Toast Points for the Week of January 22nd -The Toast

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Hi Toasts, how are you all feeling today? If you live on the eastern seaboard, please feel free to commiserate with me about the incoming Nor’easter. Is it already snowing where you live? Do you have all the essential supplies?? Do you understand why we LIVE here??? Relatedly, did you know that as of Wednesday evening there was not a single damn sled you could order with your Amazon Prime subscription that would actually arrive before the storm, even if you were willing to pay extra for “same-day shipping”?

This week Jaya and Matt gave us the January Dad Mag, PLUS our first look at the COVER of DAD MAGAZINE: THE BOOK (available for pre-order now!).

Katie Klabusich wrote so honestly and beautifully about her relationship with her mother in light of recent revelations that shook her faith in the adoption story she’d always been told.

The Toast’s Middle-earth correspondent Austin Gilkeson teamed up with artist J. Longo to bring you “The Illegitimacy of Aragorn’s Claim to the Throne,” a piece so shocking I could only respond with “WOW — CONTROVERSIAL” when it was first sent to me. I do not necessarily agree with everything we publish here, I just present it and allow you to form your own opinions, because that is (I’m told) how journalism works.

DIRTBAG HERA:

ZEUS: where is it
HERA: I don’t understand the question
ZEUS: where is the baby
HERA: idk
i threw it off the mountain
so i guess whatever at the bottom of the mountain is

As all Toasties already know, Mo Moulton is so great, and so is her “Watching Downton Abbey with an Historian” column, now in its final season. Gather her insightful historical asides while ye may! Just don’t be this commenter:

No. (No.)

Anna Cabe wrote about her love of kdramas and what the shows mean to her in terms of representation, and It Was Good:

Before I found Korean dramas at eighteen, I had lived in a culture where the pictured ideal was white — or at least as white as it could possibly be. … If Asian girls were present, particularly in a romantic scenario, they were usually a) in a relationship with a white man, and b) romanced on. They were the object of pursuit, often an accented, exotic, passive lotus blossom from the East — nothing like the American-born, mouthy Asian girls of my own extraction. Think Suzie Wong without her delightful, defiant tall tales. Think Liat from South Pacific, who barely speaks at all. These depictions of Asian women in romantic relationships were all created by white men and tinged, uncomfortably, with “yellow fever,” even if some were intended to critique the stigma against interracial relationships.

I sometimes wonder if that — plus the Catholic guilt and my conservative Filipino upbringing — is why I was so discomfited by overt displays of sexuality and bald yearning, especially in romantic films. That somehow, that expression of sexuality, of emotion, of pursuit was clearly not meant for me. I could never be the actor, I could never be the pursuer, I could never be the one falling head over heels.

I have the perfect job, and still always greedily devour Dear Businesslady’s excellent column and learn so much from it. I find it highly motivating every month. I demand a performance review.

“Don’t forget that it’s me who’s the Queen of the Goddamned May around here.”

Screen Shot 2016-01-22 at 11.48.54 AM

I hope you all have a great weekend, and that those of you in the path of Storm Whatever Its Name Is Since We Started Naming Winter Storms stay safe and snug and warm! They’re forecasting 18 to 36 inches where I live, which is an upsetting and also PRETTY WIDE RANGE, so, Weather Science, I think you could try a bit harder next time. I am staring down this four-day snow weekend with small children, and am thus about to discover precisely how many times you have to watch Big Hero 6 before the super-sad parts just bounce harmlessly off your cold, dry husk of a heart like so many tiny nerf balls. We could do with some more chocolate-covered pretzels here, honestly, but other than that I think we are prepared.

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I bought wine and water and poptarts last night so I'm all set. Also I live in DC so I got to watch as everyone had a meltdown when the government didn't completely close for today. Stay warm and safe, Toasties!
4 replies · active 480 weeks ago
I'm very close by and know a lot of government employees who were super mad about that (understandably so).

O, to be alive during the history-making Metro shutdown of 2016
I live in DC as well and I am currently sitting by my dorm room window and sipping hot chocolate as I watch the snow fall.
I also have pancake mix so I'm surviving like a *champ*.
I'm in DC and spent an hour in line at the grocery store today. But then spent the afternoon napping, and have ingredients to make wild rice soup and sweet potato stew with cheddar biscuits over the course of the weekend, so I'm good.
I have eight bottles of wine. EIGHT. I hope it snows for a week.
I am far south enough that all we're getting is cold rain, so I am just staying inside and making cookies, and kind of sad that we don't actually get snow, which would be pretty. BUT I also know the people who are getting snow are facing things like power outages and stuff that is super not fun, so I hope all the affected toasties stay warm and happy.
NICOLE. I am already bundled up safe and warm in my apartment and now I want chocolate-covered pretzels.
3 replies · active 480 weeks ago
MINE ARE ALMOST GONE. :( :( :( I made chocolate-chip cookie bars, though, and am seriously considering cinnamon rolls.
That's it, I'm making cinnamon rolls tomorrow (if the power doesn't go out).
We have supplies for a week of snow. Chocolate covered almonds, cookies with cookie butter filling which I find delightfully meta, chicken, many cheeses. Jim is making pizza right now.
This is why I bought a giant bag of dark chocolate chips for this weekend. I will melt chocolate on everything I eat.
Another excellent link roundup, thank you, Nicole! I went to work today but am now in for the duration (although in NC, so we're only getting 2-6 inches of snow and so far just a lot of ice). Tonight I am making vegetable lasagna with a bechamel sauce and some new kind of bread from the King Arthur cookbook, and I got a bottle of actual champagne to celebrate my engagement-versary with my fiance, and I think it will be a good snow!
I want Jason's "SEE MIDDLE EARTH" Shelob poster on my wall SO BAD.
2 replies · active 480 weeks ago
100% agree, although actually I think I'd be keen on a series of them as small artcards.
this has reminded me that I still need a Toast tote bag and ugh where are they Nicole
Does anyone else like using sled alternatives? Here are some I know of:

large cardboard boxes (sometimes wrapped in garbage bags)
garbage bags
tops of large storage bins
blow-up rafts

I tried using an old tiny slide from a tiny play pen once but it was too heavy and while it definitely looked sled-like, was not really ideal pseudo-sled material.
5 replies · active 480 weeks ago
My nieces have used cookie baking sheets with some success.
Cafeteria trays work well (if you have access to them). I may have borrowed some from my college cafeteria a couple decades ago for a snowy romp with a young gentleman caller.
we used cafeteria trays for sledding in college, but I do not have access to any, unfortunately!
we don't have rafts! or inner tubes! we have garbage bags but I don't want to give the kids something they cannot maneuver/steer at all. maybe I can find storage bin lids!!
Best sleds I had as a kid were actually plastic tubs for mixing concrete, bought at the hardware store. They survived a lot of slams into the Fence Of Thorned Bushes at the bottom of the sledding hill.
I don't get the run on groceries pre-storm. Especially frozen foods. If the power cuts out, what use is your microwave meal? And you're going to be stuck in your house for about 36 hours, not 6 days. You've probably got enough in the back of the cabinets to last 36 hours just fine. Unless you're out of booze. But why do you suddenly need 3 dozen eggs and 2 gallons of milk?! People here (Philly) buy carts and carts of bread, milk, and eggs. Why.

I bought a bag of chips and I've got some pop tarts at home, so I'm good if push comes to shove and I can't make my rice & beans as planned.
3 replies · active 480 weeks ago
it's equal parts "not wanting to go to the store in the snow" and "what if the trucks can't restock the grocery store for a bit due to snow blockage"

and then hyped up to a thousand.

You shoulda seen the lines at the South Street Acme today. In the middle of the day!
They shut the doors to Trader Joes on 21st and Market! It was literally one person leaves, one person enters.

I'm hunkered down with the kids and popcorn and PBJ, and hoping we don't lose any power.
that poor TJs is always swamped, too. Welp, I guess I'll be getting a lot of cleaning and such done this weekend if the power blows...
Ann M. Martin has a Twitter account? I think I'm going to have to continue not following her in order to avoid the potential risk of drunkenly (it's unlikely--but not impossible--that I'd go through with it while sober) berating her for permanently ruining fan mail for my as a child. I earnestly sent her legitimate questions as a child, received terrible responses that had clearly been cut and pasted into a form letter, and vowed never to send fan mail ever again.
1 reply · active 480 weeks ago
It's not a VERIFIED ACCOUNT so we can't really KNOW it's her! But I'm going to assume it is, because that makes it more fun that she RTed me.

I'm sorry her letter back to you was so spare. No one could blame you for drunkenly asking for an explanation on Twitter. I could not, at least.
I'm in Central Virginia. We're up to probably 6-8" so far and climbing. We'll definitely go over a foot, maybe up to 18" like they keep threatening. I'm glad I don't need to drive before Monday morning, because it looks quite a mess out there.
Yes. Snow falling started here from yesterday night & it's still getting up. Very terrible situation but also enjoying too much!!!
We live here precisely so that we can be snowed in and drink wine while reading and/or baking! I basically spend 51 weeks a year waiting for this moment.
I am in the piedmont region of NC and we have successfully made it through this storm with a Not Terrible Yet Not Disappointing amount of snow and without losing power thus far. I am currently wearing a very snow day outfit of wool socks, stripey leggings and a fleece plaid shirt that clashes terribly. The BFF has been day- and night-drinking for two days, very happily, and we watched a season and a half of Downton in the last two days.

Toasties in Connecticut--how is the snow there? And is it likely to stay? I am returning to CT in less than a month and am trying to gauge what I should expect.

Friends, what works of delicious fiction have you read recently?
6 replies · active 480 weeks ago
Cat Valente's RADIANCE is all things.
I am seconding Valente. I walked into a book store two days ago and found the fourth Fairyland book, which I forreals did not know existed: The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, it's gooorgeous.

I also found another of her short stories online I hadn't read before, The Lily and the Horn. This week has been top-notch, Valente-wise.
All her free/publicly available stories and poems are on her website! Enjoy!
http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/works/
Thank you! Sunday = gone.
No problem! No better way to spend a Sunday.
Also FYI I think the fifth Fairyland has been confirmed.

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