Sansa is still small! Sansa can fit under the bed! Sansa needs help being pulled out from under the bed now!
Yes, those are load-bearing book piles.
Usually, the deleted comment of the day goes down at the bottom, but I wanted us all to kick off our morning with “Gary” together ASAP (note that I ALSO woke up to some newly reported comments in my inbox, all of which Gary had flagged for “filth” or “filthiness” or “filthy”):
*
Two great new adoption pieces in Nikki’s series for Catapult! Buckle and Sway and Mama.
I loved and treasured the late George Martin, and the New Yorker‘s tribute is lovely:
But Martin’s real genius came to play only in the second half of the Beatles’ absurdly brief career, when McCartney’s growing gift for more expansive musical forms met Martin’s expertise as a professional arranger and connoisseur of baroque sounds. That Martin was there to arrange the larger ensembles has always been noted—what is not noted frequently enough is how brilliant, austere, and original his arrangements were. Every Beatle fan knows the story of how Martin orchestrated a version of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” only to have John Lennon want it joined, improbably, with an earlier electric version, with the two finally put together with a bit of studio magic. What is overlooked is how audacious that orchestral arrangement was on its own: a biting, dark cello and brass setting where almost any other arranger of the time would have done something more conventionally “psychedelic” or syrupy. Martin’s famous string-quartet arrangement for “Yesterday,” perhaps the most famous string arrangement of its period, is equally impeccable: a classical-minded music perfectly accenting a classical-minded song. (The only ones remotely as clean are Nelson Riddle’s Hollywood String Quartet arrangements on Sinatra’s “Close To You.”)
Hilary Mantel on Charles Brandon (!):
The subtitle of Steven Gunn’s scholarly biography describes its subject as ‘Henry VIII’s Closest Friend’. What a prospect of damp-palmed horror that phrase evokes! The knocking of Tudor knees echoes down the years. Can a king have friends? Could Henry VIII have friends? The pertinent anecdote is well known: he walked affectionately with Thomas More, an arm around his neck, but More told his son-in-law: ‘If my head would win him a castle in France … it would not fail to go.’ Charles Brandon fought in showy campaigns to recover those bits of France Henry thought he owned, so he must have felt the truth of More’s words in every shuddering vertebra. He was one of a group of athletic courtiers employed to serve the leisure of Hooray Henry; they overlapped with, but can be distinguished from, the machiavels who served the policy of Horrid Henry, and the poets and priests employed to flatter the intellect and ease the conscience of Holy Henry. Henry came to the throne in 1509. Charles Brandon’s power as a court favourite endured till death removed him in 1545. A long run, on ground slippery with blood: how did Charles do it?
THIS WEEK’S EPISODE OF THE PEOPLE V OJ SIMPSON MADE ME WANT TO ROCK MARCIA CLARK GENTLY IN MY ARMS, let’s ask Sarah Paulson about it:
How did you feel when you first read this script?
It just made me cry, actually. That’s a reaction I have, whenever I get really mad—sometimes, I cry. [Laughs.] And the doing of it was even more intense than the reading of it. When I had to stand up and explain to the court that I could not stay late because I had no childcare. And then when I had to face Johnnie [Cochran, played by Courtney B. Vance] saying all of those very derogatory—totally lacking in any awareness or compassion for Marcia’s circumstance, and immediately throwing her to the wolves and accusing her of using lack of childcare as a way of having more time to present something in front of the court. And then I just stand up and do that little speech that she makes to Johnnie and to the court.
That, to me—as much as there are so many other emotional moments in the episode—that I just remember really having to fight through tears. I was so angry that it was making me shake, and because of that I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to give in to that feeling I had internally—me personally, Sarah—and I certainly didn’t want Marcia to do that. But at the same time it was making me shake with rage, it really was.
I felt that way when I read it, but when I did it, I just thought I don’t know—I actually don’t know how she woke up every day and dealt with this. With what was going on in her home life, her private life, and her responsibility caring for her children. And being present in that regard, and working as hard as she was working, while not having as much help as she could have. And I don’t even mean childcare help in terms of someone being there. I’m talking about emotional support from her husband, from people within the office. She just had been completely abandoned, I thought, and it was a very, very stark, bleak place to be living for that time we were shooting that episode.
Last night I talked to a religion podcast about my conversion, because I have tried REPEATEDLY to write about it and I can’t pull it off, so you can listen to it on Monday if you want. It was still hard! I think this is why I have only written one thing about my faith on The Toast. It’s so personal and intimate, way more than “lol sex” and I feel very vulnerable around it, and also religion has jacked up plenty of lives, so I’m happy to just direct you to iTunes if you want to know more.
Buzzfeed breaks down all the clues in the new Game of Thrones trailer.
Hazlitt contributors pay tribute to The Replacements:
I think I have spent my entire life looking for a person who is as good as this Replacements song. Who makes you feel this infinite. Who makes the future seem like a dazzling cold plunge into shimmering waters, instead of a low-grade tension headache. I have played this song for strangers to dance to at weddings. I have put it on mixtapes for people to kiss. “Can’t Hardly Wait” is about the dizzying transition from being a child into becoming an adult. It is the only song I know about that makes me excited about the future. If the possibilities were life affirming, this brass-laden, this joyous, no one would be afraid. This song makes me want to get out of bed. —Chandler Levack
Carrie Frye is the best editor I’ve ever worked with, and everything she writes fills me with joy:
Last week, my friend Maud was in town from New York for a funeral, and one afternoon I met her and her stepdaughter Autumn at a teahouse downtown. The conversation turned to what we were each reading, and I mentioned that I was rereading Harriet the Spy. Within a minute, I noticed, we’d all grown extremely animated: three women in the corner of a dark tearoom, waving their arms around and exclaiming “Harriet the Spy! Harriet the Spy!!”
I watch those ingrown hair videos on YouTube sometimes when I’m alone, so I get it:
Lee, like most dermatologists, had never spent much time removing blackheads and whiteheads. In her opinion, performing “extractions” — a mundane, tedious, and nonessential procedure that was rarely covered by insurance — was labor better left for aestheticians. But a surprising number of her followers wrote that they fervently (if guiltily) enjoyed watching these simple dermal exorcisms. (“I love it so much 😫😫😫😫😫,” moaned a typical commenter.) Sensing an untapped audience, Lee began posting more videos of things popping from the skin, and her audience gradually grew. At first, she was wary of posting anything with too much “ick factor” — giant blackheads, say, or explosive cysts — for fear that she would upset the gentle people of the internet. However, her online fans didn’t seem to mind the ick; in fact, many of them relished it. Some fans reported that their mouths inexplicably watered when they saw a particularly juicy pop; others claimed that they found the videos so soothing that they used them as a sleep aid. Lee began setting videos to punnily titled music, like Duke Ellington’s “Just Squeeze Me (But Please Don’t Tease Me),” Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit,” and French Montana’s “Pop That.” She soundtracked one video to “People Are Strange” by the Doors. In the caption, she wrote, “People are strange. Strange because they like to watch this stuff. But I’ve realized you strange people are not alone — there are many of you!”
Why I Didn’t Run the Caitlin Moran Interview
Please enjoy two bonus pictures of Sansa today:
“Well traveled down slut road”! Amazing. I want to put that as a subheading on my CV or something.
(It would be wildly inaccurate, but I don’t even care.)
You could bring back the “objective” line that has been popularly jettisoned from resumes! “Objective: Find a position commensurate with my education and experience as I travel confidently down slut road.”
I spit coffee laughing at that.
It has been a long and arduous trek, and I have many miles to go, but I am well traveled down slut road, and it’s not about the destination, but the journey.
Starting a lifestyle mag for adventurers following the slut road, immediately.
On slut road again
Just can’t wait to get on slut road again
The life I love is watching brazen filth with my friends
And I can’t wait to get on slut road again
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.
I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever knoooown…
If I’m going to die, I’m going to die historic on the slut road!
A thumbs up was not enough to indicate how much I appreciate this comment. Well done.
LOL YES you win the Internet today
Yup, definitely the high-water mark for my accomplishments today.
WITNESS ME
WITNESS! SHINY AND CHROME! OH WHAT A LOVELY DAY
Could we get this on a Toast t-shirt, or would that be a copyright violation?
I don’t know, but I would buy three of them.
I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but my new real estate dream location is near the 3-way intersection of Thunder, Fury, and Slut Roads.
I think it would be especially fitting on a bumper sticker.
This is how I’m going to describe myself forever.
“Oh, you take the high road, and I’ll take the slut road, and I’ll be in filth-land befooooore ya”
Best one right there. (Would so much rather take the slut road than the high road.)
I’ll never sing Loch Lomond any other way.
My only regret is that it doesn’t scan to “Holiday Road.” Damn you, Lindsey and/or the Buckinghams!
Well, I’m running down slut road, trying to loosen my load, I’ve got seven peers on my mind
If I only could, I’d make a deal with god … be running up slut road, be running up slut hill, be running up that whorehouse
Inescapably earwormed:
‘cuz you’re the joke of the neighbourhood
Why should you care if you’re feeling good
Take the slut road home
Take the slut road home
….and now I am going to linkedin to update my professional summary.
“i regret nothing!” has been my epitaph of choice for quite a long time but it may have some competition from “well traveled down slut road”. hmm…
The best part about Gary is that you can hear the shudder of excitement as he types “filth.” Ooh. So much filth. Filthy filthy filth. Mmm.
Gary and the Certain Elements would be a good name for a band, though.
I’m kinda dying to know whom among us Gary considers “filthy.” Like receiving a badge of true honor.
Yeah, I don’t think I commented on that particular piece so I don’t hold out high hopes for myself, but congrats to those of you who have Repulsed Gary!
I did use the word cunt yesterday. Sorry everyone.
I’m still not over it.
Me! me! I offend him!
Oh Gary. You should hear how we ladies talk when you fragile men aren’t around.
filth
This will not end well I can guarantee you that.
Gary clearly has a keen sense of narrative, drama, and scandal. He should lock himself away for the next three to five years and write a thrilling account of A Slut’s travels down Slut Road. I think some of us would be glad to mock, I mean edit, it.
Somebody please link to Oglaf’s TRUE SLUT ADVENTURES (I can’t, I’m at work and not insane) so that Gary can take notes.
I’m at work, but here you go!
A day without Hiddlesgifs is truly a day without sunshine, so TYVM. (And I hope that being at work means you’re at least feeling well enough to be at work!)
Thank you, bb!
I would have liked to stay home today (so tired) but I have stuff to wrap up before I’m gone during spring break. After spring break, I’m on FMLA part time and will only be working 8 to noon through the rest of the semester. Hopefully that’ll give my body a chance to heal and GET WITH THE PROGRAM.
Perfect! Thank you, and +1 for Hiddles gif. You’re like the fairy godmother of gifs. (Also, wish you a speedy recovery, and hope all goes well for you… you’re clearly needed in the world!)
“Mad Gary: Slut Road”?
Gary is the new Carl.
I just spent 10 minutes researching trying to find that hilarious movie quote that I remembered a guy saying “filthy filth filth filthy”. Turns out it was Bill Cosby. I’m going back to bed.
“So much filth I must scour the rest of this website’s extensive archives in active pursuit of more delicious filth.”
Books, the ultimate multi-taskers!
I applaud you for talking about your conversion! Talking about your religious beliefs can be a vulnerable thing to do. I hope people will be gentle with you.
Where on the iTunes can we find this, please?
I will link on Monday!
I am also very excited to listen to it. I’ve timidly thought about e-mailing you about it for many months, and now am glad I don’t have to.
I am really looking forward to this. It’s such a deeply personal and complex thing that I think few people even really examine their experiences, much less share. Thank you.
I am looking forward to this too. I just went back and read the (beautiful!) “one thing” you’ve written here about your faith and it hit a spot.
I am a non-religious person with spiritual beliefs that can best be described as a general sense of awe and wonder. I am very interested in reading stories about people who, suddenly or gradually, found religion. I would like to read more about religion, but get a bit allergic to stuff that is too religion-y, if that makes any sense.
If any of you have reading list recommendations, I would appreciate it. I’ll start: I adore Madeline L’Engle’s A Circle of Quiet. This is one of a sort of series of three memoirs she wrote about her inner life, faith, nature, her Connecticut country house, etc. I love some of what she wrote on Christianity. And I am not a Christian, not at all.
Am so curious as to if and/or how Mallory (and her father) influenced your conversion, Nicole.
Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies is awesome.
That correction at the end of the Trump article is AMAZING. I am still giggling about it.
Not that my job or my company runs the same kind of risk, but that IT policy that prohibits me from downloading anything onto my laptop kind of makes sense now.
this incident has inspired me to finally figure out the whole “replace words in internet content” thing. MY WORLD IS NOW FOREVER CHANGED! why did i not do this sooner?
I wonder what harm we hath wrought, so terrible that we cannot even imagine? I mean, I really give it my all, but sometimes a misandrist needs a little inspiration.
Cthulhu?
Non-euclidean marriage.
“And have you the ring?”
“Yes! Well, it’s more like a seven-dimensional construct with the three dimensional semblance of a ring which blossoms into a great unfolding of obscene and impossible angles in higher dimensions, but yes!”
*Places the ring around partner’s finger*
*All present vanish into the many-angled planes and are never seen again*
Just curious – why the link to the Bitch article about Moran from 2012? Has she said more stupid things recently?
There was an article in Esquire recently that had some things in it that made me side-eye hard.
Maybe it related to this: http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/advice/a9641/thi…?
I mean, I think it’s reasonably funny and makes some good points (esp. regarding masturbation & clothing), but it IS very ciscentric (that’s a word, right?), and there are phrases like “the trans thing”, and I was a little annoyed about how she basically absolved all male readers. Basically: an article I’ve seen linked as more feminist and revolutionary than it is, and that I can’t get all that mad about, but that I can imagine rubbing some people the wrong way.
My first impression of the tone wasn’t that it absolved all male readers but rather held them to higher expectations, with an implicit *nudge* *nudge* “this is what being a feminist entails and I would HOPE you agree with these statements”, which is sometimes an effective tactic since the reader doesn’t want to oppose that
True, but while it’s true that when we talk about “the Man”, it’s not any particular man, and that “the patriarchy” is not some shadowy cabal, the patriarchy is not some abstract concept: it only exists because most of us in some ways reinforce at least some elements of it.
There were some good bits in it, but these are some things in it I was pretty uncomfortable with:
1. Approval of the following statement by her friend John: “Dating and marrying powerful women is like big game hunting. I fuck tigers and panthers. Not… chihauhaus.”
2. Telling Esquire readers that they are being “bummed” by the patriarchy (a) as hard as non-dudes, (b) because they “are unlikely to get custody of [their] kids” – which reinforces a common MRA whinge and is a misrepresentation at best, a straight-up lie at worst.
3. The most identifiably awful part of having periods is extra laundry rather than debilitating pain? C’mon Moran. These readers should be imagining not just gravy leaking from their junk, but also feeling incredibly shitty for a week every month for 50 years *while* gravy leaks from their junk.
4. “Women are afraid! Women are tired! That is why feminism is so rage-y sometimes!” I am having difficulty putting my finger on why I hate this so much, but I actually hissed at my phone when I read it, so.
5. The bit on male feminists needed a hearty dose of “you can be a feminist but that means shutting up and listening to people who are not men, like all the time.” Moran wants to give cookies to men identifying as feminist, but doesn’t require action.
Thank you for articulating in point 5 what I was trying to get at!
As for point 2, while it is indeed a misrepresentation (as I understand it, men don’t get custody very often in large part because they seldom ask for it, and odds are much more even if the man pursues it), she at least puts the blame for that phenomenon where it belongs: MRA’s tend to blame feminism for a lot of things that the patriarchy is to blame for.
Well yeah, it’s that. I need to hunt down the statistics, but I seem to recall that when men want custody, they get it more than 50% of the time?
If it is the patriarchy’s fault that women get custody more often, it has more to do with cultural inequality – women do and are expected to do more childcare, men are considered less manly if they change diapers, etc. This is absolutely the fault of patriarchy, but just saying “men get custody less often, poor men” is so easily misinterpreted.
Warning: ex-husband rant ahead:
My personal anecdotal evidence is that some men only want custody because it lowers their child support payment, it gives them “sensitive guy” cred with the new hookup, and they don’t actually have to do anything extra because they have a new girlfriend who will play mommy for them, so really it’s win-win in divorced asshole land. But I may be prejudiced, maybe.
(I know, I know, not all men, and I apologize to men here, but i’m having a bad ex week and he’s suing me for all the above reasons and I can’t keep my mouth shut). Thanks for understanding.
Yes, my dad is a lawyer who wanted custody and got it, despite the fact that 1) he was no fit parent and 2) my brother and I really did not want to live with him.
I know that a lot of people with mental illness/personality disorders are good parents, but he wasn’t one of them, and someone should have raised a goddamn flag in the custody hearing, but no one did.
Good god, that big game hunting line is awful. You might as well just stop the article there, there’s no coming back from that.
Thank you for reading and summarizing that so I don’t have to.
(4) also makes me mad– contrast Moran’s point to Mallory’s “Happy Feminist” powerpoint: “anger is sometimes the most normal response a person can have to a damaging situation.” Women are not angry because they’re scared and confused, like we’re… trapped animals or something, we’re angry because there are things to be angry about. We can also be tired and afraid, but anger isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction.
1) Ugh. Did her friend John even consider the potential racialized misogyny in that statement? I’m sure Caitlin, in all her white fauxminist glory, definitely didn’t. SO MUCH NOPE.
2) MOAR NOPE.
3) Not all cis women have periods! Trans women don’t have periods! Not all people who have periods are women (and for some trans men and afab genderqueer/non-binary spectrum people, it triggers serious dysphoria)! Seriously, we cis people ESPECIALLY need to make any discourse on this less cissexist.
And yeah, this monthly shit can be painful. And tiring!
4) Caitlin says this, but she is a cisgender presumably straight white woman from a country that colonized 90 percent of the world, so that is coming from a massive place of privilege. I imagine various women of colour on this side of the Atlantic, specifically black women (and even more so, black trans women), and Indigenous and First Nations women, would want to give her a heaping glass of Shut The Hell Up Forever because Caitlin doesn’t, and will never, know the half of it. (Nor will any of us white people, for that matter.)
5) YES.
I read that yesterday and I could not put my finger on why I didn’t like it!
Like its fine, in a mainstream media hollywood version of feminism way, but there were a good few things where I thought ‘I see your point but no.’
Is it maybe that “How to Win an Argument” article in the Grauniad? http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/05/cait…
oh gosh for a minute there I was worried everyone was talking about Girls again!
Confession: I still watch GIRLS and while I thought last season was very uneven, I really loved the first three episodes of this season.
(it’s still very very white)
It’s a show I’d probably enjoy watching if not for the time seemingly the entire internet was fixated on the question of is it feminist, and how feminist, and what does it meeeeeaaaan for young women? Alas, ruined by me spending too many hours on twitter.
A lot of that seems to have happened because Lena Dunham announced that she wanted to be the Voice of A Generation and then went on to make a show that is very limited in focus. The show is ok, not entirely terrible, but I found most of the characters obnoxious and I don’t relate to them at all. It is definitely not inclusive and pretty much covers white middle/upper class transplants to New York.
Wait, wasn’t that her character’s line? I know there are plenty of reasons to criticize Lena Dunham the person, but I’d hate for her to also get flack because people are conflating her with her character.
Yeah, this season has been very good so far.
Marnie is being the Marnie-est. The way she said “Ecuador” last episode (Eh-wha-dor) made me laugh as well as intensely rage-y. And during her wedding : “I want the wedding to reflect my heritage, which is White Christian Woman”.
Ray and Elijah continue to be the best.
I was actually miffed that she’s not better on trans issues – if memory serves correctly, there was a comment in her book about her irritation that Germaine Greer was quite backwards on trans issues. I guess that doesn’t mean Moran herself is on the right side of things, but I had hoped.
There is (although I think it’s phrased as Germaine Greer being “nuts” on trans issues, which is also not great); it is disappointing that she has not followed through and tried to be better on trans issues when she is aware of this being a problem with other feminists.
I really dislike Caitlin Moran. I find a lot of her writing entertaining and amusing, and I often agree with it on the surface, for the most part – but her views on sex workers and trans women and many other things are just really shit. Her stuff feels superficially feminist, but isn’t really satisfactory any deeper than the surface. Shamefully, something that plays a very large role in my dislike of her is the fact that I just find her immensely irritating (why is she always pulling a “look at how WACKY I am” face in pictures?).
I think Moran is hilarious when she’s talking about herself and her experiences (especially her childhood); it seems like the farther she gets from that, the steeper the hilarity drops off.
Late on this but a relevant anecdote: I read How to Be a Woman and then went online and was super confused by the problems other people had with it because I mainly found it to be a bunch of personal stories that were only mildly problematic to me (whatever that means, I guess). Only later did I realize that somehow, reading it on a Kindle, I had literally and unintentionally skipped about HALF the book and then when I tried reading the rest of it, I had to walk away from it.
brb building my house on slut road
Obviously the house number has to be 69.
The property values are lower the further you go.
Can anyone give me directions to Slut Rd? I’d really like to visit but googlemaps can’t find it.
It helps if you put in a cross street I think! Slut Road runs perpendicular to Harlot Highway.
I think the quickest way from here is via Promiscuity Crescent, , if that’s any help.
You’ll need a postcode
S3X T1TS
Pretty sure it’s in the vicinity of Pound Town.
Bless this post.
There are many Slut Roads across North America, finding just one is definitely a challenge. Some are hardly even roads but instead mere dirt tracks in the back forty but rest assured, all are very well travelled. Try picking up the handy map book “The 50 Best Slut Roads For Exploring The Interior”. It’s a little tourist-y, (the gift shop advertising is a scream!) and slightly outdated but worth picking up for all the hidden gems and tidbits plus it’ll keep you from getting lost!
Slightly related but not at all: When my grandpa died and we went through his stuff, we found a 1980s traveler’s guide to the Brothels of Nevada, with the girls, food, accommodations, and nearby attractions rated. It is a treasure.
Reminds me of the cute line that someone had in an article about the skiier Picabo (pronounced Peek-a-boo) Street, that her name sounded like the red-light district in Disneyland.
EIGHT DEMOCRATIC DEBATES AND NO MENTION OF ABORTION WTF IS THIS SHIT
This drives me INSANE.
Hillary has been the only one to actually call it like it is: “It’s not much of a right if it is totally limited and constrained.” http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/03/hillary-clinton-a…
I’m really glad Hillary called it like it is! Can I say, though, it makes me really grumpy when even Democrats say “that is a decision for the woman and her doctor and her family;” that sentence contains a lot of people whose decision it is not.
Yes! Very good point!
Yeahhhhh as a provider I am eternally happy to recuse myself from that decision. My line, when someone asks me, is always “I just met you, I don’t know what you should do. YOU know what you should do, and when you tell me what that is, I promise to believe you, and then we will either set things up for you to have an abortion or we will start your prenatal care. Are there any questions I can answer for you that will help you decide?”
(Basically if someone has ever given you this exact speech in these exact words, hi! I was your midwife once.)
This is an excellent speech.
Good speech! Brava.
I actually thought Bernie had the best line with this:
“And I’ll tell you something which I don’t like in this debate, there are a whole lot of people out there who tell me the government is terrible, the government is awful, get government off our backs, my Republican friends want to cut Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicaid, education. But somehow on this issue, they want to tell every woman in America what she should do with her body.”
It is a great line but it’s the punchline of a rant, not a discussion. I guess maybe they’re not having the discussion because it’s so clear that the two candidates stand in the same place on the issue?
TWO anti-abortion bills were passed in ONE DAY yesterday. Holy shit. This is terrifying.
It was brought up in the Fox Town Hall (I watch everything because I’m mildly insane).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-de…
BUT?!?!?! People like Gary?!?!?! Actually Exist in the World?!?!?! I mean, I knooow that they do, but I’m still always shocked?!?!?! Like, really terrible awful people really do exist in this world?!?!?! It’s not a joke?!?!
Did anyone else hear loud country guitars as the inner soundtrack to Traveling Down the Slut Road?
Banjos. I hear banjos. (Also: some musical Toastie really needs to write this song. It will be the grand misandrist anthem for all time.)
Travelin’ down the slut road
Fast women and fast food
Headin’ down whore highway
stoppin’ for gas and lube…
*applause*
YES, country-rock – specifically, I heard it like Copperhead Road.
I feel it should be a Miranda Lambert song?
Thank you for being a friend, Nicole. Traveled down the slut road and back again, your heart is brazenly unapologetic, you’re a pal and a confidante.
And if you threw an orgy, invited all the “peers” you knew, you would see the biggest filth would be from me, and the rant attached would say thank you for being an “author”.
WONDERFUL. This is team work at its best!
The biggest filth, my filth is YUGE, I guarantee you there’s no problem.
SOMEHOW INCREDIBLY RELEVANT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tq2HVi0w2w
The Easiest Woman in this Room. (Shh, I think it’s Gary.)
HILARY MANTEL, GUYS!
(She’s my George R.R. Martin, I guess — and the universe’s way of teaching me empathy and patience but FUCK OFF, UNIVERSE, because all I want now, all I’ve ever really wanted, really, is the final novel in the Cromwell trilogy, “The Mirror and the Light,” but, FINE I will accept this essay about Charles Brandon IN THE MEANTIME, but only just.)
I’M VERY EXCITED, and very curious to see how she handles Anne of Cleves, especially since I learned right here on this very website that she was not actually as ugly as everybody says!!!
Mantel can be slippery on those matters, though. There are covens of pro-Anne Boleynners out there who hate Mantel for not presenting Anne as Triumphantly Feminist and a Martyr to Misunderstanding. They want to read more about their historical bff, forgetting that the novels are tightly framed within Cromwell’s pov. Cromwell’s experience of Anne Boleyn is a personal one, where he has certain motiva-tions/tors to feel about her the way he does, and his feelings wouldn’t really allow him to cast her as KICKASS.
So yeah, I’m also interested because I don’t know how Cromwell feels about Anne of Cleves. But it’s his feelings that will color Cleves’s portrait for us.
Oh yeah, for sure. I’m curious to see where she goes with it mostly because of her portrayal of Jane Seymour (which I love), which I think gives Jane more of a nuanced personality than the historic records give her (as far as I know) without actually being historically inaccurate. So that could be an interesting line to consider with Anne as well.
And of course since some people consider Anne of Cleves to be Cromwell’s Big Fuckup I’m very curious to see how he ends up perceiving her in the end…
Oh man — agreed on Jane Seymour. (Also, VERY blown away by Mary Boleyn, too.)
And how disappointing to be toppled by a Tindr-match gone wrong, rather than for any of the legitimately borderline things Cromwell did.
It all comes down to the Hans Holbien portraits, doesn’t it? HIs – painted when Cromwell is doing a nice favor for a friend – makes him look like a murderer, and when Cromwell comments on that everyone is like “Yes. That is how you look.”
And one of his most humanizing traits is how he appreciates the work of master craftsmen and he LIKES Hans. Hans is just baseline nice to Rolf’s stepdaughter.
I think he will have ego invested in the painting being accurate.
Such a good point, that friendship between Cromwell and Holbein. And I ::think:: we can trust Holbein’s eye enough to think that the portrait he painted of Anne of Cleves isn’t aspirational or glorified at all.
But! What saves her from a DISGUSTING life of doing sex with Henry is his lack of attraction to her — so if I’m Anne, I’m thinking, “Fuck YEAH, Eternal Sister.” I’m just sad it’s part of what takes Cromwell down and also: GARY WHO IS OBSESSED WITH FILTH IS HENRY VIII. Henry VIII has always been with us, and will always be with us, as long as there are men who don’t understand their own feelings.
“What a prospect of damp-palmed horror that phrase evokes!” I just.
Also that Royal Bodies essay.
I want to snuggle up under a blanket with her and eat popcorn and convince her to become a writer for Doctor Who.
Y!E!ESS WE CAN do that! Let me just grab my purse.
(Also, when she was 7, she had a supernatural experience of evil and I kinda just want her to tell that story, very slowly, inside that blanket fort you mentioned and then we can soothe ourselves with snacks, delicious snacks, and then try to figure out what it is that happened to her because THAT’S WHAT BESTIES DO.)
From a 2003 interview in The Independent:
“I couldn’t say I saw it,” she says slowly. “I’m talking about something at the very border of sensory experience. I could walk to where it was, could say how high it was and describe the speed at which it moved. But how I got the information, through which sense, I don’t know.” What Mantel does know is that she felt she had witnessed something she wasn’t meant to. “The experience was absolutely destroying, as if my body was falling apart at a cellular level, which expressed itself in intense nausea. The way I rationalised it was that it was the devil. As a Catholic, that was the theology I had at my command.” The family home itself was haunted and this presence seemed like “a concentration of things that were going on in the house – the unhappiness of our family and the pressure of secrets and lies”.
I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to reenact “Misery” until she finishes the third book.
YOU SHALL HAVE MY AXE!
And my bow
It’s only been what, four years?, since Bring Up The Bodies. That was three years after Wolf Hall. Honestly I think that’s a pretty good pace for such large and intricate works of fiction. I’ve been waiting for a follow-up to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell for more than ten years now.
What does he find on the roaaaaaaads
How are we talking about your thing when MY EMOTIONS?!
a) for perspective so that b) no one cuts off Hilary Mantel’s legs, which is c) bad for the creative process, in addition to the obvious humanitarian concerns.
Damn, Hilary! How do you language!? Hurray Harry, Horrid Harry, Holy Harry – such fun and games until you slide into “ground slippery with blood.” Dammmmmn.
Also I was appalled to just find out about the Navajo Waters Pollution – it has been going on for DECADES, and has led to genetic defects and many deaths and it doesn’t get any mainstream attention.
“Since the 1950s, waste from active and inactive uranium mines has seeped into the Navajo Nation’s water supplies, which has led to increased rates of cancer, genetic defects, Navajo neurohepatopathy, and increases in mortality.
The material that fed the Cold War by making atomic bombs possible is also found in low concentrations of ore, making its runoff a toxic sludge containing other harmful elements, like arsenic and lead.”
URANIUM! ARSENIC!
“It really is an incredible injustice. If you’re born Navajo, you’re 67 times more likely not to have a tap or toilet in your house than if you’re born black, white, Asian- or Hispanic-American,” said George McGraw, founder of DIGDEEP, a non profit that provides water systems to underserved communities”
http :https://www.mintpressnews.com/214351-2/214351/ http://www.attn.com/stories/6416/water-contamination-nav...
Corrected URL for first link: https://www.mintpressnews.com/214351-2/214351/
Thanks for that! I couldn’t edit mine for some reason.
Thank you very much for sharing. I so wish there was more coverage of native issues in US media.
So do I. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that this has been going on since the 50s and most of us haven’t heard of it. Wtf.
That Bust piece is great. Caitlin Moran has been bugging me for years. When I was a teeny baby feminist she was a bit of a hero because I didn’t know where else to look for guidance, and I simply didn’t understand just how horribly unintersectional she is. I’ve grown out of that phase, thankfully, but it still makes me sad whenever I’m reminded of how narrow she is and just how awful she can be. I know there are MUCH bigger issues with her than me feeling let down, but… It’s frustrating to see how selfish her angle is when her platform is so large.
I read How to Be a Woman when I was a teeny baby feminist and remember liking it but being very put off by her section on abortion and how she seemed to frame it as a class issue (“we don’t need more poor babies!”) rather than a fundamental human rights issue. And this was when I was just realizing that I really did not agree with what my Catholic school education had taught me about birth control/abortion so I don’t even know how I would react if I read it now.
The author of the Brandon autobiography Mantel refers to is a tutor from my old college! He taught my boyfriend and several of my friends. (He also has been there since he was an undergraduate, and was on the University Challenge team that beat Stephen Fry’s.)
A Tudor tutor! A Tudor tutor! A Tudor tutor!
(“Uma? Oprah. Oprah? Uma.”)
I have been ridiculously happy ever since I read this article this afternoon! I mean yeah,granted,I think Steven Gunn is mainly being used as a launchpad by Mantel here (Oh the mental images!) but still! The degrees that separate me and the glorious Hilary Mantel just narrowed considerably!
(Also, very nice to find you here!)
You are basically friends with Mantel already.
(Hello! I am always here, because I love the internet very much.)
You all, I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird last year for the first time as a legitmate adult and I was surprised at how much I basically couldn’t stand it. I was embarrassed to be reading it in public. (This was before Go Set a Watchman came out and everyone found out explicitly how poor a role model Atticus “really” is.)
Anyway while I flailed about over my despair in not liking TKaM anymore, I turned to Harriet M Welsh. And I was hesitant to do so! What if Harriet broke my grown-up heart, too? A very very dear friend said, “No, Harriet will never let you down.”
Basically Harriet the Spy is a perfect book and I have a kiddo in my life who is named Harriet and I am counting down the years until she is old enough for me to send her the book.
It IS a perfect book. It IS.
I quite liked “The Long Secret” and “Sport”, too, but I was disappointed they didn’t have more Harriet in them.
I actually loved “The Long Secret” more than Harriet The Spy, probably because I read it at just the right age (just on the verge of 11). Janie the scientist! Beth Allen! The cashier with the “mean eyes” who recieves notes saying “Jesus Hates You”!
The scene where they talk about menstruating is also absolutely the most hilarious thing ever.
YESSSSSSS
goddess, i want to reread all three right now.
I didn’t read it until I was an adult, and I really wish I had read “Shy people are angry people” when I was a kid.
Beth Ellen searched her grandmother’s face to see if she were angry, but the face looked impassive. I’m going to be told I’m bad, she thought.
“Shy people are angry people,” said Mrs. Hansen and snapped her head around to see Beth Ellen’s reaction.
I am not a lady, thought Beth Ellen. It’s coming now. She’s going to say I am not a lady.
“You know,” said her grandmother, smiling, “it’s important to be a lady, but not if you lose everything else, not if you lose yourself in the process.”
Beth Ellen felt her mouth drop open.
“There are times when we must express what we feel even if it is anger. If you can feel it and not express it … it might be better, but you must try to know what you feel. If we don’t know what we feel, we get into trouble.” She looked hard at Beth Ellen. “You’re a very angry little girl. I have no idea what you’ve been doing about it because you’ve never shown any of it before yesterday, to my knowledge.”
Oh, that passage was so SO important to me as a kid. I super-identified with Beth, even though I had no idea what the Bath and Tennis was. I also loved Janey and Sport, but thought Harriet was just…creepy. (Apologies to Harriet lovers.)
I liked Harriet the Spy, but the one i loved, that I return to over and over again, is The Long Secret. I identified so much with Beth Ellen and her shyness and her anger and her tendency to just follow Harriet into situations that scared her because following Harriet is better than finding things to do on her own. The scene where they talk about periods was tremendously important to me when I got my period, because the Judy Blume attitude of wanting to get your period was totally foreign to me. I was in pain and depressed and didn’t understand why I should have to go through this nonsense every month until menopause, and here was a book saying, “Yes, this sucks, but we’re all in it together.” And I love the book’s message about bad parents: that sometimes parents, without being abusive, are just not good people and you shouldn’t have to like them. Beth Ellen saying, “I wouldn’t go to the corner with Zeeney!” is one of my favorite scenes in all of literature.
And Harriet seen through Beth Ellen’s eyes is hilarious. I love the scene where she plonks herself down on the couch, yells, “HEY! THERE’S A GREAT NAZI MOVIE ON!” and starts stuffing popcorn in her mouth.
I understand new things about Harriet and her world every time I read! There’s so much coded stuff in there you don’t consciously pick up on as a kid.
Thank you! I actually never read TKaM as a youth, so when I read it as an adult I was flabbergasted by how … bad it was. (To me.) I think it’s banal and complacent, and, most importantly, thematically incoherent.
I read half of it in school and never bothered finishing it. It was just boring and bland and I had no idea why everyone thought it was a good book
Yeah, I was severely unimpressed with Harper Lee’s writing when I read it recently. I had loved (LOVED!) Scout, and Dill, as a child, and found nothing appealing in them as an adult. The big-picture story of the trial and race relations made me feel sick.
Thing I actually said out loud to my wife: “I don’t know why, if we need to teach everyone a mid-20th-century Southern novel about RACE IN THE SOUTH, we aren’t using The Heart is a Lonely Hunter instead.” (There are PLENTY of problems with tHiaLH, too, and I am here all day if anyone wants to get into this, but at least it’s beautifully written and, as you point out, consistent in its themes.)
There was a big outcry in Britain a couple of years ago when Michael Gove took TKAM off the school curriculum, and everyone was up in arms because it was either racist or anti-American or something, I can’t remember. And I was very conflicted because I hate Michael Gove but at the same time I do not think it is a good book and also I think “here is a book about racism in the past in which you can easily identify with the heroic white man who heroically tries to save the black man who doesn’t get to say very much at all” is a very good way of teaching people about racism.
“here is a book about racism in the past in which you can easily identify with the heroic white man who heroically tries to save the black man who doesn’t get to say very much at all”
Especially bothersome since the book comes off so damn didactic and directed squarely at children. I actually want to read Watchman now out of curiosity about whether Lee might have had a clue all along and ended up losing control of the story she really wanted to tell.
Okay I may be misremembering this but my big problem with The Heart is Lonely Hunter is that it describes in detail the main character slicing off pieces of her calloused foot-skin. Is that … even close to accurate?
This is in The Member of the Wedding and ngl, I have occasionally described myself as “still just like F Jasmine, spending my Saturday night cutting skin off my feet.”
Ha! That sounds vaguely familiar. I must have read them in the same class or something.
Obviously was a very vivid mental image if I can remember that and not the book.
The first time I ever tried arguing about a book at school was over the scene where the men are forming a lynch mob, and Scout comes to yell at them, and then they all decide to stop and go away. The metaphoric suggestion that racism could be stopped either by a child, i.e., by the mere passage of time (or the innocence/state of nature is unracist argument) made me terribly upset, except I was 14 and too surprised by the fact that no one agreed with me to argue my point much.
oooohhh, that scene, I remember feeling just fine about it as a kid, like, those guys were up to no good and now they’ve been caught in the act. But as an adult it made me panicky to read, because no way can that end well. I never thought of the metaphorical implication, though, i am impressed by 14-year-old you!
Oh, Gary
Please stop posting this spoiler from the last scene of Season 7 of GAME OF THRONES.
To be honest Roxanne’s recap/exaltation of Magic Mike XXL might be the least misandrist piece to ever appear on The Toast. Gary’s in for a rude surprise if he does any further poking around these here parts.
Yeah, he probably hasn’t gotten to Misandrist Lullabies yet!
It really is the fondest The Toast as a whole has ever been of men.
I can kind of see the appeal of zit popping videos, but weird skin stuff skeevs me out so much that I get shivers just thinking about it.
So no. A million times no.
I couldn’t even read the article because the descriptions of the videos were grossing me out too much.
I opened it very cautiously because I was afriad there would be a big gross header image. There isn’t, and I read the article from behind my hands.
Why do they make the preview images of the videos so gross? Like surely that’s blowing your load way to early and it also means that I regularly have to deal with seeing fucking disgusting images of zits and cysts on my facebook without having clicked on the link. I’m fine with these video existing, I just don’t want to see any part of them, is that too hard to ask? They manage to do it with porn!
I am WITH YOU. I also don’t see the appeal of wanting to mess with someone else’s skin stuff – I have friends who for some reason love popping their partners’ stuff but I just can not with that. I made Beardo promise he would never make me do that (and I certainly wouldn’t do it voluntarily).
God – even TYPING that squicked me out.
YES! What is the appeal of squeezing your partners zits? ew. Presumably you want to have sex with this person in the future?
My mother used to make me squeeze the blackhead on her back, after her and her partner broke up. It took a lot of bribery (as in I got new doc martens out of it at least once. And a new bass.)
Ugh, my husband asks me to pop zits on his back sometimes and I’m just so grossed out by it. Exactly – I want to have sex with him in the future and this really kills the mood, dude.
“Later, when Charles got around to thinking about the formalities, he was able to disentangle all this, obtaining with seeming ease a dispensation from the pope freeing him from the Mortimer marriage. Margaret at some stage had an illegitimate child by a priest; Charles had three recognised illegitimate children who, confusingly, share names with his legitimate ones. The addled writers of the HBO series The Tudors strained every nerve to come up with sensational storylines, without rivalling the truth of these people’s lives.” SO TRUE
brb placing a library hold for this book
“Margaret at some stage had an illegitimate child by a priest” fills me with the same glee as “Meanwhile one of the characters conquers Poland.”
I know, right??
HBO The Tudors writers: clearly constrained by their Victorian sensibilities.
Wasn’t The Tudors on Showtime though?
I’m choosing to believe this is Mantel Shade, and not an error.
(But yeah, it’s an error.)
Oh, yeah, you’re totally right.
London Review of Books, I expect better of your fact checkers!
Lots to love in that deleted comment, but I think my favorite is the scare quotes around “peers” and “author,” the two words with the most literal interpretations in the whole thing.
The deleted comment sounds amazingly like something several of my male relatives would say. What are the odds they’ve assimilated into one super being called “Gary”?
This comment has been declared filthy by the Gary hivemind
If all the filth-shamers become Gary, and all the dirtbags Voltron up into a Jason, can all the avuncular, elderly misogynists in blue double-breasted blazers become Harvey?
In some ways, a big dragon is easier to kill than a million little bitey things.
What would Gary say if he knew that my mother gave me a copy of Magic Mike on blu-ray while we celebrated Christmas in a convent?
Well, I say that you and your mom sound like the Very Best People.
Your mother is winning at excellent motherhood. (That’s not what Gary would say; that’s what I say. Gary would probably say your mother had loaded you onto the express bus down slut road.)
pimple popping videos are one of those things on the internet I thought I’d be all about but lord I just cannot watch them… and it’s usually not the actual “pop” that pushes things too far, it’s the instruments used.
I know what you mean. I am all about picking at my skin, but seeing other people’s gross skin stuff just makes me worry more about my own skin. I made the mistake of clicking on that lady’s instagram and now I feel itchy and sick.
If I watch (or think too much about) those I get, like, brain circles (er, obsessive thought patterns) that compel me to stand in front of the mirror searching out all the things to squeeze until I’m bleeding in multiple areas.
So I am fascinated by them, but being kind to myself, &c.
Competition is fierce this year for NatGeo’s Sexual Explorer of the Year award.
Insert “cave exploration” or “spelunking” jokes here.
Also, let us not forget that Charles Brandon was played by bb!Henry Cavill on The Tudors
He was very often shirtless
I really should have paid more attention when Tudors was on and being filmed. I never realised such hot guys were on it, and if I had I would have done a lot more days as an extra.
Also the fact that my SIL did costumes on Tudors means that she has definitely seen him naked at some point and this makes me very jealous and annoyed that she doesn’t talk about her work more.
Was about to comment precisely along these lines.
how did Charles do it?
With piercing eyes and impeccable bone structure, I think?
EVERYONE was very often shirtless. What’s-her-face with the big fake rack and fake tan, shirtless constantly.
“We’re going to save a TONNE on wardrobe.”
“How?”
“Listen…”
Heh, “tonne”.
Oh my.
He’s very often pantsless as well, if I’m remembering correctly.
RIP Henry Cavill’s pre-Superman, pre-steroid hairline.
i legit just meowed at my monitor. (apologies to my coworkers.)
note to self: pick back up on rewatching Tudors.
A shirtless Henry Cavill was my first thought when I saw that link and I’m not even hardwired to appreciate shirtless men. I’m too far gone down slut road, that’s what I am.
Did anyone else hear loud country guitars as the inner soundtrack to Traveling Down the Slut Road?
On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again!
When I read “the late George Martin,” I was momentarily terrified because I confused him with George R.R. Martin and I thought we would never know the end to Game of Thrones.
Apparently, a lot of people did. So much, so, he wrote a blog post about it.
On his LiveJournal, bless him, he and ONTD are probably the single things still driving traffic to that site.
and Russia! It’s owned by a Russian company and was getting very popular there around the time fandom was mass migrating to Tumblr. Occasionally it’d go down for hours because of DDOS attacks &c. that were blamed on Russian politics.
There are a handful of fandom communities still posting and active there, too.
Also Cleolinda.
Me too! Except I DGAF about GoT, so I was just thinking ‘I feel like I would have heard about this…’
I’ve had four coffees today, and it’s afternoon where I live, yet somehow it’s too early in the morning to deal with Gary.
I want to know every comment Gary flagged because you know thise are the most awesome comments of all.
I second this request.
The whole internet obsession with zits super grosses me out and now I feel like it’s everywhere. I can’t escape. I’m going to curl up in a ball under my desk until the internet goes away.
My own pimples gross me out (I like to pop them purely because it means getting them out of my own face). I don’t want to see anyone else’s being popped.
You and me both. *shudders*
My mom and dad pop each other’s back zits and I think it is so disgusting.
Same here, it’s like an inescapable version of watching couples pop each other’s zits in public places.
At first I wondered what comments Gary thought were filthy, and then I realized that it was probably all of them.
Look all this nonsense about the Tudors is great, but what I really want is a prestige HBO drama about the Trastámaras.
I pulled up a YouTube of “Just When I Needed You Most” and then spent some time on the Wikipedia page for the Trastámaras and I never knew I needed something so much in my life like I need a series like you described.
RIIIIGHT? And the wikipedia page doesn’t even mention the best stuff!
Like the part where Enrique II kills his half-brother Pedro the Cruel at the battle of Montiel? Pedro was double-crossed by Bertrand du Guesclin, the Constable of France, and lured to Enrique’s tent under the guise of negotiations where Enrique proceeded to just knife him in the face a hundred times.
Everything about the Trastámaras is amazing! Secret marriages! Assassinations! Double-crosses! Mad daughters committed to nunneries! Forged letters from the Pope! Forged letters from the Pope!
Is there a specific book you’d recommend? ASKING FOR YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND, ME.
Oh man, so far as I know, there is not a rollicking history-novel about these guys like Wolf Hall or The Other Boelyn Girl (I mean, I’m sure there MUST be, but I don’t know of one), but I did have a book about a lot of this stuff I got to see if I can find the title of it, though.
(I read it while I was reading a lot of stuff about the history of Spain, and I don’t want to give you the one that’s, like, a statistical analysis of how many people were peasant farmers on the meseta by mistake.)
There is Clara Estow’s Pedro the Cruel of Castile, 1350-1369. Unfortunately, there aren’t any English translations of the Cronica de Pedro el Cruel, which is the best; parts of it are just romanceros (topical songs, often widely embroidered) written out as prose.
Oh, man, the evilest of the evil. I mean, it’s hard to be on team Pedro, exactly, but they were so awful that I must root against them.
That’s what’s so great about them! You get to root against EVERYONE! And basically everyone is going to get stabbed at some point!
Plus, with their intense series of cousin-marriages in later generations, they have all the squickiness of the Hapsburgs without forcing you to look at portraits with long chins. Which I consider a positive advantage.
also, they eventually married into the Hapsburgs and gave us Philip the Bewitched, which is probably the best royal epithet
THEY PUT THE CORPSE OF ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI IN THE BED WITH HIM.
Juana la loca traveled around with her husband’s corpse, too.
But that was to use the HOV lanes, right?
Mandibular prognathism runs in my family and I always like to pretend it came from the Hapsburgs, because it’s always been Carlos II whose portrait makes me think “it pre-surgery me”.
Maybe it did come from them.
I kind of want to watch the new season of Game of Thrones, but I was among those who stopped last season pre-Sansa-rape. I don’t have any interest in seeing more of that shit, so I am probably going to just read recaps and fan speculation threads.
Relatedly, does anyone have a favourite GoT correspondent who will give me all the screencaps I want and talk about what was different than the books and provide solid feminist critique?
As someone else who stopped watching a while ago but still wants to be updated on it, I get it. It was lacking the feminist angle, but there used to be two recaps on the Washington Post, one for just tv watchers and one for people who have also read the books. I don’t know if they’ve been doing that recently though. I also like the recaps/discussion on the http://learnedfangirl.com: http://thelearnedfangirl.com/category/game-of-thrones/ (conflict of interest: one of the members of these discussions is an old friend of mine). They do have a feminist bent and have some of the discussion about book differences.
I have committed to a life of boycotting anything that uses rape as a means to make you hate the guy so we can cheer when we finally kill him later. This seems to be the reasoning I hear a lot from people defending the rape trope. I can think of millions of ways to make audiences hate someone so they want to kill them. For instance, making comments about why women should wear burqas is good enough for me.
I haven’t watched the last 1-2 episodes of the last season because I was so fed up with what they were doing. Instead I follow gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com and their collab fansite, fandomfollowing.com. They are very critical of the show and have pretty good analyses of the differences between show and books. Here is the most recent critique (http://www.fandomfollowing.com/a-got-detractor-watches-the-trailer/)... you might need to read their “Book Snob Glossary” though, which is hilarious in itself.
This one is my favorite, it’s a recap by a drunk girl on Tumblr: http://starkalypse.com/tagged/the-drunkalypse
I’m the same way. I’m just really done with it and I don’t know if I want to spend so many hours keeping up with a show that likes to pretend that fans like me don’t exist, aren’t a big part of the fandom, and shouldn’t be listened to.
I have no go-to GOT correspondent. I have some friends who post their own reviews as they watch, including solid feminist critique so I’ll just follow those.
More helpfully to you, tumblr is a good place for this. There are reviewers there and lots of non-review discussions and long posts where people analyse scenes and characters they liked or disliked. I think it’s usually tagged as “got meta” but watch out for spoilers if you haven’t read the books.
Gary, are you drunk? Did you and Miranda have a fight? Has the world of Miranda taken a turn for the uncanny and supernatural and that commenter is actually your doppelganger?
Slutt Vei is in Alesund, Norway and it looks pretty nice….Thanks for the recommendation, Gary! Slutt Way leads to excellent healthcare, income equality, and sweet maternity leave.
And (I’m guessing) non-stop, premarital sexing.
Well, something has to lead to the maternity leave.
My parents’ Lab used to love scootching under their big ottoman in the living room as a puppy.
He still loves doing this, but since he is a full-grown dog the whole thing rocks from side to side when he scootches under, and his tail sticks out one end and his nose out the other and his feet out the last side. It is adorable.
The day my lab realized she was actually too big to sit in my lap was one of the saddest days ever.
Luckily she figured out that the full body lean-snuggle was just as good as the lap-sitting snuggle.
Your lab REALIZED she was too small? Mine just sits on me regardless.
He also accidentally flings himself off the couch with some regularity, so I suspect his spatial awareness is not great.
She’s oddly polite, but also good at the sneaker-upper snuggle. She’ll start at the opposite end of the couch, then wiggle-worm on her back until her head is in your lap with a face like, “Whoa! How did I get here?! You should pet me since I’m so confused.”
My lab has definitely never come to this realisation-sit down on the floor and you will swiftly find yourself with 30kg of Labrador in your lap!
the wily Labraturtle attacks without warning or pity
I’m really excited to read the Hilary Mantel piece, but in the meantime, I’m just glad to know I’m not the only one with a stack of books supporting my bed. #badatfurnitureshopping
but #compulsivebookbuyer, amirite?
Oh, man, I love the Replacements (and Paul Westerberg individually) so very much. Also, I’d forgotten they did a song called “Alex Chilton,” and now I’m going have to spend the say listening to the Replacements & Westerberg’s other stuff & Big Star & Evan Dando’s cover of The Ballad of El Goodo. Thanks for that link! It’s put me in a good mood. 🙂
One of my favorite local radio shows signed off for good with “I Will Dare,” and it so completely broke my heart and overjoyed me at once. They get under your skin! And thankfully don’t need to be squeezed out online.
Thumbs up to that choice and totally agree, they definitely get under your skin!
That is my favorite Replacements song! Excellent for road trips.
Oh, I hadn’t thought about it, but yes, excellent for road trips.
True story: don’t read the zit thing while on a janky muni bus on your morning commute if you value not being nauseated.
Oh, wow, these deleted comments are like watching angry fish swimming around an aquarium. Bonk up against the glass walls all you want, Gary, you’ll never actually make it into the comments with the rest of us, and we’ll all be over here saying “aww, look, that one’s trying to look fierce!”
TRUTH
Also: how is Sansa so huge while still technically a puppy? HOW BIG IS SHE GOING TO GROW? Who’s a big fluffy pupper? YOU ARE, YES YOU ARE!
This article is the union of two official Toast Loves, Stephen Sondheim and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, therefore everyone must see it.
I’ve never seen Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but this article was surprisingly helpful in getting a better grasp on Passion. I like the music from that show but Fosca has always confused me.
#Trubama
I have criticisms of both of course, but they are pretty cute together. Obama’s relief at having a human for a next door neighbour-leader is almost palpable. Of course, I guess the reverse might be imminent.
I think we need some pictures of them doing sports together. Or feeding each other french fries. I would accept either of these choices.
Dear Toasties, I’m freaking out at work rn with lots of panic. I messed some things up, other things are piling up, supervisors are unhappy with me (or maybe just frustrated) and I can’t stop the anxiety. I’m taking deep breaths and it will subside, but then something else happens.
I am taking a day off tomorrow (going to nyc to see hamilton this weekend!) So I am trying push through and get my work done today. But I feel terrified and miserable. Tips and encouragement welcome.
No tips, just commiseration. A huge annoying superurgent task suddenly landed on my desk this morning and a) it took me way too long, so now I have no time left to do the stuff I was also meant to do and b) I didn’t do a very good job.
*sigh*
I hope Hamilton will prove the right fix for you! Meantime, the advantage of working late is that the office is almost empty and I can put the cast recording on rn.
This happens to me too, a lot, and I hate how debilitating it can be for me. I don’t really have tips, mostly sympathy. Sometimes getting a really cold glass of water and drinking it slowly helps me refocus? I basically take a sip every time I feel my thoughts spiraling out of control , and focus as hard as possible on how the act of drinking it. This has the added benefit of keeping me super hydrated and necessitating lots of trips to the restroom to avoid sitting still under my supervisor’s eye all the time.
QUICK TAKE THIS http://goodstuffhappenedtoday.tumblr.com/post/140…
Sigh. Thank you.
O my gods this is amazing. they are watching a laptop together!!!
Go to the bathroom and just sit quietly alone in the stall for a few minutes and try to chill out. Then go back to your desk and make a list of all the shit you need to do. Rewrite that list with the most important stuff first and just plow through that fucker. Maybe turn your email off for an hour while you work so that you have a solid block without being interrupted. Even if everything is falling apart, probably it can wait for an hour. If not, set up an out of office that says “Due to tight deadlines, I will be checking my email once an hour in order to have uninterrupted work time. For urgent matters please call me.” YOU GOT THIS.
Those are some really good tips. Thank you.
I know you are already breathing, but i sometimes find even controlling my breath overwhelming. On super bad days, i keep this baby open in a tab and just flip to it whenever i need to.
https://31.media.tumblr.com/b1406ea40336dc68e5404…
2016 doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
That dog. And clean carpet under the bed…held up by books. Thing of beauty.
But no zits please. I still can’t get this one guy’s blackhead out of my mind from a trip down Slutte Strasse many years ago. My brain makes it’s own looping gif of trying to pop it. Ugh…
SLUTTE STRASSE!!!
Does anyone else picture Gary up there as Sexual Gary of Sex Criminals fame?
Just me, then? Ok.
This is a really insightful bit from the Martin piece:
It was his reputation as a comedy-record maker—for Peter Sellers, though not the Goons themselves—that is said to have most impressed the Beatles. For the Beatles always remained, in the first instance, a comedy team—their energies are satiric and expansive far more often than they are subversive or explosive. It was always bizarre that Paul said that his favorite Beatles recording was “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number!),” a strange exercise in pure Goonism. Bizarre, but meaningful—the Beatles are as much the bridge between “Beyond the Fringe” and Monty Python as they are between early rock and roll and what came after. George Martin’s presence had much to do with that.
Bleh, if that Buzzfeed article is accurate, we’re going to get so much Bran and so much kingsmoot this season. The worst.
Honestly, isn’t Bran basically just a tree now? What’s he doing out in the world, looking about 18 years old?!
I also get squicked by pimple popping/blackhead squeezing videos. However, like Nicole, I find myself drawn to ingrown hair removals. Specifically ones by a particular practitioner: Josefa Reina
She’s so delicate and precise most of the time. For some reason, I don’t get grossed out, but just watch and watch and watch.
I know of the Sandra Lee videos, and while I abstractly understand the appeal I just CANNOT.
We also have load-bearing book piles. The struggle is real!
But how does this work? My book piles are always falling over. It seems like the tiniest bit of horizontal (shear) force on the bed would send it sliding. Or is the bed supported by actual legs at the corners?
Our couch is currently the furniture piece with the load-bearing books. One of our sectional’s eight legs broke off (Rooms to Go, nothing but quality!) so we use them in substitute of a leg. They fit pretty snug underneath but do shift slowly over time. Washing the couch covers and adjusting the couch books are a weekly chore.
Ha, interesting. Not exactly load-bearing, but there is a layer of books on one half of my desk that serves as a surface for more books and papers to sit on, and slowly the detritus deepens, until I commission my approximately yearly archaeological dig.
I also have a couple of load-bearing books! They’re serving as a makeshift TV booster because when I bought my soundbar and put it on my TV stand, it wound up blocking the remote sensor on the TV. Also my TV stand is a discarded end table from my parents’ house. Despite how all of this sounds, I am an adult lady, not a college dude.
In attempts to avoid any and all election news (it’s really messing with my anxiety lately), I’m reading Wikipedia articles. Anyone have favorites to share?
Not Wikipedia, but I’ve been working my way through the BBC In Our Time podcast (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl). Somehow I got started when someone posted a link to the Mary Magdalene recording. Since then I’ve been exploring their discussions of early church history and the early Middle Ages and with digressions into Marriage, Suffragism and the Bluestockings! Definitely and aural rabbit hole.
Maybe use the list of phantom islands as a jumping-off point? IDK how into cartography you might be.
You might enjoy the “Wiki Wormhole” feature on the AV Club, which is all about interesting Wikipedia digressions:
http://www.avclub.com/features/wiki-wormhole/
(Written by an internet friend of mine, who is a lovely person!)
Reading wikipedia is so nice. Here’s a few of my atmospheric faves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown,_Massachuse… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Lyubov_Orlova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadc…
Awesome, thanks!
Ooh, look what I found:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Principle
And one of my older favorite of all time articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake
There is always the Great Time Suck that is tvtropes.org
Jezebel had an article today about the Wikiprojects women scientists; and how the woman who started it writes an new entry every time she gets hate mail for writing about women. And science. http://jezebel.com/a-biologist-is-writing-a-wikip… The link at the bottom of the article goes to the articles they’ve done and are working on.
Literally the fact that this page exists makes me happy. I don’t know why. It’s just so detailed and in-depth!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profa…
Another excellent link: The Vast Bay Leaf Conspiracy.
Also the comments, while not comparable to Toast comments, are generally hilarious in their tone-deafness, minus a couple of true gems.
Made me giggle!
Dang! What happened to The Awl? Most of those commenters genuinely do not realize that the author is being sarcastic. o_O
Also, they’re so MAD about the article. Like, even if it really were a serious article, y so mad, dudes (they are literally all dudes).
I know, right? I feel like they always had a fair number of random-no sense of humor @facebook people, but now that’s practically all they have! Well, them and Marty Weissman, who I love. I also enjoy that one of the angry dudes is assuming that the author is a dude (because all authors must be dudes, of course).
Many of the things I am of fan of I have learned about on The Toast, which is no surprise (such tastemakers, you lovely people!).
But then sometimes things I am a fan of already turn up on The Toast and I’m like WHERE DO I END AND THE TOAST BEGINS? Ex. Dr. Lee, Pimple Popper, and a secret obsession of mine!
Okay I think I literally did a little head shake at this Nupru question. This HAS to be a prank letter, right?
“I came home at lunch one day last week to surprise my boyfriend, and was shocked to hear him in bed talking to a girl. It turns out it was just the personal assistant on his phone, but some of the stuff they were talking about was just disgusting! I have always given him his space with stuff like this, but now I wonder if I need to draw some lines. With porn, at least I know he only does it in the home. But I could see him doing this at work and I worry he could get in real trouble! I guess I should be glad he hasn’t called me “Siri,” but I wonder if this might be the start of some big problems! Should I put my foot down on this one?”
Can I just thank you SO much for the Happy Sansa pictures? My family lost our puppy (just about a year) last night due to him eating something that basically just shredded his gastrointestinal system, and the surgery to fix it was even more traumatic, and after two days trying to recover in our vet’s care, our fluffy happy pup is gone.
Going to stop now, because trying to not cry at work, but I needed Sansa today. So thank you so much.
Oh no, oh no. I’m so sorry.
Oh my god, I am sorry. Hang in there. <3
I am so very, very sorry. That is heartbreaking. Sansa is beautiful and I know your fluffy happy pup is beautiful, too. Huge warm hugs, if you would like some.
oh no!! I am so so so sorry.
I’m so sorry.
I am so sorry; your poor puppy and poor family.
Also: Sansa and my big cat have some things in common.
When I first brought him home after adopting him, he scuttled under the bed like any cat would. And then didn’t come out. I was feeding him treats and stuff and he seemed ok, but for like 24 hours didn’t come out. Finally I lifted the bed up and out he popped, purring and happy as a clam. He was stuck! He’s not a fraidy cat, he’s just really really big.
that piece about the ‘mats! gosh i love them so so so much. seeing them on their reunion tour was a dream come true.
Well, this certainly kicked me in the chest today:
Had Bernie been Bernadette — The heartbreaking truth about American patriarchy
Full of complicated truth and feelings.
Oomph
I, too, have loadbearing books for my bed
Ok, sorry, will go back and read the whole thing I promise, but I just had to say that the Deleted Comment of the Day… made me raise an eyebrow so hard I think I have sprained it.
Like… my eyebrow hurts now.
Probably at least as much as Gary’s hands hurt from clutching those pearls so damn hard.
K, back to reading now.
P.S. it still hurts, do I ice it and keep it elevated or go to a doctor or…?
You should splint the eyebrow and then ice it. Good luck 🙁
I wonder what the overlap between tryptophobia and horrified fascination with popping videos is. Because I think my mild tryptophobia was set off by the “lotus boob” of a few years ago, but I also spent an hour watching popping videos after I got home from work.
Non-euclidean marriage.
"And have you the ring?"
"Yes! Well, it's more like a seven-dimensional construct with the three dimensional semblance of a ring which blossoms into a great unfolding of obscene and impossible angles in higher dimensions, but yes!"
*Places the ring around partner's finger*
*All present vanish into the many-angled planes and are never seen again*