My little buddy Mr Wilson wanted to say hi.
Life and how it happens to a cook:
“My best days are behind me,” Claudia tells me, dismissing the flaky, buttery evidence to the contrary that has made a mess of my shirt. “Let people take the mantle and do what they’re going to do. It’s a young person’s game. To be good at it you can’t really have too much other stuff going on. I used to go to sleep thinking about things and wake up thinking about flavor combinations. Do you know what a luxury that it is? You’re sealed off from shit—good shit, bad shit. But I don’t feel competitive any more. I don’t have the fire in my belly, you know?” she says sincerely. “Life happens.”
ICYMI, I just thought Laura Passin’s piece on Gwendolyn Brooks was so lovely:
According to the standard literary history narratives about Brooks’s career, there is a distinct Before and After. The key event, in this story, is the 1967 Fisk University Black Writers’ Conference, one of the founding moments of the Black Arts movement. This was definitely a radicalizing experience for Brooks–it’s when she started publishing with black-owned small presses, for instance (a bold political move for someone as established as she was). Many people see a new kind of directness about race and poverty in Brooks’s post-1967 work, as she allied herself more explicitly with other black writers. But this version of Brooks’s poetic career has always troubled me, because it seems to suggest that Brooks was pandering to the white literary establishment before 1967. It also implies that she needed the urging of black men (Amiri Baraka, Haki R. Madhubuti, and others) to fully invest in writing about black life, which is simply untrue. In fact, Brooks wrote about not just black oppression but also intraracial colorism from her very first book. Personally, I read Brooks as always already radical; everyone else had to catch up with her.
the fuck is wrong with your sister:
Dear Prudence,
My sister got married recently. Some weeks before the big day, she pulled me aside and asked me to dye my bright blue and purple hair a more innocuous color so that I wouldn’t stand out too much. She wouldn’t listen to reason as to how I love my hair, nor as to how the process of bringing it to a more natural color would be difficult, expensive, and damaging. At the suggestion of a friend, I invested in an excellent honey-brown human hair wig, similar to my actual hair texture and length. Her big day went off without a hitch, and she never even seemed to notice my “innocuous” hair. At the end of the reception, after nearly everyone had left and my family and I were helping tidy up, I removed the wig.
My sister freaked out. She’s still angry, and she says that I violated her trust and that for the rest of her life when she looks at her wedding pictures of the family together or of me in the background, she’ll know that there’s blue-and-purple hair under there, and it will infuriate her. I don’t see any problem with what I did. I didn’t want to change my hair color for ONE day in her life, and I even invested in a hairpiece specifically meant to give her peace of mind. I hadn’t considered telling her about the wig beforehand, simply because she was busy and, as long as I showed up with “normal” hair, it should have been fine. How am I in the wrong here? Did I owe it to my sister to actually color my hair for her wedding? I wasn’t even a bridesmaid.
—Sister Wigging Out
I know Blackfish was manipulative and played with a few facts for sentiment AS YOU DO, but I am really glad that SeaWorld caved in the face of overwhelming public opinion, because that documentary made me cry with my WHOLE BODY even though I eat, like, a billion animals a year:
We are proud of contributing to the evolving understanding of one of the world’s largest marine mammals. Now we need to respond to the attitudinal change that we helped to create — which is why SeaWorld is announcing several historic changes. This year we will end all orca breeding programs — and because SeaWorld hasn’t collected an orca from the wild in almost four decades, this will be the last generation of orcas in SeaWorld’s care. We are also phasing out our theatrical orca whale shows.
It’s Steve’s birthday! We are watching The Night Manager and I’m making steaks.
Oooh, a happy update to an Ask a Manager column I think about WAY TOO MUCH:
It’s been a very crazy situation, so I’m sorry to have taken so long to send this. I feel like I’ve only just gotten over it properly this last week.
Thanks again for your and everyone else’s advice. I showed it to my coworker. We have both since quit and are working at other jobs. YIPPEE! I must say, the “normal” of working with people that are respectful, work hard and aren’t compete weirdos was really startling to both of us at first (in a very good way)! Seriously, I pinch myself each day and feel extremely lucky.
What does this season of Game of Thrones have in store for NOT A DOG Sansa?
Turner also made some other, vaguer proclamations. “I mean this season is a really, really big one for Sansa,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s probably her best season yet. It’s her really coming into her own. She, this season, really commands the respect that she deserves and she grabs hold of it and she runs with it and it’s really good.”
Has anyone on “Game of Thrones” ever had it “really good”? And what would that even mean?
Be warned: Things are about to get potentially spoilery, so you may want to stop reading here. Seriously, you’ve been warned.
Sansa has a new harness she wears in the car (it is also a dog rock climbing harness, but I’m waiting to see how much Chill she can muster before I start lugging her up cliffs):
This long exchange is hard to read: burn the letters of Charlotte Brontë?! Modern eyebrows raise at the suggestion of a new husband “censoring” the “rash” correspondence of two women—lifelong friends. But it’s all made easier to ingest by the fact that we know “dear Nell,” as Charlotte often called her, who lived until 1892, never made good on her promise, and 380 letters that Charlotte wrote to her over a span of 24 years survive. Indeed, Ellen devoted the remainder of her life to trying to get the letters published and into the hands of people who would understand their value. In this massive corpus, one gets precious glimpses of the everyday life of the famed novelist, and her equally talented but less prolific sisters, Emily and Anne. Ellen, Charlotte’s closest friend, received letters on the deaths of Branwell and Emily. Indeed, Ellen accompanied Charlotte and Anne to the spa town of Scarborough, where Anne would die in May 1849, two single women giving a last look at the sea to a mortally ill and frail companion.
The history of calling people “garbage,” which is something that I personally am trying to give up, because it makes me feel bad about dismissing actual humans like discarded diapers, even if they inarguably suck:
“Garbage person,” like “bloodsucker” or “Neanderthal,” is the type of descriptor that pretty much defines itself. In the interest of clarity, though, the term as used here does not refer to a sanitation worker, or a person made from actual detritus. It is, instead, someone terrible beyond belief, but in an everyday sort of way.
According to recent headlines, someone who ends their texts with a period may be a garbage person. Same with someone who refuses to chase down runaway napkins when they blow off their table, or chooses to listen to songs from the Entourage movie trailer.
In my high school in Long Island, I only knew girls who wore chopsticks in their hair to dances and none who knew how to eat with them. This was a far departure from the Queens neighborhood I grew up in, one of those actually ethnically diverse, actually working-class neighborhoods in which the kids of color far outnumbered the white kids, to the point that when in fourth grade we had a transfer student from Ohio with the kind of Irish skin that was so pale it flushed pink without warning, we mocked him ruthlessly, covering our eyes to indicate how his white skin blinded us, not realizing there was a whole other world where we, with our hair and our skin tones and our facial features, were destined to be the butt of most jokes.
ugh i love this fuckin’ song (my kid demands to listen to it before bed every night: “want Crosby, Stills & Nash!”):
Nicole, speaking as a person whose first really-remembered concert was Crosby, Stills, and Nash, you are doing the world a service and your child is an A+ human.
CSNY forever! And the Southern Man-Sweet Home Alabama controversy between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd is perhaps the most polite musical beef in the history of recorded music.
This reminds me – I gotta find my copy of “Four-Way Street” and start playing it in the van on repeat.
I love me some Southern Cross, but the phrase “woman girl” is probably #1 on my hate list. Uuggggh creepy and patronizing, and has no place in an otherwise amazing song.
Ha, right? Their harmonies mostly allow me to forgive them.
As a child they were the only music of my parents’ that I would listen to. I can still do a perfect lip-sync to “Judy Blue Eyes” out of sheer muscle memory.
That’s The Song for my mom’s group of hippie friends and we sing it a lot, a lot, a lot every summer.
My parents and their best friend, who I consider my Uncle, had CSNY songs labelled as “their songs” on the liner song listings. Almost Cut My Hair was my Dad’s (he’s a long haired Jerry-Garcia looking dude) and Marrakesh Express was my Uncle’s, who did humanitarian work building roads and sanitation systems in Africa. I can’t remember my Mom’s and this is bugging me now.
“I wasn’t even a bridesmaid.” The whole exchange was unreasonable before that, but that’s a whole new level.
My worst request from a bride was that I just “bend my knees a little in all the pictures so I look normal size” (I’m 5’11”), but at least that was a ridiculous thing to ask a bridesmaid to do rather than a guest.
was the bride like 4’11”?
Nahh, 5’2″ or so, just more into consistency than logic. (She also made me wear heels.)
haha, that is just a reason to take the photos with the bride standing on a giant pedestal!
or, in seriousness, she can be the one at the top of a short flight of stairs. There, solved! by a fellow short person.
Gonna take a wiiiiiild guess and say that there was at least a groomsman or two taller than you.
People are weird.
Hilariously, my brother in law is at least six or seven inches taller than everyone else in his family, so we have all these wedding pictures where he looks like a Secret Service agent or bodyguard standing behind us or behind his parents or wherever beside us.
I was the maid of honor at my sister’s wedding, and she threatened to pierce my ears herself so I could wear earrings. Thankfully she didn’t follow through (I was only forced to get a mani/pedi).
Seriously. We had everyone in our wedding party wear black suit/dress of their choosing, and accessorize in whatever their assigned color was (rainbow themed wedding), however they wanted. The blue groomsman’s fiancée went full out with the blue as well, dying her bangs blue and everything! She walked my husband’s grandfather down the aisle, and it was awesome. What is wrong with some people?
That sounds gorgeous! I also love the assign a color, let them pick what to buy in that color approach; that’s how you get something in your budget and that you’ll wear more than once.
We did that too! Much less stress especially when wedding party members are geographically far apart – coordinating shopping is difficult.
That’s the approach my SIL took, too, except with a few more stipulations: the dress had to be plum satin, knee-length, and sleeveless or nearly-sleeveless. However, David’s bridal has a large assortment of dresses that fit all of those conditions, so it was easy for everybody to find something that flattered her.
We also did the black dress/suit thing, although I didn’t think about the idea of assigning a color for accessories–that’s really clever! It was perfect for me because I didn’t need to do anything except tell my bridesmaids to wear whatever black dress they felt looked best on them and I didn’t care about anything else. We bought matching ties for the groomsmen (super sale at the Brooks Brothers outlet store) and it looked perfect. Nobody matched, everyone was comfortable, and we all had a great time.
I thought my sister was bad for forcing me to wear contacts and get my eyebrows waxed. Although, if I’d had blue/purple hair I have no doubt she would have made me dye it as bridesmaid, and she and my mother would have applied EXTREME SOCIAL PRESSURE to dye it even if I hadn’t been one.
Can’t see anyone flipping out about a wig though – what?
My aunt insisted that I get contacts for my cousin’s wedding– wtf, it isn’t even your wedding! I was out of vision insurance for the year so I just didn’t wear my glasses. The whole event was truly a blur.
Also purchasing a quality wig seems like a pretty major commitment, so if I were the sister I would probably be impressed?
Yeah, that’s a big expenditure! Particularly if it was good enough quality that her own sister didn’t even notice.
I considered just not wearing my glasses but I can’t even walk in a straight line without them (plus I’m socially awkward enough without everyone else being a fuzz of colour), so I shelled out for contacts even though I was damn poor at the time. My sister knew that, and then had a go at me and nearly sacked me two days before the wedding for daring to cost her so much for hair, makeup, and my (~$80) dress. Sigh, weddings.
no glasses?! I thought nerds were cool now 🙁
I have been asked if I plan to wear glasses at my wedding. If I want to kiss the right person, then there’s really no other option.
I was pretty surprised the first time I encountered the “brides don’t wear glasses” thing. If I were to get married, why wouldn’t I wear them? Aside from not being able to see without them, having glasses is just how I look. I will forever be haunted by an aunt of mine who got a “makeover” for her wedding and looked like a totally different person that day; nobody recognized her! I would hate to have that happen to me.
When I got married, my current pair of glasses was bright green. We made that our wedding color, so my sash, our nail polish, and the bridal party’s dresses/ties all matched my glasses. My glasses are part of my face and there’s no way I wasn’t wearing them!
Oh, that is an excellent response. I’m stealing that one and squirreling it away for the future. Especially because my glasses also correct for depth perception…
Basically, someone who expects that should be willing to pay for it.
My sister asked me to shave my armpits (I *was* a bridesmaid, in a halter dress) – she didn’t sound like she expected it to happen when she asked though! (I did it, because I am a Very Good sister.)
Maybe I’m just a bitch, but people who talk about their wedding day being the ~best~ most ~important~ day evar that everyone must partake in and change themselves for often remind me of people who are extremely nostalgic for high school. Also, I sincerely hope that the best day of my life doesn’t happen when I’m like 27! That just means it’s all very slowly downhill for the next sixty years.
THIS
I believe it wa Miss Manners who said something along the lines of, “Brides who go on about the wedding being the greatest day of their lives fail to consider what this says about their expectations for the rest of the marriage.”
Ditto. One of my favorite blessings is “May your wedding day be the worst day of your marriage”
Also, I’m only 30 and about half of the weddings I’ve been to as an adult have already lead to divorce, so there’s that.
I’m pretty sure my wedding will be the best party I ever throw. But that means I tried really hard to make sure all my guests had fun and felt welcome, so.
My grandmother actually described my brother’s (first) wedding as “a really good party with a wedding ceremony in the middle.” In the exceedingly unlikely event of my ever getting married, this will be my goal. (His second wedding was pretty good, too, but Grandma didn’t live to see that one….)
Some friends from back in the day threw a huge Halloween party in a Victorian house they rented. They dressed as Gina Davis and Micheal Keaton at the end of Beetlejuice. Once the party was in full swing, the guy dressed as Zombie Reverend called the ceremony to order, and they got married. Nobody else at the party was in on it.
Just as cool as it sounds.
That sounds amazing!
I always say you know a marriage will last if the people getting married are stressed out and cannot wait for it to be over so they can be married already.
I have blue and purple hair and my sister did not even think about it when she got married!
In a couple of weeks, a dear friend is getting married in a fairly traditional Jewish wedding, which includes an element of all the guests entertaining the bride. Not only do two of us have purple hair, but we will be bellydancing for her, since that’s how we all know each other.
A friend of mine had flamenco dancing at her wedding, including herself, because that’s one of her favorite hobbies. It was great.
oh, man, on my first read through I didn’t even NOTICE that she wasn’t a bridesmaid! What the actual fuck
I broke my foot shortly before my sister’s wedding. I was the maid of honor. We decided to put me in a wheelchair for the wedding, as it was more elegant than the “ka-thunk ka-thunk” of my crutches. My sister was a little mad at first like, “Couldn’t you have broken your foot at a more convenient time?!” but she got over it.
My mother-in-law to be very diffidently offered to pay for a salon to turn my then blue hair back to brown for my wedding, 14 years ago. It was more important to her than to me, and she was kind about it, so I said yes, thank you. If she’d been pushy and demanding or dismissive, I think our relationship would have gotten off to a different start. I’ve been grateful for her gentle approach for years, since it was definitely not in character otherwise.
These anecdotes make me *incredibly* thankful that my brother and sister-in-law were perfectly happy with me wearing a suit to their wedding (something I was admittedly worried about. I haven’t worn a dress in 15 years and I still get panic attacks at the thought of having to wear one). I can just imagine the response that would get from some of these ladies.
Oh gosh, you and me both.
Not so much the dress thing, but I had pink hair and a beach phobia, and my sister’s wedding ceremony was ON a beach. She can be a bit high strung sometimes and demanding, but was so cool and couldn’t-care-less about it. (our smom, less so, but frankly i’m done with her and weddings. two siblings getting married in one year was too much. thank god the next sibling isn’t until 2017.)
Seriously. I am of the mind that you don’t get to tell people to make drastic changes to their personal appearance in order to be in your wedding: like, a dress code is fine, but asking someone to dye their hair/lose weight/etc? No, and shut up.
To unify the threads, *I* would call the sister a “garbage person.”
I agree with everyone here about unreasonable bridal demands, but I still don’t feel bad for begging my brother to shave off his Mustache March mustache slightly early for my March 30th wedding. (He said he wouldn’t but then he did.)
To play devil’s advocate here, I kind of feel sorry for the brides who get so caught up in having to make sure that everything is perfect that they lose sight of the big picture; sometimes, those expectations are so extreme that they’re stuck between being gossiped about forever if the least little thing goes wrong vs. getting the “bridezilla” tag stuck on them. Does anyone ever talk about “groomzilla”? No, because basically all the groom has to do is make sure the best man has the rings (and sometimes not even that) and that the best man doesn’t get them arrested and/or catastrophically hung-over before the wedding. I probably never should have gotten married to the person that I did get married to, but I will say this for my ex, since it was her second marriage she’d gotten all that stuff out of her system and our wedding was actually pretty fun.
Agreed, great point. Also, though, some people are jerks about their weddings. For me, the key was doing what I wanted in every other aspect of my life so that a wedding was just one day.
My little brother was massively pressured to grow out his hair (he was in college and had been shaving it bald for a year or two) to be best man in my older brother’s wedding – but not by my brother or his bride. By my own mother. He did grow it because he loves our mom, and that’s how he learned he actually had an early-onset recessive hairline. It just didn’t grow back anywhere on top. He has been shaving it ever since.
Yeah. And there’s a non-zero chance of having a few awful guests who, yes, will actually be offended over something ridiculous (I remember a post on livejournal with someone saying she would be deeply offended if the favors were only half personalized M&Ms or something, because it would prove the bride didn’t care enough to get them for everyone. I mean, really?)
And of course that’s the bride’s fault, not, say, the groom, the wedding planner they hired, the family member who was put in charge of that task, etc etc…
Except I’ve never been to a wedding where there was later gossip about everything not going perfectly. I mean, if something goes really hilariously wrong, like the venue inexplicably didn’t have enough chairs, or the cake collapses under its own weight, sure, but people who are going to gossip about the fact that your sister showed up with blue hair or the place settings didn’t sufficiently match the centerpieces aren’t people you want to be friends with, anyway. There’s definitely a double-standard in weddings, like there is in basically anything else, but I think part of that double standard consists of convincing the bride *beforehand* that everything has to be perfect, rather than actually expecting it of her.
There better be DAMN GOOD THINGS coming for not-a-dog-Sansa.
Like, she wakes up in Winterfell and Ned tells her it was all a horrible nightmare and also it’s her birthday and also there’s no such thing as Littlefinger.
And she can curl up with Lady and eat lemon cakes for days. Make it happen, GRRM.
I would also accept Queen of the North, with Brienne as the leader of the Queensguard.
That is 1000% my hope.
I understand the point George R.R. Martin tried to make with Sansa (bad stuff happens even if you conform to the ridiculous social norms perfectly!) but I got so angry on her behalf last season, because WE GET THE POINT Benioff and Weiss, you didn’t have to take it that far!
Yeah – maybe it’s fading from my memory, but I think GRRM stayed on the right side of that line, and is pushing Sansa toward an arc of ever-increasing power and influence.
D&D blew that up and just made things pointlessly awful.
Edit: I discuss some book spoilers below so proceed with caution if you care about that.
I feel like there’s a decent amount of stuff to critique GRRM about but his handling of Sansa’s arc is honestly really amazing. And it just makes no sense for Sansa to be married to Ramsay Bolton because as far as most people know, she is the sole heir to Winterfell and incredibly valuable and marrying her off to a guy who is known to torture people for fun is not how you treat people you consider assets. (Plus, there’s the implications that Littlefinger is a super-creepy dude who wants to live out his fantasies about Catelyn through her daughter so, you know, he wouldn’t be willing to give up his power over her to some guy he can’t control himself)
(And giving Jeyne’s story to Sansa also completely ruined the statements GRRM made in his work about who is valued in that world and who isn’t and the reason no one did anything to save Jeyne is because she was considered to be no one, and it also ties into Theon’s arc. Though I do take issue with any woman being used as a plot point for the service of a man’s arc so I’m still not fully on board with what was going on there.)
Honestly, I had been considering catching up with the show but after what they did to Sansa, I’m done. And I get really angry anytime I think about it.
Yeah, once I read spoilers for that storyline last season, I was out. Sansa is lowkey one of the best characters in the books, and the showrunners don’t seem to have any idea what to do with her, or why she’s so great.
SAME. Sansa is very much my favorite and I’m very protective of her and love the work Sophie Turner has done bringing her to life (like, honestly, finding out about Sophie Turner is the one good thing that show has done for me. And Gwendoline Christie.)
But they seem determined to stomp all over every beautiful thing about Sansa’s character so I’ll just stick to the books and reading fanfic where Margaery and Sansa fall in love. (Though I also enjoy the idea of Brienne and Sansa very much)
Sophie Turner as Jean Grey is the only reason I might see the new X-men movie.
Also agree that the showrunners don’t seem to get her. What they don’t see is that she’s very much a teenage girl finding out just how much she can do: they just see her as a poor caged bird they can heap abuse on.
Fanfic links, please
The resolution of Sansa’s arc is THE reason I’m reading the books.
This, this, this forever. I am still watching the show, because I dislike feeling like I’m missing out on stuff that informs popular culture even if it’s bad (I also hate-read the entire 50 Shades trilogy, as another example). But I was pretty much dumbfounded at the decision to just…tank Sansa’s story, because it completely undercuts everything that’s been set up for her so far.
Sansa is at her lowest point during her King’s Landing arc: her dad’s dead, she feels guilty about it, she’s isolated from her entire family, she’s getting emotionally and physically abused on a regular basis. But then, unlike any other person in her family, she actually learns to play the political game rather than sticking to honor and honesty above all else.* And once she does, her trajectory starts swinging steadily upward. By the end of the currently published books, she’s (relatively) safe, poised to acquire significant power with her prospective marriage to Harry the Heir and unmasking as the long-lost inheritor of Winterfell, and learning to be a shrewd manipulator in her own right. If you take that storyline and go “nah, we’ll just put her through more trauma,” you are SERIOUSLY missing the point.
*You could make a case for Arya, but I would say she doesn’t so much learn to play the game as say “fuck all of you guys, I’m out, hit me up if you ever need someone murdered.”
I’m on my way to Switzerland for the weekend! Woohoo! See you on Monday, Toast!
I’m going to Switzerland this weekend too! Can’t wait to eat all the fondue!
Mr. Charlie Potato Hashbrowns is a dangerous felon who needs to be behind maximum security bars for the good of all potatokind.
Maybe he has a brother who can break him out?
I’ve missed that cute face!
YAY CHARLIE POTATO HASHBROWNS, I’VE MISSED HIM
It’s obvious to me Charlie has been falsely accused! There’s not a criminal bone in that tater.
I mean, I suppose there shouldn’t be any bones in a potato, but…
In German, he would definitely be guilty.
Der Täter = the perpetrator, culprit, or delinquent.
(Love you, Charlie P. Hashbrowns)
!!! This is an excellent thing to have learned today, thank you.
Between this and recently learning that rye (Roggen) and roe (Rogen) are one letter different in both English and German, I’m starting to wonder if I have a secret knack for making jokes that work in both languages.
There he is! You catched a potato!
THAT IS A CARTOON
Chaaaaaaaarliieeeeeeeeee!!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Thank you for this. I have worried about both you and Mr Potato.
Time to call Lt. Charlene Sprinkle-Huff!
HELLO YOU BIG FLOOFY SPUD WITH FOUR LEGS.
IT WUZ A SET UP!!! HE WUZ FRAMED!!!
(unlesss he’s being charged with felony cutes.)
The hair in his eyes makes him look especially louche and rakish. It’s the equivalent of an old-time gangster’s hat tipped low.
Okay, that Atlas Obscura post was fascinating, because as a Fandom Old I have been repeatedly baffled by the insistence that calling oneself or a thing one loves “trash” is loving deprecation (I am sure this weekend will see a lot of references to Matt Murdock as people’s “dumpster trash son”) but “garbage” is an insult. I admit I can’t get on board with the “trash” as self-mockery just because I still hear a lot of “white trash” and similar as, you know, actual insults.
Anyway. Like I said. I’m an old!
I don’t consider myself Old, but I have to admit that I’m probably kind of old for fandom, and I don’t get or like the “trash” thing at all. I’d never made the white trash connection, but that’s a good point. My main objection just comes from the fact that fandom brings me joy and I see no need to be self-deprecating about it.
I hate the trash thing as self-mockery. No wonder everyone feels bad about themselves, they keep calling themselves trash! Even knowing that it’s not supposed to be serious, I just can’t.
I’ve usually been relatively peripheral to fandom, but I’ve never gotten that, either. I mean, I will sometimes refer to stuff I’m watching as “trashy” or similar variants, because there are things I adore for values other than artistic merit, but not myself for watching them, or loving them too much. That’s just being a nerd!
I only learned about it when some kids went to a Ham4Ham show dressed as Hamiltrash (garbage bags covered with random Hamilton stuff) and Lin said “The kids, when they like something on the internet, they call themselves the trash of the thing.” I mean, I kind of get it? It reminds me of “shut your ugly dumptruck face” and other Tumblr-type expressions that really mean “I am overwhelmed by you and can only react with (mock) anger and resentment.”
I’m not a teenager but I’m possibly not a Fandom Old and I don’t see what’s weird about it. It seems to spring from a mindset that was already going on when I got into fandom. There might be regional and individual variations but overall, it seems to me like it’s just out of a different understanding of what it means and where it comes from. I’m more uncomfortable by the broad generalisations about what it says about the kids doing it. Even if some of them might be issues, they’re not helping.
I don’t know if this sounds vague or not. I wrote a long ramble about this but I didn’t want to bore anyone with my opinions on why this happens.
I’ve come around on the “trash” thing. It’s very freeing??
There’s always that dichotomy of “oh, but I’m not THAT kind of fan,” and calling yourself “trash” is a way of saying, “Hah, fuck that, I’m that kind of fan, and I don’t care.” Yes, I watch the thing with shipper goggles on, and I reblog pornographic fan art of the thing, and I read smutty AU fanfics of the thing, and I get my fangirly hands all over your media franchises and I do what I want, and I don’t give any fucks, I’m enjoying myself.
Among my friends, it seems to be used as “I have no shame, you cannot shame me.” People are STILL writing articles that paint fanfiction writers/readers as dumb teenage girls (because anything teenage girls do is terrible, amiright?) or sexually frustrated housewives with nothing better to do, and goddammit, fuck that noise.
If anyone else is enchanted by the idea of rock climbing dogs I recommend this roundup until we get pictures of Sansa in action: http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/tnb-the-best…
Gus the All Terrain Pug is my new favorite thing in this universe. Thank you.
OH MY GOD.
Biscuit. I love him. I neeeeed him in my life.
“Sadly, Biscuit was killed by a mountain lion”
Noooooooo! I have emotional whiplash from going from delighted to sad in such a short span!
WHAT!
Where does it say that? I refuse to believe it. (I did watch the video with the sound off.)
I knowwwww! It says it in the paragraph just above the video. I didn’t notice it until I started watching the video. Now I feel bad for saying anything! Poor Biscuit.
Dogs on and/or with bikes?
Toast. We reached a wonderful state of equilibrium last night. Male life partner was watching the NCAA in a row, but we muted it, so I HAD THE ENTIRE HAMILTON CAST ALBUM PLAYING and we both could sing “history has its eyeessss onnnn youuuuuu” to the players as my alma mater choked and was knocked out in the first round. A+ evening, would do again.
I am happy about SeaWorld, too! Story/confession – I went there while on vacation in San Diego a few months ago because 1) I was the only person in my family who has seen Blackfish and no one really listens to my liberal claptrap and 2) I’m not a very good person and I was honestly pretty curious about the whole post-Blackfish scene there, so I didn’t argue against it that hard.
It was really weird, and the lack of visitorship was pretty obvious. They had already phased out the orca shows there and replaced them with “educational programs” that were just insanely defensive. The word “Blackfish” was never spoken but hung on the air like a lead weight. It was all about how so very important it is to have orcas in captivity in order to understand their behavior. Which makes zero sense, of course, since their lives in captivity look nothing like their lives in the wild. The orcas got a little feisty and the trainers stood waaaay back and sent most of them back to their holding pen. It made me wonder how much everyone working there is just thinking “Dawn Brancheau Dawn Brancheau Dawn Brancheau” constantly.
The other animal shows there – dolphins and sea lions – are still very much zany sideshow-type things. I wonder if they’ll have to change their dolphin shows next? Ironically, of course, my children didn’t GAF about the cetaceans and just wanted to go to the dinky fish aquariums and watch the penguins for 10,000 hours. So as far as the toddler set is concerned, SeaWorld can just become a penguin farm and it’ll all work out.
Seaworld as a penguin farm + otter expo (from what I’ve read otters are pretty chill as long as they have food and some friends around) would still be a nice show! Maybe add some rides or a waterpark?
I am from San Antonio, and the Sea World here has an enormous water park and a bunch of rollercoasters and other rides. If they would phase out the dolphins and belugas and stick to animals that are ok in captivity and their really quite wonderful enormous aquariums, I think it would be unobjectionable.
Even when I was very little I remember thinking how utterly STRANGE it was to be sitting in a former cow pasture in South Texas, two hours from the nearest ocean, watching these enormous animals swim around and do circus tricks.
I grew up in San Diego and I was at that Sea World the day the Challenger blew up (wierd times, man). We went once after Baby Shamu was born to see the wee orca and we never went back again because my mother was so bothered by the baby only growing up in tiny tanks in captivity that she cried at the park and we left early. I have never been able to bring myself to go back. My mom, to this day, gets so sad when she talks about seeing Baby Shamu at Sea World.
Your mom sounds like a really awesome person. It is sad – a few weeks later, my husband and I watched a BBC Earth with film of wild orcas hunting and it really drove home how bad a situation those tiny tanks are. High-def footage is a better way to interest people in conservation than sad whales in a concrete pool anyway.
I had the same feeling watching some documentary or other with extensive footage of wild orcas, and when I read about the orca pod with the 103 year old great grandma matriarch. It makes watching them swim in circles in a cement pond even more upsetting. The footage made me want to take a trip to the Pacific NW and go see them in the wild.
There is an orca named Lolita (ugggghhhhhh of course they would name her that, of COURSE, it is so fitting) at the Miami Seaquarium who was stolen from the Puget Sound in 1970. They know where her pod is and her mother is still alive and it fills me with such rage that she is still in captivity.
There’s a campaign to try to get her released but it hasn’t happened yet.
Your mum sounds A+.
If anyone wants to see orcas, come out to BC and ride the ferries! Watching orcas and drinking an illicit beer in the sun on the outside deck of a BC Ferries vessel is one of life’s great pleasures.
I have an acquaintance from high school who I have not talked to in YEARS but am still friends with on Facebook who works as an animal trainer with orcas at the SeaWorld in San Antonio. Yesterday he posted this very long thing about how he was disappointed in SeaWorld for giving into the whims of a misinformed public and how he believes that their animals are happy and he wouldn’t work there if he didn’t think they were being treated well. And like, it’s probably rough for him because he actually works with these animals and has a special bond with them, but on the other hand, bro, even if your whale buddy is doing okay, they probably could be doing much better in a different environment!
Growing up in the pacific northwest I learned about orcas from a very young age. I have the distinct memory of being very small and the voice on some documentary telling me that nobody knows why orca dorsal fins flop over in captivity. I have spent my life being varying levels of pissed off about that constantly. If you put a human– or even a dog or cat, hell a gold fish– in a tank and it started wandering around with one limb just constantly bent into an un natural position nobody would “eh I’m sure thats fine” ESPECIALLY if no one knew why.
And I do mean constantly I find myself yelling this rant at a houseplant at least once a month.
SeaWorld had a defensive aside on that in their “educational” show, too. They claimed that fins are like fingerprints and even wild whales have droopy ones!
This appears to be entirely bullshit. Did I mention going to SeaWorld made me much more anti-SeaWorld??
I’m not an expert and could be off on this, but my sense is that dolphins (kind of like dogs) actually get something out of doing tricks – like it’s a form of play/intellectual stimulation. Obviously not being captivity would be far preferable. If there are any experts amongst us who can chime in though, I’d be interested in learning more.
It’s kind of depressing, but the documentary The Cove, which came out a few years before Blackfish, focuses on dolphins and how marine parks like SeaWorld get them, but also about their behavior, etc. One of the main people in the doc is Ric O’Barry, who trained the original dolphins for Flipper the TV show, and has spent his whole life since paying for that huge regret – he feels no dolphins should be in captivity and there are plenty of reasons to support that. But The Cove goes into many many more facets of whaling and culture and public (human) health while having parts that make it feel like a heist movie…
If you’re interested in learning more about dolphins and all the issues surrounding them, I can’t recommend it enough.
I’m not sure I could handle The Cove, personally? I watched Blackfish and the footage of those terrible people stealing baby orcas in the Puget Sound completely wrecked me. I *want* to watch The Cove but I don’t think I can deal with the more brutal portions. If you’ve seen both, what do you think?
Ahh. Yeah, The Cove is much more brutal than Blackfish, mainly because of the way they capture/kill the dolphins in Taiji. I’d avoid it, if I were you, though the issues are still online to read about in a much less violent way. It just goes to show how unethical and horrible the business of cetacean captivity is!
I can’t handle the idea of seeing the dolphin slaughter, which is why I avoided it. 🙁
If you need a little pick me up to make it through Friday you should go watch Lin-Manuel Miranda freestyle about feminism while Emma Watson beatboxes. How lucky we are to be alive right now!
http://www.vulture.com/2016/03/emma-watson-and-li…
Just don’t get too angry when she mis-sorts Eliza.
Totally. Eliza is a Hufflepuff.
Hamilton is a Slytherin.
She does NOT! Eliza is the BRAVEST!
Moooooooore I want to hear them sort ALL OF THEN.
Here’s mine:
Gryffindor
G. Washington, obvs
M. de Lafayette
J. Laurens
E. Schuyler
Slytherin
A. Burr, also obvs
HRH George III
Ravenclaw
A. Hamilton
T. Jefferson
A. Schuyler
Hufflepuff
H. Mulligan
C. Lee
and Peggy
I would make the argument that HRH is also in Hufflepuff? He’s always struck me as the GWBush of England, a more foppish version, but just a good-time party boy with the reins of empire thrust upon him.
Everything else is spot on. I would add Jefferson and Madison to Slytherin. They’re the good guys of Slytherin though.
I can definitely see that. Then again, a Hufflepuff wouldn’t be very likely to kill your friends and family to remind you of their love.
I’m really happy about how seamlessly she seems to have transitioned from a child star into an adult star/celebrity activist. It seems like she’s had really good people on her side making sure that the whole thing sucked as little as possible.
EDIT: that probably sounded weird and over-invested. I’m just happy every time a young woman emerges unscathed from a childhood in the entertainment industry.
Ha ha at the idea of Sansa having chill.
How did I miss on the first read of that Dear Prudence letter that she wasn’t even a bridesmaid HOW DID I MISS THAT?!?!! Jiminy crickets, there are folks in the world that really, really need to adjust their priorities in a huge fashion, and her sister is a prime example.
Luckily, I’ve only had to endure standing up in two weddings, and both brides were pretty laid back about the affairs. Since I was the only significantly fat girl standing up in either shebang, they both let me choose the style of the bridesmaid dress (bless you, empire waist with sleeves).
ugh, as a fat girl I am dreading being a bridesmaid when/if the day comes, OR dreading the day I become weepy that no one’s asked me to be a bridesmaid because my jerkbrain tells me I’m a fat loser. There is truly no winning.
Being a bridesmaid is so much more stressful than being a guest! My experience of being a bridesmaid (also how expensive it was between dress and heels and showers etc), not to mention how exhausting the politics of it all was, was what made me decide to have NO BRIDESMAIDS NO NOT EVER. Oh, and if you do not get asked by someone who is a good friend and not a human tick, it is probably because someone’s cousin INSISTED or something else equally ridic. Wedding politics are the absolute worst.
I was a bridesmaid for my brother’s wedding this summer. The dress she chose didn’t come in my size, so I got to be the fat bridesmaid in a totally different dress. It was humiliating.
:(:(
If that had been my crazy bride sister, I would have whipped the wig off during pictures and cackled with glee at her rage.
Can you tell I don’t have any sisters? And that I haven’t been asked to be in any weddings?
HAHAHA, that is the best idea. I just can’t fathom being that uptight and so obsessed over “normalcy.”
There’s an Eagle Cam in DC right now that involves a very newly hatched baby bald eagle. It’s fuzzy. Beware that sometimes this live feed does involve things like eagle breakfast, which is indeed red in [beak] and claw.
I’m watching right now! This is the best live stream for perking up a workday.
I check out the eagle cam daily! One of the eaglets is hatching!
There is an eagles’ nest near my home off the Mt Vernon Parkway overlooking the Potomac and we can see them swooping and gliding -it’s amazing.
We have a couple of nests near us, and right now there are some Definite Indications that our local eagles are thinking very hard indeed about making additional eagles. It’s really fun to watch them do their little sexytimes air dancing. 🙂
I’ve been calling the new baby Sasha in texts to my coworker. The next one will be Malia, obviously.
I love this! I love the contrast of dramatic eagle parent + lil fluffy eagle baby.
I watched this morning and the breakfast fish kept flopping for… a surprisingly long time.
it just made me want sushi
I LOVE EAGLE CAMS
The parent just keeps sitting on the new baby same as the egg! “Now, honey, I know you got out early, but you can just sit there and wait for your sibling.” How long does the baby stay all curled up like that?
So a couple of years ago I learned an interesting thing! Robins lay one egg per day, but they all take more or less the same amount of time to incubate, so the parents will incubate the older eggs slightly less than the newer eggs so that everyone hatches on the same day.
EGGS ARE FASCINATING
Efficient mama birding!
Addendum to this article: http://the-toast.net/2016/02/22/places-i-would-li…
I would like to live in a nest with a river view and a giant bird to sit on me and keep me warm.
RELATED: there are ravens in DC for the first time in 100 years! They’re along the Potomac somewhere, but people are trying to keep the location secret so no one will bother them. Understandable, although I would stream the heck out of a DC raven cam.
I read that the other day and shortly afterward I saw what definitely looked like a pair of ravens in Capitol Hill but they may have just been exceptionally large crows?
I find it hard to tell when I’m just looking at uncontextualized crows (seriously, some crows get SO big), but when I went to see the ravens at the National Zoo I could definitely see the difference. Even the smallest raven is as large as the largest crow!
Ravens are quite a bit bigger. Their beaks are heavier and they have pretty noticeable neck ruffs….which they often puff out as they call. Also, their tails are more wedge shaped, so not straight across at the end. They soar more, too…less flapping than crows. My city has several thousand extremely people-habituated ravens so I see them pretty much every day…ahem. I want a raven cam at one of our big grocery store parking lots…in the winter, ravens have epic dance battles, roll in the snow, steal stuff from the backs of pick-up trucks etc.
Now I’m trying to figure out how to have raven pets.
This How to Train a Raven article from the National Zoo may be of help! (I mean, not really, but it’s a neat article anyhow)
“Ravens are both easier and more difficult to train than other bird species. They are one of the most intelligent species of bird and practice problem solving strategies. With that intelligence comes the potential for a huge variety of behaviors to be learned. They are easier to train because they generally learn behaviors very quickly. However, they are also challenging because they learn so quickly that keepers have to be at least three steps ahead of the birds!”
I need a corvid to do my bidding I think. It seems hard boiled egg yolks may be the answer.
have sent article to husband, will report back
I am also watching it now! The now-desiccated fish she had for lunch is… not very appetizing, but I developed (and indulged) a strange craving for sushi anyway.
I am guilty of calling my boss a ‘garbage person’ on a regular basis and I have no plan to stop because it’s just the perfect descriptor. You’ll have to pry ‘garbage person’ from my cold, dead hands!
You have my blessing!!! This is for me.
Hahaha Okay good, I’m glad that’s sorted and I respect your decision to abandon this beautiful and so widely applicable term.
Asshole and Garbage
I just cannot get up in arms about the term; I see nothing problematic with it; I just want to use it with glee in appropriate situations.
I use the expression dumpster fire a lot. If it’s a person, I’ll say they are a dumpster fire of a person to refer to how much of a mess they are. I should note that I call myself a dumpster fire of a person, too, when the occasion calls.
Matt Fraction referred to his version of Hawkeye as a “human tire fire” and I love that description SO MUCH.
God that’s just gorgeous!
Oh man, thanks for reminding me how much I miss that book.
I miss Kate ALL THE TIME. One of my OCs has basically turned into Kate I miss her so much.
Yeah, I LOVE garbage as a descriptor. It’s so satisfying. Yelling “YOU’RE A GARBAGE CAT” at my kitty when she’s destroyed something or barfed on my shoe is one of the joys of my life.
I reserve the term exclusively for Donald Trump.
I love it because it seems either off the charts hyperbolic or so incredibly accurate. Garbage people for everyone!
I prefer to reserve “garbage person” for someone who’s truly morally reprehensible, like Drumpf and his ilk. If someone’s just being garden-variety annoying, “asshole” works just fine.
Yeah, I agree. When I first encountered it, I really didn’t like it because it just seemed so demeaning toward people’s inherent worth, and I think casual dehumanizing language is not a good practice for giving people the respect they deserve even when you disagree with them, and that’s desperately needed in our polarized culture. And it seems even more important not to call YOURSELF garbage.
But yeah, once a person demonstrate real malice and bigotry toward a class of people, that qualifies as legit garbage.
Same here. I don’t get using it for small things like texting punctuation but for more serious things? Count me in! It’s just a great insult. It says what you mean. It’s gender neutral, it’s not ableist, it’s not a rude word by default.
I’ve found myself increasingly turning to “garbage” as a way to describe myself when I’m feeling down on myself. It’s very efficient! It really captures the “having no worth whatsoever” thing I’m going for when I am consumed by self-doubt.
I’m doing pretty well at the moment, for what it’s worth.
I also tend to use it in a self-deprecating way! or to reassure my friends when they are down that they are not loathsome garbage people (when you say very earnestly, “You are not a terrible garbage person,” it sounds so incongruous that the subject often laughs).
I myself am a fan of “trash girl” to describe myself when I’m not my biggest fan. You’re right, it’s efficient and gets the idea across!
Hang in there. Life is a series of hills and valleys – try not to be caught in the low.
Anyone considering moving to Canada if Trump wins, please consider this most Canadian of stories.
the Roll Up the Rim urge was fierce with this one
That reminds me, i still need to redeem my free donut.
I’m pretty sure this came up when I was playing with the CanLit generator someone posted a few weeks ago.
There was also the escape-on-an-ice-floe story from a few days ago http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pr…
At first I thought this was going to be the man survives extreme cold by turning fox pelt into pants but no, this is yet another gem.
I am really disappointed in myself for being surprised that the husband turned out to be the real villain in that Ask a Manager update! Misandry fail!
Eh, the husband was worse but the wife still sucked. Sometimes my misanthropy trumps my misandry.
It reminded me strongly of the old dynamic in my office with ex!boss (man), the office manager (woman), and the rest of the employees (minions). He’d yell at her about whatever shit he was dissatisfied about, she’d yell at us to stop making mistakes because she was stuck in the middle, and everybody was unhappy.
He is now gone, and the office manager is precise and demanding, but also fair, understanding, and really nice to work with. It’s amazing what being the middle person in a hierarchy with an abusive top rung can do to a person’s personality and behavior.
Yes, shit flows downhill, as they say. I’m glad you get to work with a better version of your office manager now.
She frequently tells us how much she likes us all and enjoys working with us, and makes sure we know that all of her criticism comes from a place of, if not love, then a genuine interest in the good of the company. And she brings her amazingly perfect dog to work with her.
If this has come up already and I missed it, sorry for the repeat but I am pretty sure it hasn’t been in LR yet. So please, share your thoughts and anger on this horror:
“Julia Ward Howe is renowned as the poet who woke up one night in an inspired state to pen the lyrics of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the song that would become the victorious psalm of the Civil War.
But what few know is that the writer, reformer and mother of six who wrote those stirring words – ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’ – was adrift in a lonely war of her own, against a husband who sought to control every aspect of her life, from what she wrote to what she ate.” http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/16/47…
What a terrible person. I shall raise a glass to Julia tonight (‘trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,” indeed).
MEN.
There was a photo of her near the end of her life in an exhibit where the librarian I think of as my Cataloging Mentor works, and Cataloging Mentor said, “Oh, this picture is so moving. She looks so careworn.” And now we know why (or at least one reason why.)
This is fascinating. Also, I am delighted at “Cookery bookery, oh!” and “anathema maranatha” both, which tells me I would have enjoyed the company of both mother and daughter.
More like anathema MANathema, Amirite? #fixedthatforyouMaud
<3 “The children, without any trace of irony, called their ebullient mother ‘the family champagne.'”
Because OF COURSE THEY DID
This is a super interesting article, but my favourite piece of knowledge therein is that Wordsworth served her “a very indifferent muffin”. I always knew he was overrated!
It makes me happy that the United Church of Christ hymnals always title it “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” since it seems like she would have hated having it called a battle hymn.
Also, I think it’s a really striking song, especially the often updated verse “in the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea/with a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me/As he died to make men holy let us live to make men free. . .” because wherever I am religiously at any moment, the verses I tend to remember are the what does God require of us, to act justly and love mercy and so on. . .
Also, a reminder that you can be a Progressive Dude (Elias Howe being an advocate of reforms for education of the blind as well as an abolitionist) and still be a misogynist asshole! By which I mean it should be a reminder to the Progressive Dudes.
Yes, to all this. Also reminds me of the final verse of “O Holy Night,” which I feel like doesn’t get emphasized enough:
“Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.”
The best verse, too.
Michael Curry quoted that verse in his sermon at the Convention that elected him Presiding Bishop, and it was amazing.
Okay, THAT GUY WAS A GARBAGE PERSON.
That AAM saga is WOW WHAT WOWOWOWOW on so many levels.
I was SLACK JAWED.
Hooooly shit.
That is a wild ride right there.
It reminds me of when I worked for a couple and I have vowed to never do it again. They weren’t as bad as this situation, but they had a weird relationship (He was super possessive and terrified she would cheat, she was a spoilt brat who was sure she was right at all times. They’re married now. Somehow.), and they would have horrible fights and then take it out on us staff like we were their children, and it would go on for days at a time. This was also a super intense job, and life (horses), we all worked together 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and the staff lived together, and the bosses worked together and lived together, I don’t think they ever stopped working. And they both had very different ideas about how things were run, but for some reason wouldn’t split anything into mine and yours, so all of the equipment and horses were pooled together, until one of them got possesive (or she tried to slyly steal a horse on him) and then we’d be walking on eggshells all week about what equipment we could use on what horses.
Somerton Man enthusiasts!!!!
A mystery-type podcast has started a multi-part series about our favorite unsolved Australian death! http://www.astonishinglegends.com/portfolio/ep033…
Their style is really just compiling information and telling it in a fun way (as in, they are total nerds who love this stuff so it’s fun to listen to). Not new theories per se, although they apparently scooped an interview with an “expert” on this case.
HERE FOR THIS
Southern Cross came on the oldies station the other day and jerk roomie made me change it because he didn’t want to listen to some dumb song about Christ. I was like, dude, how can you be so intelligent yet so f*cking ignorant. I changed the station and told him what it was actually about, but it fell on deaf ears.
I’m going to go listen to it now.
Sailing away on a sea cruise, maybe even circumnavigating, has been one of those life dreams/goals since I was 8 years old. Which, maybe not coincidentally, was around the time that song came out.
so are you rooming with Richard Dawkins or
A very important budgie rescue happened: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-19/budgies-res…
Also I rejoined Twitter after 5 years but have no idea how to use it? I’m @FrankieGreem though if any Toasties want to follow me, although it’s probably going to be all owl/cat pics.
Also hmmm… the sweetheart is out this evening and I have no idea what to do with my Friday nights any more. Any ideas?
OBviously my first thought with regard to budgies was that some speedo-wearing man’s junk got rescued somehow?
Netflix! Wine! Some food the sweetheart hates!
Our culinary match is strong, but the Good Wife and some champagne might make for a nice evening.
THE GOOD WIFE, so so great, it’s what I watch when I’m by myself too!
His MOST ANNOYING TRAIT is that he can’t whinging about how unrealistic things are in (some) TV shows, so I’ve learnt to save anything I know might be a bit cheesy but I adore anyway (Supergirl, Fringe, the Good Wife, Blacklist, even Xena recently) for when he’s out of the house.
Haha!! We may be married to twins? My husb cannot deal with my Call the Midwife or Doctor Who or Sherlock situations.
You have excellent taste in television! Pffff to our sweethearts.
Owl/cat pics are a key component of Toastie Twitter, you’ll fit right in.
“owl/cat pics” [insta-follow]
Very best birthday wishes to Steve; may his steaks, not his happiness, be rare.
Also, happy birthday, Steve! Thank you for helping to make this beautiful coven of misandrist librarians possible.
Yes, yes, thank you! Well said.
CLAUDIA FLEMING! I miss her so much, she was such an influence on me as a younger räven, and I’m glad she doesn’t really miss us and I hope she is going to thrive out there.
I agree! She was a big influence on me too.
Re: garbage as an insult, does this mean I have to stop referring to the GOP presidential candidates as dumpster fires? Because I don’t think I can do that.
Public figure exemption!
YES, that is exactly the exemption I was searching for. I try to give all civilians (especially people I don’t actually know) the benefit of the doubt, at least to the point of being something more than garbage.
“dumpster fire” is such a great and evocative insult to me, because it’s like what you use to describe something that is improbably worse than you would have expected possible. What could possible make a giant dumpster full of stinking trash even less desirable? I know, set it on fire.
BWAHAHA, exactly.
Also, dumpster fires are rarely accidental. Somebody has to look at that unpleasant situation and deliberately make it worse, just to really ruin things for everybody in the area.
“Donald Trump’s soul is a dumpster on fire.” Nope, this one works for me.
more of a spillage incident at a waste lagoon imo; dumpster fires have warmth and are fun to watch
No. None of the GOP presidential candidates passes the Decent Human Being test, so feel free to call them whatever you like.
I feel like “dumpster fire” is so deliberately hyperbolic that it’s distinct from just referring to somebody as trash or garbage. You’re clearly not casually dismissing their fundamental human worth; you’re saying that they’re actively, even violently terrible and offensive.
1) Steve and I have the same birthday. Happy birthday to us!
2) It seems like a lot of Prudie’s job is confirming that people are petulant/terrible. I have a co-worker who refers to people who are homeless as “transients,” and her voice is so full of venom that it sounds like a horrible slur (not that it’s a good thing to say even sans venom). She somehow has not noticed I respond to her rants with a neutral face, total lack of minimal encouragers, and absolute silence. :/
Ooh, here’s a great professional rejoinder to such terrible sentiments: “I hope you’re not saying this to me because you think I agree with you.”
I haven’t gotten to try it out yet, but it’s good to keep in the back of your mind if you feel the situation merits it.
oh my god, thank you for this. I will use that in the future.
I wish I could say that! Unfortunately, she’s a very toxic person, so I think it’s better if she thinks I’m a dull conversationalist.
I love a good conversation ender like that.
Slightly off-topic, but this is a perfect opportunity to crow about how easy my state makes it for homeless people to vote.
I think about 70% of being an advice columnist is providing validation to people that “yeah, you are right in thinking that’s out of line, and don’t believe it when they try to move your mental goalposts about this behavior being normal or acceptable.”
The other 30% is the reality check that “no, YOU’re being kind of unreasonable here.”
As much as I love and look forward to my daily pic of (dog) Sansa, I am so excited about the Blue Apron box in the background because Blue Apron is my favorite thing in my life currently and no one even paid me to say that.
We didn’t believe blue apron was saving us money until one day I came home from the grocery store with a frozen pizza and $50 worth of jellybeans and peeps.
On a totally unrelated note, I’m not allowed to go grocery shopping until after Easter ends.
My parents got me a subscription to Plated as an early defense present and it is the greatest present they have ever given me, no exaggeration
I’ve been unable to really sense how much stuff you actually get–would it be feasible for a single person who tends to graze rather than eat full big meals? I’ve GOT to get back to cooking my own food.
In fairness, I’ve had only one experience with Blue Apron, but it does make a pretty large meal. A friend of mine had a meal she wasn’t going to be able to use (pork mazemen, which does say in the instructions that it’s a) for two people and b) you will have leftovers) and gave it to me to make this week–I’ve been eating leftovers from it since Wednesday.
It’s very tasty, so this isn’t really a hardship…I’m just getting a little tired of noodles (which is something I never thought I’d say).
Ah, that’s what I’ve expected–I’m not always great with leftovers because my fibro et al can make what I can face eating on a given day very erratic.
I really wanted to like Blue Apron (and the gumbo recipe we got from them was awesome!) but I found myself dumbstruck at the sheer amount of waste in the packaging. Has it gotten any better? I guess they need those ice packs to keep meat, etc, fresh, but 🙁
People, where’s the love for little Mr. Wilson? He’s adorbs!!
He surely is.
He really, really is! Look at his little snorggly muzzle-powsche! He looks like a slightly ruffled goldfish teddy bear, and I love him.
My former roommate is doing a fashion blog/Babysitter’s Club fanfiction thing. I thought some of you might want to see it. She’s really cool. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/03/11/a…
hahaha!
I’ve been off for over a year, but I spent a lot of time writing long involved snarky recaps at bsc_snark at livejournal, with my thoughts and feels punctuated by lolcats. Also, if you go to there, you MUST find the posts by 3_foot_6 and veggievixen. (I’m pretty much alula_auburn everywhere.)
The posts by 3_foot_6 have made me cry with laughter.
from the garbage article: If fandom trash behaves like other euphemisms, expect the word to become somewhat gentler as time goes on–”Hamilton rubbish,” maybe, or even “compost.”
HAMILTON RUBBISH
That’s one of my least favourite things about fandom culture: calling yourself the “trash” of (person/thing). Just, NO. It goes back to that whole self-denigration thing.
WORDS MATTER, DAMMIT!
Yeesh, that Prudie letter! I need to call my sisters and thank them for being cool brides with their priorities straight (and again thank my sister who was 38 weeks pregnant at my wedding and nonetheless wore the same dress as the others [I told her she didn’t have to!] and took part in everything and danced for the whole reception).
I broke my elbow a week before my quite-high-maintenance friend’s wedding. Her mom had the bright idea to wrap my full arm cast in strips of material that matched our bridesmaid dresses as if to somehow camouflage the whole thing? I bit my tongue and went along with it. My friend was not amused. The photos are hilarious though.
I love this. Even better if you’d wound matching flowers all over it!
Believe me, if time permitted, she’d have gone to Michael’s for flowers.
I fell and bruised myself really badly (a softball sized bruise on my right arm and a 9-inch bruise on my left thigh; it was a fancy skidding fall) and my mom went crazy trying to buy really heavy makeup for me to wear on my arm to hide the bruise. (My brother and SIL didn’t care at all, because they are awesome.)
That Claudia Fleming piece hit me hard. Both of my parents are chefs–my father ran a catering company in New York my entire childhood & my mother was his pastry chef. Now, because Life, he is a restaurant consultant & my mother makes high-end wedding cakes at bakery. The different temperaments it takes to succeed at either pastry (precision) and cooking (improve), really created a lot of volatility at home–and harmony when it was right. Through both of them, I have learned to live through food in a way I see missing from so much so-called “foodie” culture and contemporary food writing, but this captured. I’m feeling more emotional about it than I can really put into words now, but I’m glad it’s on my mind now–not that it’s ever very far from it.
http://www.mobydickbigread.com/
Just thought Toasties might be interested to know that the entirety of the Moby Dick audiobook was finished (this week, I think) and is a FREE DOWNLOAD with chapters read by Tilda Swinson, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Waters, Sir David Attenborough, Mary Oliver, and a host of others!
This is awesome!
Yes, please, and thank you!
That is pretty cool, but at first I saw “Moby Dick Big Bread” which would also be pretty cool, I think. I will add it to my imaginary lit theory and reference ice cream shop/bakery.
That’s how I read it too! Is this like that dress with eye-confusing colors?
Firstly, I am very happy for the AAM LW for getting out of this horrible situation.
I read the original letter and this sentence rang out as something everyone should be reminded of daily: “we have a contract and it is services in exchange for money” as there are tooooooo many people who think it’s okay to ask for things to be done for free because “it will take like 5 minutes.”
Time really is money, especially if you’re contracted as an employee, smh.
Also, just because I can easily and efficiently accomplish a task, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay me for it. It means you should recognize my skill and work ethic. Or, if it’s really so easy, do it yourself.
Mr. Wilson has perfected the slightly inconvenienced look of all dogs who are not being currently pet, fed, or walked as their mood dictates. The eyes, they say “Why are you taking pictures of me instead of petting me? HOW CAN YOU BE SO CRUEL? I’ll just suffer here until you come to your senses… no, I’m fine.”
Could someone who’s better at Life and Art than I am please tell me how to feel about this, besides Apprehensive and both sad and thankful that nobody’s tried to film the Vesper Holly books yet?
http://www.avclub.com/article/disney-animation-mi…
oh my gods Vesper! I remember her!
She was like Miss Fisher for nine-year-olds.
I think apprehensive covers it! Must reread them soon.
SOUTHERN CROSS. I instantly started hearing it in my head when I scrolled to the link and it gave me mad chilllllllllls. Love that song.
I thought Sansa was already great at climbing over Cliffes.
Many moons ago, when I was wee lass (13?) my father and I were watching Bridezillas, (I don’t know why either) and he turned to me and said, “I want you to remember one word: elope.” So when the day invariably comes he will have only himself (and Bridezillas) to blame.
I did elope, and I highly recommend it. My father was so happy with us that he gave us a check for the amount my parents would have spent on the wedding/reception as a wedding gift. This despite the fact that neither he nor my mother met my husband until after we were already married. I have great parents.
My father used to joke that his contribution to my wedding would be a ladder (so my fiance could climb up to my bedroom window and elope with me).
Joke’s on him! I live on the ground floor (of my own house)..
I very frequently think to myself about how human civilization could not exist without sanitation services and how the people who do that kind of work are the real heroes, because I would barf every day if I had to look at other people’s trash. Which is to say that I’ve never gotten behind “garbage person” as an insult, because I might think about actual garbage people too much?
That was always one of my main objections to Anarchy as a political thing: I LIKE having other people deal with my trash and recycling.
Along similar lines, I can highly recommend the book Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization. I read it on a camping trip and so doubly appreciated its points on the overall importance of indoor plumbing.
Oh my god, that’s my dad’s birthday present sorted. (He’s a semi-retired plumbing contractor and this will tickle him pink.) Thank you!
Yay! Happy to have helped. I hope your dad likes it!
Waaaait I need help I forgot! Ya’ll– I’m sorry to admit, but my Chuck Taylors are just not doing it anymore for my not-flat feet, especially at work, so I humbly ask: what are the most comfortable sneakers you’ve ever experienced on this spinning planet? Nike doesn’t sell the ones I had a couple of years ago anymore and I am LOST. I just need something black and hopefully not exceptionally ugly. I rely on your wisdom, Toasties.
Can you go to a store with a lot of sneakers and try them on to figure out which brand(s) are the most comfortable? I need a wider toe box, and I find that Asics fit me best (and some of them are very cushy!), but you probably have different foot needs.
If you need a wide toe box you might want to try Altras. They have the absolute roomiest toe box of any sneaker I’ve ever tried.
OOH. I don’t think I’ve heard of these before but I’ll definitely check them out. My poor toes need space!
I buy inserts at the drug store and that works really well, they fit in easily with Chuck Taylors’s fabric upper and the flat sole is a good base. Makes me feel like an aging rocker, but oh well!!
This! I do this with all my shoes. It’s expensive, but so worth it. Plus, when the insoles wear out, you can replace them for <$20, and it feels like a whole new pair of shoes.
I have lots of problems with sneakers, but I’ve been doing okay with my reebok skyscapes–they’re very lightweight and don’t rub anyplace. I don’t think they’d hold up to serious feats of athleticism, but they do fine for my walk to work (about half a mile each way), teaching a 90 minute class, climbing up to the el tracks. . .mine are purple but I’m pretty sure they must come in black!
I looooooove my New Balance trail-running shoes! I got them on super sale at a TJ Maxx like 5 years ago and didn’t realize* they were trail-runners, so I have worn them like regular sneaks ever since. Veeeeeery comfy.
*didn’t realize until a month ago, when they started to show serious wear and now I need to start thinking about replacing them but they don’t make my exact model anymore D: so now I need to go to an actual STORE and try on new pairs DDDDD:
I got a pair of black Chuck-Taylor knockoff Dr Scholl’s sneakers last year, and for regular-life shoes (not hardcore sport stuff) they were very comfy and suited all of my social-semiotics requirements for footwear. 🙂
If you prefer LOTS of arch support (like I do), Birkenstock makes insoles. They’re not cheap (though they’re way less expensive than custom) but I once made a pair last through thirteen years of near-constant wear, as I’d pop them into whatever shoes I was wearing that day.
Footsmart dot com also has toooons of options for making feet not hurt, including many brands of shoes and sneakers. Some of it is very “elderly with arthritis” but they’ve got cute shit too.
I dunno I think that boss on Ask a Manager deserves to go straight into a trash fire.
All this talk of Southern Cross has put Mason Jennings’ song of the same name in my head, also A+.
Skipping to the end to comment because I hate the phrases “garbage people” and their variants so, so much.
I feel almost CERTAIN I know the boss/wife in the Ask a Manager and worked for them a decade ago! If not, there’s MORE THAN ONE of this very specific combination of jerks out there. [Update: it’s not them, so WATCH OUT, there’s at least another set of these, working in Southern California…]
Dang! I’m so chagrined about the garbage thing! I’d turned to it as one alternative to more gendered and ableist insults, how did I miss the class angle?!
Also, damn.
I’ll combine two-for-one and say that the boss from the AaM post is a garbage person. I’ve been in the situation where a dysfunctional couple who were both at my workplace made my life hell; the wife was my supervisor (and had never managed anyone before, and it showed), and the husband thought that he was my supervisor as well (and was lousy at communication and organization, and blamed any lapses exclusively on me). The sad part was, it looked like a great opportunity, and they were both a few years away from retirement.
Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock is the OG garbage person:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Marjory_the_Trash_He…
What, not Oscar the Grouch?
My older sisters were each other’s maids/matrons of honor. I was a bridesmaid for my oldest sister but not the middle one. My middle sister’s behavior toward me before/during/after her wedding caused such a huge rift that we’re still estranged, 11 years later. I was in college at the time and lived across the US from her. She wouldn’t let me in the bridal party, but forced me to spend a huge percentage of my monthly income on a “wedding day emergency kit” that I took home completely unused. She flipped out when she saw that I had a totally innocuous heat rash on my arms. (Honestly, what did she expect, getting married in New Jersey in May?) I’m not in any of the family photos because I went to the bathroom and she couldn’t be bothered to wait for me. And a few weeks later, she had the nerve to call me and SCREAM at me – I imagine there was quite a bit of spittle involved – because I didn’t get her a wedding present (the kit kind of cleaned me out for a few months). If I had showed up with blue hair she probably would have had me escorted off the premises.
So yeah, now we’re totally estranged, and it’s kind of a bummer, because we don’t live that far apart these days and she has two daughters I’d like to get to know better, but at the same time she brought it upon herself. I’m probably going to get engaged soon, and we’re honestly thinking about eloping just so we don’t have to involve her.
My sister had a courthouse wedding followed by a family dinner. I think that is the way to go and will probably copy her when/if I get married.
I’m trying to figure out, what is a wedding day emergency kit? I’m trying to think of anything that you couldn’t just send someone out to get and coming up blank.
This would be boyfriend’s second wedding and I’m not totally in love with the idea of a big fancy ceremony, so a courthouse wedding in the next state over (you can’t really do it here) is definitely something I’m interested in. HOWEVER, I know my mom would be devastated if she wasn’t there, so we’ll probably end up doing a small ceremony and reception.
From what I remember, it was a little box filled with tissues and bandaids and a sewing kit and whatnot. Basically it was a way for everyone to pretend she cared about me but not, like, involve me in anything important. (See also: was not in the family photos.)
Letters and Broken Promises… very insightful!
Honestly, does anyone like being a bridesmaid, ever?
I think about this pretty often because my partner wants to have a bigger wedding than I do. I was a bridesmaid for my best friend, and I did like being part of the day, but wasn’t a fan of the politics that took place beforehand.
Politics! Yes! And it’s patently unfair that bridesmaids put in not just massive amounts of time but also money, compared to groomsmen. I don’t understand why everyone has to have a wedding AND a shower AND a bachelorette party.
Re: the Charlotte Bronte link:
I have a book called Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming Lesbians in History 1840-1985. The book posits that Charlotte Bronte and her friend Ellen Nussey were in a lesbian relationship, and that many “romantic female friendships” of this era were, in fact, something more.
It’s a really good book that touches on quite a few other women of that era. It’s also only $1.31 on Amazon, so if any of y’all are lesbian history buffs and want to check out a book that might not be readily accessible, give it a shot!
5'4" here. I never managed to find a man shorter than me who wanted to go out, but I did date a guy who was 5'5" and that turned out to be the perfect height for makeouts and *ahem* other things. Too bad he was a jerk.
My brother's ex-girlfriend (they are still very close friends) is 6'0'' and he is about 5'7'' (maybe a bit taller? I am not good at judging height). She could pick him up in her arms like a baby.
My favorite use of referring to people as trash: