Where is their buddy cop movie?
This was posted yesterday, but here is the story behind 30 Rock‘s Leap Day episode:
We were always creating a universe that was a little sideways, a little parallel to the one we experience every day. I remember this being one of the easiest episodes to break ever, because we realized it was a whole buffet of stuff the audience already knows. Suddenly, you’re handed everything associated with any holiday, and you get to recast it. “Oh, great, we’ll do a Scrooge conceit.” “We’ll go to a Leap Day party.” “We’ll write songs.” “We’ll come up with traditions.” You just saw the whole thing immediately, even though I think we were telling four full stories in it. The hardest part was the three-line exchange explaining how this had never been discussed before, why it was such a big deal, and why Liz Lemon didn’t know about it when we saw her four years ago during the previous Leap Day.
The curious case of Lyle Stevik (there are a lot of surprisingly grim crime scene photos, so if you prefer not to see suicide-related stuff, I would nope out):
Months passed by, then years. The investigation went cold. Then, in 2006, Lyle’s case gained traction online. Armchair detectives had started to painstakingly comb through the available evidence — trading thoughts, theories, and facts with other sleuths on internet forums. It didn’t take long before Lyle went global, his case attracting readers from Florida to Finland. And everyone had an opinion. But they also shared a collective goal: To identify the Doe and bring him home.
Over the next decade, his myth grew to unimaginable proportions: twoFacebook groups, a Wikipedia page, and a dedicated subreddit. He became the subject of haikus and fan fiction, even an unlikely crush.
Most importantly, Lyle had a sub-forum on Websleuths, a hodgepodge of speculation, postulation, and possible matches collected from missing person databases like NAMUS and the Doe Network. They cross-referenced his vital statistics, hoping to uncover someone with a similar height, weight, and Lyle’s attached earlobes: not quite rare, but still, something distinctive.
HERO:
“We have murders around here,” they said. “Well, he murdered my dream of going to Hamilton,” she retorted.
So Posner put on her Serpico hat. As the New York Post reports, Posner set up a sting to catch this nefarious Killer of Dreams, this Buffalo Bill of ticket-scalping. Posner’s boyfriend “responded to the same deceptive Craigslist ad and planned a ticket-pickup rendezvous with the fraudster that very afternoon.” The police eventually agreed to help and assigned ten anti-crime unit officers to the sting. They caught the guy, who had a history of selling phony tickets.
“I was so happy,” Posner later said. “Losing $350 to get somebody who has probably done this to so many people was worth it.”
A friend of a Toastie is drowning in medical bills as a result of cancer, could some of us help her out?
NOPE and NOPE and NO and SUPER ILLEGAL (basically nothing terrible your employer does to you is illegal ever but THIS ONE IS, I’m kind of excited now!):
My employer requires that female, and only female, employees have a male employee escort them to their car after their shift is over. I am a 40-year-old woman and have been threatened with being terminated for leaving without an escort who is younger than my own children. I am often times required to wait up to 45 minutes after my shift ends (and off the clock) before I’m allowed to go home. I would think it should be my choice when I could leave work after I am off duty. Please advise?
When homesickness was a diagnosis (I never had a successful sleepover until I was a grown woman staying over at dudes’ houses, so I feel this):
Nostalgia, of course, has come to mean something different now, and the meaning began to change around the start of the 20th century. But for about 200 years after Hofer wrote that initial paper, the word was a medical term that meant an intense, and potentially dangerous, longing for home, although doctors never quite agreed upon the symptoms, explained Susan Matt, a historian at Weber State University and the author ofHomesickness: An American History. “Not all homesickness was necessarily going to kill you, but if you had a really acute case, it would qualify as nostalgia,” she told Science of Us. “There are lots of different sets of overlapping descriptions: a shortness of breath, palpitations of the heart, dysentery, fever, problems with the lungs. Or it was feeling an acute yearning, and then your body would start to close down.”
Your coffee is fine, but if you’re in NYC for like, a DAY, and want something amazing, this is a good list and also this place was a couple of blocks from my last NYC apartment and I went there constantly):
Abraço (East Village)
Its minuscule size, total lack of indoor seating, and somewhat limited hours (though it now thankfully stays open until 6 p.m.) didn’t stop Abraço from developing an outsize, devoted following willing to squeeze in for a cappuccino or freshly brewed drip coffee. Owner Jamie McCormick, a former Blue Bottle barista whose appearances behind the La Marzocco regulars follow closely, takes a focused approach to both roasting, which he does in Greenpoint, and brewing, favoring blends and consistency of flavor — which explains why fans still flock here like they do.
As someone who would love to be a spy and could NEVER DO IT (practically, of course, but also it would never be for the US, I would have to be a Canadian spy), this was my everything last week:
Cover is partly about what you say—that you are applying for a job with the State Department—and partly about how you say it. I described my prospective position as “stamping visas”—making a point of sounding a little ambivalent about the job and embarrassed by the rigmarole, but excited about traveling to adventurous places (all of which was true). Then I’d change the subject.
But it couldn’t actually be that simple, could it? I asked this in one of my interviews (a few months after my first round of assessments, an invitation came for a second: dazed, I went). I was sitting across from a genial older former intelligence officer. I was still being vigorously invited to ask questions, which I did, though I was beginning to have the sense that my real questions were the ones not worth asking. Out in the real world, I said, was it really just a matter of changing the subject? Yes, he said, a lot of the time, it was: what people everywhere really want to talk about is themselves.
Visually, and in terms of their friendships, the world of “Broad City” is racially inclusive. For a while, this diversity was regularly used as a snotty wedge against HBO’s “Girls,” as if Abbi and Ilana were the pure Elizabeth Warren to Lena Dunham’s tainted Hillary Clinton. But, in fact, Abbi and Ilana, just like Hannah Horvath, aren’t generic young women: they’re college-educated white kids from the Northeast, artsy urbanites who aren’t rich but also aren’t poor, even if they can’t afford much. They’re also secular Jews in a way that network sitcoms never allowed characters to be, in the nineties, when “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” and “Mad About You” smooshed New Yorkers into an ethnically vanilla, network-friendly neutrality.
Like many people in this demographic, the characters on “Broad City” are deeply into hip-hop. This is particularly true of the fictional Ilana, who dates a black guy, Lincoln (Hannibal Buress), a supremely chill dentist. (“Hey, bwah,” she says when she calls him. “Hey, grah,” he replies.) But Ilana’s not just a girl with a diverse social circle, a taste for Lil Wayne, and graphic fantasies about Rihanna backstage at the Barclays Center. She’s legitimately obsessed with the notion of herself as a bi-poly-cross-ethnic sexual adventurer; at times, she seems to believe that she’s not white, accusing her boss, say, of white privilege. When she hooks up with a doppelgänger (played by the Glazer doppelgänger Alia Shawkat), Ilana explains that, in bed, she craves difference: “Different colors, different shapes, different sizes. People who are hotter, uglier. More smart; notmore smart. Innies, outies! I don’t know, a Catholic person.” It’s a mixture of idealism and solipsism that reminded me of a German ex of mine, who insisted on calling himself “a citizen of the verld.”
Please to enjoy Kate McKinnon and Kumail Nanjiani’s Carol parody:
Literal genius Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah on James Baldwin (also work, and race, and family):
So I was in London when a check with four digits and one comma hit my account. It wasn’t much but to me it seemed enormous. I decided if I was going to spend any money, something I was reluctant, if not petrified, to do, at the very least I would feel best about spending it on James Baldwin. After all, my connection to him was an unspoken hoodoo-ish belief that he had been the high priest in charge of my prayer of being a black person who wanted to exist on books and words alone. It was a deification that was fostered years before during a publishing internship at a magazine. During the lonely week I had spent in the storeroom of the magazine’s editorial office organizing the archives from 1870 to 2005, I had found time to pray intensely at the altar of Baldwin. I had asked him to grant me endurance and enough fight so that I could exit that storeroom with my confidence intact. I told him what all writers chant to keep on, that I had a story to tell. But later, away from all of that, I quietly felt repelled by him — as if he were a home I had to leave to become my own. Instead, I spent years immersing myself in the books of Sergei Dovlatov, Vivian Gornick, Henry Dumas, Sei Shogonan, Madeline L’Engle, and Octavia Butler. Baldwin didn’t need my prayers — he had the praise of the entire world.
Every time I see a crowdfunding page for someone’s medical bills, I’m overcome by a wave of white-hot rage. Not at the people raising money, of course–at the fact that we live in a country where you have to RAISE MONEY from your friends to afford your goddamn medical treatment. And, of course, the very ability to use crowdfunding is only useful for certain people–people with large networks, people with Internet savvy, people with stories that are likely to go viral … it makes me want to go nuclear on someone, but I don’t even know where to channel all my anger.
Yup. Whenever people here in the Netherlands whine about their taxes, I always just reply that it’s worth a lot to me to live in a country where medical bills can’t bankrupt a person.
I lived in Denmark for a while and was so *grateful* that my taxes went to help people who needed it that I actually cried one very PMS-y day. I don’t need a big house or a fancy car, I need people to not go bankrupt just trying to live.
There’s a post that’s gone around tumblr several times where Americans have either listed or taken photos of their medical bills after an emergency room visit. Other Americans are always “yeah that sounds about right” and non-Americans’ jaws drop.
(My own example: crashed my bicycle on the property of a mid-sized company because they hadn’t lit or painted a hazard. Got an ambulance ride and spent five days in the hospital and had several follow-up visits: $54,000. I hired a lawyer and the company’s insurance paid for it and I got a small settlement.)
This.
This is why I hate the argument that charity could replace welfare– because in practice charity is something people essentially have to compete for, and most people can’t win. I chip in to individual fundraising campaigns from time to time, but I would much rather put my money into a system that helps everyone.
Your first sentence so perfectly deconstructs the fallacy of the the charity argument
Yes, exactly! If charity replaces welfare, then you just have a bunch of wealthy interest groups deciding who deserves to be helped. Like, what destroys individual dignity more–receiving the same help anyone in your situation would get from the government, or having to beg for scraps from a bunch of judgmental rich people?
Oh yeah, even our actual social safety net gets yanked in all directions by rich fucks who want to make sure that nobody is buying a $1.89 can of pop on an EBT card and who are just sure that the lady down the street is committing some kind of fraud, because she seems too “trashy” to be honestly needy.
That idea of the “worthy poor” has such a long, complex, and almost entirely sordid history in the U.S., too. Can’t look too needy, or people will think you’re lazy and dishonest, but can’t look too composed/acceptable, because then why are you asking for handouts? Ugh.
The arguments I’ve gotten into with people who are cranky that homeless people have smartphones. My iphone is the most expensive item I own, and it’s literally a computer, a phone, my connection to the outside world. If I became homeless tomorrow I would give up pretty much every other thing before I gave up my phone!
My husband was accused of being a fake-poor when he was homeless because he kept his cell phone (a gift from a friend from before he became homeless) and his laptop (again, acquired prior to homelessness). As if the $50 from selling the used smartphone and the $100 from the crappy old used laptop would’ve gotten him housed in Southern California.
Sometimes, when watching a British TV show with a dramatic, BAFTA-bait hospital scene, I’m yanked completely out of the moment when I remember that nobody involved is trying desperately to calculate how they’re going to pay for this.
Similarly, I had to quit House before I had a chance to get fed up with the characters, because I actually had major anxiety thinking about the eventual bill for all of those tests House knew would probably turn up nothing, but let his team run anyway.
My headcanon is that these diagnostic-teams-of-last-resort have a budget to cover patients’ tests. St. Jude’s Childrens Hospital does something similar.
I have the opposite thing as a UK person watching American TV – I still remember watching something many years ago and being horrified that a plot point was “how can we get this injury treated even though it’ll cost loads?”.
There are many things very, very wrong in America right now.
I almost got fired for asking for help because my company found it embarrassing. *rage *
What??? That is so fucking evil, I am completely incensed.
The anthology for helping me will be back for sale shortly. I can’t really go into detail. But yup.
Kate McKinnon is a national treasure and I live for her impressions of powerful women leaders.
I read an article about her once that said she’s a “stone-cold weirdo and proud of it” and it’s so true and I love her so much. Her recent interview on The Tonight Show was damn gold. “I can assemble a cheese board with the best of them!” <3 <3 <3
She did an interview with Conan that had me straight rolling on the floor because she was so subtly weird, just her face and body, throughout the entire segment that I couldn’t look away from her.
Angela Merkel and tiny e-mails!
I can make Hamlet double-over laughing instantly just by wailing, “I haff sent many tiny ue-mails!”
New mobile, who dis?
Angela Merkel’s crush on Obama! “I will always loff you”
gins-BURN
I have such a terrible heart-in-eyes crush on her.
Yes to this, but also her impressions of teen boys (see: Bieber and Fitzwilliam).
Speaking of spy stories, I’m reading a fun one others might like called A Spy Among Friends, about MI-6 head and multi-decade double agent Kim Philby. Both Philby and his foil in the story were recruited by high-up women in MI-6 who I also want to read books about. The moral of the story seems to be that old-boys networks will be their own downfall every time. It also includes crazy asides like one opportunity to kill Hitler in 1936 that the British government just said “nah” too. So crazy. Recommend.
I will read anything about Kim Philby that is published. I have no idea why I find him so interesting.
Ben McIntyre’s books about spying and codes are just astounding. I love “Operation Mincemeat” more than is reasonable.
Ooooh, thanks for the rec!
If you have not seen the mini-series Cambridge Spies, I recommend. Though it is responsible for my inability to love Tom Hollander in anything.
Yesssss, Cambridge Spies is excellent, and this comment reminded me that I haven’t rewatched it in forever.
I think it is also responsible for my ability to love Samuel West in anything.
ACCURATE.
ETA: lolololol at this quote from his IMDB page
“Oliver Reed regretted not sleeping with every woman in the world, and Betjeman said he wished he’d had more sex. It doesn’t matter how much sex I have, I’ll be of Olli Reed’s mind when it comes down to it. And so will anybody who’s honest”.
So, I’m gonna need Sansa to stay this size forever.
That dog. Her amazing ears. The protective stance. Just, the whole dog.
The tiny bit of tongue hanging out is killing me.
Louise Rennison died last night. Georgia was my teen girl guru and I’m sad.
Also I’m feeling really ill and I think it’s because I fucked up my meds this morning (always take pills after food. It doesn’t matter if you’re about to eat, your body still counts that as strong medication on an empty stomach and will wreck righteous revenge.). I had to come home from work and now I’m lying in bed because I’m dizzy and floaty if I stand and I’m really not sure if I need to eat or puke (feels like puke, but it hasn’t happened yet, thank God.). And my kidneys hurt so now I’m convinced I have renal failure (and its not just my kidneys filtering said strong medication)
What???? That is terrible news!!! I LOVED her books as a teen, now I’m legit very sad.
Yeah 🙁 I haven’t seen much details
I still remember laughing until my stomach hurt while reading her books in public. Awkward times on the bus.
My sister texted me about Louise Rennison and we’re both terribly, terribly sad. We were OBSESSED with her books- they were some of the only ones we’d both happily share and laugh hysterically over. My mother was deeply confused when we started working “nippy noodles” into our daily vocabulary.
Those books still hold up as being ridiculously funny. Ugh, now I’m super sad again.
Bumoley. I can’t not say it.
My sister was the one who introduced me to them!
Whaaat, nooooo. I only ever read the first two books in the series, but I must have read them about a million times.
I am so sad now.
Get them. They’re sI good.
ACH, this is so sad. I just described a scene my students did as “A+ amazing with knobs on” and I sure as hell wouldn’t have said the last part if it weren’t for Georgia. Even as an adult, those books make me snort in my tea.
Really? This makes me so sad. I re-read half of those books while I was in college and they were still hilarious and nunga-nungas and nippy noodles occasionally appear in my daily vocabulary.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LOUIIIIISSSSEEEE OH MY GOD.
I guess if I had to find out it’s best it happens here.
I hope you feel better soon! And I am heartsick at this news–the day I discovered the complete online glossary for that series I was nearly crippled with laughter. Flags at half-mast in Everywhere-a-gogo land, she was a treasure.
OK, I really want to apply to be a spy now. Just to see what happens…
That homesickness piece was really neat! But I have also read about ‘nostalgia’ being less homesickness and kind of a proto-PTSD, in which case it would make sense that WWI soldiers weren’t being diagnosed, since their condition would have been called ‘shell shock.’
Maybe someone out there is more knowledgable than I and can tell me if I’m wrong – but I think it is pretty interesting how mental illness is labeled and construed in different times and places.
Yes, perception of mental illness varies widely among cultures. I have always wanted to read a survey of how our modern classifications of disease were addressed in different times and cultures.
At least in this age, I know that in some cultures patients with hallucinations are thought to be demon-possessed, in others they are thought to be mystics, and in ours they are thought to need a shot of Haldol. I wonder if there is a certain level of community denial involved as a coping mechanism…for example, if there is no medication available, then maybe depression has to be understood as a religious issue, because there is hope in that. Just saying, “You need medicine but you can’t get it so you are screwed,” is devastating to the depressed person and their family. At least they can go to church and pray and have a lot of community support under the religious model.
What else is interesting is how mentally ill people perceive their own experiences based on culture. When I worked (in mental health) in a traditional Catholic area, the delusions of severely mentally ill patients fixated on religious figures (angels, the Devil, Jesus) and space aliens, but when I moved to a more secular area, the delusions turned to Hitler, Nazis, and the FBI, with an occasional ghost.
I’m sure there is a great paper or book on this subject; if anyone knows of one let me know.
Wow, that is really fascinating about the differing delusions. I have read an interesting paper on the different content of hallucinatory voices across cultures that describes a similar phenomenon – http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/early/2014/06/17/b…
And there’s – http://www.dsm5.org/Research/Documents/CulturePTS… – this review on PTSD that makes me think about how we construe mental illness, particularly this quote, “This critique suggests that, by emphasizing the ‘reality’ of PTSD as a universal biopsychological category, research on PTSD may have unintentionally and paradoxically helped decrease social and moral responsiveness to these events. The suffering associated with the Rwandan genocide, for example, cannot be reduced to the PTSD experience.”
I really don’t have fully formed thoughts on the subject, so I’d be interested in other reading recommendations, too!
edited to give up on html.
You would be interested in Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters. He uses four case studies (anorexia in Hong Kong, PTSD in Indonesia, depression in Japan, and schizophrenia in Zanzibar) to talk about how different cultures cope with mental illnesses and how the exportation of American ideas about mental illness and its treatment, mostly through well-meaning crisis intervention and aid work, is negatively impacting people who might have other, better, more stable supports already in place.
Smithsonian recently ran an article that dovetails with this. It was about how people on the Autism Spectrum in American history were perceived by society as a whole. Interesting stuff, especially with the variety in how autism presents in individuals.
Have all the unsolved-murder-loving Toastesses seen this?
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/29…
Death imitates whodunits!
Ugh this gave me flashbacks to the story about the body in the hotel watertank in LA.
Every time I see Sansa, I marvel anew at how fluffy her ears are. Excellent pup!
All I want is Kate McKinnon and Catharine MacKinnon to hang out and maybe be friends.
Two news stories I wanted to share:
– The auction of Deborah Devonshire’s possessions is tomorrow: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2016/deborah-…
– Lousie Rennison has died and I am very sad about this. (I mentioned it yesterday, but late in the day, so it may not be on everyone’s radar.) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-3569…
Oooh, I’ll admit, I’ve never been into the Mitfords, but that is a great collection of stuff. I definitely need a collection of modern lights and this absolutely amazing painting of a girl and goat.
I also love the painting of the girl and the goat!
I love the balance of expensive gentility vs. grandma tchotchkes in Debo’s stuff. So many ceramic birds! Expensive brooches but they’re shaped like insects! Amazing.
“Her Grace’s Collection of Elvis Presley Paraphernalia”
Debo really liked Elvis. I’m surprised her family is selling it!
We’re going through my late father-in-law’s estate right now. He’s got a sizeable literary estate to be handled, but also just a ton of… stuff. Important to him, and to other collectors, but not really to us. It is easy to sort of drown in that stuff if you aren’t careful.
Her son does live in a 126-room stately home, though. Plenty of corners to shove the Elvis memorabilia in!
I passed my dissertation defense yesterday! It sort of veered back and forth between “mildly uncomfortable” and “nightmare hell,” and I have Revisions To Do, but I got through it!
Congratulations!
WOOHOOO!!!!!! Mazel tov, Dr. Starsofthesea
Yasssss, doctor! Congratulations! You earned it.
Congrats! 😀
Hip hip hooray!
Congrats!!! You probably will never have to endure public hazing again!!!!!!
Congratulations! Here’s hoping the “nightmare hell” parts were various faculty using the defense to snipe at each other, as opposed to them being jerks to you. 🙂
Wahooooo!! Way to go! It’s all over!
That CIA article was amazing and I think it might be the best thing I’ve read in the last month.
Ahh yesss
But if I bought my Hamilton resale tickets through Ticketmaster they’re real, right?
Yup!
I think that both TM and StubHub only release the money to the seller AFTER the show, which keeps counterfeiting from being lucrative.
Yes! We just did this exact thing, no problem at the door. (Did it with hatred in my heart for ticketmaster allowing scalping in order to squeeze out more profit, but still.) You should be fine!
Learning about Kumail & McKinnon hosting an awards show was a BEAUTIFUL GIFT, thaaaannnkkkk yoooouuuuu.
Are chimps making shrines? This is really cool.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/…
Oh whoa, that’s amazing! The fact that a female chimp did it too kinda pokes a hole in the “male display of prowess” theory.
That was fascinating. But I was so distressed by the stat that in just 30 years chimps are likely to be no longer able to survive in the wild 🙁 🙁 🙁
I mean, obviously I knew things were bad, but that time frame is so brief. I can remember in the 90s when there was much discussion of how long we had until various species could no longer live in the wild, and now it seems to be…happening.
And it’s complex, because population increases indicates fewer people in poverty and suffering disease, which is a good thing, and deforestation and poaching could be the result of people making their living the only way they can, so the solution always has to be more productive than ‘stop poaching or else!’
Sigh. It’s really sad.
Thoughtses:
1. I am having a hard time seeing where the “camera trap” video provides any proof at all for the notion that chimps are intentionally piling up rocks, much less building any kind of organized “tree shrines.” If anything, the chimps seem to be throwing the rocks AWAY from the trees. Mostly though it just looks like some high-spirited chimps horsing around with rocks. Chimps tend to throw things when excited, and bystanders should count themselves lucky if it’s just poop.
2. “Even more intriguing than this, we may have found the first evidence of chimpanzees’ creating a kind of shrine or “sacred” trees. Indigenous West African people have stone collections at sacred trees (…)”
Really? Really. That’s… that’s the comparison you want to go for, article? Seriously.
Yeah, this is a super cool idea, but I don’t really see a lot of evidence for it, and I also gave that “cultural comparison” a real side-eye.
On a similar “apes are so cool” note, here is a thing my partner showed me about gorillas humming contentedly over their food: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078781-wild…
(It did make me very sad thinking of how badly they are treated by humans.)
I want to just hide under a rock for all of Super Tuesday, but I know that I’ll be refreshing the NYTimes/Board of Election sites all evening. And possibly crying about the future of my country.
I was talking about this with my brother a few days ago. I live in New Mexico so primaries are irrelevant to me. It’s been decided by that point; we are however a swing state so I do actually have a vote that counts in the real election. It’s kind of nice because I can just approach the whole thing fatalistically. I don’t have to make any actual decisions, just show up and punch whatever’s next to D, but I still get the feeling of having an actual effect on politics.
Yeah, I’m in DC so pretty much nothing I do vote-wise matters. I did go out and canvas in VA, though, so here’s hoping that pays off somewhat!
Go you! Very happy you did that.
Yup, yup, this is me. I work in a small office and both of my bosses are pretty much out of the office all day today, so I have waaaaay too much free time on my hands to sit here and wish the results would just be here already.
I’m glad they got the fivethirtyeight delegate tracker up. Silver’s crew are where I go when I’m looking to completely resettle myself if I’ve been swept too far into news cycle hyperbole-induced anxiety. But even there, the primary season so far has been about one-off analyses and articles.
I think I may actually just take a break from the internet and tv/radio today, because I’m so very distressed by all of it, and because there is nothing I can really *do* about any of it (I a) live in New York and b) am registered Green Party) right now. Especially because I’m a Clinton supporter and frankly don’t wish to expose myself to the kind of misogynist vitriol and bullying that people are experiencing were I to discuss things on, say, social media.
Thank you for saying it’s Super Tuesday. I think my happy ass will spend the day programming in FreeCodeCamp and making a million Korean banchan. It seems healthier than watching the news flow in.
Well the NYTimes has this to say, anyhow: Verbatim: Donald Trump Calls Himself Crusader for Equality
“There’s nobody who has done so much for equality as I have. You take a look at Palm Beach, Fla, I built the Mar-a-Lago Club. Totally open to everybody.”
— Donald J. Trump, renouncing the support of white supremacists, on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.
HAAAAA, it’s all so horrible I can’t even, even a little bit.
I started to read a NYT article about Clinton’s strategy for how to defeat Trump, but was overwhelmed by how much this is all happening. In real life. It is actually going on. How is HRC coming up with a plan to defeat Donald Trump in November? What is wrong with people?
I’m seeing Hamilton tonight! I bought my ticket months ago so it is not a resale ticket but I went and checked it anyway after reading that story.
I had terrible homesickness as a child, I was always that kid that had to call her mum to pick her up. I’ve no idea why, all I remember is desperately wanting to be in my house instead of wherever I was.
The article does a really good job of describing how it feels to be an emigrant; I think technology does make it worse sometimes, I don’t talk to anyone from home unless I’m heading back, because I don’t have the mental energy to open that whole can of feelings worms
That parody of Carol reminded me how insane Cate Blanchett’s scenery-chewing makes me. Every. Line. At. Maximum. Intensity.
I started noticing it in that movie where she played Hepburn and now I can’t see anything else (although she is a riveting and beautiful and all).
*All.
Basically, that scene in LoTR? Cate being Cate.
“All shall love me and despair! I’d like to thank the Academy…wait, no, sorry, wrong speech.”
The only thing I’ve seen her in was The Monuments Men and the movie as a whole was pretty crappy so I didn’t pay much attention to her in particular. But she does look intense. It seems to be her resting state.
Also her Oscars dress with the flowers was gorgeous and I want it.
What do you bet the employer who needed the women to be escorted sooner or later uses this as a reason women are too expensive to hire?
what on earth do you mean – he doesn’t pay them for waiting for an escort and no way does he let them leave early.
such a nightmare.
But he’s presumably paying whoever is doing the escorting for doing that, and not whatever work they might be doing for the company that actually adds value. So it’s a cost.
Oh, no! He’s forcing the women to wait until a man finishes a shift and is on the way out, is how I understood it. No need to pay the man, who is going to the parking lot already anyway.
Woman: works 10-2
Man: works 9-3
woman has to wait until 3 for that man to be available – thus the 45 minute unpaid delay
Well, that could be too. I just assumed it was till an important penis-bearing employee could be freed up to be a bodyguard.
I don’t suppose we will find out.
I could totally hear him saying that he doesn’t like to hirse women because of all the special treatment they require.
Ugh. This makes me think of the girl in my home ec group in middle school who, during the cooking unit, would yell at all of us that we didn’t know what we were doing, then subsequently commandeer all of our tasks, only to later whine that she does all the work.
I’m also going to go out on a limb and suggest he’s slightly uncomfortable to be around. I may be projecting based on my own ex!boss, who liked to talk big about protecting women, rapists need to be locked in a room with their victims’ fathers, etc, all while sexually harassing one of his employees. In fairness, this employer may not be a not-so-secret skeezeball, and may be just a paternalistic asshole.
“rapists need to be locked in a room with their victims’ fathers”
Because the real “harm” that rape does is that it defiles the man’s property. Yuck. Nope.
I think the actual idea is that fathers are the only ones willing to do what’s necessary to avenge their baby girls, but it’s still all very gross, just like the “father cleaning his shotgun when his daughter’s date comes to pick her up.”
Which infuriates me on the level of WE ARE NOT PROPERTY but also on the, “you dumbasses have no clue about the mad cthonic maenad hardcoreness of torment and pain that a woman is not just capable of but straight up made of, do you?”
Seriously. Oh, you’re upset that somebody might hurt your daughter, and you need to tell me about your primal rage? Bro, if I had the social freedom to do so, I would tear this world apart to make sure that all the girls, teenagers, and young women I know could grow up safe, happy, and respected.
I’ll just be following you around today affirming all the things you say and being ready to proffer a righteous high-five.
This is my dream scenario, so I’m down. *righteous high five* *united primal screams*
lol @ “slightly”
When he was arrested for solicitation of a minor, and I learned about the sexual harassment of my coworker, so many things started to make sense.
When I read the words “Canadian spy” I had a vision of a TV series about Canadian spies, like The Russians, only without all of the murdering and really really polite.
We have spies! They’re called CSIS and they even got some international attention last year whenAnonymous went after them.
There is a tv series about Canadian spies! It’s called X Company and I resent it every day of my life for getting renewed when Strange Empire got cancelled.
Have you seen the X company billboards that say “Five Spies/One Mission?” At one point I heard/read someone say they always first read that as “Five Spies/One Cup” and now I imagine that every time I see it.
I watched about half the first season of X Company last year. So boring, IMO. And yawn, the main focus was on Alfred with synaesthesia. It would have been much more interesting for me if Aurora was the main focus, and the complexities of having to lead an all-male team.
I’ve yet to see Strange Empire, but it looks way better, and it should have been renewed.
The Romeo Section! http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/ch…
Was so excited to see another Chris Haddock series and the first season of The Romeo Section delivered and has me hooked. I’m still bitter about Intelligence getting cancelled.
I just spent the last 90 minutes trying to remember a Canadian spy novel that was on the edges of my brain, and just had an aha moment: William Stephenson! Man Called Intrepid!
I just woke up to a wave of notifications on some fanfic I wrote when I was 14 and had managed to suppress until now. I don’t know whether to feel complimented or find the fic and burn it down.
O leave it! You know someone is needing it.
I appreciate the sentiment, but literally nobody needs my awkward anime juvenilia.
Awkward juveniles might. Is this linkable to you? does it damage your reputation to leave it out there? Because otherwise i would leave it. You never know what might strike a cord and for whom.
Yes, all of this.
Feel complimented, pat your 14-year-old self on the head and smile all day.
(And don’t go back and re-read that fic, whatever you do!)
Guys apparently they cast Matthew McConajfdhgfd as the Man in Black for the Dark Towers movies, and idk how to feel. I was SO EXCITED at Idris Elba being cast as the Gunslinger… I mean, I still am. And I’ll probably still watch them. But MATTHEW MCCONAKJGFDK, really??? (TBH I’m still mad at him for Sahara.)
((Also, I see you, girl in the twitter replies to Stephen King, saying that Matthew should be the Gunslinger, and Idris the “Man in Black”. Yeah, that’s not at ALL racist…))
I dunno about Idris Elba. He seems like a pretty cool dude, but Roland is basically Blondie from the Dollars trilogy, so I guess that spells a lot of changes to the plot of the books.
I don’t recall Roland’s appearance having any relevance to the plot? So frankly I’m pleased they cast Idris, who is an amazing actor.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, but I remember Roland’s eyes being described as cool, blue, bombardier’s eyes.
I’m 100% in favor of casting Idris Elba, though.
Detta’s antagonism to Roland is due to his being white. Other than that I guess it doesn’t matter concerning the plot.
Yeah, that’s the one thing I’ve been wondering about. Race was very central to Susannah’s initial arc, and so I do think her initial relationship with the Gunslinger is going to be a little altered. I haven’t seen Idris Elba in anything other than Pacific Rim, so I have no thoughts on him being cast. I think Matthew Mcconaughey will be a great Man in Black.
Also, that the initial Twitter stuff between the two is adorable.
You should really watch Luther. Idris Elba as a gifted and tormented British detective with secrets and a marriage that is falling apart. He is just so good.
Also smokin’ hot.
Blondie is just one of many nicknames for the man with no name, and his hair colour/eye colour/race has nothing to do with his character. I agree that in both cases the characters are taciturn, gruff, mysterious and strongly principled, and I’m damn sure that Idris can do that just fine.
I’m ok with it. I haven’t seen Sahara, but he can be funny and I wouldn’t want to lose the Dark Tower’s edge of humour. (Well, the later books lost every edge on their own, IMO…)
I’m just not a fan of his. He always seems the same in every movie to me, with that incredibly recognizeable voice/accent that means that whatever “character” he’s supposed to be, all I can think is “Matthew McConaughey”.
(To be fair, Sahara wasn’t so much HIS fault as the typical thing where he looks absolutely nothing like the book character, neither did his costar, and the script was horrible.)
McConahoogle is SO GOOD at playing creepy, I’m much more excited to see him as RF than I would have thought!
Is he? I haven’t seen anything of his where he plays creepy, I guess, he just always comes off as Matthew Mcconaughey to me, I can never “see” him as a character.
Like in Frailty! so creepy good.
“Frailty” is AMAAAAAAAZING.
He’s super creepy and unsettling in Killer Joe!
I can’t believe you got his name spelled right like that!
This is only tangentially relevant, but I’m still so mad about Sahara!! Clive Cussler books are my guilty pleasure (I love buying them in airports, they’re the best holiday books) and Sahara is my favourite…and the movie was SO TERRIBLE, argh!! Bad casting, they majorly fucked up Dirk Pitt’s motivations, made the ironclad central to the story, no slave labour in the mine, no kick ass UN rescue team, I was so disappointed!
I…have more feelings about this than I realised.
The only thing they need to keep from that movie is Steve Zahn as Giordino and they can reboot it ASAP.
Everything else was flaming hot garbage.
nodding so hard over here!
Nicole I just want to tell you how much I admire the fact that 95% of your domestic life seems to occur in the immediate vicinity of your big gorgeous bed. #lifegoals
Thank you! It is truly an excellent bed.
Ha, I thought the same 🙂
I have noticed and admired this very same thing! If I had a bed that luxurious I would want to stay near it all day long as well.
Kumail Nanjiani is one of my absolute favorite actors right now (no one can nail the “affable jerk” character like he can), and I love that he just randomly shows up everywhere – the last time he appeared in a TV show I was watching, I’m pretty sure I exclaimed “ah, my best friend!” so warmly that I may as well have actually known him.
He’s so great! I first heard him on some podcast and he talked about video games which are not my thing but I still thought he was funny and I would watch just about anything if he was in it.
Indoor Kids! He does it with his wife! Or, he did up until late last year. I saw them do a live version at LA Podfest last year and it was so great I subscribed immediately. Then a month later they went on hiatus. They both got too successful, basically.
I love him so much! His customer service guy on Portlandia is one of the funniest parts of the show, IMO–I think “affable jerk” is exactly right to describe him in that role.
He is easily my favorite Portlandia guest star. His sketches are classics.
Love him so much on Portlandia! His car salesman is my favorite.
“Then one guy was like we should put wipers on the headlights. That guy got fired.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXCPDAOzbpM
When I found out he was going to appear in the X-Files, I was SO happy for him, like, personally. I love the X-Files Files podcast and The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail and he seems like such a cool dude, so I was really, really excited for him.
And that episode didn’t suck, which was nice.
So good at affable jerk and also immovable bureaucrat. But he is so good in everything he is in.
I thought in the premiere of The Grinder he totally stole his scene from Fred Savage and Rob Lowe. “Um, I have ten million objections, rounding down. . .”
Is anyone else having chronic trouble commenting here using IntenseDebate? I keep getting “Error- your session has expired. Please login” messages, even when I’ve just logged in. It’s very annoying. I’m unable to use my IntenseDebate account on the Toast at the moment.
It happens to me a fair bit, but not every time.
I get that whenever I try to log in on my phone.
Yeah, all the time.
Yup, I cannot make two comments in the same session. Have to refresh the page, log in again, and comment every time. I whitelisted The Toast with my cookie blocker so it’s not that.
yup, all the time
I am frequently logged out by my work computer (although normally refreshing the page fixes matters, rather than having to put my password in again), but everything’s fine on my laptop at home.
Off topic, but posting this here as I never make the open threads:
I am reading “the Magicians” by Lev Grossman at the moment and really enjoy the story, but I keep getting annoyed at how every female character(including non-human ones) is described in terms of how much Quentin wants to sleep with them. I get that Quentin is supposed to be terrible in general, and a teenage boy/young man, but after having read mostly books by female authors recently it really stood out to me. Anyone else bothered by this?
I truly did not like the Magicians, mostly because of that, and what happens at the end which just made me even more annoyed at how the female characters were treated/what tropes they fell into. I mean I guess I “get” that he is supposed to be terrible and I like bad ppl as my narrators! But he’s not even a fun bad person! There’s nothing interesting to me about his story, like even his shittiness is just boring, and the plot/worldbuilding wasn’t enough to make me want to read the other books in the series. But I know so many smart women who love those books so ??? I don’t really get it??
yeah I keep trying to ignore Quentin and his self-absorbed thoughts, but book shouldnt be written for you to read around the main character..
Yeah I read The Magicians and hated it, then forgot I’d read it, thought it sounded intriguing, and read it again – and hated it the second time too. Quentin’s like a modern-day, magical Holden Caulfield, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
hahaha, a magical Holden Caulfield describes him perfectly!
Well, you’ve just guaranteed that despite any curiosity I am NEVER going to read those books.
I haven’t read the books, but that’s partly because I kept reading about how iffy the treatment of the female characters was…So I don’t think you’re the only one bothered by this.
Somewhat by accident, I’ve only read novels by women so far this calendar year, and I have to say it agrees with me.
I’ve only read books by female authors for over a year now until this one, it’s great! It wasn’t really a concious decision for me either, those were just the books that appealed to me more. And I know not all male authors are this terrible at describing women as more than a pair of tits, but reading this book after a series of great, complex female characters has been a bit of a slap in the face.
Intensely put-off.
I’m OK with that being a character trait of his, there’s room for books with protagonists who are deeply awful people. But I never felt like the book gave a shit about that aspect of his horribleness. It just accepted it.
Also, I never need to read the phrase “heavy breasts” again.
This is exactly my issue with this book. I love a well-written terrible, horrible, no good, very bad character, but ONLY when the other characters / the author acknowledge that this character is terrible.
Nobody else in The Magicians ever seems to care that Quentin is awful and everyone just kind of goes along with it, which I find totally unbelievable. Other posters in this thread are comparing it to Catcher in the Rye above, which I understand because terrible teen male protagonist narrator, but I always felt like Salinger was aware that his protagonist was awful and treated it that way. I don’t get the impression that the author really believes Quentin is terrible, not REALLY.
(To be fair it’s been a while since I’ve read either book so I could be misremembering details here.)
Exactly. I don’t think Grossman realises how horrible Quentin is-I think he thinks its endearing. Aww, look at his classic white-man nihilistic postmodern ennui! How sweet! Except…NO.
YES. It always read like a halfhearted acknowledgement and criticism of some flaws while ignoring others, but he’s actually a great guy so we’re okay with all this garbage behavior, right? The lack of awareness by the author also REEKS of self-insertion.
REEKS of self-insertion is the perfect way to put that. Half the time it feels like Grossman is writing real person fanfic about himself.
I’m intentionally not using the term “Mary Sue” to describe Quentin, because a) I think men do the mary sue thing more often than women do and b) I think it can be a valid choice and c) women tend to get slammed for/accused of writing mary sue characters while men do not.
My Google skills seem to be failing me, but I saw an article he wrote online about being a Really Deep Ivy League writer going on a roadtrip, because OF COURSE he did and OF COURSE he wrote an article about how deep it was, because that’s exactly what Quentin would do and he is Quentin.
As you said, writing yourself into a book can be a valid choice, but if you’re going to do that, ACKNOWLEDGE it and craft the narrative around it. Don’t do it and pretend that’s not what you’re doing, buddy.
EDIT: Found it. I loathe this guy.
I didn’t like The Magicians at all either (found it too derivative of nearly every other fantasy novel, plus Quentin being Quentin), but I’ve liked Grossman’s book reviews in TIME magazine. And I’ve liked that essay you linked, because he really did write it as a cautionary tale — DON’T DO WHAT I DID — especially the last paragraph, about how it’s entirely possible to write novels with an ordinary day job. It’s a good lesson for all the teenagers who might be tempted to run off on the same quixotic and ill-fated journey.
That’s true, it does have a good message. I think my issue with it that he skirts around how privileged he is here and I feel it undermines what he’s saying, which is also partially my issue with The Magicians. He doesn’t really acknowledge that his opinions about the correct way to be a writer (by running off on a road trip into the woods) and all the references to what he’s reading at the time stem from a background that allowed him to pursue this dream.
“Don’t do what I did, not everybody is a genius and that’s okay” is certainly a great lesson, but it comes from someone who had the freedom to make this mistake in the first place, and I just wish he acknowledge that, I guess.
I’m pretty sure he’s said in interviews that he didn’t mean for Quentin to be unlikeable and learned he was based on the response to the book once it was published.
Yeah – or if the author believes Quentin is terrible, it’s for other reasons. There’s not a lot of work done to distinguish between what’s being tolerated and what’s being criticized. Which isn’t to say that the author’s job is to hold my hand all the way through, but when you have this dickweed protagonist, I want more character development there.
Holden’s a jerk, but he at least elicits some empathy from me. He’s struggling to grow up and fit in the world. He’s younger (I think), and spends time at a garbage boarding school which has really cut him off. He gets that something’s wrong with that culture, but he doesn’t know what’s better, and swings between wanting to be a little kid again and wanting to be a grownup. It’s obnoxious, but it felt human.
Quentin’s suffering from depression, which I think is fascinating in the context of living a magical-superhero lifestyle. And to the extent his awfulness comes from struggling with his mental health, I’m on board. But that doesn’t explain his “lolbewbz” view of women. And unlike Holden, he lives in the 21st century.
Yes, Holden is 16. I can’t recall much of what he actually did in the novel that makes everyone call him a jerk, despite how I’ve read it twice, but I’ve always connected with his existential angst. That’s super-real, when you don’t like all the ways the world is fucked-up but everyone seems to accept it, yet there’s nothing you can do about it.
I hated the Magicians, but then I saw this tweet: https://twitter.com/leverus/status/47216868175434…
It just makes sense, really. It was an ok book for something that was written while drunk on the subway.
I am biased in the other direction since it is one of my all-time favorite books, but what actually makes me love the series so much is that I feel like it is very much acknowledged that Quentin is angry, entitled, and particularly in the beginning of the series, on his way to becoming a full-blown MRA. I even feel like the other characters call him on it, particularly Alice (and while they like him and often go along with him, many of them are terrible in their own ways as well). He grows tremendously throughout the series, while never being able to quite shake some of the bitterness.
The author explores a theme I really like: if you are generally an unhappy person, and your wildest dreams turn out to be true, you will still be the person you were before.
I do hate Catcher in the Rye, though…
Also, Lev Grossman once agreed with me that Quentin is heading towards pick-up artist territory in the beginning of the series, so it’s not COMPLETELY in my head.
I read the book and loved it. LOVED it. And also hated Quentin with a white-hot passion, only exceeded by how much I hated the voice in which Julia’s chapters are written in the sequel.
It’s an odd mix of feelings to have about one book.
Yeah, this is how I felt. A friend gave me all three as a gift, I read the first two really quickly and then did not want to read the third, but I wanted to finish and find out what happened…it took me a couple of days to read the first two and ten months to finish the third.
Same. I love the world building and parts of the plot but I wish the characters would have been written by someone else. Possibly a woman.
This 100%
I had the same reaction. Loved the books, hated Quentin. But I always thought the narrative supported that reading, you know? Like, it really acknowledges that Quentin is terrible and you’re not supposed to agree with his POV. I do understand where people come from wrt the treatment of the female characters but at the same time I think a lot of the criticism verges on conflating Quentin’s POV with a narrative POV.
Me tooooo! Love the world and the writing and images and the sort of grim Harry Potter / Narnia thing, hate Quentin, hate what happens to the women!
Yeah, I often felt like the book had a higher opinion of Quentin than I did (and it is justifiably pretttttty harsh on him at times). It’s like, I know you think he’s a jerkbag but I don’t think you get exactly how much of one he is. That feeling never really went away, even in the second book where there’s a more present foil for him, to the point where I haven’t read the third book (which is a big deal for me).
Yeah, I felt like he was meant to be more of a douchebag with complexity! than he actually was.
The end of book 2 made me too angry to read book 3, and I’m usually a compulsive completionist.
The third book is miles better than the second book (definitely the weakest), imo. It’s worth trying!
That bugged me a lot too. I get the sense that the author is kind of an asshole around women.
Yeah. I liked the world-building, not just that he poked holes in the HP wizarding world but where he poked them, but there was some egregious fridging of Alice and Julia, and especially in the third book he went out of his way to structure the plot so that Quentin came out the hero after all.
Ugh, people keep responding to my complaints about the handling of Alice and Julia to tell me, “oh, but the third book addresses all that!”
Yeah, I don’t think the third book did address it, really. Quentin still made a woman’s story and character arc all about him and his feelings.
I rather liked the book when I first read it, but have the same “you are boring and unpleasant” feelings about Quentin as everyone else here seems to have. I also have zero desire to re-read it, read the follow-ups, or watch the show.
I think there’s something to say about a character who is boring and unpleasant, but the book didn’t say it.
It’s not about how those things can alienate your friends and destroy your chances at happiness; how difficult they are to overcome; how they can be unrelated to the quality of your life; how difficult it is to communicate your state to others.
It’s just him being boring and unpleasant.
Oh god, apparently Julia gets raped as a plot point to make Quentin a better person in the next books? I am nope-ing out of this story. Perfect rant on the treatment of Alice and Julias characters in the books: http://hotelsongs.tumblr.com/post/9986559447/lev-…
FWIW, there is a point in one of the later books (pretty sure it’s the third one) where Quentin looks back on his sexual, uh, frustration and realizes how out of line and ridiculous it was.
I love these books, but I also recognize that they’re super polarizing, especially for female readers. But I’ve always seen Quentin as kind of trapped… by his mental illness, his obsessions, his inability to get his shit together. One thing I like about the series is that Quentin actually grows up — that is, he changes. By the end he’s not just older and wiser (though he is those two things), he’s actually a different person altogether.
I was SO disappointed in the Magicians. It’s fine to have an unlikeable protagonist, but I still want to care about him, and/or the writing has to be amazing. Grossman didn’t tick either of those boxes.
NB if you wanted to like The Magicians, you should read Rivers of London by Ben Aaronowicz (though it was published under a different name in the US because of course it was – Midnight Riot I think). The main character is a biracial cockney detective who is recruited as an apprentice wizard. So.
My grandpa had a friend who had been in the CIA and he used to make a hilarious game for himself of having his grandkids go up to the friend and very innocently ask what he had done for work, just to hear the answers. I don’t know whether the guy was aware of the game (since it didn’t happen that often), but instead of just saying “Oh, I was in the State Department” or “I worked for the government” he would go with “I was a florist” or “I was a Hollywood stunt man”. I genuinely didn’t know until I was about 15 what that guy’s job actually was.
Haha, that’s a great game! My relative always says “the agency” which might be more direct/obvious, but as far as I know he’s only saying it to us and we already know.
Huh, he uses the agency for the CIA? My dad worked for both as an IT boffin, and he was always clear that NSA was The Agency and CIA was The Company. (And we just felt bad for the FBI because the Hoover Building is dank and dreary and the agency and the company had much nicer facilities.)
Of course, I also don’t really… tell people… what my dad did, and the folks have politely requested that I not visit China or Russia any time soon even though he’s retired.
He says agency for CIA, yes. He never worked at NSA but is a retired Colonel and general badass. Quiet, friendly, non-violent badass, that is.
Hee, that would chap the ass of some of my dad’s old coworkers. They’d be all “but that’s OUR (incredibly generic and confusing) nickname! What if someone thought we were CIA?”
The pettiness of the insular intelligence community amuses me I guess.
There was an adjunct professor at GWU in DC who was rumored to have been with the CIA. It was interesting to watch when someone asked (although I was embarrassed because, duh, we all know he can’t answer so asking is rude.) The problem at that stage too is- they need to let him confirm or come up with a solid lie because this “oh I was just an analyst for different groups” thing isn’t going to fly. Either that or if everyone found out he was living abroad and working as an analyst for Goldman Sachs or whoever no one would think he was cool anymore. That’s not impossible.
Growing up in the DC area it was not even remotely uncommon for kids to just not know what one (or both!) of their parents did for a living. Like “I don’t know” was a totally legit answer, and it never occurred to me to think that was odd.
Not Throwing Away My Spock.
I mean. Just.
Bless you for posting this.
“are damn daniel and the cameraman the new hamlet and horatio” – @DrakeDickBC
daaaaaaaaaaaamn, Drake, back at it again with the apt comparison of Shakespeare and modern life.
As an addendum to your comment on the Ask a Manager link: while not enough of the terrible things that employers do are illegal, there are still plenty of ways that your boss can break the law! Here’s a page from the EEOC: http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html
And from the AFL-CIO: http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Civil-and-Workplace-…
And if you don’t have a union, the IWW wants you.
(anyone wanna talk mental health meds…?)
I’m always up for it. Currently I’m tapering from Lexapro (branded, the generic made me borderline narcoleptic), which I have been on for 9 years, to citalopram (generic Celexa) because the insurance companies found a way to slightly tweak their policy this year so that even if you do have a medical need for a branded medication, they’ll give you approval for it but don’t have to cover the difference in cost.
GAH.
I was alternating daily, but I just started 2 days on citalopram and 1 day on Lexapro, to start getting it out of my system. *fingers crossed for no weird health effects*
so when you’re ramping up/down/across, it’s probably really important that you remember to take your correct dosage each day right?
my sitch: I have recently been diagnosed with bipolar II (hi, only my partner knows this yet, I’m telling my best friend tonight so you guys are special…) and I’ve been prescribed a mood stabilizer called lamotrigine. I’m both totally stoked that there might be a non-SSRI solution to all my inappropriate crying/days where I feel like I’m slow-motion moving through a fog/etc, and also totally terrified.
I’m terrified that it won’t work at all (and that SSRIs will be the next step, because I’m super terrified of them) or that they will work but fuck me up. so I really want to do the ramping right, in case I fuck myself up by doing it wrong. But back a million years ago when I dated men and was on birth control, I was terrible at remembering to take a pill every day. and for this I’m supposed to take pills TWO times a day! HOW WILL I DO THIS? And how crazy will I get if I mangle this?
Well I don’t think you’ll mangle it. But remembering is definitely hard. I take metformin for PCOS and initially the doctor prescribed 2x a day, but I take all my meds in the morning, and I would forget the second dose, so she changed the prescription to 2 extended release pills in the morning.
Currently the fact that I need to really monitor the effects of the citalopram without any weird variables involved is burned into the back of my brain enough that I’m remembering to take the correct meds on a given day.
You have to find the right ways to remind yourself. I’ve found that iphone reminders are good since I look at my phone several times a day, but also sticking post-its in important places can be helpful.
Set alarms on your phone! I have alarms for both my meds as well as an app called Productivity where I check off all of my activities for the day as I do them (meds, watering plants, having tea, taking a walk). I also use one of those day-of-the-week pill boxes so I am never unsure if I took them or not. There are lots of approaches to treating bipolar II and almost all of them require more than one med, so definitely figure out a system for yourself.
I’m not a psychiatrist but from my experiences in a mood disorder support group (so depression/unipolar, bipolar I and II, and rapid cycling), missing or mis-dosing your meds is sometimes inconsequential but can sometimes can trigger a state change (eg, depressive to manic) and make the mood more severe and the cycle shorter or longer. As an aside I do recommend googling support groups in your area. It’s so so helpful, especially for the bipolar folks, to get peer input and discuss those “little bipolar things” with a sense of humor and empathy.
Thank you so much for this. The app sounds wonderful – the pill box (and my ability to remember to take meds) is complicated by the fact that I live in two different places.
As for support groups, I know one person who also has bipolar II that I’ve been wanting to reach out to, but my doc also said that if the lamotrigine doesn’t work then we have to reassess, so maybe it isn’t even bipolar II, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself/infringe on spaces I don’t belong/etc.
Diagnoses are a best guess and not an exact science, and it’s very common for newly diagnosed folks to come and hear people’s experiences or ask for input when discussing their own diagnosis. You should be totally welcome in the group!
I wish it was exacter! when I complained to my doc of chronic heartburn, he got some guys to put a camera down my throat and lo and behold, they could see a hole in my esophagus, and now I have a prescription that resolves the issue. That seems pretty exact, I like that!
SSRIs have helped me tremendously, after many years of suffering because I refused to take them. What terrifies you exactly?
There’s a lot of potential side effects to SSRIs and I saw a lot of them in my friends when I was in my 20s, and my family friends when I was a teen. I know it’s a logical fallacy (you only see the bad stuff because when it’s working, there’s nothing to see) but my fear-brain can’t forget all people whose depression got worse, to attempted suicide, who wandered around like a zombie because they could never sleep. Even the seemingly mild one of losing your sex drive (which is currently the fact with a few of my friends) is a big loss to me. And it’s still just true that there’s a laundry list of potential negative side effects with SSRIs, and if the lamotragine the only concern is a rash.
Also, apparently you can just go off lamotragine anytime, while getting off SSRIs can be very challenging.
And the big one, the one I fear the most, is that in bipolar SSRIs can induce mania, pushing you from II to I.
Which isn’t to say that SSRIs aren’t awesome things that work great for some people! I am just afraid of them. If my therapist and doc agree I should try them I probably will. I’m just expressing my fear.
Thank you very much for sharing! I know a lot of people are hesitant/have prejudices/etc about psych meds, but I was curious why you used the word “terrified,” and you definitely explained it! I take escitalopram for depression and it definitely can interact differently if you have bipolar. I’m sorry you had to witness such stark side effects and I so wish psychiatric medicine was better. Good luck in your journey!
Not to derail your conversation, but how did they make you feel better? I’m currently sitting on a prescription for citalopram that it took me years to get up the courage to ask for, and now I still can’t decide if I should start taking it or not, because maybe my low-level-burn anxiety is just me being a regular human! Gahhhh brain stuff.
Mine help me derail my obsessive thought spirals. Instead of being gripped in the anxiety tornado with no ability to contextualize the problem or put it aside, I have more control over my thoughts.
Thanks for the response. That does sound helpful! It’s so hard to get control over my automatic negative thought spirals sometimes, even when my rational side knows that I’m making mountains out of molehills. Sounds like I should certainly consider taking it. 🙂 My bestie has a prescription for a different SSRI, so I think it might be nice to have a buddy to hold hands with as we jump into the pool.
I’ve been on Zoloft for ~4 months now, and I am so so so glad I did it. I’ve done Lexapro/Celexa before, and they didn’t have super dramatic effects for me — though to be fair, I started Zoloft in the middle of dealing with a break up, whereas there wasn’t anything acute happening in my life when I started SSRIs before– but Zoloft has definitely carried me through for the last few months.
I think if you have a prescription, that means a doctor has diagnosed you, and you should give it a shot! What SRRIs do for me, I think, is that I can have really sad thoughts or really anxious thoughts, without riding them down the spiral. I can think anxious thoughts, and then just gently push them away — think them without actually FEELING them. And that’s huge!
I think what is really hard when you struggle with mental illness is that your understanding of what like, the default human state is, becomes kind of warped — I didn’t know it was possible to not feel so anxious, and when the medication kicked in I was like, oh…so is this what other non-anxious people feel like??
The thing that is hard about SSRIs is that they take awhile to build up in your body. For me, it took about 2-3 weeks to really feel the effects, and another 4-6 weeks for all the side effects to go away (they were not too bad for me– aside from the start-up anxiety during the first week or two, it was mostly stuff like my hands being kind of trembly).
Good luck, I hope it works out for you 🙂
Oh my goodness, they helped me so much. Things are still hard, but the meds kindof got the spiderwebs out of my head. I actually got out of bed and found myself a job, I’m not as irritable, I’m not suicidal.
It’s different for everyone, though, but I guess you won’t know until you try. Good luck in your journey!
I have the same diagnosis and only take lamotrigine! Have for…four years now? I was on two different SSRIs, an anti-anxiety med, and sleeping pills for about eight months beforehand. It was such a rollercoaster and I’m super grateful that I was correctly diagnosed and medicated in a relatively short amount of time.
Now, lamotrigine is all I take, with an atypical anti-psychotic (olanzapine) that I keep in my purse as a security blanket but have only taken twice. For awhile I was on lamotrigine + lithium but we decided to stop the lithium because I had the olanzapine on hand in case of emergencies, and it kicks in much faster than lithium. I really like this system, and knowing that olanzapine can stop anything from hypomania to full blown psychosis in a matter of hours really makes me feel safe.
I also split my dose, and phone alarms/having it right by my bed to have first thing when I wake up/go to sleep has worked for me. I’m on a relatively large dose, and have missed a pill here and there, and it hasn’t thrown me into withdrawals or anything. The public perception of lamotrigine is so crazy because of the tapering + super rare rash, but I’m happy to answer questions about my experience!
I would LOVED to talk to you! Same as above – if you’re on twitter, I’m findable by the same handle.
Hmm I am on generic Lexapro and keep trying to go to a higher dose, but as I’m telling my pdoc, the higher dose turns me into a zombie so I’ve settled on a low dose for now. But it’s good to hear stories of semi narcolepsy so I know it’s not just me. … Thinking about going to a psychiatrist to sort it all out.
Yeah, on the escitalopram I could sleep for 12 hours (I was still looking for a post-college job at this point) be awake for an hour or two, and then want to go right back to sleep. You can’t really function that way.
Yeah, I’m also on escitalopram (generic Lexapro) and noticed that my need for sleep went up by about 1 1/2 hours a night. On the other hand, it makes my depression better without making my anxiety worse
“the insurance companies found a way to slightly tweak their policy” SO MUCH RAGE about these situations.
They basically said “well, instead of requiring a prior authorization in order to get the medication, and then charging the patient less upon approval, we’re just not going to require it in the first place.”
At first this would seem like a good thing. But really it means that there’s no step in the process where the doctor gets to say “look, this person has tried the generic with no luck and medically needs the brand of ___,” so ultimately, they can say you are “choosing” to take the brand, and therefore must pay the big bucks for it.
EYE ROLL. GAHD. I am very lucky to have (an expensive, non-insurance-taking) psychiatrist who will go to the mat and spend hours on the phone advocating for me when my prior auth gets denied, inevitably, each year. I figure it’s cheaper for me in the long run than annual psych hospital stays.
Ha. I’m currently lying in bed feeling shit and high as a kite because something weird is going on with my medication. (I’ve been bad about taking it becuaw it makes me feel sick, but I’m trying to be better and everything is a bit strange)
Strattera, its the ‘safe’ adderall apparently
Missing doses or taking on an empty stomach can make the effects feel stronger than they should be. Most meds take many weeks to build up in your system and work properly, at which point the side effects can fade. Please don’t miss doses =(
I’ve been on this medication for 6 years, so I’m gonna assume it’s built up in my system 😉
I’m just in a funk at the moment where I’m not eating breakfast regularly, and since I always take my meds with breakfast I just get thrown off occasionally. And I fucked up badly today and now I feel crap. Ho hum.
Sure! Been on Wellbutrin for a few years, it works better than Lexapro and Zoloft for me. I feel like there might be meds out there that would be a better fit, but generally things are under control – plus it’s important for me to be on a drug that’s weight-neutral, and there are limited options for those as far as anti-depressants are concerned.
Same here! If I miss a dose I sometimes have an unstable mood for the day, but generally it’s a good fit for me long-term. My only side effects are a dramatically lower alcohol tolerance, a slight tremor in my hands when I try to hold them still, and mild dry mouth.
I haven’t noticed a change in my alcohol tolerance, but ugh, the hand tremors. i had to cut back from 300mg to 150mg because the tremors were too bad.
Ooh, hand tremors are also a thing for me on Zoloft! It hadn’t happened before with any other SSRI, so it was kind of weird. I notice that if I miss a dose, my hands are less tremor-y the next day. But since that is pretty much the only side effect that has stuck around after taking it for a few months, it’s not a bad tradeoff.
I have been on everything under the sun for chronic depression (including once a delightful combo of Wellbutrin, Cymbalta, and Zyprexa that CAUSED A SEIZURE!), and am currently on Pristiq. It’s kept working for about 4 years and I’m constantly terrified it will stop working like everything else. It is also weight-neutral, which was a delight at first. I get hellish withdrawals symptoms starting in ~12 hours if I miss a dose… tl/dr Pristiq is wondrous and also anxiety-provoking.
Tempted to go back on Wellbutrin myself. I think it helped with my ADHD just as much as with my depression.
I do! I’m actually having issues right now with mine. I’ve been on duloxetine (the generic for Cymbalta) for anxiety for about a year now and it’s been fine, but I recently got my prescription refilled and ever since, I’ve been noticing mild withdrawal symptoms (feeling fluish, heart palpitations, “brain zaps”), even though I’m taking the same dosage I always have. I’ve been thinking about calling the pharmacy to make sure it was filled correctly.
Yeah, you should check if they gave you the generic, and if so from which manufacturer. There can be subtle differences. I was once given the rapid-release version of my med (vs. the slow-release that I normally take) and felt like I was on coke.
It’s amazing to me that the additives they put in the generics can have such an impact, but clearly they do.
I know, it’s total BS.
I’m always on the generic, though. It’s never been a problem before. Maybe it is from a different manufacturer this time? I’m calling to check today.
Oh man! I used to get “brain zaps” on zoloft and my doctor never believed me! She said I must have just been making up an sensation! I feel slightly better knowing that this has happened to someone else, but I also am so sorry that you also have to experience them! They’re absolutely the weirdest sensation.
I am on sertraline (zoloft) and spent a few months seeing how I got by without it, having first asked my GP’s advice about tapering to avoid withdrawal effects. “Oh, it’ll be fine! Withdrawal isn’t really an issue.” All of the brain zaps I had and the large amounts of stuff written about SSRI discontinuation syndrome would like to disagree with that. It was really disconcerting at first, because I didn’t know what they were – it was just like my brain was shaking.
What is this? Brain zaps? brain shaking? Can you describe this more? This is something I have not heard of. Is it like – like, could you potentially cause an accident if you were driving and had a brain zap?
In my experience it’s only really something that has happened when stopping an antidepressant – it’s not something that happens to me otherwise. I don’t drive, so I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think it’s severe enough to do something like cause an accident – it’s just a weird sensation in which the brain feels sort of buzzy and shaky for a few seconds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidepressant_disc…
Yeah, I have found all of my doctors up to the current one have been shockingly uneducated about SSRI discontinuation syndrome (what causes the “zaps” among other things). I’ve been on Paxil and Lexapro with previous doctors, both of whom, when I decided I wanted to go off the meds, never once suggested that it would be smart to taper down. With the Paxil especially, the brain zaps lasted for almost a year after quitting, although the frequency gradually dropped off. They are such an awful, disorienting feeling that’s almost impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced them, which of course meant to my doctors that I was exaggerating or making it up and they didn’t have to take me seriously. I’m a little nervous about ever trying to quit the duloxetine because I know it’s also known for bad withdrawal symptoms, and its dosages make it hard to taper effectively, but at least my current doctor is aware of the problem and will work with me to make it easy as possible if I decide I’d like to try quitting.
It is really alarming how little some doctors seem to know about it – a quick Google suggests that sertraline can be tricky to discontinue, but my GP seemed to know absolutely nothing about it and was very casual about my stopping it. At least I know now, so if I go off it again in the future I can insist on tapering properly. (Brain zaps for a year sounds horrible! I think for me it was more like a month.)
I had that happen to me a few weeks ago – I had started a new strip of pills (sertraline) from the same box as the previous ones I had taken, and felt as though I was having mild withdrawal symptoms. All of the information on the packaging was identical between the two strips (same batch number, etc.), so I have no idea what was going on. I wondered if maybe I’d consumed something that interacted with the medication and affected its function (like grapefruit). It stopped after a short time, though.
Recently went off amitriltyline (aka elavil), which I had been on for a few years at a low dose as a migraine preventative. The withdrawal syndrome was unexpected and hit me hard. Insomnia, stomach issues, my normally bad neck pain went up to eleven, along with a really unpleasant sense of depersonalization. After two weeks it finally seems to be settling down, and Saturday I actually had a good day and felt happy and not like a zombie.
On the other hand, the topamax – the anticonvulsant that I was absolutely terrified of – hasn’t caused any side effects so far other than some occasional tingling/buzzing in my fingers and heels.
Sending warm thoughts to everybody struggling with medication issues right now.
Fingers crossed for Ramekin and Topomax!!! (Botox-for-migraine receiver here; it is a beast.)
Apropos of the photo accompanying today’s link roundup– I have long thought that TV needs a detective show about a woman in the far north whose favorite things in the world are
1) solving crimes
2) her sled dog
3) potatoes
Naturally, the show would be called Husky and Starch.
5/7 would definitely watch
Oh my god do I need this.
This is genius.
Have you read Dana Stabenow’s novels? I am not sure how much Kate Shugak likes potatoes, but…
*consults the googles*
No, but clearly, I must!
And there are about 20 of them which is marvellous.
Me and my cousin-in-law were gonna be two badass K-9 officers who battle crime by day, roller derby by night, and our SO’s were besties and we would laugh at their fishing weekend antics while lacing up our boots in the changing room before roller derby practice.
Our show’s name: Kibbles and Bitz. I was, of course, Kibbles.
But now, I think I’ll pass the K&B crown to Sansa and wee Cliffe. Much cuter!
Sans & Sheriff – your wee bairn only needs a tin star and you’re on your way!
Do font puns make great TV? Test case.
I have often thought that the world needs a dog mushing movie in which Lance Mackey and Snoop Dogg play long-lost brothers.
Meshell Ndegeocello is workshopping a song cycle/concept album based on Baldwin’s work. I’m really excited about it because I am an absurd Meshell stan and in September she was at the same festival I was and she told me she liked my giant Sportsbrella setup and I sort of died on the spot and anyways….James Baldwin concept album. I am here for it.
Yes! I’m going on Saturday.
The Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah article is great. How sad and enraging that James Baldwin’s French home has been taken from his descendents and will be demolished. It should be a national monument.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/knights-of-…
God, Dad, you don’t understand me! I’m going to go live with the creepy spirit of Grandpa’s helmet instead.
That is perfection.
I live in Virginia, a Super Tuesday state that divvies delegates proportionately. What does this mean? This means that in order to take away as many votes from The Orange One as possible, my partner and I both voted for Rubio this morning. I then washed my hands a thousand times and made a sin offering donation to Planned Parenthood in his honor.
My husband is planning on voting for Kasich in MA for the same reason. Sigh.
I’m starting to think I should have pulled a Republican ballot in MA (since I’m unenrolled). I know the Dem race is predicted to be close too and it’s all important but I really am not looking forward to watching the Orange One win my state.
I may vote in Missouri’s republican primary (unless they made us a closed one when I wasn’t looking) just because if the orange one gets a certain percentage, MO becomes winner take all iirc. Ugh.
I just want to let you know that I appreciate your sacrifice.
Thanks.
Ugggg I’ve been thinking about this, a bit. Except in AR, I’d have to vote for Cruz. And I just don’t think I can bring myself to do it.
I assume it means it’s not a first-past-the-post system, i.e. if Hillary wins (say) 60% of votes she gets that proportion of delegates, and Bernie gets the rest of them, instead of the winner taking all the delegates.
VA’s system is kinda great because since you can’t register as a member of any party you are free to vote in whichever primary you want. My mom takes great joy in “gumming up the works” for the Republicans this way.
what does gumming up the works even mean in the context of this primary though
In this primary specifically? I don’t know. But in previous years it was an (eensy) attempt to take momentum away from the frontrunner.
I’m trying to decide if I want to do this today. Tennessee’s an open primary, so I could, but I’m not sure there’s enough scrubbing to make me feel clean again afterwards.
Do it, do it! The difference between a Rubio presidency and a Trump presidency (if, God forbid, it comes to a GOP win in November) is too vast for words.
Ultimately, I decided not to. The TN Republican party doesn’t need to think it has any more supporters than it already does, because that hurts me on the local level. Plus I’m not entirely sure I could vote for any Republican candidate in all good conscience, even as an undermining tactic. They’re all just so insanely horrible, even if they aren’t as loud about it.
Peddling the Bush years all over again has got Rubio running a distant third in his own party to Trump and a Tea Party snakeperson who is basically Trump without the warmth and charisma, and while everyone can cross their fingers for a stunning last-minute reversal I wouldn’t count on one. I’d focus on getting a Democratic nominee who can offer a meaningful alternative to beat him in the election.
Hillary has built her whole campaign thus far on the idea of her hypothetical mass appeal to Republicans and nonvoters, in a year when there’s a pretty bipartisan consensus among people who actually turn up to polling stations against any neoliberal machine politician they can find. A Trump Presidential nomination is incredibly likely at this point but there’s still time to stop a Trump presidency.
Although if Rubio got the nomination, Hillary would wipe the floor with him, which would be fun to watch.
oh yeah hillary would obliterate rubio but, y’know, so would a timeshare salesman with a reality show and a book of inspirational Hitler quotes so
Yes, I think you’re right about focusing on getting a good Democratic nominee. I can keep on keeping my fingers crossed over the local conservatives who’ve started looking around and going ‘hey, wait a sec, Trump isn’t conservative at all’, but the Republican alternatives sure as hell aren’t any better.
I’ve voted now – Democratic primary, not Republican – but I still worry a bit.
Go you! A morning well spent. And I’m going to start using “The Orange One” (or Drumpf) as the only way to reference him.
#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain
Toastoes, any advice for flying with a baby? Am flying for 3 hours with an almost 8-month-old tomorrow solo. Baby will be in my lap. Am I far too optimistic for having booked this trip?
Nope, you’ll crush it. You’ve probably heard to feed baby upon takeoff and landing so their ears won’t pop. Bring some newish toys/books, but don’t worry too much: plastic water cups from the flight attendant and tearing up the in-flight magazine will almost certainly be more exciting and less of a pain in the ass because you don’t have to try to retrieve them when the kid inevitably flings them under the seats. Snacks, lots of snacks. A whole container of baby puffs can buy you a great deal of peace.
And don’t stress out about standard baby rules; you’re not going to do permanent damage if you have to bust out some video on your phone.
YMMV on how to transport yourself, your baby and your luggage, but I’ve always favored a baby carrier. You’ll get to go through the metal detector and won’t have to take the baby off or wrestle a stroller through an x-ray machine. You’re gonna do great, and your fellow passengers will probably surprise you with their generosity! Most people are very sweet about parents traveling solo.
I like to distract small children on airplanes by making goofy faces. It confuses them enough to get them to stop crying for at least 15 seconds. I consider it my gift to parents everywhere.
I do this too! I am glad someone else likes bamboozling small humans.
It’s amazing how entertaining a big pink eraser can be, in the right circumstance: it’s colorful, it’s bendy, it can be accompanied by sproing-y mouth sounds.
Good luck! If it makes you feel better, it will definitely be better than the experience of my partner’s brother and his wife (they live in Australia, partner’s family are all otherwise in the UK). As children can fly for free up to the age of 2, but need to be on a parent’s lap rather than a seat of their own, they timed their last visit to the UK shortly before their younger child’s second birthday. While this meant they saved money, it also meant they had to spend about 24 hours on a plane with an almost-two-year-old on a lap and an accompanying almost-four-year-old next to them. Three hours with an 8-month-old can’t be anywhere near that bad!
Bring two full sets of clothes for both of you, in separate ziplock bags, because poop and / or barf is cerain to get everywhere if you don’t!
Or so I’ve heard; I haven’t been bold enough to take my baby on a plane yet. Seems legit though.
you’ll be fine!
Sometimes in newer big aircraft, the airline will put you in the first row of seats in coach, and then there is a little baby hammock you can set up in front of your seat. It might not be the case for a 3-hour flight, but I’ll cross my fingers for you!
Just help the baby pop his/her ears from time to time and all will be well.
Partner’s parents moved from Japan to the UK when he was a bit over a year old. They told him the floor of the plane was spiders to keep him in his seat.
If you choose not to go that route, I think this is very clever: http://flygirl.jezebel.com/a-creative-way-to-fly-…
Note on wearing a baby carrier at the airport: don’t use a ring sling with metal rings. That, you have to take off at security.
Video and puffs and a fun new toy/book and in-flight magazines and (if you’re nursing) a willingness to boob at the slightest provocation, and you’ll be fine, barring delays.
They’re the easiest before they can walk. It’s when they want to walk around that having them confined to your lap begins to be a Geneva Convention matter and you need to get them a seat even if it isn’t required.
You can gate-check the stroller so if you’ll want it in the airport you can just relinquish it while boarding. They won’t let you keep the baby in a carrier on the plane, but it can be useful too if you have one that isn’t too involved to take on and off. (I used a mei-tai.) Yes on having a bottle with you, if they’ll let you. I’m sure you already know about feeding during takeoff to pop the pressure in their ears.
We had a lost cat staying with us for a couple of days, who we nicknamed Hermione. When my partner took them to the vet to see if they were microchipped, it turned out their real name is Harry.
This happened to me too! We adopted a cat we’d been fostering. The whole two months we fostered him, we thought he was a girl-cat misnamed Jake. We renamed him Lucy, and then found out on Saturday he was a Louie.
The only way this could be better is if you named him Ron but his real name was Dumbledore.
So, listen, I need to tell you guys that I never really found Lin-Manuel Miranda that sexually attractive, like, at least compared to Oscar Isaac or Rashida Jones other celebrity crushes I have; but then last night I had what felt like a four-hour dream of being on a date with him and it was magical and now… now…
I will never be satisfied.
I dream about him frequently, it’s quite odd. Although we’re never dating, just friends.
Maybe we should compile and publish an anthology of Toast Dreams of LMM.
I had a dream the other night that Lin-Manuel and I were swing dancing. Waking up was a disappointment.
I had a dream the other night that he and I were working on a grant proposal together! He was his super excited puppy-self and I was getting swept up in it. It was the best work-anxiety dream I have ever had.
This is my story, only with Daniel Radcliffe.
I didn’t think I was attracted to Adam Driver and then I had a sexytimes dream. Made seeing Star Wars the second time a weird experience, because my subconscious was convinced he would know, somehow, through the screen.
But then part of the reason I didn’t see Matt Smith when he was in town (other than the exorbitant price) was because *I* would know how many sexy dreams I’ve had about him, and it would just feel really weird, okay.
Abraço! Not only do they make great coffee, they also serve a delicious olive oil cake (especially delicious when it’s still slightly warm) and now I want some RIGHT NOW.
I want to share something nice.
Yesterday was a crap day because my brain decided it was going to be sad. Like crying hysterically in public sad. I am new in a city where I don’t know anyone, but on good days I think I am making good progress in meeting people. Yesterday I was convinced I was going to die alone. Also this city has a reputation for having aloof people.
Well, while waiting for the bus and looking like hell, a car pulled over and a very concerned woman came up to me and asked if I was okay.
Two people driving by, noticed I was sad and took time out of their day to see if I was okay. I took it as a sign from the universe that things were going to be alright.
Ohh I had one of those days yesterday! Alas, no kind strangers for me, but I did spend from 2pm-7am pretty much entirely in bed & today has been much better.
Aw, I had that yesterday too. I sobbed on a 20 minute walk home, but it was definitely a please-ignore-me-strangers sobbing, so I didn’t mind that no one stopped. But I’m glad you got some nice vibes from the universe when you needed them.
Unrelated to the round-up, but…
Thank you to the toasties who introduced me to the following: Express Editor Trousers (MY THIGHS FIT) and Bullish (I AM NOW ONLY MILDLY TERRIFIED BY THE FUTURE).
Oh god when I was Slimmer Than Present size my Editor pants were the best thing in the world. I will not be able to afford another pair for a very very long time and it makes me so sad.
Sorry for the incredibly invasive question but what underwear should one buy to go with Editors? I have a pair and never wear them because the only panty line that doesn’t show is thongs.
Ummm I think that’s what I wore when I was wearing them regularly actually! But I bet a nice pair of thin microfiber no-line knickers would do. Marks and Spencer carries some good ones and they now ship to the US.
I’ll try this, thanks for the tip!
“Where is their buddy cop movie?”
Teeny and Hooch
Can someone who knows more about politics/the primaries comment on this? I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Trump’s candidacy (assuming he doesn’t become president) could be a good thing? Because he seems to be breaking the alliance between lower income voters who side with the GOP to the detriment of their economic interests, and and the 0.00001% donor class (Kochs, etc.) that GOP policies actually benefit.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/c…
I’ve been saying since this summer he’s either going to irreparably fracture the party or drag it down with him, and both options are frankly an improvement.
Trigger warning of course but this article is making me SEETHE WITH RAGEEEEEEE. ESPN can eat a bag of dicks. http://deadspin.com/erin-andrews-espn-forced-me-t…
That is abusive as.
Ugh, guys, why do I have to be at work when there are so many good links in the roundup???
I want to read everything.
My state is voting today, and I just wanted to yell into the wilds of the internet that I got to vote for Hillary Clinton for the first time today. I was just under 18 at the primaries in 2008, and even though I have been very pleased with Obama, it’s just exciting to finally get to vote for a woman that I admire so much.
I don’t really want to talk about why (just believe that yes, I did think a lot about it and I did genuinely consider Sanders) but I wanted to say it and I don’t want to say it on Facebook because the two women that I’ve seen saying anything have been recipients from really rude messages from both conservatives and other liberals and I just can’t deal with that now. I know toasties will be good though. 🙂
Go you!!! Hooray for exercising your democracy!
Yay voting!
A friend who’s voting today told me I convinced her to vote for Clinton, which I didn’t expect to happen. I’m ridiculously proud of myself.
Me too! I really respect Hillary Clinton, and am happy to support her, but have kept it off facebook for very similar reasons. Kind of regret the degree to which I let some hecklers in my social circle silence me there, but… I am just not up for that kind of conflict at this moment. Yay for semi-anonymous, venom-free spaces though: I really do appreciate it.
Tomorrow the USSC will hear oral argument in the first significant abortion case in a long time. http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/02/argument-previe…
If Kennedy does not vote to invalidate the Texas law, then the court will be tied 4-4, and the 5th Circuit’s ruling will be the law.
I feel so sick about this. At least Scalia isn’t around, but still. ugh. Fuck those people and their bullshit lies about ‘caring for women.’
If the ruling stands, it will only apply to the 5th circuit. It’s shitty, but slightly less shitty than it could be (she says while sitting in Texas).
Yeah, it won’t apply nationwide, except that I think if the SC doesn’t rule that the restrictions are unconstitutional, it will energize other Republican-held legislatures to continue pushing the line on abortion restrictions.
My state disappoints me so much sometimes.
Hi Toasts, if anyone is still reading page 2, I’m looking for any resources you might have about inclusive language for gender.
My team and I are working on a survey that includes a question about gender and are having a difficult time determining the best language to use. (HRC has a guide but I know they don’t have a great track record with trans groups so I’m unsure whether to use them as a resource.) Thanks in advance!
How about just a freeform text field with “What is your gender?”
Also, do you really need to know? What is it going to add to your data analysis?
That’s a good question… I was asked to do this but I actually have no idea why they need this information in the first place. I’ll bring it up. Thanks!
Maybe try searching the #gender tag on Tumblr? You may have to weed through a ton of crap, but you may find something.
if you are doing a survey where trans/cis status is actually relevant, then you have to include all of:
Ciswoman
Cismann
Transwoman
Transman
Nonbinary
And then it’s best to have also a write in box.
If cis/transness is NOT actually pertinent, then you can just to:
Man (cis or trans)
Woman (cis or trans)
Nonbinary
(and it’s always also best to have a write-in box) (if you want to be even more inclusive, you can do “nonbinary/genderqueer”.)
This is great, thank you!
There is not agreement (as far as I can tell; I am not a member of the trans community) on whether ciswoman and transwoman should be one word or two. Binfluenza, if the community you’re targeting is known to you, maybe you could try to find out which they prefer.
I agree, though, that if it’s going to be relevant to your data analysis (maybe it’s something medical?) you should differentiate between trans and cis men and women, but if it’s not then you should specify that when you say “man” and “woman” you mean “both cis and trans.”
However I would still push back on whether the gender is relevant to your results at all. People always want to put in demographic info but it often doesn’t actually influence the analysis. Do your research questions have anything to do with gender or other demographic info?
It’s a general audience survey for an activity to see what demographics we’re attracting (being intentionally vague here). So, I’m glad you asked that question because I hadn’t thought about it and now I actually don’t think it’s relevant at all.
My coworker and I are going to make the case to remove it entirely from the survey, but I’m going to use either headonist’s suggestion or a blank box option (or both) as a backup in case those above my pay grade are unwilling to leave it off.
Thank you!
Nthing the suggestion for a free-form text box, if possible. And I am also dubious of HRC’s guide. GLAAD has a media reference guide, but I don’t know if they address surveys specifically.
GLAAD’s guide doesn’t include surveys, which is why I thought to ask here. The only one I could find was HRC’s and… yeah, skeptical of that. Thanks!
If you end up finding a more-reputable survey guide, please let me know! I too am on a project where breaking down responses by gender is very important. The team had conscientiously used the HRC as their guide to the language, and I was not in a position to say, “this actually isn’t an ideal organization to use as your style guide here,” because I couldn’t offer a better alternative.
– I found myself surprisingly upset by the Lyle Stevik thing, in part because some of the attention seems particularly voyeuristic (i.e. the subreddit has unredacted photos of him in the motel room; also, I’d braced myself for the photos in the article because of Nicole’s warning, and they seemed pretty restrained in what they showed, then right at the end, BAM, full-face autopsy photo), and in part because I started to suspect that the author (“a writer with a passion for the bizarre and the unexplained”; dude, could you not, please) may have simply scraped everything from online sources–he’s from the UK, a long way from the PNW.
– I completely get the thing about homesickness; I got it bad my first semester in college (no “(maybe)” about it), to the point where I was severely depressed at college not turning out anything the way that I had thought and hoped it would, until I went to a counselor who told me that it was pretty normal.
– Bookmarking that NYC coffee list.
– The CIA application thing reminded me of my very brief interest in working for the FBI. Back in the late eighties, when I was working a series of dead-end minimum-wage jobs, I caught an ad for file clerks for the FBI, and even though they didn’t pay that much, either (I still wonder if I could have afforded to live in the DC area on what they were paying), it would have put me in/near a different and more interesting city than the one that I was in, and why the hell not. I was sort of amused by the application, which not only asked me if I’d ever belonged to a communist/socialist/terrorist/desirous-of-overthrowing-the-government-by-force organization, was gay, and/or had ever used illegal drugs, but also wanted me to list everyone I’d ever lived with, including their contact info; I assumed that this included everyone I’d roomed with in college, which would include no less than three people my first semester (long story; see my note about homesickness, above) and a fourth for the spring semester, and three of those were from other countries and I hadn’t kept track of them. I told my favorite aunt, a former librarian, about the application, and she responded by sending me an article from The Nation about the FBI snooping around public libraries, demanding the circulation records of “people of interest”, and the librarians refusing to do anything without a court order. I thought that that was pretty badass of the librarians, which helped increase my interest in the profession and led me to become one. (This was over a decade before 9/11 and the Patriot Act, BTW.)
– Kate McKinnon is pretty incredible; she’s one of the reasons why I’m looking forward to the new Ghostbusters so much.
WHERE ARE THE TOTE BAGS
i keep accidentally spending my whole gift budget in the meantime
I really need to take a picture of the boxes in my entryway.
(whispers) we would totally help you free up some space…
You guys I just read a book review that claimed that Germany was “landlocked” as in did not touch an ocean. This is in a professional publication. Our entire team of librarians is Dying.
I weep.
Guys, I’m supposed to vote tonight and I genuinely don’t know who to pick. I’d be happy with either Clinton or Sanders. I like the idea of finally having a woman for president. I like a lot of the things Sanders says. I know that either of them would do things that please me in the White House and also do things that frustrate and vex me. I will wholeheartedly back either in the general…
Do I not vote? Do I flip a coin?
You vote! You do not flip a coin! Q: do you think a long primary fight is good or bad for the eventual D nominee? A: vote for the P nominee that will make it longer or shorter?
I have this very same dilemma! Leaning towards casting my vote for Sanders (because I want to show that yes, many many Americans are behind a democratic socialist candidate), then selecting all-women delegates (just because) that are either majority pro-Clinton or are split between Clinton and Sanders. I want Sanders and his movement to absolutely continue, but I’m not sure if the presidency is the right place for him. Like, he might be better in a position that involves less fighting with Congress.
This could very well be a naive strategy, idk. Only voted once before.
Luckily, my primary isn’t for another two weeks.
That’s my feeling about Sanders. I like his positions, but he doesn’t have the temperament for the Oval Office. I want him to stay in the Senate.
If you like them both, who do you think has the best shot at winning the general?
If I could guess who that would be.
Vote! It’s been stated before, but vote for who you like best, in your heart–and if the other Democratic candidate gets the nomination, just vote for that person in the general. Voting is always a good thing.
But I genuinely like them both, for different reasons.
Wondering if Nicole or others have an update on the Thinx-piece (oof, sorry)? Are you still satisfied? Reporting from day 2 and hoping there’s a better way. Plus I think the subway ads are working on me.
Never apologize for that glorious pun. Also the ads are working on me too!
Here is my link offering and it’s a doozy – handsome falconry enthusiasts of Czechoslovakia. You’re welcome.
http://www.tresbohemes.com/2015/10/the-sexy-rugge…
The homesickness-as-mental-illness piece reminds me of how I tried to articulate feelings of depression when I was much younger; the best I could do was, “It’s like homesickness, but you’re at home”. They feel almost identical to me – just that deep despair in the pit of the stomach and general sense of hopelessness. But one can be alleviated relatively simply, if you’re lucky, and the other cannot.
Oh, yes. When I was at my most depressed I’d find myself sitting on my couch and thinking, “I want to go home.”
How do you login to Intense Debate on an iPhone? It just keeps circling back for me.
I just wanted to give my condolences – my grandfather died a few weeks ago, too, and it sounds like he and your grandmother were in very similar situations. He died in the long-term/hospice care center of my grandparents' retirement community (literally an elevator ride and 2 halls away from their apartment), with 2 of his daughters and my grandmother by his side. It was both a slow and sudden decline, but he had the best care throughout all of his illnesses, and it breaks my heart to think of anyone having to die alone or in pain or fearful for their family's future because of the massive cost. I don't understand how people can say a system where "your money or your life" is literally true, is sustainable or moral.
nodding so hard over here!
Thanks for the posts. These all posts are very well written… http://speed.ibirdsoft.com
Thanks for the posts. These all posts are very well written… http://speed.ibirdsoft.com
Kate McKinnon – amazing, every time!!!