections on specific days because the doctor has a prior engagement, like golf. (These anecdotes are from the 50s-70s, but the attitude prevails)
The OB when I was born in the mid-80s tried to get my mother to hurry up so he could make a golf date. Family legend states my mother attempted to rise up and throttle him. (However, the nurse-midwives were lovely.)
I have such rage for these fucking men. Just because they were jealous of women’s ability to CONTINUE THE HUMAN RACE, they felt the need to control and belittle the process to make it as humiliating and traumatizing as possible for women. (If you feel like you need a rage-spolision today, search for symphysiotomy in Ireland. Doctors decided to continue using an outdated procedure to punish women for having children and make it easier to have multiple births and pregnancies. It also crippled them for life, but that obviously doesn’t matter, they’re just baby incubators anyway.)
Any word that ends in -otomy, and is related to obstetrics, is not a word I need to google while having my coffee.
it is horrible. don’t ever google it.
(RAGE*SMASH*HATE*RAAAAAAAAAAGE*FIRE)
I think that not googling it will be my heroic restraint moment of the day, if not the week.
D: D: D:
I googled that. Horrible.
Yep.
That happened.
And most of the women are still alive and suffering. They recently won a rather pathetic reparations deal, that was really just a swindle to get the state of out liability.
Ireland is not a modern country. Don’t listen to the diddly-eye propaganda they put out in order to get your money.
AS LATE AS THE 1980’S?! Just for that… I’m not ever having children. Silent protest.
The last of the Magdalen Laundries closed in the Nineties. The Nineties!?
i’m already child free but evey time i learn about another horrible thing that’s done to pregnant/birthing women, i put a fresh layer of cement over my cervix juuuuust to be sure.
Three cheers for your mother!
When she was birthing me, my mom arrived at the hospital 9.5 centimetres dilated, and pushed for 45 minutes. The doctor STILL gave her an episiotomy because she was “taking too long,” and she had pain for three effing years after. Sorry mom, but not as sorry as that doctor should be.
When my mom was in labour with me, it lasted overnight, so her regular OBGYN was at home and she was being watched by one of the medical students. She woke up at one point and saw that he was injecting something into her IV, so she said “um, what is that.”
“Oh . . . just something to help things along.”
My mother read him the riot act, and he sulked about it (she told him she didn’t want it done unless her OBGYN signed off on it, and he snitted “well she’ll probably agree with me!”) but he did not inject that IV. And when the regular doctor arrived in the morning, she was not impressed to hear what he’d tried to do.
I would say not much has changed since then, there was some report a few years ago about how the induction and c-section was markedly higher right before Easter and Christmas. Also I think Ireland has a really high c-section rate in comparison to the rest of Europe.
What is it with OBs and their precious golf schedules? I know of women in the 70s and 80s who went through the exact same thing. Way to be a cliche of privilege, dude.
Yeah, I feel like, if you’re a doctor, “being late for personal things because I was taking care of a patient” is kind of an occupational hazard you’re supposed to expect going in.
Sadly, this isn’t even something that died out in the 80s. My aunt took a job as the chief Labor, Delivery, and Recovery nurse in Carlsbad, NM in the late 90s and was flat out horrified (not to mention furious) to find out that practically everyone born in Carlsbad for years was born between 9 AM and 5 PM, Monday through Friday. Almost everyone was either induced, c-sectioned, or made to wait until the next day. It only came up because someone went into labor late at night during her shift, and the other on-duty nurses refused to help her deliver the baby because the doctor wasn’t there and had standing orders not to be called in. I think she would have pulled him into the hospital through the receiver if it were technically possible.
I think she ended up dragging them all to the state ethics board after the doctor tried to get her fired.
This is a thing that still happens (idk if for golf) arranging deliveries to be “convenient”
My grandmother actually negotiated with the nurse to have help her deliver (her 3rd) before the doctor arrived. And then had the rumgumption to ask for a discount because doctor didn’t actually attend the birth. And he gave it to her! This was in the 60s in California and now I need to go call my grandmother.
I went and found Rosemary Kennedy’s wikipedia entry and I’m not eve 1/2 way through and I don’t know if I want to cry or scream.
‘Hmm my daughter has suffered live long intellectual disabilities because of an asshole doctor/nurse combo, and now she’s displaying some inconvenient emotions. Better cut her brain out.’ Joe Kennedy Sr, probably.
Ugh THAT WHOLE BOOK. I’m taking a break from reading anything serious because of that book.
THEY DID THIS TO MY GRANDMA WHEN MY UNCLE WAS BORN!!! This same thing! The doctor couldn’t get there fast enough and the baby was coming so the nurses held her legs together. She’s still traumatized by it 60 years later.
YES. This happened to my grandmother with my uncle to profoundly devastating results. Rolled up towels were somehow used to keep the baby in until the doctor arrived. My sweet uncle is now in his mid-50s and is severely mentally handicapped (mentality of a 2-year-old, maximum).
My grandma was having my uncle and a nurse tried to hold her legs closed until the doctor got there. She kicked the nurse. I’m glad she did.
Ugh it’s horrible to hear of the nurses doing that to fellow women, because of this ridiculous ‘Dr-as-God’ mentality. I can’t think of any medical reason to interrupt childbirth when it’s already happening! I don’t know what made-up ‘medical’ reason was given to torture the women and potentially injure the newborns like that. Presumably the real reason was it wasn’t enough for the woman to deliver the baby with the help of other women, there had to be a Man there to make the birth ‘official’. Like a twisted inversion of a doctor calling time of death, except completely unnecessary and often harmful.
I am going to be That Person: the commenter above doesn’t say that the nurse was a woman. I realise that it is highly likely that they were, considering the profession generally and the specific setting, and I think your point about women not counting as much as men when it comes to making things official is an accurate one, but the automatic assumption that “nurse” = “woman” drives me mad.
Oh yeah I agree that assuming nurse=woman is extremely annoying and regularly not true; I only assumed in this case because the poster referred to their grandmother being the one giving birth and it was generally more likely in the mid-20th century that a nurse in an ob-gyn ward would be female (not 100% likely though, of course!) But you’re right, it would’ve been better not to assume, and like you say the general point stands regardless.
My mom labored for 30 hours and then the doctor said, Maybe we should do a c section. My mom bit him!
Savita Halappanavar
Modern, my ass. One of the hallmarks of being a developed nation is lower maternal mortality. They just don’t fucking care.
Beginning no earlier than the date of her hospital admission, October 21, she repeatedly requested an abortion for her miscarrying fetus but was refused, instead being told by Katherine Astbury her obstetrician that as she then appeared physically well, and her fetus had a heartbeat, her life did not appear to be in danger and therefore this was not legal After Ms. Halappanavar engaged in a conversation with her midwife Ann Burke, that in India and Hinduism abortions on request were possible, Ms. Burke commented that “this is a Catholic country” but later said it “had came out the wrong way” and it “had nothing to do with medical care at all”. On the night of October 23, according to her husband Praveen, Ms. Halappanavar was standing in a restroom and collapsed. The following day October 24, the heartbeat of her foetus ceased, and the remains were removed from her uterus in the operating theatre, at approximately the time that the results of her blood samples came back with a diagnosis of septic shock,Savita Halappanavar’s septicemia then further deteriorated despite being treated with oral antibiotics for infection since late October 22 and intravenous antibiotics since October 24.Both were ineffective and her condition rapidly evolved to the point of organ failure and finally cardiac arrest and death on 28 October 2012.
Jane the Virgin thread?
[spoilers through yesterday’s in replies]
Noo Petra’s mom is the worst! The worst! Murdering and making Petra help and then blaming her! But I can’t even be that surprised because she’s always been the worst.
I want them not to let Michael off the hook for being an angry lunatic. Jane…you don’t have to choose one of them. Michael might’ve fixed your Christmas thing but he’s still the guy who pushed your baby’s father while he was holding your baby.
Cute Southern detective lady is totally flustered by Luisa. I want them to be adorable together (and Rose not to murder her).
Do we think they’re setting up the cute professor as a love interest? Because he’s cute, but he’s her professor, not cool!!!
Ugh, Petra’s mom.
I think they might be trying to? If they wait until after she’s done grad school (is she in a masters or a Ph.D program? if it’s a masters it’s only a year or two, right?) it might be interesting, but please no icky advisor/advisee relationship.
That professor is so smarmy! I will be onboard with Jane/Michael if I must to block it!
I’ve been wondering that too, but only because the professor is young and attractive. They haven’t even come close to flirting/crossing any boundaries yet, though, so hopefully not. Jane is still pretty hung up on Michael too.
Not going to lie, I burst into tears (of joy) when Alba got her green card. I was really worried that they were going to drag that out a lot longer.
Alba is the best! I love awesome grandma characters and happy Alba is always a favorite.
Plus Grandpa Mateo is great. He and Rogelio (and maybe the professor? we’ll see) are the only good men on the show. I would watch a spin-off of young Alba and Mateo coming to America.
Poor Petra :(. Also I am happy that they gave a bit more nuance to to Raphael’s action beyond Raphael is jealous of Michael. I really am not on board for her to end up with Michael and I think the show sometimes goes to too great lengths to say “no really, he’s sooo nice and perfect” when his actions are sometimes questionable at best. Also Michael broke Rogelio’s heart which is an unforgivable offense for me.
RIP Brogelios
I had completely forgotten about Sin Rosetro killing Raf’s dad. I was already sympathetic to Raf in that situation because Michael IS a corrupt cop (and he was a dick to Cute Southern Cop Lady when she first showed up) and he SHOULD be fired, but the dad thing is important too.
I love how Rogelio couldn’t resist naming the supposed scholarship funding Jane’s education with an anagram of his own name. Sooo Rogelio.
edit: I think that tumblr link is broken
edit edit: now I see it!
I think I fixed the tumblr link? I dunno I’m still learning how to embed gifs.
For Jane I’m really team no-one-let-her-figure-her-own-stuff-out-first but I’m definitely more sympathetic to Raphael because I see him trying to be a better person for Mateo and Jane and I don’t see that from Michael.
Yes, Team Let-Jane-Be-Single-For-a-While and Team Find-Someone-New have been appealing to me for a while. Then the last Femslash Friday made me squee about the never-going-to-happen Jane/Petra. I am most strongly Team Jane and Team Anyone-But-Michael, though.
I was so excited for someone to FINALLY be on Petra’s side and then it doesn’t even matter, because Magda is so awful.
I kind of think she might get support from Rafael (and even Jane, maybe?) through this though.
Petraaaaaaaa 🙁
I’m not too worried about her in the long term though, I’m guessing the police will quickly figure out that the murder weapon was Magda’s hook, plus Magda’s already served time for attempted murder, and Rafael will probably get Petra a good lawyer. But still 🙁
I WANT YOUR SNOOOOOOOOOOW
I am so excited for Great Comet moving to Broadway! IF you are in the metro Boston area, American Repertory Theater has a production at Cambridge right now, which I saw last week and thought was AMAAAAAAAAAZING. (They did not serve us vodka but they did serve us pierogies.) Much of the off-Broadway cast has come to this production, the actress playing Natasha is luminous, and Brittain Ashford devastated all of us with “Sonya Alone.” If you can get to Cambridge before it closes in January, DO SO. God, it was great.
I have such mixed feelings about Josh Groban. But I listened to “Sonya Alone” several times in a row last night and have all the feelings. Can’t wait to listen to the rest of the off-Broadway cast recording (it’s on Spotify!). So I’m hoping for the best.
God bless you so very, very much. I literally went from hearing about the very existence of this show in this thread, to having seen it (in a really good seat, thank you $25 mid-week matinee!), to obsessively listening to the soundtrack in just a day.
Holy man, that was so good!
Hi New York City Toasties! I am doing research with a group called Ma’yan, based at the JCC of Manhattan, on sexist incidents (and other sexist things) that occur in the New York metro area. If you have the time and are willing to share, we would love if you filled out the survey below. Your sunbmissions will be COMPLETELY anonymous. Thank you! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SY8ZB5F
I needed something sunny like that Vows column today awww
I didn’t love this season of Fargo as much as the first but I’m still excited for future episodes (and to watch the finale because I’m on a non-US delay).
Yeah, I think going in my hopes weren’t “love it as much as Season One” so much as “don’t hate it as much as you hated True Detective Season Two” and on that count it was a rousing success!
For the Toasts who miss Bear: I found him!
(Apologies if this is old news, but I was like squeeee yes.)
I just found him again yesterday and was SO EXCITED.
Hey Mallory you sly dog, I’m going to choose to believe that the fact that my RSS reader truncated your headline to today’s Prudie column as “Help! My wife is wonderful, but she gained 50 pounds and I have no feelings” was intentional.
(this one: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
I have no feelings
::snrrrrrk::
Loved the one-line answer to the person asking if their PTA should shake down a bereaved parent for money.
what is wrong with humans whyyyyyyy
The thing that amazed me was that there were some people in the comments who didn’t see anything wrong with it.
If you read it as a question about, “is asking her more insensitive than intentionally leaving her out?” it’s not so bad. I can see that being an awkward situation, especially if it means skipping over her at a fundraising meeting or something like that that would draw attention to her.
But yeah, if you read it as “we’d like her money, can we ask?” that should be obvious!
Rarely have I been so glad to not be able to read the comments!
I really love reading Dear Prudie where Mallory is very tactful and polite in her answers to TERRIBLE PEOPLE, but long-time fans KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN HER HEAD.
The best thing was the people on Facebook who were outraged because Mallory was too NICE to him!
Having zero knowledge of the events ‘Chappaquiddick.’ I scanned the article to see what it was about, from my 5 seconds of reading I have gathered:
Man does something awful (while drunk) and spends rest of the movie ‘dealing with repercussions’ or ‘learning to be happy again’
Meh. Don’t care. Don’t need to see another movie about it.
(Campaign staffer that gets killed by her boss? mildly more interesting)
Ted Kennedy and the whole Chappaquiddick is one of the few things my conservative parents and I agree on. We hate that man and what he did and the fact that his life was just fine after that.
My mom hates him with an absolute passion. I didn’t know about that incident and she had me look it up when I talked about him once. Nothing he did after was enough to make up for what he (and his family) did then and I really can’t argue with that.
The Kennedys were, in fact, terrible.
Oh man, this has brought back the memory of when Ted Kennedy died and I said something snarky about it and my horrible boyfriend at the time who had to be right about everything got mad and accused me of being brainwashed by my conservative family. Those were wild times…
Yeah, I can see why he’s an ex! Because totally, saying something snarky about a man who did what he did is obvs conservative brainwashing.
So THAT’s why my twitter timeline was full of glorious pictures of Serena Williams yesterday. Hate that there was a reason, but I can’t say I minded the result.
Well, it’s also because she was chosen as sportsperson of the year. And those photos from the issue were amazing.
yeah, this is a great article about her being named sportsperson of the year by SI http://www.si.com/sportsperson/2015/12/14/serena-…
My back deck this morning (yes, that is a baby enclosure completely filled with snow):
I kind of hate you, but in, like, a I don’t know how to deal with my jealousy or complex human emotions kind of way.
You can still hate me, but also the roads are a nightmare and there were wrecks EVERYWHERE yesterday and we are basically snowbound today.
I am probably a horrible person for saying this, but I actually love weather like that, obviously not the wrecks/injury part, but the snowbound, fireplace, hot drinks and blankets and snowfall-hypnosis staring out of the window and ugh, it is just damp and gray and TOO FUCKING WARM here and we should have had five feet of snow already this year instead of ten miserable inches that all melted in two days but happened to fall just when we were trying to get home from our honeymoon, nice timing WEATHER, just give me a day, ONE DAY of huge snows and hunkering down with warm things and cats and husband
That is too long of a run-on sentence, and I am sorry, but I am IN DISTRESS OKAY
^^this! “I like snow and miss it” is one thing, I have had nearly snowless winters and they were mildly sad, but this weather is triggering some “this is deeply wrong and spooky” instinct deep in my brain.
This weather is emotionally and mentally painful for me. I don’t know if this is a real thing, and I am not trying to make light of SAD, since that is a legit winter-time ailment, but I definitely feel like my depression gets worse when it is warm out. So summer is terrible, but this is the time of year when I generally feel my best, and like everything is okay, but now it just seems like I will never be happy again?
Thanks, weather.
there’s a thing about a cold, gloomy, ominous-weathered winter day that kinda gives you permission to indulge in sadness, like “today is gross, lean into those feelings, do stuff tomorrow.” or in the spirit of the holidays, “today is bleak but HERE, LOOK, light and warmth!” the pattern is disrupted!
Ominous winter weather is what gives me my power to get through the rest of the year.
Literally my favorite thing in the world is hygge, and it kind of can’t happen when it’s 60 out. It requires huge snowflakes and warm lights and cider and good company and at least a thirty-degree differential between indoor and outdoor temperatures.
It takes me time to adjust emotionally to changing seasons, but I can generally do it within a few weeks. Except now it keeps veering wildly between September and November, and the trees are bare, and I’m wearing shorts. I can’t adjust this quickly, and my brain doesn’t know how to feel.
Also my sinuses can’t keep up, so I keep getting headaches and a runny nose.
It’s really confusing to have spring weather temps and winter-soltice length days. We do a LOT in our modern society to divorce our bodies from natural rhythms, but there is a part of us that is still in tune with it and I think this weather is just really physically and emotionally confusing.
As an aside, I’m pretty sure SAD can happen any time of the year, not just in winter. It’s entirely possible that your depression is seasonally linked in a less traditional way. I hope your weather sorts itself out soon.
There’s a small percentage that gets reverse SAD, which hits in the hottest summer months.
I just want to say that I am SO GLAD that you all are here to make me feel normal. I have been miserable and confused and angry about the weather since late November, and I feel like a freakshow every time some other Bostonian remarks on how “great” this weather (LACK THEREOF) we’re having is.
This is EXACTLY my life and mental health status right now. I live for winter. I neeeeeed snow or I will cry non-stop between now and…well, next December.
One summer we had so many sunny, cloudless days in a row here that I got up, looked out the window, burst into HUGE sobbing tears, shut all the blinds, and went back to bed until the following morning.
*offers you a kleenex and feelings of commiseration*
*accepts; sniffles*
Maybe we’ll have snow into March. Because I’d much rather be skiing than running.
Ditto. I actually start getting panicky–increased heart rate and respiration,etc–when I think too much about the potential repercussions of this.
Same here. I actually broke down crying on Saturday thanks to the combination of “The season is all WRONG” and “There is absolutely nothing I can do to fix this.”
Come here and we can hold each other in our hour of distress.
I just bought snowshoes. SNOWSHOES. WTF, December?
If I were a farmer, I’m pretty sure I’d be genuinely terrified right now.
Another thing that occurred to me yesterday–around the Great Lakes, this is going to have a massive effect on commercial fishing. Net depths are strictly regulated, and if your depth is now too warm for the fish you’re licensed to catch, coming on the heels of a year when your depth was already too warm…
Back on land: Bats are still awake. Bees are still awake. Frogs are still awake. I had a spider hatch at my house over the weekend and the babies were catching houseflies. Trees are budding. The house next door had grass seed laid in November after having their septic redone and it’s actually growing. My lavender is still green. We’re going to have cold weather eventually, and if nothing’s had the chance to go dormant, we are fucked.
And next summer’s going to be terrible, pest-wise. The weather won’t have a chance to kill all the fleas and ticks and whatnot, and they’re going to be murder next year.
Also, I got a mosquito bite yesterday.
Me too! (Several, actually.) I’m in San Francisco which, admittedly, doesn’t really do “winter” the way most of the world does but it does – or SHOULD – get colder, windier, wetter this time of year. It should not be warm enough for me to get a mosquito in the apartment because I opened the back door for 5 minutes one evening.
Plus if the lakes don’t cool down a ton over the winter the summer algae bloom (mostly in Erie but also other shallow bays) is probably going to hit earlier and last longer which has really bad effects on fishing, tourism, and water treatment.
oh my god the algae blooms are going to be HORRIFYING
Dungeness crab season was put on hold indefinitely because of a toxic algae bloom ;(
Which is also worrying, because in Canada the Department of Fisheries and Oceans won’t test or allow anyone else to test Dungeness crabs for Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning from algal blooms, and limits the areas in which clams can be tested for it.
I’m glad I’m not the only one fretting. 🙁 All my friends look at me like I’m weird – “But it’s so great we’re getting sunshine instead of rain!” No, jerkfaces, we NEED rain so we have enough in the reservoirs for next year. And we need snow further up the province too!
Oh, if I had my kids magically transported elsewhere and could be in front of the fire, I would be WITH YOU.
I will send you fireplace thoughts.
This really forces me to face some hard truths about myself, because obviously that much snow is massively inconvenient and life-threatening to many people, and of course I spent the last two winters complaining endlessly about the constant snow, but there is a voice in my head I cannot silence that won’t stop whining WE CUT DOWN OUR CHRISTMAS TREE IN T-SHIRTS
It’s 70 degrees and sunny in Virginia today.
Last year (and in previous years) we’d be freezing and digging out from either an ice or snow storm.
I’ll be there as soon as I can pack my skis. (ENVY.)
We are ten minutes down from Snowbird and fifteen minutes down from Alta, bring the fattest skis you can find.
AW YEAH.
Man, I am really happy that it’s becoming increasingly okay to talk about depression and mental health issues in public; I a lot of times forget how recent that development is. My parents both (I think) have depression, and growing up they didn’t have the language for it or the will to talk about it at all, and that was…not very long ago.
For whatever else my generation does or doesn’t do, I think we made substantial progress against the stigma of mental illness, and I count that as a huge success.
Agreed. Previous generations thought repressing it made it go away, but it doesn’t, it just displaces it on to others and continues the cycle.
I was in a writing class and talked about how my bipolar disorder affects my writing. Later, a woman, who suffers from depression, came up and thanked me for talking about my bp, as stuff like that made mental illness “seem normal.” I wasn’t sure how to react, because I talk about my bp all the time and really, people don’t know what to say except saying stuff like “I didn’t know about that,” or “I’ve never thought about that” or “why would you write differently because your mood changes?” So I’ve decided that people need help with knowing how to react and how to think about mental illness and its effects. I won’t just *word splat* about my bp anymore, I’ll give people some *possible responses* or something. But, um, I wonder, because I haven’t asked yet, what is helpful when someone tells you that they’re mentally ill? It’s hard to know what to say and I’m not sure, at this point, if I think a response is wrong or bad, because it really is such a confusing topic, as mentally ill people all seem to have a unique version of the illness and it affects people differently. Although, the pulling yourself up by your bootstraps responses are ****unhelpful****, and sometimes the “my daughter is mentally ill, did I do the wrong thing when I did < this > ” is a lot of responsibility.
Yes, please. Lifelong chronic depression. I have the same questions.
I think this is a good point, and I’m not sure what the answer is — for me, personally, there’s nothing that’s specifically helpful. There are a lot of responses that are specifically unhelpful, and my strategy so far has been to browbeat people into never saying them (or, preferably, just never speaking again while in my presence).
Not sure how good a strategy this is, per se.
I have found that it also doesn’t help that TV movies and Hollywood movies seem to nearly explicitly state that if you take your medication, you will be fine. You can work, you can be normal, and this certainly isn’t the case for me. There’s so much disinformation out there that it’s hard to know where to start … .
*nods*
I am lucky in that my meds work for me, and that the first med I tried worked for me– not perfectly, but well enough. And I know how lucky I am, in that my sister-in-law’s experience has been totally different.
I would say that movies don’t handle human variation very well, but I’d probably expand it out to “American culture overall doesn’t handle human variation very well”– with all the (sometimes well-intentioned) resultant exhausting ‘splaining about “Have you tried [obvious first attempt at solution]? It worked wonders for my [person].”
I think you’re right, but I’d expand it a bit farther to “Humans don’t handle human variation very well.” Mental healthcare in the US has its problems (I’m part of a whole family of non-neuro-typical folks), but there are still a lot of places and cultures where it’s just ignored. A good friend of mine, an Indian-American doctor, has suggested to me that my younger brother’s very severe ADHD (thankfully more-or-less under control now after years and years of experimenting with combinations of drugs and therapy) is just a phase, or just him acting out for attention, and that we could fix it by just being stricter with him. It’s hard for neuro-typical people to deal with non-typical people. It’s also hard for non-typical people to deal with people who have different issues – another family member has struggled with depression, I know most of the stuff to not say, I think I have some feel for when people need space and when they need a phone call, but I don’t actually understand that on the bone-deep level that I understand the sensation of trying with all your might to focus on something important and just not being able to do so.
For fellow sufferers, I’m totally cool with chatting about it “ie, oh my anxiety is TOTALLY different, it’s like [whatever it’s like]” and then we commiserate. YMMV, of course, but I like just talking about it like it’s a “normal” health thing like allergies.
For someone who doesn’t really get it/can’t relate to it, something like “that sounds hard. Let me know if there’s ever anything I can do to help” and then just drop it unless they continue the conversation is usually at least neutral, I think?
The older I get the more I’m retroactively horrified at how my parents didn’t deal with their depression. (“I’m just not trying hard enough to be happy!” Mother said. “You need to try too. If you feel like you need to cry, go take a hot shower so no one hears you.”)
Yeah, I think my parents maybe weren’t too bad — for them, the real repression was the generation before. But they also grew up without any useful vocabulary to talk about it, which in a lot of ways seems to me worse? Or just as bad, anyway, because they were so close to being able to address depression, and then just couldn’t do anything without the right words.
Yeah, the lack of vocabulary is, I think, a very real issue. There’s also kind of a culture gap there because my family is Asian and thinks of depression as a “white people thing” and even if we have concepts in our own language for depression and things related to it, we don’t make the connection/translation between that and Depression-in-English.
Yeah, my family is white, but my dad’s family was very working-class, so for them depression was a rich-people thing. My mom’s family was pretty upper-class, though, and for them I guess it was a problem that other people had, not the successful ones.
I guess it’s pretty interesting how easily any different kind of subculture will turn mental illness into some other kind of person’s problem.
My grandfather and his mother both had prolonged depressive spells near the end of their respective lives. They had in common a great love for their work, and a sense of intense meaning and purpose derived from it. Both, too, had communities in which they were loved and revered as a result of their work.
In each of their cases, when they had to withdraw from work / public life– in Grandpa’s case, as a result of ill health, in Great-Grandma’s, as a result of being sent home from the mission field due to war at a time when American middle-class women didn’t work, while her spouse stayed under house arrest on another continent– they lost, simultaneously, their life’s purpose and their support network. (I strongly suspect neither of them would have been open to counseling. As pastors in an era where inadequate joy spoke ill of your spiritual health, that would probably have been too counter-cultural for them.)
Having observed my father’s intense crabbiness (all emotions in him are expressed as anger), and having been diagnosed with (thus far treatable) depression myself, I’m sure there was brain chemistry involved in what they experienced. But whole-hearted immersion in meaningful work seems to have been as essential to their basic equanimity as meds, self-care, and therapy are to mine.
As someone headed into Christian ministry, I am supremely aggravated by the asshole pastors who perpetuate the notion that mental illness will go away with prayer and trusting God more. These aren’t typically the kind of people that would use ‘prayer and trusting God more’ to treat something like appendicitis or a stroke…they’d keep someone on a vent for 20 damn years waiting for a miracle. So why the hell is it OK to treat mental illness like that? SO MUCH RAGE.
I feel the need to share this with the Toast (“On Clue’s 30th anniversary, an ode to the flames on the side of Madeline Kahn’s face”): http://www.vox.com/2015/12/13/9910772/clue-30-yea…
Toasties im having a holiday party / game tournament this wkd and dont really feel like mega elaborate cooking (the last holiday party i roasted a turkey among other things…) What should I feed a crowd of people? I’d love some ideas that can come out of the oven ready to go.
I’d make something in a slow-cooker if you have one. My go to is chili or pulled pork for sandwiches, but it’s the easiest way to feed a lot of people.
This is a great idea that can also be used for lettuce wraps!
Baked potatoes are always a crowd pleaser! Just whack a load on a tray into the oven and put out some butter/coleslaw/tuna etc and maybe a salad?
Seconding the baked potatoes idea! I had a baked potato party a year or so ago, threw a ton of regular and sweet potatoes into the oven, and prepped a bunch of bowls of fun toppings: pesto, goat cheese, butter, sour cream, shredded cheddar, broccoli, bacon, chili. No sweat for me, guests loved it, I could mingle with friends and imbibe at my leisure.
I used to do the food for retreats my mum would go to (good way to keep a bored teenager entertained while the grownups chant in a sweat-lodge), and people would bring lots of salady-things and ingredients and then I’d cook a roast chicken, a load of baked potatoes and sometimes make a big soup; great way to feed loads of people buffet-style
I’m planning a similar thing for New Years, I’m going to marinade a load of chicken legs and do a tray of baked potatoes, then there’s plenty of food with very little prep or presentation!
Yes! And it’s perfect for accommodating a mix of vegans/vegetarians/etc. because people can put their own toppings without having to make special requests or feel singled out.
Kale salad with pumpkin seeds is also a big hearty thing that can be tossed together way in advance.
That’s what I was thinking! Slow cooker dishes (soups, casseroles etc) are great, but either you’re going to have to make two dishes (meat and veggie) or one non-meat dish (and then some asshole will bitch about the lack of meat)
At least with buffet style/make your own you can just lay out the toppings desperately (and put a meat dish on the side) and people can do their thing!
And from the perspective of the guest, it’s so nice to be able to assemble just the amount that I want to eat and in whatever combination. I’m a recovering picky eater, and I always breathe a big sigh of relief when there are lots and lots of options that are still super convenient for the host.
Things in a pan! Dips (especially that seven-layer stuff, mmmm, yeah), maybe some rolls, warm chocolate sauce to put on ice cream.
Things on a pan! Cookies, nachos, seasoned nuts, little sandwiches.
I was definitely going to say seven-layer dip.
Making seven-layer dip in a big glass bowl before a party always makes me feel like the Madmen-era goddess who I wouldn’t want to actually have to be, not for all the valium in the world, but who I enjoy embodying for brief moments. See also, cocktail punches with floating bits of fruit.
A giant pot of soup? (depending on how many people you’re feeding and how big of pot you have) I did this for a cookie baking get together last weekend and it was great because I made the soup way before people came over and just left it on low heat. People could grab a bowl whenever they were hungry and not busy.
My go-tos for a crowd are chili, sloppy joes, or a taco bar. Hope it’s a fun party!
Big pan of baked ziti?
In a similar vein, I was gonna say baked mac and cheese. I make it with roasted chiles in it, so tasty.
Great idea! Easy / cheap / delicious
Make this Bo Ssam (basically a roasted pork shoulder) with delicious fixings and tortillas to make little delectable tacos. It is the BEST. http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12197-momofuku…
If you want something equally centerpiece-y as turkey, how about a ham? They take a long time to cook but that part is fairly hands-off, or you can get a ready-to-serve one. They can be pricey, but are an excellent way to feed a crowd. (Plus, excellent leftovers.)
I am half relieved, half disappointed that we are not the only country who is experiencing controversy when it comes to choosing the best sportspeople. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35031110
Never trust a boxer named Tyson, for he will be a horrible misogynist wreck?
I’m just going to say— the sight of that snow fills me with HORROR and DREAD and I would be very very happy if Boston gets nothing more than flurries for the whole damn season, I don’t even care what that means about climate change, I don’t know that I can do this two years in a row.
Seconded! God, remember this time last year when we were like Hmmm looks like it’s going to be a mild winter. We were so young and naive.
I’m afraid you have picked the wrong town to live in.
I’d argue that I have picked the right town to live in, but that climate change has decided to fuck with the wrong town.
BLIZZARD OF 78 #neverforget
AND EVERYONE WAS SICK OF SNOW IN 79.
BLIZZARD OF 78 aka “the source of my lifelong phobia of getting stuck on the highway in a snowstorm and suffocating to death” THANKS MOM AND DAD.
I don’t need the snow, esp. after last year, but goddamn I just wish it was colder.
I think a lot of my restless/antsy/dissatisfied state of mind right now is because I WANT to be hunkering down against the cold and layering up in my parka/scarf/hat/gloves and braving single digit mornings and hibernating/saving my energy for spring, but the weather won’t let me.
I agree, I don’t really need snow to get in the Christmas spirit or whatever either, but I would really like it to be about 20-25 degrees colder. It suits my mood.
Buffalo sympathizes.
Cape Ann resident here. I am creeped out by the warm weather but I wouldn’t care if it didn’t snow at all this year.
The Kennedy’s are a true American dynasty. That is to say, corrupt, inbred, and excessively privileged.
re: Fudge:
The tin can actually be a tin. It’s the “heatproof bowl” that can’t be metal.
Also, when doing this sort of thing, be very very careful that the bowl is robust enough. I was once part of a microwave-fudge making party where the molten sugar ate through the bottom of a plastic bowl and ended up on the floor and that lava-like sugar formation was on the floor for MONTHS.
OH, you know, I just re-read and you are totally right! EDITING.
Yeah, I live in Massachusetts and have no fucking patience for happy talk about Ted Kennedy (one feminist I know actually *named her cat after him* shortly after he died). Anyone who has ever been to that piddling little bridge knows he had to be blind-drunk to drive off it–and that rescuing his passenger would have been pretty easy (the water’s not very deep).
My late mother-in-law was an Irish-Catholic Democrat and LOOOOOOOOAAAATHEDDDDDDD him, bc, oh, right, MURDERER.
I remember my parents were baffled and enraged by the big Ted Kennedy circle-jerk at the 2008 Democratic Convention. Frequent variations on “are we just celebrating that he killed somebody now???” were heard for days.
The firefighter saying repeatedly that he could have easily saved Mary Jo Kopechne if Kennedy had actually called the police like a human being instead of being a total shitbag…..that she found an air pocket and was probably alive for hours wondering where the fuck the police were. That Kennedy went on to have a respected career and people JOKED about the event and now some so-called feminist director is making a movie about its affect on HIM. I hope Mary Jo is having a glorious afterlife because this is more bullshit than can be handled.
I have very complicated feelings about Ted Kennedy because he (or rather his office) was a really excellent advocate for lots of vulnerable populations in Massachusetts and I know lots of people who’s lives were made better because of his office’s work. Anyone regardless of political influence or party affiliation could call his office with a problem they were having relating to federal or state services and a staff member would look into their situation and get back to them in a timely manner. Few representatives, especially senators really do that (cough Sen. Kerry cough).
So basically I just separate the office of Senator Ted Kennedy, which had the best and most responsive and caring constituent service desk from the man who killed a young woman and never suffered any meaningful consequences for his reprehensible actions that night.
In any case this movie looks like garbage.
I’m with you. Kennedy’s office staff were amazing, and if you lived in Massachusetts and you needed shit done, they were the best people to call. Kennedy’s people helped me get visitor visas for young mathematicians at work, for example.
My daughter was born the month after Kennedy died, and wound up in the NICU for 32 days. On day 30, our insurance company informed us that they wouldn’t cover her anymore, and the NICU nurses, being heroes, plunged in to help us. They told us what to say to the insurance company, and they gave us a list of our state reps to call, but we lived on the border of a precinct, so our reps batted us back and forth. The nurses honest-to-god cried that they could no longer tell us to call Kennedy’s office.
I hear rumors that Elizabeth Warren eventually inherited his staff.
She sort-of did, his staffer who worked with immigration issues is the same person, but most of the regional staff are people who worked on her campaign. I can’t speak to the DC office though, they might all be there.
Yeah, I think that if you want to follow politics closely you need to have a pretty firm mental wall between the personal lives of the ruling class and the things that get accomplished in office. Because someone who has the influence and social position to get elected to major office is also in a position to do a lot of bad crap with no repercussions, and Ted Kennedy sure as hell isn’t the only one who took advantage of that.
Joyce Carol Oates (I KNOW I KNOW, I read this before she had a Twitter) wrote a novella called Black Water based on the events that’s an imagining of Mary Jo Kopechne’s experience. It’s been a while but I don’t remember it being sympathetic to the Kennedy character AT ALL, and it was weirdly compelling.
I grew up in MA and Ted Kennedy was seated across the aisle on my first ever plane trip and my mom got all awed (more to do with any authority/celebrity than this specific one, although yes to everything in this thread about being from Mass and what his office accomplished vs. the man himself). Then I learned about the incident in like 4th grade when my friend’s parents took us to the spot where it happened on a Martha’s Vineyard day trip. It is a weird thing to process as a 9 year old girl. (That friend’s parents were… not awesome.)
Joe Kennedy, Sr was basically Tywin Lannister. Like, if he had a WWTLD? bracelet, that would explain 100% of his decisions.
I think Tywin Lannister has got a WWJKSD bracelet.
He turned up as a character on Boardwalk Empire and the actor playing him made him all charismatic and relatable and I was like OH NO YOU DON’T
Gloria Swanson should have thrown him overboard when she had the chance…
Nicole, I’m sure you’ve said this a billion times, but what is (are?) your favorite Kennedy-based book(s) so that I can fill up my reserve of horrifying Kennedy facts to use at dinner parties / first dates?
I think Sam Taylor-Johnson might need an intervention. Directing 50 Shades of Grey, marrying a child and attaching herself to this Chappaquiddick shitshow are all clearly cries for help.
Wait, wait, Sam Taylor-Johnson is a woman? I was reading the blurb thinking “oh geez, some male director is making a probably-going-to-be-tone-deaf movie about an awful dead guy.” But why on earth would a woman want to make a movie about what Ted Kennedy “had to go through” after murdering a woman?
Possibly for the same reason she wanted to make a movie that romanticizes abusive relationships?
I think she might be tryna make that paper.
Fuck intervention. I just plain do not like her. And a LOT of that has to do with preying on/marrying a fucking CHILD who was HER EMPLOYEE. If anything, her directing this film does not surprise me in the least.
There is a really strange double standard happening with her in this situation. If the roles were reversed and this was a 40-something man who got involved with a teenage girl in a movie he directed people would lose their shit.
I mean, depressingly, they probably wouldn’t. That is to say, some small subset of people would be upset, but most would basically just ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and move on with their days. (I just read that Gaby Dunn storify posted elsewhere here and hey, everything is horrible.)
Yeah, that was my reaction. Switch the genders and it would seem normal. I think it’s creepy either way, but it’s much more surprising when the woman is older.
Having read that Storify, I now feel a little weird about the Josh Groban excitement in the round up (re: Comet of 1812).
When I read interviews with her, the phrase ‘so open-minded your brains will fall out’ comes to mind.
I need to make that fudge now, to hell with work
Is your backyard an entire forest? What if Sansa ends up in Narnia?
I feel like if Sansa wound up in Narnia, she would have a very stern discussion with Fenris Ulf and maybe he would end up being a spy for Aslan?
The article on infections pre-Germ Theory is well timed for me. I just started reading “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President” about the assassination of James Garfield and how he might have been saved if US doctors had believed in sterilization. I’m only a few pages in, but it’s really good so far.
It’s also reminding me why anti-vaxxers are the worst, because two of Garfield’s children died of illnesses we vaccinate against (diphtheria and pertussis).
WAY more terrifying to me is the fact that we’re going back to pre-germ theory world. Well, we’ll understand the theory of germs, but we won’t be able to do a damn thing about it because, oops, all our antibiotics stopped working and we forgot to make more and now we’ll get to die or suffer for years because of a piddling little scratch!
Did we end up talking about the ending of Ancillary Marcy in the open thread? I just finished the book this morning and went looking, but wasn’t able to find it.
Also, Leckie posted a link to this interesting look at the complications of translating the Radch books into other languages. I’m a bit confused about why the Bulgarian translator felt the need to make the professions sound feminine, when (in Bulgaria) the masculine forms are increasingly used for everyone. Even in English, Anaander Mianaai is Lord–not Lady–so I feel like there could have been an argument for making professions and titles masculine, and using feminine pronouns and relationship words (like mother, daughter, etc).
I’m super here for Radch talk! Loved them all in English so I recently started reading the first one in Japanese (the translation just came out).
Where did you buy your Japanese copy?
I have a Japanese Kindle so that I can use their store.
(The workaround I was using before is that you can have both amazon.jp and amazon.com accounts regardless of where you live. For instance, my phone is logged into my amazon.com, and uses the American Kindle store. The Kindle app for PC on my desktop is logged into my Japanese account and uses the Japanese Kindle store. You can use a forwarding address like the free ones you get on tenso.com to register, and pay with an American credit card!)
I loved it. I also choose to read Mercy as an unofficial origin story for Iain M Bank’s Culture series.
So, I kept getting recommendations to read Iain Banks from all the sci-fi I like (like the Imperial Radch series, which I loved), so I read Consider Phlebas and was pretty underwhelmed. Does it get better/different or is that one pretty typical for the Culture series?
It’s been a long time since I read Consider Phlebas, but if I remember correctly it is the most broad of the Culture books, giving you more of an overview of that society. Later novels usually follow a specific person or people on some adventure in or adjacent to the Culture.
I love all the Culture books so it’s hard for me to judge, but you may like some of his later novels more than that one.
Personally I read Player of Games and found it pretty meh. I’ve never really had the drive to read more.
I’ve been thinking about that! Imagining how the AIs will be centuries later, when they’re more independent. And choosing names for themselves.
That’s a really interesting link! I hadn’t really thought about the difficulties of translating the system. I agree that I would think that the Bulgarian translation seems like it should do the same thing as English, using the feminine pronoun and possibly male titles, but maybe there is something specific about the language that would be even more confusing?
Anyway, I loved these books. I finished Ancillary Mercy with such a warm and perfect feeling. Everything I’ve read since has been suffering in comparison, which is sad because I know that they are awesome books (I can tell, logically) but none have been connecting with me emotionally in the same way.
This so much. I’m at such a loss for what to read next.
The ending feels so hopeful! I was worried it would be nihilistic because they’re in the middle of a violently collapsing empire, but they managed to carve out something that would probably work. And all the AIs calling each other cousin–with varying degrees of sincerity–is so wonderful.
I know! I actually put off reading it for a few days after I got it because I was so worried about how Leckie would pull it all together, but I thought that she did it beautifully.
I read Sorcerer to the Crown directly after, and it had many things that I love in books (characters of color! fantasy! alternate world building!) But my reaction was basically… this is not Ancillary Mercy…
Sorcerer to the Crown is great, and super fun (the faerie family squabbles killed me), but yeah, I didn’t have the same connection with the characters.
Have you read The Goblin Emperor? I really liked it, and like the Imperial Radch books there was a lot of politicking to set things right, and characters I really connected with.
The German translator did the same: namely made all professions feminine, even (especially) where there is no actual feminine form (For example, Anaander Mianaai is “die Herrin.”) My German is terrible (I’m reading Ancillary Justice auf Deutsch to practice), and also a non-native speaker I find it works to keep reminding you that the feminine is normative in this universe — it’s cool to pretend for a little while that Leutnant just isn’t a word but Leutnantin is a normal one. But on the other hand, if Leckie had actually used the equivalents in my native language, i.e. “Lieutenantess” and “Lordess” and such, I suspect it would have been hard not to be giggling the whole time. Or maybe it wouldn’t have been, and after a few chapters I wouldn’t have seen anything weird.
That’s a good point, about using the feminine titles to keep reminding you that it’s the default!
This reminds me of something I read about Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin was considering various ways she could have handled gender, like using feminine pronouns but male titles (so she could still say the king was pregnant) or male pronouns but feminine titles–but a pregnant queen is less remarkable, and she felt feminine titles do not carry the same gravitas as male titles. A Lord is important, but a lady is silly. Etc. Challenging those stereotypes is important, though! I don’t know.
Yeah — I mean, I think it’s true that “The Lady of the Radch” would make me think of the Lady of the Lake or the Lady of Shalott, while “Lord” has the association of power (Lord of the Rings, ‘Blessed art thou the Lord our G*d, creator of the universe…’). And I’m not sure that there’s really any likely way for that to be corrected (though it can be challenged) because neither title is really that alive any more (at least for me: I only encounter them as titles or markers of power-havingness in sff or The Past). It’s also the case that “Lady” (and most feminine forms) read as — pardon the expression — ancillary creations to the “normal” male form. Which is what the German translation challenges, but by back-forming “regular” feminine forms from normative male ones rather than using the sort-of equivalent ones that are linguistically marked as not equal.
Oh yes, I see now! Sorry, I didn’t understand at first what you meant about making new feminine forms. That’s a cool way to deal with it.
For me, “lady” currently conjures an older, regal woman with a backbone made of steel. I’m at a loss to explain why. Maybe it’s something I read?
Oh my god Ancillary Mercy. I am totally down for a discussion of it, and/or being pointed in the direction of any toast-discussions that already exist.
There’s so many things about it that I love, but the first thing I can think of right now is how I love how she handles the Presger, making them seem so strange by keeping them offscreen and having the Translators be so weird. (I’d prefer to be more specific but I’m at work and can’t shift from work-brain to literature-discussion brain)
Yes! If there wasn’t a discussion in last week’s open thread, I’ll start one this week. I love how strange the translators were, and how we never got any sort of description of how the Presger look or how their society functions. And it seems like, for all everyone is scared of the Presger infiltrating Radch space, no one ever talks about them being featured in melodramas. I wonder if it’s a purity thing–they’re aliens, and uncivilized, and therefore not fit for polite conversation.
I love the Presger and hunger for more information about them. (All the sub- and annexed and outside-Radch cultures, actually. Especially the Itran Tetrarchy, because She Commands Me and I Obey just wasn’t enough for me.)
I have to admit, though, that every time I read “Rrrrr” I picture them as rebellious, grumpy cats.
I picture the Rrrrr as being kind of cat-weaselly, but yes, grumpy.
I picture them as basically furry octopuses (because I think the first book mentioned that they have long limbs or multiple limbs or something?). But I think of octopuses as sort of like undersea cats, so that works!
Hey! I’ve been working backward through Ann Leckie’s blog hoping to turn up deleted scenes, and I found this!
She Commands Me and I Obey part 1, part 2
I haven’t had a chance to read it yet because I am at work and people keep talking to me (the horror), but it would seem Leckie has granted your wish 😛
oh my god i didn’t see this comment until today and THANK YOU SO MUCH
Oh yes, I loved the Presger translator.
I am here for any Ancillary Mercy discussions! I just finished it Sunday night!
There’s something deeply wrong with the world when I’m more excited about an ID4 sequel than a Star Trek one, let alone one in which Idris Elba plays the villain. But the Trek trailer looks very much like more of the same nuTrek with Chris Pine tooling around on a bike (oldTrek got to their tenth movie before they broke out the dune buggy), and the Enterprise getting trashed, again (my headcanon is that every time the crew goes out on a mission now, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers starts cranking out big piles of spare hull plates).
In the meantime, ID:R goes exactly where it should: They’ve been reverse-engineering the alien tech, just as you thought they would, but the aliens are also coming back, again not too surprising, as they probably don’t want the competition. Nothing in particular against Liam Hemsworth, though, but I wish they’d replaced Will Smith with another actor of color–John Cho (although he’s probably committed to the Trek franchise) or Michael B. Jordan, who probably isn’t going to be in any more Fantastic Four movies, I’m guessing.
I heard a rumor somewhere that one of the characters will be Will Smith’s character’s stepson, so it won’t be a total whitewash but still, yeah, good point.
Yep, Jessie Usher is playing Will Smith’s son.
And I am super fucking pumped for ID4. I like how it’s a true sequel that explores the logical consequences of the events of the first one. Not a reboot, and not a pseudo-sequel-but-actually-wants-to-be-a-reboot. (LOOKING AT YOU, TERMINATOR.)
I’m not sure I’m really looking forward to ID4 because I have so many hopes for this movie that they can’t possibly all happen. Like, I want Will Smith’s son and the President’s daughter to grow up besties and eventually have a romance full of pining that ends in a big house full of dogs. I want Randy Quaid’s children to grow up happy and well-adjusted and get lots of therapy to help them cope with being raised by an alcoholic who was Right About Aliens.
Also I’m very distressed by the fact that since ID4 is twenty years later, 1) Boomer is definitely not coming back and 2) Jeff Goldblum’s dad probably isn’t either.
2) Judd Hirsch is in the trailer 😀
YUP HE SURE IS.
Sorry Judd Hirsch, looks like you won’t be able to enjoy your retirement on a boat due to ALIENS.
Oh my god I didn’t realize it the first time, you’re right! Also wow he is really a perfect casting choice for Jeff Goldblum’s dad because Older Jeff Goldblum does really resemble him.
I thought I didn’t care about this Star Trek but then they showed me Karl Urban and I care a little.
There is that. Karl Urban has done so many different nerd things that he’s like the male Natalie Dormer.
I’m just sad they didn’t get Mae Whitman to play grown-up Mae Whitman.
Wait, what??? How did I not know this?
Sam Taylor-Johnson, what the hell? I used to think you were cool.
Every time I get a UTI, I think about how horrible it must have been to have them in the pre-antibiotic age. And how plenty of women probably felt obliged to have sex while while suffering, because they didn’t have rights over their own bodies. And how painful and exacerbating of the original illness that would be. It actually makes me quite sad (and grateful). I hope at least women back then were able to talk about it and share home remedies with each other.
Preach. That’s why when asked if I’d want to time travel to the past, I always say no: I really don’t want to live in a world without birth control and antibiotics.
What’s the best time to live? Right now. When will be the best time to live tomorrow? Right then. I hit every single box on privilege bingo, but I still would have zero interest in ever visiting the past.
Agree! My typical response is that time travel only sounds like a nice idea to white men who don’t know a lot about science.
For real, I think about this too, I am such a baby when I have a UTI or even a yeast infection, I would not handle it well if I couldn’t get immediate (~1-day) relief.
Me too. The idea of having a UTI for decades is straight-up horrifying, let alone all the compounding factors like lack of bodily autonomy. 🙁
and of course they’re more frequent in women, so you know past-times men didn’t believe they were that bad.
I study historical demography and I think about this a lot. There’s so much we don’t really know very much about, regarding past family life and women’s health – how fertility decisions were made, what the extent of contraceptive and abortifacient knowledge was, how menstruation was managed, what people did to try to keep their babies alive – because it was women’s knowledge and not often written down. I’d kill to be a fly on the wall at a conversation of “gossiping” women from pretty much any time or place.
Seriously. And then how much of that knowledge was considered witchcraft or illegal?
Yeah, it is fun to read Men of the Twentieth Century writing about this stuff. Can’t remember what paper it’s from, but I found it pretty funny to read an otherwise very intelligent man musing “it’s been well established that we have had knowledge of abortion and other types of contraception since ancient times, so it’s a mystery why it seems not to have been used that much [in early modern Europe]. Just spitballing here, but maybe different societies and communities have ‘rediscovered’ it a number of times and then contracepted themselves into extinction and then we never heard about them.” LOL, dude, I can think of about fifteen better explanations, including “the women were totally using it and not telling the men” and “the women weren’t using it because it would get them killed, and ‘maybe killed in childbirth’ is better than ‘definitely killed for witchcraft.'”
I do kind of like to think about our foremothers laughing in the afterlife about how all their precious knowledge, passed down orally, is lost to us now – it seems like the perfect revenge for having to live in a society that doesn’t value you at all.
I’m a sociologist and do history of science and medicine stuff. I find it endlessly hilarious/infuriating whenever I read a mansplanation for the lack of knowledge about [insert woman-centric topic here]. Has someone started a tumblr? It might be therapeutic.
“Maybe women just weren’t interested in–”
NO.
“Maybe women just didn’t do–”
NO.
“We can’t find evidence, so women probably didn’t–”
NO NO NO.
Would read that Tumblr.
a TUMBLR of nothing but men’s sentences being cut off with “NO!”, printed in lovely script over inspirational backgrounds of sunsets and forests and shit. yes, plz.
There should TOTALLY be a tumblr. This isn’t 100% related but I was inspired to dig up the Gary Becker quote that made me throw the book at the wall (Gary Becker was a Nobel-winning economist with stupid sexist theories, for those who don’t know). He’s talking about people’s target number of children and how they might have under- or over-shot that target back in the day when fertility was hard to control, and he just… really manages to compress millennia of female suffering into a kind of insulting aside:
“Husbands with sterile wives have terminated their marriages or have married additional wives in societies permitting polygyny, and some women have had more children than they desired or had them at inopportune times.”
OH REALLY YOU DON’T SAY.
I know I’ve read somewhere that the birth rate drops to replacement in basically any society as soon as birth control becomes easily available. Almost as if this is what women have wanted all along!
I am really depressed at the though of antibiotics failing, specifically because of experience with a chronic UTI.
TMI warning: I got my first UTI when I was 12 and it lasted for ~2 months* because I was 12 and had absolutely no idea what was wrong with me and Could Not Talk to anyone about what was happening Down There** and i remember just being at school in a daze of pain and basically stopping drinking any liquid at all because then I KNEW I didn’t really need to go and could ignore it instead…and I cannot imagine living in that level of agony*** without the hope of relief.
*I can’t remember exactly but I definitely had 2 periods during that time
**No idea why I rule out talking to my mother, my older sister, or even the school nurse. I really wasn’t doing my best thinking
*** because nowadays I get to the ‘blood in the urine’ stage in <2 hours WOOHOO!
I get messed-up hangnails, minor toothaches, and stopped-up ears on pretty much a daily basis, and I rely on a heavy regimen of neosporin, sensodyne toothpaste, eye drops, nasal spray, etc to remain tolerably comfortable. I can’t imagine getting a irritated fingernail, for example, and having to resign myself to the fact that yep, this is my life for the next week at least.
did anybody else watch Adele’s concert on NBC last night? I’m not a huge fan of her music but she seems like such a lovely person.
Oh no, that was last night?!
yes! maybe they’ll show it again? She was radiant.
That woman is so beautiful, I don’t even understand what is happening. Those eyes! That face! “When We Were Young” always makes me cry. Lord, I’m a sap 🙂
In response to the Independence Day: Resurgence trailer, I immediately Googled “independence day 2 will smith?”. No Will Smith! What kind of sequel to Independence Day can this movie possibly be without the greatest sci-fi action-hero of my generation/the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? According to this, M. Night Shyamalan and that movie with his kid are to blame.
…I didn’t realize I felt this strongly about the direction of Will Smith’s career until writing this comment and getting genuinely upset that he wouldn’t be in the Independence Day sequel :/
me too! I love Will Smith! My favorite part of the first movie is when he opens the spaceship and says “Welcome to Earth” and punches the alien out. lol
They apparently wrote two entirely separate versions of the script, one with him and one without him, while they were waiting to hear whether he wanted to be in it. I’m trying to be hopeful about it – maybe without him, they won’t get stuck in the sequel pattern of “Do the same thing, but bigger and louder.” Like Halloween Jack said elsewhere in the comments, it would have been nice if they’d replaced him with another PoC, but…Hollywood.
It’s heartening to hear that at least some of the writing/production team were holding out hope for Will Smith’s return! But I agree with you and Halloween Jack (and champagnewastoblame): they really missed an opportunity to cast an actor of color in the Will Smith-shaped hole in the story. Without actually knowing the character to be portrayed by Hemsworth the Lesser, I remain convinced that Samira Wiley would have been the superior choice.
noooooooooooooooooooo also Liam Hemsworth? Really? I feel like he doesn’t just have zero personality, he has a vortex of negative personality.
Yeah but Jeff Goldblum????
i was delighted to see Judd Hirsch will be in this one, too :).
(ETA: i’m apparetnly SO excited about Jeff thtat i just tried to like your comment for a second time.)
Important Update on my neighborhood’s lone Trump campaign sign:
It’s on the ground now, it fell off their mailbox post,* and I ran right over it in my car this morning
* I just noticed the mailbox post AND mailbox are PINK and there’s a CAT painted on the mailbox!! I was like, Dolores Umbridge, IS THAT YOU
Everyone on my block in DC keeps leaving their bags of dog shit underneath the one across the street from me. The homeowner tried putting up a ‘pick up after your dogs sign’ to no avail.
ahahahahahah PERFECT
well, I mean, you got a bigger sign saying that’s the spot, dude, way to send mixed messages
Dolores Umbridge is TOTALLY the Trump of the Harry Potter universe, except with “half-breed” instead of immigrants/Muslims/anyone who isn’t Donald Trump
SHE TOTALLY IS
I was surprised to see that wretched sign in our neighborhood in a liberal corner of an 80% blue state, but it all makes perfect sense now.
Umbridge would totally vote for Trump. Meanwhile, Ted Riddle, er, Cruz, would be waiting in the shadows.
Someone needs to get on Desth Eaters for Trump signs if they don’t already exist.
Someone wrote a fanfic about Umbridge having a hero-worship crush on Margaret Thatcher. It sounded plausible.
Now we know where Dolores went when she retired. What a shame that her Trump sign “fell” in the street. What a shame
“It’s on the ground now, it fell off their mailbox post,* and I ran right over it in my car this morning”
we <3 u
you’re doing the Lord’s work.
So I’m in two minds about posting this, especially since it isn’t needed in the fudge recipe, but you know you can put metal in the microwave right?
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/wuwt-microwave-metal…
Short version of the rules I personally follow:
Only use steel
Never any kind of foil (it’s too tricky to be safe in my opinion)
Don’t mix your metals (steel bowl with aluminum rivets is a no-no)
Don’t have your metals touch other metals
Make sure it doesn’t touch the sides of the microwave
But yeah, been doing it in commercial and home microwaves for years and it’s really fine.
Mind… LITERALLY BLOWN.
All this time I could be microwaving metals??
Kinda yeah? It’s a bit freaky and rebellious the first few times, makes you feel like a rebel! It’s a great trick because at my last job I was the first person to do that and my boss told me I literally changed his life with that fact and it was totally worth hiring me if this was the kind of stuff I was bringing to the job. (I work in kitchens for the record)
But, um, if you microwave explodes please don’t hate me. I mean, there is the wired article, and my own years and years of experience doing it, and I’m still a bit freaked out that you’re going to have the one microwave that explodes…
I accidentally destroyed a microwave by putting in a travel mug that looked to be all plastic but, after said microwave stopped working, i looked at the underside of the mug and and it said there was metal in it and it shouldn’t go into the microwave.
Since then, I don’t trust myself to combine microwaves and metal : /
TOTALLY understand. A lot has to do with the configuration of the metal according to the article, which is why I have all those rules about touching. If it’s inside the mug, how are you supposed to know what’s going on?
Generally I keep it to heating up things in steel bowls that I have (like melting a large amount of butter or something) but yeah, it’s still freaky.
I often guiltily microwave teabags with staples in them…I feel a little bit better now!
this happened to me, but it was the TEENIEST bit of gold paint on a ceramic mug! luckily I caught it before it did any damage, but I’m microwave paranoid now.
Ah, that was the rule I forgot. Make sure your microwave is from after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Also, you *can* microwave metal but you don’t *have* to! Stick to plastics and crockery, it’s all cool.
Ah, another day, another reason to be glad to work for an employer that is tightly bound by privacy laws. There are locks on our filing cabinets, and it’s very important that we can’t access each others’ units, and no boss on the planet would voluntarily fill out the seventeen levels of paperwork to do that sort of thing rather than just wait for the employee to be in the office.
50 Shades was free on demand and I had two hours to kill on Saturday night before SNL, so husband and I figured what the hell, how bad could it be. I just – so bad! So much worse than I could have imagined! The acting was crap, the story was godawful boring, the sex scenes were few and not sexy! This is what people have been obsessing over? I don’t get it you guys.
in my (admittedly limited) experience, the people I know who really loved 50 Shades tended to be the same people who think Jesus prefers them to be repressed and uncomfortable, so. idk.
Even in a largely secular/”technically Christian” British population, it was seen as the acceptable face of kinky oddness. Mad money in being a release valve, perhaps.
I tried to read the first book a month or so back and only made it through 25.3 shades before erasing it from the Kindle and reading kids’ books instead. Whulgh, it was not good.
well I just shot lemonade through my nose, THANKS
(a+ good comment you have made here)
A friend of mine that likes to up on cultural trends read Twilight and 50 Shades. He showed me the incredibly clunky writing of 50 Shades. It’s like a school report of What I Did On My Holidays.
A horse is not a person.
Also, SERENA. I’m not entirely sure she’s human either, or the harbinger of a future and far superior species.
About that fudge, I want to make it but I only understand American. I am also feeling lazy and stupid today in regard to googling and math. Vanilla bean paste? Caster sugar? Grams! Should I just drink instead?
I’m an ignorant Australian and I have no idea what crazy British invention “vanilla bean paste” is, but caster sugar is superfine sugar and an ounce is about 30 grams, if that helps.
None of this is to say you shouldn’t drink anyway.
Vanilla bean paste is available in Woolworths/Safeway (and probably Coles, but I don’t shop there) – it’s like the tiny black spot parts of the vanilla bean. Basically vanilla bean for people who can’t be bothered cutting open the pod. Comes in little jars about the size of that Clinique eye gel.
Maybe not for today if you are feeling lazy, but I highly recommend getting a digital scale. Makes working with grams really easy (plus make recipes more reliable).
Caster sugar is just super fine sugar. Throw some granulated sugar into your food processor and grind it down a little bit (though tbh granulated sugar miiiight work as is, I haven’t looked at the recipe).
As for vanilla bean paste, this page has a conversion to vanilla extract: http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-van…
But honestly just drinking instead sounds pretty good and way better than what I’m doing right now.
Caster sugar is very fine sugar, somewhere between regular granulated and powdered sugar. I think we call it superfine in the States? The golden bit means it’s not as finely processed as white sugar, gives a bit of a caramely taste to things, but it’s not going to be the end of the world if you use white superfine. You’re not going to be able to sub in regular sugar though because i’m betting it won’t melt properly in this recipe.
Vanilla bean paste is like vanilla extract, more concentrated, and with the little seeds in it. I think you could find it in the fancier supermarkets, but if you can’t, maybe go wild and add 2 tsp. of vanilla extract! (or scrape out one vanilla bean!)
The butter works out to one stick and 2 tablespoons
The sugar works out to slightly more than 1 and 3/4 cups
The can of condensed milk is about 14 ounces.
It’s the time of year where I spend a lot of time translating these things anyway.
I have a note on my fridge for common weights because of this, like how much 1 cup of sugar weights, 1 cup of nut butter, 1 tablespoon of butter, that kind of thing, plus how much my mixing bowls weigh so that I can weigh dough to measure out precise cookie sizes.
This is wonderful! Thank you all so much. I knew I could say anything here without fear of judgment.
I am making fudge tonight!! 🙂
Shameless self-promotion of boozy custard desserts on my blog: http://eatbiscuitdrinkflip.tumblr.com/post/135166…
Also: caster sugar is “superfine” sugar. This is vanilla bean paste: http://www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-114421/Pure… Google will convert any measurements.
Or, do like me, and just buy some munchies and watch Great British Bake Off.
Drink and have someone else make the fudge for you! Win/win!
SAME i was SO LOST the recipse is basically european sugar and magic
It’s like vanilla extract that has an added thickener, and with little flecks of vanilla bean in it. I got a huge bottle on Amazon but I’m sure fancy-ass cooking stores have it and maybe someplace like Whole Foods?
If you have a kitchen scale grams are no problem and you can be confident that your measurements will be accurate, and feel superior to someone like me who knows better but haphazardly measures stuff anyway, with no regard for things like dry measuring cups etc.
I think vanilla bean paste is the stuff I bought under the name “vanilla caviar” which is basically ground up vanilla beans and makes the best whipped cream. If you ever see it, get it! It’s great.
Serena Williams has been one of, and often the best tennis player for, what, a decade, decade and a half?. Get back to me when American Pharaoh wins the triple crown next year.
I recognize your snark. But my pedantic side needs to point out that horses can only try for the Triple Crown once. When they’re 3 years old.
I’ll see myself out.
Also it turns out the dog I live with is terrible at fetch in the snow. Like the second the ball goes out of sight in the snow he completely loses the trail.
Sounds like that dog…
*puts on sunglasses*
…can’t make fetch happen.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I DID NOT KNOW about Chappaquiddick and I am not reading ALL OF THAT ARTICLE and there are not ENOUGH ALL CAPS for how angry this makes me?!?!??!
I knew about it, and knew it was terrible, but this line from the Wikipedia article about it filled me with complete horror and rage: After Kennedy’s death, Ed Klein, an editor for New York Times Magazine and an author of several books about the Kennedy family, stated that Kennedy asked people he met, “Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” What a monster.
So… is anyone else still watching Last Man on Earth? If so, can we discuss how depressing this fucking show is?
I haven’t caught the very most recent episode, but I agree that when it is not just absolutely ridiculous it is totally depressing.
I quit a handful of episodes in, because while I loooooove Kristen Schaal, Will Forte’s character is such.an.ass.
Is this what you mean by depressing? 😉
We did the same thing for the same reason, but decided to get caught up again recently because we heard the show had turned into more of an ensemble rather than a bunch of one-dimensional characters reacting to that one horrible character. But it turns out it’s a DEPRESSING ensemble of totally unprepared and delusional jerks and and… ugh. I wish Kristen Schaal and Mary Steenburgen were on a better show.
I’m a couple of episodes behind. I liked it at first and then just absolutely lost interest. On one hand, I truly appreciate a post-apocalyptic show that isn’t all about how everyone starts murdering everyone else a la The Walking Dead. On the other hand, it’s still just a white male fantasy full of truly shitty human beings.
Wow, I didn’t realize I had such deep thoughts on this.
I feel like there’s a conceptual connection to “Always Sunny”? Like, you have to enjoy watching characters who are designed to be unlikeable.
I watch it and cringe. I love? that absolutely everyone is so very damaged by surviving and how their coping mechanisms are failing them. I also like that they were not transformed into Amazing Homesteaders- that seems a lot more likely. But I cringe.
The tween boys I live with LOVE IT and are also getting a crash course in how not to be Tandy. We end up having discussions about ethical behaviour.
One of the first things my dad taught me as a kid was what a terrible person Ted Kennedy was. (Seriously, I remember it. I asked him a question about something in the newspaper and oh, boy.) But my dad is an ultra conservative/libertarian. So as I later read and heard white East Coast liberals who write and podcast for NYC/DC based pubs, I thought, “am I wrong?” “Should I care about JFK and Jackie even if he cheated on her all the time?” Etc.
God bless you, Nicole (and Mallory for sharing your text on Twitter last night). I can still, as a good liberal feminist, go back to hating the Kennedys. It feels good…
It’s pretttttty far down on the list of reasons not to like the Kennedys, but Ted knocked me over one time on Capitol Hill — like, my ass was literally on the sidewalk — and he didn’t even slow down, let alone say “sorry”
but what do you expect from a Kennedy
WHAT
I assume he had somewhere important to be, but come on!
(I do realize how silly it is to talk about my butt when he literally killed a person)
Yeah but on the other hand you’d think maybe he’d have learned some kind of lesson about not ditching women
UGH. But please tell us what you were doing on Capitol Hill!
I went to school in Baltimore and then lived outside of DC, and then I actually moved BACK here after 6 years in North Carolina, so I am in the city a lot. That particular day was years ago and I have no idea what I was doing! I used to go to a lot of hearings/briefings on foster care/child welfare reform.
Oh, okay! It’s funny because I always mentally envision you and your family still in Oregon, but that is not at all accurate.
Also, I must note that, as I follow your IntenseDebate profile, the comment “I do realize how silly it is to talk about my butt when he literally killed a person” is more entertaining out of context.
I didn’t even know you could follow someone’s IntenseDebate profile! I have a very poor grasp of IntenseDebate for someone who, ah, works here.
Lol, that amuses me. FYI, the “follow” button is the first thing you see if you roll your mouse over someone’s profile pic.
Me, too! I barely understood politics before it was explained to me that the man was a murderer.
definitely had cognitive dissonance about him, like genuinely not being sure people were talking about the same guy.
One of my friends loves Jackie and was talking earlier this year about how she just wanted her JFK to come along, isn’t that just the dream? And I was like NO that is the NIGHTMARE.
Granted, I come from a big Irish Catholic family that goes to Cape Cod every summer so we are ACE at Kennedy cognitive dissonance, but still. Marriage to JFK is not the dream.
WHAT
ON
EARTH
Propaganda’s a hell of a drug. My parents loved JFK and Bobby, and it’s not like they or the educational system was going to go out of their way to emphasize that they both sucked in various ways.
Also — can’t wait to read the article on Hanzee but I still have two episodes of Fargo left to watch so I’m going to wait, just in case there are spoilers or even slightly clue-me-in type stuff. We have been discussing him constantly throughout this season.
Hey, usually I find nothing to criticize about the Toast, which I love, but I’m not sure if Josh Groban-related news really jives with the site. The guy is an emotional abuser, which my very, very good friend publicized post-relationship with Groban.
(Here is the Storify link: https://storify.com/amandataylor88/don-t-fall-for… Groban basically uses the Internet and his position to lure women.
Ugh, that sucks. I had not heard that, and also was sharing for Natasha and Pierre news.
Totally understandable!
Yes, I feel sooo conflicted about him being cast. So many people (ok, LMM, among others) seem to like him and I am sure this is how they will sell tickets and make more money. But ever since I learned that, I just can’t… Ugh. But I’m always so happy for good and interesting shows…
And Fred Armisen too. I adore Pop Culture Happy Hour and he was part of their live show and they said he was delightful, but this is all I can think of now…
uuuuuggggggh. I cannot access the link at work, but your tldr is certainly enough for me at the moment, and uuuuugggggh because he’s unexpectedly funny enough on comedy shows that i liked him, and i don’t LIKE it when the world is nuanced and people who have done gross things also have redeeming qualities. uuuuugh. being a grownup sucks.
Hang on, the Chappaquiddick link says that the script was “just named to the 2015 Blacklist.” Does this mean that even Hollywood wants nothing to do with that garbage?
Oh wow, it’s winter where you are! I’d forgotten what it looked like.
Anyone who is perfectly fine with not having any snow and remembers only all too well how unpleasant, dangerous, and frustrating it is to constantly have to deal with feet and feet of snow, come commiserate crankily with me here. BRING ON THE GLOBAL WARMING (pending the safety of people on islands and coastal areas, the safety of endangered species, and the security of the global food production system)!
Don’t worry, upthread we’ve decided that we just have to sacrifice Christopher Kimball and we’ll be in the clear.
The Nichole and Deborah story was really touching. I’m so glad they both got the help they need and can finally talk about their shared depression experiences. Makes me wish I could do the same with a relative of mine
Fun fact at the Conspiracy Museum in Dealey Plaza there used to be walls dedicated to the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK and EMK. And if you were like, wait, what? they would explain that he was POLITICALLY assassinated at Chappaquiddick. There’s a conspiracy theory for everyone.
ARGHHHH
Nicole have you read Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates? I haven’t read it in years but it’s a novella from Mary Jo Kopechne’s POV. I can’t say it’s…enjoyable? but certainly interesting, if you are into JCO’s style at all- I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
Well, remember that this is not long after the second of his older brothers was assassinated. Plus, even though it was a few years before Watergate, Nixon had already gotten a reputation for being a dirty campaigner. (P.S. Just To Be Clear™: This is not to defend Ted–just an observation that, at the time, the myth of Camelot was still very much in play, and people didn’t talk about JFK’s womanizing or point out that the “idealistic” Bobby had been Joe McCarthy’s aide.)
Wow, I really loved the Nichole Perkins piece. So refreshing to see a daughter and mother talking openly about those issues. It is a goal of mine to be able to talk to my mom about certain traumas and mental health issues we’ve both experienced, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
“There were a lot of our ancestors who picked up something like a UTI when they were fifteen and had it right up until they died in their fifties, the itching, the burning, the pain, the infertility, the difficulty peeing… Never got better but it never killed them either.”
aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Dear God.
Do you think eventually you’d just….get used to it? I say this as someone who’s had one UTI as an adult. I almost passed out in the shower and had to take the day off work and the meds kicked in in 4 hours and I have peed and taken cranberry EVERY time after sex since then (5 years ago) because it was so awful. But like…..after forty years, maybe you’d adjust to a new normal?
Couldn’t wait until Friday to share this ridiculous dog and cat snuggling action:
You made the right choice. (to post the photo, but also to have that dog and that cat in your life)
I really needed this today. Thank you.
Happy beasts!
I am still SO ANGRY about what happened to Sonya in War and Peace.
Ok, is War and Peace worth reading? I like Anna Karenina okay, but I’m really more of a Dostoyevsky/Solzhenitsyn person so I’ve never attempted War and Peace? But I feel like I should?
If you didn’t love Anna Karenina, you might not love War and Peace, which (in my opinion) is a bit drier, particularly because it focuses so much on historical fact and philosophical issues. But I do think it’s worth reading. I’d recommend the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation; it’s much more readable than other ones I tried.
My husband’s job is making noises about wanting us to move again. The last time was two years ago when we were almost relocated to Japan. This time, they’re talking about Connecticut. Since his job would be a work-from-home type of gig (but still requiring a move because he would be visiting customers in that area), we are free to move anywhere we would like in Connecticut.
I’m completely scratching my head over this one. Clearly, I can search for a job anywhere in the state and we can move near where I work, but how do I decide where I want to live in a state where I’ve never lived? I hear New Haven and Hartford are terrible, but who can afford to live in Greenwich? Are there small, charming, affordable Connecticut towns where my child could continue to take Japanese lessons (which is not a must-have, but a nice-to-have)? How would I even find such a thing?
My husband grew up in West Hartford, fwiw, and while I think living there has warped his entire family’s perception of wealth and privilege in some pretty major ways, it’s not Darien. And it was, as he always says, a fine place to grow up/be from.
I think I saw West Hartford on some list of great places to live in CT. I just never know how to read those things.
I’ve heard great things about New Haven, well, at least more positive things than negative things. It’s also a university town, which I count as a major plus as far as access to interesting things like lectures and museums and probably also Japanese lessons. I’ve never been anywhere else in Connecticut though, so I won’t be much help with comparisons.
I lived in the woods on the border of MA-CT-RI and it was beautiful. Only 90 minutes from Boston, but I had dark, starry skies. Small-town-type post office where every letter carrier knew the name of my spouse after hearing mine, without being told. (We do not share a name.) Equidistant from Boston and Providence airports. (I love TF Green.) Lousy public schools, though, with good private schools.
If you want trees and small town New England culture, aim for the northeast corner of CT.
I’m from CT and I have some questions! What do you consider affordable? What do you consider “terrible”? I lived in New Haven and in many ways it’s wonderful–great cultural events, great food, great parks. If you want your child to keep taking Japanese that might be the place. On the other hand, it has a lot of problems and is very segregated and very… Yale at times. But I get defensive when people say it’s a shitty place to live 🙂
Hamden is a close-by suburb of New Haven. And Guilford, Clinton, etc. along the shoreline are so cute but maybe expensive? And close to New Haven for the cultural attractions.
I’m from a suburb of Hartford. There’s lots of them, it just depends what you’d call affordable. CT has a notoriously high cost of living, but salaries are usually higher as well. Plus, in many places the public schools are really good.
West Hartford is a nice place. So is Simsbury. My brother lives in Southington and likes it.
Eastern CT is beautiful and small- towny and probably a bit more affordable, but you might not get the Japanese lessons and commutes might be longer. Same goes for the more rural Western part of the state- Litchfield County is gorgeous. The central I-91 corridor and the coastal area near New York are more populated and it might be easier to find a job, but if you venture away from those areas you get more of the “charming.”
Let me know if you have any questions about particular places 🙂
I don’t really need charming. I mean, Stars Hollow sounds like an exhausting place to live, right? Cute, but exhausting.
The general sense I get about New Haven is that it’s great if you are affiliated with Yale, but not so great as a non-Yalie with brown skin. I find that somewhat problematic, as a brown-skin-having person.
Totally problematic, and often even for Yalies with brown skin, unfortunately. I do think that it has strong points though, even outside of the Yale bubble.
Stars Hollow, love it as I may, would be COMPLETELY exhausting, I don’t need Miss Patti and Taylor in my business all the time. It’s loosely based on Washington Depot, which I’ve never been to.
Brown skinned person who has lived in New Haven! Partner and I had a great time! I mean, he was Yale affiliated, but I was not! And there were the best coffee shops in all of America, AND the greatest wine shops in America (owned by brown people!), and great pizza, and a farmers market near a nice park with gorgeous old growth trees that also sold fresh oysters from the dock. Also, the neighborhood where we were living, East Rock, has very affordable pre-war homes that are HUGE with bay windows and fireplaces and charm galore. Plus the train into NYC is about 2 hrs tops when you want to get your Big City fix or see Hamilton. Obviously, historical segregation / red lining is a problem for generations of brown families who have lived there but I’m not informed enough to speak on that directly.
Ooh what was your wine shop? Mine was the Wine Thief but I’m not sure who owned it. What I *do* know is that when we were doing beer-battered fish they totally gave us a free bottle of porter.
SUCH good food and parks.
Westville is also nice and less Grad Student Central, but I loved East Rock.
Sorry I’m super late on this (i tried to answer on my phone and i couldnt log in etc.). I was referring to Odd Bins, but Wine Thief was also lovely and adorable. Most consistently excellent wine + coffee shop experience + pizza + BREAKFAST (well, I’m mainly just talking about the Pantry…) in America
I have family in Mystic, CT and it is really nice!
Yes! Mr Rose and I used to ride the motorcycle to Mystic on weekends. One of our favorite destinations in our New England era.
omg is that the same town as the movie?!
all this (righteous and deserved) Ted Kennedy hate makes me nostalgic for my high school Latin class. Bringing up the Kennedys was the most effective way to make sure we got absolutely no work done. I could’ve memorized my teacher’s rant about it: Ted Kennedy is a murderer and a drunkard and that poor woman and they’re all evil etc., etc…. I didn’t understand just how right she was, at the time.
Toasties, Spencer Hall of SBNation and Every Day Should Be Saturday (sportsball sites) posted a roundup of his writing this year. I think he’s a fantastic writer, and you should check it out. Of particular interest to people here: Reviewing the terrifying dogs in Westminster’s ‘Working Group’. A small sample:
TIBETAN MASTIFF
The Lhasa Car Alarm! You’re supposed to throw a fistful of gravel in the face of one of these if they come after you during a trip to Tibet. A friend did this as instructed, and the dog ran through it like so much buckshot off the hide of a tank. He had to camp out on top of a car for ten minutes until someone came and got the dog. I assume that person was either the mayor, or the mayor’s assistant in a scenario where the dog was mayor. (The dog was undoubtedly the mayor.)
Thank you, thank you for this link. I want to hug them all.
I never realized I wanted a boerboel until I saw them there, and now I know it’s the dog I’ve always wanted. (But also I’m kinda militant about only getting shelter mutts – no judgment, Nicole, it’s just how my family has always done it – so I will probably never have one.)
This might not meet your requirements, but there are boerboel rescues. Some of the dogs there are mixed breed, including boerboel of course. I understand, though, preferring a mutt from a shelter.
Oh, NO OFFENSE TAKEN, a shelter-mutts-only policy is very laudable!
My aunt just got a boerboel and he is 50 pounds of pure wrinkle. And of COURSE I can’t find any pictures on her Facebook right now.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/15/wh…
Late to the party, but heres a really interesting Guardian article about Menopause research and care! It seems that sexism and dismissal about symptoms follows women through out their lives!
Nicole, according to Google you have either named your dog after a lovely person in Game of Thrones or the MP3 player I should have purchased instead of the one I ultimately settled on, but that name always and forever reminds me of SansaBelt slacks. So, maybe some tiny pants for those long long legs?
My boss just came out of his office to ask if we were concerned that there might be riots in LA today if the Freddy Gray jury has a verdict since the schools are closed. Apparently he thinks its a big risk since all the (black) kids are out of school and LA has a history of riots. I’m not sure if he wants the jury to wait or the kids to go back to school even with a bomb threat. And he’s better than the last boss I had here.
Just found out that I have the same birthday as monster Joe Kennedy and I’m SO UPSET :(((((((((((((((
You are a gift to the world. We now have a reason to celebrate that day. Because of your birth. Thank you. And thanks to your mom.
If it makes you feel better, the Dali Lama and George W Bush share a birthday
I share that birthday too. It’s so odd, it sounds like a rebuff of astrology right there. Another person with the same birthday? Sylvester Stallone.
As do I! Birthday twins!
“Heat the mixture in the microwave on High for 10 mins, stirring every 2-3 mins.”
See, this right here moves it into the category of “not actually any easier than doing this on the stove, and possibly more annoying.”
Aha, yes, between that and measuring in grams and finding vanilla bean paste…
I am in the UK and I have never seen vanilla bean paste.
1) Sam Taylor-Johnson is a creepy predator
2) Your backyard is a wintry wonderland and I’m stuck in Florida and it’ll be 70 degrees on Christmas and it’s terrible and if I could apparate into your snowy backyard I would, in a totally non-creepy way
Ted Kennedy anecdote time! My dad used to tend bar (and occasionally double as a bouncer) in Aspen sometime in…the 70s, I think? Probably late 70s. Anyway, the Kennedys frequented Aspen quite a bit and one time my dad caught Ted pawing women in the corner by the pinball machines.
I’ve rejected a lot of my dad’s conservative views but Fuck That Gross Asshole Ted Kennedy will go with me to the grave.
My dad still does an impression of 70s (and 80s) Teddy K drinking at bars on the Cape absolutely blitzed and slurring out “whoooo wants to buy a driiink for the Senatorrrrr”. What a goddamn asshole.
This is pretty incredible:
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/this-is-an-…
Happy Anniversary, Nicole & Husband!
I got published on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (they do not pay, fyi!): http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/no-good-bagels…
Please like it, give it all your likes! 🙂
I cmd-F’d “Iowa” and it’s sadly true.
yup, all too true i’m afraid.
I thought I could handle the infection link, and 2/3rds of the way through I realized that I was getting lightheaded.
Independence Day 2 surprises me because it’s a fair while since the “original”. I watched most of the trailer, and think it could be …maybe OK?
One thing I wonder is whether it’s going to show “We used alien technology to build an anti-alien radar net and space fighter fleet and nothing else .” I hope there’s weird futuristic medicine and cars running on something glowing. They don’t have to explain it (we don’t go about explaining smartphones to each other), it would just show that the alien invasion has had an effect on the world.
The interview with Zahn is so interesting! I was actually watching a webseries called Baywatching like a week ago (it’s a woman reviewing/taking the piss out of every. single. episode of Baywatch. It’s truly glorious), and he guest starred as the most stereotypical Native character I have ever seen (he nuzzles a deer. And has eagle magic. I think?) so I really liked reading about him & his role in Fargo (which I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. Soon!)
I didn't even know you could follow someone's IntenseDebate profile! I have a very poor grasp of IntenseDebate for someone who, ah, works here.
If you didn't love Anna Karenina, you might not love War and Peace, which (in my opinion) is a bit drier, particularly because it focuses so much on historical fact and philosophical issues. But I do think it's worth reading. I'd recommend the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation; it's much more readable than other ones I tried.
Hey! I've been working backward through Ann Leckie's blog hoping to turn up deleted scenes, and I found this!
She Commands Me and I Obey part 1, part 2
I haven't had a chance to read it yet because I am at work and people keep talking to me (the horror), but it would seem Leckie has granted your wish 😛