James Tiberius in his Valentine’s Day outfit, because he’s getting jealous of all the attention you give Sansa.
One of your fellow Toasties is fundraising for the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund, if you want to help out!
Michael Twitty is so freaking interesting (do not read the comments):
So how did this self-trained historical cook and unaffiliated scholar — a man who majored in Afro-American studies and anthropology at Howard University but did not have the money to complete the coursework for his degree; who describes himself as outside the mainstream and “four time blessed” (“large of body, gay, African American and Jewish”); who for years supported himself (meagerly) as a Hebrew teacher; who underwrites the cost of his professional travel by crowdsourcing — come to be recognized as an important figure in the world of culinary scholarship?
The easy answer is Paula Deen.
support the troops or whatever:
Hickman conducted a statistical study on a select sample of the thousands of military members who said they were experiencing health effects from their exposure to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the help of Seton Hall Law Center, he found that five of the six bases that saw the worst health cases, such as cancers and untreatable bronchial illnesses, were located on or near documented chemical warfare sites, where chemical weapons were left over from Saddam Hussein’s rule. Those locations include Mosul, Taji, Tikrit, Tallil and Balad, where Beau spent some time serving. And of the 112 service members and contractors Hickman found who served at both Camp Victory and Joint Base Balad like Beau, 31 suffered from different forms of cancers and brain tumors.
he is OBVIOUSLY a witch, someone needs to throw him in the Potomac to see if he floats:
Mosteller’s official title is director of Oval Office operations, although a more apt name might be anticipator in chief. When Obama is in Washington, every move the president makes, every person he meets and every meeting he attends has been carefully orchestrated by Mosteller.
He knows where Obama likes his water glass placed on the table at meetings and whom he’d want to sit beside. He knows how he prefers the height of a lectern. He researches a head of state’s favorite drink so that the president can offer it. He readies Obama’s remarks and sets them, open to the first page, wherever the president will be speaking. He tells Obama when a sock is bunched at his ankle or his shirt is wrinkled, before an interview.
pets that are stuck but pretending everything is fine
A controversial Danish law allowing police to confiscate valuables from asylum seekers has netted the authorities no money at all in its first 11 days, according to a police spokesperson.
The new rules, which came into effect on February 5, allow cash or items that do not have “sentimental value” to be seized if they are worth more than 10,000 kroner (€1,340). But the police spokesperson told AFP that no asylum seekers carrying that amount of money have been stopped and searched so far.
Adult braces have been around forever, basically (my parents couldn’t afford orthodontics for us, which worked out okay for me, but my brother looks like a barn door swinging open, <3 you bro, no offense):
In 1987, two years before the AAO started keeping statistics on age and gender of patients, the New York Timesran a story under the headline “ORTHODONTICS FOR ADULTS: A HELP AT ANY AGE” which included the assertion that “adults with braces, a rarity 10 years ago, are almost commonplace nowadays.”
In 2012, 25 years later, the Times ran a story under the headline “Orthodontists Market to Adults Seeking Prettier Smiles” which leaned on the AAO statistics and looked into a rise in advertisements aimed directly at adults. In the story, reporter Andrew Adam Newman talks to the then-head of the AAO Michael B. Rogers, who claimed that when he began his practice in the 1970s, adults only accounted for about five percent of his patients. He said that now, decades later, they made up a full quarter. But remember that, according to the AAO’s own numbers, by 1989 adults were already 25 percent of orthodontia patients.
You know how everyone has a Twitter crush that they think night and day about impressing? Well, mine is @BisHilarious, and she has a DYNAMITE Hamilton podcast, and you should check it out, and tell her I sent you, because then she might like me more, and some day if I’m in LA we could hang out. I’m overthinking this.
Damn, Nicole, that is a cute-ass baby.
p.s. Sorry I don’t have anything witty to say; my own cute-ass baby was up every fucking hour of the night last night. And I have a job interview today. FML.
Kick ass at your interview! The power of the Toast is with you! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
Awww, thank you so much!! <3 you people.
James Tiberius has his mama’s pretty eyes.
“he is OBVIOUSLY a witch, someone needs to throw him in the Potomac to see if he floats”
Does he weigh the same as a duck? https://youtu.be/k3jt5ibfRzw
Did he, at one point, turn Obama (or really anyone) into a newt?
(it got better)
you, madam, are a pun genius
Heh it would have been 1986 when my paternal grandmother had braces at age 60 (in her case a slightly misaligned jaw was causing her to break teeth and the braces were the last step after having her jaw broken and reset).
My mom ended up having braces at 40 – her family moved right about the time her old family dentist would have put braces on and the dentist in their new town thought she was “too old” at 17. And of course in our family 40 wasn’t “old” for braces at all.
My parents got braces when they were in their 40s, just a couple years after we had them as kids. And oh boy, did we chortle and gloat when they complained how much they hurt at first, and then were sore each time they had a tightening. “It can’t be that bad”, we said. “We get it, stop complaining!” we told them. “Eat your food anyway!” we said. All things they had said to us two years before when we were complaining about how much they hurt. Hmph.
Guys – I just moved into a new building that has elevators, and this morning a woman got on and had a dog with her. A dog! It was barking and jumped on my leg because it was really excited to go outside and it probably would have annoyed basically anyone else getting on the elevator at 7:30 in the morning, but I was so happy to see a dog.
A dog!
My lease says no pets, and the landlord was very clear that we can’t have pets, but there are lots of people in my building with dogs. I’m simultaneously happy to occasionally see a cute puppy and irrationally annoyed that people are breaking the rules, because I’m incapable of not following the rules.
I used to live in a “no pets” building where fully half the residents had secret cats and a handful had secret dogs. Once we realised this, of course, we acquired our own cat and it was the best decision I have ever made.
We are limited to two pets, and we already have two cats. I am trying to make a case for sneaking a dog into the mix. How would they know? There seem to be lots of dogs in the building.
I knew a woman who had rescued 5 chihuahuas, and her landlord never knew she was breaking the 3 or 4 (or whatever)-pet limit because he couldn’t tell them apart and she made sure never to walk all 5 at one time. So if you can pretend your cats are one cat, then you should get a dog.
Yeah, I knew a couple who got away with having four cats when they were only supposed to have two, because three of them looked alike (two were siblings, the third was coincidence). Whenever the landlord came by, one member of the couple would drive around the block a few times with two of the tabbies, and the landlord only ever saw the white one and one tabby.
We’re approved for two cats but have three, because one hides under the bed all the time except at night.
Technically, our landlord only has visual proof of one cat.
We had two dogs and two cats in an apt where we were supposed to only have two pets. We only registered the dogs with the apt complex as the cats would really never be seen.
That is exactly how I feel about rules that I don’t like. How dare other people break them if I don’t have the gall to! And let me pet your dogs. (though smoking in a non-smoking building really makes me angry- if it makes my place smell bad your choices are out of line)
Co-sign all this, especially the terrible smokers! Ugh. Though my building allows pets and it’s delightful to run into adorable well-behaved doggies in the elevator.
ugghhhh smokers in non-smoking buildings
My neighbor has reached the heights of passive-aggressiveness, though; she’s blocked her front door with a towel and last night she had a fan blowing all the smoke back down the hallway at the smoker’s apartment. Which is, unfortunately, at the end of the hall past mine. I respect her dedication to not just talking to the guy, but I wish she wouldn’t blow the smoke back into my apartment.
My building became non-smoking five years ago, but there are smokers here who have lived here WAY longer than that, so they were like grandfathered in and still get to smoke in their apartments, just new smokers moving in don’t. I hate it. The hallways ALWAYS smell like stale smoke.
Perhaps the building changed their pets policy and those folks are grandfathered in? When I moved in to my building there were SO MANY DOGS and it was the best, but we changed management companies and I noticed that when they advertise vacant units now they say no dogs. They have never announced to existing residents that the rules changed, just changed the policy for new tenants. Gradually all the dog-havers moved out and now there are no dogs. 🙁 (Though almost every tenant has cats! Yay cats!)
Anyway hopefully that possibility will help you curb your irrational annoyance?
I am likely moving to an area where it seems like a lot of apartments accept dogs less than 45 lbs. My dog weighs 55 lbs. I might just…lie about it? What are they going to do, weigh my dog?
His head is about hip height, but he is strikingly lanky when standing and can curl into an amazingly small ball, so it might work?
(they are not going to weigh your dog)
Lie. It’s the only acceptable option.
A dog!
I understand your feeling! There is only one other apartment in my building (the first floor is a shop) and the lady who lives in it has a dog. A big friendly one that does not jump or bark much but just smiles encouragingly until I give his ears a a good rub! She works late and occasionally locks herself out while walking him, which has resulted in my door buzzer waking me up at odd hours. But I sort of don’t mind because when I slump downstairs to let them in, her dog wags and grins and lets me hug him! A dog!
This is why I keep a house key on my leash! Crippling fear of being locked out.
Such a good idea!
And I also don’t have to worry that my husband has a key with him if he’s out with the dog and I want to go somewhere. I spent too much time trying to decide whether to wait around for him, I made like 4 copies of the key and put one on every dog-related thing we have. It’s liberating!
Yes, the dog leashes are excellent stand-ins for pockets/purses. Our leashes each have a container of poop bags attached, plus a house key, plus a little pouch for ID, money, and credit card.
Comic artist Meredith Gran’s pinned tweet (my favorite tweet):
*sees a dog* *slowly turns head wide-eyed to life’s 4th wall* A DOG
Yesterday a guy passed me on the trail on his bike and a second later his golden passed me as well, trotting along carrying its leash in its mouth. You should have seen my stupid face.
I am having A Week and it’s only Wednesday, these secret pet stories and the ones down thread are giving me the strength to make it to Friday. Bless you all.
A few occasions of seeing dogs on the street that have brought me great joy:
– A dog that was carrying a pretty huge stuffed animal in its mouth while on a daily walk.
– A dog trotting along, excitedly carrying a “stick” in its mouth that was more like a branch/log/small tree. Best part was the dog was not holding it in the middle but on one side so the balance was all off but this dog did not care, this dog was jubilant at the size of his catch!
Dogs!!! A few days ago there was inexplicably a very friendly, very fluffy Newfoundland puppy running around my gym. Technically, I’m pretty sure pets aren’t allowed and I’m sure some people didn’t appreciate a giant puppy flinging himself from person to person demanding attention but that will probably forever be my best work out of all time, if maybe not the most productive.
Those pets!
One of my friends has a very old dog (he’s kinda blind and kinda deaf), and he keeps jumping in waterways and then whining pitifully by the bank until she pulls him out again. It’s annoying but also kind of adorable?
My last dog used to get stuck under the couch at my parent’s house on the regular. The first time I was super worried and bugged my brother to tilt the couch up gently so he could get out safely. Every time after that, I’d just leave him to his whining until he figure out how to get out himself. Silly little guy, not so great at the learning.
Oh my god, those stuck pet pictures. I am bookmarking that for bad days.
The dogs I am 100% not surprised that they got themselves into those messes and are chill about them. It’s the cats that don’t have immediate murder on their faces that surprise me.
KITTY. HOW DID YOU END UP IN A BAGEL, KITTY.
This is amazing and hilarious and reminds me of the time I was preparing a bagel and the phone rang, so my kitty took advantage of my distraction to steal my bagel. I only knew that she was doing it because she made chirping hunting noises, and was fully halfway across the house with my bagel before I caught her.
Later in life she stole cake off my friend’s plate. #shameless. (but srsly, don’t let a cat near your cake, what even is wrong with you?)
I feel like this is the appropriate time to say that once, our dog stole a baguette from the table and ran off with it. Our house at the time was small and had had most of its interior doors removed, so we chased her in a circle around the entire house two or three times, cackling hysterically the whole way.
She looked like a cartoon French dog with that damn baguette sticking out of her mouth.
If I leave a bag of madeleines in Saffron’s reach she will open it and eat a bite out of every single one. She loves cake.
Why only one bite per madeleine, though?? Does she love cake? Or does she just think she loves cake until she tries a bite of it, then decides it’s not so great, then sees the next madeleine over and her tiny cat brain goes “Ooh, cake! I love cake!”again, etc., repeat until out of madeleines?
This is one explanation, but may I propose the alternative explanation that cats are evil. Adorable, but evil.
She is contrary. She will beg for cake when I am eating it and will fall on the first few bits as if she has been starved for a week, and then will decide that what I’m giving her is poison and she must beg for the secret cake I am eating that is clearly different to what I’m offering her.
I think given time she would demolish a whole bag of madeleines (she is the least fussy about them compared to other cake) but she is quite easily distracted.
I suspect it’s about wanting what someone else has. My little, evil cat constantly wants whatever old lady cat has — the bowl of kibble that is exactly the same as the other bowl of kibble, the water dish that has water from the tap just like the other water dish, the spot she’s laying in that is equivalent to the multiple cozy spots all over the house. She’s just like a ball of free-floating jealousy that randomly gets grounded wherever she looks.
Mine aren’t too bad with each other for that (which is handy as Captain has a prescription diet and daily medication), but they are both very covetous of whatever I’m eating, even if they don’t actually want it upon close inspection.
My late cat Dandelion was always immensely covetous of any food she saw people eating (“you have a plate! What’s on it? Let me have some- oh, it’s bread”); while she didn’t enjoy all human food she loved fruitcake and ice cream.
My cat attempted to eat my hummus the other day.
Ohhhh, my parents had a Rhodesian Ridgeback that once did that with an entire 5 lb. bag of potatoes. She just knew that one of them had to be edible, and by golly, she was going to find it!
Hah! That is brilliant.
IIRC, someone last week (?) told a similar story about a dog eating one bite out of each onion in a 5 lb. bag, which has really stayed with me. My dog once ate uncooked rice, olive oil, and flour at one go, which was fun. Her poop was craaaaazy for like three days.
My aunt’s greyhound once ate an entire pork roast, mostly whole, and then puked it back up on her (my aunt’s) bed less than an hour later. Because a whole pork roast is too much food for a greyhound, you dingus.
Haha this just reminded me of when my dog got into a tub of Vaseline. His poops were… smooth.
I made the mistake of reading this comment while taking a sip of water.
My old Labrador ate a huge bag of raw potatoes INCLUDING THE PLASTIC BAG. At the vet we got to see the huge impending farts on x-ray.
I might be able to get a dog in a few more months and I am super stoked.
My dog ate a bowl of pizza dough that I had set out to rise, but she didn’t get to it until after it had risen partway. It continued to rise after she ate it. There were many farts and burps.
(Apparently this is actually dangerous and I probably should have taken her to the vet, but I didn’t know that, so we just laughed at her)
This, for reference, is the dog that got out of the yard and eventually returned with a fully cooked turkey wing. Still don’t know where that come from. She also once dug up the compost and came up with a sheep’s head.
Some friends growing up had Ridgebacks and from their experience I have concluded that Ridgebacks are the absolute worst (or… best?) when it comes to getting to food.
So many ruined backpacks and pots taken from the stove…
Gertie also loves cake! She likes most carbs but cake is definitely her favorite.
Once when I was young, we didn’t get the front door quite shut when leaving the house for the day, and came home to find aaalllllll the outside cats lounging about on the furniture. They had eaten the tips off all the Hershey’s kisses in a big basket on the counter, and were quite pleased with themselves.
Oh my god, that is just the best image ever. All the smug little cat faces looking at you.
We once made a tres leches cake and our dog ate fully 3/4s of it (and amazingly didn’t throw up).
We made the cake again so we could, you know, actually eat some and he got SUPER excited.
My friend’s cat does that with any succulents she tries to get as house plants. She’ll come home to find four perfect puncture marks in every single leaf. She doesn’t even try anymore.
My one cat is so very good about not putting her face one my food, but very indignant if I don’t let her sniff it, so I hand literally everything to her for inspection.
So then we get another cat who does not have the same boundaries and it’s like “good morning kitty you want to smell my bagel? No, don’t lick the cream cheese off that’s not how this game goes!!!” (I also do this when I visit friends who have dogs. They also care more about putting their mouth on things than a delicate sniff-inspection)
I have a similar yarn struggle; my cats have been taught to Respect The Yarn, and then we got a brother/sister pair because their human was irresponsibly moving halfway across the world and they do not have my kitty’s boundaries and there is a whole new learning curve happening now.
I thought it was only my new weirdo cat that stole human food! (He has tried to swipe chips out of my hand repeatedly, and on one memorable occasion leapt to steal pizza from my friend and ran halfway across the apartment with it.) My other cat just does not care about human food, so it has been a really bizarre experience.
It’s like having an agile dog with claws.
Our cat growing up loved Tostitos. And she wanted precisely one bite of your pizza crust. Only one.
College cat would use her paws and hook your hard boiled egg right out of your hand.
Current cats limit themselves to stealing bags of shredded cheese off of the counter.
The bagel thief will eat any starch around. We actually have a Non-Cat room that all bread products go into because she has worked out cupboards, latches, and breadboxes. She cannot, however, work out doorknobs, so HA! My bagels!
Other cat really enjoys salty snacks. Not just the cheesy ones, either. Like, corn nuts. It is so weird. O yes and also he really enjoys licking walls.
My weirdo cat thinks the dust on window blinds is a fine delicacy. (He literally gets up on his hind legs to lick, lick, lick the blinds.)
My weirdo cat loves to eat spiderwebs! I don’t mind I have a lot of spiders and this means I only have to worry about the ones higher than a few feet off the ground.
Oooh, yeah, I’ve caught my cats eating a few of those too. They get them tangled in their whiskers, augh.
Same here, but I think it’s cute. Thankfully I grew up with a combination of a lot of non-venomous spiders and a mom who had a very agricultural attitude toward spiders (“they’re beneficial! As long as they aren’t trouble there’s no reason to bother them!”)
Good gods, I wish! I… may have let my window blinds get slightly grosser than I am comfortable with.
Cat Where I Live is very into seaweed snacks and is upset that I am down to my last package and won’t share.
Not just your weirdo cat.
My parents’ cat loooves tortilla chips (my mom also loves tortilla chips, so he has a lot of opportunities to beg for them). But, being a cat, he does not have the molars to chew them, so my mom has to crumble them up for him.
According to my parents, our cat managed to get hold of and eat some nacho cheese-flavoured Doritos recently. She seemed to enjoy them.
Our newest cat is also a massive human food thief (I think he learned it from the dogs). He will pretty much jump onto your plate if you don’t watch him.
I have a dogcat. He will actually take food out of my mouth if he can. I have no idea how he thinks this is a good plan but I have learned to watch for kittypaws in my face while eating at my desk.
I am shocked mine doesn’t do this! I just have to eat with a spray bottle. Only sometimes he’ll start trying to gnaw on the spray bottle?
THE AUDACITY. Our bagel thief is like that too – she will actively walk into the water spray and then look confused because she is wet.
When I had pet rats, one of them wanted whatever I had just eaten–she would lick my lips, and the first time I opened my mouth in surprise and she dove into my mouth to lick my teeth.
Pet rats, man.
My parents’ cat has never eaten human food in the five-ish years they’ve had them… but a few weeks ago, he made an exception for a cake pop. A cake pop!
They say that cats do not have the taste bud receptors (or whatever real term) to taste sweet but the few foods my cat does go for are always very, very sugary. She loves peeps and jellybeans, every cat I’ve had has loved cake and pie filling… sure they like the occasional meat bit but they really prefer dessert!
(my cat also likes adopting potato chips but that’s another story)
Have you seen the gifs/video of cats eating fruit? Especially melon? Ugh, they are the best.
Particularly this cat:
HERE’S THE MELON GIF:
This is wonderful!!
My former cat was insane for marshmallows. It was hilarious to watch, because they would stick to his fangs, and then stick to his claws, and then stick to his fangs… ah, good times.
Yeah, I legitimately don’t believe people who tell me this anymore. Weirdo cat (who apparently isn’t so weird, based on the responses above!) loves sweet things most of all. He would 100% go for a cake pop or pie filling. (Unless it was a lemon filling. He hates citrus and, like, backs away when confronted with it for some reason.)
My first thought was “like a witch!”
I think pretty much all cats dislike citrus? It is deffo a ‘thing they are supposed to dislike’.
Huh. I did not know this! Though he’s also supposed to not care about sugar and probably shouldn’t eat lint or try to eat coins (seriously.), and yet.
I once set down a plate with half a bagel on it and turned to pick up my coffee. When I turned back around the bagel was gone and the only sign it had ever existed was a Chihuahua with a spot of cream cheese on his nose.
I have one of those kitchen trash baskets with the foot pedal and my cat knows how to stand on the pedal, reach his giant paws in, and swipe chicken bones. Lately, I have been resorting to try and remember to throw the bones in the freezer until the trash goes out (and not leave them in there forever) or putting a weight on top of the trash.
Cats are TOO SMART. Mine can get into any cabinet or drawer (thankfully my doors have round knobs and not levers anymore, they were good at those too), but they haven’t figured out my trash can, at least.
We have to latch the door on the pantry because the cat has not only figured out how to open the door and get to the bag of dry food, but can close the door behind him so it looks like he was never there. I’ve seen him in action but I still can’t quite believe it.
This reminds me of the cat who figured out how to get into the freezer and steal fish sticks:
My cats don’t do that, but I cannot leave any food in 99.5% of my kitchen because they can get to it. I had to put baby locks on the cabinets with the recycling and trash. I once made cupcakes and left them out to cool; when I came and checked on them basically half had their tops delicately nibbled away.
Just the other day I was absentmindedly plowing my way through a box of girl scout cookies and caught my cat delicately removing one from the package and carrying it to her bed when she thought I wasn’t looking. Sometimes I find chicken bones in her bed with the marrow sucked out and I don’t even know where they come from.
I didn’t get a picture, but my rat Lucy attempted to run away with a burrito that was as wide around as she was and twice as long. She managed to drag it halfway across my bed before I turned around and caught her at it.
This could have been the second pizzarat. #regrets
I just love the fact that he’s turning this crisis into an opportunity to nom.
He is totally going to eat his way out of this predicament.
“Oh me? I totally meant to do this. Yep. You’re just jealous.” (I am jealous).
“Whelp, time to turn lemons into lemonade!”
Crisis, or excellent strategy? If I had the option of a bagel ring around my neck for constant carb access without even having to use my hands, I would be allllll over that.
That cat looks so high. I think he’s been hitting the nip.
I laughed so hard at this one at the link. BEST.
I also love the one of the Shiba Inu dog that pushed its way through thick shrubbery and found itself dangling over a very high wall. Such a cheerful eager face! So ridiculously poised! So happy to be a wayward orange-gold trapped gargoyle-dog!
The chain link fence one, too. Happy go luckiest breed?
yes!!
I sort of identify with the Shiba Inu as a breed. Though it is as much ironic-merry glows’ humor-fatalist as happy-go-lucky, but when you encounter enough disaster! well! (boing!)
My cat chases her tail and then catches it and gets her own claws stuck in her own tail fur and then makes the weirdest noises about it and we sit there staring, bemused, unable to look away.
My roommate’s cat keeps forgetting she has a tail, being surprised by the tail, then chasing and pouncing the tail, then being pissed off that SOMEone bit her tail.
My sweet harmless golden retriever once stole my dad’s burrito off the living room table when he got up. My dad is very possessive of his food. He never stopped bringing it up, for the rest of the dog’s life. “Yeah, Maggie’s great…unless you like burritos!”
DADS
Dog rarely has the opportunity to get into food he shouldn’t have, because he’s so needy that if he isn’t sitting right next to/trying to crawl on top of me (mostly the latter) or trying to get me to play with him, I know he’s getting in trouble. Also he’s a young lab-ish thing and, as follows, an unsubtle buffoon. But one time I was out and partner went to the bathroom, and he decided to go for the gingerbread house that was on the table, which he then accidentally knocked off the table. It shattered. Good move, dog, sure, no one will ever notice.
My cat would love this. My cat is a carb-aholic and doesn’t care about most types of meat/fish. I keep telling him he’s an obligate carnivore and it’s weird he only begs for hot dog buns and turns up his nose at tuna, but he doesn’t listen.
So, TLDR: cat carb addiction is how this happens.
She likes to think of it as a convenient snack necklace.
This thread is the best thing today thank you for starting it. A toast to all of our weird and wonderful fur-babies! ♥
I am very impressed by James Tiberius’s pink-and-purple shopping trolley. Smashing the gender binary can never start too early!
On braces: when I went to an orthodontist to see if I needed braces I was told I would “never be a princess” if I continued to suck my thumb. Screw you, dentist. (He also said something hilarious;y awful about my brother’s looks, I think, but I sadly cannot remember what it was.)
Could be worse! My dentist never gave me Novocaine when he filled my cavities, something I didn’t realize because I was like 12 and thought no one would be willingly fucking me over like that. Then he gave me braces and messed up the glue, and my teeth are permanently stained, even 20 years later. Plus I (unsurprisingly) have major dental fear now.
I had bad teeth as a kid (as in had to get fillings on baby teeth when I was 3 years old; our guess is that it was probably related to me being born 5 weeks early) and I also had a crazy dentist. He definitely did not numb me properly when I was either having teeth pulled or having cavities filled–I was 7-ish, it’s hazy–and I remember him saying “if something’s wrong, you let me know and we’ll stop,” but there were so many instruments in my mouth at once that I couldn’t actually make a sound to get their attention. I was also really shy so I wasn’t going to assert myself in any other way.
I asked my mom about him a few years ago, and apparently he died relatively young. I was not unhappy about that.
Then when I was 17 I had to get my wisdom teeth out, and an oral surgeon who had worked on my parents before did it. They said the whole procedure would take 45 minutes, so I made a 45 minute ipod playlist and put it on, but of course everything took longer. I didn’t want anesthesia so they gave me laughing gas but I felt nothing happening, even as they kept increasing the amount, so eventually I stopped asking them to increase it. When they finally got around to taking the teeth out (they broke them apart first, then took the pieces out, apparently that’s safer in terms of not hitting nerves) my music was already off and I felt everything.
Also, my mom had unwittingly made the appointment one week before my senior yearbook photos and wouldn’t change it, so I was still slightly puffy when I took the pictures and I hate looking at them. *sad trombone*
I had fillings in my baby teeth too! We assume mine was from being on a two-year steady regimen of phenobarbital for idiopathic seizures until about one week before the FDA noped it away (at least for that kind of use). The family dentist refused to treat me so I saw a specialist, who was mostly okay, but a lot of the hygienists were really mean and basically anytime something hurt, they told me it was because I wasn’t brushing well enough–which I’m pretty sure is not why none of my baby teeth roots dissolved and I had to have every. single. one. pulled.
May all those hygienists’ teeth fall out. Amen.
Laughing gas is a sadistic lie. Do not believe what they tell you about laughing gas. When I was in the emergency room after I thoroughly borked my ankle playing soccer they had to redislocate it for gory and unimportant reasons.
I was topped out on normal painkillers and they couldn’t give me an anesthetic because I was going in for surgery the next morning. So they said they’d give me laughing gas and I would be so high I wouldn’t care what they did to my foot.
That was untrue. I tried to tell them it wasn’t working and the guy was like ‘so why are you laughing then?’ and I was like ‘that’s how I cope with fear!’ and he ignored me and dislocated my ankle.
I cared. I cared a lot, and at very high volume. My ex (who was made to wait outside because gory) said he almost threw up just at the sound I made.
I have since mentioned this story to several women who have had happy gas for their births, and they agree that the entire concept is a cruel joke. #stoplaughinggas2k16
I have often heard people say their dentists used no Novocaine…was the dental profession a haven for Sadists?
If Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors is anything to go by, absolutely.
Pretty sure the answer is yes, for old male dentists of a certain age. I vividly recall crying in pain while the assistant wiped my tears and my asshole childhood dentist kept working.
Ew!
When I was a kid a doctor told me I should never smoke cigarettes because it gives women premature wrinkles. BUT WHAT ABOUT LUNG CANCER BRO.
I was editing a nursing oncology book a few years ago and one of the chapters said something about ‘if a teenage girl receives a cancer diagnosis, her primary concern will be changes to her appearance’.
Oh it pissed me off so much. A-everyone cares when they are going to lose their hair due to chemo, etc., not just teenage girls, and B-everyone primarily cares about whether or not they’re going to die.
My mom used to make me go to a dermatologist b/c of my acne; he was this little slimy toad of a guy and I couldn’t stand him. Somehow the subject of me being treated for depression came up (my mom probably brought it up), and he asked “well, are you depressed because of your acne?” I was so pissed off, if I could have stormed out and gotten myself home, I would have. I was incensed that basically his thought process was teenage girl–>only cares about appearance–>has acne–>is sad.
See, the premature wrinkles are alarming because they would likely prevent courtship and baby making. Cancer takes years to kill a woman, so she dies *after* the baby making, her mission accomplished. Who wants post-baby women around any longer than necessary, anyway?
I really needed braces–my teeth were all over the place and I had to get a number of baby teeth pulled because they just wouldn’t fall out even after the adult teeth had moved in.
My little brother, on the other hand, has great teeth. He was so upset when the orthodontist told him he’d never have braces that he burst into tears. The orthodontist, in an attempt at consolation, pointed out that, at least, he might get to have glasses later on.
He doesn’t need glasses. I do. Thanks parents.
This article about a spoof company to diversity your all-white panel is just… wow. http://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/…
I love that the author refers to herself as emperor and tsar, plus founder, chairwoman, president, chief minority officer, founder, chief dreamer, and CEO.
I am also reminded of the (apparently real) practice of renting disabled children so you don’t have to wait in line at amusement parks.
?!?!? I’ve heard of people putting their healthy kids in wheelchairs, but is that really a thing?!?
And artists Caroline Sinders and Taja Cheek, are currently working on a project provisionally titled Databases Full of Women, which is a consolidated database of women of colour across a range of industries.
Glad to see we’re being upgraded from binders 😛
For people who read Mindy Kalings “Why Not Me” could Brian Mosteller be the “Will” she dated briefly in the book?
That is 100% what I thought as well when I read the link roundup. The description of him just *feels* like Will.
I think Mosteller is gay- But there is another, perhaps even more indelible memory for Mosteller — the morning after, when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Mosteller, who since got engaged, had been open with the president about his sexual orientation since the early days of the campaign.
Baby ties are perhaps the most useless, BUT most adorable piece of clothing on this planet. Also, James’ whole outfit is prob something I would actually wear. A+ baby fashion all around.
That is a seriously classy baby.
Here’s an interesting article on Patty McCord, who created Netflix’s internal culture, and did such a good job she ended up making herself redundant: http://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/the-future-of-…
(Ignore the click-baity title, I went in thinking this was gonna be some story that would get me all fired up but it’s really just about a woman who did her job so well she wasn’t needed, which was the point, and then she moved on. ALSO, semi-relatedly, following @deray on twitter was a great decision because he RTs so many great articles, which was how I found this one. Highly recommend.)
I got to see Michael Twitty speak several years ago and it was spectacular. He is as fabulous as he seems! But I hadn’t realized he’d gotten so famous. Good for him!
I love Michael Twitty! Every few months I end up on his website and get lost for an hour or two. I took a Gender, Race, and Food class a few years ago (probably the BEST class I have ever taken in my life) which made me even more obsessed with food and culture and appropriation then I had been before. I love food history and discussing the idea of authenticity in regards to food. It’s made me more aware of how I cook and how I define what I cook. Any other food nerds out there?
Worked for Zingerman’s for years. Twitty’s the kind of guy my old boss should/would/probably already HAS had in for a special dinner. Anyway yes, I can talk about this for a long time.
ZINGERMAN’S
[unintelligible screams of excitement]
If I was able to find a way to work for them without moving back to Ann Arbor I’d do it in a second. Loved the company, loved the job, couldn’t stand A2.
I’ve only been to Ann Arbor once, so I mostly think of it fondly as the Zingerman’s pilgrimage destination, tbh. I have an aunt who developed the wonderful habit of sending me enormous care packages of fine cheeses while I was in college, so getting to go to the store during a road trip was a pretty big milestone in my life. The sparrows that hung around the dining area were the fattest, happiest sparrows I’ve ever seen, and I was so effusively amped to be there that the cashier used her employee discount on my order just because. 😀 😀 😀
Ah, yeah, then. That sounds very much like a Deli thing to have happen 😀
A2 is fine, mostly, for a lot of reasons, but the people who are from there never let you forget it, and working in a service job there can be really, really tough.
Oof, yeah, that’d be a pain. Working a service job in a college town is a great way to learn some horrible truths about humanity, for sure. But the food!
Food nerd check in! My MA thesis was going to be on cookbooks and the creation of colonial communities. I stepped away after I dropped out of school, but am ready to get back into the swing of things! Tell me what you love to read on the internet about food!
Mostly I love food memoirs–The Language of Baklava (and you KNOW I am down for Diana Abu-Jaber’s new memoir), Comfort Food for Breakups, etc. I love food blogs, though, especially ones written by a person from a specific culture that explains the food, the importance of the ingredients, and so on and so forth. (She Simmers is a favorite for both Thai recipes and great information on Thai cooking in general.) I also love The Splendid Table–Lynne Rossetto Kasper is a national treasure–because they have great articles and wonderful recipes. Oh! And NPRs blog The Salt is really great when talking about food history and the culture of food.
What are you reading? What books do you recommend?
OH MAN FOOD MEMOIRRRRSSSS.
Gumbo Tales by Sara Roahan. Find and read.
Lynne is such a damn sweetheart, I met her a few years back and have rarely felt such a huge lump of goodwill from a human in my entire life. Getting her a t-shirt was maybe a highlight of my entire existence.
Screen Doors and Sweet Tea by Martha Foose = love forever, also that woman can hold her bourbon, wow
Oh my gosh that Gumbo Tales book looks amazing! I am going to get a copy AND recommend it to my book club.
I’m so glad to know that Lynne is great in real life! She’s always so gracious when people on TST are in awe of her–and I have The Italian Country Table and her book personality is just as wonderful as she is on the radio.
I am excited because I have a Ruth Reichl book and a pirate-queen-kidnaps-chef adventure novel (Cinnamon & Gunpowder) on the library hold shelf!
Food memoirs I have loved: Day of Honey, about food during war, and In Search of the Perfect Loaf, this dude’s adventure in learning about bread.
Yes to all of those, but especially the baking one! I read bread recipe books like novels already, so that sounds pretty much perfect!
Food nerdssssss
I get to research and write about food history for work and it is the BEST JOB. I mostly obsess over trade routes and colonialism and the history of food processing and ritual uses of food items, and try to sneak those references into everything I write, and it’s great.
I just got this book http://www.amazon.com/Food-History-Reader-Primary… (can never remember how to make nice links sry) and it’s incredible– there are translated cuneiform soup recipes and classical Chinese texts on internal medicine and all kinds of fascinating stuff. Highly recommend.
Unrelated: you may not remember this, but last year you suggested Fort Collins when I was deciding where to move, and I’ve been here for eight months now and you were totally right, it’s fantastic. So thanks!
Your job sounds amazing! I bet it’s great fun. I get to research textiles for my job and I love it. That books sounds great, and it will definitely go on my list.
And I DO remember you! I was actually thinking about it last week apropos of nothing. I’m glad you love Fort Collins, I am very happy where I am now but I do miss Old Town, all the great beer, all the special events, and especially Lucille’s. If you haven’t been to Lucille’s for breakfast I highly recommend. Get there when they open if you’re going on a weekend (people usually start to arrive 5-10 minutes before they ope their doors) and you will not be disappointed. I still dream about their spiced tea, beignets, and eggs New Orleans. Also there’s a great Afghani place near the K-Mart. I can’t remember the name of the place but the food is incredible and the owners are great as well. (I might need to make a pilgrimage up north just for the food–once it warms up a bit.)
Lucille’s was one of my first breakfasts after moving! Those beignets are unreal.
I’m not a huge fan of driving here, due to both roads and drivers leaving much to be desired, but everything else has been great. Winter hasn’t even been too rough– high of 61 today! Come by whenever! We can go to the cheese bistro, which I love more than I thought possible!
I had forgotten how much I miss the Welsh Rabbit! I think I buried my memories because I miss it so much. There is seriously nothing better than getting a bottle of wine and eating nothing but cheese, bread, and olives and maybe some charcuterie. Next time I’m in town I’ll let you know! I would love to hang out with a fellow Toastie!
I am the opposite of a food nerd, but I love Michael Twitty! He thinks very carefully about the overlooked issues and I value his take on current events.
Sorry Toasties, can’t wait for open thread – I have been invited by my local Democratic Party to run for state representative! There is less than a snowball’s chance in hell that I will win, I would basically just be running to keep the race from being uncontested.
But that could be amazing, right?! It’s the right thing to do, I think? Am I insane???
DOOO IIIIIIT
PLEASE.
That’s pretty cool, whether you win or not! I do think it’s important to have contested races whenever possible–otherwise it’s really just a farce. If you do run, I am happy to offer any services required. Not to brag or anything, but I was elected as student council president my senior year. I’ll even give you my golden line (well, to 17 year old me): I’m not asking for your respect, I’m asking for the chance to earn your respect.”
I will TOTALLY use that!!
Do it! I’m always tempted to do this because I live in an area where the republicans run uncontested all the time. If they’re going to win, at least make them work for it! And local/state government has a major impact on people’s lives!
Do it! And then come tells us all the insights you’ve had into the nitty gritty of doing something like that 😀
I had an AMAZING debate teacher (whose class is the reason I think I might be able to do this) who ran for Congress a few years back and I am totally tapping him for some insight before I get started.
That’s awesome! Do it! (If it’s something you want to do, that is. You don’t owe it to anyone to run. But if you at all want to do it, do it! 🙂 )
I’ll say that it’s a lot easier to commit to this knowing that there is absolutely no way I’ll win. But it would be amazing if I did!
THIS IS MY DREAM, YOU HAVE TO DO IT
Totally amazing! What an honor to be asked. As someone who used to live in a district where no one ever opposed the awful Republican state rep, I would have dearly loved to vote for someone else even if they didn’t have a snowball’s chance. And who knows what could happen?!
DO IT DO IT DO IT. Because also that’s how you get your name in the hat for the races that are winnable.
TOTALLY! And just remember what happened to Jackson on season 5 of Gilmore Girls when *he* thought he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
Totally the right thing to do and a fantastic experience- Do It
DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR SHOT
I AM NOT THROWING AWAY MY SHOT
(seriously this more than anything else has convinced me)
Public service is calling you. Make A.Ham proud of you. (without, you know, all the duelling and getting shot and stuff)
And without the sex scandals.
You gotta do you, tho.
But do you gotta do Maria Reynolds?
Yes, do it! And then tell us all about it! (If you want to.)
You should do what Leslie Knope would do, which is FIRST to make an extensive pros vs. cons list, and SECOND to decide that you are definitely going to run.
ETA: seriously state reps are SO IMPORTANT nobody realizes this
THIRD make a binder with every contact and strategy you will need, wardrobe choices, rough drafts of stump speeches, inspiration female politicians, etc. FOURTH start a scrapbook with the pro/con list as the first page.
(definitely not tearing up a little bit because of how much I love/miss that show and Leslie Knope)
TRUE STORY I have already discussed with my bestie that I basically need to start dressing like Olivia Pope post-haste
bye bye blue jeans, HELLO WINE CARDIGANS
Everyone’s already said to run and I totally agree. Do it! But my main reason is this: one time I neglected to do sufficient research on the lone non-Republican candidate for state rep (iirc) and it turned out that the guy, while running as a Democrat, was some sort of unholy white supremacist monster who was obviously running as a Dem because the state party either couldn’t find someone who actually was one or just didn’t care. And I voted for him, an act which still horrifies me. I assumed SOMEONE had vetted the guy!
So you should run so people like me won’t have horrible guilt on our souls when it turns out our protest vote went to someone even worse.
DO IT. And if you feel comfortable, post a link to your campaign so I can donate.
I don’t know how to post images, can someone post the ‘shut up and take my money’ image, kthnx.
This is absolutely bonkers and amazing, congratulations you killer bee! GOOD LUCK KNOCK EM DEAD
All these later and I still feel contentious about my childhood braces. I only needed them for cosmetic reasons but my parents decided I didn’t know what I meant when I said I didn’t care and subjected me to three years of almost constant pain. I understand the privilege that is my parents being able to afford braces, but my old smile was fine. I wish I’d been able to make the decision about them as an adult, and I wish society would get over the value judgments that come with straight teeth
A-men. (I love this article, by the way: https://aeon.co/essays/there-is-no-shame-worse-th… )
Even my friends who are super-duper-sensitive to other markers of who’s-had-money-and-health-and-luck, like size or grammar, delight in making fun of people’s teeth. I…sometimes get kind of tired of people.
As someone with healthy but quite crooked teeth, YES. I get tired of people. I take very good care of my teeth and have only had one cavity ever (which is probably luck since I rarely saw a dentist as a child), I get so sick of people making snide comments about my teeth. I know they are all wonky and I would dearly love to get braces because they are very hard to floss and I have some mild issues due to alignment being off, but WTF. Crooked teeth are not a sign of character. Childhood poverty isn’t a sign of character either. Hell, even if you are a terrible person who thinks adults are always to blame for being poor because bootstraps or whatever, it’s not like a kid has any power over that.
I would love to get braces but my extra money, when I have it, has always gone elsewhere. Working my way through school, student loans (still), helping my parents with medical bills, and now my kids need braces. Then college. So, you know, maybe some day. In the meantime, I keep telling myself that crooked teeth are a great way to filter the assholes out of my life early.
*toasts you with cup of (su)staining tea*
It *is* a way of weeding out assholes and busybodies. (I also watch a lot of pre-1990 TV where plenty of people have teeth like mine and aren’t presented as Obviously Evil, Stupid or Unattractive.)
My childhood dentist (RIP Dr Birgmingham) was very non-interventionist about cosmetic issues but an absolute hard-liner about tooth health. This means that, while my brother and I never had braces (my sister did but that was because she had too many adult teeth and her wee jaw couldn’t take it), we did take fluoride tablets because we were on well water. So I am a 39-yr-old adult with ever-so-slightly crooked teeth who has never even once had a cavity. I’ll live with the crookedness, thanks.
HARD SAME. And I stopped wearing my retainer as soon as I could get away with it, so guess what! It didn’t make all that much difference in the long run. (And I have never gotten a cavity in the places where my teeth are wonky. I have in the back molars though, which is probably because they’re hard to floss because they kept trying to cram them in tighter to fit the front teeth in.)
Still a little mad that when my parents took my little brother to get his (legitimately messed) teeth fixed, the orthodontist somehow talked them into getting braces for me in some kind of 2-for-1 deal, because my bottom front teeth were a bit crooked. My teeth were FINE, and I played the trumpet which is terrible with braces. (Although that led to me switching to the tuba, which was a net positive. Still.)
I didn’t have a horrible time with my braces, (and there were some non-aesthetic reasons for getting them, my back molars didn’t match up or something like that) but I am a little resentful that when my parents took my little brother to the orthodontist they collectively decided that he shouldn’t get braces, because the gap in his front teeth is genetic and braces wouldn’t fix it. The major aesthetic problem with my teeth is/was genetic too!! I had the same teeth as my mom, and still have a permanent retainer WHICH I HATE to keep my bottom teeth from overlapping in the front, which is what she also has. I know that isn’t the only problem that my braces fixed, but the fact that my little brother got away braces-free and I got left with the permanent retainer irks me greatly.
You can totally get the permanent retainer removed. I did when I started martial arts, even though Aikido didn’t involve a lot of face hits. I just wanted it gone.
My friend had top and bottom ones and she got hers removed, but apparently had to put up a big fight with her dentist to get them out (why). I’m switching to a new dentist soon and will def bring it up then!
My permanent bottom retainer caused me so much stress. The orthodontist didn’t explain to me that it was permanent and my mom told me it would just fall out eventually so she didn’t need to make an appointment at the orthodontist for me. There was an embarrassingly long time when I thought that there was something terribly wrong with it because it hadn’t fallen out yet and I was convinced it was slowly poisoning me.
Two of the things I most appreciate that my parents did for me as a kid are (a) get me the orthodontia I needed and (b) put their feet down when the orthodontist said “well, I know I said I’d take the braces off after a year, and her teeth are healthy, but they could be straighter…”
And that’s how I ended up with healthy, slightly crooked teeth and only having orthodontia for nine years instead of forever, probably.
My boyfriend and I have legit argued about braces. He got them and I didn’t. He hated them every second and still has a wire behind his bottom front teeth.
I honestly don’t know whether or not he needed them, but I did, and my parents never even thought about it. (They were shitty about getting us to the dentist, too.) My front top teeth aren’t hideous or anything (thank god) but a lot of my teeth overlap in a way that makes them difficult to clean properly, and so I have cavities, and I’m pretty sure it contributed to my TMJ disorder.
So every time my boyfriend has complained about how much he hated braces I always ended up replying, “Okay, but at least you got them, and I didn’t.”
<heresy>Should I really support the troops if I heartily disapprove of everything they are doing?</heresy>
I mean, I want all those people to come home unhurt…or better yet, not to have gone at all. It would be nice if the civilians in those countries didn’t get blown up, either. It all seems so pointless and cack-handed. Are we fighting ISIL or not? Can we tell the difference between all the factions? Why are we bombing hospitals?
I have so many unanswered questions.
Canadians managed this weird “we support our troops (although we wish they were still peacekeepers) even though we’re pretty sure the situation in Afghanistan is more nuanced than our government wants us to think.” Kind of “don’t hate the player, hate the game”
I think there’s a big difference between saying “I appreciate that you have promised to risk your life for my safety if our government says that is what needs to be done” and “I support everything our government tells the military to do.” My husband is a 20-year military veteran, and he privately opposed the war in Iraq and frequently thinks that the government is not using the military appropriately. But that doesn’t mean he and I don’t support the individual troops, who are, in fact, necessary for our country’s defense.
I think there’s a big difference between saying “I appreciate that you have promised to risk your life for my safety if our government says that is what needs to be done” and “I support everything our government tells the military to do.”
so much this.
i have no internal conflict about supporting the troops and disliking government policy. it would be nice to live in a peaceful world but we do not. i am therefore SO VERY THANKFUL that there are people willing to put their life on the line for mine. that doesn’t mean i approve of the way our government uses them & treats them.
Why would you not support the troops? They don’t make military policy, and of all U.S. citizens, they suffer the brunt of it.
The armed forces are now all volunteers (or ’employees’, if you prefer). If they were conscripts, I would probably be less conflicted. As it is, I have a lot of sympathy for the volunteers who joined because their financial options were limited. See? Heresy. I’m just not the patriotic type, at least where war is concerned. I paid too much attention in history classes when I was younger.
I don’t think it’s really about patriotism, but rather about supporting good working conditions for people, whatever their reasons for working where they work.
I don’t want to pile on here but I can’t get behind the idea that an employee is a cosigner to the employer’s decisions or positions. That’s not the way labor-management relations are meant to work, and it’s a nifty way to sidestep the responsibility that we as a society have towards working people.
When I was in college I worked part-time at Walmart. I was a surly 20-year-old pushing a broom so that I could make the extra money I needed to cover my housing and, uh, liquor expenses. I was not the “deserving poor,” I was not some angelic single mother just trying to keep the heat on. And I used to get the nastiest looks and comments from peers who just sort of disapproved of the general enterprise. As if I had decided that ah yes, THIS is the $7.35 hourly paycheck with which I have decided to align my personal brand. Fuck that. It was a job. None of us are perfectly uncompromised and unconflicted and ready to prove that we are deserving enough to be granted dignity and good health. I assure you that if my disapproving friends had met some of my truly impoverished Walmart coworkers they would have found them distasteful somehow too; sure they were needy, but they were uneducated, had different politics and tastes. You can’t win, if the goal is to prove that you are the right kind of citizen, the deserving one who’s working for the right reasons.
In my view, a progressive society doesn’t make those kind of judgments. We don’t look person by person and decide who merits our sympathy, who we like enough to root for. Instead it’s an across the board rule– all labor has dignity. All people deserve safety, respect, and a living wage. Period. Maybe someday we will live in a more peaceful society but that’s a long way off, and I’m not going to let my preferences for a distant future outweigh my concern for people who are in need right now.
Sorry to get long and rambling, it’s just that I have had a number frustrating discussions about this stuff before.
@bird_internet, This is a great comment and a great illustration of how the abysmal state of labor relations in this country provides a steady supply of people with no better options who really shouldn’t be blamed for the unethical decisions of their commanders. And yes, some of our military actions have been VERY unethical.
Ding FUCKING Ding, thank you so much for this excellent comment. I was starting to get pretty upset. Thank you thank you thank you
A military force is not Walmart, though. I agree that boycott is overly hyped as a solution to everything, and it becomes a weird purity argument. But when you work at Walmart, you sell things to people. That doesn’t hurt anyone. The hurt has already happened, way back in the production chain. The Walmart worker’s action comes at the end, AFTERWARDS. Future pain because of demands for products that are produced in terrible ways is just not their fault. It’s too far-fetched.
People who actually invade countries CAUSE harm. Their actions come first, the pain is a consequence. That’s the opposite of a Walmart worker’s situation. Of course, (most) soldiers try to bet that the amount of pain caused by their actions will be less than the pain that would happen if they DIDN’T fight. There are situations where that’s true (stopping genocide springs to mind), but also plenty of times where it’s not true, or where the bet was based on very bad calculations, or where the balance is shifted by values where some people’s lives are worth more than others. But regardless of the longterm consequences, combat directly causes harm.
I really do think that soldiers need to be mindful of which wars they participate in and why. It’s a tough line of work, to be sure, and it needs more thorough moral examination than “I can’t be blamed for what my employer, who was the only one hiring in my town, wanted me to do”.
Many other jobs need those examinations too. Any job where your decisions impact people’s lives needs to be thought through. Healthcare, police work, social services, even education, even being a manager – lots of people are sometimes asked to do things that will cause harm. Removing a kid from their home vs letting them stay, not extending medical leave, passing or failing a student, sending someone to prison, firing somebody, etc. Using weapons isn’t different from using other types of force, it’s just…more. More obvious, more immediately harmful, less reversible (but really there’s no such thing as a reversible decision, because time doesn’t go backwards). But not fundamentally different. Power is power.
The vast vast majority of jobs in the military are not combat. Plenty of nurses and clerks and dentists and electricians and yes, social services people. Lots of them don’t pick up a weapon after basic. Men toting guns in sandy deserts are not the sum total of soldiers.
Yes, I know, that’s why I described exactly what I meant (people doing combat or directly supporting combat) instead of being vague.
It’s not apples-to-apples, I know. But how exactly is a soldier supposed to be “mindful of which wars they participate in?” My dad joined the military in the 80s, and he was making a bet that the cold war would remain cold and that he could earn a pension and some housing in the meantime. He was very lucky to retire just before the invasion in Iraq, but if the timing had been off by a few years he would certainly have been required to participate in a war that he did not support, under the command of a president he did not vote for.
Sure, every person needs to examine the morality of their own actions, even those actions that are precipitated by larger forces. And I doubt that your average combat soldier is just blithely untroubled by the reality of war. But I don’t think that anyone needs to display penance in order to merit adequate protections like healthcare.
Healthcare and basic human rights should not be tied to military service.
Soldiers need to be mindful like everybody else who uses force or power. Doctors, nurses, police officers, social workers and judges (for example) need to not make or carry out unethical decisions. I’m not just randomly making a moral judgement for the hell of it or because I haven’t thought it through, I legitimately believe that people need to not involve themselves in unethical actions, and extract themselves as soon as possible if they find that they’re involved in something wrong. I think about these things a lot.
If a healthcare worker discovers that their facility operates in unethical ways, I want them to get out (and to blow the whistle, if they can). If a police officer is asked to make an unethical decision, I want them to find a way to not do it. If a gang member is asked to murder someone, I want them to try to avoid it. If a bureaucrat is asked to approve something dangerous, I want them to find a way around it, or say no. I mean, if ANYONE (including me) for ANY reason is pressured or expected to do something immoral, I want them/us to avoid it as much as possible. Sure, we fail a lot, because no one is strong enough to do the right thing literally all the time, but we try, right? Some people make an exception for soldiers, though (usually out of empathy, I think – the consequences of being wrong are so huge that it seems unfair to say something), and I guess I just don’t see the reason to make that exception.
This is so well put and very thought-provoking about the exceptions we make. I think it’s an excellent challenge to anyone in a profession with power or that requires a lot of ethical/moral decisions.
I wonder if the nature of the military (so wrapped around “following orders”) will ever permit real progress to be made toward the end of encouraging individual members to speak out if they find something morally questionable.
I mean in general I agree with you, and I certainly hope that people are excercising as much freedom as is available to them to make those decisions. And of course health care SHOULDN’T be tied to employment, but, you know, we live in a fucked-up system. I am not sure what exception I am making though, except in that military service can be tougher to get out of than most jobs.
I mean if it was plausible to just sort of avoid being deployed during a useless war then I’m sure my dad would not have left my mom alone with a baby during the Gulf War, but I don’t think you can claim objector status when you’re already living in military-provided housing.
This is an excellent distinction and nuance, very well put.
I really do think that soldiers need to be mindful of which wars they participate in and why.
The problem there is that it’s often not known until many years after the fact what wars are really about and the level of casualties involved. Think of the false pretenses of the Iraq War, for starters…and those who signed up after 9/11 had no idea that was coming.
And I don’t think it’s feasible to ask 18-year-olds to be completely mindful of all the things you listed. Worse yet, the military recruiters certainly won’t do it.
I was thinking of the Iraq war! It’s a great example of what I mean. The lies (“Iraq has WMDs”) literally don’t matter at all, because “having WMDs” isn’t a reason to invade. Nobody is allowed to start a war unless 1) they’re attacked and have to defend themselves or 2) the UN decides that an intervention is needed. Starting a war for any other reason is not allowed. That’s starting a war of aggression.
People didn’t support the Iraq war because of made-up facts, but because they felt that the US gets to invade other countries if it wants to – for example, if it decides that a certain country is run the wrong way or shouldn’t be allowed to have dangerous weapons. “Iraq has WMDs, and we don’t like that” is only a reason to invade if you already feel that “they have WMDs, and we don’t like that” is a sufficient cause.
The 18-year-olds may not get it, but no military is made up only of 18-year-olds. And the 18-year-old recruits don’t stay 18 (or recruits) forever.
I have very, very hard time trying to fit this standpoint, which I basically can agree with, with the rejection of the Nuremberg defence (which I definitely agree with). Most people today do agree that “we were just following orders” doesn’t remove responsibility, at least not all of it. So… is that true for Americans, and for today’s Westerners in general? Are soldiers responsible for what they do or not? What if the soldier follows all the rules on the ground, but the actual war itself is an illegal war of aggression? Can they be blamed for participating, or not?
America’s military is coercive even though it doesn’t use conscription. Since serving guarantees you healthcare and such, and everyone needs healthcare, I don’t think it’s a completely free choice to join. But that reminds me of what ex-gangsters say – if the gang members are the only ones with an income, you have to become a gangster if you want a job. And… We often understand that, but still believe that they shouldn’t shoot people? But soldiers are allowed to participate in wars for a living, in wars that aren’t much better? For some reason??
I mean, I DON’T KNOW. Really I don’t. I’m from a country with a very very tiny military and we don’t do the “support our troops” thing (I know more than a few soldiers, and some of them have very dangerous jobs, but I’m only vaguely acquainted with the one guy who’s actually been to a war zone).
Obviously nobody deserves to be exposed to chemical hazards though.
It all comes down to what kind of support we’re talking about. There are politicians who will tell you “support the troops” means you mustn’t dare to oppose war. But that doesn’t do squat for the troops. The kind of support that kicked off this conversation is basically workers’ rights: safe working conditions, fair pay for work, reasonable leave policies, protection from abuse. None of that conflicts with opposing war, and declining to support those things doesn’t end wars. Mistreating soldiers doesn’t stop drone strikes. Even in a worst-case scenario, even if someone has committed war crimes and deserves to be held accountable, withholding healthcare isn’t the appropriate way to do that.
I agree that a military force should be run in a way that treats its members well. I think that even the most terrible militaries, guerrillas, gangs or even terrorist groups ought to treat their people well.
I also approach this as a Quaker, meaning that if there were a draft I could get out of it as a conscientious objector. We take personal responsibility very seriously; my spiritual community would be deeply shaken if one of us signed up for the army. But I also don’t believe a stranger’s conscience is my responsibility. It is my responsibility to advocate for justice, which for me includes both treating all workers fairly, and speaking and working and voting against war as much as I am able.
Let’s remember that people who join the military are a very diverse group. Many people end up there because they have few other career options, and poor people and POC are overrepresented in that category.
I believe my cousins had the choice of military, Wal-Mart, or chicken slaughterhouse/processing plant where they lived. All bad options; probably only one has decent healthcare and pension plans.
YES. And for a lot of people (including a good number of my students), the military is the only way they will be able to go to college. Choosing the military is often the most viable, effective way out of a bad socioeconomic situation.
Listen, when people have been exposed to horrifying occupational health hazards, step 1 is not “but first let’s stop and reflect for a while on how terrible the employer is.”
A lot of my family is military, not because we’re really fucking pumped about warfare but because the military is one of the simplest ways to get covered by an actual safety net in this county (or it’s supposed to be). The braces I had as a kid? My parents’ health care? Their eventual retirement security? Yeah, sorry that they didn’t earn those things by teaching orphans to read or something.
Jesus, no kidding.
“Yeah, sorry that they didn’t earn those things by teaching orphans to read or something.”
Boy, this is not the comparison I would be making if I were defending your position. Our military has created an awful lot of orphans. That makes the issue a lot more complicated than working at Wal-Mart.
I’m sorry for being glib but there’s also a certain glibness about the assertion that my dad’s taxpayer-funded career behind a desk means that he should have to lie awake at night ashamed of his proximity to the horror of war. The world is a terrible place that often puts people in morally complex situations. My position is not that warfare is okay. It’s that nobody should have to apologize for making a living. We can’t all cleanse ourselves of any affiliation to anything troubling or problematic. My family’s livelihood is inextricably tied to it. What do you want me to do about it?
“We can’t all cleanse ourselves of any affiliation to anything troubling or problematic.”
Yes, this.
Pretty good read here about how the military has come to substitute for traditional welfare, and how even that is being chipped away by privatization and cuts.
I struggle with this because I often (e.g., for all of W’s reign) disagree with US military policy, and am a pacifist at heart. Combine that with the fact that the military men and women I’ve personally known have been pretty awful people who enjoy the idea of sticking it to brown people. Add onto that the fact that I really REALLY hate the tendency of many ‘patriots’ at home to pay lipservice to veterans without actually caring whether, say, they receive adequate medical care and counseling upon returning home.
But the soldiers don’t control their orders. They don’t have control over where they’re sent or what they need to do. So animosity about strategy and policy should be aimed at their commanders, not them.
I think we should support our troops by not sending them into undue danger for capitalist gains or familial grudges. I think we should support them by making their recovery and re-integration into civilian society a bigger priority than buying new tanks. We should make sure they’re not homeless 5 years after discharge. And we should support them by not using them for political gain or plaudits among the Fox News crowd. You know, actual support for human beings, not bumper stickers and salutes.
This is what annoys me so much at times with US media and their ‘support the troops’ rhetoric; they, along with the people in government who bang on about ‘supporting the troops’ during elections, say one thing, and then behave completely the opposite way; fighting against government measures that would actually ‘support’ the military personnel once they’re done giving their lives and safety for ‘freedom’
I feel that “they don’t have control over their orders” is seen as an acceptable argument for some militaries but not for others. Famously, no one accepts it when old Nazis say it (at Nuremberg, they weren’t only tried for the genocide, but also for starting a war of aggression). I think we’re not actually sure when this argument can be used and when it can’t.
I agree with you, though, that the veterans should be properly cared for.
I agree with a lot of this. I’ve also personally known a lot of awful people who wanted to shoot people legally. And I also know a beautiful & deep-souled woman of color who was an army medic (she was on Team Lioness, so her job was addressing health care to women and children civilians while respecting local customs) who received ZERO support when she returned from Iraq because she wasn’t the “right kind of vet” for the Fox News red-meat crowd, and the left called her a “baby killer” (like, to her face. in a college scenario. when she was a medic whose explicit job was to care for children).
So I agree that support means not exploiting the foot solider, providing healing when people are turned into human weapons. I think the most red meat deserve healing, because it can help the rest of us… And I REALLY hate how the the bumper sticker about supporting troops is more valuable that funding the VA. How about we fund the VA and not the weapon-makers?
So soldiers don’t control their orders or military policy. They still control whether they terrorize and rape their fellow soldiers and civilians.
I don’t think I was advocating carte blanche for anything individual soldiers want to do that violates orders, the Geneva code, or human decency.
Ok but that’s why I don’t and can’t “support the troops.” Not just because I disagree with military policy (boy do I), but because there is a culture which encourages and allows and hides these things. It’s not just a few bad apples, and when people say they “support the troops,” it makes me queasy, as a sexual assault survivor (though not in a military context).
Any discussion of how to “support the troops” without at least acknowledging the rampant sexual abuse in the military is incomplete.
I don’t pretend my comment above was a complete argument for all the changes that should occur in the military. Nor do I pretend to be an advocate for the military. I get a similar nausea when people say support the troops, mostly because what they mean is ‘don’t argue with the government’s decisions or you’re a bad person who hates veterans’.
Anyway, there’s a difference between supporting the individuals and approving of what the military does. There’s also a difference between support and reverence.
I think if we’re going to send people into dangerous situations (whether the danger be shrapnel or carcinogens), we have a responsibility to make sure they receive appropriate treatment and counseling.
Hi! I’m a military rape survivor & provided a testimony to sen. gillibrand about uncounted rape victims who are abused by vets/active duty, but outside of the system themselves. Trigger warning for below.
I fundamentally believe, from personal experience, that rape and sexual assault were taught. When a high school friend (and ex-boy friend) was being enlisted, the recruitment officers would show increasingly violent pornography, escalating his sexual violence threshold. He came over one day all excited to show me a real snuff film that his recruitment officers showed him. They would share cell phone photos of their wives and girl friends and laugh at sexual humiliation together & drink beer & smoke cigarettes & watch normal hollywood buddy movies & conflate violence with other “normal” stuff. It was a brotherhood, bonding thing. I also think it *taught* rape as a weapon in a military context. I’m not an expert-expert, but I experienced this. And I think my ex was singled out because of whatever brokenness and proclivities he had that they exploited. I think that when you train 17, 18 year old broken men to turn their bodies into weapons, they don’t know when to turn it off, so in stead of raping and humiliating the “enemy” they assault each other, they assault their families. And it’s hard to prosecute within the military context because it would mean coming to terms with the fact that they’re teaching boys to rape.
For me, supporting our troops especially when they come back, means UNLEARNING this. It means providing health care, restoring the humanity that the military stripped them of. I can’t handle the idea that these guys who were primed to express sexual violence, suffering without the emotional tool kit to admit PTSD (because weakness), are just out and about in this world without care. So, I guess it’s “Support the troops” (individuals) vs. “Support our military and its systems and major ethics problems.”
Wow, this is so important and such a crucial insight. Thank you so much for joining in the discussion — I think you hit on exactly the right difference to make when people say “Support the troops,” and it’s civilians’ job to work on our kneejerk reaction to that phrase, if it’s negative. Because it helps no one to leave veterans untreated. It just perpetuates the cycle of violence and trauma.
Thank you for your definition of “support the troops”. It helps me clarify what I have been thinking: true support of the troops as human beings may require a major overhaul of the military.
The encouragement of sexual violence you describe is horrifying. I wish you healing.
Thanks! I appreciate the healing wishes. But I wanted to say that I’m pretty good. It took about 5 years to even process what I’d gone through, and another 5 years to make sense of it. I feel my brain handled it in the most gentle way possible. I also wanted to say that the person in question actually apologized to me, because he was able to process what he was going through. And that’s pretty cool. I wish that for everyone.
But something that made a big difference for my understanding was being able to think about what had happened to me, what they were doing at the recruitment offices, the images from Abu Ghraib (which came out the year before my incident & are eerily similar…), and the Invisible War documentary. It took me nearly a decade to put it all together, but it really confirmed that sexual humiliation/rape was part of W’s torture strategy, along with waterboarding and everything else. And the lance corporals bodies were turned into weapons–their humanity was taken away–and in some ways, I think they’re victims themselves. I can’t blame individuals for that. I can certainly blame our so called “Commander in Chief.” Fuck that guy and his strange, deeply psychological bathtub paintings.
But one day, I just go fed up with not being able to say, “I support healing for individuals” because it became a “with us or against us” buffonish short hand for “patriotism” and “blind allegiance” to a lot of things I never supported, a piece of propaganda. It’s like saying, “I’m not one of *those* Christians.” Like, why do shit heads get a monopoly on my language? Why do I have to create caveats around my worldview to disassociate myself from people who are trying to claim it all for themselves. Eff that noise. So, yeah, healing for all!
I go around and around on this. Since military service isn’t compulsory, being in the army or whatever is a choice, just like any other job. And I personally would not choose a career that involves shooting people and doing the bidding of a violent and corrupt system. So when I think about it that way, I don’t support them. They’ve chosen a career with their eyes open. They don’t deserve my support any more than a Loan shark or a republican politician, because “i was just following orders” isn’t an excuse when you are the one who chose to go into the order-following business in the first place, I don’t want them harmed, but I don’t support their choices.
On the other hand, some people see the military as their only viable economic option, and military service is basically compulsory for some races, classes and geographical areas in exchange for a shot at college. And can I really hold the line in not supporting a person who is just doing it for the money but doesn’t believe in the rhetoric or the methods of the military industrial complex?
Of course, post-holocaust, that’s exactly the question that was asked.
Yes, this is what I’m thinking about, too. Is “following orders” a good defence or not? For who? When? And when isn’t it good enough?
“They’ve chosen a career with their eyes open.”
Oooh, see, I don’t know about that. There are so many communities where 18-year-olds (or those a good deal older) are not given a balanced and honest history of the U.S. military and everything that makes you call it a “violent and corrupt system.” Far, far from it.
Many are brought up with entirely different notions and associations of what it means to be in the military, and there’s a whole range of motivations (many of which you alluded to in your second paragraph) that made them think it was was a good idea or an acceptable trade-off. But that education you speak of — a real understanding of “the rhetoric and methods of the military industrial complex” — is not at all widespread. In fact, I’d say it’s privileged knowledge.
Also, I think those who signed up after 9/11 have to be considered separately, because I know a lot of people who may never have otherwise joined the military did then, for many different reasons. Like Beau Biden, for instance. And of course no one knew then how the Iraq War would arise and what it would be about.
All of this. I know 18-year-olds are technically adults, but geez. My school barely covered any history post-WWII. It’s perfectly possible to graduate high school without much (if any) knowledge of all the military fuckery the US has gotten up to in the past 70-odd years.
And I JUST THIS YEAR learned that a whole group of military generals and advisers TOLD Truman not to drop the atomic bomb on Japanese cities — the forest, the ocean, anywhere else without a high number of civilians in the target zone — but no, the other side just had to see what it would actually do to a city.
American history, and especially military history, is so much more complex than we’re led to believe in our K-12 education. Or even college-level.
This is an aside, but if you can get your hands on an interview with Leo Szilard called “Truman Did Not Understand,” I highly recommend it. Szilard was (in addition to being a Jewish refugee from Hungary) instrumental in getting FDR to launch an atomic program in the U.S. (he wrote the letter to FDR; Einstein signed it). His interview is from 1960 and is incredibly mournful in describing the intent of the atomic program vs. its actual use.
Thank you for that rec! I’ll look out for it.
That’s why I feel so conflicted about it. 18-year old me took the ASVAB and ended up going to journalism school. I knew nothing about the life of a professional writer – it just seemed like the right job for me. And I can absolutely see where some 18-year old thinks “the army is the right jobs for me” with the same level of ignorance about their chosen field as I had about mine.
That said. I think pretty much any 18-year-old who is looking at the military is at least somewhat aware from TV/movies/culture that he/she will be holding a gun. And a gun only has one use.
But….no. There are many many many jobs in the military where you don’t hold a gun after basic at all. Lots. Most, in fact.
But those people have still gone through the same dehumanizing, weapon-centric basic training. Those other jobs are still there to keep the machinery running on the front lines. And anyone who has gone through basic knows what that looks like.
THAT BEING SAID. The current VA system is a disgrace. The violent culture of the military is a disgrace. I was already a pacifist, but everything I’ve heard in Serial Season 2 makes me want to move to a country where soldiering isn’t considered an “honorable” profession.
True, but the military is still a violence delivery system. That makes it unlike other societal institutions.
I agree with this so much. I think military service is a place where “choice” rhetoric is overused. It’s a silly comparison, but it’s kind of like ending a discussion of female beauty standards with “I just like my legs better shaved, it’s my choice!” it ignores all the societal stuff that goes into that. It doesn’t at all mean that you’re not responsible for your choices, but it still seems worth acknowledging that your choices don’t happen in a vacuum.
My brother who joined the military did have access to information about “the rhetoric and methods of the military industrial complex,” but he was really lost after high school, and the military sold him this incredibly powerful image of strength and honor. I don’t want to erase the many female soldiers who join (I just don’t know any personally), but for teenage boys the military offers an idealized masculinity that can be hard to resist if you’re young and looking for an identity.
I basically feel that America is a warrior culture. You guys literally get taught that it’s great and honourable to be a soldier. Most other Western cultures don’t teach this.
But there’s a diference between “just doing it for the money” and “if I join the military, I will have insurance and a steady income and I need that.” The attitude there is important – I see a lot of students in the courses I teach who chose their major just because it pays well and not because they actually like/are interested in it. I’d definitely describe them as “just doing it for the money,” in part because they don’t think much beyond the surface about some of the issues in their profession. But my students in the military seem very aware of how their service gave them opportunities they they wouldn’t have had otherwise. It’s a different mindset – “I want a steady job and tuition” vs. “whatever, this’ll pay the rent.”
A close friend had a student a while back who told her, “I did two tours in Afghanistan and came back alive. I gambled and won; now they have to pay for my college.” It’s a much more dangerous decision.
My dad was career Navy. He joined at first because his dad had been career Navy and he didn’t know what else to do, and he knew he was going to marry my mom pretty much the moment he turned 18 (my mom is a year older). (And seriously: my dad’s birthday is Nov 1st and their anniversary is the 6th.)
But then I came along faster than expected and there were two more of us, and that was a way he could make a middle-class living for us.
And he pointed out later: “I made a bargain with Uncle Sam, that I would do a job for him that might get me killed, and in exchange if I did die you and your mom would be taken care of and all your college would be paid for, and if I didn’t die me and your mom got health care and a pension until we did.”
(I will say that he took retirement after seventeen years and then got a job at Intel, where he still works. He has his Intel pay and benefits on top of his yearly military pension–which isn’t much–and veteran’s benefits.)
There are definitely times people are recruited under the auspices of not ever being sent to combat. I was deeply uncomfortable when my brother joined the military, but he’s a linguist. His job was to learn a new language and use it. At this point, he has been told a couple of times he’d be deployed ( and then wasn’t, cause the military’s like that), but when he joined he was given reason to believe that wouldn’t be a part of his military experience.
You can disagree with military policy (I certainly do) while also thinking that we should try to keep soldiers from getting brain cancer. This is a weird derailment.
Yes. I have both friends and family who have come back with horrific wounds both physical and psychic… and none of them have gotten appropriate, timely care. And that’s on both coasts, where there are more VA hospitals. I can’t imagine what it would be like in a rural area.
Good discussion! And I think that the word ‘support’ is open to many interpretations. When Reagan was president, I used to think the phrase ‘Do you support our troops’ really meant ‘Would you fellate Ronald Reagan?’ I had to think I would not.
I am not a pacifist – there is a place for military intervention – if, for instance, Cuba invaded Florida. But it’s hard for me to avoid the conclusion that people volunteering to go overseas to shore up our economy are part of the problem, not the solution.
When I was young I used to watch the Vietnam war on the news every night. Since then we have never known peace, unless you count never having to face war on our home ground as peace. America is a war state, and not a stabilizing influence. The time for hard questions about our ‘exceptionalism’ has long come and gone.
My bet is you aren’t going to find much disagreement here with anything except for “But it’s hard for me to avoid the conclusion that people volunteering to go overseas to shore up our economy are part of the problem, not the solution,” which is the crux of the issue, isn’t it? I think bird_internet had a really eloquent comment on that above. I’m pretty uncomfortable with assuming or judging people’s motivations for their work before I’ll support them, especially when “support” in this context is just basic medical care and not being put in needlessly unsafe situations.
It’s like … here, I’ll throw out my own heresy to match yours: I really don’t think prostitution is a great thing for society, gender relations, etc. But I also think people can make their own decisions to get into it or not (even if it’s of their own violation rather than desperation!) and they should have full protection and safe working conditions to do so. You know?
Yes, I similarly dislike how the phrase “support our troops” has been used, since when I was first becoming aware of world events, it became a shorthand for “don’t question the validity of these two wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, because questioning any of our military decisions at all is unpatriotic.” And I *am* a pacifist.
But I think that’s a completely separate conversation than whether our troops, like all people, deserve to not be poisoned by their workplace.
Ah, Toasties, you are thinking people, a trait I highly admire.
“Since then we have never known peace, unless you count never having to face war on our home ground as peace.”
Many would say the imagery of 9/11 contradicts that last part. It may be easier to quibble about whether that counts now, but it wasn’t easy in 2001 and 2002.
I would say try to imagine a Muscovite in 1979 is asking you whether to support Soviet troops during that time Westerners invaded Afghanistan. Helps focus the inquiry, in my opinion.
Coming from a country that’s been neutral since WW1 and now living in a country that has been at war nearly as much as the US in recent times; I have a bit of an ick about the whole ‘support our troops’ stuff. It’s a weird propaganda machine to see in action.
It doesn’t mean I think less of the men and women who do it as individuals, but I can’t blindly say ‘support the troops’ when I strongly disagree with the reasons they’re being put in danger. Its a whole different ball game in the US, and I can’t comment on it at all, but I often resent the emotional manipulation on British TV that tries to force people into supporting an unjust war.
That’s a good point. It’s very common/effective for the hawks at the top to use ‘but don’t you support the troops?’ as a shield against criticism of militarism, and I think that tactic, combined with widespread atrocities, probably contributes to some of the animosity people feel toward soldiers.
Yes! That’s it, it almost feels like you can’t criticize the military/military action without people jumping all over you for being ‘unpatriotic’. Sometimes I feel like people (in particular Americans, who are super overly identified with being ‘patriotic’, whatever that means) are either programmed to automatically say ‘i support/respect the troops’ when any mention of the military comes up, or they’re saying it out of fear of being witch hunted for not saying it.
And by saying ‘I support the troops’, which is a very broad statement (i.e. I definitely support safe working conditions for military personnel, but I do not support the over-all military action or culture they are involved in.), its taken as unconditional support for the war/military action.
I have really intense conflicting feelings about this, because I was always very anti-military, and then my brother joined the Marines. He didn’t do it for any of the good reasons either, he has lots of privilege and could do many other things. I’ll probably always think it was a bad decision, both for him personally and as a moral choice. When he chose to join, it was a really hard time for our whole family. Part of how my mom (who took us all to many protests against the war in Iraq) dealt with it was by trying to change some of her feelings about the military, which was really upsetting for me. I don’t think knowing and loving people in the military, or not knowing anyone personally but recognizing them as human beings who deserve care, should require supporting US military intervention. I think it actually requires opposing it, in almost all cases. “Support our troops” is a phrase that has been tortured to meaninglessness, I think everyone should stop using it and start having more serious conversations about how we should treat our military and use our military power.
[Nine pages of angst edited for length]
Excellent point — thank you for chiming in.
Army sister here, and I want to give you a hug and say that I agree with basically everything you say.
The Danish government ought to be ashamed of itself.
Oh, it should. It has so, so many things to be ashamed of. Denmark very emphatically doesn’t want people from war-torn countries to move to Denmark. They make it as unpleasant as possible to do so. Of course, the door is always open for citizens of the European Union.
(obviously, the entire EU behaves like this, but Denmark is being creative in ways that the other EU countries aren’t)
I feel like I was totally raised on the story of Denmark saving their Jewish population in WWII (even when I know there are parts that have been mythically hyperinflated, I will still get teary every time I hear the Fred Small song) and this just depresses me so much.
(I mean, I know it’s not a symmetrical equivalent, that it had to do with a particular assimilation pattern, and Danish romanticism being very much about interwoveness and community. But it’s my emotional association every time.)
I had braces as a kid and then I had a retainer that I was supposed to wear forever and that I just stopped wearing (I believe that this is actually standard for retainers), and every once in a while I will get a sinus headache that starts while I’m sleeping, and in my dreams I find my retainer however many years later and jam it back onto my teeth only it doesn’t fit right and it makes my face hurt.
I had braces as a kid, too. My orthodontist was hilarious – he’d show me brochures for the plane he was buying with the money from my crooked molars.
I had braces, too, and still wear my retainer. I had to not wear my it for a while when I had my wisdom teeth out, and all my teeth started aching so terribly that I decided to never go so long without wearing my retainer ever again.
In response to your “had a retainer that I was supposed to wear forever and just stopped wearing”, in my middle-school battle against my arch-nemesis retainer (that I had to wear after 3 years of braces), I went through SIX before I succeeded in banishing them forever.
Retainer #1: Lost it in Australia on vacation/ This was the only time I legitimately lost it on accident; I left it on a tray while our group was at lunch and threw it in the trash. This, however, was the perfect chance to realize I could LOSE my RETAINER and not have to wear it!!
Retainer #2: “Lost” it at school, aka, “accidentally” let it fall into the trash during lunch.
Retainer #3: Began to think that if I kept “losing” it, Mom would get suspicious. Took retainer out at Grandma’s while eating, “accidentally” knocked it onto floor. Grandma’s evil satan dog chewed it to pieces.
Retainer #4: “Accidentally” stepped on it when I “accidentally” knocked it off the bathroom counter while brushing my teeth.
Retainer #5: Felt safe enough to switch back to “oops lost it”. “Accidentally” left it at a friend’s house during a sleepover. Somehow her Mom could never find it, hm, interesting.
Retainer #6: Threw it out at a restaurant I was at WITH MY FAMILY, like a true middle-school rebel. My Mom gave up and said that was it, she wasn’t paying for another one.
Personally I consider the tiny gap remaining between my top front teeth to be my badge of retainer-losing honor.
well, I was wearing mine only at night after my braces, and then I went away to college and thought to myself, “wait, who even gives a shit about this”
my teeth appear to have remained in place, so who knows
I had to wear mine ALL the time, except when I was eating/brushing my teeth, and I hated it. Especially after 3 years of braces, lol. And same, my teeth are fine!
(In retrospect as an adult I do feel bad though, my parents paid a lot for my braces, AND those retainers, and they really didn’t have the money for it. What a middle-school dirtbag I was.)
I also threw a retainer out on a lunch tray, except I was in a hostel in Iceland and nobody understood the English word “retainer” and my dictionary didn’t have the Icelandic word for “retainer” so I looked like a weirdo American digging through the trash to find some mysterious expensive object which nobody else understood until I pulled it triumphantly out of the trash. But I refused to lose that thing because I paid for it as an adult and it was stupidly expensive.
The result of this is that I now know how to say “retainer” in Icelandic but I have no idea how to spell it (Google translate isn’t helping me, their suggestions are all wrong).
Edit: whoops, this was supposed to be in response to burningupasun.
Maybe Wikipedia knows? When I want to translate a specific THING, I go to the source language Wikipedia page, and then I check what the article is called in the language I want to translate to. So, on the English page for retainer, you could click the Icelandic page.
I just spent like twenty minutes trying to figure out how to do this, I can’t seem to get the Icelandic option to show up without navigating away from the retainer page. I think I am wikipedia stupid! Or perhaps I am meant to never know how to spell it!
On the computer, the corresponding article in other languages are linked in the menu to the left. On your phone, scroll down to the bottom and find “Read this article in another language.
If Icelandic doesn’t show up as an option, well, not all pages exist in all languages 🙂
Hah!! Yeah, everyone understood me in Australia at least and I actually DID look for it that first time, but I just couldn’t find it, so, alas…
I admire your brash dedication to tooth freedom.
I really, really hated that retainer, lmao. (I mean, tbf I also really hated the braces I was stuck with for 3 years but you know, those weren’t easy to pop off and ‘lose’ haha.)
Heh. My parents agreed to support my Baby-sitters Club habit as long as I was doing my bit for the orthodontia, so wearing it and tightening it on schedule and so. Plus I was told that it was a way to show I was responsible enough to have my ears pierced. In general, I was so scared of getting in trouble I probably would have been hysterical if I lost mine anyway.
I did have a permanent one for awhile that left a permanent lump on the roof of my mouth. It’s not painful or anything, just a lump.
I have a permanent retainer on the bottom half of my teeth, so I’m stuck with that one and stuck with stuff getting stuck in it all the time, but I definitely stopped wearing my top retainer regularly like a year after I got my braces off. Every once in a while I find it in a drawer and try it on to see if it still fits; twelve years later my teeth apparently haven’t shifted significantly.
I used to have a little retainer that just went across my bottom six teeth, and one time I accidentally inhaled it and it got stuck above my soft palette.
Well, now I am unexpectedly thankful for my permanent retainer because that sounds awful!
I had one of those until a couple of years ago when I was biting into a really unripe apple and it just sort of sprung loose. The dentist took it off and wanted me to schedule an appointment to get a new one, but not having it felt sooo good that I just never replaced it. I used to get sores on the tip of my tongue all the time from rubbing it against the wire, I’m not going back to that.
One side of mine sprung loose and the dentist I saw here (after I’d moved cross-country) wanted to charge me $250 to take it off – not covered by my grad student dental insurance. I declined, paid the much smaller consultation fee, and took the other side off myself that night with a pair of pliers.
This is all bringing back unwelcome memories because I have an appointment with an orthodontist next week to see about adult braces and whether they can fix my stupid bite before I just end up biting all my back teeth off.
I was totally a solid citizen when it came to faithfully using/futzing with/cleaning my first round of devices: palate enlarger, braces, 2 retainers that I can remember (including the kind they cement to your bottom teeth, which was the WOOORST).
A night guard can only mitigate the problems associated with putting all your biting force on the back teeth, as it turns out.
Oh god, you had a palate spreader? Those things terrified me, and I was SO glad I never had to wear one. I had braces, neckgear, and headgear, and at one time eleven rubber bands, but no palate spreader.
Yup! It was cemented in and my mom had to stick this teeny key thing up there every day and turn it, which moved the whole contraption something like 1/4 mm apart per day. I remember it feeling kinda weird but not painful.
The stupid thing is that my teeth are STILL really tight together so I probably could have used more time with it.
Yes! I had one of those for a while, too. I’d take that over headgear (which my friend had to wear at night) any day.
Uggggh headgear was the woooorst. Especially since I sleep on my stomach/side :/
I did orthodontic work for years until I finally got my teeth straight and was down to just a retainer. Unfortunately, then my wisdom teeth started to come in and the retainer didn’t fit anymore. Well, we had since moved and our situation had changed and we couldn’t afford for me to have any more work done. So I stopped wearing the retainer in high school and my teeth got progressively more crooked until undergrad when I finally got my wisdom teeth out. All four teeth had come in at weird angles, shoving other teeth around and I had to have all four removed at once. I waited a YEAR through pain and sinus issues until we could afford for me to go have them all removed. Now my teeth have stopped getting more crooked, but they are not straight and I don’t foresee ever having the money to fix them for good.
MEEE TOOOOO.
Oh my gourd, the update on AAM about the woman whose boss was terrible about her panic attack! Her boss is a skeeze and an awful human.
(also ugh the comments on people misunderstanding affirmative action ugh urrrgh)
I just read that and am honestly really super hoping that by some strange coincidence, that poor woman happens to work at my fiancé’s old job because I actually don’t want to believe there are two employers like that out there.
He has anxiety/asthma, both of which he is great at managing 99% of the time, but he’d been working 10-12 hour days (including weekends) for about a month straight when at about 5pm one Friday afternoon, he finally started having a panic attack. He closed the door to his office and tried to, y’know, take some deep breaths, until he realized that it had just triggered his asthma. So he said, “Hey, it’s after five and I’m about to have an asthma attack, so I’m gonna go to my car where my inhaler is and then head to the doctor.” And they got angry.
On Monday, they moved him from his office to an open cubicle at the other end of the offices, saying it was because he was clearly too stressed so they were removing the pressure of him having the office closest to their main door so he wouldn’t have to worry about letting people in. (Which was maybe once a day.)
oh jesus, that’s horrific. The sad thing is that there’s probably dozens (at least!) of bosses/supervisors who would treat their employees this way out of either ignorance or true maliciousness
Small correction – the OP is a guy, and there is some discussion further down the thread about how that’s probably part of the reason his boss is being such a dick, since he doesn’t look like a “stereotypical” anxiety-sufferer.
oh man, I hadn’t read that far– well, there are my biases! So the boss is like, deffo a sexist jerk trying to push this poor man he didn’t hire out bc a) he’s a man and b) he’s not “acting like it.” GROSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
OT- I have a major dental phobia, and a very overdue dentist appointment today. I’ve been promised nitrous, but I’d much rather have a solid knock to the head. Think calming thoughts for my about noon, kay?
Will be thinking extra-calming thoughts for you! 🙂 I also have a major dental phobia and have been thinking about trying nitrous – let me know how it goes?
It wasn’t bad. I was worried that I’d get seriously loopy, but it was more like being half asleep
How did you find a phobia-friendly dentist? I am looking into the same thing, but don’t know where to begin.
I found one by specifically looking for one that offers sedation for cleanings, which I took as an indicator of understanding phobias/anxiety
I googled my town+sedation dentistry. And as there were only two options i went with the closer one
You just inspired me to finally take action on this–thank you.
You can do it! Thinking very calming thoughts!
major dental phobia. but this is the year I have to just get on with it. thinking peaceful tooth thoughts for you.
I also literally asked for a hammer to the head the last time I had to have major dental work, and of course they laughed and gave me nitrous instead. I hope it works as well for you as it did for me! It was like the best aspects of being tipsy — everything very distant and fuzzy, even the noise of the drill was like from another room, my fingertips all tingly. I would totally do it at home if I could.
everything very distant and fuzzy, even the noise of the drill was like from another room, my fingertips all tingly.
I had no idea what being on nitrous was like! It sounds kind of like what I experience when I’m about to pass out (from blood loss, not booze).
I didn’t mean to make it sound so bad! The weird thing about those symptoms and the similarity to tipsiness is that, unlike tipsiness, you aren’t sleepy at all. So not like feeling that you’re about to pass out. Just distance and a happy detachment from your senses.
My dentist, at my request, prescribes one dose of Valium for me to take at home an hour before the appointment. Of course I have someone else drive me to the dentist.
You can do it! I went back after a decade without dental care and was just terrified, but people worked with me to make things run smoothly. Keeping all the good and calming thoughts for you. Deep breaths.
I lived. It wasn’t fun, but nitrous and xanax made it bearable. Plus my teeth aren’t as effed up as I had thought.
You were brave. Go you!
I know this is an OT question, but I’m feeling so tired and scatterbrained I’m worried I’ll forget about this (again) before Friday.
Does anyone have experience with managing dust mite allergies? (More in the reply)
I’ve been feeling congested for the past couple weeks, which makes no sense because my worst allergens are all dead and frozen. I had a mild reaction to dust mites on the skin-prick allergy test, and I’m wondering if it’d be worth it to make an effort to reduce dust mites in my room. From what I’m read, though, it seems like a lot of work. Would I have to go all out (dust everything, get rid of the carpet, reduce the amount of clothes stored outside of my drawers and closet, etc) to notice a reduction in allergies?
My sister is allergic to dust mites, and it was no fun for my mom who did all the cleaning. If you have a carpet it could be a trigger (my sister couldn’t live in a place with carpeted floors), maybe try to vacuum very often and see if you get better? You really want to focus on the bed though. My sister uses special pillows, and she vacuums her matress (yep) regularly. My mom even had a special vacuum where all the dust and hair went into a water compartment and then you had to empty it in the toilets (eeeeeew), it helps to really trap the mites. Essential oils like eucalyptus can really help with congestion too. Expect your allergies to worsen when you do the actual cleaning, as you’ll be moving some dust around. Good luck!
I’ve personally always dealt with it via HEPA filter and claritins-as-needed. That combined with dusting every 1-2 weeks (take a claritin beforehand or you will give yourself a reaction!) meant I could keep the carpet and still find the place livable.
Commenting to hear about this too! My allergy test was similar and so far I have not done anything about it, but a friend has offered to lend me her HEPA filter to try out, which I am considering.
my boyfriend has terrible allergies and we’ve had a lot of luck using this air filter: http://www.amazon.com/Coway-AP-1512HH-Mighty-Puri…
it is very very expensive, but all the reviews do it justice.
I’ve been able to manage mine with an almost-daily otc allergy med, since I also am mildly allergic to my cat. I switch sometimes because I also have seasonal allergies (I nailed the triumvirate of cats-dust-pollen), but the generic Allegra seems to be what works best for me. I also try very hard to keep up on dusting and vacuuming at least once a week – if I forget, I’ll usually start to feel it. I also got dust covers for my pillows, since those are near my face so much.
Haha, yeah. I’m on a bunch of allergy meds full time, including Allegra. I’m on almost everything I can be except for a nasal spray (I have this mental block against shooting liquids up my nose). As my allergist remarked, I am a very allergic person.
A very allergic person who definitely needs to dust and vacuum more. Do you use any particular products for dusting?
I think unfuck your habitat has some guides for cleaning with allergies, including some very good tips about cleaning ceiling fans- might be worth digging around on her site.
I tried using microfiber cloths as reusable dustcloths for a while, and honestly just found that buying a pack of those Swiffer sheets (the ones you’re supposed to put on the end of your sweeper, not the little fake dusters) was easier, and they picked up dust a little better. I don’t use a spray, since I feel like it leaves things tacky.
With my vacuum I think mine has a hepa filter on it? I’m not sure (it’s not a fancy vacuum), but I do recommend a canister vs. a bag, since they’re easier to clean, and a non-roller vacuum if your hair is anything but short. Vacuuming once a week with long hair resulted in me having to cut small creatures out of the rollers on a regular basis or (inevitably) having to replace the roller.
I have a mental block about shooting liquids up my nose (or did) and then in desperation tried a neti pot recently. It’s unpleasant during the minute or so you’re using it, but it does help.
Mine were pretty bad as a kid, and yeah, you probably would have to do a pretty hard-core initial cleaning, and have consistent upkeep). Some possible solutions:
– Steam clean the carpet, and vacuum it at least weekly with a vacuum that has a hardcore filter (wood floors are easier to keep clean, but if you’re not, like, having crazy allergy attacks, you can prob keep your carpet);
– Get rid of any down comforters and pillows, and/or get hypoallergenic covers for any bedding (mattress cover, pillow covers, etc);
– Definitely do put away clothes, or even just store them in plastic bins under the bed or wherever works for you;
– Wash any stuffed animals or curtains periodically, and limit stuff that dust can collect on (storage boxes are your friend, because it’s much easier to wipe dust off a storage box than off 1,000 tchotchkes);
– Def try the air filter option!
I am a dust mite allergy sufferer and also not the tidiest person which is not a good combination. The main thing I do is use Flonase every day and it helps a *lot.*
That said, if you want to try non-medication solutions, the best place to start is with your bed, as this is the primary place where dust mites collect and we spend a lot of time in our beds! Wash all of your bedding once a week in HOT water. (If you have a down comforter you can throw it in the dryer for 15 minutes to kill the mites instead.) I believe there is also special detergent that will help get rid of allergens, though I’ve never bought it so I don’t know how well it works. A further step you can take is purchasing hypo-allergenic encasements for your pillows, mattress, and comforter. They’re a little pricy but far cheaper than replacing all of that stuff!
If you see small improvements after making some of the simpler changes you can always decide how much further to pursue it.
Good point about the pillows, mattress, and comforter cover! Those would be easy fixes.
Lol, I’m already on basically all the allergy meds. I’ve also started getting allergy shots. My lifeee,
Are you me? 😉 I also use Flonase, and got the hypo-allergenic covers for the mattress and pillows. I could definitely stand to wash the sheets every week, but tends to be more like twice a month. ETA we are lucky to have wood-style laminate floors and tile in the entire house!
I’m mildly allergic to dust mites as well, and very mildly to animals (we have 5 pets haha). I take a generic Zyrtec pretty much every day and am ok. I also have a little HEPA filter in my office, and run a roomba around our house pretty much every day.
I’ve found replacing pillows very useful when my allergies get worse. Vacuuming bedroom regularly and having a foam mattress also helps- dust mites prefer box spring mattresses.
Jumping on this thread because this is super relevant to me right now. I just did a major, major cleaning (inspired by Marie Kondo) of my small Brooklyn bedroom that I’ve lived in for five years, and I rustled up soooo much dust in forgotten corners, behind stacks of books, etc. etc. I’ve been having terrible allergies ever since and it’s been like, a week. I think I got rid of most of the dust, I Swiffered, I washed my sheets/ duvet, but I probably also inhaled a lot in the process. When will this end?
That Michael Twitty article is great, he’s such a great person.
“A Jewish convert with the Twitter handle @koshersoul, Twitty is deeply engrossed in both the African American and Jewish food traditions. “Blacks and Jews are the only peoples I know who use food to talk about their past while they eat it,” says Twitty, 38.”
I don’t know that they’re the only peoples, but as a Jewish person this definitely resonated with me 🙂
I wonder if he means cultural past as opposed to familial/personal past? My Asian family relates food as “this is what I cooked when I had just come to America” etc but nothing has the kind of Passover story history to it.
I would say this is true for a lot of Eastern European cultures as well. My family has been in America for >100 years, but we still cling to our food-related traditions, even after the religions that spawned them fell by the wayside.
this line made me raise an eyebrow too, but I don’t know enough about other food cultures to offer a counterexample! In my German-American family it’s a sort of reversal of that: “we used to eat this all the time, it was the worst, so glad we don’t have to anymore.”
This piece on Marcia Clark and sexism in the 90s was very worth reading http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/02/marcia-clark-rede…
Things I did not anticipate about 2016: that this year would make me feel so emotional about women in the 90s.
True. I never thought that in my 30s I’d see her, Hillary, Monica, and all the rest of the bitch villian 90s women crowd sympathetically portrayed and sometimes redeemed.
It’s just bringing up all of these emotions about how I saw real life women portrayed in media when I was a little girl and how the women in my life were treated. That weird cultural balance between “feminazis are the worst” vs “girl power” and how I constantly felt torn between hyper awareness of the limits placed on me by society and the desire to constantly fight against them.
Seriously! On the one hand it was all grrl power! style stuff, and on the other, as son as anyone stepped out of line they were eeeeeeeeeevil. I know I wasn’t equipped to think critically about this bs when I was a kid or teenager and I wonder how much deprogramming I still have to do to myself on that account.
Yes, this! The Marcia Clark piece made me cry.
Can we talk about Twitter crushes for a second?
I just want Shrill to think I’m clever.
Courtney Milan. Because not only does she write great romance novels, but she used to be a lawyer and occasionally does great rants on IP law.
My Twitter crush is John Scalzi but also a little bit Mookie, who write the webcomic Starpower, and HE RETWEETED MY PICTURE OF MY COSPLAY AS STARPOWER. *takes bow*
Shrill sometimes tweets at my Twitter-famous friend and I am consumed with jealousy EVERY. TIME.
Also I am in love with Demi Adejuyigbe but I don’t think he will ever notice me. It’s like being back in middle school all over again.
One of my IRL friends is IRL friends with Mallory and I’m consumed with jealous sads when I see them talking on twitter
I dream about Shrill and nomchompsky thinking I’m cool
Brittani Nichols’s twitter is amazing. It’s maybe the most consistently good twitter account of the ones I follow.
I’m two episodes into the Hamilton podcast and I love it. Khalehla Rixon and Brittani Nichols bounce off each other in a really delightful way. I think the podcast is especially wonderful if you don’t get enough opportunities to gush about Hamilton in your life. Listening to Khalehla Rixon gush about it is almost as good.
The next episode for me is My Shot and I am so excitied.
I don’t entirely understand the function of having a Hamilton podcast (much less one that claims to be authoritative, based on Nichols’ Twitter feed) without having seen the show, given that that’s the context in which it’s intended to be experienced. I understand that not everyone can afford to see the show, but those two are unquestionably reasonably famous enough to make it happen, financially. That being said, I’m definitely going to give it a shot, because I’m addicted to everything Hamilton.
I’m also exhausted with the “most musicals are uncool, but NOT THIS ONE” narrative surrounding Hamilton. It’s pretentious and reeks of such elitist bullshit. So all of us who loved musicals before this are uncool? Good to know.
I’m also exhausted with the “most musicals are uncool, but NOT THIS ONE” narrative surrounding Hamilton. It’s pretentious and reeks of such elitist bullshit. So all of us who loved musicals before this are uncool? Good to know.
I hope that you’re not getting that from Toasties, because I’m not. It can be kind of a bummer when a site or blogger really, really gets into something, and it’s not something that you’re into. (It’s become a semi-regular occurrence with people that I started following on Tumblr because they were into one of my fandoms, and then they got into something that I’m not into more or less full time, or it turned out that that was their main obsession all along and their post on my fandom was just an exception. It’s really a drag when they do some great fan art on my fandom, but don’t repeat it.)
It’s not from Toasties, but it has been from a lot of people in my life. Even an article about that Hamilton podcast mentions it – how Nichols came to it in spite of it seeming like there’s no place for them in theatre. (Which like… yeah, that’s kind of what Lin’s addressing with the show. But you can talk about the demographic disparity/limited access of theatre without putting down the medium, and you can do so more productively.)
There’s a spectrum of tone and sentiment you can have associated with this idea.
“I have felt shut out from musical theater until Hamilton”, “no musicals have resonated with me except for Hamilton” and “all musicals besides Hamilton are terrible” are all reflections of it. But I would want to respond to them differently.
I hope people give musical theater a second look because of Hamilton. But if they still don’t find it resonates with them, I don’t want to begrudge them continuing to avoid the medium.
I 100% agree that it’s a spectrum, and those merit different responses – but even so, I don’t think the takeaway should be “Hamilton has transcended the genre [either rap or musical theatre] and can/should be enjoyed/considered in a vacuum.”
If anything, what Hamilton has done has revealed the possibilities for MAINSTREAM theatre/musical theatre as a form to enable and empower these disenfranchised voices. In my opinion, the response shouldn’t be to turn their back on the medium, but instead to accept Lin’s invitation to get in there, get your hands dirty, and run with Hamilton’s momentum to CHANGE the medium as we know it. There are now so many more opportunities for good work to be done/good art to be created, thanks to the widespread success of Hamilton. It’s just frustrating to me when people view it in isolation – it’s part of a lineage that’s just as influenced by Camelot as it is by Mobb Deep, and one that extends into a future that (hopefully) features a LOT more synthesis of these previously-disparate musical timelines.
I would actually argue that a key reason Hamilton has succeeded artistically is that LMM so clearly loves and knows BOTH rap (specifically 90s rap) AND musical theater and is thus able to employ rap well within the context of a musical.
I haven’t gotten exposed to the “most musicals are uncool, but NOT THIS ONE” narrative because most of my social circle is pretty pro-musical. But I’m not surprised that’s a narrative that’s hopping around and it sounds pretty exhausting.
I get a lot of the the “I don’t like rap, but I like Hamilton” thing, which gets frustrating because it exclusively comes from people who haven’t even listened to a lot of rap music.
Guess what, silly. You do like rap! Hamilton is rap and maybe you’d like more of it if you gave it a shot. Ditto ditto sentiment, I’d imagine, with people dismissive of musical theater.
“I don’t like rap, but I like Hamilton” is the easiest way to get me to tune out of anything that person has to say from then on out.
I’m really bothered by posts like this. I like Hamilton. I have tried listening to rap songs, and am largely unmoved by them. This is not a contradiction.
It’s not the act of rapping, itself, that I don’t like. Obviously! My problem is that I have a tough time understanding lyrics. Any lyrics. The lyrics don’t resolve into words unless I read them. So when I listen to music, the first thing that grabs me is the tune and instruments. It’s no accident that the first song from Hamilton that I fell in love with was You’ll Be Back. Extremely simple lyrics, extremely catchy tune. I found the Cabinet Battles hella boring for quite a while because their genius is in the lyrics, and those were largely inaccessible to me.
I liked Hamilton first because of the music–because of the harmonies and the strings and the piano and the catchy tunes. It was only after the music had caught my attention that I started delving into the lyrics and enjoying the rapping for its own sake.
I had not really considered this perspective and I appreciate you pushing back against what I said.
The reason the “I don’t like rap but I like Hamilton” thing bristles me is because of the pride some people take in not liking rap music. People dismiss it as lesser, people say it’s not even music. It’s insulting. A lot of people can’t just accept that something doesn’t resonate with them. They have to prove that the thing they don’t like is objectively bad. This has been going on long before Hamilton and has roots in America’s incredibly racist culture.
But it’s definitely okay if the rap you’ve heard doesn’t resonate with you. I’m sorry if I implied otherwise. I’m sure there is rap out there that you would like because the genre is super varied, but if searching for it is too low yield (most of the stuff you are hearing you don’t like), of course it makes sense to look elsewhere to find stuff to listen to. Who cares? You don’t NEED to like other rap music.
Ultimately, there’s a difference between “I don’t like rap” and “this is the first rap I’ve heard that has resonated with me.”
Incidentally, there’s a lot of rap songs that I like independent of the lyrics. Heck, there’s a lot of rap songs I like IN SPITE of the lyrics. A lot of rap celebrates clever lyrics but that’s definitely not the only thing going on. There’s a lot of catchy hooks. There’s a lot of musicality.
I have trouble with lyrics too. Occasionally when I figure out what the lyrics are I like the song less, even. That kind of thing for me happens in every genre.
I was just thinking about this stuff this morning! I am, like NeuroticChihuahua, unmoved by most rap, though I love Hamilton. I don’t hate it but I am mostly uninterested, aside from a song here and there. But it’s hard to separate this preference I have from the fact that so much “I don’t like rap” sentiment comes from a gross, often elitist/racist point of view, so I try to watch how I think about it very carefully.
Yeah, I think in the US at least, “I don’t like rap” has a very……particular meaning. The fact that it usually goes along with “or country” tells you a lot about what that is actually dogwhistling.
Ooh, do you have any recommendations? I want to connect with rap outside of Hamilton, and it really frustrated me when I looked up a bunch of songs LMM was inspired by and they did nothing for me. I’m trying to think of rap/hip hop songs that I’ve found really catchy, and at the moment all I’m coming up with are songs in other languages, lol. Tijdmachine by Dio, and Alles New by Peter Fox (I’m not linking to the official video because it involves people, a good number of whom are black men, wearing monkey masks. I don’t feel like I know enough about the context to make a judgement about it, but it feels dodgy).
There was a thread at Metafilter about this recently. I haven’t delved into it at all, but some of the answers there look useful.
My go-to is always Missy Elliot. I find a lot of her music/choruses really catchy but I wouldn’t call her Hamilton-esque by any stretch of the imagination.
Get Ur Freak On was the first song I put on my playlist when I started running a year ago.
Sure! I’m a little insecure about making music recommendations but I’ll give it a shot (I’m glad other people are chiming in with recommendations too).
I adore Cold War by Janelle Monáe. I love and recommend everything she does actually (though she spreads out across a lot of different genres so that’s only partially a rap recommendation). Cold War is on her second album The ArchAndroid, which is my favorite album of hers and a good introduction to her, I think.
I haven’t listened to as much of The Roots, though I’ve been meaning to because I love How I Got Over.
Maybe it’s a little silly to recommend what was a song of the summer, but I’m quite fond of Hey Ya by Outkast. I like Outkast a lot. Bombs over Baghdad is another favorite of mine. So is The Whole World.
Kanye West is worth looking into, maybe. Not to diminish his ability as a lyricist, but I think he’s known for catchy tunes above all else. I really enjoy Stronger, in which Kanye repurposes a Daft Punk song into a fun song of his own. Good Life from the same album, is another favorite.
Hope those help!
Also, if you do get a foothold on the genre, it can be really fun to explore. There’s a wonderful culture of collaboration, sharing and repurposing, so you can often go on a journey of discovery, bouncing from one artist to another (“I like John Legend. Oh, John Legend did a song with Andre 3000? Let me check that out! I liked it. Let me check out Andre 3000 on his own.”) It’s a great way to discover rappers and non-rappers alike. I only discovered Nina Simone, one of my favorite blues singers, because Lil Wayne sampled one of her songs.
Oh yes, how could I forget about Janelle Monae!? Cold War is fantastic, and I love Q.U.E.E.N.
Oh yeah! I just picked up Electric Lady and I’ve really been enjoying it.
Slightly disappointed I couldn’t introduce you to her, though.
I used to listen to Peter Fox instead of doing my German homework (it’s stuck with me better than vocab I learned in other contexts, save the phrase for, “He was in a relationship with his daughter,” and the word for stomach cancer). Which is to say, yes, that video…
A friend and I decided it might be drawing on a King Kong/smash the city kind of thing, or maybe a Planet of the Apes/new world order kind of thing, but if anyone who happens to read this is German and can explain the context, please do?
I also really like Danny Brown for the catchy hooks, and Kendrick too (Money Trees from his album-before-this-one is great). ASAP Rocky’s Phoenix I think is also really melodic. Oh, and Mask of Doom. Frank Ocean/Earl Sweatshirt collab on “Sunday,” is really lovely I think.
(Edited to move comment to right thread)
I could watch the video for Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment on loop for ages. I think it’s pretty easy to understand–it’s about a grandma and has a catchy hook! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4ooH8frBWg
Salt-n-Pepa. Super feminist on top of being fun, good rap.
Yesyesyes. Salt-n-Pepa 4ever.
SAME!!! About You’ll Be Back, I mean. (And everything else, too.) It isn’t that I dislike rap, at all. I’ve loved rap for decades! It’s just that there are so many different kinds of rap, as with any genre of music, and I tend to like less battle-y stuff and more mellow (Paid in Full by Erik B and Rakim or say, anything by DeLaSoul) rap music. Very fast lyrics and all, just not as jarring somehow? I might have sound issues. Also, those groups are old.
What I overall want to say is that there were so many characters introduced, whose names I didn’t fully get or even their personalities really, and so much happening that I needed a few minutes to catch my breath and process and I could do that with the delightfully catchy You’ll Be Back. Then, NeuroticChihuhua’s right, the music had to hook me and I got more comfortable with who everyone was and could follow the narrative. Nothing, nothing, nothing at all to do with whether I like rap or not, or how square I am, or anything.
I mean, I am relatively old, so my eyesight and hearing play into how easy something is for me to process (also, generally, cognitive processing speed isn’t top notch anymore). But, it does feel kind of excluding and minimizing to say it’s because I’m not cool enough for rapping. I am, though! I’m totally cool enough for rapping! I’m just medium old!
This is why I was only willing to give Hamilton a try when I found out about the online annotated lyrics. My first time through, I sat there with the lyrics in front of me on my phone.
Lol. I listened to it when it was posted on NPR for free, because everyone was so excited about it I figured I should at least give it a try before I noped out. Without the lyrics, I had no freaking clue what was going on. I thought You’ll Be Back was being sung by some British aristocrat to an actual woman who’d left him to emigrate to America. I couldn’t tell any of the singers apart, so I didn’t know who was saying what and it completely escaped me that Burr was the narrator.
It was still glorious.
——– Original message ——–
For me, I tend to only like newer musicals, or really old ones that my mom dislikes. It’s not that I don’t think it’s valid as a genre or that “All musicals are bad,” the majority don’t resonate with me and/or there’s just a lot of baggage and bad associations with them.
Hi! I never claim that is’s authoritative so unclear where you’re picking up on that. It’s extremely speculative and even on the podcast I talk about how if I’m wrong about the things I guess at, I don’t wanna know I’m wrong until I see it. I don’t think if you saw it a dozen times you’d be all-knowing! Even with its success, there are some people that won’t have anyone to geek out with and I hope it finds them. I think that’s the function as is the function with a lot of the things I do–trying to put something into the world I wish I had growing up.
I think it’s…strange to assume you know either of our financial situations? Like real weird.
I don’t know if you read that FastCo article and that’s what sparked this “musicals are uncool” thing but just wanna say I really love them. I didn’t feel like nitpicking that dude so I let it go which seems like a mistake on my part because it DOES further that narrative and it’s one I’m not a part of. My quote doesn’t even follow that train as I talk about giving more recommendations after they listen to Hamilton. I will, however, accept having anything I’ve done be called pretentious and elitist. I wish it happened more.
I found your podcast so pretentious and elitist I listened to the whole thing straight through this morning. I look forward to future pretentious and elitist episodes!
I listened to the first two episodes this morning and thought they were awesome. It was like hanging out with two (pretentious and elitist?) friends who were equally interested in dissecting Hamilton! Which doesn’t exist in real life for me for now, so you are filling a vital niche!
You know I wasn’t sure about listening to it, but now that it’s been called pretentious and elitist, I’m in!
It’s probably elitist and pretentious, but I’m not a musical person. I saw Wicked, I saw Billy Elliot. They leave me cold. I love *old film musicals*, basically anything by the days when MGM ran the lives of their stars and the 1980 Annie movie, but yeah, nothing. Rent? Nope. I won’t say musicals are uncool, but I will unabashedly say that they are not for me.
Except Hamilton
Hey, let me join you in your pretentiousness. In our house when I was growing up basically only classical music was allowed. So then when I got to high school and started hanging out with people who were listening to pop music, I would hear some song with an “original” melody that the artist was being lauded for and I would be like, no, no, that’s actually ripped off in entirety from Brahms, or Mozart, or Schumann, or whatever. And the popular musicals were just rip-offs from operas etc. etc. etc. (Just imagine a self-righteous know-it-all teenager stomping around in self-righteous teenage rage here.)
I got to interview Michael Twitty once, and he’s so very thoughtful and generous with his time. That profile of him makes me happy!
I’m not even all the way through reading about Michael Twitty and already in LOVE. “Four time blessed” truly.
Thank you for all of this always, Nicole.
Seconded. I had never heard of Michael Twitty before. He’s LOVELY.
So a while back there was the Twitter thread on odd things we know a ton about, and I mentioned that mine was FIFA corruption and the World Cup decisions for 2018 and 2022. So you can imagine my nerdy glee at this fascinating article:
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/147672…
It is INCREDIBLE.
Ooooh. If you have nothing good to say about FIFA, come sit by me.
This is the greatest gif of all time. It brings me so much joy.
Oh man, I have SO MUCH not good to say about FIFA. I actually published a paper in law school about how they are both insanely corrupt and completely untouchable. I love soccer so much, and they ruin everything.
Of course Chuck Blazer lived in Trump Towers
I’m so glad that every single article written about Chuck Blazer from now til the end of time is going to eventually mention the cat apartment.
also I’m TERRIFIED that Sheikh Salman is going to win the election and ha haha haha ha shhdjakhdvhajkdfg
Yeah, it’s insane that he’s even a possibility, let alone the frontrunner. But really, are there any good options? FIFA is so ridiculously corrupt that I kind of feel like a complete overhaul is the only way to actually clean it up, and that won’t happen.
Ooh, if you’re into international athletic corruption, you should check out the IAAF and the 2021 World Championships.
Thanks for posting my EMA fundraising link, Nicole! I’m hoping that $5 or $10 bucks toward abortion funding won’t seem like so much when compared with the kidney donation of last week…
There’s a lot of research that needs to be done on the exposure of veterans to various chemicals that can have long-term and often devastating effects. Gulf War Syndrome has been linked to use of a nerve gas antidote and/or exposure to a certain pesticide, and veterans in general are at much higher risk of ALS, aka Lou Gehrig Syndrome, which some people suspect may have to do with the exposure of armed forces trainees to CS gas during basic training.
IS NOTHING SACRED? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-16…
I am just coming to terms with the fact that some cheese is not vegetarian AND NOW THIS??
wood. pulp. WOOD. PULP. I don’t eat the pre-grated kind and I think that’s the bulk of it, but could my Parmigiano Reggiano wheel-wedge be adulterated too??? It’s enough to make me give up on food altogether.
but could my Parmigiano Reggiano wheel-wedge
I don’t think so, because I don’t think you can really adulterate a wheel of cheese with wood pulp. The concerns with a portion of an actual wheel would be whether it’s authentic PDO parmigiano reggiano, time of aging, etc.
This was my belief and dearest hope, thank you for confirming.
100% wood-pulp cheese is 100% vegetarian!
Even more reason to not buy the grated stuff! I don’t always buy the Italian stuff because there are some great American and Australian Italian-style hard cheeses, but I definitely always buy wedges. (Plus with wedges you can save the rind and use it in soups and stocks and it’s the best.)
hhhhow…. would you not be able to tell? I don’t put parmesan on pasta because it looks good
I think if you only use the grated stuff from a can it might be hard to tell the difference. As long as it’s vaguely salty and looks like cheese, people who don’t grate their own and don’t know what it *should* taste like probably have no idea.
I am sad for those people. (And I recognize that my mother is one of them. She also prefers margarine over real butter, which . . ?)
Huh. And all those years when I told my parents they were eating wood shavings, I thought I was just kidding.
I am having too much fun cackling at this Can Lit generator that I just stumbled upon today: http://canlitgenerator.com/
“Three undergraduates from diverse backgrounds go hunting to reconnect with the false, nostalgic simplicity of their youth.”
I’m almost positive I’ve read that before.
”Two dogs get government funding , barely escaping the weather.”
Did a Toastie design this thing?
“A group of writers build the 2nd tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada with sexy results.” The sea, the sea!
“A woman and her dog contemplate their provincial identity, haunted by the spectre of their grandfather’s mistakes.”
I identify with this, despite being non-Canadian!
I got a similar one! “A woman and her dog get lost in the wilds of northern Quebec only to be beset by the spirits of their ancestors.”
I would totally read that…
Oh my!
“Two dogs contemplate their provincial identity under the pall of heavily implied incest.”
“A family and their dog cannot finish their novel without realizing that Drake references aren’t inherently hip or funny.”
“Two dogs become involved in the fur trade to better know their withdrawn, uncommunicative father.”
“An intramural soccer team are haunted by memories and maybe a real ghost during the War with sexy results.”
“Two dogs raise a sheep that may or may not talk despite a loving father.”
“A family and their dog tersely conduct a maple syrup heist in a squid-jiggin’ boat, but only after multiple scenes of ice skating.”
“Drake solves a mystery on a skidoo only to lose it all at sea.”
I CAN’T STOP SEND HELP
All dogs, all Drake, all bleak midwinter ALL THE TIME pleaseandthankyou
“A statue of Louis Riel has to leave Frobisher Bay in the Great Depression despite the wishes of a loving father.”
“Three generations of an East Coast family fall through the ice in a squid-jiggin’ boat, but only after multiple scenes of ice skating.” – What, not hockey?!?!
“A sea captain abandons their life in the Oil Patch, barely escaping the weather.”
“A survivor of the Halifax Explosion builds the 2nd tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada, haunted by the spectre of their grandfather’s mistakes.” – Is it weird that I’d actually read this? Especially if the person responsible for said lighthouse is a woman? 😉
“Three generations of an East Coast family build the 2nd tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada in excruciatingly detailed Toronto to provide care for their mother.” – Well, there is a Toronto on/in Prince Edward Island, but it’s nowhere near the coast! 😉
“A writer makes peace with their past in the Day-Glo version of Newfoundland they show you in the tourism ads but in a ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’ kind of way.” – TRIPPY.
In the last three days, I have seen deer, wild turkeys, and a fox in my neighborhood. So exciting! Plus the roundest and fluffiest sparrow imaginable spent the cold snap sitting on the bush outside of my kitchen and staring in at me, probably wondering why we hadn’t refilled the feeder. I love that guy.
Little fluffy, fatty birds are the BEST.
A few weeks ago I saw a fox in my neighborhood! Also I was listening to Rilo Kiley’s “Portions for Foxes” at the time. It was weird and cool.
Can’t wait for open thread, my apologies.
Ex info in the replies. I’m feeling very stabby today.
You know my ex, that one, the one that MISSED the kid’s broken hand after watching the kid fall on the ice, punch his brother, and wipe out sledding multiple times in the same weekend? That ex?
Yesterday was my 5 year divorce-aversary. All I wanted to do was take fake champagne into my student cubicle friends and toast my progress. Instead I came home to a BILL from the COURT for something HE FILED. (and, it was from last january? I don’t know how, I can’t get the court on the phone).
And a letter from a lawyer saying that he’s suing me for more custody because I’ve refused to grant him more time with the kids. (This explains why he’s been trying to get the kids to have sleepovers so that he can text me asking to bring them to my house late the next day and then get a text from me saying, “no”. )
In the meantime, the kid who is self-harming has a psychiatrist appt. tomorrow and will probably go on some kind of meds and, even though dad occasionally takes kid to counseling and picks up kid from said counseling, dad has no clue. Because he doesn’t ask why. And I inform dad of said appointments, but it is not my job to tell dad his son’s feelings. We discuss how kid can share his feelings with his father if he chooses at those same appointments. I sit in on most of them. Dad never has. Even on days when Dad sits in lobby while I go up to meet boy.
Please send lawyer mojo and “orange doesn’t look good on me” mojo. And…patience. Because I don’t have enough going on in my life….
Speaking of “orange doesn’t look good on me” [note: the song starts with the sound of a gunshot, in case that’s not someone’s thing]
Plus also your ex is terrible and court is terrible and teenagers are terrible even when they’re great, and I hope the suit gets thrown out and you get attorneys’ fees and he stops being an asshole.
I like it! What I needed today, for sure.
I’m so incredibly jealous of everyone who’s all “I stopped wearing my retainer early and it was fine my teeth never moved!”
Cause I stopped wearing my retainer in high school, and if anything my bottom teeth are WORSE than they were before I had braces. I spend a lot of time worrying about them, because they’re so crooked/mashed together I’m sure I’m not brushing/flossing properly. And they’ve continued to get worse just in the past few years. But my smile’s mostly fine cause my top teeth are straight, and there’s no way I could afford another round of braces, sooo.
Oh god me too. I had a mild crossbite and my orthodontist was basically like “THIS WILL FOR SURE RUIN YOUR LIFE” so I had tons of braces and then I stopped wearing my retainer (whoops) and now my teeth are way worse than when they started. I also stress about them a lot, though I’ve had similar luck with my smile (my top teeth are straight, my bottom teeth are mostly straight, my jaw just isn’t here it’s supposed to be at all – heyyyyy underbite and major crossbite).
SAME.
I suffered through 5 years of braces/palate expander hell. AND I dutifully wore my retainer for at least a year or so after they came off.
But if you look at my bottom teeth you would never know they were straight.
The real kicker was when my dentist recently said – “Have you ever considered braces for your bottom teeth?”
I wanted to yell – “Consider them??? They ruined my entire middle school and early high school experience for me! Never AGAIN.”
No one can see them and I pay extra flossing attention, so I’m sure it’s all good.
Wow, imagine being one of the 11% of voters supporting Ted Cruz or 24% (!!!) of Rubio voters who either think whites are the superior race or aren’t sure about it. I mean, I know that Hispanic is usually formally treated as an ethnicity rather than a race, but I doubt voters are looking at Rubio especially as a white guy.
It’s the “not sure” category that boggles, for me anyway.
I got braces as an adult, but it was 100% NOT for vanity reasons. I basically had to have my whole mouth restructured because of an underbite. It was super expensive and often a bit painful but overall worth it because it was seriously affecting my life (like, I got panic attacks every night because it cut off my breathing, weird stuff like that.)
Can I just say that the Twitter post is an inaccurate representation of the graph on Republicans and white supremacy? 11% of the Republican “base” isn’t sure whether they’re white supremacists or not. Of that group, 27% are undecided about who they would vote for. Either way, it’s all still super depressing.
No, the Twitter post is correct — each candidate’s column adds to 100%, so the graph is showing what percentage of each candidate’s supporters fall into the “White supremacy: yes/no/maybe” categories.
A very Toast topic of conversation:
Right now there is a big discussion of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me on RadioFranceCulture. It’s fascinating for lots of reasons, but I just wanted to put out there that the French translation of his book’s title is La colère noire, Black Anger.
Reactions?
It’s true that this has a different (milder) resonance in French than in English. And it was probably chosen by the publisher to boost sales. French public culture is a lot more comfortable with provocation and polemic than American public culture. That said, I am a bit taken aback by the translation decision!
(If you want to listen, it’s available on the radio france culture website).
This makes me very curious about how much input authors have when it comes to naming their translated works.
Nicole, you must realize that you are all of OUR Twitter crushes?
Yay for James Tiberius! I have been hoping for more baby pictures but I didn’t want to ask for any in case Nicole didn’t feel comfortable posting more than the original “look! I said I had a baby- here he is!” pics. He is really cute.
Thank you for expressing my baby thoughts, too! Sooooooo cute!
I was completely unprepared for the unmitigated agony braces would be. They also had to WIDEN MY PALATE with a torture device that had to be cranked wider every few days: http://www.gregjorgensen.com/blog/2011/08/what-to… (The article says it is “relatively painless” which is a LIE.)
IDK man I just no longer believe in braces anymore. The English manage fine without them, and I would rather have had an overbite than pain and tedious cleanings with no end date.
My brother and I had that device! (I called it The Spider) The key actually BROKE in his mouth, and he had to sleep with this dangling metal thing until he could visit the orthodontist.
I had that too! It was AWFUL.
Oooh, I had that cranking thing for awhile! Technically once I got my braces off I was supposed to keep wearing a retainer at night for basically forever, but that was over 10 years ago and I have…not done that. (My teeth feel fine, I swear!)
Hey! I’m English and I had braces as a teenager (including the widening torture device thing and a horrible head gear thing with hooks that pulled on the sides) and I’ve got them again as a 30-something. I’m pretty sure the British teeth = a mess thing is a myth. Maybe we’re less into tooth whitening but braces as a teenager is pretty common (and free on the NHS for under 18s).
Yeah, my sister had braces, as did plenty of people I was at school with. Definitely a thing over here.
I have lingual braces,* and I’m nearly forty. They were not inexpensive.
*recommended to close some spacing left when my two baby teeth were pulled last year, so as to make the space better for implants. For the expense, it better be worth it.
I NEED AN ANTICIPATOR IN CHIEF.
I know the all caps make it sound like I am kidding, but, I may be crying a little at how miraculous that sounds. I’m tired, y’all.
I’d also like to point out that given how unendingly, painfully precious that gorgeous baby is, you have confused my hormones into assaulting my very considered stance that One Is Quite Enough, Thanks. Oh, Nicole. (But please do not stop. All of the pictures will be a sufficient number. All. Even the blurry ones. Let’s do this.)
Toasties, I saw Hamilton last night. The world will never be the same. Ask me anything.
Is it worth it? We just bought tickets last night for September, in part as a 40th birthday celebration thing for me, I am not actually excited yet because I feel SO GUILTY about how expensive it is, even though we can totally afford it, and we never do anything like that, and I TOTALLY LOVE Hamilton more than I love most things, and I never fangirl, and my husband also really wants to go, but it feels silly to spend so much money, and then have to travel, and I just have so many issues and I am sorry to unload them all on you.
We will totally enjoy it, right? This is a Good Thing?
I saw it over Christmas and I think it was totally worth it. I feel very lucky since I would never have bought tickets 100% of my own volition (the cost! the excess!) but my dude is a much more “experiences are valuable” person than me, so he spearheaded getting tickets and it was amazing. And so worth it. And if you have the opportunity and the means to go, absolutely do so, it is such an incredible experience.
(I hesitate with how to phrase the last bit because the soundtrack is done incredibly well, and it is a basically entirely sung through show, and the cast and crew are super generous with behind the scenes looks, and obviously everyone cannot and will not see it, so in the least elitist way possible: there is so much more to the show than what you can get just by listening.)
I think you will! I saw it in January, having bought tickets as a Christmas/birthday present for my fiancee, and a lot of my enjoyment was in the general…experience, I guess? Like, I got to see an incredible show in a phenomenally gorgeous theatre (the Richard Rodgers is so pretty in that sort of over-the-top theatrical palace kind of way), with someone I love very, very much.
The show is great, and to bounce off of what mmsees said, seeing it live gives you a look at the show that’s an enhancement of what you get on the soundtrack (things like the choreography, or the little unsung/unspoken interplays between characters during songs), but for me, the thing that was most special was simply being there as a whole.
It is a Good Thing. I too felt guilty about spending so much on tickets and airfare and hotel, but I justified it by reminding myself that 1) I am an adult and I should spend my money on the things that I enjoy; 2) Seeing Hamilton on Broadway with the original cast is a once in a lifetime experience, and 3) I booked this trip so far in advance that by now it’s all paid off. Plus, once I got into the Richard Rodgers, any lingering doubts were instantly replaced with “how soon can I do this again?” It was Worth. It.
Thank you all for your comments, there were very helpful! It’s starting to sink in that we’re ACTUALLY GOING and I am starting to get excited!
I’ve got an appointment with an orthodontist next week to talk about braces options. My sister was a chronic thumb sucker who ended up needing many years of braces, a full jaw break and realign and then more years of braces, so my teeth totally flew under the radar as a kid – my top row is straight and great, but my bottom teeth are all crooked and overlapping, and they don’t even come close to meeting. It makes eating a lot of food really tricky (corn on the cob, sausages, anything where you have to bite straight on), because I have to come at everything with my eye teeth. My dentist told me my bottom would just keep crowding themselves further, but I just don’t think I want to spend this kind of money on something that’s essentially just for vanity. Anyone else get adult braces? I’m going to talk about Invisalign…
I had braces as a teen and as an adult. Invisalign wasn’t an option for me (and also would have been more expensive), so a few months after I started my first job I got full-on metal braces and wore them for 18 months. It wasn’t too bad. Every so often my teeth would hurt, but for the most part they felt fine. I felt conspicuous with them at first, but after a while they became normal to me, and I don’t think other people really noticed.
I would advise that you get at least a second opinion, and maybe a third, and also ask friends/co-workers for recommendations. My orthodontist in my teens I think made my teeth worse (I followed all of his instructions, including wearing my retainer nearly every night for 13 years, and still needed braces a second time), so you want to make sure you’re getting someone good.
Good idea about all the opinions. I live in a really small town so the otho comes in to visit from another city every few months. Maybe I’ll try to book an appointment with someone else in another city as well just to talk. I’m really in no rush, I’ve lived with these forever! Thanks!
Me! Train tracks on top and bottom which look pretty weird at first (my husband called me his teenage bride for about a week, which was, er, odd) but you get used to them. They hurt a lot for the first couple of days after they were put on and whenever I go to get them adjusted, my mouth feels sore for 24 hours or so afterwards.
It’s sheer vanity really. My front top teeth were overlapping and my bottom teeth were all crooked, though they don’t show when I smile. I keep reminding myself it’s going to look good when it’s finished. To be honest, I hope it means I can actually wear lipstick. I gave up in my early 20s when I discovered it always got on my crooked teeth. Here’s hoping they’ll stay uncrooked this time! (I had braces on the top as a teenager. My retainer broke and they went back to being crossed).
Teenage bride! Haha. You’re gonna rock the hell out of lipstick! What will be your go-to shade? I hope they stay uncrooked for you. My dentist told me our teeth just naturally want to migrate into the middle all the time. Whyyy?
Dunno. I’m looking forward to experimenting. 🙂
Oh, hey, twinsies! Although I HAD braces as a teen (and loved them because it was middle school and I totally dug getting different rubber band colors every time I went for a check-up). I also have an open bite, though maybe not as open as yours sounds? Biting certain things in two is definitely a challenge!
The thing that finally convinced me to make the appointment already is that I’m starting to see problems emerge with my other teeth as a result of my open bite (also whatever tooth grinding took place before I was in night guards). All my jaw pressure is being exerted on a very small area and it’s messing with my enamel. I have a couple of crowns on one side and will likely need more in the future — a preventative measure before I can get nerve sensitivity or cracks. I’m currently in process of having to get a fairly new crown redone because my bite is so wonky. The price for braces is terrifying but if it can help me keep my teeth for as long as possible I will find a way to pay it!
(All of this is a very long way of saying that it isn’t only for vanity and I hope you get your teeth sorted, although I don’t know if that helps to recontextualize at all!)
I was envious of my friends who got to have brightly coloured elastics when we were kids, hehe.
Good luck saving up for the braces. I hope you get your teeth sorted too! Sounds like it’s the right decision. And fist bump to a fellow night guard wearer! So cool. I went to a music festival this summer and my friends thought it was soooo funny when I went to bed one night with my eye mask, ear plugs and mouth guard in.
I had lunch with a former colleague & friend who was uber-conservative when I worked with him, but has gotten even more conservative over the past few years. Really upsettingly and offensively conservative. He is Scalia Jr. I need a palate cleanser. Can you tell me something liberal you believe in? The more liberal the better, but really anything will do.
Universal basic income! Woooo!!!
YES! Universal healthcare, too!!!!!
How’s this for liberal foundation: There is more than one correct answer.
Toastfriends, this is the epiphany that changed my life. This concept was never taught by anyone in my childhood. It has made all the difference.
Rights are something people have all the time, not just when somebody in power approves of the people, or likes them. The rights are always there, as a consequence of just being a person, even if some other person is uncomfortable.
Toasties might appreciate this:
Fun Prizes to Give Him After He Guesses Your Ethnicity Right
This is not a new or topical link, but it is a KITTEN NURSERY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXCUxuIb3GM
That (very cute) puppy seems oddly lacking in the fur department.
Lol. I listened to it when it was posted on NPR for free, because everyone was so excited about it I figured I should at least give it a try before I noped out. Without the lyrics, I had no freaking clue what was going on. I thought You'll Be Back was being sung by some British aristocrat to an actual woman who'd left him to emigrate to America. I couldn't tell any of the singers apart, so I didn't know who was saying what and it completely escaped me that Burr was the narrator.It was still glorious.——– Original message ——–