SANSA IS SO BIG NOW. Also, IntenseDebate is having a freakout, we’re on the Mystery of the Missing Comments. Hang in there!
The domestic terrorists occupying federal property in Oregon are idiots and will almost certainly get out of this alive and well:
The occupation began after a demonstration in support of Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, who were to report to California prison after a federal judge ruled that the sentences they had served for arson were not long enough under federal law.
Among the occupiers were Ammon and Ryan Bundy, two sons of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who became a symbol of anti-government sentiment in 2014, according to The Oregonian.
A lawyer for the Hammonds said, however, they did not welcome the Bundys’ help, according to The Associated Press.
“Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family,” the lawyer, W. Alan Schroeder, wrote to David Ward, the Harney County sheriff.
You may or may not be following #CrippingTheMighty, but David M. Perry has a primer here.
From Friend of The Toast Angela Chen on her time working on her family’s e-commerce site as a kid:
When my mom lost her job as a web developer, she started an online store selling safety products—stun guns, knives, alarms—and enlisted my help. I was 11 and thought this was weird. But only because, as a mostly assimilated immigrant child, everything my non-assimilated parents did was kind of weird to me. My parents moved to the States from central China in the early ’90s. They studied engineering in Ohio and worked in restaurants so that they could bring me here from China, and I could promptly decide I wanted nothing to do with anything they did.
It took years to realize that my parents deciding to try their hand at e-commerce was not a weird “Chinese” decision, but one of the instances where they were wholly influenced by their new home. The decision was the product of a place where the local companies were so ubiquitous that I never asked my friends what their parents did because the truth was self-evident: They were computer engineers. My middle-school best friend’s dad worked for Apple. It was on her family-discount iBook that I first learned to stream music. Another friend’s parent was at IBM. A family friend worked for Sun. My favorite goody from “Kids to Work Day” was a figurine of an Intel engineer who wore a bunny suit to manufacture chips.
Philadelphia Toasties, start your engines to support a cool new business.
Luc Sante is a GENIUS and his books (LOW LIFE is the best book ever written about New York) are incredible, and now he’s turned his sights to Paris (I think he underplays the difference between 19th century urban poverty and 21st century urban poverty, though, especially for women and kids):
Sante’s Paris, already on its way out by the 1950s, teems with balladeers and immigrants, pickpockets and political exiles, prostitutes and clochards, squatters and Situationists. It features washerwomen wringing their laundry on the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin, 19th-century gangs who, excited by James Fenimore Cooper’s depictions of Native Americans, named themselves “Apaches”. These men and women may have been materially poor but, Sante argues, they were imaginatively free and creatively rich in “their neighbourhoods as well as their use of time, their scavenger economy, their cooperative defences, their refusal to behave, their ability to drop out of sight, their key to the unclaimed, the scorned, the common property of the streets”.
The sworn virgins of Albania:
Families in this predominantly farming region of the Balkans could designate one of their young daughters to live a life of celibacy as aburrnesha, or sworn virgin. “Becoming a burrnesha elevated a woman to the status of a man and granted her all of the rights and privileges of the male population,” Peters reports.
Albania’s sworn virgins have gone on to become military commanders, mechanics, and other professions that were otherwise unthinkable for women. “People who chose to take on this role cut their hair and assumed male identities, changing their names, their dress, and their behavior,” Peters writes. Today, local laws allow both men and women to hold property, and the need for “sworn virgins” has died out. Yet for the surviving octagenarians and nonagenarians who have lived as men for most of their lives, there’s little reason to change now.
Ali is a college friend, so by the transitive property, I can…sing?
As I prepared to write this column, I must confess to nursing a nagging worry that I might yet again be branded anti-national, this time for committing the cardinal sin of enjoying the sound of a unique, expressive voice that belongs to a young Pakistani singer. Oh well, while the trolls are busy bashing Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson and minister of parliament Chandan Mitra for running them down during a television debate, and as our minister for external affairs announces that it is time to resume bilateral dialogue with Pakistan, I may as well be out with it and declare how much I enjoyed hearing Pakistani singer-writer-columnist Ali Sethi’s rendition of “Umraan Langiyaan ” on Season 8 of the popular Coke Studio Pakistan series.
Let’s get this out of the way: Cord Jefferson is obviously alive, because he wrote this excellent piece, so don’t panic like I did for no reason:
The ride to the hospital was one of the more surreal experiences of my life as I sat awake, lucid, blasting through New York City across the Brooklyn Bridge and down the wrong way on one-way streets with a siren blaring overhead. On the thirty-minute trip, I finished reading the last two pages of Slaughterhouse-Five, a book I’d often chastised myself for not reading sooner. Billy Pilgrim’s predicament, being “unstuck in time,” resonated deeply in that moment. In an ambulance, an E.M.T at the ready if I were to begin dying—maybe I already was dying—my mind wandered scattershot to various eras and people in my life: A cruel thing I’d said once that I might never be able to take back now. My mom singing to me. A girlfriend I’d once had. I’ve heard she works near the Brooklyn Bridge these days; maybe just then she was on the phone making dinner plans with a new boyfriend, maybe she had to pause for a few seconds to let the siren pass.
I am obsessed with this particular piece of Canadian history, but I don’t think we’ve talked about it before, and FiveThirtyEight has a great piece on it:
On Oct. 31, 1926, Charles Vance Millar, a well-known and wealthy Canadian lawyer, died at age 73. Halloween was a fitting day for him to go; Millar loved practical jokes and spent far too much time doing silly things like dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk and then hiding to see who would pick them up. But that was just a warm-up. In death, Millar unleashed his biggest prank ever — a last will and testament that was basically a giant social experiment. By promising a vast sum of money to the Toronto family that could have the most babies in a 10-year period, Millar set off a race to give birth the moment he died.
Marco is healing up beautifully from his top surgery, SO grateful for the love and support of his Toasties, and if you check out his closed fundraising page, there’s a link to a lil thank-you video he put on YouTube.
If you are very qualified and live in Portland, OR, Bitch Media is hiring an executive editor.
I know we have all seen the literally perfect performance of “Natural Woman” that Aretha did at the Kennedy Center for Carole King, but JUST IN CASE:
Dang, I saw an interview with that Ammon Bundy character on the news this morning and I have never been so pissed off at how stupid network news media is. “I read and interview that said you are ready to die, is that true?” Nothing but a bunch of mealy-mouthed soundbite hunting, no questions about what in the hell is actually going on.
Don’t these guys have to go to school or something? How does a guy say, “We’re occupying a Federal building because of the abuses suffered by ranchers in Oregon,” and nobody thinks to ask, “Which ranchers? What abuses?”
They knew they were going to interview him! Don’t they have a team whose job it is to research the history of the issue so that the interviewers can be prepared to ask substantive questions?
No, obviously not, some bullshit news garbage, all they do is give him an opportunity to present his case in as rehearsed and favorable a light as he possibly can. Good job guys, way to help the public sort out the intricacies of the situation.
Also, the sentencing issue around the Hammonds is not completely reasonable (please forgive me for linking to Reason magazine, which is about 80-90% garbage, I guess this is in the small margin):
https://reason.com/blog/2016/01/04/rancher-arson-…
I think mandatory minimum sentencing is both bad and stupid, though it also seems likely that this particular occupation has got nothing to do with it, since you’d think that, “repeal mandatory minimum sentencing and commute the sentences of people who’ve suffered from it” would be the #1 demand of the Bundy Bros. if that were the case.
HOWEVER it turns out that at the trial, the jury convicted the Hammonds under a standard of “maliciousness”, because hey — ACTUALLY they set all that land on fire in order to cover up evidence of poaching!
http://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/eastern-oregon-…
Fucking Reason magazine, for fuck’s sake.
(mandatory minimum sentencing is still very bad)
Fred Clark over at the Slacktivist complains about this a lot. The lack of good investigation through mainstream media is really messing with public discourse. The real work will be done by someone at a magazine like The Atlantic or someplace else, but no one other than concerned intelligentsia will ever read it.
Admittedly, I always *feel* smart when I can thoroughly parrot a Vox Explainer on whatever the fuck is going on in the news these days, but I nevertheless wish I didn’t have to.
There was a tweet that night where CNN basically said they had “not independently verified” the Bundys’ claims, and it’s just like…then why are you fucking publishing them, you are ostensibly a news organization, wat.
I know, right? Like, what are you waiting for? You are the fucking news, send a guy out and fucking verify something.
God, I hate everything about this story and lack of substantive reporting on it.
To offer only the faintest of defenses, I can tell you as an Oregonian that Malheur is isolated on a scale that most people would have trouble comprehending. And the weather out here is not great for flying at the moment.
But also the media is bullshit and I’m pissed to find myself agreeing with these wingnuts about that, even if it is for different reasons.
yeah but these guys are complaining about federal court cases, you can get that shit on Lexis Nexus. They don’t even need to send Don Lemon anywhere!
Wouldn’t you want to send him away from you every opportunity you got though?
I would, but for some reason, these suckers won’t put me in charge of CNN.
Don, we need you to cover…*googles “remotest places on earth”* Tristan da Cunha! Yep. Need you there by Friday, buddy. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.
Because it’s CNN and we would be shocked if they actually independently verified claims before they say on the air
I hope they send Don Lemon out there to see if it smells like pot.
I’m torn between wanting them to send Don (because who doesn’t love a trainwreck?) and not sending Don (because I don’t think a trainwreck would be a good thing.)
Yeah, CNN needs to Get It Together. I understand trying to get their interview with Bundy up online quickly when they first got it yesterday morning, but that line is still in their follow-up stories today. Time to do some Googling, CNN reporters! Their claims should not be that hard to verify or debunk!
it’s terrible that traditional news outlets have responded to online competition by eliminating their editors and fact-checkers and professional photographers and everything else that distinguishes them from a blog, but CNN has always had the credibility of a Twitter egg let’s be real here
Fred Clark is my fave, he does such a good job of discussing irrational behavior without coming off as superior or condescending.
I sort of wonder, though, if the big news outlets *should* be giving these guys much coverage. I mean what’s the point of a demonstration that no one asked for, with no particular demands? Duh, they want to play cowboy on TV! They want weird crackpots who don’t read the Atlantic but who may occasionally switch on the TV to see them and say “hey, that sounds like my kind of thing!”
Yes, I think you are right. They want to pander to the Angry White Men so that Angry White Men can rise up and reassert their dominance over everyone else again.
The worst part of me wants the government to treat this like they treated Ruby Ridge or Waco, and the rational part suspects that that is how it’ll end up – you can’t have a nation-state that allows internal separatists to take over public land, or else you don’t really have a nation. But I also recognize that these assholes were in part radicalized by Waco/Ruby Ridge, and killing them won’t solve anything long-term. I dunno. It’s a huge fucking mess and I hate them and I wish I didn’t share a country with these people.
I don’t think the government will have to do that, I think we can just wait these suckers out and wait for them to surrender quietly in exchange for food. (Did you know, for instance, that there is a High Desert in Oregon? That’s where they are!)
I DO think that they should all be arrested though, and I’m not sure why the Bundy Bros. are still running around after Nevada.
(They probably brought a buttload of food with them, but twenty bucks says they didn’t think to bring enough water; water is heavy, and it can’t be compressed.)
I really hope that the government is able to cut power and water to them, though I’m betting they’re on a well. Still– you cut power and it’s a hell of a lot harder to get well water!
They’ve probably got a generator, but even then, how much fuel did they bring? How long are they going to run it? And even if they’re on a well, how much water do they mean to draw? There’s at least twenty people there. In the meantime, it’s not like they’re blocking river trade or anything. Even at the outside, let’s say they can occupy the refuge for a year before they go stir crazy or finally run out of supplies, so what? The rest of the world isn’t going anywhere.
Incidentally, it seems possible that they didn’t bring enough snacks to begin with:
https://twitter.com/imraansiddiqi/status/68376451…
Ok, if you’re occupying a federal building, you don’t get to send out for pizza. FFS.
I like the naive confidence in the US Postal Service.
“But…how are we going to get the snacks IN to the building?”
“Just have the Post Office deliver it! Nothing is more reliable than the Federal mail system!”
No, you will smuggle those snacks in under cover of darkness in a daring midnight rescue mission. GOD, if you’re going to be a violent reactionary dumbass, at least commit to the narrative. Christing hell.
Down with government, except for the post office I guess!
At least until they deliver our gogurt!
Isn’t that always the way of it? Every conservative/libertarian I have ever met wants less government for thee, but enough for me.
Yeah — smaller government, except I still want my roads created/plowed/repaired, and someone to put out my house when I set it on fire using illegal fireworks unwisely, and to be able to order things from Amazon and have them delivered right to my door without anyone opening them up or stealing them, and have electricity to power their interwebs and teevees, and interweb service…..
Related, as always: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/ammon…
Rules That Shouldn’t But Clearly Need to Be Made for $1000!
It’s not like this was unexpected! If you’re going to put yourself in a siege situation, you really need to think these things through.
I did not know that they were in a desert. That does give me some hope this can be finished peacefully.
Flexible definition of “desert,” there. Yes, technically we have a high desert in OR, but the area in question is a lot wetter than most people think of when they think of a desert. These idiots have actually occupied a building in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a bird refuge. Since the area is in the middle of a drought, it appears much more desert-like than normal, when it is actually fairly marshy.
Yeah, I wasn’t thinking it was like the Sahara or anything, but I figured it was probably more difficult than usual to live off the land.
Maybe not though, honestly I don’t know a god-damn thing about Oregon.
I’m quite certain these guys are not capable of living off merely normally-difficult-to-live-off land, either
it depends on whether or not that last minute request for emergency snacks comes through
cancellation due to insufficient snacks is definitely the best possible outcome of the peoples’ liberation movement to make starting fires always legal (?)
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, because fucking Chad forgot the Camcorder. Goddamnit, Chad, you had one job.
I am hopeful that no one will get hurt. Because a) we really don’t need to shoot people to enforce laws, there are other ways of being a legitimate government and b) these guys are just itching for some kind of headline-grabbing fiasco that will draw attention for their shitty movement and make the feds look like the bad guys. I say we wait them out, make them walk out all sad and defeated when they realize that they’re poorly prepared and have no coherent platform.
the police/ law enforcement should do everything they can do end this peacefully. And then they should do the same with all other disenfranchised groups, instead of escalating things.
All *other* disenfranchised groups?
I agree with your sentiment, but how are these guys disenfranchised?
poor phrasing on my part. These guys are not disenfranchised.
Ah OK cool, thank you!
Well iirc, Waco and Ruby Ridge blew up in part because neither the Branch Davidians or the Weavers had committed any crimes serious enough to warrant the kind of response it got, and the ATF ran in waving guns around and yelling “YEEHAW!” and it ended . . . exactly how you’d expect. This time around, it’s the protesters (“protesters”) who are waving guns around and yelling “YEEHAW,” not to mention actively speaking about wanting to commit violence, so responding with force would not be especially egregious. It wouldn’t solve the radicalization problem (but then again, what would?) but they at least have probable cause here.
reminds me of the time the Philadelphia police bombed a house, with both adults and children inside, http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/18… .
ETA: That’s a link to why so many people don’t know about the MOVE bombing, this is about the actual incident, http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/13…
I keep linking to stuff about the MOVE bombing when people say “Gee, I wonder what would happen if they were black people,” because it’s worse than just that– we actually KNOW what would happen. They’d be bombed.
I actually just read an account of what happened at Waco, where a special government was team negotiating for a good long while, kids and others were starting to be pulled out, and then one of the government officials went, “they lied about something small, they’re untrustworthy,” and then went in guns blazing. (It was Jamie Holmes’ Nonsense, and it was so frustrating how close it came to not being a disaster.)
I kinda hope the government takes the Noriega route to rooting them out. 24/7, the smuttiest techno-trance gay club hits.
Or all world music, all the time. Saami throat singing followed by yodeling.
Or hell, it’s Oregon: send in the twee girls with ukuleles.
NWA all the time, periodically interrupted with someone yelling, “uh oh, it looks like while you were gone, all the kids in your home town started wearing sagging pants and sideways baseball caps!”
Wild ululation at 3 a.m.
Oh wait, that would probably result in gunfire.
Daft Punk’s “Around The World” 24/7 for a week should take care of it. I mean I love that track but it’s pretty repetitive even with just one listen.
The “journalists” should be reporting much more heavily that the two individuals going back to prison DO NOT support these idiots. The idiots are using them as an excuse and claiming that they are defending “ranchers” in Oregon, but the ranchers in question committed the felonies in question and are planning to report to prison for the rest of their terms as ordered.
Yeah, and the felonies they committed were “setting fire to federal land in order to cover up illegal poaching activities”, information that seems like it’s freely available from the trial transcripts, so I think at the very least if they’re going to do interviews, someone ought to ASK about that.
Right! The lack of decent journalistic coverage of this is disheartening. This is the media that allows Trump to basically just say whatever comes into his head because no one will bother fact-checking his vitriol.
One of my biggest life regrets is that I never attended one of the Penny Marshal/Carrie Fisher shared birthday parties that they used to throw. Not that I was invited, or live on the West Coast, or am probably a few years too young, but I used to imagine I was a party attendee.
Carrie Fisher is a TREASURE. I spent the break watching the new Star Wars three times, the old trilogy twice AND When Harry Met Sally, so I can confirm that she is The Greatest and has aged WONDERFULLY and all the haters can go SUCK IT. Also, I really want that blue dress she wears at the end?
(Part two of my Great Victorian Hate Read is up on Storify and yes, the corset book is just as bad as you’ve heard it is)
I LOVE HER STYLING in TFA because she’s a powerful as hell and dresses like one of my aunts.
Your Hate Reads give me life. Go team mom.
Same! Love the Hate Reads.
“Unfortunately it hurts all 3 of my feelings.” I aspire to be this cold. Bow down!
Also, your Victorian Hate Reads are the best thing. I am only to your fourth tweet and I’m like, “what the hell is a ‘short electronic headline’? As opposed to an analog one? As opposed to a headline you have to power by turning the crank?”
#1 – you are doing a public service! These are delightful.
#2 – is Gabriel a real-life Christian Grey? Good god.
Thank you for sharing the hate. My hate for Gabriel is blooming like a beautiful flower.
Oh, thank you for reading this so that I don’t have to. The “explicitly unwanted gift” thing just bugs me so hard about the corset.
Also the, you know, everything else that this woman writes down. But especially that.
I feel the need to clarify that I am not against the corset lifestyle, some of my friends tightlace and I myself wear a corset for sports support. I am just really against this Gabe guy and hope his wife will someday recover from the Stockholm syndrome.
I’m not against it either, believe me. I’m all for women making their own choices about their fashion and lifestyle and what makes them most comfortable. BUT GABRIEL IS THE ACTUAL WORST AND SHE JUST COMES OFF AS SO. MEAN.
I am just baffled by how vicious she is about other people! Like, sometimes I think awful things, but I stop and check myself and scold myself for it and I certainly don’t WRITE IT DOWN FOR OTHER PEOPLE TO SEE.
Though I think this entire thing might be her becoming super-conservative as a rebellion against her Cool Mom.
“I think this entire thing might be her becoming super-conservative as a rebellion against her Cool Mom.”
I think that’s half of it and the other half is her being really vicious to other women about their own personal life decisions as a way of redirecting all of her anger & stress she tells herself she doesn’t feel about Gabriel.
I bet $5 Gabriel eggs the trash talk on to deflect from being the actual worst.
Wanna bet his compliments to her are always followed by an explicit or implicit “…unlike those other women”
Yes. And I want to have a serious talk with whatever doctor let an overbearing partner put a corset on a sick person in the hospital because God forbid the little woman sleep without her stays.
For real, what doctor/nurse/other health professional was like, “yeah, that’s cool. It’ll only make taking her vitals that much harder, but sure, strap her in.”
I think I actually saw the red mist descend over my eyes when I got to that part. Because her wearing her stays is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING to (terrible, horrible, no good very bad) Gabriel, and he must be centered at all times.
She self pubbed these, right? This is why editors exist.
I’m not a huge Star Wars fan (though I did see the new movie over vacation and liked it) and I am fairly exhausted by all the marketing and buzz and everything, but I am SO HAPPY that it’s brought about all of this appreciation for Carrie Fisher. I didn’t realize how much I loved her until now.
I have no idea how I wasn’t following you until last night, but some other Toasties on Twitter retweeted that Storify and it took me down a long road of hating Gabriel with every fiber of my being.
Oh lord, I need to get a second cup of coffee first if I’m going to make through hate-read part 2. Corset lady is the WORST, but if she were to wake up one morning and realize Gabriel is a nightmare person and wish to leave him I would have her back.
I would 100% read her follow-up book about how she regained her senses and left her husband and formed beautiful strong friendships with other women. She could even continue to enjoy dressing up and tight-lacing. But I would love for her to have the scales fall from her eyes and realize she’s projecting her husband’s misogyny onto other women (and probably herself).
If Susan B. Anthony wore a corset, then obviously feminism is totally null and void. We should just revoke that whole right to vote thing. Politics will be so much easier!
Feminism has always been able to identify and act on every point of the oppressive patriarchy all at the same time, so I don’t know why they were even stumping for the vote when they were SIMULTANEOUSLY STILL MAKING DINNER FOR THEIR FAMILIES pshaw feminists don’t know their history.
I didn’t even make it through a dozen of your tweets before I was too angry to go on, so props to you for actually reading that whole junkyard fire of a book.
GOD. Okay, first, thank you for reading this so I don’t have to.
Second, SHE IS SUCH A BAD WRITER. She’s obviously trying to write in some sort of Victorian style, but it just comes off as a parody of what people think “old-fashioned” language sounds like. “Did not diminish my amusement in the slightest.” JFC.
“Gabriel smiled, starting to be affected by my merry amusement.” What is this?
I think if I ever encountered this Gabriel person at a costumer’s event I’d happily strangle him with the laces from my corset. That would be an appropriate end.
I would buy a corset just to strangle him with its laces because he’s the worst.
Holy wow, that hate read was great. Gabriel sounds like the worst.
This isn’t really “in defense” of her, but a lot of serious reenactors are SUPER snobby about people who wear inauthentic material. They call them farbs and are kind of mean about it.
I first ran into that word in the book “Confederates in the Attic” and the dude always yelling about it was such a dick even the other reenactors were like “spare us.”
She is the worst. Gabriel is even more the worst. I almost want to share her book around the living history program that I take part in during the summer so we can all hate read it and rip it apart and feel superior to her.
How is she unfamiliar with the rational dress movement? I mean, obviously she is, because that would require doing research rather than just picking and choosing historical details to justify her husband’s fetish, but still.
A) the Japanese like all humans fucking love cake
B) the Victorians were constantly blitzed on pain medicine, whatever that doctor tried to prescribe her was almost certainly not “morphine by the pint”.
Everyone knows you only get LAUDANUM by the pint. Morphine you get by the teaspoon.
You could buy cocaine over the counter during the Victorian era. I’m not a historian, I have no idea how many people actually used cocaine for medicinal purposes, but the fact that you could buy it without a prescription leads me to believe that the answer is QUITE A FEW.
I had an old victorian household knowledge books which advised you to pack your sore tooth with opium gum, so yeah.
Thank you for undertaking the hate-read so that the rest of us are spared. It is much appreciated.
OMG your liveread.
OMG THE HATEREAD. I’d give my reproductive organs to see what would happen if Sarah tried to whitesplain history to a Black feminist. Or any feminist of colour, really.
And she keeps using that word (“diversity”). I do not think it means what she thinks it means.
Gabriel can rot.
Also: #TeamMom
“”The 19th century factory girls who sewed corsets benefitted directly from their industry” so were obvs not exploited.”
Did “The Song of the Shirt” lie to me?
I want to hateread the Victorian book but also don’t want to encourage her in any way. <SO CONFLICTED RIGHT NOW>
You are doing Gods Work
See if your local library has it?
Carrie Fisher is, quite simply, a broad. And since there’s not exactly a surfeit of those right now, we should treasure her.
She’s a mouthy broad, and also a hell of a dame.
I think I just found my new twitter bio
NOT LINK ROUND UP RELATED, but omg, i’m an irresponsible adult.
Guys, I’ve lost my keys somewhere between Minneapolis and Lake Michigan.
I have a spare house key, but not a mail box key. Do I bother my landlord or the post office about it?
Probably your landlord, I’d assume they have a copy! When my key broke (in the keyhole!) I had to ask my landlord for a new one.
Your landlord will probably replace the little lock thing & give you a new key. They pop in and out.
Ask your landlord. And hey, everyone loses their keys sometimes, you were just unlucky enough to lose them in a place you couldn’t find them again! Plus, at least you had a spare house key.
Definitely talk to your landlord. That’s why you pay rent, for times like this!
Post office keys are replaceable, I think about $9.
A local organization I love got some serious coverage in the Toronto Star this weekend: http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news/gta/2016/01/0…
They run a mobile library from a bike in city parks in the summer, publish young authors, and other fun stuff! Whenever I’m being overcome with cynicism about today’s book world, I remember all the interesting things that people are doing to share books and reading.
Today there are officially 4 new elements! The 7th row of the periodic table is now complete! http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/04/pe…
Do you think that all the chemistry teachers will update their posters or talk about this?
**Spoiler Alert**
Probably not 🙁
But maybe???? One can hope
All of the chem teachers I had in school were excitable nerds, so I imagine this will be the first thing they talk about when kids come back to school.
Mine were… not.
But I’m glad that some kids will learn of this awesomeness!!!
THIS IS SUPER EXCITING, OH MAN
I KNOW! I can’t wait to see what they’re named!
“New elements can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property or a scientist.” This is so fascinating! Who decided that this was the naming convention?
Imagine the thrill of the Ron Swanson/Chemistry nerd crossover types who made their own periodic table coffee tables when they realize they either get to modify their table or (better yet) make a whole new one!
The Sworn Virgins story makes me think of the Montana Butte Standard newspaper article that @TweetsOfOld linked to yesterday, about trans people in 1936? – https://twitter.com/TweetsofOld/status/6833147760… – https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3945929/transgend… “Explaining the strange mystery of women becoming men”
It might be old news for a lot of folks, but it’s the first time I’ve read it myself, and it was weirdly fascinating. There’s a lot that’s not right at all (based on early 20th C understanding of medicine, I think), and it mostly focuses on intersex individuals or doctors claiming that the person is actually intersex (reading between the lines, I think there’s a bit of fudging going on with some of those, tbh), but there are a few lines about people who don’t have physical reasons for being trans, and it says “well, that’s how it is, let them be, don’t force them to act like the gender they appear to be” (lots of gender essentialism, of course, it’s 1936 Montana)
I think what was most interesting to me is that this one article from 80 years ago feels a lot more progressive than much of what I see today in the media.
Anyway, today is the first day that we had to send the baby to daycare. I think he is going to be okay — it’s probably easier at four months than it would be at two or three years, when the kid has got something like cognitive notions of “abandonment” and “betrayal” — but I am still pretty sad about it.
Don’t worry, there’s only like a 1/1,000,000,000 chance that he will grow up to be Kylo Ren.
If you plead with him to stop being evil and he says something vague about “not being able to deal with this pain”, step away, beyond the reach of a lightsaber.
oh no, your post has just made me realize that somewhere on the internet an angry man is blaming Kylo Ren’s turn to the dark side on his working mother… !
Not only somewhere on the internet – my fundamentalist in laws said that exact thing irl a few days ago, 100% serious.
Put a sock in it, fundamentalist in-laws. Honest to pete.
I hope your reaction was to laugh hysterically. “Oh, in-laws, you’re such jokers! We all know nobody would ever say such a ridiculous thing and mean it.”
Man, he’d BETTER not turn out to be Kylo Ren, I will be deeply ashamed if he gets beaten in a lightsaber duel by a couple of knuckleheads who’ve never held a sword.
TBF he has just been hit by a shot from a bowcaster. That tends to outright kill most normal people.
[extremely Emperor Palpatine voice]
There is no excuse for failure.
Also, 2v1, one had legit hand-to-hand training, and one is the most powerful untrained Force user we’ve seen since Anakin. Kylo’s good, but his hand-to-hand is probably stagnating without people to train against, and he could also be more adept at the cerebral aspect of Force use, rather than the physical (not sure if this split still exists, but it would explain the apparent disparity between his ability to use the Force to pull secrets out of someone, which Darth couldn’t do, and his fighting skills).
And Rey has actual fighting experience, too; she’s presumably self-taught, but we see her dispatching dudes pretty handily with her spear.
Anyway, I read Kylo as pretty plainly a guy with IMMENSE POWER and ABSOLUTELY NO DISCIPLINE, so his relatively poor fighting skills made sense to me — like, stopping a blaster bolt in midair, that’s raw power (and a terrifying amount of it). Extracting secrets from the minds of the unwilling, I think there’s probably some degree of skill involved, but I can buy that it’s as much raw power as it is technique. But lightsaber fighting is all technique, and I can’t imagine Kylo has ever put in any serious time on lightsaber drills.
I’m pretty sure his power is based on the legacy of “I killed a bunch of fellow trainees once” and the fact that nobody’s willing to put up with his temper tantrums in order to actually force him into training.
Also, he’s backed up by a fleet of stormtroopers and a starkiller planet. He’s never needed to actually be competent. Let’s all stop and ponder the real-world analogies here.
I made this exact argument the other day to someone who was arguing that it wasn’t plausible that Rey could hold her own against Kylo in their lightsaber duel. I think when he gets angry, he gets sloppy, whereas when she gets angry, she gets laser-focused.
I hope you discussed this with your care providers and reviewed their records on the matter.
UNfortunately, a comprehensive sword regimen for four-month-olds was something I had to sacrifice in order to get full day care.
The state of daycare in this country is abysmal! How hard can it be to provide trained martial arts teachers in the infant rooms?
It is horseshit and if we have a second kid I am definitely quitting my job so I can homeschool them both in Form II Lightsaber combat as well as, obviously, black magic.
UGH UGH UGH it’s so hard. I’m back at work full time today (baby is 11 weeks). She won’t have to go to day care for another month due to family members caring for her, but I’m already so sad to leave her, and I know it will be harder when we have to put her in day care. I’m pro-day care and pro-working moms, but it doesn’t have to be this fucking early, dammit. #USA
I just mostly feel sad about the idea that he’s going to look around or wake up from a nap or something and want his parents and we won’t be there, and that seems like a shit thing to do to a baby.
I totally get what you’re saying, but also babies that young have very little sense of what’s not nearby. he will for sure be happy to see you, but he’s not laying around thinking, where’s mom??
Yeah, I know, it’s honestly why I think it’s better to do it now than it would be in a couple years when he might be thinking that, or have a sense of “wait, why is dad leaving?” I still feel bad about it, though.
ALSO, I just realized that among the seventeen things that I remembered to bring to day 1, I forgot the bottles of pumped milk, so I just got a call from them saying they’d used up their frozen reserve. Hahahahhhh hahaha, god I hope this child makes it to adulthood.
he’ll be fine! builds character 🙂
oh no, it’s a normal thing for babies to be taken care of by lots of people, sometimes extended family, sometimes neighbors, sometimes day care. And it’s good for them to be exposed to adults with different styles! It really is, even though I can completely understand that it feels sad right now.
Yeah, I know, I was thinking about it recently and I realized that actually the process of joint child-rearing is a much more common and ordinary part of human social structures than I tend to think of, and that actually the “child raised only by parents model” is relatively new and unusual.
I nevertheless feel sad about it. Maybe I just wish it was only for two or three hours at a time, rather than the whole day, every week day, from now until basically forever? I don’t know.
If it’s any consolation, my mother informed me that when they took me to kindergarten when I was 4 (I’d done preschool the year before that), I was much more upset to leave at the end of the day than I was when my parents dropped me off at the beginning of the day.
Are you me? Am I you? School was always waaaay better than home. Hated the end of the school day.
I mean, home was great, and my parents are awesome. I just got sad that I couldn’t hang out with my friends for another several hours.
I know this is late but I just wanted to tell you it will get better! Mine has been in day care for ~ 2 months now and he actually loves it – he even babbles at the other babies! He’s making lil baby friends! Also on Monday I was sick and I took the day off work but took him to day care anyway and it was glorious as fuck. I have never chilled out so much and given less of a shit in my entire life. I was super sad and scared to leave him at first but it has been amazing over all.
Yeah I dropped him off today and I was much better about it and, uh, I am kind of secretly looking forward to a day that I can take off when I can also have him at daycare.
TOAST! HOW WAS YOUR HOLIDAY SEASON, OH MINE WAS FINE THANKS FOR ASKING MAYBE BECAUSE ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 2015, THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, THE LIFE PARTNER AND I FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY ACTUALLY PURCHASED A HOUSE.
A HOUSE. WE BOUGHT A HOUSE ON CHRISTMAS DAY.
We did not bid-war against anyone. It comes w a parking spot (which in urban cities is a big deal, i know, I’m from the burbs where thats just like, standard practice too wtf East Coast). I can have a puppy. WHAT. WHAT EVEN.
It’s a Christmas miracle!!!!
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEW HOUSE!
My holidays were..less eventful. I got too drunk and then regretted it and now am mostly whole again.
I hope you got a really really big bow to put on top of it.
SOON 🙂
Congrats! What an awesome present to yourself!
Congrats! That is totally, totally awesome!
i did this too!! except we don’t close till the end of january. but now i am plagued with constant insecurity, are you having this problem too? what if the second bedroom is too small? what if the closets are too weird? what if the basement floods!??!?!?!?!
i’m not even a homeowner yet and i am already convinced that homeownership may be the most terrifying endeavor ever (ever).
I am maybe overconfident in the skills / dedication of my realtor, in that I have no real worries? I’m mainly preoccupied with interior decorating and possibly overly ambitious pinterest projects? Is painting kitchen cabinets yourself REALLY attainable or just a way to ruin your home? Also nagging anxiety bc we told no one in my fam of critics about the purchase bc we want to be unspoiled in our happiness about this moment / accomplishment w/o other people critiquing any aspect of this major life decision– for a least a little while.
homeownership is terrifying. kind of fun too! but also expensive and terrifying.
Was there a walking stick just casually resting in the corner of the front hallway?
I was JUST about to ask this!!
why/how am i missing this reference…???
Miracle on 34th Street, at the very end.
ah there we go!
Congratulations! such a great feeling
*wakes up not unlike the starfish in Finding Nemo*
me: Morning. It’s morning, everyone! Today’s the day! The Sun is shining, the Toast is back, and we are getting out of…
Me:….
Me: the Toast is back. THE TOAST IS BACK!
Shout out to Unleavings for giving Phillytoasts a heads-up about the new comic shop!
I hate to sound dumb, but I have completely lost the plot on the whole Oregon thing. Can some smart Toast give me the 5-Ws of what this story is? As far as I can tell, it’s white dudes occupying a government building because government is a thing/they have some guns/someone went to jail? And Oregon is just like ::shrug emoticon::? Am I getting this right?
Do you know anything about the sovereign citizen movement? Because that’s pretty central to what’s going on. The people occupying the bird refuge building are led by the same guys who had the Bundy ranch thing in 2014. The place they’re holding up is on a remote plateau in Oregon.
Yes, this. You can read the Vox Explainer or a few other things that lay out the specifics of what’s going on (including the fact that this particular federal building is basically a birdwatching station/occasional fire-spotting station, so not exactly major infrastructure).
But mostly, it’s the secondary reading that will make it all start to come together, since the puzzle pieces that matter involve understanding a really different worldview. (As in, don’t read “right-wing” and think the Republican debates; these guys aren’t the equivalent of Bernie Sanders, they’re closer to ELF, or well… someone else who knows domestic terrorism fix this analogy for me.)
The ‘militias’ of today are tied to the militias of the 90s for whom McVeigh felt sympathy; they’re tied to white supremacy; it’s not a coincidence that their disdain for United States authority figures looks a lot like it might have in the Old West.
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/3/10703712/oregon-milit…
Oh, thanks for following up on me! I don’t really know what’s going on yet myself, except that it has all the hallmarks of the Sovereign Citizens, and those guys are anti-government in a big way. And that it’s in a very remote part of Oregon, thus “And Oregon is just like ::shrug emoticon::?” (I don’t think they are, but are playing the long game and hoping that because it’s remote, and because of how nasty it got in 2014, they can avoid letting it get too big, and the Bundys will back off. i doubt it will happen, but I’d rather not have anyone be killed)
Wonkette has an explainer/summary of some salient points as well, and talks a little about the Sovereign Citizens thing (before veering off into the usual nonsense): http://wonkette.com/597544/who-are-oregons-wildli…
Oregonian here. Nothing I have seen in the media (and admittedly I’m trying not to consume much because the situation is ridiculous) has adequately expressed just how isolated that part of Oregon is. Portland is many hours (and worlds) away.
I do know someone in Burns, however, through my equestrian activities. She and her husband are very right wing Tea Party people. She absolutely thinks the Hammonds got a raw deal. And yet, her take on this is that the Bundys weren’t invited and aren’t welcome.
Oregonian here, as well. And agree — we had a bunch of wackos start here in Bend in a “convoy” to support these idiots. . . but it is a lot fewer people than is being reported or than the Bundy folks are claiming.
And it is indeed very remote and very wintry. . . and the refuge is not heavily used in the winter, anyway. . . I don’t think it is so much that Oregon doesn’t care but more that “wait, why are these idiots from Nevada coming here to “support” the Hammonds who don’t want their support anyway.” Like, we’re all sort of thinking, hmm, it’s winter and miserable out there. . . how long do you folks really want to hang out for this basically meaningless revolt? No reason for the FBI or whoever to get real excited if we can be calm and slow about responding and keep this from becoming a disaster that helps propel Trump into the White House.
Another Oregonian checking in. Burns is about 5 hours from Portland, and quite far from any of Oregon’s (few) major cities; the whole eastern part of the state is home to towns that rarely have populations over a few thousand. The county Burns is in, Harney, is one of the largest counties in the country at 10,000 square miles. There are only 7,700 people total in the county. They’re outnumbered by cattle 14 to 1. And the BLM/federal government own about 75% of the county. One of the reasons they may have chosen the bird refuge, is that ranchers in Harney county last year were the first of many western counties to sign 30 year agreements with the federal government to try to protect the sage grouse on private lands (the government was considering listing the sage grouse as endangered, something they have decided not to do). The protection of the grouse has caused some contention because it competes with grazing land for cattle. And by agreeing to protect the grouse, the ranchers have to put in place certain conservation measures on their land, which they have pay part of the cost for. They also have to remove juniper trees, which grouse don’t like and which have invaded the open land caused by over-grazing or tree cutting (the cattle don’t like junipers either, so it also benefits cattle, but it is expensive).
Okay, so: some ranchers were convicted of arson for setting fires, one on land that wasn’t theirs but that they leased for grazing from the Bureau of Land Management, and one on land that was theirs but spread to federal lands. They were convicted in part because evidence was produced that one of the fires was set to cover up illegal poaching, which I believe they deny. The other fire was supposedly set as a backfire to prevent a wildfire from getting onto their land and destroying their winter feed stock, but was set during a burn ban and the government argued that they put firefighters in danger and were irresponsible. (Here’s what the DOJ has to say about it: http://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/eastern-oregon-…
They were convicted under part of an anti-terrorism statute for setting fires on public land, which carries a minimum sentence of five years. When they were originally sentenced, the Hammonds argued that the sentences were unconstitutionally harsh, and the judge agreed and sentenced them to less time. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, vacating the original, lower sentences on the basis that the court could not ignore the statutory minimums, and they were resentenced to the full five years, less time served.
So, the people occupying the building are angry about several things: the fact that they were sentenced under an “anti-terrorism” statute, and the fact that they’ve been resentenced to such long sentences. There’s also longstanding anger about the way the Bureau of Land Management controls so much of the land and in particular grazing land in the state. This NPR article has some more context: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/03…
BRAVO
But from what I can tell, the people going to jail are trying to distance themselves from the building-occupiers, no? They’re basically throwing their hands up and saying, “We’re not with them,” and the occupiers are like OH YES YOU ARE.
That is correct.
Correct! Some of the occupiers claim that they’ve spoken to the Hammonds (the arsonists) and that they *would* support them if they could, only, you know, the government won’t let them. They’ve provided no evidence to support that assertion, as far as I know. For context, Ammon Bundy, leading the militia, is the son of Cliven Bundy (him what did the whole armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management two years ago when they tried to take his cattle for nonpayment of grazing fees). However, even Cliven Bundy has stated that he doesn’t think this should be happening, since the Hammonds have stated they don’t want it. The occupiers appear to be using the Hammond ranchers merely as an excuse to forcefully occupy government land and make a statement about “federal government interference.”
My understanding is also that for one hot second at the start of the building-grabbing, the rancher-arsonists were on board with the whole plan. But then their lawyer was very clear about the reasons for NOOOOooooope, no no no no nope, and now they are making all the correct noises about how they are very much looking forward to reporting to prison.
Man, nothing says “anti-terrorism statutes should not apply here” like an armed takeover of a federal building. :/ But thank you for the very helpful explanation!!!
NPR has some good background that touches on the age-old tensions over public land usage in the West. This is the latest chapter in a very old conflict: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/03…
Here’s another article explaining the key players and issues http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/….
That baby-having contest story is making my uterus convulse in fear.
It’s horrifying. Why would you make that will?
If Millar was smart enough to amass all that fortune, he surely had the foresight to thank that there would be a number of very poor families trying to have lots of babies, and yet not having as many as someone else. What did he think would become of them all???
I suspect he didn’t care.
Yes, and only the liveborn legitimate children count! It’s horrible in so many ways.
And the baby that died of RAT BITES.
that is the worst. stop having babies if you cannot prevent them from being EATEN BY RATS.
But if you win the money none of your babies will die that way again! Long-term goals!
(This whole situation is horrible and I cannot believe it was allowed to happen.)
If the Knick is historically accurate, wild rats can give you meningitis? I think?
When I was visiting rural Russia I saw a pin for “having lots of babies for the motherland” (that’s my memory of the loose translation) and I am SO PISSED I did not buy it.
This weekend I got a cat, and I am very sad about leaving her behind today to go to work, of all places. In general being a responsible adult is coming very hard this morning after a week of lounging around.
That’s exactly how I felt after my first weekend of cat parenthood. I hope goingh ome and seeing them is fabulous!
Congrats on the new cat! Mine was horrified this morning as I was leaving for work after spending almost a week with her lounging around. I’m afraid of what I will find this evening.
poop and mayhem, maybe. but rugs can be washed and vases can be replaced. YOU HAZ A CAT TO GO HOME TO 😀
Yea new cat!
I only had Friday off, and it’s still awfully hard to go back. More three day weekends, I say.
I hope you are ready with pictures for the cat thread on Friday!
I feel this way every day I leave for work, and usually explain to my girlcat that I have to go, but I’ll be back at suppertime.
Back at work, so I can’t stay long, but Sherlock comment thread? (Post-commentpocalypse, I have no idea if there was one in the weekend post or not?)
SPOILERS…. edited to put spoilers in reply.
So I think there was a genuinely fun 1 hr. Victorian Gothic special with lots of quotes/allusions to original Holmes in what ended up being a 90 min. mess. If he had solved the Bride mystery (w/out Suffragette Conspiracy in purple klan robes – WTF?!) and then woken up on the plane once, that would have totally worked for me. As it was, good lord, that last half hour flew straight off a cliff. Not sure if I hated robed conspiracy or flying off the waterfall more. But it was… entertaining, at least?
MOFFETT MANSPLAINING FEMINISM ON PUBLIC TELEVISION MADE ME WANT TO SET IT ON FIRE. I tried to watch, I will follow Bandicoot Cummerbund’s cheekbones off of a cliff, but REALLY. Sherlock mansplains feminism.
Oh god, that was Moffett!! Now I know who to blame for that messsssss.
Moffett seems to think that acknowledging how little women get to do in his shows actually counts as giving women equal voice/time in his shows. >:(
I didn’t used to get too bothered by Sherlock’s gender politics — all that stuff about Irene Adler being a betrayal of feminism never bothered me much — but I feel like this episode finally firebombed my good will. It was so condescending. Thanks, Sherlock writing team, for getting up to speed on the burning issue of whether women should have voting rights!
Plus I’m becoming very annoyed with Mary Watson. I feel like the writers think they’re so very feminist now because of her, but she’s such a Strong Female Character (TM) without any depth.
That being said, I’m with liv in that I was having a good time with the spooky Gothic murder story. I wish they’d just left it as a fun, unexplained romp in Victorian times without trying to give it some overarching meaning to the series plot.
I continue to maintain that the correct way to fix Moffat’s terrible gender-writing problems is to just let Sherlock exist in a weird parallel dimension populated 100% by extremely pale British men. (There could also be some not-pale British men, but heaven knows the man isn’t up to writing about them.)
No explanations should be proffered or accepted about why this world is 100% m-slash, nor should anyone even remark on it.
Ugh yes. I have tried to excise that bit from my mind and am instead trying to focus on fun costumes and the fun dialogue bits that Mrs. Hudson got. lalalalalala…
I had a tiny problem in that the episode had been spoiled for me via twitter (totally fine! I don’t mind spoilers!) and so I knew that it was a feminist murder plot, so then when the pips arrived I wanted to flip a table. And then the ‘had she been to America recently?’ question. I was super hopping mad, but couldn’t explain to my husband why, because he hadn’t read the spoilers. But. Pips?! They used that story line, about the KKK to hint at … feminists? Ugggh. Why? Why even make that connection. It’s awful. Anyway, I held all that in until the scene where it becomes resolved and then, yes, the episode kept going, but why. The cliff bit was ridiculous, but not infuriating. So I hated it slightly less. Also, I’d stopped paying much attention by then.
Ugh, they could’ve done a storyline with modern day white supremacists and used the pips storyline to tell a genuinely frightening tale about how pervasive and insidious they are.
I would be less annoyed if they’d skipped the silly, klan-esque robes and had them meeting in a no-non-sense townhall kind of style. Why make it seem like a pseudo-religious cult, rather than a calculated conspiracy for revenge given the limits of their power in society? I’m still harboring some annoyance, I guess.
I legit thought the pips were a call back to the Season 1 Episode 3, were they not? as soon as the pips arrived, I remembered that Moriarty had used pips to communicate with Sherlock and Sherlock had explained that old secret societies used them
So I thought the husband was going to be tied up with a secret organisation and he’d done something bold and now they were coming for him.
And I feel like that’s what they were going for but they just didn’t manage it?
TBH I had to stop it about 45 minutes in because I was falling asleep and I didn’t want to fall asleep and wake up and see the end without having seen the rest.
Also I could just hear Moffat winking at tumblr every 5 seconds. STOP THAT. STOP DOING THAT.
I really liked, “the orange pips are symbol of death, according to the traditions of America.”
Oh, yeah, of course, in America our long tradition of using orange pips to warn someone of their impending doom, naturally.
Naturally.
And if one should receive an envelope of dried pips in the post, one instantly knows what it means and is scared; even if one lives in a different country where the tradition doesn’t exist and you’ve never heard of it before.
It’s my favorite misapprehension about America, right after that time when Stephen said on QI that Americans call quarters “two bits” (in the E series) which … maybe in the time of George Washington, but in our modern era? No. Never.
Ah! They might’ve used them in the series before, which makes me a tiny bit less irate, but in the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story, “The Five Orange Pips” (which I listened to on tape when I had a v boring data entry job, so it’s burned in my brain along with the rest of the adventures), it’s explained that it’s the KKK who use the pips. That’s the secret society. So in the story, I think Sherlock puts it together because there’s a boat that docked from somewhere in the American South and the guy who received the pips had tried to take down the klan. So maybe the current series is trying to say pips = all secret societies, but that seems kinda weak to me, compared to pips = calling card of this one particularly awful secret society that most white novelists and storytellers were not even calling out as awful in 1891 (when the story was written, to compare “The Birth of a Nation” from 1915, which was screened at the White House by Woodrow Wilson, glorifies the klan).
It seems like an opportunity missed and a message muddled, if nothing else.
They did use them, which is why I thought they were using them this time; but it was explained before that specific societies used them for specific communications (i.e. 3 pips = you have 3 hours to live etc). But yeah this time they’ve just said ‘oh yeah some secret societies do this thing and we’re not going to explain if there was a specific meaning to the pips or if it was a specific society that sent them, the man obviously just saw the pips and understood that they meant he was going to die.’
I get that they wanted to do the switcheroo with the wives killing their husbands because *feminism* (which is another rant in itself because UGGGGHHHHH.), but they really dropped the fucking ball with the pips; the husband clearly didn’t know who they were coming from or why they were being sent, just that it meant death. I thought it was at least going to be that he was in some sort of club (where the pips are an actual thing) and he’d done something bad and was expecting them to come after him. They could have still had their switcheroo and just said that he wife knew about his club and decided to fuck with him and send him the pips herself.
HONESTLY MOFFAT DOES NO ONE READ YOUR SCRIPTS BEFORE THEY’RE FILMED.
Also, if this mind palace exercise in realizing that women are f’d over by society and by the individual men in their lives changes Sherlocks’ behaviour towards the people in his life by one single iota, I will eat my hat. But it won’t. Which makes this whole episode feel super extra pointless. Ugggggghhh.
I enjoyed it despite it’s problems. But I think it also revealed a central problem with the series. They created a really great, charismatic villain who has bonkers chemistry with Sherlock and then killed him off. So that begets all this nonsense in the mind palace because it’s the only way to have Moriarty since they chose a method of death that he can’t plausibly come back from.
I enjoyed it more than most Sherlock episodes because most gaping plotholes could be explained away by “it was a drug-induced hallucination”. It meant I shouted at the screen so much less!
Yeah that’s the only thing that made the Mycroft-in-a-fatsuit and Moriarty fellating a gun bits even marginally acceptable.
I found the Mycroft stuff profoundly uncomfortable, although I can’t articulate why.
I found it really disgusting, but I felt ok with it in the end because since it’s all in Sherlock’s head it was really just a reflection of his animosity toward his brother. Not an actual representation of a plus-sized person. Sherlock is irked by his brother in general, and he tends to view human needs like food and sleep as weaknesses, so in his hallucination that translated into a really gross depiction of obesity.
Alas, even this wasn’t enough to allow me peace on it. Once the anachronistic phrases were flying by super-obviously, I went with ‘ah-ha, some other clue is turning itself into a metaphor in Sherlock’s head’, but “Sherlock thinks eating is gross so we all got to spend 60-ish minutes being grossed out by a fat person eating” is… too little. (YMMV, bien sur!)
I wrote an LJ post about the fatsuit and why I think it’s a problem if that’s what you’re talking about.
The fact that Sherlock’s fatphobia isn’t presented as a character flaw* is definitely a big issue, yes! Thanks, that was a very good summing-up of why it was so bad. (Also, the fact that they seemed to go out of their way to present it as deliberately revolting – eating food is not bad! Being fat is not bad! Please don’t depict both as being somewhat gross and unpleasant.)
I am very glad to see I am not the only person still posting on LJ.
*That said, while they do make it clear that John’s misogyny is a problem, I would much prefer it if he just wasn’t a misogynist. It doesn’t make it better if you wrote sexist stuff and then say, “it’s fine, we know it’s sexist, Moffat.)
I would much prefer it if he just wasn’t a misogynist.
With Moffat at the helm? Realistic goals, please. Seriously, I cannot imagine him changing. Ever.
Yay for LJ! Where/who are you there, if you don’t mind me asking?
See, I think this and the one-off holiday special aspect made me slightly more tolerant of it than I otherwise would have been. Not to mention, after years of being watching DW and Sherlock, I mostly just roll my eyes and go “Moffat’s being Moffat again.”
I have tried so hard to like Moffat, especially as so many people talk about how great Sherlock is, but I find that so many of his things just feel like he’s saying, “Look at this amazing plot twist and complicated mystery! Be impressed at how clever I am!”, and then when you think about it for more than two minutes there are plotholes everywhere and the plot relied on nobody acting like a normal human being. I also do not like his Holmes or his Watson (and unlikeable chacters don’t make something bad, but I feel like we’re meant to like Watson, at least, not scream at the screen about how terrible he is).
Exactly. I ALWAYS think “You think you’re so clever and the characters you’ve created are so clever and you’re really just playing and being too goddamn clever for your own good 99% of the time.”
Yep. It’s not that plotholes existing is so terrible, it’s just the fact that he seems so sure that everything’s so brilliant and complex and revolutionary, and it just isn’t.
All of this. I really liked him back when he was just writing one episode per season for Doctor Who–they were creepy and atmospheric! It was a nice change of pace! Now that he’s in charge of the show, though, I just want him to be gone.
Yes! He was a super guest writer (are you my mummy?) but it has gone splat since he took over.
This. This is whats been rattling around in my head for so long.
Moffat just isn’t as smart as he thinks he is and/or pretends to be. I think he gets so distracted by messing with the fans and thinking about what the fan reaction to things will be (so. much. pandering.) that he forgets to deliver an actual story.
At this point I feel like this version of Sherlock has just become a parody of itself (the bachelor party thing? honestly. sure it was funny, but that’s what fanfic is for. Actual Sherlock doesn’t drink you twat. Drinking is for idiots to forget about their problems, Sherlock gets high on his work, or failing that, actual drugs.)
I think the biggest problem is that they’re not written backwards? They always feel like a “mystery” story I wrote when I was about nine, which started off with a wonderful spooky atmosphere and unanswered questions, and then got progressively more pants as I tried to make up adequately spooky answers and explanations. Real mysteries are written from the twist/solution backwards, so as you work through everything logically slots into place and the reader discovers what the writer was thinking all along. Sherlock always feels lik eit was written forward, with someone trying to come up with clever solutions after they’ve trailed spooky questions, but they’re always terribly disappointing.
I massively prefer well-written Sherlock fanfic to the series for this reason!
My main takeaways were:
1. Molly looked better with her mustache than John did with his.
2. If Moriarty isn’t for real dead I’m going to roll my eyes so hard.
3. I legit thought Victorian John and Sherlock were going to make out on that waterfall cliff but then I legit thought they were going to make out like 10 minutes into the first episode so I should have known better.
I thought Molly looked better with the moustache than she does usually (not that she looks bad! She just isn’t my type. But apparently in drag she is? Who knows).
My boyfriend asked me if I still thought Lestrade was the sexiest. I had to sadly say that no, I did not. Muttonchops suit nobody.
Oh god yeah, justice for Lestrade’s face!
Lestrade is normally the only character I find attractive and the only one I actually like (because he DOES HIS DAMN JOB and is not terrible), so I was very disappointed.
I recently rewatched that absurd Doctor Who episode where he played the roguish old timey big game hunter and I was like “Hot damn I forgot how attractive you are, Freddy Honeychurch!”
Yes. Justice for Lestrade’s everything. I feel like most of the time, he’s just “everyman cop, not a superhero, has some patience for Sherlock’s manic nonsense but not all of it.”
Muttonchops!Lestrade just comes off as a superstitious fool with a BAD FACE.
It was a HOT MESS and I felt embarrassed for everyone in it because surely they’re all better than this!
Also, there was an exchange that was straight up lifted from Hannibal/Silence of the Lambs – “What made you like this?” “Nothing made me. I made me” vs “What happened to you?” “Nothing happened to me. I happened.”
I feel the same! They have all of these amazing ingredients and yet they just *keep* dropping the ball.
Moffat comes up with some great story premises (on Sherlock and DW) but I always feel like he doesn’t bother to think how it will end and in the end just says ‘fuck it, throw some references at them’ or its actually a really basic solution that I thought of 5 minutes in but thought they wouldn’t go with because its too simple. Like I have no problem with simplistic, but don’t sell your show and your main character as ‘much smarter than everyone else’ and then rely on total cop outs.
Either Moffat isn’t smart enough to write smart characters (which means he needs to find some smarter writers) or they fear that people (*cough* Americans *cough* sorry.) won’t get it and need to dumb it down a bit. Which is stupid and enraging. I’d much rather have to watch something 5 times to figure it out (provided it is actually intelligent and not just complete nonsense. Hello Jupiter Ascending.) than guess the ending 5 minutes into the show.
A+ on the secret conspiracy of suffragist murderers, I honestly didn’t think that Moffat’s crypto-misogyny could get anymore ludicrous, but he definitely surprised me with that one.
Yeah, it’s barely crypto at this point. I am not Sherlock levels of observant, and yet…
I was very confused about whether they were meant to be suffragettes or not. I mean, suffragettes did move towards committing acts of terrorism/civil disobedience, but that was mainly blowing up postboxes and throwing bricks through windows, rather than dressing up as ghosts and murdering men.
No, they definitely were a women’s lib Ku Klux Klan, votes first, murdering abusive husbands second. (Or vice versa.)
Maybe I missed it but it also seemed like they didn’t explain why they killed the particular men they killed? Like was it just because they were jerks or what? I could 100% get behind a lady cult who take turns dressing as ghost brides to prank men/make men pee their pants in terror but I’m going to need some more background info to be able to endorse the murder aspect.
Honestly, I kind of would have been okay with a lady-cult dedicated to murdering perpetrators of domestic violence, under the right circumstances and written and directed by the right person, which I feel this was not.
ALSO, how much bullshit is it that Watson is like, “oh, what if it’s a twin?” and Sherlock is all, “It’s NEVER twins” FOR NO FUCKING REASON, I mean he could at least CONSIDER IT, and then he’s all smug about the actual solution to the mystery which was, “pretend to shoot myself, then get my friends to switch out a look-alike corpse,” and come on man that is a twin! That counts! If the key to your mystery in any way hinges on “a different person who could easily be mistaken for the murderer” that is the broad category of “twins and/or doubles”.
Obviously Sherlock has never watched The Prestige.
That was also my first thought.
I thought it was a deliberate House “It’s never lupus” reference, which is staggering levels of up-your-own-arse-ness.
Did anyone else get to the part in the morgue where Sherlock goes on about someone being shot in the head and surving and just think ‘oh for fucks sake’.
I love Andrew Scott as Moriarty, and its great seeing him again and all (although a *touch* too crazy, which I didn’t know was possible.) but just stop. Please. Stop.
I didn’t mind, because it showed that Sherlock was always obsessing over Moriarty in the back of his head. A lot of the stuff in this episode that made no sense was the stuff that made no sense to Sherlock. He (like Moffat) doesn’t really understand feminism in the first place, he’s much less likely to while on a drug trip.
do people generally abuse cocaine and morphine on such an interchangeable basis that their loved ones can’t tell the difference? or did they back then? as a modern-day recreational drug user, that part rang silly to me.
Yes it should be pretty obvious which one he’s using by how much talking there is.
Well in the show’s defense, Sherlock was always switching between cocaine and morphine in the original stories.
okay, that makes sense. i should probably read any of the original stories, but i have not. thank you!
For your consideration, a rough draft of the two minutes of dialogue that Moffat should have put in the fireplace scene:
Watson: So how was Sir Eustace connected to Mrs. Ricoletti?
Holmes: Mrs R’s first husband was killed by the KKK, of which Sir Eustace was a member, for marrying a white woman. He was a sergeant in the Union Army’s colored troops.
Watson: Good heavens.
Holmes: So the women used the orange pips to make him think his old comrades were after him; the robes as well, in case he saw any of them. They were purple to blend in with night shadows. Hooper explained it to me later.
Watson: So how should I title this?
I can’t believe I agree with every single one of these comments. If it was gonna happen anywhere, though, it was gonna happen here. I LOVE THE TOAST
I LOVE EVERYBODY IN THIS BAR
This looks like something Mallory would approve of: warm sweaters for fine art? http://www.sallyspinks.co.uk/Project_gallery/Page…
possibly not.
anyway, I approve.
Cherubs with beanies?! I did not know I needed this in my life, but apparently I do.
Aren’t they great?! And all the various Venuses with stripy sweaters!
this reminds me of when i was little, and my friend christine and i would cut outfits out of the sears catalogues for the bikini girls on her dad’s autoshop calendars
OT but I can’t stop freaking out about this. I was in the shower this morning and I heard a gurgling noise like my toilet was suddenly backed up, and then a RAT CLIMBED OUT OF THE U-BEND. I thought this was an urban legend that is sometimes in horror movies. APPARENTLY IT’S REAL. NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. Not using a toilet EVER AGAIN.
WHAT
Wait, climbed out into the bowl? How even… wouldn’t it have been under water too long? How long can a rat even hold its breath?
Regardless of how the rat accomplished this feat it is terrible that it happened to you at all!
That was why I was so shocked! According to google, toilets are only filled with water in the toilet part, and the rest of the pipe is clear unless it’s actively being flushed. So, it would only be underwater for a couple of seconds to climb out.
I don’t really mind rats, but I mind animals suddenly emerging from my toilet, aaaaah
Well now I know more about plumbing than I used to and have reasons to look at every toilet with suspicion from now on. I wish you luck with your toilet trust issues.
But what happened next??? Did it get out of the toilet or were you able to send it back from whence it came?
Rats are, in fact, pretty hardcore.
wat the FUCK
AHHHHHHHHHHHH *closes toilet lid forever*
brb- buying locks for my toilet seats
I stuck a giant shakespeare anthology that weighs at least 5lbs on the lid
Almost anyone would put something heavy on the toilet lid. That you specify “a giant Shakespeare anthology” is marvelous. So very Toast.
But then you’ll open up the toilet and find a DROWNED RAT.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I am so sorry that happened to you!!!
Set the toilet on fire.
i was going to suggest burning the whole house down and starting over somewhere else but perhaps your more measured approach is advisable.
My vote is for burning down the whole city/area covered by that sewer system.
And starting over in Alberta, if the wondrous tales of it being rat-free can be believed.
WELP LOOKS LIKE IT’S TIME TO MOVE
Come to Alberta! We don’t have rats!
Wait…what? *is baffled*
We really don’t!
Rats are an invasive species in North America. The Alberta government figured out about them before they expanded to here. Most of our borders are too far north or too mountainous for rats to be coming in. The remainder are rural enough that not many rats are expanding across them. The government employs a bunch of guys with shotguns to monitor the areas near the rat-friendly borders and take out any rat infestations they find. (Plus there’s poison bait and traps and stuff, but the guys with shotguns are what usually gets reported in the news.)
It’s probably not going to last forever, because if any rats make it to one of our cities and set up a breeding population then there likely won’t be any way to get rid of them. But so far, no rats!
Related: If you do move to Alberta, don’t bring pet rats. They’re illegal.
rat-friendly borders
rat-friendly borders
I’m not actually laughing at Alberta, just that phrasing.
wait WHAT
how
how no rats
does not compute
/new yorker
We don’t have raccoons either, at least in Edmonton, but I don’t know why. Maybe because of the coyotes, or the cold, or the combination of coyotes and cold.
Fascinating.
Wow. I had no idea!
/Vancouverite who has seen more than her fair share while out and about on the streets
Yes, come to our Rat-free Utopia! There is a fairly entertaining short about this at the end of Ratatouille btw (I think it’s after the credits). We don’t need to talk about any of the many other issues, but no rats is a big bonus tbh. ESPECIALLY after this horrifying little anecdote.
time for a vacuum-powered space toilet.
OH NO. That is horrifying and I am so sorry. I hope it was a freak one-off occurrence and you never have to deal with it again.
(The fictional example I can think of with this happening is When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs, which is utterly chilling and not something I would want to be reminded of. I am sorry you have had to experience this!)
WHERE IS THE RAT NOW
It never got out of the bowl. Once I realized it was a rat in the toilet bowl, I slammed the lid down to trap him in there. My fiancé came in the room to see what I was screaming about, gingerly opened the lid and… there was no rat! It climbed back down the u-bend.
THAT IS THE SCARIEST PART OF THIS STORY AND I WILL NEVER STOP CAPSLOCKING AGAIN
This happened to me and not yet husband years ago as well! In the middle of the night after I had gotten up and used the bathroom, THEN, when I got back to bed I heard noises in the bathroom, but our cat was on our bed. Turn on the bathroom light and there was a rat in the toilet. I legit freaked out, rat freaked out, rat made it out of toilet and into the tub. (It was a very small bathroom) Not Yet Husband ended up stunning rat with a combination of listerine and a large flashlight. I feel both relieved and also sad that we killed him. TL:DR I live two states away in a much more modern house, still close toilet lid.
Oh gosh that’s horrible! I like how completely useless your cat was. I have two cats and neither of them cared, except when I ran by and got them wet (since I had been in the shower and ran out). He had opinions about that. But, the rat? Didn’t care.
IS THERE A WAY TO PREVENT THIS OTHER THAN CLOSING THE LID WHAT IF YOU WERE SITTING ON THE TOILET WHEN IT HAPPENED OMG AAAAGH
So apparently there’s supposed to be some sort of grating/system by which this doesn’t happen in modern plumbing. However apartment was old and we were on the ground floor. Also rats give no fucks about our rules is my takeaway.
omigodomigodomigodomigod
i’m currently on the sixth floor so i feel safe (that would be a committed climb even for a hardened chicago rat. i did see a completely flat rat on the street the other day though). BUT I AM ABOUT TO MOVE TO A HUNDRED YEAR OLD HOUSE (but still on city lines) IS MY BUTT GOING TO GET RATBIT
Are you on a septic tank or city sewer because where did it even get into the pipe?
City sewer. I’ve heard urban legends in this area about rats climbing through the sewer system up into toilets, but I didn’t realize it was A REAL THING.
Welp, 2016 starts with a bang. Thank you for this trauma.
This happened to me! I heard splashing and opened the lid, and there was a rat staring back at me. Of course I immediately closed the lid and put a cast iron pan on it, but our rat didn’t leave. Eventually the Super came and scooped him out with a jar.
Wow I feel really lucky that ours got the hell out of dodge and we didn’t have to deal with a dead one, yikes!
I had something similar happen when I was a kid!! It was a small opossum instead of a rat, and it didn’t come up while I was in the bathroom. Instead, it came up into the toilet while the lid was down, sadly drowned in the bowl, and then waited for me to discover it when I came home from school and really, really had to pee. My mom lifted it out with salad tongs that we decided could be disposable while I held the garbage bag, and I will never fully trust toilets again. One more reason to move to the wilderness, where if an animal comes at me, at least it’s not coming from the cat hole I just dug.
A SMALL OPOSSUM
If this helps at all,* I have read news reports of the same thing happening elsewhere, but with snakes.
*Which it may not. I mean it in a “puts things in perspective” way, not in a “fresh nightmare fuel” way.
i learned about the snakes thing when i was a wee child and TO THIS DAY i check for critters before sitting. if i’m feeling particularly nervous that day, i’ll use my foot to lift the seat, too, to be sure something hasn’t figured out how to hang stealth-ninja-style from the under rim.
*cringe*
once when i was small there was a large spider lurking under the toilet seat at my parents’ house. it did not get me (i did my business, and then when i stood up it ran from the underside of the seat into the bowl and i vengefully flushed it) but to this day i regularly lift the seat to check for intruders before i sit.
My greatest nightmare is a snake in the toilet. I actually think about this and LOOK sometimes. I don’t need to know this can really happen, AAAAAAHHHHHHH… <screams forever, vows to turn on the light even in the middle of the night>
Seattle’s local NPR station did a story on how there was an epidemic of this happening in town. I no longer live in Seattle. Related? You be the judge.
Apparently you can put dish soap in the bowl to drown them (it removes something on their coat that helps them float), but honestly, I would probably just scream and cry (and call my property manager).
In closing, I’m sorry this happened to you. It is truly a nightmare scenario.
Ohgodohgodohgod.
I would still be screaming, I think.
:hug:
People are always talking about laughing while at work because of the Toast
why was I not warned about possible PANICKED SCREAMING
bc that is what I almost did
That happened to me once! Except the seat was down and I just kind of found IT in the morning and was horrified forever.
Apparently, it can be an indication (along with other clues like slow-draining sinks, etc) that there is a pipe breakage somewhere in the system… which was the other fun surprise that came with my toilet-creature 🙁
Oh my goshhhhh this happened to me a couple of months ago, except mine was a mouse – ever so SLIGHTLY less terrifying. This one also left of his own volition after my boyfriend tried to flush him a couple of times, which he was not very happy about. I live on the 5th floor which seems quite high up for a place to just wander into(??)
Basically I just can’t think about it too much because how else would I ever use the toilet!?
– Carrie Fisher fuck yeah! It took me forever to find this Tumblr post, but is it ever worth it: Fisher lets Daisy Ridley know what she can expect.
– WRT the assholes in Oregon, apparently the #YallQaeda tag is trending.
– Speaking of Tumblr, for those who haven’t yet seen this: this.
Related: the excellent “Vanilla ISIS” moniker for the Oregon assholes.
aaaaand now I see that’s mentioned in your link too. anyway it’s good!
I have also seen the hashtags #VanillaISIS and #YokelHaram re: Oregonian asswipes
I am the no fun one who finds these hashtags super offensive (YallQaeda, YokelHaram, VanillaISIS) and I can’t quite articulate why except it seems to fit a certain progressive smugness about rural people that hits some ugly class stuff AND seems to add to anti-Islamic sentiment and idk but it bugs me big time.
Same, “progressive smugness about rural people” is one of my big peeves. Also do Oregonians even say “y’all”?
right – the “dumb redneck” thing is not necessary. they’re armed and dangerous and that should be more than enough reason to condemn them.
NO, thank you. That is not at all a rural Oregonianism, at least not the part of rural OR with which I am familiar (and I was born in Malheur county).
Yeah, they seem to imply that terrorism is inherently Islamic, which…no thanks.
100% agreed. Oregon’s population has done a perfectly bang-up job of practicing domestic terrorism for more than a century without any help from anybody else.
Agreed.
Although I do see a lot of Tea Party sympathy from my rural relatives, I get your point, and I’ve been bothered by the same sort of classism in the past. I won’t spread it any further.
Sidenote: what even is that dress that Daisy Ridley is wearing. I recognize the irony of this comment, given the context, but I find that fashion choice to be weird.
It reminds me of some of the “future space fashions” that I’ve seen on Star Trek; it looks like the sort of thing that Ridley might have picked up in Garak’s Clothiers on DS9.
She needs a severe 90’s updo to go with it, though.
The story Carrie Fisher is telling makes me so uncomfortable WHAT KIND OF PERSON COULD TELL A STRANGER THAT THEY MASTURBATED TO THEM UGGGGGH. I can’t imagine saying anything like that to an actual porn star let alone an actor whose character was FORCED to dress that way. Men are gross.
Regular reminder that Alice Munro wrote a baller story called “The Albanian Virgin” and if you have a New Yorker membership you can read it here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/06/27/the-…
And if you don’t you can get it in Open Secrets and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO.
This is 4 months old but I ran across it today (via pajiba) and I think the weight-lifting ladies of the Toast might enjoy it: https://www.instagram.com/p/6puNsxFE1e/
The sworn virgins thing gives me so many feelings. Initially, it’s a tentatively good feeling because it provided a way for some women and trans men to not have to live in the gender role they would have been otherwise assigned, an option that I feel like is not typically seen in the early 20th century anywhere.
But also it’s an affirmation of the intensely low status of women, especially as this applied only to women who would live as men, and the weird connection with sex as some sort of natural defiler not only of virginity, but of humanness. Like, women flat out could not have what were considered natural rights for men, while still being women. Just, like, no option.
Dang, that’s a good way to put it. I’ve thought this way about women’s religious orders too– if I were living in 14th-century Europe, I would definitely, 100% want to be a nun. But now that I’m living in the present day, when I have more than like one and a half options in life, I would never want to be a nun.
I absolutely agree with you.
I also think that the sworn virgins need to be considered in the overall cultural context of Albania. I have seen several articles in which the custom is summarized in two sentences–basically concluding, “Isn’t that cool?” Albanian culture is complex religiously and ethnically; it would be interesting to know how the sworn virgins were treated in Catholic vs Orthodox vs Muslim vs communist/atheist communities. In my understanding, part of the necessity for the sworn virgins was to provide “men” during times when there was a shortage due to war and feuding, etc. It did not have much to do with gender identity or sexual orientation, though I’m sure some trans people took advantage of the possibility. It would be interesting to read a comparison of various cultures’ methods of dealing with the lack of men (polygamy? women marrying the brother of their deceased husband? women given limited rights?). As for the virgin part, I think that was simply a natural consequence (rather than the main point) of this decision and probably actually a necessary thing for these people to continue to function in that society. 1) no homosexual relationships were tolerated; who would a gender-changing person be permitted to marry? 2) if unmarried, single parenthood would make them unable to function independently anymore 3) lack of heterosexual sex under the alternative conditions perhaps was not seen as any great loss.
I just spent way too much time thinking about this. I have several Albanian friends and I think the country is fascinating and this is only one tiny aspect of it.
In other words, I do not think it is a
this is great, please post more if you think of anything else!
And it’s also a definition of womanhood based almost entirely on sexual interactions (or lack thereof) with men. Women are people who may someday have penises put inside them, and therefore have no rights. If you want to have rights, you have to agree never to let somebody put their penis inside you, which obviously means you’re not a woman anymore.
Thanks for the Montreal tips, Canadian Toasties! I had a wonderful time. And whoever suggested Aux Vivre, my vegan cousin loved it, and nearly cried after having her first bit of key lime pie in 5 years.
Only regret: almost got to see Couer de Pirate, but my family wussed out and left before she went on. It wasn’t that cold!
That Aux Vivre key lime pie is divineeeeeee!
Ok, I guess I should tell y’all this: I had a miscarriage. It was horrible and I lost a shit ton of blood. It happened over ner years eve / Jan 1 early morning. Mr. Chemicaldefect was actually amazing. He helped me get through it and then did all of the cleaning up of the bathroom that looked like a blood apocalypse. We’re at his folks house, and I haven’t told them what happened. I’ve also got a sinus infection so I’m extra crappy feeling these days. I told two sis in laws and got some good advice. The past few days I’ve just been sleeping as much as I can. Today I’m hoping to go out of the house and actually do something because I would like to actually enjoy this visit. Mr. Chemicaldefect cried buckets and is very sad. I am a littke sad. I was starting to get fond of the little parasite and its creepy little heart. Oddly enough, I realized that I’m ok with the idea of trying to have a kid on purpose. Facebook is covered in baby posts, most from a pregnant sis in law (not one of the ones who knows what happened) and that makes me really sad. She’s all “yaaay I made it through the first trimester! 1!1!” And I didn’t. Idk why in sad about that.
All love and support to you. Please be kind and gentle to yourself, and let others take care of you.
I’m so sorry that you’re going through this. It’s a really weird thing to grieve, so take your time and let yourself feel whatever you feel.
Hi, I have had a miscarriage. It was years and years ago, but I remember feeling depressed afterwards (I tend in that direction anyway) and not realizing that it was postpartum normality after a miscarriage. I mourned the little thing too. But eventually went on to have two healthy now-young-women, and you do get to the point where you don’t think about it every day and when you do think about it, you’re a little sad but not at the bottom-of-the-pool sad.
Just be aware of your feelings. And yeah, sleeping a lot is both normal and also necessary. Your body’s been through something serious. I send you good thoughts and empathy.
I’m really sorry you had to go through that; I hope you’re getting good medical care and emotional support
Remember that emotions don’t have to make sense or be logical, you’re allowed to feel whatever you feel
My wife and I had a miscarriage before our baby was born, I just want to let you know that it is very common — probably even more common than we realize, since often people will miscarriage without even realizing they were pregnant — and that it is just something that happens sometimes. My wife constantly blamed herself for it, for instance: maybe she ate the wrong thing or did too much exercise or didn’t do enough exercise. For a while she was worried that it had been caused by stress — like, she was worried that she worried too much and that was why it happened.
But they just happen sometimes. It can hurt a lot for a little while, but not forever.
I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. The hormone fluctuations after a miscarriage will get you, no matter how you might have been feeling about the pregnancy. Sending healing hugs. Use your sinus infection as cover to go to the doctor if you start feeling worse!
I’m really sorry this happened, especially after you came to want the pregnancy. I hope you’re able to relax and feel lots of good feelings with your in-laws, and that your sinus infection goes away very quickly because I still think that is not fair of luck at all to saddle you with the miscarriage AND sinus infection at the same time. You deserve much better!
It’s okay to be sad and out of sorts, though, and tired. You did lose a lot of blood, and that’s going to make anyone exhausted. I hope you start feeling better soon.
I’m sorry you had to go through that. Take care of yourself!
I’m so sorry for your experience, I have been following along from your first post but I don’t think I commented before now. Feel whatever you are feeling and know that it is ALL okay to feel it. I hope you be kind to yourself.
Sending hugs and love your way. Please take care of yourself.
I’m so sorry to hear this. It’s okay to have any of the feelings you’re having (or not having).
I had a devastating miscarriage (for a very planned and wanted pregnancy) two summers ago. When I got pregnant again I was ecstatically happy … and guilty and sad for abandoning my lost baby, who was always really more of an imaginary baby than not.
What I just mean to say that emotions are weird and I’m thinking about you. There can be weird hormonal shifts after a miscarriage, too, so treat yourself gently.
Wow, what a roller coaster of emotions and feelings and body things. I wish you all the best. Maybe don’t worry about having any future kids for now, and just focus on getting back on your feet and healing up from what was an incredibly stressful, difficult thing. I was worrying about you after the comments crashed and wondering what happened with the bleeding and thinking good thoughts your way.
Jedi hugs! I’m glad you feel like you CAN tell us, but please know that there’s no “should” here— we’re here for you, we are more than willing to listen (commentpocalypse not withstanding)— But you don’t owe us aaaaaaaaannnnnyyyyyything you don’t want to tell us.
And, yeah, feel your feels, they’re not wrong. Just based on hormones alone, your emotions are likely to be all over the place. Add that you may very well have some conflicting thoughts about it, add the thoughts and feelings of Mr.CD…. feelings could get messy for a while. That’s okay. It’s okay to be a lot sad, it’s okay to be not sad. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to go back and forth between feeling different ways! It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
Consider deputizing Mr.CD to tell his parents, or maybe the SILs, or maybe deputize the SILs to tell other people who are around (ie, the pregnant SIL).
Be gentle with yourself— being at inlaws with a sinus infection is hard enough, adding the miscarriage doesn’t make things easier!!
I’m so sorry this happened to you. Lots of love and support from the Toast-section of the universe. <3;
Oh, that sounds so hard, and I’m so sorry,
I am very grateful you checked in, I suspect I’m not the only one who was thinking about you and wondering how you were doing.
Sending good thoughts your way
I’m so sorry you’ve had such a tough experience. Feel all of your feels, and don’t hesitate to ask for help when you need it. All the best healing thoughts to you!
Oh, honey. All the toasthugs for you. As everyone else has said, do please be kind to yourself, and let yourself do what you need to do to heal (both physically and emotionally).
That sounds terrible and awful. I am glad Mr. ChemicalDefect is supportive and that you have him to lean on.
Let yourself feel how you feel about it.
*HUUUUUUUUUUGS*
I’m sorry. A couple of years ago I had a miscarriage without even knowing beforehand that I was pregnant. I didn’t want a baby. I have never wanted a baby. I don’t believe that my foetus was a human being. And yet I was devastated, even while knowing that it was the best possible outcome for me. And I kept apologising over and over to my dead baby, even though I knew it wasn’t my fault and I had never had a live baby. All of which is to say that feelings about this stuff are super complicated and don’t lend themselves to rational explanations. Be kind to yourself. I’m glad you’ve got people to help you through it.
Oh honey. It sounds like you’re doing exactly the right stuff to take care of yourself.
I had more than one friend when I was a teenager who got pregnant accidentally, had a miscarriage, and found they were horribly sad afterwards, even though they hadn’t wanted to be pregnant. It is a pretty normal experience. Some of it is hormones, of course, and some of it is just that emotions are weird.
Take care of yourself and best wishes to you all.
Oh man, reading that Cord Jefferson article is giving me anxiety.
I had a moderately scary thing like this happen about 1.5 years ago– I had started the NuvaRing, and had googled it for instructions on putting it in, and instead found PAGES of articles about women who developed blood clots because of it. So, hypochondriac that I am, I started freaking out that maybe I had a blood clot. Even though only like, 3% of women developed these clots from the NuvaRing. Whenever my heart would beat fast, or chest would kind of hurt, or if I was out of breath more quickly than usual, I would panic.
One night, I had TWO DREAMS IN A ROW. TWO. in which the same thing happened: I went to the doctor’s office because I thought I had a blood clot, the doctor examined me, and I woke up before I could get a diagnosis. I went back to sleep after dream 1, and had essentially the same dream again, but with different locations and people.
So the next day I was like, fuck it, I’ll just go to my student health center and they’ll tell me I’m being crazy, and then I’ll have some piece of mind. I go to the health center, and they’re like, all your vitals are good and normal – oxygen concentration is good, heart beating normally…but on the off-chance something is wrong, just go to the ER.
So I go. And the doctors there are like, um, you’re not a smoker, you’re 26, you have no family history of blood clots, you are probably fine…BUT SINCE YOU’RE HERE, we have to do the tests. I do the first test, which is called a d-dimer. I’m joking around, in good spirits, even ask the doctor if I could leave before the test came back because everyone was so sure it was negative, and I had now been in the ER for hours. The doctor was like “Eh…I have to advise you that you should not leave, but it’s your choice.”
An hour later, the test came back. It was positive. The doctor looked completely stricken as he told me this, and I almost burst out laughing at how SERIOUS he looked. I was like “Uh…am I going to die?” And then he laughed and said no, but I did have to be admitted, and put on blood thinners, and the whole nine yards. The terrifying thing is that women have like, just dropped dead from the blood clot, which could happen if it gets dislodged from your lungs and goes to your brain.
SO THAT’S MY STORY. And now I get a little nervous if I ever have that tight chest-y feeling.
….Maaaaaaybe I should finally get my occasional chest pain thing checked out, despite being a 26-year-old nonsmoker who is not on a NuvaRing.
At the very least you should be able to say to yourself when it happens “Oh, that’s that annoying stress-indigestion I get around my sternum” which I find very comforting because even though it happens mostly on the right side of my chest I still worry that I’m having a heart attack.
Jesus.
Holy shit. I’m so glad you’re ok. Birth control blood clots are one of my most irrational medical fears!!
YUP. This is why I went off the pill.
Can I ask what, if anything, you use now? I went off the pill for unrelated reasons, and now I don’t know if I want to go back to it. Right now I think I’m feeling the progestin only pill; it looks like the side effects are a bit milder than the regular pill (including no links to blood clots). Side effects that can’t stealth kill me are worth it just for the anxiety reduction. Really, I want a doctor to say “oh here’s a super duper easy thing that will not impact you at all!” and sadly, that does not exist. Any medical device or intervention has side effects, but there’s no way to win here! (Praying for that men’s birth control gel shot thing to get approved, like, yesterday.)
I tried the progersterone-only pill and it made me want to murder everyone and also eat everything and after three weeks my spouse threatened to leave me (only half kidding). So, so, so much worse than my PMDD all by itself. I can’t use combined BC due to migraines, and my IUD never sat right (tilted cervix/uterus). In the end, my primary partner has had a vasectomy and I use condoms/don’t do pregnancy-causing stuff with other penis-havers I have sex with. Although my IUD never worked for me, my sister, mom, cousin, and several friends love love love theirs!
Eesh 🙁 I’m sorry you had such a hard time before finding a way that worked for you. A lot of my friends also love their IUDs, but I’m a baby who’s still afraid of them.
Barrier method. It sucks, but it is what it is. I went off the pill once i was in a long term relationship (becuase HELLS NO I AM NOT CARRYING YOUR RANDO CHILD, and two methods are better than one!), found out that my body’s chemistry (too much T, if I recall correctly) was all out of whack, I was pushing 30, and a smoker. I don’t want to screw too terribly with my body’s chemistry, and our dr refused to give GentlemanX a vasectomy when we asked (BECAUSE WHAT IF YOU WANT BABIES EVER), so condoms it is! We buy good quality ones that he prefers (because i don’t really care), and he is not terrible about it, but he IS terrible about following through with things, so his junk still works and he wears a rubber. It is not ideal. I know.
Hey, if it works it works. None of the options are ideal. That’s annoying about the doctor though.
IUD all the way!
Which one do you have? I know everyone LOVES them but they freak me out a lil bit.
I have the copper, and it’s really not so bad! Like I was really scared about the insertion, but I took a bunch of ibuprofen before, and it really just felt more or less like a pap smear? Definitely not FUN, but not totally awful either.
They freaked me out, too! Not even just insertion, but the whole concept of having a strange device implanted in my body really weirded me out at first. But I have a really cool doctor that I feel comfortable with who said she did them all the time and none of her patients had any problems, so on her advice I decided to go ahead and get one, and I’m very happy with it! I have the Mirena, which is the one with hormones. If you do decide to look into an IUD, just make sure your doctor uses a numbing agent on the cervix for insertion! I keep hearing from women whose doctors refused to numb them and it sounds horrible! My doctor used lidocaine, and I also took a bunch of ibuprofen and a valium before I went in. It was still a pretty intense experience, but not especially painful. Anyway, whatever you decide, good luck!
Wow, go you for listening to your instincts! And yay for medical professionals not totally dismissing them!
Honestly, I am impressed at your psychic skills. Glad you trusted your instincts!
Aretha!! She got an honorary degree at my college commencement and I have never seen so many 20-somethings absolutely lose their shit at the sight of one person (Aretha, of course, acknowledged our presence with a brief yet regal wave). She is the greatest.
Look I’m just gonna say what we’re all thinking:
Steel Cut Oats are garbage. They don’t taste any better than rolled, they have inferior mouth feel, you can’t get your oatmeal thick enough (if thats what you’re into), they aren’t useful for baking and they take too long to cook.
Yeah thats right its a new year and rolled oats aint putting up with this steel cut propaganda anymore.
Steel Cut Oats are garbage
Honestly I’m very happy with quick oats. Rolled oats take too long to cook, and don’t turn into quite the right sort of mush.
Honestly I buy quick oats most of the time too but the only difference is they steam those a little in the factory before selling them so I’m counting them.
I think they also cut them into smaller bits? Anyways, I’m glad there’s no anti-quick-oats snobbery involved in this.
I guess at some point I should eat the steel-cut oats that are somewhere in the bottom of my baking drawer. Or else throw them out.
We have a container of steel-cut to finish out this week and then I’m starting in on the BOXES of quick oats my husband bought for 2015’s Cookie Extravaganza That Wasn’t. I mix with a tbsp of psyllium husk powder and a packet of trail mix with chocolate chips, and who cares about fiber anyway because CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST.
Ooh. Hard (but respectful) disagree here. Steel cut oats aren’t exactly an impulse food, but I either soak them overnight or make a big batch and reheat as needed. I especially like them savory, with butter or olive oil and parmesan.
Rolled oats, however, are just slimy and soft.
I am an oatmeal HATER in a big way, but I like most other grains, and I’ve never tried steel cut before because of aforementioned hate of oatmeal. I do like the flavor of oats in breads and also enjoy raw rolled oats in my yogurt (I’m weird), so do you think steel cut is something I could enjoy? They aren’t as cheap as regular oats so I’m hesitant to buy a big thing that I may or may not like. I just really hate the paste consistency of oatmeal so much.
Do you live by a Whole Foods or other grocery store with a bulk bin section? I get my steel cut oats there and you can buy as much or as little as you like, so you could buy 1/2 a cup or so and try them out.
You might enjoy them! They do still a LITTLE have the paste consistency–that’s the big difference between a bowl of oats and a bowl of, say, wheat berries–but they feel much more like real grains than rolled oats do.
Do you have a Trader Joe’s nearby? They have the least expensive steel cut oats I’ve found. Or maybe you could find a small bag to try?
Have you tried not cooking, only soaking, your rolled oats?
I enjoy the texture of rolled oats after they soak in milk overnight. I add raisins, cinnamon, half a spoon of sugar, and eat it as a cold breakfast cereal. I do the same with yogurt in place of milk.
I really love my rolled oats raw and chewey in my yogurt 😀 I’m weird tho.
I like raw oats too.
One of the things I can count on here at The Toast is that no matter what it is, someone else out there is like “yeah me too!” Also, I accidentally “followed” you when I tried to reply to this somehow and I don’t know what that means or if it’s weird for you or what so I’m sorry if it is!
Ha no worries, as far as I can tell all following someone used to do was make their comments highlight in a different color, but I don’t think it even does that anymore since the site update.
I have a very strong aversion to cooked oats and am too lazy for steel cut but I find rolled oats (with seeds and nuts) left to soak in some rice milk for 10 minutes is pretty much awesome without triggering my gag reflex.
Steel cut oats are the bomb. The porridge feels more substantial, and you can get a really good creamy bowlful.
I do them overnight in the slow cooker.
The overnight soak is key for me. Boil for 1 min, cover and put in the fridge. In the morning, simmer for 9 min. Optional: laden with almond butter, coconut milk, and a lil maple syrup.
Team Rolled Oats 2016 And Forever!
I find that if you cook rolled oats as if they were quick/instant oats (ie, just put some liquid on them and nuke them for a minute or two), they have that slight bit of toothy mouthfeel that makes it feel like a Real Meal (and doubly so if you put some nuts in there), without any of this fussy night before thing. And you can always make them a little drier/nuke them for less time if you want them really chewy.
Sorry, Team Steel Cut Oats here to say U R Doin It Wrong.
The best, easiest way to make them is to put the oats and water in a pot on the stove AT NIGHT before you go to bed, bring it to a boil, put the lid on, turn it off, and let it sit there overnight ON THE STOVE. Then when you get up, just turn the heat to medium and heat it up. Thick, slightly chewy and delicious, wanting only for some brown sugar and a handful of craisins. Or raisins or crystallized ginger, whatevs.
Please, steel cut oats are the most delicious. If you’ve never tried them, I highly encourage the overnight method. Otherwise they do take forever to simmer, and that’s just right out.
The easiest way to cook them is to start yesterday you say? Cook them yesterday and then cook them again today?
This is what steel cut oats do to people! Wake up sheeple! Rolled oats will always be the superior oat format!
I love your passion on this topic! 🙂
I HAVE OPINIONS!
i am not spending 2 days cooking oatmeal.
be they rolled or instant, oats nuked along with Stuff for a couple of minutes is all the time that i’m willing to invest. i know steel cut have more fiber but 1) they turn into wall paper paste and 2) i have other things to get done with my day besides preparing oatmeal.
Do not be showing me pictures of cute puppies when my precious boy is at the vets, it is most vexing.
(he’s going to be fine, it’s just an injured leg, but he’s in a lot of pain right now and so is my bank account.)
Aww, it’s so hard to be away from your dog when you know they’re in pain! Wishing him a speedy recover with lots of comforting cuddles in the meantime (for the both of you).
Ooh! Ooh! For Making A Murderer people, the podcast on it by my bosses is up, and it’s SUPER GOOD.
Ooh I am very glad the site has a transcript for the podcast! I don’t have many opportunities to listen to podcasts anymore but I can always read.
Same 🙂
Oh man, I watched it over this weekend and I have FEELINGS about it.
Can this be a spoiler-y discussion? I don’t want to start inadvertently ruining things for people.
I have no objection to that.
Okay. So did anyone else want to strangle the jury? How could they ignore the DNA evidence (or lack thereof)? It seems like basic scientific stuff. If she was killed in the house, some trace of her blood or DNA would be there. Plus some of her DNA should have been on her own car key. And if there was no tampering, how did that hole get into the test tube?
Also, Krantz freaked me the f— out the second he started questioning witnesses. That weird, almost-whispered voice made me actively twitchy. I’d sit there thinking “can he please stop talking?” So I was not at all shocked that he turned out to be an evil perv. If anything I was relieved my discomfort proved to have merit.
I watched it this weekend, too. I was incredibly creeped out when Kratz slipped up and referred to Teresa Halbach as a “little girl” at one point in his opening statement.
There were just so many appalling things done I don’t CARE if it wasn’t a conspiracy; even if those were genuine/unconscious “errors” without a specific agenda that conviction is horribly tainted.
(And not to dwell on the horror, but the “compromise” that he did it but didn’t mutilate the body is so weird! Like, it implies that they somehow have yet another version of what happened (when the prosecution is already muddling its theory between Avery and Dassey.)
I think I may be most enraged by Dassey’s attorney and investigators, especially the one who said the family was “pure evil” and that “a friend” told him they should be rooted out or whatever? Yeah, great, I totally feel comfortable with a moral judgment that sounds like it comes from a 1930s eugenics book.
(I kind of want to read Dean Strang’s book though! https://newrepublic.com/article/126910/making-mur…
Whoa that Stork Derby piece is full of crazy pregnancy facts. Lacatation is as good as condom use for preventing birth? WHAT!? (I mean biologically it makes sense, I’m pretty sure women would die in childbirth even more than they already did at that point in time.)
Oh god, people are gonna be mad about that “In Toronto’s province” wording though.
Lactation can suppress ovulation after pregnancy, but only for the first six months or so, and only if you’re nursing exclusively, and even then, it’s not exactly a sure thing, because bodies aren’t machines etc.
Exactly. The suppression thing was more foolproof back when humans didn’t have easy access to food, so they produced less breast milk and had to nurse more often as a result. Frequency is key to the mechanism.
Yes, everything I’ve read says you NEED to nurse every four hours or you may ovulate. Bodies!
I mean. I’m just impressed that ESPN (or an offshoot? I don’t really know what that website is) figured out that Toronto is in a province, not a state.
Did y’all see yesterday’s kickass #Ham4Ham show? It’s my new fave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbfws-YZQu4
I love it. It makes me SO ready for a gender-swapped Hamilton!! An all-female version is an option too of course, but I’m kind of tickled by the thought of the Schuyler Brothers.
Yes but for real, why can LMM not use a microphone? Why doesn’t one of his colleagues teach him how to use it so he doesn’t sound all muzzy? I enjoy these little includes but his audio bugs me to pieces.
I think it’s just to do with the totally off-the-cuff setup for Ham4Ham. It’s a total fan treat, not an ‘official’ part of the marketing for the show and therefore probably (initially at least) no budget. They’re taking time off to get a proper sound system set up now and I’m sure it will be great!
He probs knows how to use a mic.
No, I get that the wireless mics they are using are rubbish (the wired one is much better), but he always sounds like that, and then quite often someone else takes the same mic from his hand and sounds perfectly clear! Whyyyy.
According to his Twitter, they’re looking into upgrading the audio equipment for future #Ham4Ham performances, so fingers crossed?
huzzah! Fingers crossed for AFTER THE WINTER BREAK. (How long are they taking off?) ETA oh I looked up his Twitter, got it. ~2 mos.
IT’S SO GOOD. Also LMM changed his twitter icon to this amazing fanart of Morgan Marcell as Hamilton, who killed it beyond belief, which I find adorable on a couple of levels: https://twitter.com/kayleerowena/status/683808876…
(I mainly love how much all the ladies were phenomenal, but I also really enjoy how much the dudes look so happy and impressed by the women singing their parts).
Ahhhh the Stork Derby! I’m so weirdly fascinated by the horrible ideas in population thought of that time period, and I just wrote a paper on them. Basically, it was a perfect storm of:
1) eugenics being popularly accepted in the scientific community
2) the mathematical methods for forecasting future population size based on current birth/death rate trends having just been invented, and
3) the fact that mortality had fallen significantly in the past 50 years and fertility was starting to fall in response, but the relationship between these things wasn’t that well understood yet.
Basically, a bunch of white guys sat around going “rich white women aren’t having enough babies and we’re all gonna go extinct!! And working class women and women of color are having more than white women, so the future population is going to be full of [terrible racist and classist stereotypes] and THEN go extinct!” So this stork contest (which, terrible, and yet not even close to the worst thing that came out of this historical moment) probably seemed kind of logical in that context; I’m super curious to what extent this rhetoric influenced the guy’s choice to put it in his will and ruin these people’s lives.
My kid is withdrawing from college today and emptying his dorm and (overly dramatic mom voice here) without me and I can’t fix it or make it better or anything he has to afult onhis own…which might be ok except that he will be living where? Probably with ex, and probably doesn’t want my job advice, and totally needs his thyroid to be better and I can’t helicopter that either and today is hard.
I’m so sorry. If it makes you feel any better, my spouse flunked out of college when we were 19, and after a rough couple of years, got back on track and now has a terrific job, makes enough money to support me not bringing in a paycheck as I start my own nonprofit, went back to school in his 30s, and just finished his bachelor’s and is thinking about grad school next. It may well be ok. I’m so sorry your ex is where he’s going to land, though — he’s not exactly a good influence, ugh.
I’m so sorry! That sounds really tough and almost exactly like what my mom went through with my little brother a few years ago, when I (her only other child) was also away at college. I don’t have any great advice, my little brother is still struggling but he’s still young, and my mom struggles with him at times. She’s coped by babying her cats and now the dog my brother adopted but was unable to care for. I think she’s starting to focus on what she can do and change in her sphere and support him when she can.
I left college during my second year, for a multitude of reasons, incl. mental health and family issues, and money problems. I don’t know your child’s situation, obviously, but I thought I would share my story in case it made you feel any better. My family did not agree with me leaving school, and tried to force me into local community college instead, even threatening to drive me to and from class to make sure I went. This was the exact opposite of what I needed. I had to get away and learn how to be an adult, how to take care of myself, etc. I actually ended up moving away because I couldn’t deal with them trying to control my life anymore. I made a lot of mistakes, of course, and my life would have been far easier if it hadn’t taken a detour. But it was necessary to my development as an adult human person. It took me a LONG time (11 years from high school grad to college grad) to finish my bachelor’s, but I ended up with a B.A. from a MUCH better school, and this year got my M.A., so I am proof that it can be done. I was a much better, happier, more fulfilled student when I went back. College (or education in general) is super important, but a-it’s not necessary for everyone, and b-not everyone is ready for it at 18. I wasn’t ready until I was in my 20s, tbh, but when I went back I did extremely well because I’d taken the time to find out what I wanted in life and worked like hell toward my goals. Not all is lost!
You could be my spouse tbh. Very similar stories. Glad you both are doing so well!
This is really to everybody–I totally support him leaving, he feels like he’s just reinforcing the “I’m a failure” internal voice if he keeps falling behind. I really know that most of this, unfortunately, and probably for a few years now, has been thyroid related, and he has to get that part fixed. Its not a small thing, and it affects the rest of his life. I know that his dad really doesn’t care and won’t help him with that, and he is undermedicated now but we are in a two month wait and see period before they will adjust his meds. He will follow his dad’s lead and that could be really awful for him, health and mental health wise. I know he can do the rest, but I can’t force him to get healthy.
Hugs! I’m so sorry his dad is not helpful, I hope the thyroid thing gets straightened out. He knows you love him and you don’t think he’s a failure and that counts for a lot.
I had an undiagnosed thyroid condition for years and yeah, it really, REALLY messes you up on so many levels, and it really fucked with my first attempt at grad school. I hope he gets it under control, because he will feel so much better. Your ex is the worst >:(
I think the fact that he’s self-aware enough to realize that staying at school isn’t healthy for him right now is a good sign. Maybe some time away from school, in a less stressful environment, will allow him to get some more clarity.
I agree with what others have said–letting him know you love him and support him will be a big help to him.
Coming at it from the college perspective, I see way too many students who insist on hanging on when there’s some kind of medical or mental health issue and just saying over and over no, no, I’ll work harder, it’ll be fine, and just digging themselves into an academic hole– it’s pretty heartbreaking to watch because they really want to succeed and just keep beating themselves up when they don’t, for reasons that aren’t really in their control. So I think you (and he) are totally right to say that the important thing is to step back and get healthy. If going back to the same college in the future is even a possibility, see if there’s someone in the dean of student’s office (dean of student health or something) who knows about his issues and will have him on their radar if he decides to come back– someone beyond an academic advisor who can smooth the way for him and maybe check in with him as he transitions back. Having someone like that who understands the medical context on his side would make things a lot easier than just showing up and convincing people who don’t know the story that he was doing badly before and now he’s going to do better.
Ahhhhhhhh I totally did this to my mom. Withdrew in my last semester, across the country, refused to come home, made some supremely unwise relationship choices, the whole shebang.
BUT
As painful as it was, it was definitely a good choice in the long run. I was absolutely not in a state where I could tend to my education, and two years working a minimum wage food service job endowed me with some important perspective on life, and overall I grew up quite a lot over the course of my hiatus. I went back and finished once I was ready (and staying in my college town definitely made that so much easier!), and was able to give my education the energy it deserved. Things didn’t magically get better overnight, but after a few years and a lot of work I can safely say that everything turned out okay in the end.
Only my little sister out of us four actually made it straight through. So im ok, just sad for him to feel like he can’t do something. He stopped by tonight and mentioned taking a welding class with a friend so hopefully things will sort tthemselves out.
I remember reading about the sworn virgins in a National Geographic article years ago. Did anyone else read that too? Glad to see someone else is giving them the portraits they deserve and recording their stories.
The strength of those people’s choices fill me with awe. Respect.
Did anyone else read the gizmodo article on Oregon’s long history of white supremacy. I found it really interesting. http://gizmodo.com/oregon-was-founded-as-a-racist…
David Neiwert did some really fascinating (and depressing) long-form articles on this a few years ago, if you want some extra data points. His series on Sunset Towns is pretty eye-opening.
link: dneiwert.blogspot.com
Thank you for this. I’ll definitely be checking them out!
Oregonian here. I read the article, but I also already knew the story. I learned about it when I was researching moving here. The thing that surprises me is how few lifelong Oregonians know about this state’s racial history.
But the attitudes run deep. There have been some fairly ugly petitions and ballot initiatives here regarding the rights of undocumented immigrants too. The racism involved was thinly-veiled at best and brazen at worst.
Yeah I would wonder if this gets taught in the state history curriculum. I’m not from Oregon, nor have I ever been so I had no idea about this part of their history. It also makes me question the whole Oregon trail game which definitely didn’t mention this.
Anyone know the story behind what happened to the Movie Yelling About Star Wars comments?
IntenseDebate seems to have eaten all of them or sucked them into the void.
ID is having major issues across the entire platform, not just that post and not just the toast!
Man, losing any comments is a pain, but the comments on that thread were golden. I hope they’re recovered somehow!
oh no, it's a normal thing for babies to be taken care of by lots of people, sometimes extended family, sometimes neighbors, sometimes day care. And it's good for them to be exposed to adults with different styles! It really is, even though I can completely understand that it feels sad right now.
Yeah, I know, I was thinking about it recently and I realized that actually the process of joint child-rearing is a much more common and ordinary part of human social structures than I tend to think of, and that actually the “child raised only by parents model” is relatively new and unusual.I nevertheless feel sad about it. Maybe I just wish it was only for two or three hours at a time, rather than the whole day, every week day, from now until basically forever? I don't know.
Yeah I dropped him off today and I was much better about it and, uh, I am kind of secretly looking forward to a day that I can take off when I can also have him at daycare.