Sansa is my best friend and my co-pilot.
A Toastie sent me this video about how they made the Crimson Peak house (magic, mostly. Magic and blood.)
The Nib Lives, It Dies, It Lives Again!
Texas Monthly has the best true crime writing out there, and everyone is recirculating this piece about the 1960 murder of Irene Garza now that the priest who heard her last confession has been arrested for it:
Nearly all cold cases stay cold: Witnesses die, memories fade, evidence languishes or is eventually thrown away. Only a fraction of them are ever revisited. What small number of unsolved crimes that happen to spark the interest of detectives have no guarantee of ever being solved. The odds that the key witness in a cold case would decide to contact law enforcement 42 years after the fact was extraordinary enough. That the case was being actively investigated at that same moment—in the city where the witness mistakenly thought the crime had taken place—was beyond anything that its seasoned detectives had ever experienced. “There were times when I felt that Irene was pointing us in the right direction,” Jaramillo says.
Oof, what a terrible situation:
Two months ago at the company holiday party, I got blackout drunk and made a fool of myself. Nothing fireable, but I was literally falling-over drunk. I did some embarrassing drunk dancing, inappropriate joking around, and a LOT of cursing (not AT anyone, just in my speech, when I’m usually very buttoned-up at work).
I am so deeply ashamed and horrified at my behavior. I realized that I have a drinking problem and I need help. It’s been painful and difficult for me as I try to grapple with sobriety and confront my inner demons.
Meanwhile at work, no one will let it go. People love to quote the stupid things I said at me, or re-enact some of my stupid jokes. I knew I deserve teasing so I was braced for it, but it’s been two months and it’s not letting up. They do it publicly in our company-wide chat program and in meetings when I’m presenting a project I’ve worked hard on. I guess since I was a happy drunk, they think it’s harmless, but it makes me feel nauseous with shame. I’ve left work crying on multiple occasions. This is just a really hard time for me and I am constantly being reminded of my mistakes. My manager thinks it’s funny, so it’s not directly threatening my job, but how can they take me seriously when they’ve just been reminded how much of a mess I can be?
In other advice news, Mallory continues to win everything:
Q. Masseuses: My 26-year-old son is engaged to a 27-year-old “massage therapist.” She goes to clients’ homes to provide her services. I am 58 years old, and unless a masseuse is affiliated with an athletic team or training facility, a masseuse is a near prostitute. Remember Chuck Robb? And a massage parlor in my neighborhood was just shut down for this reason. My son is not concerned about this. I realize they are adults, and having expressed my views, I now need to back off. However, the thought of my future daughter-in-law fondling naked men, or other women, creeps me out.
A: I do not remember Chuck Robb. Masseuses often pay clients in-house visits. You are behaving absurdly. Stop imagining your daughter-in-law fondling naked men, and all your troubles will be over.
I am in SO FREAKING DEEP to The People Vs. OJ Simpson, also, Pilot Viruet is a great TV writer:
Once again, however, it’s the smaller exchanges that stick around after the episode is over. Almost as interesting as the chase itself is the impact it had on the world around it. Everything and everyone seemed to stop. “The Run Of His Life” shows these effects, ranging from the breaking news live feed interrupting a basketball game to how the chase resulted in boosting Domino sales. There were the prepared eulogies just in case, and Cochran’s live commentary that put these preparations into context: “Whenever I see a black man being chased by armed officers, my guard goes up. … The police shoot first and offer sloppy apologies afterward.”
In one scene, Christopher chats with his (fellow black) neighbors and expresses the popular sentiment about how O.J. should barely be considered black considering the fact that he bailed on his home and background in favor of yukking it up with the rich and famous (and white, and employed as police officers), and that he didn’t exactly try to give back to the community. “Once O.J. made his money, he split and never came back. He became white,” Christopher says. “Well, he’s got the cops chasing him,” a neighbor retorts, “He’s black now.”
SECRET SUPERMODEL SNOWPOCALYPSE:
The SUV came to an abrupt stop.
It was July of 1977. A crew from Neiman Marcus had come to the Andes mountains, near the border of Chile and Argentina, to scout locations for a fur catalog shoot. As the SUV climbed farther and farther up the mountain, snow started to fall, blanketing the road. The passengers, including a young Jerry Hall—sitting in the backseat, draped in a fur coat and fresh off her first runway show in Paris—began to panic. A Neiman Marcus executive peered out the window, trying to get his bearings. Visibility was close to zero when the driver threw the car into reverse, desperately trying to turn around. What he didn’t know was that the SUV’s rear wheels had stopped just two inches from the edge of the cliff.
The SUV now dangled precariously off the side of the mountain.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Luvvie on white fragility:
I get these types of emails once every couple of months. If you are somebody white, who thought you should be sending me an email telling me “I haven’t been promoting love with my words”, delete that email. In fact, report it as spam and don’t send that shit to me because no.
Just a stray observation that Toasties seem pretty evenly split on Bernie v. Hillary, and I really appreciate how chill and respectful you’ve kept your discussions. I’m hoping we can maintain that chill all the way through primary season, and then you can go HAM before the general election.
Since the FLDS started losing ground to the apostates, it shuttered almost all church-owned businesses, especially those open to the public, which included the pizza place and the only grocery store in town. While I could have patronized any of those places as a “gentile,” or nonbeliever, they were off-limits to apostates, who could be threatened with arrest for trespassing if they so much as walked through the door. Now, only FLDS members can enter the few remaining church-owned shops in town, and they must call ahead and use a password. To further limit contact with outsiders, the church had also selected a small number of men who were allowed to drive to a nearby Costco to stock up on food and deliver it to members.
I stop at the apostate-owned Merry Wives Cafe, which is one of the few places in town to get a cup of coffee, to meet Isaac Wyler. Other than Jessop, Wyler may be the most hated man in town among the FLDS. A farmer with a ruddy complexion, he grew up here in the FLDS, although, like many in the lower echelons, he never took more than one wife. He was always wary of Jeffs, but the last straw came when he heard his prophet pray for the execution of his neighbor Jason Williams. Not long afterward, Wyler says, Williams’ truck blew up in his driveway. Wyler went online, started researching the church and began secretly recording Jeffs’ sermons and leaking them to law enforcement. In 2004, Wyler was kicked out for reasons that were never explained to him. He was told to leave his property and hand over his farm. He refused and says he has since suffered constant harassment: His fences were torn down, his tires slashed nearly every week.
I’m always wary of Heartwarming Asperger’s Tales, especially when they really play up savant abilities, but this short documentary (it’s like 18 minutes!) about a boy who loves dogs and charms a bunch of Best in Show types with his knowledge and enthusiasm was indeed very, very sweet.
Embarrassing organizations in public continues to be one of the few things that works:
This deleted commenter sure knows the way to Mallory’s heart:
