“Oh, am I NOT supposed to eat a roll of toilet paper? You have to tell me these things!”
These before-and-after CGI pictures reminded me that acting is probably really hard, especially when you’re emoting to a green cushion with white golf balls on it.
I have never purchased a book so quickly in my LIFE:
It is hard to overstate the pleasure of reading West of Eden, which has all the best qualities of a Hollywood memoir. I kept the book in my bag and snuck away with it during breaks from jury duty; it was my constant companion and the source of most of my conversation during the week that I read it. On a lunch break from jury duty, I read Gore Vidal reminiscing about Hollywood in the 1940s: “It was a totally lesbian scene. Yeah. They were all raging.” And then there was Jackie Park, one of a string of Jack Warner’s lovers, lamenting the fact that he was “very beaten down–he needed shots from a doctor to make him virile.” Park’s solution was to take Warner to a hypnotist who would convince him that he could get it up–and he did! West of Edenis Hollywood at its most salacious–no gossip unreported; no rumor left unsaid. It is the progenitor of tell-all books like Bette Davis’s The Lonely Life and Empty Mansions, the book about the reclusive heiress Hugette Clark. It is a page-turning, one-upping, revelatory account of life in and among Hollywood’s most powerful families in the 1940s and 50s, with every bit as much intrigue and heartbreak as the topic would suggest.
I am desperately, desperately excited for Jacob Bernstein’s documentary abut his mother, the literally perfect Nora Ephron:
If there was a motivation, it was the opposite of closure. It was a way to keep a relationship going with her. I hadn’t gotten depressed when she died. I was sad, but I didn’t feel incapacitated. It was really after we finished and debuted at the New York Film Festival [in 2015], the reviews were good—and 36 hours later I was really depressed. A friend said, “You spent the last two years watching her in front of a monitor.”
…
I don’t think my mother liked looking at herself. And I don’t think I’d been as aware until I did this how insecure about that she was when she was young, because whatever insecurity there was, she had turned into the essay about breasts [“A Few Words About Breasts,” Esquire, 1972] and the sex fantasies piece [“Fantasies,” from her 1975 collection, Crazy Salad: “In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.”]…. They were both so archly done. It was hard for me to conceive of vulnerability behind it.
But I do think that was one of the issues she worked out in her thirties and forties. It was probably part of why my father’s affair—or his affairs—were so damaging to her.
The joy of the Founding Fathers Fandom:
This is a fandom, with all the creativity, humor, and fervent arguing and agreeing that goes on in all other fandoms. Check out some sample fan art: A group of “Founding Father Pin-Ups” features a truly grotesque Ben Franklin, and an “Ultimate User’s Guide to How to Hug James Madison”advises that the hugger to “withhold from coughing, sneezing, and heavy breathing” and to “plant feet to avoid stepping on” the diminutive founder. Mash-ups proliferate: itsalwayssunnyin1776 inserts founding fathers’ faces into scenes from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And text postsimagine moments of … connection between favorite fathers. (Popular “ships,” Tumblrspeak for imagined relationships between objects of a fandom, are “lams” — John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton — and “jamilton” — Jefferson and Hamilton.)
Just because Hamilton features prominently doesn’t mean that the fandom is the fault of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical: Most of its most prominent blogs have existed for years.
The Americans is back VERY SOON and here is an interview with the woman who plays Poor Martha:
There was a piece in The New Yorker, “The Spy Who Loved Me,” in 2014, with a story somewhat similar to Martha’s. How much do you read stories that mirror Martha’s experience?
All the time. Everything I can possibly get on the literal cases that there are and then anything that would compare to her level of stress, about finding out she’s living with a stranger. Further into the season when the story develops more, I started to try and find some substitutions for someone in a similar situation, about what that must be like. And I thought about the wives of serial killers because that’s comparable to me.Are there any examples that jump out?
Yeah, Judith Ridgway. She was the wife of the Green River Killer, who’s in prison. His name is Gary Ridgway. She was a woman that seemed to be quite like Martha. The day, the moment she found out for real that her husband had killed 40-some people, in their 17 years of marriage, there’s a tiny bit of footage of her looking out of her little kitchen window. She looks like how I imagine Martha — she’s this really small woman with her glasses on, and she’s not even there. There’s an interview of her talking about that moment where she just felt like a wall came down in front of her, and her life was never the same. She said this great thing about her husband, which I took onboard for Martha in the later episodes [this season]: “I love my husband but I hate the man that took him away.” I think that’s a little bit of Philip and Clark, when she gets further down the road and starts to stand on her own two feet a little more and makes some hard decisions.
okay okay one more thing about The Americans, which I am OBSESSED with:
GE: In the new season, you feel Elizabeth soften a little. There’s a dream sequence where I was like, “Oh my God, she has feelings … she’s thinking things I didn’t think she was thinking.”
JF: We had a real struggle last season because Joe and I, in the story of Paige’s recruitment, felt emotionally on Elizabeth’s side. It made a lot of sense to us that this was a way for her to reconnect with her daughter. That if this was something she truly believed in, there was a real act of love and connection here. That proved to be more challenging to convey than we expected because it seems obvious to us.JW: I often feel we’re a little at odds with a section of the audience in terms of how they see Elizabeth. There’s a significant percentage that sees her as cold or an ideologue, and our perception of her is much more complex than that. I know there are people in our audience who also have a much more complicated view of her, but there are those who see her more simplistically, and to us, all those things about her, whether it’s her steadfastness in terms of her devotion to the motherland, which has elements of ideologue in it, but also has elements of being true to the things she believes in and also has elements of having deeply thought out conviction to it. Seeing her as cold is not something we believe in.
Choire on A Little Life:
So let this be one more last laugh of that shitty old year 2015. Seems cruel that the book with the better writing should lose to the book that just has more writing. But there’s one crucial thing A Little Life has, and that is its sick and impeccably consistent and insistent bad touch. It’s a fever that never ends up breaking, a gross cut that never heals up. This nasty talent is what got all these hordes of people to read it, and isn’t that the greatest power of all? She got you people good. That’s a form of artistry as sophisticated and mysterious as actual witchcraft. I personally think it’s probably better that you don’t read A Little Life. But then when have any of us been able to stop people from hurting themselves?
Emily Dickinson, always relevant to our interests here at The Toast:
Suppose the keys weren’t missing at all, but were part of some private, internal structure. And suppose her definition of poetry was different from ours, and she was a very different kind of poet, more like an explorer and discoverer, who meant to subjugate her Lexicon, rather than juggle words. She would share some of her discoveries in her letter-poems, sing a verse or two to a favorite cousin, but she shared her hand-sewn fascicles with no one; these were very private catalogues, complete in themselves, meant for her own consumption; and the variants to a particular word that she wrote in the margins were like magical flowers, not meant to cancel one another, but to create a cluster, or bouquet. That “omitted center” was less a mask than the sign of her modernity. For those critics who swear she was feminizing a male-dominated culture of language constructions, I would say that there’s something strange about the femininity of her attack. Camille Paglia best describes the force and “riddling ellipsis” of Dickinson’s style. “Protestant hymn-measure is warped and deformed by a stupefying energy. Words are rammed into lines with such force that syntax shatters and collapses into itself. . . . The brutality of this belle of Amherst would stop a truck.”
On Monday, former Gawker editor-in-chief A.J. Daulerio and former managing editor Emma Carmichael testified on the first day of the defense’s presentation in the Hulk Hogan/Gawker Media trial. Once the lawyers’ interrogations had concluded, a few questions were collected from the jury to ask each of the witnesses. One juror’s question in particular attracted a lot of subsequent comment, asked of the 28-year-old Carmichael.
“Have you ever had intimate relations with Mr. Daulerio or Mr. Denton?”
Keep in mind that Judge Pamela Campbell received the questions from the jurors, as provided by Florida law, and then personally, herself, asked Carmichael this question. She has absolute discretion over whether any question is asked, and in her opinion, it was perfectly reasonable to ask a 28-year-old woman if she’d slept with either of her bosses, in a trial alleging, as a tort, invasion of privacy.
THIS LADY:
I was unaware that being anti poisoning children was a out on the limb position.
Yeah, this whole thing is mind boggling. How could the EPA totally disregard the fact that protecting kids from lead poisoning is like a foundational part of their mission?
are kids part of the environment? I think we need to run this by management.
Well, they sure produce a lot of goo.
Well, but these are predominantly poor, non-white children from a high-crime area. (Writing that out made me sick to my stomach.)
Any time any comment starts out with “Why so negative?” it should trigger a laser to come and vaporize their computers. Shut up. It’s the equivalent of “Well, actually” and it usually has some crap immediately following it.
Lazers! That’s a good feature! To the kick starter!
IT ALSO WASN’T EVEN A NEGATIVE ARTICLE
IT WAS CHEEKY AND SNARKY AND FUNNY
I love that it starts out with “why so negative” and ends with “don’t be an ingrate.” THAT’S A PRETTY NEGATIVE THING TO SAY, MISSY
I recently taught my 8th graders (I teach all boys) that if they find themselves starting a sentence with “Well, actually,” that they better think REALLY HARD about the phrase that follows. A brief summary of mansplaining followed. I hope I sent them out to the world a little less jerky.
Thank you. The only time ‘well, actually’ or ‘in reality’ or phrases of that ilk can be uttered with impunity is when you’re admitting to a frailty. “Well, actually, I didn’t close the door all the way on the refrigerator. In reality, I didn’t actually graduate.”
I think maybe The Joker is giving unsolicited parenting/internet commenting advice now.
I got the impression that it struck close to home for the deleted commenter.
it’s clearly the advice-giver scorned
This lady is clearly a partaker of the heady wine of unasked-for-advice. To absolve herself from meddling she must redirect the crime onto her innocent victims. She is also my ex MIL.
I have to wonder, why they get so angry when someone does not take their advice? If “thanks, but no” is not an option, is it still “advice”?
I don’t know why it took me so long but I just started watching the Americans last week in anticipation of season 4 and I am o b s e s s e d. It’s so good I can’t handle it. I’m only half way through s2 right now so clearly I will not be caught up for the premier but I’m hoping I can get the rest watched for next week at least.
I just finished my binge watch of season 3 and ZOMG SO GOOD. You’re just on the edge of your seat the entire time; it’s such a wonderfully complex and brain-fucky show.
Just wait! The show does not slow down at all, just getting better and better.
The Americans is so good. I fell behind in watching last season, so I’ve been catching up on the last few episodes now that they’re up on Amazon Prime. So much tension from such little things! Gah, love it.
I just started watching it, too, and the acting is fantastic. They can convey such nuanced meanings in looks and silences.
It also seems more realistic that they wouldn’t let the people who see them without their disguises escape, like in so many other spy shows.
Hijacking the Link Roundup just this once to remind NYC Toasties that the Burgomaster and I will be at St. Andrews at 7pm tonight if you wanna say hi! If I survive the Hamilton matinee, that is.
I read this as “survive the Hamilton manatee”…
And I think it speaks to the general bafflement of Canadians at the American political scene that I went “Oh, okay. I guess there were manatees involved somehow?”
Manatees are perhaps the only thing that could improve the show. I’ll mention that to Lin if I see him.
I am sorry to miss your visit to our great city! Enjoy Hamilton, and just let yourself cry as hard as you need to, otherwise you’ll get a headache!
I may try to stop by. I assume you will look like a gang of gifs hovering around
a table.
Wait – the matinee today? I’m a Toast lurker going with my wife and my soul is currently trying to leave my body! Wave if you see a tall brunette/sma Asian lesbian couple!
Yes! I was at today’s matinee! Ah! I’m sorry I didn’t see this until I got back to the hotel! I hope you had as amazing a time as I did!
I will be there! Can’t wait!
T H E A M E R I C A N S
(It’s just so good! And there are so many wigs! Good, wig driven drama, is like my absolute jam).
I love that the interview with the show runners mentions the wigs specifically! I’m glad they understand that if you take the wigs one tiny click too extreme the show loses some of its magic.
**Wig spoilers**
I thought they couldn’t top the wig Elizabeth wears at Clarke’s wedding to Martha but then she wore that punk short hair to kidnap that one guy and I nearly melted.
Wig spoilers is my new favorite phrase.
I loved the short punky wig. I’m also there for all the various fake mustaches Philip has worn.
I saw a still of Philip all lumberjack bearded up and I am here for it.
I DID TOO
Not quite the same kind of wig spoilers, but last night I finally watched the second to last episode of last season, where Philip takes off his Clark wig. I have never felt so much tension over hairpins being pulled out before. It was amazing.
It’s SO good. And I’m so happy FX is championing it even if it doesn’t have the best ratings.
FX has definitely become one of my favorite channels because of this. They keep their critically acclaimed dramas, even if the ratings are terrible.
I’m so excited! It’s a little weird to say that watching a show about dread, murder, and the ways our lies destroy our relationships makes me happy, but it does.
Also, I’m weirdly fascinated by the fact that they apparently CGIed Keri Russell’s baby bump (I hate that word, but don’t know what else to call it) out of the show on a few occasions. We can do that?
I read that Scarlett Johansson was pregnant for most, if not all, of the filming of that last Avengers movie, so they just CGIed it out! The future is now!!!
Sansa has been framed!
It’s clear to even this casual observer that she is protecting this roll of toilet paper from further attacks by your cat.
Last week I came home to find my Chihuahua standing over a destroyed roll of toilet paper with an expression of glee on his face. Fortunately for him I am aware that the cat has a history of stealing and tearing up any paper products she can get her paws on and that she is the only one of the animals who knows how to open the bathroom cabinets.
My (now deceased) cat had a really fun game where he would knock the mason jar that has all the wooden spoons in it off the counter, open the lower kitchen cabinet, put the spoons in there, then close the cabinet door again. The first time this happened it took me a while to first find the spoons and second to figure out how the hell they had gotten into the cabinet.
This is how ghost stories start!!
I am here for any and all the Americans related gossip. OH MY GOD POOR MARTHA. I worry so much for her! I love all the women in that show and wish they would just kill Stan already.
My husband and I binge watched the 3rd season last week and we just kept saying “poor Martha” over and over again. I really want Martha to have a happy ending! Like, I realize at this point that is impossible because she’s too entangled, but she’s just trying to live her best life!
FUCK STAN
STAN IS THE WOOOOOOOOOOOORST. I just watched the S3 finale last night and I’m still so mad there were no real repercussions to him for his rogue operation. But the curveball the Director threw about the exchange was great because it just showed that the possibility of the Bureau not taking his suggestion for who to trade never occurred to him.
**Stan IS the worst spoilers**
I am really bothered by all the commenters who imply that Stan and Nina’s romance is real, as if she simply fell in love with the much older man who coerced her into putting her life at risk and clearly has no real understanding of the situation she’s in.
So much. I mean, Nina was clearly a survivor who knew that making a man (or in fact several men) believe that she loved them was her best bet. You’d think it’s a little unrealistic that these men would not doubt her love under the circumstances, but those commenters show just how eager some people are to be deceived.
Yuss, LR going up at 1pm GMT is glorious as I am now reading while eating leftover spaghetti bolognese and not feeling guilty at all for blatantly not working.
I know it will end soon, but for now: SO HAPPY.
I was in the library and told myself I would break for lunch when the LR went up, thank you Ladies of the Toast for this gift
The before-and-after CGI pictures mainly made me think of Garrett from Community trying to be a microscope. (But also of Fury Road, because everything does.)
I rewatched Fury Road over the weekend. I don’t even like action movies but that movie just gets me pumped! And I was giggling with glee because they actually did all that shit!
I can completely forgive Fury Road any cgi trickery because I know if they used it its only because they physically couldn’t do what they needed.
And also for safety reasons. They didn’t actually want people to get blown up and crushed in the desert, which is understandable.
A real director would have done what was needed. Tom Hardy’s beautiful face be damned.
They really did put Tom Hardy atop one of those fifteen-foot pole-pendulums! He was not very happy about that, considering he has a fear of heights.
I find it deeply endearing that he talks about how frightening it was. Because there’s no need for stoicism, some things are just scary and should be described as such!
I love Fury Road so much. They used so little CGI! I was mainly thinking of Furiosa’s arm, and the behind-the-scenes shots of Theron with a bright green motion-capture glove.
Can we talk a little about the Gawker trial? I am very full of conflicted emotions about this. On the one hand, publishing Hogan’s sex tape was over the line (and not even the worst thing they’ve done, outing that guy last year was terrible). But at the same time, I feel like amid the snark and the attitude and the skeevy actions, they’re also one of the few organizations on the web that’s made a legitimate commitment to doing actual national journalism, and if they go under and that work goes away, it will be a really unfortunate consequence (that they will have brought down on their own heads, certainly, but still).
The layers of wrongness here fold in on themselves like phyllo dough. I agree with you about their commitment. I agree with you about the wrong things they’ve done. The judge is wrong about putting that question to Carmichael – and that wrongness is confounded with the fact that both Daulerio and Denton are openly out (as in, the likelihood of them sleeping with Carmichael is slim).
On balance, as Mycroft is always saying, Gawker’s utility outweighs its errors. But those errors include hella hubris, and yes, they will have tripped their own selves up with it if this case precipitates their end.
All this trial has revealed to me is that Daulerio is even more of a scumbag than I already believed him to be. It’ll be a shame if the good writers and reporters who work for Gawker suffer because of someone like him.
It would be kind of unfortunate, I guess, but only in the short term and only until more responsible people and orgs step up. Behavior like Gawker’s really can’t be tolerated in a healthy society. There will be others.
Are you actually sure that more responsible people and orgs will step up? Because I feel like the last decade looks like a journalism death spiral.
yeah actual investigation and editorial oversight cost money, and it’s by no means established that anyone in the business values them
As someone who posts there from time to time (primarily on Jezebel), I would be very sad if Jezebel got shut down because of the mess going on at Gawker. And, like you, I’m very conflicted. I absolutely think they screwed up and shouldn’t have posted the video, and it’s clear that their extremely juvenile attitude towards privacy and propriety got the better of themselves here. They absolutely shouldn’t have posted the video and, like with the forced outing of a famous person’s brother, people should have been fired/forced to resign.
But the idea that they could be sued into oblivion here is really unfortunate, as a legal matter, and this trial has become a circus that shouldn’t happen in a system with robust press protections.
they’re two sides of the same coin, their schtick is investigative muckraking which is something most of the press is totally unwilling to do, and especially to back up with costly things like fact-checking (publish negative stories? we might lose access!) but also means they have a more aggressive, information-wants-to-be-free attitude towards journalistic ethics. Most small press that gets anything done is, and has been, similarly freewheeling and skeevy.
This isn’t related to the links (or maybe it could be tied in to founding fathers?) but I’m listening to a 60 yr old white man yell about freedom of speech and I’m sitting quietly feeling like Inigo Montoya… it does not mean what you seem to think it means (the unfettered ability to say whatever your want whenever you want with zero consequences).
Send help.
“Sir? I’m a little confused and I think you can help me.”
“Why, yes, little lady, I’d be glad to help.”
“I wonder if you could tell me the exact wording of the constitutional amendment you were talking about. I’m not sure I have it right.”
“[quotes First Amendment with pride and gusto]”
“Oh. I see. Are you sure that’s it?”
“Yes, indeed. That is exactly what it says. In this great nation of ours …”
[Interrupts] “So there’s nothing in there about freedom from consequences of one’s speech? You’re sure? We can say anything, but nothing about preventing responses to what we say? Just that the government can’t prevent us speaking. Hunh. How about that.”
Too subtle. They’d never get it.
Related: I need to change my alarm clock from NPR to something different, because they seem to have decided I should wake up every. single. morning. to an interview with a someone saying something akin to “he’s saying what people really think, I like that he speaks his mind unlike other politicians even if it isn’t nice”.
Saying what you think without any filter is not some magical skill! It takes zero self-control. Thinking before you speak and weighing potential consequences of your statements takes a lot more judgment, restraint, and consideration!
I just…literally, not blurting out every thought that comes to mind is one of the major skills I used to discuss and reinforce with my teenage students as a basic part of Being An Adult.
You know what has been killing me? People saying “I don’t like him, but he says what he’s really thinking I admire that!”
and then when I say something like “I actually prefer commuting when it’s overcast.” or “I’d rather have snow than freezing rain.” I’m interrogated and shut out of conversations. Is the trick to getting people to listen to what you “really think” to be a gigantic racist fuckhead cuz if you can’t handle my innocuous opinions what are you liking about his?
Exactly. He’s the adult equivalent of the toddler who asks why the lady in the check-out line has a weird nose. (But without the excuse of not knowing any better).
David Greene was interviewing a Trump voter in OH who said some version of “He’s saying what people want to hear!” about 4 times in 2 minutes, and Greene (to me) sounded like he was having a really hard time not outright saying, “But you see that the problem is not just that Trump is filled with garbage, it’s that if he is saying what people want to hear, that means that THOSE PEOPLE ARE ALSO FILLED WITH GARBAGE AND THERE IS A SCARY NUMBER OF THEM.”
And then Greene talked to some conservative muckety-muck who flatly said, “Just because you’re an American with an opinion, it doesn’t make your beliefs true, and these guys are all wrong. I would vote for a tree stump before Trump” and it was very awesome (relatively).
I heard that this morning and thought: bless you, conservative muckety-muck. stumps over trump. at least you’re not allllll as crazy as it seems.
I don’t tweet (am old) but I think that #stumpsovertrump has potential.
I think the comparison of Martha to the wives of serial killers is spot on. The example that interview reminded me of is Megan McAllister, the fiancé of Philip Markoff, the “Craigslist killer.” She initially was publicly adamant that there was no way he could have done the things he was accused of, and there are interviews (both police and media) showing the gradual, horrifying realization of what happened.
Alison Wright clearly takes such a thorough, serious approach to playing Martha, which I love, since she’s one of my favorite characters and deserves to have someone in her corner in real life, even if she doesn’t have that on the show.
It would have been so easy for the show to portray her as sad and pathetic, but both the showrunners and Alison Wright never let you forget that she’s a full human being, and I love them for it.
Guys I really need some reassurance after last night that we’re not in the last days of the Weimer Republic. I know Hillary (or Bernie?) can beat Trump soundly (right? right???) but even so, almost half of the country is going to vote for this guy. The hatred and violence he’s stoked won’t just disappear if he loses. I’m scared.
I can’t reassure because I feel exactly the same way. So perhaps some comfort in company?
We are not in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Trump will lose to whoever he faces. And it won’t be half the country voting for him – it’ll be around 35% of the people from the around-55% of the VAP who actually vote, who make up about 235m of the 320m people in the country. So he’ll pull around 45m votes, which is still scary, but it’s not half the country, and to be honest, it’s not (or at least, it shouldn’t be) that surprising. This stuff isn’t new, y’know? These people have always been around.
Yeah. They’re just emboldened to be louder now, at least if they’re like my mother. I’m hoping it’s the death knell of that kind of thinking, and nothing more.
this is what I tell myself, too, about the BernieBros who will NEVER vote for Clinton but will show up to vote for Trump. There aren’t many, they’re just the loudest ones, and the vast majority of Dems who show up will vote for whoever has the D by their name.
yeah, honestly most of those guys weren’t going to vote before Sanders showed up, and will probably stay home if he’s not in the race.
Also, polling suggests that about 50% of Clinton’s supporters would vote for Sanders in the general, and 47% of Sanders would vote for Clinton, so that hardcore contingent seems like it’s very small.
What? That’s ridiculously low. It ought to be 90%+, in either direction. Where did you see that figure? I mean, when the alternative is any of those Republican candidates?
I now find myself desperately hoping they won’t vote, since my younger brother just called Hillary “the Butcher of Benghazi” and got in a snit when I freaked out at him. He literally thinks Trump is better than her because of Info Wars bullshit.
In other news, I’m down to only having my husband to talk to in RL which is great.
I was just telling myself this while looking at last night’s results. Yes, Trump “won” my state, but he “won” is by 38%, which isn’t even a majority. And that’s not of total voters, that’s of Republican voters. Support from 30%-40% of HALF the electorate is not as dire as it sounds.
If we’re going for Weimar analogies (and believe me, I understand the temptation), I might put this more on the level of the Beer Hall Putsch: a deeply unsettling but ultimately doomed drive for power. That ultimately worked out for Hitler because he was able to pontificate during his trial and then imprisonment gave him free time to write Mein Kampf. But these are different circumstances and it’s unclear to me what will happen after a Trump loss. (Also, while the Putsch works as an analogy on some levels, Trump is not yet trying to lead a violent coup consisting of disenfranchised beer garden regulars. Also, the economy is sllloooowwwwlllyyy improving, rather than being constantly crushed by punitive war reparations.)
These are all very excellent points, thank you.
YES, it’s important to understate that Trump’s getting the smallest “majority” of Republican primary support for any nominee in DECADES. Even Mitt Romney, whom no one was really passionate about, got a much stronger showing of support.
Yeah, the Republican party’s decision to swallow the Tea Party, rather than let it split off, seems to have resulted in severe indigestion.
Part of me is just watching the resulting convulsions with horrified fascination, and part of me is wondering if I should have applied to that Vancouver masters’ program after all.
I am genuinely worried about the people who are reflexively anti-Hillary voting for the guy with an R behind his name. I know Trump is only pulling a plurality of the Republican vote now, but it could and will easily be more. (I say this as someone who genuinely likes and supports Clinton, but also has a parent who hates her for no-good, obviously sexist reasons.)
I am so upset by how much WORSE the campaign is going to get. Trump potentially pulling back on the racist violence he’s been stoking once the primaries are over, balanced out by everything DEFINITELY getting full-on Clinton is Lady Satan. The sheer level of hate aimed at her, uuuuugh.
The hatred of her just makes so little sense when compared to how really terrible Trump is. But it doesn’t have to make sense…
And it’s hard to imagine many of the Sanders supporters I know, who would never in a million years vote for Trump, actually vocally backing Clinton after all the venom they’ve been directing at her. (Directing it at Trump would be preaching to the choir…) I also can’t picture them being quiet about politics.
But then I realize I’m saying “many” and thinking of, like, 5 people.
Yes! It is so hard to get proper perspective in an election season, but keep reminding yourself all that stuff about anecdotal data.
I also trust Bernie will give her a strong endorsement when the time comes, and do campaign work for her in the general. I hope that’ll help, for anyone who was inclined to vote anyway.
If I have an aneurysm this election season, it’s going to be after hearing yet another person equivocate Trump and Hillary, declaring a vote for either will literally bring the same result. NO, NO, NO, NO.
WHAAAAAT!!!??? I could almost just barely see someone making that argument about two candidates from within the party mainstreams, but …. but …. the whole point of Trump is that he isn’t anywhere within the party at all! Are these people even paying attention to what’s going on at all?
I think I need to spend the next nine months on a bender.
I’ll be right there with you.
I may need to spend the next four years on a bender, and I don’t even drink.
Hillary Clinton is a liberal Republican. Donald Trump is The Beast from the Sea. Oh my god, people!
If the DNC can show the most basic strain of competency in launching a general election campaign against Trump, it should not be a close contest. Also, I think the RNC is going to be in real disarray these coming months, especially if they’re serious about having a contested convention (and making Paul Ryan their king nominee??? That’s what I’m hearing now), with Trump ALREADY suggesting there’ll be violence if they don’t listen to all the voters/delegates so far. The downside is that the GOP has already sown decades of mistrust about Hillary, so that’ll still be in effect. But still, I think the choice will be really stark in November.
Ryan has refused, and I don’t think they can come up with another consensus candidate.
Yeah, he refused the Speaker of the House position when first asked, too. And POTUS is going to be a hell of a lot more appealing, especially since it would mean escaping the Speakership.
His excuse for changing his mind about the speakership was that it was agreed he wouldn’t have to work too hard and would have lots of time for his family. He isn’t going to be able to use that one to justify changing his mind about the presidency. It’s true he might change his mind, but IMO he seems genuinely not to want to run right now.
I feel really bad for Paul Ryan, because he so obviously Does Not Want Any Of This. Let the poor man retire.
Eh, he accepted the VP nomination in 2012. I wouldn’t conflate “do not want to be held accountable for a screaming, frenzied mob of cannibalistic man-babies who are just as likely to turn on you” with “no political ambition whatsoever.”
Oh, I think he wants to be President like anything! I just think he’s afraid it would be career suicide to run this year, when the chances of his party splitting up are fairly high. Next election, once he can come in as the savior of a newly refined (in all senses) Republican Party, I expect him to be right in the thick of things.
Ahh, now that’s a persuasive theory.
“If the DNC can show the most basic strain of competency”
That’s a big if. Ugh.
I know they really fell on their face for the 2004 election, but I think that a lot of the people who ran Obama’s 2008 election are now involved in various branches of the DNC. I mean, his speechwriter Jon Favreau wrote a very strong endorsement of Clinton (that also acknowledged that very gross thing he did after the election). That gives me hope.
ME TOO, to your entire comment. I did get my Hillary-hating mother to agree that Trump cannot be president of the country, but she’s gonna have to find a third-party candidate in the woodwork somewhere because she still won’t vote for Hillary. And my dad will certainly vote for Trump if it’s between him and Hillary.
I don’t feel so confident that he will lose. I’m not sure he’ll win either but I feel like it’s such a toss-up at this point. Independents seem to like him. A lot of people really don’t like Hillary and might not vote for her just because they can’t stand her.
I was thinking about the possible matchup last night and it makes me so, so depressed. The idea that electing Hillary to stop Trump would be a necessary evil doesn’t make me feel any better about her not being a good person to give executive power to. Or that Bill would be so close to the White House again. It all feels really bleak right now. Especially after voting for Obama in my first and second elections.
You know, it’s funny. I always hear these stories about how “people hate Hillary Clinton so much they’ll stay home rather than vote for her, no matter who the alternative is.” I hear her supporters bemoaning this supposed fact, and I hear her opponents chortling about it. But in fact, when push comes to shove, it’s her supporters I see online saying they hate Sanders so much (for daring to oppose her) that they don’t think they can bring themselves to vote for him, and in 2008 there were the PUMAs flooding the webs with their racist bile against Obama because she wasn’t the nominee. (This is distinct from the actions of Clinton herself, who made a brilliant concession speech and campaigned hard for Obama last time around and doubtless would do the same again if something strange happened and Sanders was to be the nominee this time.) I mean, I dislike Clinton a great deal as a candidate and potential president, but I won’t have the least bit of trouble voting for her against Trump, and I imagine that most people who tend to vote for Democrats would feel the same.
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of truth in this. There’s some people — nowhere near a majority — who are loud in their bitter griping, but November is still eight months away, and that’s a long time to stare into the abyss of a future Trump presidency. And I really do think a strong impression will be made when Sanders endorses her.
Yeah, the difference between “I don’t want X to be President” and “I want X not to be President” is going to become a lot clearer after the conventions.
AGREE AGREE AGREE. I plan to vote for whichever democratic candidate wins the nomination. That said, I am stunned and horrified by the amount of people that I know – I live in Brooklyn, a very Sanders borough – that refuse to vote for her because they “don’t respect her as a woman”. Like, what? What?! It’s of course only men who say this, normally citing the fact that she did not leave Bill when he cheated on her as evidence that she will be a terrible president. My head is going to explode sometime in the next eight months, probably.
I’ve seen some fascinating statistics from Pew Research about the changing demographics of religious affiliation and voting patterns.
I don’t think I can find the right charts this morning, but basically – the decline of mainline protestantism and the rise of ‘unaffliated’ translates to the dying off of the religious right.
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-chang…
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u…
eta: Literal dying off. Growth of ‘unaffliated’ is big – and balloons amongst millenials. Religious/right wing is a big slice of 70+ voters.
Yes, yes, all of this. Thank you for hammering home these important mathematical truths.
I’m scared, too. We need a blanket fort. I’ll bring chocolate.
Can there be a default Toast end-of-days plan where we all just meet up in the forest somewhere and live in a giant blanket fort? We can each take on various duties. I’m willing to be the unwitting scout who goes off to gather firewood and narrowly misses being attacked by a bear.
ugh YES
I’ll write Chopped! style scenarios for our dumpster-dived provisions to make dinner prep fun rather than bleak.
Ultimately, everything will be made into a bread pudding.
Or a deconstructed taco.
I’m a theater person and have no useful skills, but I’m happy to lead a Station Eleven-esque Shakespeare troupe. Because Survival Is Inefficient.
I have some legitimate wilderness survival skills, so I can teach everyone how to build fires and adequate shelters. I also know some edible wild plants AND some plants that are toxic to burn and thus should never go in fires.
Also I can edit all our postapocalyptic survival memoirs.
Can we do this anyway? Like, Survivalizing the Patriarchy? Because I am on board for a Toast Republic already, and I can’t see a downside.
my most persistent anxiety/obsession is “what do i do if i am forced to flee my home due to natural disaster, war, zombies, or alien invasion???”. i legit think about this in GREAT DETAIL, you guys. i am now adding “…if Man With Tiny Hands is elected?” to this list.
so: i’m in! i’ve got survival skills, am strong & resourceful & not a picky eater, and have all of my burner gear to use as basic shelter for a few people. please take me with you <3
I’ve become very good at fire-building, and am familiar with the principles of draft and fireplace placement. This is perhaps a step beyond the giant blanket fort, but it’s pretty much my only technical skill.
I’m friends with a group of women and we all have an agreement whereby, once we’re old and retired and all the husbands/male life partners have died off (because let’s face it, women live longer than men and most of us who are partnered with men are 5-10 years younger than our partners because that’s how it tends to work in academia for some reason) we’re going to pool our resources and get ourselves a farm somewhere and be self-sufficient and male-free. We may end up starting that a little sooner than we thought if things keep going this way (and we may have to welcome men temporarily, but that’s ok).
I already have a plan for this sort of thing, is what I’m trying to say, and I’ve been living in the PNW for ten years so I’ve developed mad survival skills.
I need this too. Last night my mom texted me all like, “I have a feeling Trump’s going to win.” She is not particularly savvy about politics, neither am I, so I have no reason to believe her, but it rattled me SO hard. [ETA: she does not support Trump at all]
I keep going back to the GOP base. They’ll come through, right? Most of them don’t support him, right? Even if he technically gets the most delegates, can’t the party be like, nope, this isn’t happening? I honestly don’t know the answer.
I mean, they could, but it’d rip the party in half, so it’s unlikely to happen.
So there’s two big events in which the Republican base gets to decide/is supposed to have a voice: the convention this summer, which anoints the nominee, and then the election in November.
The convention will be attended by thousands of delegates (most of whom are going to Trump) and the party leadership. I’m not going to make predictions about what’ll happen by the end, but I’m pretty certain it’s going to be BANANAS, with the real potential for violence if Trump stirs up his delegates to fight if the leadership tries to nominate someone else over him.
What really matters is the general election in November. Even though Trump is sweeping all these states’ primaries, he is doing so with far less percentage of votes than any Republican nominee in decades. So no, he doesn’t have the majority of Republicans on his side, and I don’t think he will on election day, either.
I’m a little worried if the party pulls off a coup where they nominate Paul Ryan (who hasn’t been on any primary ballots???) instead. Apart from what that means for democracy, I think he might appear so sane and reasonable that they can gather a majority of the electorate who hate Hillary/Democrats/anyone connected to Obama. But even in the case of a President Ryan…that’s a much better outcome than President Trump.
i’m going to keep re-reading your comment to sooth myself.
Yes! And now I’m bringing some sources, courtesy of Five Thirty-Eight.
Published after the results last night: It’s Still Not Clear That Donald Trump Will Get a Majority of Delegates
Republican Voters Kind of Hate All Their Choices (from March 3rd, so just a couple weeks out of date), which found that only 49% of Republicans would be satisfied with Trump as nominee, compared to 63% for Romney in 2012 and 77% for McCain in 2008.
There’s also this nugget: “Not only is Trump’s 49 percent satisfaction rating lower than any recent party nominee’s, it’s also lower than almost all the losers’. Rick Santorum in 2012 was more widely acceptable than Trump, for example. The only exception was Ron Paul in 2012, although the exit polls asked about him in only two states.”
I was just saying to a friend last night that I wondered if the GOP was going to actually force Paul Ryan to be the nominee. He is certainly the most solid choice they could make, but it’s a little complicated by the fact that he doesn’t seem to want to be president? They only barely convinced him to be Speaker of the House!
THERE IS A PRECEDENT! This is exactly what happened to James Garfield in 1880. He never nominated himself or made any effort to campaign, but everyone pounced on him as the best choice during a contested convention, even as he shouted that his own vote was going toward some other candidate. Then he literally stayed at home on the farm all the way until after election day.
I do think POTUS has a hell of a lot more appeal than Speaker of the House, anyway (especially since it means leaving the Speaker position). It probably won’t be that hard to convince him.
🙁 Poor Garfield, just wanted to be left in peace to read.
I’m liking John Kasich at this point. I disagree with him on absolutely everything, but he doesn’t make my skin crawl, and he’s doing an excellent Mr. Rogers impression in his current speeches.
I was really tempted too to latch onto Kasich too as a Good Guy, until I saw Samantha Bee’s excellent segment on him exposing his anti-choice credentials, how he’s shut down Planned Parenthood, doesn’t even allow for exceptions for rape/incest/danger-to-mother in his anti-abortion laws, and put a gag order on rape counselers so they can’t even mention abortion to survivors.
So yeah, he does a hell of a Mr. Rogers impression, all right. Complete trash beneath the surface.
Oh shit, I’d forgotten about that. Unfortunately, he’s on par with the other GOP candidates on that, I believe (except Trump, who will take whatever abortion-related stance will bring him the most success).
I am intensely worried that Bernie supporters will not join Clinton in the general race and vice versa. I have this lingering fear that we are going to cut off our nose to spite our face, miss the forest for the trees, etc.
I agree though that Trump’s supporters aren’t just going to quietly go away if they lose, and I’ve been wondering about this for weeks and weeks. What do we do with them?
What do you do when you realize that half of your family is not only going to vote for him, but that they’ll do it proudly? Do you just show up to Thanksgiving dinner after the election and pretend like they don’t want to use the government to control your body, deport your neighbors, and revoke marriage for your friends?
J is all Bernie right now (1st time he & I have ever been on the same side of a presidential campaign) and he will NOT vote for Hillary. He sincerely believes she’s a liar, an opportunist, a Wall St shill. Blessedly, he won’t vote for Trump either, but… then what?
This also worries me, as a strong Hillary supporter. But that is probably because I spend too much time driving myself crazy reading the Dank Meme page. The data shows that millennials who currently support Bernie are very willing to support Hillary, especially if Trump is the GOP nominee http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elect…
Re: family voting for Trump – it is more like a third of my family but I don’t know what to do either. Maybe we should plan on having Thanksgiving together if it all goes wrong?
Thanks for linking to that article. It makes me feel a LITTLE better?
I have been doing some hard consideration, and I genuinely cannot think of anyone in my family (or, come to think of it, in my in-laws’ family) who I would expect to support Trump. So thank god for that, at least.
I’m technically a millennial, I believe (even though I’m kind of an old person at heart), and a Bernie supporter. I would not vote for Trump (or any of the Republicans, let’s be honest) in a million years. If one of the Democratic candidates turned out to be a Russian sleeper agent, I would still vote for that person over Trump.
I still don’t like Hillary. I don’t trust her, I think she and Bill are too willing to bend the law, I don’t think she’d handle the power well, etc. But her basic policy ideas are okay. They’re in line with general democratic values.
With a Hillary presidency I’d feel very “meh.” With a Trump presidency I’d be in constant fear of what psychotic thing he’d have planned at any given moment. “Meh,” sadly, is the better option.
Are you me? Because this is exactly what I think, too, only you expressed it so much better than I could have.
So much of the Bernie supporters’ rhetoric has been about vilifying Hillary rather than just being enthusiastic about Bernie which I think is at the heart of why I kind of want to throw up any time I see a post about him on social media. Save that shit for the general election, guys! Don’t give the other side ammo to use against Hillary in the event that she gets the nomination!
I had a really upsetting conversation with my sister who is a HUGE Bernie supporter, like volunteering at his rallies and cold-calling people about him huge, where she just tried to convince me that Hillary is an untrustworthy liar and if she gets the nomination she’ll have to “think very seriously” about whether she’d vote for her. I think she was partly just salty because some asshole lady told her she was letting all women down by not supporting Hillary, but still. Give me a break! I told her that I was going to vote for Hillary just to piss her off.
Well tell her to focus on winning back the Senate. There are some real tough races for Dems out there, make calls into IL, OH, PA, etc and give her pal Bernie some friends to advance his agenda with! And if she’s not willing to do that maybe that will open up an interesting conversation about how progressive change is really made.
I’ve suggested this to some college students I work with and the results have been interesting. Some seem to actually consider it, some have declared themselves too pure to work for anyone but Bernie.
This is a little old, but she’s raised $18 million for down-ticket races and is vocally supporting Dems in those races. I’m not worried on that front.
God, I despise that! I am supporting Sanders, but got into an argument just last night with some dude who REFUSED to talk about how important the Senate is. He was just like, “nah, Bernie’s got this,” and actually *shushed* me. What a dingus.
He was just like, “nah, Bernie’s got this,” and actually *shushed* me. What a dingus.
[flips table]
I’m not entirely sure about that! In my city, NYC, all of my fellow Millennials might WANT Bernie for president, but everyone I know is fully aware that they are obligated to vote for whichever Dem gets the nomination. It’s not even a question at this point. Every single young person I know is going to vote for a Democrat, even if it’s not their first choice candidate. Just giving you some hope, here!
Our primary system needs runoffs! A person who gets under 50% of the primary vote HASN’T WON. The two top vote-getters should face each other in a second round. Why don’t we do this? Does anybody out there know why we don’t?
Oh God, would that ultimately make the campaign season necessarily longer? Because the idea of standing any of this for one day more than necessary literally has my throat constricting with fear.
typically if you do an instant runoff system you number your choices. so you could vote 1. kasich 2. rubio 3. cruz
That would be efficient AND great!
Just think, if we had runoffs and Trump had lost in the second round every single time –to Cruz, blergh, just another flavor of nasty–he’d probably be out by now, planning his third party run, and Cruz would be losing to someone else.
The trouble is, when I think someone else, I think Kasich? Bush? Rubio? Aren’t they all essentially Trumps who’ve learned not to run their mouths in public?
They’re Republicans, which is awful for women and minorities and lots of things, but they’re not Trumps. They’re not encouraging violence and Islamophobia, they’re not talking openly about rolling up the First Amendment to get rid of freedom of the press.
I’m concerned that Cruz is actually a not-so-secret anarchist that would do his best to dismantle as many government organizations as possible, which would do huge damage, but I don’t think he’d be the loose cannon that Trump would be. (Not better, just…different.)
Cruz scares me more, actually, in that I think once empowered he would lose what semblance of control he has maintained thus far and do everything Trump would do only quieter.
I agree with all of that! I think it would probably be easier for Pentagon leaders to stand up to Trump and flat-out refuse orders like “bomb the shit out of that country where that guy is making fun of me,” followed by impeachment. Cruz, though…
It’s a pipe dream, but I would love for us just to get over winner takes all binary voting in favor of some kind of ranking or “budgeting.” (Like, you would have as many votes as there are candidates, so you could choose to “spend” them all on one person or portion them out.) Literally the system we use is the worst, in that it ends up with the smallest amount of people pleased with the outcomes.
I was too young at the time of her AG nomination, but I’m kind of a retroactive Lani Guinier fangirl.
No, they’re stuck at the convention with the delegates voting in rounds until there’s a clear majority. It’s a matter of days, usually.
I say “usually,” but honestly the last one was in 1952 on the Democrat side. I just finished listening to Destiny of the Republic, about James Garfield, who also became president out of a contested convention (he NEVER wanted the job, never nominated himself). Really fascinating. When two candidates are at a total impasse, a third one can spring up and be agreeable enough so that everyone’s willing to compromise and go with that person instead. But that, of course, was a very different political world.
Well, I think partly because the primaries are at the discretion of the parties, to a certain extent (this is why some some states have caucuses for one party and not the other, why the two parties have a different number of delegates, etc). You’re not running for office, you’re running to be the candidate for office. And in presidential elections, the convention is essentially round 2 of the primary – that’s the chance to decide who the nominee is, we just assume that it’s a foregone conclusion based on the number of delegates. But I suppose if all of Rubio and Kasich’s delegates voted for Cruz, he could be the nominee (which isn’t necessarily very comforting)
Well, we don’t have a parlimentary system where we’re going to continuously fail to find a viable coaltion to form a government, so we’ve got that going for us.
Plus, as others have pointed out, half the country isn’t going to vote for him. I think there are enough Republicans who find him completely unacceptable that they will either not vote or will vote Democrat or third-party. I also think that in the time between now and November there are a lot of opportunities for Trump to piss people off and lose their vote.
Absolutely agree. Ultimately, there are more D voters than R voters in the country. I personally think we are at the beginning of an extended period of D presidents.
That would be really nice. If only they can find a way to fix the gerrymandering that makes the House of Representatives so red.
Yeah, though given the high concentration of D voters, gerrymandering isn’t even strictly necessary for a R-controlled legislature. Who’s ready for more gridlock!
Yeah, but Democrats actually have to show up, which so many of us are not doing. Wtf is wrong with us??
Yes, yes, yes. This.
Days like this I am reminded my dual citizenship and think, “Welp, time to reconnect this other culture of mine.”
Looks at what’s going on in that country. “Well, fuck.”
Most of the world seems to be going through a lot of pain right now.
I know this feels like a completely new and different election, and maybe it is and all previous patterns are out the window. But what’s giving me comfort is looking at how presidents came to power. Out of all 43 of the presidents, only 3 had never held a previous political position prior to their elections, and those were the generals Eisenhower, Grant and Taylor. Historically the positions that get you into the presidency are governor or senator. Even stepping from VP, house representative or cabinet position to the presidency are actually fairly rare. Businessman to president? Never happened. (Herbert Hoover was the closest to that, but at least he had served as Secretary of Commerce.)
OMG that judge in the Gawker trial. Whether Carmichael has slept with her bosses or anyone else is not in any way relevant to the issues. AT ALL. It was so so so so so so so so so inappropriate of the judge to ask that question.
How did Carmichael answer? What does one even say??
I had to read about 7 articles just now just to find out that she answered no. No detail on whether she screamed “nooooooooooooooooooooo” and jumped up and down on the judge’s legs for allowing such an awful question. Because that’s maybe what I would have done.
That is better than the judge deserves, assuming that after you jumped on her legs she still got to keep her job.
Per Vox she calmly said “No” and wasn’t rattled by the question. http://www.vox.com/2016/3/15/11237948/gawker-hulk…
It is completely awful and I hate that judge and that jury BUT there was a comment on the article on The Cut about Carmichael’s appointment that was so delightfully savage and I was ::eyeball emojis:: for days. Gawker is the worst. http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/03/jury-asks-if-jeze…
Oh man I’m reading A Little Life right now and I’ve waded too deep into this bleak quagmire of a book to extract myself. I’m like ~450 pages in and I honestly don’t know what new horrors she could inflict on this poor character for another full 300 pages.
Growing increasingly disillusioned with it, however, has not diminished this book’s ability to make me cry at regular 70 page intervals. Help.
“I honestly don’t know what new horrors she could inflict on this poor character for another full 300 pages.”
If I asked you to take a drink each time a new pedophile monk was introduced into the narrative I’d be arrested for manslaughter.
Dibs on that band name!
Pedophile Monk.
I got bored because I found the writing & internal life of the characters boring/unpleasant, despite it having been highly recommended by people I trusted. Dunno. To keep going, or not to keep going?
You don’t have to finish it.
If you’ve managed to extract yourself, stay out. I wish I had!
Oh god free yourself.
Go stand outside and let the sun touch your face and remember that people love you.
Can I just say how happy I am to be warned off that book?! I had it on my wish list, on the strength of some vague internet recommendations as being THE BOOK to read, but I do not need to be brought low by a misery machine disguised as a book. My gratitude to Choire for writing and Nicole for linking is infinite.
Ugh, it does not get any better. I kept hoping it would, and then after the last terrible thing happened I just gave up and was like, “Well, might as well finish it, my week is already ruined.”
Yeah at this point I’m just waiting for, like, them to get a puppy, the puppy to get puppy cancer, after ninety pages of the puppy slowly wasting away, Jude accidentally runs Willem over with a car on the way to puppy chemo (puppy is mercifully killed in crash), Willem ends up in a coma, and then all but one of the remaining characters commit suicide. She leaves one character alive simply to spend the last fifty pages describing in harrowing detail the intricate contours of their misery.
And I know I’m still going to stubbornly finish the damn thing.
I also didn’t notice it was by the same author as The People in the Trees until halfway through, and then I was all “No wonder!!”
“Jude accidentally runs Willem over with a car”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAH HAHAHAHHAHAHA HAHAHA
Like Jude would ever fucking do ANYTHING for himself. “Drive a car.” The IDEA.
I was massively triggered by A Little Life – I had to take time off work after reading it – and honestly I have no idea whether it’s any good or not because I have no way of thinking about it with any kind of objectivity. So I loved Choire’s decision for giving me permission not to like it – everything else I’d encountered was just praise for how amazing it was.
I’ve only recently twigged that when people say ‘ingrate’ they mean ungrateful… I always thought it meant someone who was trying to ingratiate themselves. Turns out I’ve been wildly misinterpreting a lot of insults!
ugh my mom lovesss to use the word ‘ingrate’ and it does, in fact, grate on my nerves – I always feel like it’s a vindictive and judgy sounding word…if I didn’t know what it meant I would still cringe! your interpretation is much better, and probably leads to at least a little amusement when the context is right.
The 2016 Name of the Year bracket is out and there are some truly incredible entries on here.
Sicnarf Loopstok. Cosmo Bjorkenheim. Ransom Barefoot. Dr. Shark Bird.
I am love with every entry.
Lt. Charlene Sprinkle-Huff! Dr. Kim Nazi! LANGSTAFF DICKERSON!
Thank you so much for making me aware of this. Omg.
I am literally crying at Jasmine Albuquerque-Croissant.
Furious Carney is the one that got me. Also, Dick Tips.
I lost it at Howdy Goudey.
Onno Hoes is on there! The former mayor of Maastricht, famous for cheating on his husband with a 20-year-old. His name was always a favorite of mine even in the crowded category of Dutch politicians, which includes such luminaries as Jet Bussemaker, Aalt “Aleid” Wolfsen, and of course, all-time all-star Tiny Kox.
Really, I feel like Dutch names in general would be good on this list. Maybe the Olympics will bring up Sjoerd Hamburger again.
Speaking of mayor names, I think Butch Otter should be an honorable mention.
Other thoughts:
Rigoberto Uran Uran–Uran Uran sounds like the worst Duran Duran cover band ever
Rusty Justice–my username in any future post-apocalyptic video game I play
Cinderela Guevara–must have one heck of an identity crisis
wait these are real names? *swoons*
To be fair, Tiny Kox’s full name is Martinus Josephus Maria Kox, but it’s common for Dutch people to have a “nickname” that they use on everything but their passport and he’s always written as Tiny Kox in the paper or on the Socialistische Partij website (where he is featured alongside other SP politicians such as Tjitske Siderius, Bastiaan van Alpledoorn, and Tuur Elzinga).
Bastian van Apledoorn? OMG
I’m rather taken with Dicaprio Bootie and Taco Pope myself.
Taco Pope was robbed with his seeding. Clearly a #1 name there.
Billie-Jo Skeleton is my favorite. It’s like the set up for a joke. Regular name…regular name…wait for it….SKELETON!
I wonder how these sound to non-English speakers. Some of them rely on being or looking like other words, but so many are just wonderful combinations of sounds.
I love this every year, and there are some doozies. Like, a first name Pope and a last name Pope, who need to marry so that we get a Pope Pope.
But really, Dick Tips made me fall out. I can’t.
DR. SHARK BIRD.
(I also started shaking with laughter over “Burm Snart.”)
I have had legal hearings with him!! What a small world.
YES. I didn’t think anything would top “Dr. Shark Bird,” and then I read “Burm Snart” and I snort-laughed so hard it hurt my face. It pleases me on a deeply unintellectual level!
I feel like “burm snart” should actually be the term for snort-laughing so hard you hurt your face? As in, “Oh man, you guys, I can’t get over these Name of the Year Lists, I’m seriously burm snarting right now.”
Sounds too much like “bum shart” or “burn shart” to me.
Since seeing this list yesterday, I’ve been idly repeating “Burm Snart” in my head like a mantra. Makes me smile every time. It’s just… so perfect.
I lived in the same college dorm as the 2013 winner (Leo Moses Spornstarr) for two years, and he is probably the most famous person I know? He is the only person with this last name, as his parents combined their last names (Sporn and Starr), and he is an only child.
Did his parents like…think about how it would sound for a second before going with that combination?
The biggest problem is that his middle name ends with S, so it combines with the S in the last name.
If it was Leo Morton Spornstarr or something, you would hear the separation.
As it is, you just end up with Leo Moses, Porn Star.
That just sounds like Leo Morton’s Pornstar to me, which is also excellent?
I adore weird names and this is the greatest gift, thank you. <3
(Also, this helps ease the pain of my family talking non-stop about sportball).
Also, “Rusty Justice” is a character in my upcoming Supreme Court porn parody.
So s/he would be Justice Justice then? (Or possibly, I suppose, Associate Justice Justice.)
These are all amazing. How has no one yet admired Chizu Shimizu Buckalew? Saint Schwing? Jorja Pound Turnipseed? Sweet Orefice????????????
… and I am CERTAIN that Shuntayvious Primes-Willes is going to be in the NFL someday.
I just want to snuggle Lil’Jordan Humphrey. Lil’Jordan! Awww!!!!!!
Okay, can I ask an honest question — what is the deal with this name tournament thing??? I have never understood it. It seems at worst racist and at best mean-spirited. Can anyone please explain to me why this is funny and not mean?
I guess I see a line between “lol what kind of dumb/trashy parent would do that to their kid” and appreciating the juxtaposition and absurdity of someone named Dr. Shark Bird? Maybe it is mean-spirited, I dunno, but I have definitely had that feeling where I’m reading something and come across a really great name and I just have to pause and savor it.
Remember when the Hairpin was doing lists of the best names from various periods in history? I remember literally crying at my desk over the Puritan one. Somebody’s gotta bring that back, because silly names are my favorite.
I took an Ancient Mediterranean History class in college that was at 8:30 a.m. in a dimly lit room, and I basically spent most of the time jotting down all the funny Greek names.
In a previous academic life I did Tudor-Stuart Britain and even >20 years later all you have to do to get me to burst into giggles is yell “Praisegod Barebones!” across the room.
Is everybody ready for a brawl to commence? Obama to announce his Supreme Court nominee at 11 AM EST.
I am legitimately so excited about this. I yelped when I saw that he was going to do it this morning.
Not looking forward to the “political” “commentary” about it, though.
I am here for FULFILLMENT OF CONSTITUTIONAL OBLIGATIONS!
I so hope it’s another RBG.
ETA: I mean, there can be only one RBG. So the next closest thing.
It’s been leaked — it’s Merrick Garland.
Oh Jesus fucking Christ, really? A 63 year old Eisenhower Republican. Hooray. I really hope this turns out to be incorrect, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Whatever. When Garland gets stonewalled for the rest of the year, maybe President Clinton will nominate someone better.
I’m kind of hoping that’s the point… nominate Garland with the intention of getting someone else in after he gets blocked.
Yeah, this is a relatively conservative pick — I’m guessing it’s designed to make Senate Republicans look bad/fill quickly with their best possible option. Normally Obama is more concerned about his legacy.
Yeah, either the Republicans block this–which makes them look even more batshit crazy than they already are, and sets us up for a more liberal nominee under Clinton (or a batshit crazy nominee under Trump, which the Republicans don’t want either)–or themy confirm it, which, eh. He’s no RBG, but at least he’s not Scalia. I think it’s a smart move.
(Also, if he’d nominated Sri Srinivasan–who I was rooting for–and the Senate blocked it, it’d be harder for a future president to nominate him later.)
Ugh fiiiineee, this is a good point. I guess I was always assuming that there would be no way that the Senate would actually block the nomination, but it’s true that if he nominated Srinivasan and they somehow did manage to block it, he probably wouldn’t get a second shot.
Super bummed though, still. It would’ve been so great to have had a former public defender (Jane Kelley) on the bench.
I do too. I mean, ideally I would’ve liked someone more liberal, but this is kind of nice as a raised middle finger, like “Okay, you REALLY have any substantial objections to this guy? Really? Come on. Tell me.”
“Two months ago, you loved this guy and wanted to work with him.”
Ok, this makes sense. I was initially pretty disappointed, but you’re right, there are more tactical considerations at play here. I feel like my West Wing obsession has really prepared me for this real life situation.
Replacing Scalia with a moderate is still a huge win for the liberal side of the court.
YES. I heard he’d be a reliable liberal vote (remember that the conservative side is WAY out there). At any rate, he is NO Scalia, and that’s the biggest point.
Furthermore, let’s be honest, a 63-year-old is not going to be on the Court for generations.
I just called Senator Toomey’s offices since he’s the spokesperson announcing the Republican intransigence, and his staffer told me “it’s just not true” that the Constitution requires hearings on nominees. I replied it may not be the exact wording of the Constitution to say “hearings,” but the Senate is required to consider the president’s nominees, and this is clearly the spirit of the law, and they told me, “that’s just not true.”
So I looked it up. The president has a duty to nominate someone, and to appoint someone “by the advice and consent” of the Senate. Just FYI in case anyone else feels like calling their right-leaning representatives.
It was a depressing call — I ended up saying it was not as a democrat or a republican that I would be opposing Senator Toomey in his upcoming re-election bid, but as an American citizen, and that while I had never been an activist before this issue had motivated me to help mobilize my neighbors to get out to vote against him. And then the political operative said one more time “it’s not true that the Senate is required to hold hearings,” so I said that was very interesting, would he point me to where in the Constitution that is made clear, and instead of replying he hung up on me.
Not an uplifting experiment in democratic spirit, but still, good to make one’s voice heard. If anyone else feels moved to call Toomey’s offices, they are (215) 241-1090 in Philadelphia and (202) 224-4254 in Washington D.C.
Wow – every time I’ve called a congressperson’s office to advocate a position I know they won’t in a million years take, the staffer has been extremely neutral. I assume my opinion goes directly in the trash after I hang up, but damn you’d better at least pretend to be listening to me! I wonder if that staffer was going off script or if Toomey is just particularly awful? I feel like calling them up and chewing them out on your behalf for trying to argue with constituents instead of representing them.
I guess I could have been more neutral myself — I did start out by saying I was horrified that it was Toomey, my senator, was the spokesperson advocating for no hearings. But I was very measured, and the aide was pretty rude/snide throughout. I called the Philadelphia office so maybe someone picked up who is not used to being in an “outward-facing” position to the public.
Holy shit he hung up on you?? Get all over Twitter about this (I only say this b/c Toomey is always on Twitter), that’s really messed up for a public servant’s office to do that. You pay his salary!
I just went on a twitter rant against @SenToomey. If he thinks “it is wise to give the American people a more direct voice in the selection and confirmation of the next justice,” then it should also be wise to give the people of Pennsylvania a more direct voice in government, i.e., he should shut up until Pennsylvania has a chance to vote him out. #sitdowntoomey
>:(
you are awesome — I love this! Perfect logic.
I may borrow this argument — or at the very least, going to retweet you!
Sure, go for it!
Librarian toasties might enjoy this twitter: https://twitter.com/FakeLibStats
Though I can say with certainly that the “hand sanitizer and papercuts” fact is not fake.
Some of those pre-CGI images just reminded me of the Futurama episode “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings”, where Fry’s holographic concert goes wrong and the actors are revealed to be standing on an empty stage in their underwear. That’s way closer to reality now than you’d expect!
Wow, Jacob:
“I think that the story you’re scared to tell is usually the one you’re supposed to tell.”
yes
Not link-roundup related, but I went to my first real ballet class in ~15 years last night and I’m feeling really proud of myself? I did okay! I’m massively out of shape and have no flexibility to speak of, but the instructor said he can tell I’ve had training! The mirror was brutal but I wasn’t tempted to backslide into restricted eating!
That said, I definitely overdid it, and today I’m wearing a knee support and limping. But I’m looking forward to next week’s class.
You should feel proud! It’s so hard to get up the courage to just go, but once you’re there it’s pretty great. After going regularly to adult classes for a couple of years (after a ballet-filled childhood) I let myself backslide and just didn’t go for about a year :/ Working on getting back into it myself! Solidarity!
I feel you! I take a ballet class for high school age girls (I’m 28) who are all beautiful, lithe, flexibble dancers. My best friend teaches it and lets me drop in to do SOMETHING. Some days, I feel like the oldest, fattest, least flexible and least graceful dancer alive, next to them — but the thing is, each week, I DO notice my technique getting a little better and my body remembering how to do these things it used to know so well.
Good for you for going!!! Hope you can keep it up and just enjoy dance for the sake of dancing!!!
That’s so great! In the last state I lived, a Russian lady had just opened a ballet school that offered affordable adult beginner classes (in addition to their regular school) and I SO wanted to join, but I had to move again before I ever got a chance.
Very inspiring! Awesome for you!
From that Tournament of Books piece: “A Little Life is not an allegory. An allegory would have a pointed point. Our allegory would reveal itself, at least on one page, as a coded discussion of a thing that is obvious.”
I think the point Yanagihara is making — there are a couple others, too, but this might be the main one — is that there is a cultural myth we tell ourselves about the all-powerful healing nature of love. That it will balm our wounds or whatever. That it will make us whole. But, via Jude, Yanagihara instead says, “No. There can be ways of breaking a person that is so complete love won’t do it.”
She’s doing this in an operatic way — and that may or may not be to a reader’s taste. (I H A T E D the book.) But I think Choire misread it fundamentally, even if he ultimately allowed it the win.
The whole Founding Fathers article is delightful, but my favorite part is the aside, “That’s a metaphorical shoelace. There was no actual shoelace.”
Also, in actual good news for the environment, for the second year in a row, the global economy has grown but emissions have NOT grown. Small progress! https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleas…
I am unnerved by finding myself in agreement with something Camille Paglia has said.
She’s pretty awful, but occasionally she’s the asshole who says something worth saying.
As an anthropologist, my agreeing with Paglia moment was when she critiqued (in her own particular idiom…) anthropologists studying kink for utterly desexualizing it, ie, writing about it with such detachment it made it impossible to grasp how it could be sexually compelling. Man did it ever go to the heart of how anthros study people, in part, to avoid confronting our selves. 😐
I just got season 3 of The Americans on DVD last week and I am very excited to watch it.
Where can a law-abiding Canadian toastie watch season 4 online? We don’t have cable and I don’t really want to subscribe for the sake of a single show, since everything else I watch is available through the internets. Is it on iTunes?
It’s on iTunes and available for purchase on Amazon. I’m in the US, but I don’t have cable, so I usually watch it the following day online. It typically becomes available around 6-7 am Wednesday morning (sometimes earlier).
Do you purchase the season via Amazon or iTunes? Or is there a way you watch it for free?
I buy it. I don’t think you can legally stream it for free. Season 3 was just added to Amazon Prime a few weeks ago, so you’ll be able to see if with an Amazon Prime subscription, but you’ll have to wait nearly a year.
So many good links and comments today, as always! I am so busy at work (how dare everyone really!) but I have these all open in separate tabs to look through later.
Also, I listened to Nicole’s interview on the Caritas podcast. It was lovely.
Do any of you know how to watch the Americans without an FX subscription???
If you have Amazon Prime it is available on their instant video
The new season is?!
Oh I don’t know about the new season (I’m behind on it (edit: it being the entire show) myself).
S3 is, S4 will be available to buy as it airs, but you’ll have to wait a while for it to be free as part of your prime subscription.
http://www.askamanager.org/2016/03/my-employee-se…
Did anyone read this AAM yesterday? There are so many twists and turns! I know there are a lot of reasons a person can’t just drop a toxic job and leave, but I hope the LW does just that and finds a sane place of employment, because there is exactly no one at this company who seems trustworthy, from the CFO to the manager who pushed that lemon off on her.
I read it! and all the comments! What the FUCK, man!
That is bananas! Oh my goodness!
I am baffled at the utter lack of sympathy for a woman trying to maintain a job with three kids under the age of 6. Our culture does nothing to support parents of young children and this can easily be seen as an outcome of that rather than the actions of some horrible employee.
There are a dozen more productive ways to deal with that situation than the one this person chose, though. Lots of people in lots of workplaces manage to be a parent and also work without lying, misusing company resources, and abusing family relationships to conspire with an executive to lie to employees.
I agree, but the discussion devolved way beyond that –
1. assumptions that this person had human and financial resources to make better choices (because most of the “better” choices depended on having those resources)*
2. assumptions that this person drove the CFOs poor decisions
*She was put on a PIP because she couldn’t get in at 8am consistently because of her childcare situation, the state of childcare being wretched in the US with early drop-off programs not consistently available in all communities and costing more money. PIPs are the banshee’s call for employment (current and future) she has 3 kids and all other resources are an unknown quantity to the internet hivemind.
I would have had more sympathy for her if another employee, who presumably also needs her job, wasn’t being threatened with firing and no reference because of her actions.
There are people defending her in the comments! As in, more than one human person!
My level of engagement this morning is set on “Hahaha the picture of Kristen Stewart petting a man in a bodysuit” and I am feeling pretty good about that.
The expression on that dude’s face is A++. .
That is the real stand-out image from that article. “Wow, there was actually nothing at all for them to work with” is one thing, but that’s a whole other level of silliness.
Another bit of Americans stuff, talking with the music supervisor about the insanely awesome music cues: http://www.avclub.com/article/americans-music-sup…
Now that Breaking Bad is gone, I’d have to say for me The Americans has the best use of music out there (except for maaaaaaaaaaybe Better Call Saul.)
Better Call Saul is HANDS DOWN one of the best shows EVER. I will die on this hill (another hill: Schitt’s Creek).
I do adore Better Call Saul, I’m just thinking specifically of the music. There’s less songs and musical moments that stick in my mind with it.
I’m just going to say that I used to live in Emily Dickinson’s backyard. Meaning, in the house whose yard backed onto her backyard. Anybody know what I’m talking about?
Yes, I absolutely do! Was it annoying having tour groups tromp around the grounds all the time? Did anyone ever try to steal things from your garden?
(I grew up there! I am working on an essay about it that I might pitch if I ever finish it.)
Actually, it wasn’t a private house, it was a dorm. If there were tour groups, I didn’t notice. More likely that we were disturbing them!
Toasties who nerd out on construction from yesterday— today they’re putting up walls! Its an entirely different crew! It was only Monday when they were laying concrete and now there are STEEL BEAMS. wow.
I know the new supreme court justice nomination is the big US political news today, but does anyone want to talk about Boehner endorsing Paul Ryan for president earlier today? I’m cackling about the shade of it all. This election year is a disaster and I’m taking humor where I can get it, I suppose.
its GREAT
“In the same question-and-answer session here, Boehner referred to Ted Cruz as “lucifer.” He previously called the Texas senator, who led the failed Republican effort to shut down the government over Obamacare, a “jackass.””
Looks like someone is enjoying his retirement.
I never thought I would find anything to like about Boehner, and yet…
Boehner gives no shits anymore.
That Dickinson piece was really great. ‘Emily never shrank from any knife.’
What, Bradley Cooper thinks he’s too good to get in a Green Man suit and sit around being pet????
I love that it’s Kirk from Gilmore Girls. Because CGI stand-in for a talking raccoon is such a Kirk job.
He’s also the director’s brother! I guess that makes it easier to convince someone to do the less glamorous tasks…
‘Hey bro, wanna be in my Marvel movie?’
‘HELL YEAH!’
‘Cool, here’s your lycra body suit.’
well, it’s Marvel, so they’re ALL wearing lycra bodysuits half the time.
but I guess you might feel like the odd one out if yours was the lime green one with golf balls stuck on.
the real technical challenge is gonna be when they get down to trying to film the Captain Golfcourse movie
well that should be coming up soon, they’re starting to run out of other dudes to give solo films to before Black Widow can get one
He’s also got a minor roll in the movie, I believe.
Just think of Andy Serkis, who has become successful and respected in film through being the go-to guy to dress up in a bodysuit studded with markers and act out his part, without ever appearing in the finished work.
There are many crimes my baby has to answer for in her five months of life on the outside, but one of the most heinous is causing her parents to be TWO SEASONS behind in The Americans.
Here’s some awesome: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/these-ladies-…? (Beyonce and tap dancing, you can’t go wrong!)
I love modern takes on classic dance styles and it makes me wish I’d bothered with dance a bit more as a kid, although judging by my Irish dancing career, I wouldn’t have been much good!
Thank you so much for sharing this! Exactly what I needed for a pickmeup after a crappy day. So impressive!
Last season of The Americans, I tweeted a question along the lines of, “do you think Philip is fond of Martha?” and the official The Americans account retweeted me, and every single person who replied said something along the lines of, “He’s gonna put her down like a sick dog” and I was like, “ARE WE WATCHING THE SAME GODDAMN SHOW HERE!?” It was pretty fucked up how many people said that to me, actually.
I’m normally all “death of the author YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO THINK” but I feel so pleased and somewhat vindicated that the showrunners have as much empathy for Elizabeth and Martha as they seem to.
I for one am extremely glad they have that obvious empathy for Elizabeth and Martha, especially with Elizabeth being the way she is. I’d be a lot more worried otherwise.
Inbound link, rounded up: Randall Monroe’s latest What-If includes a link to The Toast.
Oh shoot, and I just came back from grocery shopping utterly codless.
Don’t worry about it, we’ll just open a McDonald’s on some other planet to compensate.
“The Americans” is one of those shows I feel hopelessly out of the loop over. It’s not like “Breaking Bad” which I just never had an interest in watching. I honestly tried to watch “The Americans” for awhile in the beginning (back when I had cable) and it just…didn’t click with me for some reason. Which is nuts because I love Cold War spy stuff and Soviet kitsch and all that. So now when I see people raving about it I’m like “why didn’t it work for me?”
Me too. I also tried watching Breaking Bad but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. But, I love spy stuff! Why didn’t I like the Americans?
Me three, on both. But my interest in/tolerance for shows that seem to be a bunch of men doing crime/violence/politics/war is very, very low. Meh. Tiresome. At least in part, I think it’s because I’ve consumed SO MUCH of that (this subject matter saturates our entertainment world) I’ve just had enough, unless there’s a compelling reason for me to overlook its essential boring sameness.
*Well, actually*. The prince’s name was Ronald. And he was a BUM.
Hello but did everyone see this Kickstarter of the genius woman who is asking men to pay her to read Jonathan Franzen? “Originally the first marker was going to be $1000, but then I was told I was lowballing prices, so
here we are.“
Oooooh, can I do this retroactively? I suffered through his entire book of miserable essays for a book club.
In a just world all women who have been forced/tricked into reading Franzen would be recompensed for their time.
I’ll put on my best lawyer suit and do a class-action TV commercial. “Have you, or someone you love…”
OMG, I just choked on tea laughing. Possibly the high point of my day.
I think she needs to reverse the ordering though, The Corrections was possibly the last bearable Franzen book. DO NOT READ FREEDOM FOR A MEASLEY $5,000.
HERE FOR West Of Eden and also want to very enthusiastically rec Jean Stein’s bio of Edie Sedgwick. It’s a masterpiece.
When I was younger I realized that 8-year-old girls generally became obsessed with horses, or Emily Dickinson. Probably a solid third of girls were actually in the “other” category which was an obsession with whales or ancient Egypt or Disneyland or rocks or something. But horses and Emily Dickinson seemed to be universal. (For North American English-speaking girls. I obviously am not correct as far as non-English speakers and those of other cultures.)
I would love to know if the horses thing is western-specific; I was very firmly in the horses-obsessed camp from about 4 years old.
I know english riding is gaining popularity as a middle-class hobby in places like Dubai and China, but were horses a childhood obsession in those places before?
Me too! Child development is fascinating.
Egypt, here! Most of the girls I knew were horse people, though. I dont think I knew any Emily Dickinson fans at 8. Dolphins seemed to be the other big one in my area.
Dolphins are really big with small girls in New Zealand too.
I was a horse and dinosaurs girl.
Canada was also horses and dolphins. I think the Emily Dickinson might be US-specific.
USian reporting in. No girl I knew was obsessed with Dickinson, growing up. Horses and dinosaurs, though: hell, yes.
Ok, so more regional then, I guess.
And now I want to see a fancy interactive map of what young girls develop obsessions with in different places.
Me too for Ancient Egypt. And I should have said cetaceans instead of just whales. (That’s the one that includes Dolphins, right? Too tired to look things up.)
I was a 9 and 10 year old girl obsessed with Emily Dickinson. I was probably *the* Emily Dickinson girl in my 5th grade class.
This is fascinating. I actually found both horses and Emily Dickinson super boring as a child, and was mystified as to their appeal. (I was definitely into the dinosaurs, though. Also gemstones and minerals. I had a very extensive Digging Artifacts Up From the Ground phase.)
canadian here, from the prairies: for me it was dragons, the supernatural / paranormal in general, and video games, but i’m an outlier adn maybe shouldn’t be counted.
uh so. horses (I learned to ride at 7 or 8), ancient egypt (why yes I was always wring in my super awesome hieroglyphic secret notebook), and emily dickinson (though tbh I love her poetry a lot more as an adult than I did as a child). mostly I just liked the idea of her and loved to read and write poems and carry them around on scraps of paper in my pockets.
damn, I was coooool.
For a school project when I was 12 I made my own hieroglyphic language and became fluent in writing it, so I have many journal entries from that time written in my own made up hieroglyphs.
my people are here!
I love it! can you still read them?
Did you have the stamp set?!! I loved mine but almost never used it because I didn’t want it to get dirty.
You forgot ballet. Always the major existential crisis when you are told that ballet and horse riding are incompatible so you’ve got to choose one. (I went with ballet/dance in general.)
I went through the obligatory horse phase in kindergarten. I think 8 is when I started my Animorphs phase. My dinosaur phase was at peak intensity in preschool and early elementary school (I still find dinosaurs really cool and interesting, but no longer have an encyclopedic knowledge of them). I don’t think I know anyone who had an Emily Dickinson phase, but I’m in the South (U.S.)
This was both pre-cable and pre-Internet so things have sure changed I’m betting.
Horses and Island of the dolphins, actually.
Cats and The Beatles (and even though I am an older Toastie, they broke up before I was born)
First I’ve heard of The Beatles! An excellent choice for an obsession!
Dickinson. But the obsession didn’t really become a driving Thing for me until I read Paglia’s take on her in “Sexual Personae”.
My youthful obsession was Laura Ingalls. We share a birthdate and were both born in Wisconsin, so that helped. I read the books so many times. I wanted (and got) a sun bonnet. I also wanted (but did not get) a butter churn. Why? IDK.
I have made an appointment to get my brain tested for fun things like ADD (possible), memory loss from getting hit on the head repeatedly (also possible), dyslexia (not outside the realm of possibility), Autism (fairly unlikely), depression (very likely), and social anxiety (also likely), so in like a month, I’m gonna be here freaking the fuck out on y’all about my brain doctorin’.
BECAUSE BRAINS MAN, HOW DO THEY WORK.
I’m here for your AD(H)D feels, friend. I’ve got it too.
what the hell does that Flint memo even mean
‘this city’s government is kinda corrupt, let’s let them be poisoned’?
I’m pretty sure it means “The population of Flint is overwhelmingly poor and mostly black so they’re not worth getting worked up over.”
yeah but like what were they trying to pretend it meant with that weird disclaimery dogwhistle stuff
I tried to watch The Americans, but only got as far as the scene where Keri Russell’s character gets brutally raped, I suppose, because this is now the Only Way writers can show how horrible a character is so we can be happy when he gets killed later. Can we not think of another way? Or is it just the most expedient? Psychological abuse is pretty horrifying, but I guess that takes too long.
WTF? Really? So, it didn’t pass my test and is in my Boycott bin.
Totally understand your concern here but it turns out this is a really important set-up for a number of things that play out over years the show, including the most nuanced and interesting exploration of a married couple’s sexual relationship that I have seen on television, exploration of the impact of sexual abuse/coercion on a male character, and a whole boatload of lies and truths and semi-truths that play out between characters over time. I think the point of the rape was not about showing how horrible that character was, but about forcing a moment of honesty between two people who had rarely been honest with each other — and seeing how that played out down the line. Maybe it could have been something other than rape, but it’s hard to see what else her own people would have done to her (that they did not already do as part of her training, that Phillip wouldn’t have known about) that would have set off the evolution of their relationship and themes on the show in the same way.
I’ll also note that even the showrunners think it got way better in season 2. I think season 1 was good (and I love the relationship development between Elizabeth and Phillip) but the writing was somewhat ham fisted compared to season 2 and 3 where they just took it to a whole different level.
That said — totally respect a principled stand! Just wanted to give some context.
Thank you. I was hoping I might get some context. I have miles to go in understanding my rage about this topic.
Honestly, Bill Nighy with dots all over his face is just as good a villain as Davy Jones. <3 Bill.
Dear Prudence thread, anyone?
I’ve noticed in my life that there is a common theme to statements like “she’s a great person” when she is, in fact, not at all a great person–and that is the fact that these statements could benefit from the addendum “to me” or “for me”, which in turn can be easily explained by a short parenthetical. For example, your friend is great *to you* (because you fit the narrow definition she has of who deserves friends).
This can be applied to all sorts of statements!
Some more examples:
“American slavery wasn’t that bad” –> “American slavery wasn’t that bad *for me* (because my ancestors and I aren’t black!)”
“There is no gender wage gap” –> “There is no wage gap *for me* (because I’m a dude!)”
I like the way you think. It’s like the fortune cookie game of adding “in bed” to the end of all the fortunes. Except this gives useful info instead of just making people laugh.
“Hillary is just as bad as Trump!” “…for me” (I was surfing some sections of Reddit last night, let’s say.)
Yes! This is an excellent application. I thought about including a Trump example, and I just couldn’t keep the gag response down enough to type it all out.
Specifically in the context of the Dear Prudence stuff I’ve noticed “s/he’s a great person” is most commonly the intro for the person who whips the writer hourly with an electrical cord while screaming racial slurs, and have started automatically interpreting it in the tone of “bless her heart”.
I know, right?! “I’m dating/married to a really great and/or wonderful person, but sometimes they….”
That sentence NEVER ends well. NEVER.
My theory is that the letter writer starts constructing the message to send off:
“Dear Prudence, I am torn about what to do with my boyfriend. He tortures small animals, exposes himself in public, and refuses to do any housework. How can I make this relationship work?”
Then she reads over what she wrote and is like, “oh, shit. he really sounds like a terrible human being when I write it all down like that. If I send this in as it is, the response is going to just be, ‘cut him out of your life right now!'”
At this point, if she doesn’t just go, “welp, I guess I’ve just answered my own question then,” she ends up feeling like she has to add in a justification for why she’s even with him in the first place.
Except the reasons we end up with people who are not good for us are usually complicated and take therapy/serious introspection/self-knowledge to answer. At the very least, they can’t be succinctly summarized in a letter to an advice columnist.
So the letter becomes, Dear Prudence, I am torn about what to do with my boyfriend. Even though he tortures small animals, exposes himself in public, and refuses to do any housework, he’s a really great person and I love him. How can I make this relationship work?”
I really appreciate advice columnists who can strike that balance between clearly delivering the advice, “dump him now please,” and doing it in a way that’s compassionate, and acknowledges that for whatever reason, that’s a hard decision for the LW to make.
Your analysis is probably accurate, especially because there’s very rarely any details which back up WHY this person is a “great person.” It’s just “slew of increasingly disturbing behaviors BUT they’re a great person for no particular reason I can specify!”
to be fair the added time and effort of listing it out doesn’t make things much more persuasive.
‘does the dishes, generous lover, very funny, stabbed a baby’
“Stabbed a baby” made me burm snart out loud.
Which is why there will always be an audience for advice columnists. It’s a lot easier to carry out the decision you’ve already reached when someone else is telling you to do it.
And if that helps someone dump the horrendous loser that’s dragging them down, well then that’s a wonderful thing.
“I’m dating a really great feminist guy, but sometimes he calls me a whore and demands to know when dinner will be ready. What can I do to make our relationship work?”
Here for all things Dickinson. I love love love that current academic thinking regarding her life and work is *finally* moving away from the agoraphobic broken-hearted spinster line.
ok i was excited for the Dickinson article but
“the garters still leap out at us like a pair of seductive spiders.”
what no please no
I want to say that if Trump wins the doors are wide open to you guys here in the UK, but unfortunately we managed to elect some oddly-colored xenophobe immigrant-haters here ourselves, so alas you're out of luck unless you can guarantee you pull down more than £35k a year.
Canada's nice, though.
… whereas I see just the opposite. I really think it's a function of who one sees/follows online.
This is late and nobody is gonna read it, but someone I follow on tumblr was interviewed for that article about historical fandom, and was INFURIATED, she says her answers were terribly misrepresented and that the article as a whole (plus their talk) could be summed up as “lol young women and their shipping, ha ha” when there’s….pretty solid historical evidence for John Laurens being queer.
The tumblr in question is john-laurens.tumblr.com if you want to read her perspective.