Look how long her legs are getting! You would never know that she stole, ate, and puked up soap yesterday.
Jackie Fuchs on what it was like to be the real person at the heart of the Runaways rape scandal earlier this year:
I woke up in a parallel universe. My Wikipedia entry had become the most viral page on the Internet. The number of other outlets reporting on the story multiplied at a rate that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around —The Washington Post, The Guardian, Rockol Italy, Rolling Stone Brasil, Rolling Stone México. Television shows started calling my unlisted home number requesting interviews. Since my wardrobe consists almost exclusively of jeans and long-sleeved black T-shirts, I had to borrow clothes from my sister. We used to be the same size, but after five months of stress, her blouses swam on me. I did one interview with a paper clamp on my back to hold in the excess fabric.
Ijeoma Oluo on her beautiful atheist family at Christmas:
I’m raising my sons in our family religion of Don’t Be an Asshole, and I’m counting on them figuring out the rest. I wasn’t expecting my youngest to have declared himself an atheist at 6, but Marcus isn’t your typical kid. For his 8th birthday, for example, he requested a suit and tie.
So as the holidays approached, I found myself trying to think of ways to avoid an even bigger scandal than the tooth-fairy debacle. How do you tell your kid that he’s not allowed to tell other kids at school the truth? That their holiday and their God is a work of fiction? This was Marcus’s truth, I hadn’t talked him into it, and I wasn’t going to talk him out of it.
After Marcus asked why we celebrate Christmas if Santa isn’t real, his older brother Malcolm replied, “It’s Christ’s birthday.” My 8-year-old literally rolled his eyes. There was no letter in his backpack that was going to make him cry with fear and shame, and if one ever showed up, he’d likely laugh at it. Instead of having to console my son from the rejection of his Christian classmates, or reassure him that he’s not going to hell while he clutches a letter announcing his doom (as my mom had to do for me), I have to get creative to keep my son from leaving notes in his classmates’ backpacks stating “God is dead.”
I am so excited for unREAL season two that I can barely breathe.
this is an excellent Facebook post
Sarah Seltzer on the great male Mary Sues of film history:
After Bane breaks his back in The Dark Knight Rises, Batman gets healed up by amateur criminal doctors in a prison and never has to go to a chiropractor, not once, not even for the occasional therapeutic massage. And he’s not doing yoga, either, let us note. I call bullshit, as does this spine surgeon who was interviewed by a fan site. Epic Mary Sue moment, there.
On a death caused by an illegal abortion in 1955, and what it means today:
Smith’s death and the literal absence of her body enabled commentators to inscribe their own sexual scripts about women, sexuality, and reproduction upon her. Daniel’s defense lawyer characterized his client as “the victim of a girl who pretended to her family and friends that she was a little angel when she was in fact just a girl who like to enjoy so-called free love.” The prosecutor and the media turned Smith into an innocent daughter in need of protection from predators like Daniel. To do so, they used ethnic signposts to contrast “Jackie, the pretty blonde daughter” with “dark Thomas G. Daniel,” “Greek born”; the Puerto Rican nurse Pijuan; and the “Mexican doctor” Mireles. This racial and gendered narrative sought to rehabilitate Smith’s reputation and to convey that she was a good girl who did not deserve her fate,a small-town naïf seduced by the big city. “She actually was a lamb,” stated one co-worker to reporters, “and New York is not the right place for lambs.” Another told reporters, “Jackie was well-equipped in every way, except to cope with the advances of a predatory male.”
Nostalgic about Shy Ronnie:
I learned a whole lot about reindeer herding today:
Kiryak, his wife, Lyuba, and their two sons grew up in a long tradition of reindeer husbandry established by their people, the Evens, a 20,000-strong indigenous group in Siberia. The Evens are one of the smallest of 20 indigenous communities — including Scandinavia’s Sami and Canada’s Inuit — that base their economies on reindeer. Native herders across nine nations slaughter up to 120,000 animals each year to satisfy luxury tastes. Evens’ reindeer meat goes to connoisseurs in western Russia; the venison, harvested from animals that graze across Kamchatka’s pristine earth, sells for nearly $10 a pound. Deer antlers go to China, where they’re sliced or powdered for medicinal purposes.
What a great time to re-up Jane Marie’s classic 1950s Glamour tutorial, for all your holiday party needs!
7 Ways Hillary Clinton Is Just Like My Abuela
Hazlitt’s Year In Innovative Black Women
(gets up, makes a cup of tea, settles in to read):
After the revolution, the Shanghai shuttered. Many of the performers fled the country. Superman disappeared, like a ghost. No one knew his real name. There were no known photos of him. A man who was once famous well beyond Cuba’s shores—who was later fictionalized in The Godfather Part IIand Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana—was largely forgotten, a footnote in a sordid history.
In the difficult years that followed, people didn’t talk about those times, as if they never happened at all. “You didn’t want to make problems with the government,” the mayor’s son said. “People were afraid. People didn’t want to look back. Afterward, it was an entirely new story. It was like everything didn’t exist before. It was like Year Zero.”
And into that void, the story of Superman disappeared.
I am having a busy time right now (we’re going through the diagnostic stuff with one of my kids, who is perfect and hilarious and affectionate and neuroatypical, and it is an ocean of appointments and getting on lists and waiting to be at the top of them!) and last night I finally treated myself to “The Royal We” and it is the most delightful escapist romp imaginable.
(Bc of privacy stuff, I probably won’t mention that again, and I DEFINITELY do not want expressions of sympathy, bc my kid is rad as shit, but we know each other pretty well now, and I would feel weird if I never said anything.)
GOOD SELF CARE NICOLE.
Also, I hope you and your family get through the frustrating lists and waiting and appointments part to the other side as quickly as practicable, and that once you get there, you’re able to put together an awesome team of people to support your family in optimizing its awesomeness!
The Royal We is the absolute perfect vacation book. Such a goddamn delight and so much fun to read. PLEASE LET THERE BE A FREDDIE SEQUEL PLEEEEASE
BUYING THIS IMMEDIATELY.
Also I have very much gotten the impression that your kid is rad as shit and cannot doubt that they will only continue to be.
The Royal We is so wonderful. I wish I could go back to when I hadn’t read it so that I could enjoy it for the first time all over again.
1. Best of luck navigating the diagnostic stuff xx
2. FREDDIE, that is all (I read the Royal We in a constant swoon of delight and immediately went back to reread my favourite parts and now you have inspired me to read it again, the Toast is a great and positive force in my life)
I love you. Waiting is so hard. ♥️
I know I should’ve bought that book (I mean, it’s the Fug Girls!), but instead I just stood in a bookstore for like an hour skimming the top copy — which everyone else had skimmed too, bc you never buy the top copy — and I felt okay about that decision until today, since I was pretty broke at the time, but now I want to actually read it all proper-like.
You WILL get my sympathy that you had to clean up soap barf, though. I only hope she did it on tile, and that you found it by seeing and not by stepping in it as you entered a new room and fumbled for a light switch.
I’m clearly not speaking from experience…
Why do they eat soap? Why do they eat any of it.
In the famous words of George Mallory, “because it’s there.”
My dog once ate a pound of rancid butter and let me tell you that you have not lived until you’ve tried to get rancid, oily butter vomit out of carpet.
My dog loves goose poop and dead frogs (and barfing them up) so at this point, soap would be a welcome change. Slightly less gross to clean up, at least.
I once woke up* in the middle of the night and thought, “wow, my bedroom smells like poop.” And got up, saw a blurry mess on my carpeted bedroom floor, and in a stroke of stunning genius, REACHED DOWN AND STUCK MY FINGER IN THE MESS to confirm that it was, indeed poop. Smelly, runny dog poop.
*was clearly not entirely awake
🙁
One night I thought I had dreamed my cat horking on my feet, but when I woke up the next morning I thought “hmm, why are my feet wet?” NOT A DREAM.
I feel like Jolie here – get rid of your dogs/cats; they are disgusting.
Did you read her AACP column about the Roomba that picked up dog poo and then proceeded to robotically smear the entire house with it???
HORROR OF HORRORS
OH DEAR GOD
I HADN’T BUT NOW I CAN’T STOP SEEING IT
Perhaps this is a good place to seek some advice (or should I be writing into Mallory?) because pets ARE disgusting. I am petsitting for an acquaintance, and toasties, their house is disgusting as a direct result of their disgusting pets*. Like, I was asked to sleep there, but I couldn’t stand the smell. I even dug out their cleaning supplies and spent an hour tidying up to make it livable for a few days, but barely made a dent. (I was literally sweeping poo off of the floor. I am not a tidy person, but I cannot be in a house with excrement just…..there.) One room of the house is essentially an animal toilet (litter box and wee pads), and the carpet throughout is unsalvageable and needs to be burned. Is there a polite way to tell someone she is living in a health hazard (she has kids!) and that she needs to hire a house cleaner immediately? Or do I just keep complaining to the internet about it and refuse to pet sit going forward?
*The pets are actually very sweet, clean, and well-behaved.
I would posit that the humans are the disgusting ones in that scenario. I am a lover of pets, and your description makes me shudder.
I have no advice to offer, unfortunately.
As someone who has no investment in the relationship (but you did say acquaintance, not friend), I’d say that you should not worry about politeness and just flat-out tell them. I think that a lot of pet owners are simply incapable of smelling pet waste any more. I would not put it in terms of “think of the children” (although I have to wonder what their clothes smell like when they go to school), but you can make it clear that you literally can’t stand to be in there any longer than necessary to feed and check on them.
Ugh unfortunately I think that children living in a house with excrement on the floor is child endangerment. I think you might be way past having a friendly chat.
I will wake up from the deadest of sleeps when a cat horking sound happens anywhere in the vicinity of my bed. “I’M AWAKE WHERE’S THE LIGHT IS THE CAT ON THE BED GET THE CAT OFF THE BED RIGHT NOW.”
God yes. My Blondie was a wonderful, lovely cat that was sweet and affectionate and very fond of horking up hairballs on my bed at 3 AM. I’m pretty sure I stopped needing to wake up before I plucked her off my freshly washed comforter mid-hork.
I just start kicking wildly at the first hint of a horking sound, just in case the cat might be on the bed.
I woke up to a wet butt a couple weeks ago. Guess why! Go on, guess.. The cat, what had been recently miraculously cured of his afflictions, had just peed on it. HE PEED ON MY BUTT.
That’s…so creative of him.
Cat is attempting to gaslight you. His plan was to make you think you’d done it yourself. Keep an eye on that one.
My cat had a peeing problem the first few months after we brought her home. Once she hopped up onto the couch with me, which I optimistically interpreted as an opportunity for snuggling. Nope. She just peed in my lap, then left.
I was catsitting for my parents a while ago and was asked to try to introduce the cat to her new bed (she is getting old and they worried she might soon lose the ability to jump up to her normal sleeping spot in the kitchen). She climbed right in and I was very pleased. Then I realised that the odd position she was in and the faint noise of running water I could hear were her having a massive wee.
CATS ARE ASSHOLES*.
*I love cats and nearly all fuzzy things.
My cats (or one of them I think is the real culprit) pee on the bed to punish me for going away and leaving them with a cat-sitter–but it was NOT ON for Calliope to pre-emptively pee on the bed in the 45 minutes I was frantically packing, OR my first night home after putting fresh sheets on the bed. NOT COOL, Cat.
My beloved boy cat peed all over my head in a fit of. . . well, he was sick with Feline Urinary Syndrome and had no other way to tell me, I suppose. He didn’t appear ill at that point, but it became evident the next day when he had suddenly gained weight.
Argh yes. I have found much barf and also when I was a kid and we had outdoor cats, the occasional dead animal this way. Dogs/cats they are loveable but gross. But loveable! But gross as well.
So. So. Gross. I came home to find a barfsplosion yesterday. One of my cats’ greatest talent is covering as wide an area and as many separate objects as possible in one shot. He’s the Mt Vesuvius of cats. Yesterday it was on the wall in addition to all over a bunch of other stuff. HOW.
Good luck with the navigation/organization/waiting room magazines! Immediately checking out The Royal We – any book that’s a romp is a book I need to read.
I read The Royal We when one of my kids was going through some hospital shit earlier this year and it’s exactly what you need to take your mind off of those stupid hospital chairs.
I can’t imagine a kid of yours NOT being rad as shit. Best of luck with everything. <3
I read The Royal We cover to cover several times in the darkest days of hyperemesis before the abortion. It was the only thing I could stand to read.
Best wishes for your rad kiddo’s eventual triumph over all that may stand in her/his way.
“…my kid is rad as shit”. The most perfect parental expression, encapsulated. And thank you for the reindeer link, loved it (as I do every LR post, seriously!).
Boo for lots of appointments, but yay for having a rad as shit child.
I bought The Royal We this morning based on this post and I just finished it. Incredible. It is so joyous and yet made me cry like six times. It made me smile and laugh more than any new book I’ve read in a while.
If wanting to punch out the person who doctored that picture of Jackie with Bill Cosby is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Nicole, all the best with all that.
Totally unrated to any of the above, has anyone been watching The Last Kingdom? It is very good, and very Toast-y, and there are Vikings and Anglo-Saxons and good actors, especially King Alfred the on-his-way-to-becoming-quite-good. I very reccommend as a holiday watch.
ARSELING has become insult of choice chez me.
Yes but when will I get to have my threeway with Alfred and Leofric, is what I want to know.
I thought the fight scene with Leofric and Uhtredsonofuhtred was the preamble to them getting it on…
Yes – am finding it a little over-acted but there’s just so much juicy drama. Also, a kickass nun character that reminds me very much of Nicola Griffith’s novel ‘Hild’.
Agreed, Uhtredsonofuhtred (with you on that Es_Petal) does a bit too much moody staring over the horizon, but the rest of the cast are A* I think. And, that nun IS Hilda!
He is ever so pretty while he stares though, so I am at one with it.
Sometimes when he’s doing staring I play a game which is ‘what do I think his hair smells of?’ Could it be a) horses and woodsmoke b) sweat, horses and woodsmoke or c) blood of his enemies?
Or d) the water of the stream in which he has just bathed naked…?
Yay thanks for mentioning it! I need something to bide my time until Vikings comes back.
Ah, it’s good? I have been debating because I adore Vikings, but I read the first book in the series and could not get past the macho wishfulment nonsense and the cardboard women characters.
Oh the women are great in this, they must’ve fleshed them out a bunch. Brida is especially rad.
Maybe I will give it a chance, then! I just really hated Uhtred in the books and couldn’t imagine enjoying a television show about him.
I don’t want to overshoot here. He is a bit of a wally and is not my favourite character. But it’s done in a knowing way that I find quite charming-like, eyeroll, Uhtredsonofuhtred WILL YOU STOP. He’s headstrong and macho, but kind of a clown also.
He is less awesome than Brida, deffo. But he has a nice arse and he is entertaining.
Vikings the historical people or Vikings the tv show on the History Channel? Because The Last Kingdom is nowhere near as bananas as Vikings the tv show, but does a pretty good job of portraying the historical Vikings. Depends on what you like.
I meant the tv show, but more broadly I also mean the historical people, I guess. I am in general here for anything Early Medieval.
Yes! That show is so good!
Honestly, I am almost definitely going to vote for Hillary Clinton but all of her efforts to be cool and hip and in touch with the youths really annoy me at this point. I think it’s because I know I’m the exact demographic she’s trying to reach- I’m <25! I love Broad City! And Beyonce! etc! but my reasons for voting for her have nothing to do with any of that and I almost feel like it’s kind of insulting to assume that they do? Like, who cares about the ISSUES when you can look at a COOL GIF. I care Hillary! I care a lot!
Also it’s so weird to me because I know whichever person is making those gif posts and trying to make her seem cool and hip is probably A Youth like me and it still comes across as so unauthentic. Just be yourself Hillz! It’ll be less awkward!
Yeah, the whole “Hillary Clinton is like your abuela” thing made me feel weirdly grateful for not being a target demographic for pandering. I don’t know how I would’ve coped with a “Hillary Clinton is just like your loveable but quirky immigrant Asian mom *and* she loves Hamilton!” listicle.
ETA: my mom does not love Hamilton, but it would make family gatherings so much better if she did.
SAME. Although I imagine it’s possible Asians will be pandered to somehow, give the campaign time to figure out the clumsiest possible way.
I’ll be voting for HRC because she’s going to be the Democratic nominee, but I’ve never been super excited about her as a candidate, and the weirdness of ALL the pandering/packaging attempts is just compounding my meh-ness.
Hooray for lack of visibility…? -_-; To be honest, the biggest issue that is probably holding them back is trying to figure out what “thing” is universal enough among all of the various Asian communities (or Asians and Pacific Islanders if they’re feeling really ambitious!) to reference for pandering.
The best thing I can think of is rice.
Somewhere, some hapless volunteers are trying to brainstorm this very thing. They’re probably in California.
ETA: “HIllary LOVES boba & Hello Kitty just like you!!”
i
morbidly
really want to see that
now
I kind of want to write or get a conversation going on Twitter now about it now but I have a little bit more work to do before the week is done. -_-;
I’ll be voting for HRC because she’s going to be the Democratic nominee, but I’ve never been super excited about her as a candidate, and the weirdness of ALL the pandering/packaging attempts is just compounding my meh-ness.
This is exactly how I feel, thank you for articulating it.
I read a tumblr post (yep) yesterday that talks about all the things Hillary has to be and cannot be (she cannot seem too old, she cannot seem too young, she cannot be angry or sad, she cannot be too happy, but she also can’t have NO emotions) and while I think a lot of the stuff her campaign is doing outreach-wise is a little cray, after reading that I’m not sure I can fault her for some of it. Like yes she is trying to reach out to the youngs and yes it comes off as unauthentic but I’m not so sure that she can be a version of herself that will be palatable to everyone.
(anyway here’s the link: http://sadydoyle.tumblr.com/post/135664586198/lik… )
(yes, I am fond of hillary in a way that is independent of her political campaign, I found out the other day she eats jalapenos whole like chips, who does that, does it help her channel the anger of misogynists???)
Yeah, I totally get the “why” of it, and I wasn’t trying to criticize her as a person or anything. The way her campaign has been going about it just kind of annoys me, as I said. Like pandering in order to get votes is always going to be pandering and nobody is ever happy blah blah blah but I wish they would tone it down a bit, that’s all.
” I wish they would tone it down a bit, that’s all.”
I’m afraid that’s going to be the very last thing they’re going to do over the next ten months…
Well, honestly, I hope the campaign turns its focus on defeating the Republican candidate. But as smiavs said above, they’re pushing hard for the demo that doesn’t normally vote, and I can’t fault them for that (unless the pandering turns off a significant number of intended voters, in which case I totally will).
They’re lucky I’m so stubborn. I won’t be turned off!! I refuse!! I’ll vote for you no matter how many listicles your staff writes!!
BRAVO. I was just thinking that the other side of this is how I will probably implode with fury, in a totally non-productive way, if I encounter any self-professed Democrat/liberal/progressive who declares they won’t vote because of X thing Hillary’s campaign did (unless they like, commit a crime, in which case we’ll have to have a conversation).
Also, that whole “my vote doesn’t even matter” thing only applies (MAYBE, if you don’t live in a swing state) to the POTUS candidates — which are indeed a really big deal, but NO LESS BIG OF A DEAL are the state legislature candidates (including all the ones who get voted on in midterms). Yesterday I re-read the Cosmopolitan articles about how beleaguered Planned Parenthood clinics are and the rise of those pregnancy counseling centers, and…this is the stuff that matters, that really affects women’s lives, especially those most disadvantaged. I’m about to dedicate my life to turning out Democrats for those midterms.
THE STATE LEGISLATURE MATTERS A LOT, oh my god.
I mean, I live in New York, which you’d think would be a bastion of liberalism, but nope, we have a Republican-held state senate. (Thanks a lot, Long Island, I’m looking at you.) And that really, really affects matters.
Vote, you guys. Vote in your state elections. Vote in your local elections. Please, please vote.
Yeah, the trap that Hillary is stuck in with not being able to be herself is the thing that actually makes her the most relatable of all to me.
Would that I had more than one like to give this comment. Though Julianne Escobedo Shepherd’s piece was righteous and the list was cringeworthy and I don’t want anything I say to be used to silence or derail another woman’s anger and hurt and reasonable calling-out of ridiculousness.
Thought she was on a great track with, “Let me get a pen” and taking a big sip of wine in that SNL sketch with Jimmy Fallon. I have turned “let me get a pen” into private code for “Yay. Riveting male opinions.”
THIS!!
I would eat pickled jalapenos that way, if I wasn’t concerned about how acidic they’d be to just munch on. But not raw jalapenos, that’s hardcore.
I’ve eaten pickled jalapeno slices right out of the jar; they’re pretty good if you get the right heat level for you.
They should play up the jalapeño thing. No kidding that just improved my opinion of her like 75%… for some reason.
I’m not attempting to convince you that you’re incorrect here, but I will say that if you do care about the issues, then you really AREN’T the demographic she’s trying to reach. The U.S. has ridiculously low voter turnout, and young, potential voters are some of the biggest offenders in that area. She’s trying, (probably in vain) or rather her campaign people are trying to attract people who normally wouldn’t vote at all, I think.
HNGH I yelled at loudly lectured my brother last night when he told me he wasn’t voting and went through the list of Excuses Jaded Very Young People have like “It’s not like my vote matters, man” and “But I am also not giving a vote to the Republicans” and “But I don’t agree with any of the candidates on all of the issues”.
am not sure if the verbal walloping he got last night will motivate him to vote or if i just accidentally made sure he will not be voting in 2016.
as a woman of color, I’d never NOT exercise my right to vote, but I totally get people feeling like there’s no one they WANT to or even can vote for. However, the people I know who feel this way aren’t jaded or indifferent; they care a LOT and are just fed up.
I think you’re probably right, but regardless I see these attempts anyways, and I always kind of get a feeling of “is this really what an entire team of people has decided I want from a presidential candidate?” If it sways a non-voter to vote, it’s awesome, but I feel like somebody my age who truly doesn’t give a shit isn’t going to watch her appearance on Broad City and be like “wow, now I want to vote!!”
Agreed, I just figured it was worth pointing out that you probably aren’t the target demographic. I don’t actually think any of that crap works at getting people elected.
I’m fairly certain the “EARTH HUMANS, OBSERVE HOW I RESEMBLE YOU” schtick isn’t aimed at the low-info demographic or the high-info demographic or the already-going-to-vote-for-whoever-the-party-picks demographic, it’s an attempt at outreach to those weird scaleless bipeds who keep droning on about their families and their emotions and their planet still having water and their doing things besides being egg incubators for the brood, and who the hell knows what they want.
I am feeling the exact same conflict.
I’m sort of tired of the whole “a lady president would be better because ladies, amirite ladies?” bit. I don’t need a pretty pink pen to be a writer, I don’t need a pretty pink wrench to fix my sink, and I don’t need a pretty pink presidential candidate to be engaged and invested in the outcome of the election.
Ditto on the “just be yourself” front. I don’t need you to be a hip president. I need you to be a competent one.
But pandering from her campaign doesn’t make her any less competent? No matter how many awkward things she does to ~appeal to the young’uns~ (that, honestly, Obama or Sanders could and do get away with because we don’t give the same type of scrutiny to male candidates*), that doesn’t mean she is not really highly qualified.
I feel conflicted about this, because while the abuela article is the absolute DEFINITION of “trying too hard” and is completely cringeworthy, the other stuff…kind of doesn’t bother me?
Or at least, I feel like she is being criticized about it in a way that another candidate would not. Like, if Bernie Sanders went on Broad City or whatever, I know I would see a ton of Facebook posts being like “fuck yeah, this guy is awesome, what a great sense of humor!”
I agree with the Sady Doyle piece linked elsewhere in this thread–it genuinely does feel at this point that no matter what Hillary does, someone is going to hold it up as proof that she’s bitchy/cold/out-of-touch/aloof/try-hard/calculating or whatever other personality trait it is that people hate but that actually has very little to do with how qualified someone is as a political candidate.
I think the clearest example of this is comparing the reaction to Bernie meeting up with Killer Mike in Atlanta at a fried chicken place vs. the reaction to HRC going on Broad City. They are both out of their element, and I suspect that, were he not running for president, the number of times Bernie Sanders hung out with a rapper at an Atlanta fried chicken joint would remain zero. But the reaction to Bernie was “This is awesome!” and the reaction to HRC is “Pandering fake!” and I have a really hard time seeing that as anything other than sexism.
YES, this is exactly what I meant, I just was blanking on a comparable situation with another candidate. Bernie is embracing the “idiosyncratic but straight-shooting guy” persona, and that is fine (and not entirely inauthentic), but the Hillary hate feels like a combination of sexism and people having knee-jerk reactions out of personal dislike for her.
I think you’re making a really good point, and I also think that a difference between those situations is that Bernie and Killer Mike had a long, substantive discussion about the policies Bernie supports and believes in, and that’s not what a cameo on Broad City is. I think a better parallel to that exact situation was Hillary going on Another Round with Heben and Tracy, which I think people mostly had nice things to say about.
That said, if Bernie went on Broad City, I’m sure everyone would freak out over it in a good way, so you’re still right.
I agree. It’s absurd how people will fawn over Obama leaving a press conference early to see Star Wars and turn around and call Hillary pandering in the same breath for saying a Star Wars reference at the debate. Absurd.
I agree with this. When I first saw that article I was like “oh god this is dreadful and so insincere.” And yes, it’s dreadful, but how dare I demand sincerity out of her when that is a demand that I loathe having extracted from me on a daily basis? Given how much I resent the expectation of tendering Service With A Smile in my life both professional and personal, I feel like it’s beyond cruel for me to turn that around on anyone else, even a presidential candidate.
I’m kind of surprised at the reaction here to Hillary’s “abuela” post versus Bernie Sander’s meeting with Killer Mike. Hillary appropriated another culture, one that has a long history of oppression in America, an oppression and lived experience that she cannot possibly assume as her own. Then she claims to be pro-immigration but the “abuela” post reveals a huge blindspot of hers when it comes to listening to immigrants in the first place, instead of blindly trying to relate to them. (The #NotMyAbuela is really interesting). By contrast, Bernie didn’t appropriate another culture, he just listened.
Secondly, I’m hesitant to think it’s for sexist reasons that people are quick to call Hillary’s efforts PR stunts while Bernie’s efforts are praised. That is, I never thought of it from that POV. Personally I feel that a lot of Hillary’s PR efforts come across as disingenuous because of her past voting record. She’s often been accused of doing a complete 180 on social issues like gay marriage and immigration and also the USA’s role in the Middle East. Understandably, people are wary of the fact that she may be changing her stance now simply to gain votes. Which makes her current efforts like the abuela post seem questionable. Whereas Bernie has been much more consistent when it comes to social issues and social justice, racial inequality, etc. Since it’s hard to know what candidates really believe, people look to their voting records as a way to gauge this and Hillary’s just seems really inconsistent with where she claims to stand now.
I’m just curious, even when Hillary’s campaign continues to… make these kinds of blunders, why does this not change (or make you question) who your vote goes to?
Sansa looks so lonely in that picture, like she needs a full time snuggle assistant! Where do I send my resume?
Very excited for Confederate Flag Bikini girl.
We don’t do Santa Claus around here, and we’ve always told our daughter (5) that Santa Claus isn’t real, but it’s fun for some people to pretend that he is, and you shouldn’t say anything because that would be yucking someone’s yum, etc etc.
But oh the irony! She’s recently decided that Santa Claus IS real … because her friends have seen him, and told her. (She still insists that God isn’t real, however.)
Bf and I are nowhere near close to having kids yet, but the Santa thing is something that we’ve been discussing. I loved Christmas as a kid and then when I found out Santa wasn’t real there was like a 10 year dead zone where I had lost all holiday spirit. Bf had a similar experience but we came to different conclusions: He thinks those 8-10 years of belief were totally worth it for the empty void that comes after. I think No Santa= no false beliefs that can remove the magic from family, presents, and food. But also if my child were That Asshole who ruined it for the kids who did believe I’d have to send her off to be raised by wolves.
So I really appreciate you sharing that your daughter ended up believing anyways!
I can’t remember when I learned the bad news about Santa, but I’m pretty sure it dovetailed with discovering the “Yes, Virginia” letter, and instead of having my buzz harshed it gave me a nice perspective on people doing kind things in secret, which really can work miracles sometimes. That may be a form of methadone to help a future kid kick the Claus habit when the time comes.
My parents are atheist as well but we still did the Santa thing. I don’t remember being particularly traumatized by finding out he isn’t real (or remember if I even cared at all). I do know I immediately went and ruined it for my little sister though.
I never felt lied to or betrayed. I’m the oldest of three, and I figured it out on my own over a span of several years. But pretending to believe was fun, and I didn’t want to ruin it for my brothers, so I kept it up for years!
Apparently we all just enjoyed it, because my youngest brother refused to admit he didn’t believe until he was at least ten.
I came to that article from a weird perspective because my parents never sold us on the Santa lie… but the reason they didn’t sell us on the Santa lie is because they were suuuuuper fundamentalist Christian when I was little and there can be no Santa because Jesus! So I was both a) a Santa Heathen and b) uber-religious. There were some incidents with other kids, my little brother once got in a yelling match with the neighbor girl about whether there was a Santa Claus and then her mom came over and yelled at my mom.
So I am Jewish and never had Santa and figured it out when I was 5. My best friend was 4 at the time, and when I told my mom “There’s no such thing as Santa, that’s just X’s mom leaving the presents,” my mom replied “I know, but don’t tell X.” So of course I told him on the bus to freaking kindergarten the next day because I thought it was terrible that the grownups were lying to him. He cried. His birthday is Dec 6 and, to this day, (39 years later!!) in every birthday card and every birthday email, I include an apology for “the Santa thing.”
I didn’t want my Jewish kid to ruin it for some other kid and have to apologize for “the Santa thing” for the rest of her life. So when my daughter asked me, at age 5, if Santa was real, I said “For some people.” I’m still ok with that answer, and, even now, at age 9, she usually writes a note to Santa on Christmas Eve that says “I know you won’t bring me anything, but I like that you make my friends happy.” She leaves him a snack, and he usually shares with her. She also regularly corresponds with the Tooth Fairy. Every kid needs some magic in her life . . .
Oh man, that is such a good answer! Too late for this one, but I’m going to save that for when #2 is old enough to start asking questions.
As an atheist who absolutely loves Christmas, including the part where I go to Mass with my Catholic partner and read A Christmas Carol and sing carols, the atheist Christmas piece is making me feel weird, like I am not supposed to like those things. Is anyone else feeling that way? I haven’t finished it yet, so maybe my feelings will change.
Oh, I always enjoyed Muppet Christmas Carol and trees and singing and stuff when I was an atheist, you can be whatever kind of atheist you want! The only requirement for atheism is not believing in God, which is marvelously freeing when it comes to deciding what you like to do on holidays!
That’s how I’ve always felt! I think there is a faction of atheists (including all the dudebros on this here internet) who feel that a requirement of atheism is ultimate skepticism about everything, and that’s the vibe I got from the essay. I don’t believe in a god because I just CAN’T, not because I reasoned my way into it, and I still want the joy of the season!
“I don’t believe in a god because I just CAN’T” – yes! this exactly, from another atheist who loves Christmas and celebrates it joyfully and carolfully.
Same! (That is, my feelings about Christmas are conflicted, but I do feel like I just can’t believe in a god, rather than it being completely down to logic.)
NICOLE, VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION. Which is better, A Muppet Family Christmas, or Muppet Christmas Carol? I have always thought the latter but my husband likes the former and we cheerfully fight over it every Christmas! It’s honestly one of our traditions but STILL, which one???
That IS an important question! I don’t have a good answer for it, except perhaps to suggest that these two share a solid second place for best Christmas movie ever, behind Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas.
I’m also an atheist who loves Christmas, but the Christmases that I grew up with were always strictly secular. So I think my associations with the holiday are a bit less complicated than the author’s, who apparently grew up in a place where MULTIPLE people would put letters telling her she was going to hell into her backpack every Christmas.
That’s a good point– the Christmases I grew up with were also decidedly secular.
I grew up in a secular Jewish household in what is generally considered a pretty liberal area and we’ve had more than one letter stuffed into our mailbox about how some combination of my family / my parents / one of my parents was going to hell because we didn’t have Christmas decorations on our house. So, I can definitely identify with the author. This kind of stuff does happen.
Oh absolutely! It’s the jump from that to “Therefore, I hate Christmas stories” that I don’t quite get.
I think it’s completely within reason to hate something that reminds you of a negative experience. Otherwise, why would anyone feel the need to get rid of an ex’s old things after a breakup?
Reading through your comments above, it’s great that you’ve had excellent experiences of Christmas as an atheist. But, Christmas is a holiday that is shoved in your face in many parts of the world, and it’s very difficult to ignore. So, couple that with any sort of negative experience (religious or not) that’s even tangentially associated with Christmas and you’ve got cheer and happiness forced in your face when you don’t feel cheerful and happy about a particular bad memory that you’re reliving.
This kind of stuff happened to me as a kid (I grew up New Age and incapable of lying about it when Southern Baptists asked), but I still love celebrating secular Christmas. The holiday itself just doesn’t have baggage to me.
I do refuse to go to Christmas services ever again, because the last time we went was to my in-laws’ Presbyterian church the year of the Newtown shooting, and the pastor had some weak-sauce sermon about how a bunch of babies died in the Bible so the horror will always be with us! Indeed, let’s be complacent about unthinkable violence because things sucked 2,000 years ago.
I am religious, and have been Obnoxiously Religious in the past because that’s how I was raised, but I just can’t fathom how fucked up you would have to be to leave a note saying “you’re going to hell” in a classmate’s backpack, or how fucked up your upbringing was (not to mention the people that raised you) that no one told you it was Not Okay to do that. My children will be compassionate, kind religious people, because (spoiler alert) that is what religion is about.
Same, I like the trappings of Christmas and so does my family, but it’s always been secular for us.
Yes, my Christmases were completely secular and detatched from Christianity, like my upbringing in general – I cannot imagine getting letters warning me I was going to hell. (Although my dad’s Catholic upbringing did do that for him, essentially.)
I am a life-long atheist, raised in an atheist/agnostic household, who loves Christmas more than most things. My mother (a long time atheist/recovering Catholic) instilled a love of the holiday at a very young age, and that includes some religion-y type things too, just out of sheer tradition, as her parents were very Irish Catholic. I don’t go to Mass or anything, but we enjoy a Jesus based carol as much as the next family.
Dude bro atheists who don’t like Christmas just because they believe god is a lie or whatever can shove it. (obvs there are lots of good and valid reasons to not like Christmas, tho!)
A lot of the lyrics of Jesus-based carols weird me out, but damn if Christmas carols aren’t some of the prettiest pieces of music in existence.
Oh, same. I can mostly tune out the actual words and focus on the very pretty melodies.
I think of Christmas as a cultural holiday rather than a religious one. The traditions are the best part and if they happen to be God-related, eh, so what? At Christmas Mass (back when I actually went to it), I liked to think of the nativity story as just a nice folk tale I heard every year and just enjoyed the music and the flowers and everything.
Also, as someone who grew up in the church, the God stuff is very ingrained in my memories and family traditions and I’m not going to give that stuff up just because I’m not a card-carrying Catholic anymore.
I’m an atheist who was raised Catholic and I LOVE Christmas and I don’t feel weird about it. I do feel weird when I talk to other people about going to Christmas Eve mass, because I don’t want to mislead them into thinking I’m more religious than I am (not that I think they’d have a problem with me being religious or non-religious, I just like to be clear). I do my best to clarify it by adding on a comment about how I can’t disappoint my grandma by not going to church with her, but that’s not 100% true either. I had a rebellious phase where I wanted nothing to do with going to church and was definitely only going to fulfill family obligation, but I’ve come around and enjoy it on its own terms now. Except for the part where they changed the words on me, but at least that gave me the Mulaney bit which cracked my shit up.
Thank you for the early reminder that the words have changed, I usually remember midway through doing the whole thing wrong on Christmas morning.
Just went out and bought one of those cards that lists the new responses. You won’t make a monkey out of me this year, Catholic Church!
Ugh, the changing of the words! My father’s funeral mass was probably not the ideal place to accidentally reveal myself as a heathen to my deeply religious relatives but whoops! Happened anyway.
I passed my phone around at Thanksgiving and my mightily Catholic family got a hearty chuckle out of that bit. I sometimes mutter “and also with you” under my breath to make my mom snort during Mass.
Christmas-loving atheist here! One of my favorite parts of the holiday? Creches. Manger Scenes. Nativities. Whatever you want to call them if it’s a baby who’s divinity I don’t believe in surrounded by a ton of people and a could donkeys I LOVE it! I don’t know why. And there’s always been something about going to church that I like, even if I don’t believe what is being said there.
For me, I think it boils down to being an atheist who respects and enjoys ritual and tradition. Maybe it’s because I spend so much time studying folklore and anthropology. Maybe it’s just an ingrained part of me. But as much as I just truly don’t believe there’s anything divine in our world I also truly love the beauty and ritual behind religion, especially the way it manifests during joyful holidays. (Take me to the mall on black friday, however, and I become the scroogiest scrooge that ever did scrooge.)
I’m a Christian who hates religious zeal and gets really eye-rolly about nativity scenes, EXCEPT I really loved how my Episcopalian church decorated their bulletin last Sunday, with all non-Western art nativity scenes! I posted a collection of them here, including the captions that tell the artist and country of origin.
That is super cool – good on your church!
Zeal is a really weird thing, isn’t it? :/
Zeal is the GROSSEST thing, and I have a super-allergic response to even religious enthusiasm, because I grew up in a zealous fundamentalist Baptist community, pretty much brainwashed into evangelizing (“you don’t want your friends to go to hell, do you?”), and not unsurprisingly I behaved like a right prick all the way through my early teens. Anyway, I try to keep my scathing cynicism and allergy symptoms to myself, unless someone’s being offensive.
I’m an atheist and I hate Christmas for reasons totally unrelated to being an atheist. If you enjoy Christmas, celebrate it as a cultural tradition. Most of it was appropriated from pagan holidays anyway. Just do what makes you happy, be kind, and don’t worry about the rest.
Yes! we watch the muppets christmas carol and then (usually try, usually belatedly) light a yule candle to welcome back the light. As a person with SAD, that resonates a lot more now then it ever did when I was trying hard to be pagan. My teen is into telling people “Yo Saturnalia”
I enjoy saying “Yo, Saturnalia” in my best Rocky voice.
That’s exactly what he does!
We gave our friend Honest a statue of a Roman legionnaire which he really likes, and we dress up the legionnaire for Saturnalia on Christmas since they don’t have room for a tree and cats that would destroy it. Thus far his costume includes a tinkly coin top and a unicorn horn, both in blue. A joyous time is had by all.
As an xmas atheist, I kinda feel like if christians incorporated pagan religious/folk traditions (either purposely or from individual pagan-christian conversion) into their religious holiday, why shouldn’t we take christian traditions for our own non-religious holiday? It’s a tradition it itself!
Yes! Many cultures have Yule celebrations because it’s so very dark and it’s nice that the sun will return some day. We can use the traditions available for a secular version.
Just chiming to say that this agnostic is very much enjoying this thread of everyone discussing their secular approaches to Christmas. I grew up celebrating a pretty secular Christmas as a kid, but I’ve been feeling conflicted about it because 1) my family just assimilated into this celebration without much attempt to hold onto any of our traditional holidays (we’re nominally Buddhist in the loosest sense of the word because I have never been to a temple in my life but some extended fam are observant) and 2) I feel like it’s disrespectful for me (just me, I understand why other people do it) to go through the motions of something spiritually/religiously linked if I don’t personally believe in it.
However, I really like the idea of having a celebration around the darkest time of the year, and I love holiday lights, food, universal time off, and the gathering of loved ones so… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, it’s really interesting to me to read about how other folks feel about this time of year! Especially vis a vis raising kids who are also nonbelievers. I was personally into Santa Claus (although my fam would refer to him the Viet/French way of ong gia Noel) anyway for the hope of some gifts.
My grandma was a practicing Japanese Buddhist who loved Christmas! I don’t know if it was a product of being plunked into an American Christian family, but she instilled a love of Santa No Ojisan in me from the time I was a little baby.
I’m realizing that I feel conflicted because I don’t feel like I ever had a choice as a kid. Christmas in the US is so omnipresent that it’s unavoidable, and for many, many reasons (some structural, some unique to my family), my family didn’t regularly acknowledge Vietnamese holidays. My family, who was incredibly frugal when I was child (I had a literal handful of toys when growing up), actually bought a reusable tree! We had ornaments & a star!
I realize that I can do the latter as an adult but it feels a bit off, much like how Nikki wrote about how feelings of appropriation re. learning Korean as an adult.
None of this is Christmas’ fault, but I guess my feelings are all tied up with some resentment towards an overwhelming mainstream US cultural hegemony, and I know that’s not how normal people go through life.
You don’t need my permission, obviously, and I’m not even Christian, but the number of people from Christian backgrounds who tell me (after I say “I’m Jewish and I don’t celebrate Christmas”) that Christmas is for everyone makes me feel it’s totally fine for you do to whatever the fuck you want. Can you really appropriate something that was forced (however gently and specifically) onto you? I don’t think so.
That makes sense! There is a big difference between “here are some fun traditions you can share if you want” and “here is something that will be omnipresent for a month and gives you time off unlike holidays from other religions, but it’s totally optional, really!”
4 months. In retail at least Christmas is now omnipresent for at least 4 months. At least 2 months outside of retail.
I grew up Episcopalian and though I’ve been an atheist for a long time, I still really enjoy going to the Christmas service every year; it’s really important to me. Luckily, my very liberal church has open communion, and emphasizes that people of ALL faiths, and nonbelievers too, are welcome there.
So much of Christmas feels secular anyway, but as Nicole said people should feel free to take part in whatever they like at Christmas.
Another atheist-Christmas-lover here. I spent a lot of years hating it, because broke and never felt like I could participate fully, and too many years of chamber choir and retail work taking the shine off literally everything about it, but the first Xmas that I spent with MrChouffe was kind of a game-changer: he is an unabashedly enthusiastic Xmas-fiend and also an atheist, who insists on getting a tree Thanksgiving weekend, decorating the whole house, doing Advent calendars (Lego advent calendar is everything, btw), watching every Xmas movie/Xmas TV episode he can find, buying way too many presents, making Xmas cake a month in advance… and it sort of replenished the whole thing for me. HOORAY.
(If you ever feel like having all the feels, find the Twilight Zone Xmas episode. It is… it is pretty great.)
We watched it at Friendmas last week. ALL THE FEELS.
as an atheist with a family that comprises a whole hodgepodge of religions & non-religions but nominally celebrates Christmas, I totally relate to the last paragraph: He’s decided that Christmas is about two things—family and presents. But mostly presents. The joy that only hedonistic consumerism and overeating can bring—that’s what the holidays are about for Marcus. Nothing more. I remember feeling vaguely guilty for a few years as a kid – 10-11 or so? before I figured out I was an atheist, anyway – for focusing on presents & cookies and ignoring the God part. Now I just know that’s what I’m celebrating – getting together with folks for some good ol’ wintertime hedonism.
But my joy in doing that stuff in the name of Christmas is inversely proportional to the number of nasty harassing proselytizing folks I encounter around this time of year. The couple of years around GWB’s re-election, when everyone was talking about who is and isn’t a Real American, I was like “ummm….I’m celebrating New Year’s, I guess.” If i got letters like Ijeoma Oluo did I’d be pretty dang resistant to celebrating Christmas even in name only.
re: your Christmas joy being inversely proportional to proselytizing folks – This is the reason I will be giving out specifically New Year’s cards and/or gifts to my coworkers this year. The amount of grumbling I’ve had to endure about how “this is AMERICA and we celebrate CHRISTMAS!” has made me kind of anti-Christmas this year.
I’m doing New Years cards too. The benefits are threefold- I get an extra week to get them out, I get everyone’s addresses when they send me cards, and I quietly stick it to the vast majority of my friends and family who are Catholic and send Jesus cards.
I like this idea! If only my cats were up for being dressed up in little winter coats for a photo shoot.
Yes, I’ve been doing New Year cards for yonks now! Just get a cute blank card with a penguin or snowman or something and go to town.
This year I found the most AMAZING “Happy Winter!” card at Walgreen’s but it was $3.99 for just one which was a bit steep, so I only bought the one, and then got a nice generic “season’s greetings snowman” for my new year’s wishes.
(the inside is bordering on Christmassy, but it’s hard to avoid it with red type and “sweet season”)
It really bugs me when I wish people “happy holidays” because I’m specifically including New Year’s, and they’re like YOU GRINCH but no, it’s a whole vacation week here at the university! holidaySSSSSS
Amazon yo! I found pretty packs of new years cards for not much money!
I am agnostic and absolutely love Christmas carols, but I hate most of the secular stuff (Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bell Rock, etc.)–from a musical standpoint, the religious ones are objectively better, and it feels good to sing them, and so there.
Nothing wrong with enjoying the emotional uplift that can come with things seasonal, I think. You’d probably get a similar vibe at a folk music sing, for example.
My family growing up celebrated secular Christmas and had our own family traditions that I loved/still love. They include: the gaudiest decorating possible, and this has amped up over the years (a few years ago my girlfriend’s deck umbrella broke and now my Dad has turned into a faux tree); shooting down the Christmas Tree with a shotgun (We only need the top, jack pines are TALL, and you need to take the gun when you go christmas tree hunting anyway because wolves); booze minis at the top of the stockings to spike your coffee with (Kahlua, Bailey’s etc – obviously I only got to partake of this when I got older.)
Christmas songs are beautiful, I don’t mind if they’re about a fairy tale (plus, I like fairy tales.) Just like how when I travel I go into churches because those are also (usually) beautiful.
My girlfriend is a pagan so yesterday we had a little Solstice ritual. And we were invited to a Chanukah part earlier in the month, and I hope that continues, so our kid gets a taste of many things and can make his own faith/holiday decisions based on diverse experiences.
Deck umbrella tree! Sounds like a Dad Magazine photo spread.
I will get pictures!
Did you know there is a Christmas song for us atheists who love Christmas? (Yay, Tim Minchin!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q
If it’s wrong to enjoy the Twelve Days of Mr. Sacks, I don’t want to be right.
I think it may be easier for those of us who grew up in a Christian tradition to continue to enjoy the celebration on a more symbolic or nostalgic level. It feels like a birthright. People who experienced harassment as children for not celebrating–it’s totally understandable that they would not enjoy this time of year.
And then there are the dudebro skeptics, who are under the impression that their emotional lives are 100% LOGICAL AND CONSISTENT AND TOTALLY UNINFLUENCED BY PAST EXPERIENCE and thus no non-Christian can enjoy the season, which, whatever, get back to me when you actually have some self-awareness.
I am sort of the opposite – my parents are very atheist atheists (and so am I, to be fair), and my family is not very big on Christmas in general. My mother tries to be, but as a family we tend towards the cynical and are not big on enforced jollity/doing things because other people are. We celebrated Christmas more when I was younger, but less so now, and I feel a bit guilty when I want to do things like listen to Christmas carols or put up decorations, as I know my siblings, in particular, would think it was weird.
Toasts!
I’m getting on a train in a few hours and will remain there for 6ish hours- can a girl get a book rec? I’ll read pretty much anything, though I’m kinda blue this holiday and would love something fun and light-hearted. I’m almost done re-reading The Royal We and have also finished Fates and Furies and The Fifth Season, if that gives you an eye into my tastes.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is an incredible read and I can’t recommend it highly enough! Also, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.
ETA: neither of those are particularly lighthearted, but I would recommend Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari because it’s interesting and funny as well!
I’ve been meaning to check out All The Light We Cannot See- and I loved loved A Visit From the Goon Squad!
I just finished reading Station Eleven, which I really enjoyed even though I was feeling like I was totally over post-apocalyptic stories when I started. Now I’m reading Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente which is so wild & weird! I’d heartily recommend it if you’re a fan of retro sci-fi or the golden age of Hollywood.
I loved Station Eleven! Radiance looks NUTTY, I’m 100% going to dive into it!
It’s VERY fun. Even if the plot is not the strongest, the world(s?) in which it takes place definitely make it worth the read!
Terry Pratchett books about the witches are my go-to fie lighthearted travel reading. The last one is a lot sadder than the others, though, so would not suggest that one unless you feel like being a blubbering mess for a while. (…or maybe that was just me.)
Also Uprooted is not funny, exactly, but it’s a great fantasy retelling of a conglomeration of folk tales from Poland and Russia.
I’m smack in the middle of KJ Charles’s Charm of Magpies series and I totally want to flail about it so this is my chance. Victorian fantasy! Cute boys! Cute boys who just want to make out with each other a lot but they keep getting interrupted by deadly dangers! Banter! (soooo much banter.) Migratory bird tattoos! (Literally. Every once in a while the tattoos seem to get sick of where they’re at and decide to move around.)
In all seriousness, though. It’s a really, really fun series if you enjoy fantasy/romance and they’re super fast reads (so far I’ve read each book in under a day).
Ohhhhh wow that could not be ANY MORE up my alley if it tried. Downloading those right nowwww
My two favorite recent light-hearted books have been:
Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick and The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine.
I actually stayed up about 6 hours reading The Girls at the Kingfisher Club last week, which was probably not a wise life decision during a busy time at work and finals week, but I couldn’t put it down. They both have kind of a modern fairy-tale retelling thing going on, in different ways.
If you need a faster-paced book, I’m currently reading The Informationist by Taylor Stevens, and so far so good! Or, my fave book of the year: Shadowshaper by DJ Older.
Planetfall by Emma Newman! Fast-paced space colony whodunnit, sort of. Roxane Gay recommended it and people on the internet have been doing furious debate over the end.
Oh! Oh! Where on the internet, if it’s handy for you? I am reading it now and I already can tell when I finish it I’ll be frantically searching for a nice spoilery thread to speculate wildly in.
Jane Smileys “some luck”. The first of a trilogy.
“The rules of civility”
“Brooklyn”
“The queen of the tearling”
“Mistress of the art of death”
I could do this all day. 🙂 enjoy your trip!
Light-hearted, you say?
Where’d You Go Bernadette, Maria Semple
Attachments, Rainbow Rowell
The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff
Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
My Life in France, Julia Child
Act Like It, Lucy Parker
The Martian, Andy Weir
seconding The Girls at The Kingfisher Club!
Ooooh, I love reading on a train.
Oh great Toasts, you remain wonderful people- I now have six books loaded on my Nook, ready for travels ahead! Thank you all!
I can’t recommend ‘The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing’ enough!
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley! When I booktalk it, it’s this: “what happens when you wake up in a field of dead people with a letter to you from you in your coat pocket?” It’s Buffy meets MI-6.
I loved that book! Seconding.
Also, most of what I’ve read and loved recently is decidedly not lighthearted, but maybe the Nightvale novel? Or The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. The heroine spends a lot of time on worlds which run on Narrativium, so, joyously tropy.
I have been reading A Darker Shade of Magic to the GF lately and we are both very into it.
unREAL season two OMG I CANNOT WAIT THOSE CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS MAKE ME SO GODDAMN EXCITED.
(BTW the Victorian hate read continues on Twitter under the tag #liveread. There will be a storify once I finish- since it’s my big vacation, I’ve been reading in small chunks. Also to maintain sanity. If there’s enough interest, I’ll also read her other books)
I KNOW I AM SO EXCITED
Yesss.
unREAL unREAL unREAL
I don’t know why I root for any of these people but I DO.
I REALLY want to watch unREAL but I gave myself a rule that I can only watch things that I can see legitimately on one of the 4 streaming sites I pay for (well 3, one of them I use a friend’s password for), because it doesn’t make sense to pay for something or download when there are so many shows I want to see that I already have access to.
Long explanation to say, does anyone think/know if/when this will be popping up on Hulu, Amazon Prime, or Netflix? Google hasn’t been much help 🙁
I am following the hate. You are a goddamn American hero.
(Er, I’m assuming you’re American)
Jesus, she has other books?
I’m now imaging a 1900 house style program produced by Rachel and Quinn with the victorian couple.
Oh my goodness I had never seen that Shy Ronnie sketch and it is SO GOOD! Rihanna is perfection.
When she says why did I think you could do this? I die every time.
I know! And now I’m fantasizing about being in a Bonnie and Clyde-type duo with Rihanna. It would be epic.
I love how much Ronnie and Clyde can be read as just a straight documentary of being near Rihanna. Ronnie isn’t shy he’s just standing next to HER and she’s less an attractive person than a force of nature against which even Jon Hamm is left mute and pliant.
OMG that Facebook post. I’m bookmarking that page so I can look at it when I’m having a bad day.
Oh ok sorry 😀 😀
I very seriously considered making it my cover photo but then I remembered that not only am I friends with my parents’ friends and younger family members/students i’ve worked with, my dad finally got a facebook would definitely not appreciate vulgar language on his daughter’s facebook
I’m imagining it was written by my ridiculous coworker who is also named Sam and also believes in the Illuminati, except he is super afraid of technology and so would never have Facebook.
i LOVE that he believes in the Illuminati but ALSO takes their “we’re not the Illuminati” response at face value.
Toasties! I spent 8 hours in the car with my partner and our his cat yesterday. This of course meant that once I pushed my way into the driver’s seat and we had properly exhausted all seven radio stations in Coal Country, PA, I talked him into playing Hamilton. He’s talked about trying to get Hamilton tickets (HAHAHA!!! Not with my salary!), but listening to original Broadway cast recordings is Not His Thing. He was very obliging yesterday because of the rain and the winding roads, and he laughed at the right parts and asked questions when he wasn’t sure about the **narrative** and rolled his eyes when I started warbling to our his cat.
Then. We got to Act 2. I could tell he was getting Original Broadway Cast Recording Fatigue Syndrome and told him we could take a break. As he looks down at my phone to stop the music, he sees Daveed’s full name for the first time. “Daveed Diggs? Why does that name sound familiar?” Pause as he Googles. “DAVEED DIGGS?! IS IN CLIPPINGS!??! HE SINGS?! WHAT!?!? CLIPPINGS IS AWESOME GOOD FOR DAVEED DIGGS LOOK AT HIS HAIR” and then he enthusiastically hit play and we continued listening to Hamilton until my phone died at “It’s Quiet Uptown” and is now a Hamilton Convert.
I feel your boyfriend on the “listening to original Broadway cast recordings is Not His Thing.” I want to see Hamilton, I am sure that I would LOVE Hamilton and the accompanying music but trying to listen to the soundtrack (of any musical) as a standalone piece just doens’t do it for me, and I feel sad about that because now I don’t know any Hamilton songs to sing to my cat.
I totally get that! I generally do not do the cast recording thing – I was so blissfully ignorant of Book of Mormon when I finally saw it and I was surprised and delighted the whole night. It is a Very Good Tactic! I did make a special exception for Hamilton after I naively Googled Hamilton tickets thinking we could maybe visit his grandparents next summer and also watch the show and realized we will probably not be seeing Hamilton anytime soon. Just like Star Wars, it’s never too late to start (but only if you want)!
(I definitely had to do some Googling during the first couple of listens to figure out what was happening in some of the songs but if that sounds fun? to you and you are impatient and also want to sing Hamilton songs to your cat ASAP, I would give it a chance! Or listen to a “Best Songs of 2015” playlist that includes Wait For It (ie ALL OF THEM) and use that as your cat song!)
I think you mean your phone committed suicide at “It’s Quiet Uptown.” That fucking song.
i was bummed we couldn’t keep listening to Hamilton but also really fucking relieved because the tears in my eyes were already really affecting road visibility.
Ha! I introduced my best friend to it yesterday before she headed out on a road trip.
She proceeded to, eh, “introduce” her family to it (forcibly).
Somewhat unsurprisingly, they didn’t mind.
My work crush came over to my desk earlier this week and I expressed my frustration at how sold-out Hamilton is (nothing until SEPTEMBER?!?!!??!!!??) … he asked me what Hamilton WAS. I was very disappointed – we live in NYC, how has he missed it? – but as I started to explain it, his face started lighting up. Apparently that period of history is his favorite period of history, and I already knew he loves hip-hop and rap, so in the span of 3 minutes he went from utter obliviousness to OMG I MUST SEE THIS IMMEDIATELY, WHAT DO YOU MEAN SEPTEMBER??!?!?!?!?
Help, I’m so smitten.
I’m on the train right now with crappy cell phone service that ate my original comment, so have just the important bit: My friend’s little sister is getting a trip to New York for HIGHSCHOOL GRADUATION. This includes Hamilton tickets. I am being consumed by envy.
I got a family trip to NY for Spamalot for high school graduation (I think because my parents both wanted to see it), but no one will buy me Hamilton tickets now that I’m self-sufficient. Stupid adulthood.
Happy Holidays, Toasties! My family (mom, dad, beloved little sis who is too cool to hug me) are currently en route to my place a few states north of them. I’ve been tasked with finding a Christmas tree on my way home from work today. It’s a drag, because even though I LOVE Christmas I am a lazy person who doesn’t want to decorate, solely because it’s annoying to take it all down on December 26.
Anyways. Taking them to a brewery tonight. I’ll toast you Toasties and wish you a merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Festivus/Post-Christmas Mall Sale Day!
OMG I FORGOT TODAY WAS FESTIVUS
and why take it all down on the 26th? my family always leaves the Christmas stuff up until January 1 and it’s kind of nice. When you get the tree later it’s fresher and you’re not risking much in fire safety terms.
Good point! The only concern with the tree is my tiny dog who eats anything and everything on the ground/doggie-eye level. Around this time last year ate an entire pack of gum and spent days in the hospital. She’s also eaten a makeup sponge, a squirrel carcass, a chicken wing covered in ants (she found that on one of our walks) and a tampon applicator that she dug out of my bathroom trash bin. She was a stray before I got her, and even though she’s fed two square meals and MANY treats, she still has that scavenger instinct. Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past her to try and eat the tree.
It is pretty to have it all up though!
I put Christmas lights up in my apartment 4 years ago, and they have been continuously up since that time. I thought about taking them down, and was like “nah these are nice extra lighting during the dark winter” and then by summer I forget that they are there or become incapable of seeing them or something.
This is my sole approach to decoration. The holiday part is that around Christmas I often remember to turn on the lights hanging all over my apartment.
I like your style. You know what you’re doing. 🙂
Oooooo. I did this in uni. It was so pleasant!
These days the only christmas lights up in my house are misfits christmas lights. They make every day better.
My family made me get a tree one year. Since they were travelling on the 24th, I didn’t decorate it “so that we could do it together” (read: because i am lazy). Then I didn’t have any decorations (because i am also cheap), and as a result we spent Christmas morning making chains out of brightly coloured construction paper while getting sloshed on boozy coffee.
There are worse ways to spend Christmas morning.
You know how to do Christmas. Also, I’m going to steal your decorating/boozing tips.
Protip: Add frangelico.
Protip2: B52s are bloody amazing.
I believe in leaving Christmas decorations up until Epiphany, aka January 6. It’s the actual Christmas season! How can you take the stars down before the Wise Men have arrived; do you want them to get lost?!?!
I am actually agnostic and leaning toward atheist, so I don’t know why I even care, but I like to tease devout Christian friends and family members about taking down their decorations too early. “I’m not even Christian! Why am I better at observing Christian holidays than you are?”
Although this year, my decorations consist almost entirely of snowflake ornaments and lights, so I think I’ll leave those up all winter. I like some twinkly lights in the bleak dark evenings of January.
Puppies stealing, eating and puking up non food items! Shudder.
Please keep the mini direwolf away from small laundry items! Our wondermutt ate a kid sized sock when he was about 9 months old. It got stuck in his gut, almost killed him. Many vet bills later he recovered. That’s when we learned the hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting trick. (outside only, no matter the weather)
Hydrogen peroxide has saved us so many vet bills! The vet told us about this after we paid to get the dog’s stomach pumped when she ate most of a large Chinese New Year’s candy box (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_candy_box).
For over a year, we had a grease spot on our front walk from the time the dog ate a tub of margarine and several pudding cups and we used a dropper full of peroxide to remedy it. Labs! They’re stomachs with cute faces and tails.
(she once ate a half kilo of gourmet jelly beans. I now know what unicorn puke would look & smell like).
Solidarity, sister! We should have named him Goat. Part lab, part trash hound.
Also, unicorn puke made my day. Thx!
“Labs! They’re stomachs with cute faces and tails.” InDEED.
Mine opened and ate a heart shaped box of Valentine’s chocolates, politely leaving behind the cellophane and little paper cups, and an entire bag of Hershey’s Kisses — with the foil on. He was *totally* fine, didn’t bat an eye, and I got to clean up silver sparkle poop for a few days. Happy Valentine’s eh?
Our springer spaniel ate a bag of Hershey’s Kisses plus foil, too! We called the vet and he told us not to worry about it. Which tells you something about how much real chocolate is actually in Hershey’s candy. Our backyard was all sparkly for a few days.
I believe our vet’s exact words were “The foil is just extra fiber!” 😀
My stepmom’s springer spaniel has eaten (on separate occasions) 4 dozen brownies, 2 sticks of butter, and a 2-lb chocolate bar. He’s been fine after each (once he’s stopped barfing.) :-/
Oh man, labs. A friend of mine’s lab mix had to have surgery after he ate an entire pack of raw chicken wings, plastic and styrofoam included, in less than a minute (stole it right off the counter), and was told by the vet that she pretty much only had to do that surgery on labs and goldens.
“a tub of margarine and several pudding cups” I love your dog so much
One Thanksgiving, while my brother was looking after her, she ate 2 dozen butter tarts and half-a-kilo of brown sugar. And then threw up all over the carpets he had just steam cleaned.
My friend’s lab recently ate half a costco-size bottle of olive oil. Dog looked completely confused when she started projectile pooping straight olive oil. Like just staring at her butthole like, “huh.” I feel like these dogs would be pals.
Oh man, that visual made me laugh so hard I cried
D:
Has anyone read Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel?
I am a ways into it and feeling a little unenthused, and a little weird because I feel like this is a White Knight/Manic Pixie Dream Girl story and I’m waiting for that to be undermined? I know a lot of Toasties really loved Station Eleven, which I haven’t read, but I haven’t heard much about this book. Does it get better?
I haven’t read it, but count me as a Toastie who did NOT love Station Eleven, so I am here to validate your feelings.
I am so meh on that book.
Last Night in Montreal is pretty mediocre compared to Station Eleven. I loved the latter and then read the former and was pretty let down.
I realize this is the opposite of the point made by the “7 Ways Hillary Clinton is Just Like My Abuela” article, but I feel like I need to share that every time I watch Hillary I’m struck by how similar her speech patterns and mannerisms actually are to my (white, upper middle class, college educated) grandma. She purses her mouth in the same way when someone is saying something she disagrees with, and has a really similar speech rhythm. It’s a little disconcerting.
I totally get that too. I think it’s because HRC is a white, educated, upper middle class (wealthy now) grandma. That is her authentic self, I’m pretty sure. And that grandma has my vote!
Yep! I’m pretty sure that similar background strongly contributes to the resemblances – which is why I listed them out – but it still makes me do a double-take sometimes during debates. (And I love my grandma and will vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination because I think she is pretty cool too.)
Nicole, are you going through Lonely Island albums too? Because I did that last night after you posted Dick In a Box. JACK SPARROW!
My in-laws are staying with my husband, our five-month-old girl and me for two weeks. Last night this conversation happened:
FIL to BABY: “You’ve got such a great smile! When the boys get angry at you because you’re so much smarter than they are — ”
Stirrings: 😀
FIL: “– you’ll just smile at them and they won’t be angry anymore!”
S: D:
FIL: “You’re so cute!”
S: *whispers* “Crush the boys’ dreams! Take to the sea!”
Then we had a conversation about misandry, a word he’d never heard before. Anything to avoid politics!
Ha! This is great.
Re: Lonely Island
I found out that my husband and partner of six and a half years has… never seen Dick In A Box! DO WE EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER.
“You’ve seen Jizz In My Pants, thought, right? Like a bunch of times?”
“why would you assume that, after the last fifteen minutes of conversation.”
*whispers* does he even have his flippie-floppies
let’s never mention the nautical-themed pashmina afghan.
THANK GOODNESS I know he’s on a dolphin doin flips n shit because we’ve danced to that on an actual boat.
I appreciate your concern at this difficult time.
I am so relieved he’s not at Kinko’s straight flippin’ copies.
Saga + Hamilton, thank you and good night.
NOOOOOOOOO (by which I mean: yaaaaaaasssss)
WELP
THAT’S IT FOR ME, I’M DEAD FOLKS
Awww, Oswald.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
It’s nice that people don’t want to lie to their kids about Santa but…I’m always a little jealous of people who grew up with Christmas and birthdays. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness so we didn’t do any holidays. Now as an adult I enjoy the hell out of all the holiday things (except New Years, ugh New Years).
I feel like Jacqueline Smith’s story is as much about reproductive coercion and abuse as it is about abortion rights. By the article’s account, she wanted the baby, and her boyfriend was the one who made her get the illegal abortion that ended up killing her. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that having freely available reproductive health care might have saved her, but I also think that she wouldn’t have died of a botched abortion if her boyfriend hadn’t forced it on her.
My god, yeah. The article talks a little bit about the impossible position she was in if she wanted to be an unwed mother, but I think it could have made the coercion aspect more explicit, especially because people still argue today that the father should get “a say” in whether a woman gets an abortion or not. Her story is a pretty good example of what that ends up looking like.
This is a good point. Everything about that story breaks my heart.
I’m knitting away with super bulky! If I can ever read this chart correctly I should just about finish by Friday.
You do know that someone who demands a hat and scarf 4 days before Christmas TOTALLY deserves 100% seed stitch?
Yeah, but it’s my moooooooooom.
I’m theoretically making this: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cloudberr…
I might just do the cables at the end and ribs in the middle.
Yay! Have fun. What did you end up making?
I feel like I am the only person in the world still at work (apart from my colleagues who are also here) and our CTO just informed us he is planning on making mulled wine in the spare office kettle tomorrow. I don’t… think this is possible, but I am willing to watch him try.
I am still at work, and am at work tomorrow morning, and at work (different work, mucking out ponies) on Xmas morning, and then back at work for the 3 non-bank-holiday days next week. Best of luck with the mulled wineing.
Ooft. I used to be that mucking out ponies on the holidays person. Solidarity (and solid muck boots)!
I’m also back in work next week, but I’m planning a big aul staycation later in January to give myself something to look forward to.
I also quite fancy a random holiday in January.
Although not a huge one as I have 7 days of holiday to last until the end of March so i will spread them out a bit, but I will take half a week and actually see my horses in daylight.
I like doing the yard on Xmas morning, we get made bacon sandwiches by the boss and it’s nice to get out in the fresh air an work up an appetite.
Yeah and it’s nice to say happy christmas to the horses.
I have 10 days left, so I’m gonna take a week, spend half of it seeing my friends in Dublin and half seeing my parents. And it will be good.
Update: there was a sale on flights so I bloody ruddy booked some to Dublin. Take that, Christmas schedule.
In a weird twist I’m not at work today. I have today and Friday off this week and I’m going in tomorrow.
Usually as a member of the Occasionally-Belligerent-About-It-Entry-Level-Retail Squad I am dependably at work.
I’m trying to get scheduled for New Years next week. Maybe 6 days I think I’m winning my bosses over to my approach (give me all the hours).
I’ve done that before (in college) and I remember it working like a charm, but also it was college so I didn’t really know a lot about mulled wine. Good luck!
I’m working today, I have a storytime this morning and then I’m spending the rest of the day weeding picture books, because the previous children’s librarian got sentimental about books and kept a lot that have seen better days (or decades).
We are at work and the boss who’s here is the boss who’s always hesitant to let us leave early for fear of criticism from main office. On Thanksgiving they were almost all gone by three and had forgotten to call us. :/
While I am *at* work, I am not so much working… (I haven’t had much to do for ages, and I am cross about coming in today, so I haven’t even tried to pretend.) It’s like a tiny vacation at my desk! Sort of. Do let us know how the kettle-mulling goes.
2 separate gifts I ordered online at the beginning of the month- one for my mom and one for my bff- haven’t arrived yet and I don’t think they’re going to get here before Christmas. Both have wicked vague tracking info (one is coming from England so I get it but the other has been stuck in USPS hell for like 2 weeks, like literally has no info beyond “in transit”). I’m so upset!! Thankfully I have something else for both of them and they’ll understand but ugh!!
I posted in the last OT about how I addressed some packages to the wrong zipcode and I thought they got lost, but incredibly they both arrived here in time to give to my brother while he’s in town! So, I am passing my postal luck to you, through the internet… postal miracles do happen! Here’s hoping it works!
thank you! that’s encouraging!
We have a USPS package that’s still “in transit” although it arrived a week ago. Good luck!
I feel your pain I have a present that was “forwarded to the US” from Heathrow on the 22nd and I have no information from it since. I don’t know why I pay for the registered/tracking stuff if they don’t end up actually tracking it.
Is it weird that I look forward to new Sansa pictures?? She’s the cutest!
Have a great Christmas, Toasties!!!
Far stranger to not look forward to them, I think- so fluffy!
I feel like an outcast saying it, but I miss the old, varied, interesting “Link Roundup” pictures before the dogs took over. I like dogs but I’m not madly into the whole fluffiness thing and I miss the fascination of all the different views and art and design that used to characterise this slot.
I know you’ll all hate me now 🙁
Nah, rich tapestry etc. I would like a mix of dogs and varied pictures, but I’ve also been a new dog owner and I know what that’s like.
Yeah, I’d be happy with a mixture. I cooed at first.
So fluffy!
I used to come here for everything else, but now I come here for Sansa.
ahhhhh I have to take my cat to get boarded today and I’ve never done that before and I’m so nervous for her!!! She was feral and I’m so afraid she’s going to think I’m abandoning her, the poor thing.
Also, that Male Mary Sue article is dynamite, I hope local hospitals are read for an influx of nerd-dude aneurysms.
I dropped my cat off at the kennel yesterday! It was a surprisingly emotional time for me, considering she’s super chill and well-adjusted and handles new situations well, like all the times I’ve taken her on multi-day road trips. But now I’m at my parents’ house and I woke up on my own and not because she was aggressively trying to rope me into 6am playtime, and it makes me sad.
Fortunately the kennel has webcams so I can watch her sleep! Aw, look at her sleeping.
Aw, that’s awesome! I’m hoping I can rope someone at the clinic into texting me pictures of her every five seconds or so.
She’s always suuuper affectionate after I’ve left for more than a day or two, but this time she won’t be in her own space, so we’ll see!
Cannot recommend Rebecca Solnit’s piece Men Explain Lolita to Me enough. (followup to the Toast-linked piece “80 Books No Woman Should Read”) Funny and graceful by turns:
“I’ve been performing interesting experiments in proffering my opinions and finding that some of the men out there respond on the grounds that my opinion is wrong, while theirs is right because they are convinced that their opinion is a fact, while mine is a delusion. Sometimes they also seem to think that they are in charge, of me as well [as] of facts.”
I was avoiding reading this but then I did and it was Most Excellent. Thanks for posting!
I won’t have time to read the links until this afternoon but I feel like this is the place to share this story. My sister and her husband are atheists (so am I) and my mom is a super-Christian of the Evangelical type. My sister’s kids are young and she decided it was ok for mom to take them to church when they spend the night on weekends since little kids church tends towards crafts and singing and sister likes to sleep in occasionally.
Niece, about three at the time, was telling my mom how teacher said Jesus is her friend and he died but came back. Her four-year-old brother had just learned how hearts work and told her, “You’re wrong. Your friend is dead. His heart stopped beating and he is dead now.”
AAAAHHHHHHHH that’s fantastic.
AHAHAHAHA, CHILDREN ARE ADORABLE.
My 5yo daughter, after learning about Easter in UU Sunday school: “That story was really creepy.”
Me: “He did come back to life at the end, though.”
Her: “That just makes it creepier.”
I sure hope she doesn’t have these conversations at school.
This made me cackle!
“Don’t be an asshole” as a moral/ethical set of standards seems pretty similar to dudes wanting women to fall all over them for not being misogynist shitbags.
Which is to say the bar is too low, regardless of your beliefs.
I think she’s failing that lesson if her seven year old doesn’t understand how it is totally being an asshole to stick “God is dead” cards in his classmates’ bags, but that may be spillover Emotions About Atheist Douchebros falling on a kid, so I kind of feel like an asshole? idk.
I had the same feeling, fwiw. IDK, my mom was able to convince my brother at age three that he shouldn’t go around busting Santa for other kids, and my brother was not generally an easygoing, people-pleasing child. And my mom isn’t all that great at empathy. That whole anecdote really didn’t seem cute or charming to me.
I don’t see how “we do not try to proselytize to others because it’s rude and we would prefer people not to do it to us” is that difficult. Someone save baby Dawkins from himself before he ends up with no friends.
I read this as a joke and reflecting on her son’s confidence in his (lack of) religious identity versus her experiences as a child and calling back to the notes she received. I didn’t see this as her son actually doing this.
As someone that received similar treatment growing up atheist in a very christian area of the country I read it more as pride that her child is unafraid. When kids asked me what religion i was I sometimes said “oh you know the regular one” because I know it was “wrong” to not be a christian so I could see how it would be heartwarming to have a child who is unapologetic for his atheism.
I don’t think she is advocating atheist proselytizing ala atheist douchebros.
I can see that reading.
Have all Toasties joined Femsplain? Or has the news already broken and I’m (as usual) channeling Charles Boyle from Brooklyn NineNine?
If this is breaking news, please join the Femsplain Slack channel. Some of us would like to grumble about manbabies to sympathetic ears in multiple Internet venues.
I have come to the conclusion that it is vitally important that someone make a Jessica/Kilgrave fanvid to the tune of “You’ll be back.”
Does anyone want to read this piece about intense female friendships and share thoughts/feelings? http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/12/friendship-affair…
I hate the way the writer projects what are apparently her long-standing codependence issues onto her friendships. I have a (married) best friend who I refer to as my “law review wife” and the fact that we talk basically every day and hold each other’s hands through troubled times hasn’t affected her marriage (and if her husband minded the “lr wife” thing, or she did, I’d stop it.) She is the best, I couldn’t do it without her and if we had a friend breakup it would go harder on me than some romantic relationships, but *that is part of having people you are extraordinarily close to.*
Yes, thank you! And to PRockette and NovemberDecember as well. I feel like I’ve had female friendships that were way too intense like this but there were factors such as being queer (so the answer to “do you want to eat her pussy” was always “sometimes”) and being young (both of them were in my early 20s.) My best friend for the last many years is a gay guy, but I don’t like to think I can’t have close female friendships. And I do have close female friends.
The intensity of the writer’s feelings seem to be a proxy for something else in her life. She seems to need people to “get” her completely. I don’t believe that anyone can ever truly know anyone else. That sounds dark, but what I mean is that none of us are mind readers and we shouldn’t require that our relationships provide that.
I have a lot of close female friendships. None of them are toxic. The most toxic codependent friendship I’ve had was with a man.
Also wtf that therapist. If you can’t be married and have a BFF a lot of my BFFs have explaining to do (to say nothing of Nicole and Mallory’s glorious friendship).
Usually deferential to her insight, I found myself rebelling. “Why?” I said. “Why is it regressed to want to want to have intense, meaningful, complicated relationships with people you’re not fucking related to. Why is it regressed to want to have a best friend?”
“She thought for a while, the way therapists do. “Because you already have one,” she said. “He’s called your husband.”
I knew she was right. I understood that adult female friendships are no longer socially supported or sanctioned in the way they might have been a generation ago, or the way they are for girls and younger women today.”
UHHHH. That seems like really bad therapeutic advice. Why on earth is there this idea that your spouse has to be your only source of emotional intimacy, why are the strictures of compulsory heterosexuality like this. Why can’t you have more than one best friend?? Also if emotional intimacy with your husband is that hard he probably isn’t your best friend.
I think it’s probably BAD for a relationship to have all that burden on it! I always encourage my partner to talk to her other close friends about difficult stuff as well as me because they’ll have different perspectives and, like, I want to be her best friend and confidante but not her only best friend and confidante.
Wow, have not read the whole piece, but that opens a big ‘ol can of worms. What happens if your marriage falls apart? Or your husband/partner behaves in a way that’s abusive or just otherwise really bad for you. You need someone else in your life to turn to, for fuck’s sake.
I am very sad for the writer. And for her husband. And for the friends that are on the other side of her intense loneliness.
I too had a series of intense female friendships, one in childhood, one in college, and one post-college. Only one of them imploded spectacularly on me, and that was the post-college one. The friend was emotionally manipulative and (looking back I can see now) codependent, and the breakup was incredibly painful. It made me realize that it probably wasn’t healthy to rely too much on one person for all my emotional needs. I still feel myself being pulled toward specific women and wanting to instantly be best friends, but I’m trying to more consciously distribute my emotional connectedness.
My theory about friendships is that people are like different kinds of atoms, and they each can handle different numbers of orbiting electrons/friendships. Some are perfectly content with one or two, and some need many more. Personally my orbitals fill up very quickly, and I think that’s fine, as long as the friendships are good for both people in them.
It seems like the author considers relationships that do not have a sexual aspect to be somehow incomplete – for instance, “The friend wanted a real relationship with her, a sexual, romantic relationship, and she wanted, well … a best friend.” I really don’t like the idea that female friendships are somehow less mature than male-female romantic relationships – that they’re fine for an eight-year-old or a sixteen-year-old, but not a thirty-year-old. That somehow we as women must grow out of the need for female intimacy, and learn to connect solely (or at least primarily) with our male partner. For one thing, it’s a strongly heterosexual narrative. It also seems to imply that if a woman just gets with a man, and works at that relationship, everything will be fine, which ignores the existence of abusive relationships.
Platonic and sexual relationships seem prone to different kinds of dysfunctionality, but at their core, I think they are the same: we see ourselves as incomplete, and we rely on others to make us whole. Whatever your gender, and whatever the nature of the relationship, that’s going to end badly.
I have been thinking about this sort of thing recently because (at the request of a therapist friend) I started writing an essay on running/exercise and mental health, and it turned into an essay on my relationship with my running partner, with whom I am slowly becoming comfortable talking about…well, everything. So I had high hopes for this article as a way of validating (and maybe celebrating) my own frequent, intense friendships with women, and was therefore disappointed by the suggestion that such relationships are codependent or otherwise pathological. Why does one’s spouse have to be one’s only best friend? If my pal’s husband doesn’t run, and if my pal is open and honest and compassionate such that I feel comfortable talking to her about things I usually can’t tell anyone else, why…why is that psychologically abnormal? Or inappropriate?
This article left me feeling bad about a friendship that I have been so deeply grateful for.
Toasties seem to agree that this woman needs a new therapist, so don’t feel bad!
Relevant to our interests:
http://www.vice.com/read/the-year-in-male-tears
I’ve succumbed to a ridiculous Oscar Isaac crush and feel like a giggling schoolchild. Send help. Or gifs.
welcome. one of us, one of us!
there, there. you’ll get through it.
maybe have a light snack.
enjoy your stay.
THAT LAST GIF THOUGH
i’m melting
i know. there are few men i’d describe as “dreamy,” but oscar isaac is one of them—a total dreamboat if there ever was one.
I was conflicted for, oh, two minutes, by how attractive I found his asshole character in Ex Machina, but I got over it. He IS dreamy.
Not a gif, but one of my absolute favorite random actor interview moments. Oscar talking about the cat from Inside Llewyn Davis on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me:
FAITH SALIE: Did you have any challenging moments with that cat, Oscar?
ISAAC: Every moment was a challenging moment.
SAGAL: Really?
ISAAC: Yeah because there were like four or five of them because you can’t train a cat.
SAGAL: Wait a minute, you can’t?
ISAAC: Well, we couldn’t train ours. So we just got like four or five different cats that did one thing. You know, like if we needed the one cat that can walk from Point A to Point B, we had that cat. If we needed a cat that would just kind of be numb and semi-sedated, comatose, that’s the one that I would carry around. And so – and then you had the really squirrely one that you needed to jump around, when you needed, you know, an action cat scene.
And that would be the one they would tie to me by a wire.
SALIE: What was your favorite…?
SAGAL: Wait a minute, I’m sorry, hold on. They tied the cat to you with a wire?
ISAAC: Yes.
SAGAL: So you’re on – so they say we’re about to do the scene, and we need the cat to jump around. Why did they tie it to you?
ISAAC: Because they don’t want it to go run off into the subway and get run over, you know, or yeah, whatever. And so what do you think a cat does when it doesn’t want to be tied to you?
SAGAL: What does it do, Oscar?
ISAAC: It scratches your face, your neck. And then you know what happens? It gets away from the wire anyway, it breaks the wire.
SAGAL: So there you are on the set of the Coen Brothers’ film, chained to an orange cat that hates you. This is like…
ISAAC: And really just hates the movie business in general.
SAGAL: This is like a sick remake of “The Defiant Ones.” This is awesome. Did you have a favorite of the multi-cats that you used to play this cat?
ISAAC: The comatose one.
SAGAL: Oh sure.
I’m not much of a commenter, but SO many good links – I had to pop up and give you huge props. *applause*
Also, I am obsessed with Sansa and cannot get enough pictures of her. She can do no wrong. Eats soap? Pukes suds? Adorable.
Ha! Emo Kylo Ren: https://twitter.com/kylor3n
My mother’s actual Facebook page lists her religion as “don’t be an asshole”: https://twitter.com/ajlobster/status/667373187647…
An excellent little song for those who live by that precept: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RiXFqW5F5yY
Hello Toasties! I have a Hamilton-related issue.
I really would love to be into Hamilton. It sounds so great! I love history! I love musicals, in my limited, friends-with-the-high-school-theater-kids acquaintance with them! BUT I don’t know anything about hip-hop or rap, and I am Not A Lyrical Music Person, mostly because I have pretty bad executive dysfunction with a side of auditory processing disorder. (I like music, but generally listen to lyric-free music or just ignore the lyrics and make up my own nonsense words for the most part.) I can’t follow things without a visual component without a tremendous amount of effort. I can do maybe a half-hour act of This American Life or a single Welcome to Night Vale episode, but those require that I lay down with noise-canceling headphones and close my eyes. This does not seem practical for an entire musical.
My question: will there ever be a visual recording of this show available to the public for less money than seeing the show costs? If not, is there something somewhere where someone has paired visuals with the audio recording?
I think I heard they’re doing a theatrical release of the original cast?
They want to, but nothing’s planned yet.
Boo, I was excited when I heard that because even a touring production may not make it here. 🙁
I am sad to hear that nothing is planned yet, but it’s good that the topic has come up! Thanks for the help, y’all
The Jacqueline Smith article is horrifying. The dangers of illegal abortion are so scary (as are, as people have pointed out, women not being given agency over their own bodies. Forcing anyone to have an abortion, much like forcing anyone to go through with an unwanted pregnancy, is Not Okay).
It reminds me of something I’ve been thinking recently, since reading about a case in which a man murdered his pregnant lover (it may have been this one, but it is a sadly common story). I was thinking about how a society with limited opportunities for legal and safe contraception and abortion, as well as a stigma surrounding extra-marital sex and single mothers, provide a lot of motive for men to want to dispose of their partners when unexpected pregnancies occur (not that society is the sole thing to blame, obviously; men who commit murder are not blameless victims in the slightest). But even in the UK today, where attitudes have changed a lot, things like this are happening. So, in conclusion, men are shit.
(As someone who does not want to have children, it’s not that I can’t sympathise with wanting to avoid unwanted parenthood. But, obviously, committing murder or assault or forcing someone into an unwanted abortion is horrific.)
So I had Inside Out at the top of my Netflix DVD queue and was expecting it to come in just in time to have it around and suggest watching it with my family over the holidays and they just instead inexplicably sent me the #2 movie in my queue which is…Roots Disc 5. I mean, I want to see that too (I have seen the first four already, after all), but not really family holiday fare. WTF, Netflix.
If #1 isn’t available when your movie comes in, they move on down the queue. My husband and I very quickly learned to maintain separate DVD queues when we discovered that little bit. Otherwise, we’d miss all his new release stuff for my old stuff.
Nicole, if you want perspectives on the waiting-for-the-diagnosis and the ugh-another-damn-appointment phenomena, there is a fabulous writer over at Grounded Parents named Deek who posts on neuro-atypical topics and whose kids are also rad as hell. (I’ve met them and would suggest they are, in fact, rad as fuck.) I don’t know if she reads The Toast but she totally has Toastie spirit.
I read her posts because I learn a lot about how to interact with atypical brains that way…and because I often learn something about my own brain too.
They should play up the jalapeño thing. No kidding that just improved my opinion of her like 75%… for some reason.
Well I do know that now I will imagine I'm Imperator Furiosa when I'm out anywhere, just generally, so thank you for that. 🙂 But really, absolutely, this is exactly it, with a side of supreme condescension b/c I'm a young-ish single woman who dares go out on my own.
I LOVE the term neuroatypical so much. I haven't been able to convince Mr. Pseudonymica's son to go to his college's disability office. I don't push it because I don't want him to feel like there's something wrong with him, but he has failed two classes and gotten C's that should have been A's directly because of little things he does and does not do because he's on the autism spectrum. I think I finally thought of the best way to phrase it so he realizes he needs accommodations but doesn't feel diminished by it, and "neuroatypical" is the heart of it.
It's beautiful to think of kids getting diagnosed while young AND, most importantly, having it framed in a positive way. My nephew could use that – he's brilliant and amazingly empathetic for a five year old, but he's hyperactive so he gets labeled as a bad kid. It is now, and will be in the future, such a boon to our society if we embrace how some people do things differently.
Yes please storify your hate read! I don't Twitter but I love to hate those guys. I didn't get an answer when I asked someone else this question before, and I really need to know: is the book detestable in a way that is delightful to read, our do you just feel kind of gross?
That would be so brilliant. They'd think they were going to ace it but then they wouldn't be able to use their computer or car.
Here's the link to the Storify: https://storify.com/ppyajunebug/victorian-hate-re…
I'll also put it the Cocktail Hour post when it goes up!
Honestly, it wasn't gross. The corset book sounds like it is, but this one was mostly incredibly pretentious and tone-deaf. But I enjoyed hate-reading it.
Does he know about Wrong Planet? Used to be a good site for sharing info with other neurodiverse people. Not sure if it still is.
My daughter is 12 and autistic. Not an easy path but an interesting one.
It's not great anymore. Lots of weird aspie supremacy stuff. :/
4 months. In retail at least Christmas is now omnipresent for at least 4 months. At least 2 months outside of retail.
I think my sister and her husband went for the best of both worlds in their approach to Santa with my nieces. They've always been honest about his (lack of) existence, but they've also really played up the fun of pretending and have done everything Santa-related with them, still. So the girls get all the fun without the inevitable disillusionment when they realize they've been tricked. It seems to have worked for them.