Facehugger Alien Dog strikes again.
In the mid-1990s, the biggest threat to America continued to be the welfare queen. Or at least that’s what the news and many politicians all said. My school was far too genteel to name the welfare queen outright, but she haunted our balanced class discussions. The welfare queen was worse than disease and death and the destruction of the icecaps. She was worse than that because she was all those things in one, perpetually pregnant with pathologies, birthing out criminals and addicts and losers and apparently eating $50 steaks and driving gleaming Cadillacs while doing so.
I was acutely aware that, on the surface, I could potentially fit all the stereotypes of the welfare queen: I was black, the daughter of a single mother, on welfare and food stamps and living in the projects.
I would sit in class and listen to the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers and policy makers — people who had never needed and would most likely never need welfare — earnestly advocate the dismantling of the welfare state, and I would shake and shake and shake with something I couldn’t name.
On this afternoon, Mr. Grays was descending the steps of his mail truck backward, as postal workers often do to minimize wear and tear on the knees, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a car making a sharp right turn onto President from Franklin Avenue. Mr. Grays shouted at the driver, climbing back up the steps to avoid getting sideswiped. The black car, in Mr. Grays’s telling, came tearing back his way in reverse. The driver said to him, Mr. Grays recounted, “I have the right of way because I’m law enforcement.” The unmarked car held four plainclothes police officers, according to the Brooklyn borough president’s office, which has taken an interest in the case.
Zaeem Qadri, a spokesman for the Punjab provincial government, said that 65 people had been killed in the explosion and 300 wounded. Punjab’s chief minister Shahbaz Sharif announced three days of mourning and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, Qadri said.
Hugh Jackman is the hero we need
2 real (I mean, my dad doesn’t have any friends NOR DOES HE WANT ANY, he is a hermit, but if he did):
Thank you for approving my friend request. It was such a pleasure talking to you at your dad’s wedding. And a relief! You never know who you’re going to get stuck sitting next to at these things. I’m sure you felt the same way, even though, as I said when you sat down, I didn’t recognize you at first since I hadn’t seen you since you were a little girl. I know the miracles of the human body shouldn’t surprise a doctor like me, but what a difference a few years makes.
Anyway, I really enjoyed hearing a little bit about your life in New York and your budding writing career, and I wanted to extend an invitation to you. I’d like to offer up my guesthouse on Martha’s Vineyard anytime you want to get out of the city for a little writer’s retreat. As you may remember from visiting me in the summers when your parents were still married (as was I, to a woman who never really understood me), the guesthouse is just a few yards from the main house, where I now live year-round.
Repeat after me: “Sure! My consulting fee is [reasonable rate slightly jacked up]/hr.”
I was recently laid off on a Thursday morning with no notice and was basically perp walked to HR. I wasn’t even allowed to return to my desk to gather my personal belongings either. I was given a small severance and one weeks pay for each year I’d been there (5 years).
Today I was contacted by my former manager/supervisor requesting that I help him out with data gathering/location for a monthly report. Should I help? I’m still devastated by the no notice RIF, and honestly hope the entire organization fails. I don’t want to be a bad person, but I don’t feel that I owe them any reply at all. Would it be best to just not reply?
Dear Friend of the Toast Christina Tesoro would love your help so she can attend a Lambda writer’s retreat!
This thread:
SPOILERS FOR THE BLACKLIST BUT I DON’T REALLY CARE IT’S LIKE TEN SECONDS AND DOESN’T CONNECT TO ANYTHING
I do not know if you are watching The Blacklist, but I love this dumb fucking ridiculous show like whoa and am at the beginning of season three and the moment where our girl Keen hops the fucking FENCE to the Russian EMBASSY like a goddamn BALLER BITCH is my life rn:
The peculiar history of life insurance:
Death was everywhere in 19th-century America: Fatal injuries, disease epidemics, and the Civil War made families acutely aware of mortality. For women and children, the death of a husband and father could tumble them into poverty. Only the wealthiest Americans bought private life insurance. Women were not allowed to take out policies on their husbands, and if the husband bought the policy on himself, the money wouldn’t be protected from creditors.
Sorry, Paul:
Dear dudes,
Just because a woman doesn’t like you, doesn’t mean she’s gay. You could just be a terrible person.
Also just because a woman is gay, doesn’t mean she knows you exist. A woman can just be gay without considering how The Men might feel about it.
The hell you say.
But how dare anyone not consider how The Men feel about something
sometimes both are true!
EXACTLY. You can dislike paul and be gay. You can dislike paul and be straight. You can dislike paul and be anywhere on the spectrum of sexuality.
Or, you could be straight and like Paul well enough as a human being yet not be attracted to him sexually. Rich tapestry, right?
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this option is unlikely. The liking him as a human being part.
I’m seconding this. It does seem unlikely which, as Paul would say, is very sad.
Then again, there are many more TERRIBLE boys these days too which is very sad.
I’ve been reading Heinlein for science fiction book club reasons, and based on his writing it seems pretty much all boys were terrible once, so I’m not sure that’s true. It’s just that there are now a lot more options that aren’t terrible boys, which I am deeply grateful for.
You could even be a nice guy (not “nice guy”) and she could not like you. Because she doesn’t have to like you.
“Because she doesn’t have to like you.”
See, this is the part he finds unbelievable, the part that blows his mind. If he ever accepted it as possible, much less as truth.
No, he’d definitely agree that she doesn’t have to like him. It’s just that the natural order of the universe decrees that she ought to like him, and if she doesn’t then there’s something deeply wrong with her. But he wouldn’t want to acknowledge that there was anything pressuring her to like him.
And if a woman isn’t interested because she’s gay, that is a perfectly valid reason.
It’s not sad, Paul.
(You don’t think it’s THE Paul, do you? The Epistle to the Toastians?)
OMG I need someone to write the Epistle to the Toastians!
I have seen your challenge and am contemplating accepting.
Only our eternal souls are at stake!
The question is, write it like St. Paul or write it like St. Mallory.
That is not a question. Of course you’d write it like Saint Mallory.
Doitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoit!
(Please.)
JGlows, an apostle of The Toast
To the church of the Toastians
Grace and peace to you from Mallory our Mother and the Lady Nicole Cliffe and the Holy Nikki Ghost
I wanted a Toast neighborhood/commune/different levels of shared housing and community for different levels of introversion situation.
I did not realize how much I wanted a Toast church.
We could sing “If Men Go To Hell, Who Cares?” at the services!
We are continually thanking Mallory in our hearts for you, when we remember your great misandry and continual love for one another.
Nah, I’m pretty sure THAT Paul was — for all the ways in which he was terrible — pretty pro- not getting married.
My mother apparently has been keeping this in my childhood home THIS ENTIRE TIME.
This bunny looks like it would have been snuggly and nice once upon a time, but now those blank, blank eyes negate any cutesy effect its fuzzy pajama body may have.
I suggest your family starts a new Easter tradition where you hide this bunny in unsettling places for each other to find.
I’m not going to suggest that because my mom will do it and then give us all heart attacks. The bunny is over fifty years old, and yes, probably wasn’t terrifying at one point, but then it got possessed by demon, so here we are.
jesus fuck
Me, reading LR and then comments this morning:
Head shake, sadness, chuckle, smirk (PAUL), chuckle, AAAAHHHHH OH DEAR GOD GET IT AWAY *knocks computer off desk and runs away*
Also, sorry everyone, but I need the strength of others to get me through this tough time of knowing I shared a good portion of my life with an actual demon in my house.
The first thing I thought upon seeing this was “that looks like a sad, flattened funfetti cake.” I’m going to stick with that.
That is one well-loved bunny.
This is a good velveteen-rabbit-y way of looking at it.
It’s just been waiting. Biding its time. But now that you’ve discovered it, its plans will have to move faster.
Lets just say I’m real glad I do not live in my mom’s house anymore.
Please tell me you’re currently preparing for the exorcism?
Remember the velveteen rabbit? This bunny is part of the way Real.
Real what?
Don’t ask.
There’s a “children’s stories made horrible” pitch in there somewhere…
NOPE the Velveteen Rabbit was always horrible!
It was made horrible almost exactly two years ago, in fact! http://the-toast.net/2014/03/26/the-velveteen-rab…
Oh, well. I guess I didn’t really need to sleep again ever.
Gef the talking mongoose? Is that you? http://www.xojane.com/fun/gef-talking-mongoose
Pro tip, if you ever have the chance to hang out with BestLaidPlans, do so posthaste
Au contraire! A bonfire with houblonchouffe is the best of all possible times!
SO MUCH ROSÉ
ET VERY MUCH CETERA
An action shot of Charlie P. Hashbrowns helping* me to lace my new boots.
*getting in the goddamn way of
Is not dog. Is punk rock hamster.
That is a giant hamster.
I must have one.
Andy Warhol cosplaying hamster, most excellent.
You are incorrect. You were trying to lace your new boots when you should have been allowing the Adorable Tater to play with the laces. He was irritated, though, when he realized you were not helping him play, but getting in the goddamn way of his play.
Get your priorities and perspectives straight, ChloeKEvil.
Every day that reminds me of the existence of Charlie P. Hashbrowns is a good day.
I legit thought this was a long haired guinea pig for a second.
Maybe he does not like your boots?
Dogs like leather. At least 4 times a week I have to stop a dog from licking our leather furniture.
“Yes, your ancestors killed and ate bovines. But today you eat expensive dog food and lounge on furniture clad in bovine skins. Tanned, bleached, dyed skins that cannot be good for your health to lick. Stop it!”
Apologies to vegetarian/vegan Toastfriends.
HOW SO FLOOFY
The Easter bunny was always horrifying. As a kid I had a hard time getting over the fact that he apparently…lays eggs?
I raised my godchildren with the story that the Easter Bunny came along on a motorcycle with a sidecar full of candy. It helped explain why, one year, there were tire tracks on my living room floor.
I mean…I kind of just want to know the real story behind why there were tire tracks on the living room floor?
I feel like just the thought of a six foot rabbit is pretty unsettling (and that’s not even just a Night of the Lepus reference!)
Has anyone here seen the 1950 movie “Harvey”? Jimmy Stewart has an imaginary friend, a six-foot-tall rabbit named Harvey.
My uncle, having watched and loved Harvey, decided to watch Donny Darko based on the fact that it also had a six foot tall rabbit and hence was possibly similar. I think he was a little traumatised.
My daughter has always hated the EB with a passion. Even now, at 13, she can’t deal – we were at the mall on Saturday and she hid behind me as passed the area in the atrium where you could line up for photos.
So many fine contenders, but I nominate She’s about your size, though I think your waist is a little smaller. as The Creepiest Line from that “Your Dad’s Friend” piece.
(Note to those who didn’t read it: the ‘she’ in question is the man’s college-age daughter.)
The great thing about it is, given that it was published in the New Yorker, it might have some creepy dad friends rethinking their roll. Or maybe it’ll be seen as a how-to guide…
“Aha! I should stock the guest house with diaphanous dresses and revealing swimwear so I can assure her she doesn’t have to pack! Genius! Why didn’t I think of that?”
One can hope. I’ll never forget the time I was told by an older man that I was “pretty like his daughter” as he tried to get 19-year-old me to accept a drink.
OH. MY. GOD.
iiiiccckkkk
G’hoy ugh.
Just like that show on SNL hosted by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey: Your Second Wife!
“If memory serves, you’ve always loved horses” got me.
why it was categorized as HUMOR instead of HORROR I will never understand
This is more OT than LR BUT I AM SO EXCITED I DON’T CARE SORRY
My amazing friend is finally coming back from his year in New York soon and he and his NEW BOYFRIEND are staying with me in june!! I can’t waiiiiiit ugh and he’s offered to bring me stuff from NY so suggestions for what to ask for are welcome
BAGELS.
I was coming here to make the same comment, also in all caps.
I work in a law enforcement adjacent profession, and many of my coworkers like to assess our current climate as needlessly anti-police; the phrase “… but everybody hates cops now, I guess,” gets trotted out pretty regularly. It’s baffling to me that they can maintain that view of incident after incident when articles like this one about Glen Grays go so far out of ther way to point out that even other cops (current and former) have issues with certain behaviors. The article literally ends with the subject saying, “I don’t hate cops,” and yet stories like this are invariably incorporated into the everyone’s-just-out-to-make-cops-look-bad-now narrative that people like my coworkers are committed to.
honest Q: Why do you think that is? Do they just not want to seem complicit in something bad (everyone needs a paycheck) or do they REALLY THINK everyone/ mostly POC are just… making things up? Or alternatively, just deserve it?
I think confirmation bias is the main issue here. I think that, beyond not wanting to be complicit in something bad, they have an initial understanding of their job (and, by extension, other jobs in the legal system) as ones in which you are actively doing good and on the side of right. I think they filter articles like this based on that view, and determine, then, that these people are lying, exaggerating, and/or deserving of trouble.
I think this confirmation bias is a fairly pervasive issue as more and more articles about law emforcement misconduct have been published recently (including for people who started off with a very the-legal-system-is-all-good view for reasons other than employment), and I wonder whether that push-back wasn’t part of the reason the author of this article made sure to point out that Mr. Grays and others drawing attention to his situation are taking issue with individual officers and actions rather than the police as a whole.
I think it’s just that people get their news from *such* different sources. Like, if you are watching Fox News, the Glen Gray incident probably isn’t even mentioned. I know it’s a different context, but my parents seriously think that Bernie Sanders wants to change the top income tax rate to 90%. I am not sure where they are getting that from… And there is a bias that humans have upon receiving information from Source 1, then they want to doubt Source 2 because the information they’ve gotten from Source 1 has already sort of become part of their canon.
My understanding (one of my partners is a cop) is that it’s a mix of all of the above. No one wants to be seen as a bad guy, and a lot of cops have a hard time separating criticisms of law enforcement as a system from criticisms of them as people. (Might have something to do with most cops being white guys? They seem to take everything personally.) And when you’re a white cop working in a community of color, basically your only interactions with minorities are during bad/upsetting/emotionally charged situations (because it’s pretty rare for white people to have a significant number of friends of color), so you start to assume that those negative interactions are representative of all people of color all the time… so you start treating them that way all the time.
There’s kind of a fascinating irony there re: white guys/white cops. Maybe they take everything so personally *because* “you start to assume that those negative interactions are representative of all people of color all the time.” Maybe they’re so used to judging the group based on the individual’s behavior that when someone else calls out an individual from *their group* they assume the same thing is happening.
Oh hell, that’s a really good point.
Thiiiiis. I think there’s also a component of otherwise well-meaning people denying or dismissing valid criticisms of cops because it doesn’t fit with their own narrative of what being a cop means. (“Well, I know that I would never do [bad thing another cop is accused of] in that situation, so that can’t really be what happened. Therefore, the accuser must have been exaggerating/doing something illegal/harboring anti-cop prejudices from the start.”)
Or, if there’s incontrovertible proof that a cop did do the bad thing they were accused of doing, other cops are still going to mentally insert themselves into the role of the cop, not the victim, and make excuses accordingly. (“It must have been really stressful, he had to make a split-second decision, anyone could have made that mistake, it doesn’t mean he was racist/abusive,” etc. etc.)
ETA: Found a piece backing up what I am trying to say–it involves an experiment where people were divided into teams for an online game task:
Participants tended to feel much less empathy — less joy at the successes and less sorrow at the misfortunes — for members of the other team than for members of their own team or of a control group that hadn’t been assigned to any team. And as Bruneau hypothesized, the width of this empathy gap did not correlate with a person’s empathy rating on personality assessments; it was not wider in less empathetic people or narrower in more empathetic people.
What it did correlate with was the strength of a person’s group identity. “The more an individual’s team affiliation resonated for them, the less empathy they were likely to express for members of the rival team,” he says.
So in other words, if I’m a cop, and being a cop is an important piece of my identity, then I’m going to empathize first with other cops and very little with their victims.
It’s a sort of blend of No True Scotsman and Confirmation Bias.
::screaming @ humanity:: “WE’RE ALL ON THE SAME TEAM!!!”
Sometimes I wonder if that can reliably work, or if the human brain really needs to think in terms of in-groups and common enemies to get anything done. Even if we’re all on the same team, it seems like anything we accomplish together has to be framed in terms of fighting some non-human common enemy.
I live in Crown Heights, and the relationship between cops and citizens there is just fraught with tension. I have never seen cops patrol the trains anywhere else the way they do in my neighborhood (3 or 4 armed officers in one car at a time), or standing on the corner “observing” people. *I* feel intimidated by their presence, I can’t imagine how POC, especially men, feel. And the sad truth is that when you need police presence (we’ve had to call the cops a couple times over the years), it takes upwards of an hour for them to show up. That would never happen in Manhattan.
ETA: There is a huge difference between “I hate cops” and “I am straight up terrified of cops,” and I think it’s easier for officers to buy into the “hate” narrative because it places the onus back on the community and allows them to sidestep any responsibility for the way things are.
My limited experience indicates that being a police officer appeals to a certain type of guy who is not particularly self-reflective or worldly, meaning that they just assume that critiques are baseless attacks for other reasons. My coworker stated he had always wanted to be a cop but 1) he also tells stories of fare-jumping and ignoring gun laws 2) he chose to go into completely different area of study and will not put himself through academy resulting in 3) applying to be a cop in one of 2 towns in the state that don’t require academy training prior to hire (if ever?) that one time and then dropping it when they didn’t bring him back for another interview. But again, he really wants to be a cop he says. In addition, despite all the proud stories of his white arse breaking the law knowingly he says that POC just need to be on their best behavior and they won’t get shot by cops. And that is not racist. Nope it’s all about respect for the law and law enforcement. Like he demonstrates by fare jumping etc.
Yeah, and I’d argue that police departments encourage that type of mentality, and punish (whether overtly or not) individuals in the department who are more critical in their thought.
I think this article might have made it into a link roundup a few weeks ago, but is still very relevant.
I believe it’s fairly common for police entry exams to include IQ tests, and not only is there an IQ minimum but an IQ maximum as well. The theory being that people who are too smart would be bored with the work of a police officer or some such thing (though I suspect the real reason is that someone too smart wouldn’t follow orders as well.)
Which, of course IQ tests are not a measure of a person’s worth or value and may not even be particularly accurate at measuring intelligence, but this could be a contributing factor as to why police officers often seem to be… less self-reflective as you describe, and maybe not the most critical of thinkers.
Question of my Wkd that Toasties probably know the answer to! What exactly did Deatheaters get from supporting Voldemort’s reign? Like, I totally get that HE gets to be leader of all wizards, and they get the benefit of creating a permanent ruling class since they’re persecuting Muggles, but if you’re not Bellatrix (who I assume gets some kind of Queen of the Damned Cabinet position) why are you supporting this dude? Like, the Malfoy’s already were crazy rich and ruled things, how does their life get BETTER under Voldemort?
Trump, but appealing to the aristocracy and not the working class
My mind jumped to Trump too. Voldemort had the army of bigoted Muggle-hating wizards behind him, so a good chunk of the wizard upper class realized that it behooved them to get behind the leader of the movement in order to curry favor with him and be set up for life or get lots of power once he was in charge of the wizarding world.
Basically, Voldemort=Trump, Malfoy= Chris Christie
UGH that metaphor is so apt…. I used to give CC a lot of credit bc he flew the flags half mast when Whitney died.
Yeah – he’s playing that same, “stolen birthright” game with them. Yes, the deatheaters are mostly rich (although I imagine many are cash-poor), but nobody seems to care any more. They want to dominate the other strata of wizard society.
This is a good question! I think some of them are basically just criminals who are thrilled to have an excuse to kill and torture. Also, often people with a moderate amount of power will still jump at the chance to change the system so that they have even more. Possibly there’s also an economic answer? If they’re declaring that all non-pure-born wizards are thieves of magic they may be confiscating their property and distributing it amongst themselves. Are there taxes paid to the ministry of magic? Maybe dissolving it in favor of a dictatorship will lead to them keeping more of their income/stolen goods.
ETA: here for excessively thorough answers to fantasy questions any time.
I agree that some of them were solely motivated by the fact that they’re sadists. Voldemort really brought the psychologically disturbed wizards out of the woodwork.
And beyond that, I think wizard society is just fundamentally cruel and exclusionary. Dumbledore is the aberration, not the norm, and Voldemort is really just promising to make wizarding great again.
Wizards, by and large, view the outside world as both hostile and inferior, barbarians at the gates. Muggles are useless, but potentially threatening and in need of domination. Other non-human magical societies are even worse – centaurs, spiders, giants, etc. Dumbledore is reaching out to all of them in hopes of peace, but that’s new. And unpopular.
Wizards, by and large, view the outside world as both hostile and inferior, barbarians at the gates.
Yeah, I feel like part of the issue for the Death Eaters are Muggles. Their population has exploded, they’re getting harder to hide from (which increases restrictions on the magical population), and there are Dumbledorean sections of the magical populations who want muggles to be treated ethically. Oh no, you’re saying you don’t want us to go out and fuck with muggles whenever we want? Screw that!
This is a big one. They hated having to restrict their actions to hide at all times from Muggles. The Death Eaters were notorious for not bothering to hide from Muggles, hence the actions at the Quidditch World Cup.
Yeah, and perhaps in part, they’re afraid that the Muggles will soon surpass them, with better tech trumping any magical rejoinder. Particularly if they have Muggleborn/half-blood allies, or if they’re able to make contact with other magical entities.
What’s going to keep Muggles and goblins apart forever?
They get cool tattoos? That’s a significant quality of life improvement for sure.
I bet they must get free hair products. You don’t get shine like Lucius Malfoy or curls to hold like Bellatrix without some serious product.
Not just shine but that silken texture- perfect control without any stray wispies but still touchably soft. (Is this where we admit to having a bit of a thing for Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy? because I’m here.)
I totally have a thing for him. He also referred to his shiny locks in an interview as “this totally bitchin’ haircut” so….yea. I also have a thing for Helena Bonham-Carter in general and specifically as Bellatrix. There is never a single moment when she doesn’t look like she is having the time of her life. I don’t even think they gave her lines, just put her in a costume and told her “go have fun now!”
TOTALLY have a thing for Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy. Or even just Jason Isaacs. I even watched “Brotherhood” when it was on, despite the very bad RI accents, to watch his pretty face. (But he really is prettier with the Luci(o)us hair.)
“A bit of a thing” is a bit of an understatement…
I find it noteworthy how many franchises demonstrate the Evil Heart/Good Hair law. I always found there to be a pretty solid inverse relationship between Sam Winchester’s hair styles and his level of demonic activities.
I had never realized this. You are so right!
They’re cowards, and this way they get to be on the winning side when the killing starts.
It didn’t seem like all the Death Eaters were part of the aristocracy, so it would make sense that there’s also a class component. Like how poor white Americans are often pitted against African Americans.
I always assumed that DE were mostly purebloods (I mean, obv not entirely because Snape) and that the wizarding aristocracy is basically the older pureblood families. I think the class element does come into play, though – you get the people who feel like they’ve been cut out of their rightful place in that aristocracy, whether or not it’s legitimate (again, Snape, but also people who might’ve been on the lower rungs or only fairly recently got “pureblood” status).
Basically, imo, aristocracy is a class thing? And not tied to money, though there is a need for the perception of wealth. And I think for wizarding Britain, instead of money/wealth, it’s blood status.
I agree with this completely. It’s a way of pushing back against the feeling of being threatened by a class of people (muggle-born witches and wizards) they view as inferior to them. The more inclusionary wizarding society is, and the more level the playing field, the less special and important old-money purebloods are.
I’ve always imagined a big part of it is the desire to protect/defend magic. Wanting to keep the magical world secret and safe, not letting witches and wizards create lasting ties to Muggles and refusing entrance to those from Muggle families.
I think a big part of it is the fear, right, of how Muggles would react to the discovery of magic. Witches and wizards are wildly outnumbered, and it wouldn’t be much of a fight if something triggered a war magical folk weren’t prepared for/already fighting.
Like, the History of Magic books talk about how witches getting burned would just turn the flames cold with their magic, but I imagine any magical person caught who had their wand taken away wouldn’t have much recourse against a very violent, physical attack (yes yes, the powerful ones can do wandless magic blah blah but kids and stuff? Or average wizards caught in a panic?).
There’s a whole history no one on Harry’s side talks about much, but wizards went into hiding for a reason (Statute of Secrecy etc etc) and even Hagrid is like, we’re best left alone. So! If you come from a long pureblood line and have that panic and fear instilled in you for generations, I can see how Voldemort seems like a permanent solution to the problem of wizards creating dangerous ties to Muggles.
(I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ON THIS, HI.)
I’ve always been curious about the whole Statute of Secrecy situation. How did the entire magical world agree to go into hiding? What if the wizards in, say, southeast Asia wanted to go public but nobody else did–could some kind of Magic UN stop them? Is anyone talking about desegregation at all? One of the things that makes me unhappy about the epilogue is how the world seems to be exactly the same. It seems like SOMEONE who lived through those wars about blood purity should have questioned whether Muggles really pose a greater danger to wizards than the ideology of separatism does.
MY KINGDOM for a rundown of the international magical community.
I think I am giving JKR too much credit for what was probably just meant to be a happy sendoff to characters she tortured for years, but I sort of think the sameness is the point. Nothing changed because nothing ever changes, etc. The same prejudices will always be around, and even if they go underground for a while, someone will always dig them back up.
Like, you would think the whole Shitting on Slytherin Children thing would’ve died down a bit, right, like hey maybe don’t alienate a quarter of your youth because they won’t trust you when things get difficult, but it seems to be in full swing in the epilogue.
Right, the Slytherin thing in particular gets me. I get the feeling that the talk about “the bravest man I ever knew” was supposed to be the progress we saw in that scene, but it’s both paltry and ridiculous. I know that the separation between wizards and Muggles (sometimes I wonder why that word is capitalized) is centuries old and likely can’t be changed in a decade and a half, at least not unless something spectacular happens to blow the lid off the statute of secrecy. But I wish someone would at least talk about the possibility! If only the epilogue didn’t end with “all was well” when problems obviously persist.
Ugh, The Problem of Slytherin. I feel like if Rowling had a stronger editor for the last four books they might have pointed out that, for all her talk of “choice” and “House unity” we get like, 3 not-totally-terrible Sytherin characters and most of them are minor at best. Also, having an evil character (other than Pettigrew) come from a different house would have gone a long way.
The way I see it, any of the House characteristics could lead you down a dark path if taken to an extreme. Ravenclaw, for example, could have illustrated how knowledge without compassion ends with the wizarding equivalent of the H-bomb. Hufflepuff would be the example that misplaced loyalty can be a terrible thing (the motto of the SS was, after all ‘My Loyalty is My Honor’). Gryffindor could have explored that inflated ideals of bravery and chivalry lead to “ubermensch” mentalities that are unhealthy. And Sytherin, who’s main attribute was ambition, should have had way more people that ended up becoming politicians and professional sports players and the like instead of a House of racist sociopaths.
It could have been an interesting study in balance and moderation. Instead it ended up being “3 houses good, 1 bad, except not really…..but yea, in practice, totally 3:1”
I think the portrayal of Slytherin is justified because the books are told from such a limited perspective. Despite taking place in this sprawling world we all like to explore and develop, the books are strictly from Harry’s POV (except for just a few side chapters). Plus, in Harry’s day, Slytherin house was largely made up of kids of Death Eaters. I think it makes total sense that in Harry’s day, Slytherin house would have been filled with kids for whom magical racism and elitism were the norm. They would have created a pretty insular culture/echo chamber/whatever you want to call it.
You think the Sorting Hat wouldn’t be biased by what’s going on, though. Its interest in only in the persons qualities and virtues. There have to be some Death Eater kids/ supporters who are super smart and were therefore put into Ravenclaw. We see quite a few Death Eaters that would fall under the “loyal and hardworking” qualities of Hufflepuff. And for all of her bat-shit crazy, you could totally describe Bellatrix as “brave, daring, and full of nerve”- all Gryffindoor traits. We are only limited by Harry’s point of view because Rowling stuck all the evil people in a different House from him, if they were more evenly spread out he would have run into them more, if that makes sense.
That second sentence isn’t true, though. The hat looks at traits, but it takes your own decisions into account too. I think that’s heavily implied to be one of the reasons houses tend to run in families (for a non-Slytherin example, see Percy Weasley, who was ambitious as hell–but when he was 11, coming from a family full of Gryffindors, wouldn’t he have thought the proper thing to do would be to be a Gryffindor, like his folks? And Regulus Black was ultimately just as brave as Sirius, but he wanted to be like his family, whereas Sirius was always a rebel). We get both direct and indirect criticism of the fact that the houses sort so soon, and that so much is based on House (see the cross-house unity of Dumbledore’s Army). I think because family is one of the major themes of the books, the fact that sorting and alignment were so closely tied to family makes a lot of sense. But just because it worked for me doesn’t mean it worked for every reader!
I’m a Sorting Hat truther. I’m not sure it doesn’t anything at all, other than chat a little bit. The actual sorting is done by Dumbledore, possibly with the heads of houses. The whole Sorting process is just a fancy show for the sake of tradition.
Don’t trusdt anything if you can’t see where it keeps its brain, etc.
The fact that the Houses seem relatively evenly-sized (what if you get a year group that’s 90% Hufflepuff? Where would they all sleep?) makes me doubt the Sorting Hat. I suspect it throws students into Houses they might not be the best fit for sometimes just to make things balance out.
There was a fic like that! How after the war there were only like two new baby Slytherins and a huge surplus of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and here was this debate about just merging the Slytherins into other houses and dismantling Slytherin altogether.
Haha I don’t have much else to add, but it was an interesting scenario to think about!
I agree with this! I see your House as reflecting not your innate abilities, but what ideals and values are most important to you. Thus, we get Hermione–who is certainly smart enough to be in Ravenclaw–ending up in Gryffindor because she (at least deep in her heart of hearts) prioritizes standing up for what’s right over acquisition of knowledge. And of course, Harry asking not to be put in Slytherin because he’s already decided that it’s not a group he wants to align himself with.
I hear you on the perspective thing, but while Harry’s hatred of Snape and adoration of Dumbledore gets in the way of him figuring things out sometimes, we do get a pretty clear and hard-to-argue-with idea of which characters are evil by the end of the series, and the evil is overwhelmingly Slytherin. If the house is that irredeemable–say, if Voldemort recruited people from his House and then they passed their prejudices on to their children, and if we buy into the idea that families are so similar you’ll just see generation upon generation of Slytherins and an ambitious person will almost never have a brave child and if they do then they’re good-and-brave like Sirius Black, not evil-and-brave…if we buy into that, then someone oughtta do something about it, you know? Giving the racists their own house to build these coalitions is a terrible idea!
Yeah, that would require a lot more nuance than I think Rowling was interested in exploring.
The closest we get to a good Slytherin is Slughorn,* and even then, I feel like the narrative treats him with this sort of mild disdain because of his interest in building relationships with important and successful people. (Which, honestly, is what we usually call networking, and is a valuable career skill.)
*I don’t count Snape because I genuinely don’t view him as ever being fully on the “good” side–he spends most of the books doing the right things for 100% self-serving reasons.
Let’s be honest, much though I love McGonagall, Slughorn is the teacher/mentor you would want to have. “Oh, you have an interest in writing, let me introduce you to so-and-so at the Prophet” “You are a kick-ass Quiddich player? I know the captain of the Hollyhead Harpies, let me pass your info along to her” “you have political ambitions? Come to this party I am having, there will be some people there that might interest you.”
I am with you on not counting Snape. “Oh, you are going to kill my crushes whole family? That’s cool, just spare her. Totally down with you killing her 21 year old husband and infant son though.” That doesn’t make you good, dude.
I kind of disagree with this, though, because while having a teacher who is interested in connections can benefit you, Slughorn was not interested in anyone who wouldn’t benefit him in the future. He picked out the ones he thought would do good things for him and could care less about anyone else. In fact, it felt less like we were supposed to treat him with disdain because making connections was important to him, but because he treated people like novelties and commodities.
What I like about this aspect of Slughorn is that it 100% makes him an asshole, but is an entirely recognizable personality type. He’s not a dark wizard, he’s just selfish and snotty.
Isn’t this the International Wizengamot? Obviously, it’s not thoroughly fleshed out in the canon, but that organization could provide a starter for some excellent socio-political fanfic!
True! But ahh all those glimpses of international wizards in Goblet of Fire were so great but never followed up on! lsdkfj I mean, yes okay the books were already 700+ pages each, but man it would have been so nice for some more info on how magical culture/politics differs across the world.
Thank god for fic haha
The thing that gets me about the Statute of Secrecy is how it works for Muggleborns. You can tell your parents and siblings about magic, it seems, and do it in front of them, but what about your extended family and friends? Are you allowed to tell them? If not, what do you say? How do your parents explain your absence (“Yes, I know we were always very opposed to private school, plus we can’t afford it, but I suppose we just changed our minds and sent out child off to school in the Highlands”). It definitely seems to promote division and distrust between magical and non-magical communities.
If I’d had time or energy, this was seriously going to be what all my fanfiction was about: #Muggleborn problems. It actually feels like a pretty sad and dark side we aren’t supposed to notice because “ooh! magic!”)
Wasn’t it a group of Muggle neighbor boys who tortured Dumbledore’s little sister when they saw her being a wizard in public? IIRC, that’s a big part of what led to his later summer of love with wizard Hitler (that, and the blurry relationships lines between British public school students).
Yes!!! It is a very real and legitimate concern! Obviously I am not saying Voldemort and his bros have the right response, but I don’t think their motives are totally incomprehensible.
Yes! Me too! There is so much to unpack in the Statute of Secrecy stuff and just in general in the dynamics of how Muggleborns move into the magical world, and what really is the status of Muggle families of wizards? I find it kind of unsettling that it sort of presents as total assimilation (except for holdouts like Dean and his soccer poster) and the extent of the divide that occurs once a kid gets his or her Hogwarts letter (although obviously the sample we see is also strongly influenced by the parents-are-inconvenient-in-adventure-stories factor.)
I THINK ABOUT THIS ALL THE TIME.
I’m particularly baffled by all these stories of witches/wizards marrying Muggles but failing to mention the magic thing until they’ve tied the knot. I suppose it’s against the law to disclose your status until you’re legally bound, but good god what a way to begin a marriage.
And transferring from Muggle world to magical one must be such a maze. Like what if your parents don’t get how to do the owl post thing? And you can’t show them what you’ve learned until you’re of age, so like. sdlfkj Wouldn’t parents just think it was some elaborate ruse to get out of geometry…
And anyway, you’re totally cut off from the culture, so how do you even make small talk when you go back home? And it’s not like you can really talk about what your year has been like and expect anyone to understand. GOD what if you get sick or hurt over the summer? Getting put in a cast when you know Madame Pomfrey could’ve healed you in seconds? It must be such a struggle.
I can’t believe the story about Seamus’s mum not telling his dad she was a witch until after the marriage is presented as a hilarious anecdote rather than HORRIFYING. (And how do you get to know each other well enough to get married without disclosing that? It’s such a major thing, plus everything we see about wizard-Muggle interactions suggests that the average wizard knows virtually nothing about the Muggle world and is very confused by it when they have to operate in it.)
RIGHT?? It’s the most bizarre thing. How do these couples meet!! What on earth do they talk about?? How do they explain their jobs/families/youthful memories? They don’t even have pop culture in common!
In my unfinished fanfic, I handwaved that you can get away with telling someone you are engaged to, which my protagonist might have used as a loophole, just a little bit? Hey, engagements end; it happens.
But yes, on the being cut off from the culture–and really, it’s a one-way trip. The amount of lying you’d have to do to cover up weird remote boarding school (especially if you go and your siblings don’t! Mum and Dad love me more, I guess. Or hate me more, also possible), and no, you can’t actually write me, and no, definitely not doing A-Levels or O-Levels or going to university anyplace anyone has heard of, and a fake job description/title and. . .
I mean, if it’s thought out to any extent (and it might not be, because I think Rowling assumes anyone would hugely prefer the magical world (um, sorry, I still don’t see Patronus charms or Owl post or pretty much any wizarding communication option as ‘better than the internet’), it would be kind of a “Crapsacchrine World” (thanks TV tropes!) in which parts of the social fabric are deliberately engineered to disconnect and eventually sever Muggleborn kids from their families of origin–which is doubly creepy in a world where “family” and family ties/rivalries are a big damn deal!
“(yes yes, the powerful ones can do wandless magic blah blah but kids and stuff? Or average wizards caught in a panic?). ”
Ariana dumbledore is a prime example. She was tortured because she was a kid and couldn’t defend herself. Then she had to be kept hidden because she was a threat to magical secrecy. While most outsiders believed she was a squib, if she had been known to be a witch who couldn’t control her power, it’s not unrealistic to believe that she would have been locked up in St. Mungo’s for the rest of her life.
It’s not just about a ruling class, but the fact that they truly believe that having pure blood is best. They are the ones who believe that Hogwarts shouldn’t even let in muggle born and half-blood students. They believe that wizards are far superior to muggles and would rather not let any non-full blood wizards and witches into their world at all. But of course they can’t come out and say that on their own without making a lot of people angry and alienating people whose support they need. So instead they wait for someone whose crazy enough to say it all and join with him.
Also I think for a lot of them, they got in when they were young and would rather not still follow him after he comes back but are in too deep and unable to escape.
The youth-aspect is true as well! I can imagine a few things I was into in college that I would be less than thrilled about if they popped up NOW, demanding my full allegiance under threat of death.
There’s a wonderful tumblr post that I sadly can’t track down right now about how Voldemort lost specifically because he failed to see how his college buddies might, after 13 years, find other things–like the well-being of their children–more important than supporting his attempt to Make the Wizarding World Great Again.
Depends.
Some are in it for more power/money. Some are in it because they really think his reign is inevitable and they want to be on the right side. Some think he’s correct, politically. Some just want the opportunity to torture/torment Muggles and “lesser” wizards. The Malfoys have power and influence but they have to toe a very careful line in terms of not saying/doing certain things that they would like to, whereas under a Voldemort rule they wouldn’t (they’d have to toe a different line in terms of always keeping Voldemort happy, but they haven’t really thought through the implications of life under an incredibly powerful dictator)
TBH, I think the Potterverse is just a Jerkass world. (Not to say our own isn’t, of course…)
I mean, Dumbledore’s supposedly the epitome of goodness and the most trusted authority, and he’s flirted with racial domination and is fairly corrupt. You’ve got a dominating bunch of angry hotheads (Gryffindors and Slytherins), everyone who’s vaguely gentle or intellectual is slightly suspect, every system of government/education etc. is based around cronyism, there’s a bunch of personality cults… It just leads to a permanently dissatisfied population who are excellent at outsting/blaming others but not great on critical thinking. (The Slytherins seem to dominate the death eaters, but they seem to base their choices on personal loyalties rather than ideologies as much as the Gryffindors, which is great when your whole family joins up, less great when say, Voldie wants to kill your son. Interestingly, the Ravenclaws, or at least Cho and Luna seem to be able to somewhat separate people from their actions, which is probably why they come off as a bit suspect next to Hufflepuff, who are one pitchfork away from an angry mob.)
I feel like ‘all was well’ probably lasted about fifteen minutes before the next dark lord/lady sprung up.
Yes. I was so troubled by so many things by the end of the last book. Partly it seems to have a real streak of Good People and Bad People, rather than People who might do Good or Bad Things, and that increased rather than decreased in the series. (When we go from the Unforgivable Curses being, you know, unforgivable, to them being gallant. There were a lot of things in the earlier books I thought would turn out to have significant, hard consequences and then they just disappeared into camping and chest monsters.) I also think there’s just kind of a mean streak, which I find kind of unsettling. (I’m a contrarian–part of me feels bad for permently? scarred Marietta Edgecombe. One of my favorite fanfics in the day had her as basically a double agent into Neville’s army, because she was able to convince the Carrows that obviously she hated Harry Potter and Co due to her scarring, and in the epilogue, Hermione is working though a big pile of texts to figure out how to remove the scar “which was her way of apologizing.) Partly, I guess, because within the school setting so much manifests in kind of physical bullying, which in the magic world is so fixable–it feels to me like it leads to a lot of callousness about how people are treated in general.)
I was 19 when I started reading them, when GOF came out, but I think even as a kid I would not have wanted a Hogwarts letter very long. And of course it’s just claustrophobically small–you have all the same friends you did when you were 11 for life, and you all mostly marry each other, and everyone thinks it’s completely normal that 30something and older adults are still obsessed with their school rivalries.
I SEE YOU HAVE READ MAYA’S WORKS…
I HAD THEM OPEN QUITE RECENTLY FOR BRAIN COMFORT PURPOSES!
They are the best for that. I have like a thousand backup files so I will never have to live without them haha.
Yes, The Quality of Mercy! (Was that The Quality of Mercy? My brain says so.)
This is completely true. I’m somewhat glad Rowling stayed away from a more nuanced angle, though, because the instances where this happens in the books don’t seem very well done to me.
OH yeah, holy shit, Marietta Edgecombe. That is a horrifying punishment, especially when you consider that it’s not as if she betrayed the DA out of spite. Her mother’s job was on the line! Political shit was going down! She was A CHILD facing a ton of pressure from multiple directions, and she had a moment of weakness, so sure, disfigure her forever, that seems cool.
Slytherins don’t base their choices on personal loyalties alone. Self-preservation is a big thing for them and for some of them that means following Voldemort. The Malfoys always seemed more scared to me, they’re not the most loyal Death Eaters.
Cho and Luna never seem suspect to me and Luna is really loyal to Harry and her friends.
I went into this downthread a little (week late and a dollar short!), but re: the suspect bit, I kinda meant that in terms of taking the Watsonian approach to the series and trying to view it from the JKR/Harry style approach.
I mean, the nice thing about the series is how much it stokes people’s imaginations to find ways to include what wasn’t covered in the books as much as discussing what was – see people’s headcanon on sorting, diversity etc.
I do think, personally, though that JKR never seemed particularly interested in the sorting in terms of there being a strict reasoning behind each beyond basic level characterisation (Slytherins are bad, Gryffindors are the best, the other two depend on how nice they are to the Gryffindors.)
Obviously there are exceptions (Wormtail, Snape – although Snape is termed as ‘Maybe we sort too soon!’ i.e. missorted, rather than ‘Maybe this whole sorting thing isn’t what it’s cracked up to be’ – it’s hilarious that the evil villain for example, is the only one suggesting that no house or one house would be a better system, and yeah, the ‘all is well’ bit seems to be ‘Thank goodness we still have exactly the same divisive system we always did with perhaps a modicum more respect for one particular deviation from that system proving himself to also possess ethics valued in the best house!’) but people turn themselves into knots giving the benefit of the doubt and making these amazing theories for the sorting (‘The hat puts you where you want! Dumbledore chooses! The hat has to sort 25% into each house! The hat puts you where you most value!’) when it rarely gets beyond the basic level: ‘Hufflepuffs are meanies when they all group together to be rude to Harry, but better when they all group together to curse Harry’s enemies!’ ‘Ravenclaws are slightly untrustworthy in that they sometimes insist on seeing things from a point that isn’t gut reaction’. (Cho pisses off Harry by having emotions, but also by defending Marietta and questioning Hermione’s hex; Luna irritates the Trio, even while she’s their friend, by her irrational beliefs, but also by making them uncomfortable with her honesty about people they like and don’t really want to examine.)
And all the Slytherins who are ever shown as halfway forgiveable (Slughorn, the Malfoys, Snape) are those who aren’t invested in a particular ideology so much as they are other people – the Malfoys love for each other trumps their hatred, Snape’s love for Lily is presented as what redeems him, even Slughorn is persuaded to assist Harry because of fond memories of Lily rather than any investment in right or wrong.
Dumbledore’s authoritarianist tendencies and his manipulations of others aren’t glossed over in the book, though…they’re major subplots. I think any reading of the books that positions him as an ultimate moral authority and beacon of eternal goodness is wrong. (Exactly how corrupt vs. moral Dumbledore is, I think, is an argument that depends more on the personal beliefs of the individual readers than on his book portrayal.)
Seconding that I never got the sense that Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws were slightly suspect. But anyway, as you acknowledge in your post, everything in the “You’ve got a bunch of angry hotheads…not great at critical thinking” section seems like it could 100% apply to the real world!
I was thinking more of Rowling’s quote calling him the epitome of goodness. I personally don’t have any time for him. Rowling seems to generally underline Harry’s views as the ones most closely aligned to hers (when he has a strong opinion as opposed to when he’s indifferent, where I’d argue she defaults to Hermione as holding the more ‘correct’ view.), so I guess where I’d consider Dumbledore an asshole at absolute best; she seems like she’s going for most readers to go ‘Hmm, he made tough choices, All Too Human, but a decent guy at the end of it.’ IDK.
Re: the other houses, there does seem to be a little balance in the presentation of Hufflepuffs/Ravenclaws who are Nice to Harry and therefore Decent (Luna, the D.A. Hufflepuff boys) versus those who question Harry or have other priorities and are therefore Morally Suspect (Marietta Edgecombe, Zacharias Smith.) but in general, Rowling doesn’t seem to really have an interest in developing the house system to a true equality between the four so much as Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw proving themselves as loyal allies/seconds to Gryffindor and Slytherins showing their inferiority. So the slight suspicion I referred to is I guess more of the feeling that those two houses are always one step away from being in lower regard in a world drawn around particularly Gryffindor style ethics – Ravenclaw because they have the intellectual bent that’s in conflict to the ‘heart over head’ approach (you have Luna, who’s shown as a true friend, but also pisses off the leads and isn’t quite accepted, in part because of the ‘uncomfortable truths’ she brings up – to the trio, it’s almost unsayable to admit say, that Hagrid is a crap teacher, despite how obvious it is.) And Hufflepuff because of the groupthink (turning against Harry in CoS and GoF.)
Fear, some of them. It must have looked like your options were eat or be eaten. If you had Juggle ancestry a few generations back, you’d do all you could to protect your family.
They are a bunch of shitty racists.
I suppose not all of the pure-bloods were wealthy, so getting to be the ruling class would have appealed (although it didn’t to the Weasleys, so that argument can’t be taken that far). I suspect they just really hated and feared Muggles and Muggleborns.
Keeping their position solid! The Malfoys were already crazy rich and powerful but by keeping people like Hermione out, they had less competition.
my dad doesn’t have any friends NOR DOES HE WANT ANY, he is a hermit, but if he did
Yup. I’ve never been more grateful that my dad is a borderline loner.
Yeah, my dad has acquaintances from various hobbies, but no one he’d invite over to the house or spend time with outside of that hobby. My mom’s slightly better, but not by much. It was so weird when I made friends with a girl whose parents had SO MANY FRIENDS and they’d always be popping by the house.
I had a Dad’s Friend like that, would IM me all the time. Nothing suggestive, but I thought it was weird. Father of six; I was friends with his oldest and was at his house all the time. Later it came out that he was a serial child rapist. My own father, a survivor of abuse with a usually razor-sharp creep radar, never suspected a thing.
Thank goodness you came out of that unhurt.
I find it almost unbelievable that your dad suspected nothing (I’m not saying it’s not possible, it’s just hard to wrap my brain around). Did he ever have just a slight feeling that something was off that he subconsciously chose to block out?
I’ve talked about it with my dad, and the years we lived around this guy were actually those when he still wasn’t out about surviving abuse. He didn’t tell anyone for 26 years, in fact, until a triggering event brought everything out. So my dad theorizes that if he had suspicions they went suppressed along with his own experiences. He was hard on himself about it for awhile, since one of this guy’s victims was the son of my dad’s best friend. My dad thinks that if he hadn’t been blocking his experiences he would have been able to recognize that this guy was a creep and have done something to stop him. It’s part of why, since “coming out”, he’s used his position as a journalist to expose predators in the community.
Your dad sounds like a really great person. Tell him that he has the deep respect of a rando from the internet!
He is, and I will!
And another rando!
Hi everyone – I just wanted to say thank you so much for all of the very kind and wonderful responses to my question on the open thread Friday about faith. I get the comments via email through IntenseDebate and I have saved them all. I am just overwhelmed by all the compassion that was shown. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I just saw that thread, and it was so kind and generous that I am now a big soppy mess of tears. I think everyone had great things to say, atheists and Jews and Buddhists and Christians alike, and I’m glad you felt loved. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
That was such a wonderful thread – I’m pretty much as godless as you can get, but I still found a lot of insight into Christianity and the beliefs of some of our lovely Toasties. I hope very much that your uncle recovers and that you treat yourself kindly as you struggle with some of the Big Questions.
“Thank you for approving my friend request.” <– THIS. The 5-minutes-post-acceptance “thank-you” note is the number-one sign I’m going to regret accepting a dude’s friend request. It’s def not limited to older guys– my worst date in college came from a guy who did that (immediate message thanking me and asking me to hang out, followed by “haha I guess I just asked you on a date ;)” after I had agreed to hang out, natch). I don’t know exactly what it is about it that bothers me, maybe just that thanking someone for making a pretty empty gesture of goodwill in the digital age indicates that he’s (a) taking it way to seriously/literally and/or (b) angling for something and using the gesture from the other party as a foot in the door (i.e. “you accepted my friend request, so you are actively seeking interaction with me”)
Especially that last bit in the parenthesis. GOD.
Yeah, foot in the door is a known sales technique – get someone to grant a small request, and they’ll be more inclined to grant larger ones later. Like opposite reciprocity – you just keep tilting the request-granting more and more in your favor. As a sales technique, it’s gross enough, but in interpersonal relationships? Ugh.
Completely agree with you; I may interpret the “friends” label too literally on Facebook, but I look at it like this: if we are actual friends, then there’s no need to thank anyone for adding them. (I keep my Facebook pretty locked down though, with only people I actually want to interact with able to see my posts – no friends of friends, no professional acquaintances, etc.).
Ooh, I keep my FB on huge lockdown as well. Do I know you, have we personally interacted at some point, would I recognize you in the street? If it’s “yes” to all three, you’re Inner Circle, everybody else: sorry, no can do.
(But I do have one FB page under my business name (West50East Studios) that I use to promote my artwork!)
Oh yes, plus the implicit or explicit logical leap that if you set boundaries or refuse to hang out/go on dates it’s unfair because you were somehow “leading them on” by accepting a friend request.
My spouse got rather traumatically laid off by her former employer because she ran out of FMLA while pregnant and hyperemetic, and they asked her to do some consulting work a couple months ago. After a great deal of deliberation, she went with Nicole’s route: she said sure, it would take about twenty hours of work, and her consulting rate would be 3x her former W-2 rate (which is perfectly reasonable, though she probably would have quoted 2x to a company that hadn’t, you know, fired her while she was pregnant). They said, “well, we can only afford 60% of that.” And, because she’s amazing, she replied with a much more diplomatically phrased version of “then I guess you’d better hope I can get it done in twelve hours.” (Which she did! See above under: amazing.)
*slow clap*
Oh man – the creepy dad’s friend facebook note is exactly like that I got from an older professor I worked with once. I was a language major, and he was on staff at an immersion summer camp where I worked. Like, similar down to the way in which he kept offering to help me come live in his country of origin (where he was a professor) for a year, and would make lots of comments about my appearance interspersed within claims of wanting to help advance my studies/career. When I eventually blocked him (after several such notes despite me doing my best to shut him down), he borrowed friend’s accounts to scold me about being ungrateful…
UGH.
D:
Lemme guess, was it Middlebury? Color me shocked.
No, actually! More midwestern, like to brag that Chelsea Clinton attended their camps.
That community (at least for my language) is so small though – this particular professor also was a professor for another college language scholarship program in his home country. I later received one of the scholarships and was going to be sent to his country, and had to contact the coordinators to be like “so I don’t know if professor x still works with this program, but here are some weird notes he sent me while he was my coworker. I would prefer not to be in a class under his instruction”
They immediately reassigned me to a different country. I got the sense from their response that they were not shocked.
I’m really sad to hear this. I went to those camps for ten summers running and it was a hugely important part of my childhood, and it’s terrible to imagine awful people there. I did notice that over the time I was attending (my last summer was 2002), the rules about camper/counselor interactions seemed to get a lot stricter: we’d be gabbing about our lives, and then the counselor would be like “welp, you’re raising a subject I can’t talk to you about, I’m gonna change the subject.” I wonder if something happened, or if they just put some more careful HR guidelines in place. Or maybe those rules were always there and became more obvious as I got older.
“Yes, I am ungrateful. Stop wasting energy on an ingrate.”
To scold you??????
How can we not be expected to do physical violence to people like that? Sheesh.
One of the creepier elements to that horrifying Easter photo is the bunny isn’t all that much bigger than the kids. Did they dress up a tween to horrify his/her younger siblings/cousins? If so, why did they dress him like a cross between Howdy Doody and a bad taxidermy project?
Howdy Doody went to my high school! I bring this up at every opportunity because they’re so few and far between.
And yes, technically Buffalo Bob, the ventriloquest, went to the school, not the dummy.
That looks early 50’sish to me?
IDK but it looks like it could be my mom and her brother with their dad – he was not a large man, only around 5’8″ at the tallest, with a slight build. Small, but wiry. This seems like not a totally uncommon size for men of his generation?
Someone printed out pictures like these and taped them to our floor’s automated mail cart. AHHHHH
Whenever I hear a man in a story say “perhaps we could take a walk in the woods” I think the odds are high he’s going to murder you there and chop up your body so you should run away as far as you can, tossing smoke bombs behind you so he can’t see where you’re going.
This is why we need ink pouches like squid.
I wish I could be like the sea cucumber and projectile vomit when I need to.
Yes, I wish to vomit at will when men be mansplaining at me or asking me to do their emotional labor. And I want perfect aim, limiting mess to their person, nowhere else. So cleanup is their problem.
I knew a baby who could vomit at will.
If she felt trapped (highchair) and required to do something she did not want to do (eat veggies or protein) when there were toys waiting to be played with, she would get this look on her face. Focused, determined. Then out it would come, all the contents of her stomach. Then she was released from the hated highchair and allowed to crawl off to find toys while adults cleaned up.
Her parents learned to recognize the facial expression. I witnessed the father, baby spoon of veggies in hand, say sternly, “Don’t you do it!” over and over. Now an adult, this woman tells herself “Don’t you do it!”, hears the same tone in her head, when she feels nauseous but wishes not to vomit. She reports it is effective, except during the first trimesters of her pregnancies.
That is one heck of an impressive child. And terrifying.
Morning, Toasties! Random question for you: is the Arthur & George miniseries worth watching? It’s the ITV/PBS one and it just showed up on Amazon Prime.
I haven’t read the book either, so I honestly don’t know much about it.
I remember reading the book and enjoying it enough at the time to finish it, but never feeling the urge to reread it, if that is any use at all? I think the miniseries is one I will watch when I want something to be on while I arse about on the internet but not a priority.
I enjoyed it! I haven’t read the book, either, but it’s apparently based on a true story. That said, my attempts to remember it right now are inextricably tangled with the Sherlock Christmas episode, so I can’t give you specific reasons why I enjoyed it, just that I did.
Thanks!
Toasties, I’m graduating! I passed both my exit exams–the second one just minutes ago–and I’m deliriously happy. I also have to wrangle the “we who passed our exit exams” lunch, but I’m so excited (I’m so scared!)
Have a lovely lunch, and congraaaaats!
Congratulations!
Hooray you did it!!!
I remember the day that I realized that my dad was the creepy friend. All of his friends are creepy too, but that I could deal with. Then I realized that he was. D:
So gross. So yuck.
🙁
One of the marching band chaperone dads in high school used to be all friendly with me, I figured it was NBD, his son and my brother were sorta-friends, we’re just chatting between touchdowns.
Then his daughter told me he had a framed picture of me on his desk, and it was bigger than any of the pictures he had of his children. So that was gross, and also, his daughter had clearly just come to the same realization re: her dad being the creepy one. She was Not Pleased. Sorry you went through that, too.
D: D: D: D: D:
That is legit horrifying.
HOLY SHIT! Did you freak? I would have freaked tf out!
Fortunately it was near the end of my last marching season, so my time in his presence was basically over. My method of dealing was to hide from him, stay silent, never tell anyone (my parents – who knows what they’d have said, but my siblings would have made fun of me, because that was our teenage default.)
It would be lost in the mists of time by now, but he used to attend all the space shuttle launches, and sent me these postcards that NASA mailed at the moment of blastoff. So I saved the one from the Challenger (I was in high school a long time ago, y’all), and have pulled it out over the years to show my kids or whatever, and every time I’m like, “oh, yeah, Mr M existed.”
O M G
FRAMED PICTURE?
My dad was the creep too – note to future generations: turning on family sharing on iTunes is not good if you keep your porn stash on iTunes. Your kids will definitely find it :/
I am so, so sorry. I just keep blinking in horror at the thought.
That’s horrifying! When I realized why my dad had all those Sandra Bullock pictures hanging around, I wasn’t able to watch her movies for a while.
I have no idea how my father does it, but without fail, every single one of my friends, male and female, adores the shit out of him. To the point that they cheer if I say he’s home/visiting/near me in some capacity.
I think I was scared once people thought he was creepy. I asked one of my friends why she liked talking to him, and she thought and said, “Well, he wants to know what I think.”
(Want my dad instead? He can be loaned.)
I just want everyone to take a look at this amazing, godawful house for sale in Palm Springs.
OMG. TIMEWARP!
Also, I know Palm Springs and Palm Beach are not the same, but this reminded me of my boss complaining about being in Palm Beach and saying “every man here is wearing a bright green jacket and salmon-colored trousers with a bow tie.”
I think it’s a WASP/prep thing, but might also be a Florida thing.
I think Scarlet O’hara used the dining room curtains for a dress, right?
On the other hand, part of me is like “They had a look and they kept at it.” The more sensible part of me is like “IF YOU REDID THE WHOLE PLACE IT WOULD BE GORGEOUS. HOW IS THAT CARPET NOT TERRIBLE YET.”
I genuinely want one of the large studios or Netflix or someone to buy this house and then design an entire TV series around it. I mean….this place is so perfectly, hideously glorious that I feel it deserves the fame (or, at least, notoriety) that would come from being on television.
The color-coded rooms made me think it should be a superhero base or something. An incredibly gaudy and ridiculous one.
OOOOOO! Or a live-action version of Drawn Together!!!
Nice.
I am baffled that, while every other room is designed and decorated to the nines, the kitchen is so… plain? I mean, it’s spacious and there are two ovens, so it’s not a bad kitchen, functionally, but the dark wood cabinets and white laminate countertops and drab linoleum flooring makes it look like the places I rented in college in New England. I mean, at least install pink marble countertops and brass fixtures or something, right?
Me too! I mean, when your breakfast nook is fancier than your actual kitchen, maybe you need to rethink things.
Perhaps it was re-done on the cheap when they got fed up with having shag carpet in the kitchen?
I’ve seen that phenomenon before, all the attention to decorating every cubic inch of house, but plain kitchen. It’s because the kitchen is for the caterers. They eat at home only when hosting parties. Usually they eat at fine restaurants. At the very least, get carry-out from fine restaurants delivered by domestic servants.
That’s such a sad, narrow view of what a kitchen is for. Even if I were richer than god and never cooked again (that wouldn’t happen, I love cooking, but this is hypothetical Palm Springs me) I would still want onyx counters and glass-front cabinets so I would be picturesque when eating cake straight off the cakestand in my fur-trimmed robe or smashing plates in a fury or whatever it is that Rich Hypothetical Palm Springs Homeowners might enjoy.
But then why doesn’t the kitchen have doors? If that were the situation, you wouldn’t think they’d want to see the kitchen.
Maybe only the servants ever go in there?
Man, think of what you could do with $850K and that’s what they went with. WOW.
For some reason, the wood paneling on the walls in the den is what really got me. It’s just so…I don’t know what it even is, but it makes me sad.
Hey in Sydney 850k won’t get you the terrace house that doesn’t have a kitchen or bathroom AND WHERE A CORPSE ROTTED FOR EIGHT YEARS. That just sold for 1.2M
Oh wow I was not prepared for that master bedroom. (Update after looking further into the photos: SHIT the WHOLE MASTER SUITE IS LIKE THAT HOLY COW.) I kind of love the horrible green bedroom, though.
That pink bedroom looks like a great way to break an ankle on the way to pee in the middle of the night.
It’s a very particular kind of mid-century ostentation.
I think my favorite part is that the kitchen is bland as fuck compared to the rest of the house.
The guest bathroom too.
I mean, kitchens are for staff, but you’d think the guest bath would at least have a fountain or some cherubs or something.
It would be like living at the Madonna Inn! Had I the money, I would move in and change NOTHING. (Except for maybe getting rid of the carpet in the bathroom. Ew.)
I immediately thought of the Madonna Inn too. And that the price looked damn cheap compared to the Bay Area.
Ok but does the furniture come with it? Because I’m not buying that house if I have to find my own 12-person table and green-upholstered dining room chairs.
How would you get your makeup to come out right in the midst of all that pink?
I would put together what I thought was a subtle look and have people commenting on my sunburn all day.
That is utterly bananas. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Awful as it is to admit, I sort of like the living room! I like the green-and-white sofas, anyway.
Although it looks dumb, the padded edge around the coffee table so you aren’t resting your feet on a hard uncomfortable surface is kind of genius.
Is that padded? I thought it was just carved.
Definitely padded. They’ve got the same thing around the bar to protect your forearms. And it nicely ties in with the upholstered bench in the blue room.
The only good thing in that house is the kitchen floor. Other than that? Absolutely VILE.
I almost feel bad for the poor realtors who are sure to have seen a huge spike in traffic from your posting. This is going to skew their numbers and possibly make them believe that there is a greater desire out there for houses like this than they had thought. (Full disclosure: I do not know how real estate websites work.)
Oh man, I want to love it, but it juuuuuust misses the mark for me – the boring kitchen, the lack of wall art, the pink and blue and green that are not quite my preferred shades of pink and blue and green. Also, it’s too big. Nice pool, though.
I think I said “OH MY GOD” to every single photo.
I love it. It’s hideous. I love it.
Oh my god, it’s like Graceland’s West Coast Cousin.
The bedroom is clearly from Barbie’s dream house.
Why is the dining room the Emerald City?!
I love it? And my brain also breaks because I am set to Insane Sydney Property prices so 850k= the price of the actual rotten shack in Balmain that was used by estate agents as a terrible warning, ie we wouldn’t let this sell for this little. Or half the price of my neighbour’s tiny redbrick bungalow that sold last weekend. But then a house with no kitchen or bathroom WHERE A CORPSE ROTTED FOR 8 YEARS also sold for 1.2M so yeah.
My dad had a creepy friend. Said friend was also the father of my sisters BFF, and his wife was a friend of my mom’s. It was later discovered he had a relationship with a disabled patient of his. He was a psychologist.
My dad was shocked and was like “I never knew!” Our conversation went like this:
Me: Oh yeah, that makes sense.
Dad: What do you mean?
Me: Well, he always seemed kinda creepy.
Dad: Why didn’t you say anything?
Me: He didn’t do anything and I was like 11. You don’t tell you parents that something seems off when you’re that age. What was I gonna say? “Mr. Smith is creepy” and not back it up with anything besides my gut feeling?
Dad: 0_o
“What was I gonna say? “Mr. Smith is creepy” and not back it up with anything besides my gut feeling? ”
This. This is EXACTLY the problem. I hate this.
I am determined to make sure my daughter (and her friends) always know that their observations and intuitions, even without substantiation, are valuable and important to me, and will be listened to, and supported. Even if that support is merely an opportunity to say it aloud and ask questions. Ideally, it will mean helping them discover how they can critically examine their own intuitive pings, including exploring whether it is truly just intuition or if they have made numerous valuable minuscule observations that their subconscious assembled for them.
Children and women being discounted for their experiences, their radars, their observations… it infuriates me. It is one of the deepest injuries of abuse in my opinion because of the issues it sets up a reinforced lack of agency, crippling self-doubt, and the inability to hold their own narrative against the narrative of a world that tells them there is no way they could be right.
I was having a conversation with my dad about this recently! I quit gymnastics at the age of 14 in part because my old coach left and we got new coach who just… ugh.
Fast forward a few years and the coach is in jail for child sex offences. When I was talking about it with my dad , he commented that he had been reading about how accurate kids’ radars are. This guy never did anything to me and I barely remember him, but dad clearly remembers me being thoroughly creeped out and quitting a sport I loved out of nowhere over this guy.
I am so sad about Lahore. And Brussels. I have nothing really insightful to say, but I just can’t wrap my head around how these suicide bombers become convinced that they’ll be seen as heroes for blowing themselves up next to a bunch of children. In what twisted mind does that seem brave?
Same.
Yes, very sad. I have to get extra time in the sun today. The news has me that close to another depressive episode.
The little reading I’ve done indicates those minds belong to people who are both isolated and desperate.
OT, sadness. A student of mine is dropping out of college (sophomore) to marry a guy she started dating in January.They considered waiting till he was through basic training and she graduated, and they decided to do it now.
Sigh.
UGH. I obviously don’t know if you have this kind of relationship with her, but if you do, have you asked her why she needs to drop out in order to get married? Can’t she get married (not saying she should, but if she’s dead set on it) and stay in college? Or is she doing this to be able to follow him around from base to base?
In January? THIS January?!
Yes, this January. They’ve been on, I think, four or five dates, and have been communicating long distance. I have been the voice of reason (failed), just call me Cassandra. At least she’s far enough along in her degree that she could pick it up somewhere else and be done in three years.
Yes, the notion that “Girls Go to College For No Reason Beyond an Mrs.” is still alive and well.
Maybe appeal to the best interests of this student’s future children?
I know a young woman who was ready to quit college after her sophomore year because she became engaged to be married. Her father got her to complete her bachelor degree by saying it was the only way he’d pay for a wedding AND by telling her that her future children needed her to have a degree. In case of untimely death of their father and as a good example of finishing what you start.
I have a friend like this who got married to a military guy at 19 but stayed in college and now she’s getting her Master’s degree and might go for her Ph.D; she’s brilliant. I’m not sure I agree with everything she’s done, career-wise, but it is definitely possible, even for Christian fundamentalists, to get married in college and remain in college. I don’t know if this applies/helps your student, but there it is.
Well, maybe it’s sad for YOU, Paul. But not for some of us.
(Thankfully none of my dad’s friends were this variety of creep. Though I did basically burn bridges with one of them when I had to say “Please stop forwarding me these gross, racist, Islamophobic anti-Obama emails. I don’t even know why the hell you think I want to read them.” I said it somewhat more politely than that, but I still never heard from him again. I’m not even remotely sorry.)
Yeah, that sounds like a win-win.
The consistently excellent Patricia Lockwood wrote a lovely and hilarious story of visiting Trump rallies during the NH primary.
“Is he electable?” I demanded, my veins flooding with three sips of Grey Goose. “Is Ted Cruz electable?”
“Why wouldn’t he be electable?” Mark asked.
“Because he looks like he was grown from fetal pig tissue in a cowboy boot,” I hissed. Blood was coming out of my eyes, blood was coming out of my—wherever. I pressed my drink against my lower lip to prevent myself from releasing any more descriptions of the heinous pig-boot Ted.
“the guesthouse is just a few yards from the main house, where I now live year-round.”
I feel 100% confident in saying that everyone who lives on the Vineyard hates that guy. They all roll their eyes the moment he turns around.
Toastie brain trust– help please! I’m looking for an article(s) to help explain something to a dude in my life. The situation is the all-too-familiar “gently call out something they said as sexist/mansplaining, be told that it JUST COMES FROM A PLACE OF CARE and I am being CRAZY and PETTY, immediately de-escalate the conversation because managing his fragile male ego wasn’t even worth bringing it up to start with.”
I am SURE that I have read multiple essays here on the toast, as well as linked in the link roundup, that discuss this specific phenomenon? Maybe through the lens of tone policing and/or the calculations that we have to make when engaging with microaggressions? I am *not* thinking of Jess’ amazing and already much-emailed-by-me-to-men “Emotional Labor” piece. Help?!?
I can’t think of a specific article about it, but the fact he called you crazy and petty is pretty gaslighty.
I have no link to share with you, because I find that Such Dudes tend to just look for ways to pick relevant articles apart instead of absorbing anything. Why not pick the dudes apart instead and turn the tables? You already have the upper hand in that your ego isn’t so absurdly fragile. Such Dudes are never prepared to be called on their own emotional reasoning; pulling the rug out from under them can be oddly satisfying.
Maintain the calm tone of a kindergarten teacher talking to a child having a tantrum. “I know that it probably feels like I’m criticizing you as a person, Paul, but it’s just this one behaviour I take issue with.” Explain to him that YOU are the one coming from a place of care and that’s why you’re gently trying to help him avoid future mansplanation. Take a pause every few minutes to thank the heavens for giving you the power of self reflection that this man so sadly lacks. He is a man child but you are a beautiful grownup and he can’t take that away from you. Best of luck.
Something like this? http://www.shakesville.com/2013/10/the-terrible-b… or the related article on “Occam’s Big Paisley Tie” (http://www.shakesville.com/2015/07/occams-big-paisley-tie.html).
Nicole, thank you so much for posting Kaitlyn Greenidge’s garden article — it’s great. I hate that the issues she talks about — the belief that aid given to the poor should have a shit-ton of restrictions on it (which make it even harder to get out of poverty), and the idea that people not affected by an injustice are the best qualified to talk about it — are still so common.
The Blacklist is my awesome, hilarious and only slightly guilty pleasure and I can’t understand why people still think it’s a good idea to cross Red, ever? You just know that smirk is gonna happen and then you’re going to regret every word of the monologue you just made, and possibly also every action you took since you were born.
I am still watching the Blacklist but only because I love every other character on that show EXCEPT the main character. She is such an idiot but I get past it because I love Red and Dembe and Aram, etc. etc. etc.
Completely with you. Bad decision after bad decision. Kind of like watching Homeland, except the supporting characters in that do nothing for me so I just gave up.
I love Mira, Dembe and Red in particular. Plus Cooper. That voice!
So, so, so stupid. I only watch it on Netflix because it’s the perfect show to binge with a friend while you get increasingly drunk. So damn predictable – there have been way too many times I’ve sarcastically filled in dialogue only to have it be correct 3 seconds later. I love how crummy it is.
Also, my boyfriend and I will make up commercials as Cooper because there’s a certain intonation in the way he says his name that is hilarious – “The Agent Cooper Super-Duper Pooper-Scooper.”
And there’s a good chance that Reddington’s going to kiss someone on the mouth, and it’s probably the specialist he brought in, specifically to thwart the fuck out of you.
Do I go to the library after work today? In the mood for . . I don’t know! Something good? (least helpful narrowing-down ever).
Last time I did that I went looking for one book and came back with six. I gotta stop doing that.
Classic! That’s always what happens to me too! So then I come home with a random assortment of strange things that I may or may not read, and may or may not get back on time.
I’ve recently had the thought, “Oh, those books I see advertised on The Toast that actually look pretty good, I should check some of them out.” So I’ve got Queen of the Night on request, and The Sunlit Night is at home waiting for me to read it. I haven’t read either of those yet so I have no insight into them, but when I don’t know what I want to read, it’s fun to escape the long list of things I think I should read, or things I’ve been meaning to read, or things I’ve started and haven’t finished, and go read something new I’ve just found out about.
Two of the best books I’ve read in the past six months are:
1) The Bees by Laline Paull. I actually picked up this book because of a recommendation on a Toast thread!
The book is set in a beehive, and told from the point-of-view of a worker bee. It’s fiction and has a great overall story arc, but my favorite part about it was that most of the action and interactions are based on actual apian behavior. You will learn SO much about bees from this book. And bees are so fascinating! This book got me so into them that I ended up going out and buying a bunch of flowers that are best-beloved by bees and planting them in my backyard.
2) Kindred by Octavia Butler. This book has been around since the ’70s, but I just read it recently. The main character is a black woman from 1976 who is mysteriously sucked back through time to antebellum Maryland in order to save her ancestor: the white son of a slave owner. Throughout the book, the main character continues time-travelling between the 1970s and slave-era Maryland.
It’s a fascinating concept, but more than anything else I’ve ever read or seen, this book brought home the horrifying, low- and high-level terror of slavery. I have never felt a more visceral revulsion for the practice of American slavery than I did while reading this book. It’s an amazing read, and I highly recommend it, but definitely expect to have a strong emotional reaction.
I obtained and read The Bees and it was awesome! So weird and good! Thank you for the recommendation! As it happens, I had just reread The Handmaid’s Tale last week, so reading the two in close proximity was super interesting.
Twenty-five years ago, my penultimate husband had a toy clown–a clown he’d had as a kid and kept. It was about a foot and a half tall and egg-shaped, like an enormous Weeble. It had a red base, a yellow shirt, and a sour expression. Its hat was green with a perky yellow feather. It was sculpted entirely out of hard plastic. The head could turn 360 degrees and would shift if you rocked the toy back and forth on its base. It had sculpted plastic circles under its eyes and a disturbingly turned-up nose.
Both the New Yorker essay and the picture of the terrifying Easter bunny make me feel exactly the way the clown used to.
*Jesus*
You had me at “my penultimate husband.”
Yup.
– In a year when it seems that I’ll never run out of things that piss me off, that thing about the garden really gets to me. When I was poor enough to qualify for food stamps, I used to contemplate trapping some of the rabbits that my city seemed to have plenty of; aside from concerns about possible disease, some part of me just knew that it had to be illegal, otherwise people would already be doing it. So many of these rules are just petty and seemingly devoted to the fear that the poor might possibly have something even a little bit nice, like fresh tomatoes or a computer of their own. (I’ve often wondered if the real agenda behind people wanting the public library to put censorware on public access computers, or even get rid of them entirely, might not be in part because of the covert resentment that “those people” have free computer access.)
– Ugh, that dad’s dermatologist friend; I want to say that it’s a little over the top, as it hits all the red flags, but people in this comment thread seem to indicate otherwise. I’d like to think that most middle-aged guys will go out of their way to avoid seeming like That Guy. Occasionally, when I’m skimming through FB posts, I’ll run across that side-scrolling thing that will suggest new FB friends, and it will be the usual collection of cousins’ cousins, people that I was vaguely acquainted with in high school and college, and that one person that I met on OK Cupid and had the date with that, even though it went OK, we sort of tacitly agreed that it wouldn’t be a thing, so no more dates, but FB seems to think that we should be on each other’s feed, for whatever reason. And a number of young women who, without my checking, I know are most likely on the friendslist of one particular nephew of mine. Sometimes I get the impulse to friend-request everyone on this list and just start posting the craziest, most risible stuff I can find on the internet, but I know that my nephew’s friends will tag me as That Guy, and if that happens, I may as well quit all social media forever and go east of Eden, never to return.
– Sometimes I get the impression that Ask a Manager could be re-titled “Why Capitalism Sucks.”
– I’ve often wondered about Modern Woodmen because they’ve got a big building in the Quad Cities. I also wonder if the success of the Boy Scouts had something to do not only with the quasi-military aspect, but also the woodcraft part of it, as a sort of carry-over from these fraternal organizations.
When I was poor enough to qualify for food stamps, I used to contemplate trapping some of the rabbits that my city seemed to have plenty of; aside from concerns about possible disease, some part of me just knew that it had to be illegal, otherwise people would already be doing it.
One day, during my stretch of unemployment, my cat brought home a young rabbit she had killed. It was still-warm fresh, in pristine condition, and I seriously considered skinning and eating it. The only thing that stopped me was that I’d skinned a rabbit only once before, and I wasn’t confident that I could do it unassisted.
I’d like to think that most middle-aged guys will go out of their way to avoid seeming like That Guy.
But they won’t, because being That Guy has never had negative consequences before. It’s the way Donald Trump has been consistently rewarded by society for being a garbage fire of a human being, so he has no motivation to do anything other than continue to be a garbage fire.
In today’s brand of awfulness: The NRA has published reimagined versions of fairy tales, but with guns.
<a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/us/the-nra-reimagines-classic-fairy-tales-with-guns.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=1&version=internal&contentCollection =www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F03%2F26%2Fus%2Fthe-nra-reimagines-classic-fairy-tales-with-guns.html&eventName=Watching-article-click” target=”_blank”>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/us/the-nra-reim…” target=”_blank”>=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F03%2F26%2Fus%2Fthe-nra-reimagines-classic-fairy-tales-with-guns.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
Does this mean civilization is officially coming to an end? I’m hoping our astro-minded friends are soon to find a habitable planet where the sane ones of us can live.
Better link…. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/us/the-nra-reim…
For some reason, I’m most disturbed by the fact that the Hansel and Gretel retelling seems to completely remove the obvious child abuse and neglect of the original tale, which would have seriously complicated the shoehorned moral of “always have a gun handy to Deal With Bad People”.
this x infinity
As a fairy tale nerd who is pretty much always up to try any version, these are appalling on every level–the psychosocial meanings, the language, the symbolism and the actual terrible writing.
Also, Gretel already goddamn saves herself and Hansel, no gun needed.
hijacking thread again for an update of my epic travelling, which is epic.
I’m in Los Angeles now. I had breakfast with a disney bunny and watched Zootopia in hollywood. I also went to WonderCon, which was a blast – I saw like all the panels on Saturday (Agents of Shield! Orphan Black! Shows I’ve never heard of before!) and yesterday I just hung out and bought a bit too much stuff.
Then Food happened to me, and I had my first real culture shock. Corn bread. It’s … just not bread. It’s weird cake (tasty, but weird cake). I felt uncomfortably German and a bit lonely because of the unbreadness of the thing. But then the dessert was bigger than my head and that was good (there was unbready bread pudding as well, but also brownies).
Today I’m going to CSU Fullerton and look at Philip K Dick’s stuff. Whee.
Was it sweet cornbread? Because as someone who hails from the region of savory cornbread, sweet cornbread was a culture shock to me too.
Corn bread that seems like cake is a variation. In the Deep South my mother grew up in, corn bread is dense and dry and not at all sweet. Very little white flour. Only a tablespoon of sugar in a 9 inch square pan, and that only for the necessary chemistry. This traditional corn bread is served with “pot liquor” poured over it. Corn bread is dry in order to soak up all the goodness that came from the cooking of the main dish. The resulting liquid left in the pot is the “liquor”. I love traditional corn bread with black-eyed peas poured over it.
Thank you for clarifying! I had no idea about this at all (which is probably what made the whole thing so surprising).
Random German fact: We eat a lot of bread. Bread’s A Thing for Germans. Behold a small and by no means comprehensive variety of German bread and bread-related things:
I don’t consider myself a very German-y German most of the time, but yeah, the fact that there was a thing that’s called bread that’s not even close to anything I’d recognise as bread was just a bit too much for me. Culture. It’s a thing. And I am apparently a Kartoffel.
Yes, I’ve never eaten so much bread (and it was all delicious- the pretzels, the PRETZELS!) and varieties of mustard as when I stayed with a German friend for a few weeks in Ulm.
You say you’re a…potato?
Kartoffel, which directly translates to potato, yes, is sometimes used as a word for Germans, in order to express slight to mid-level disdain. Germans also eat a lot of potatoes. We do love our carbs.
I want a pretzel now…
apologies that this is off-topic; i need to do some mom-ranting.
i wish someone would sit on my shoulder and remind me not to try to have a deeper, adult connection with my mother. she loves me, and says so ALL THE TIME, but she doesn’t really know me. when i try to let her know me, she responds with fear and sadness. recently she said something that really bothered me, and when i told her so, she turned it around saying i hurt her feelings and made her feel like a failure as a mother, and that she’ll just leave me alone.
my dad is generally cool, but he also wants peace, and he’s the one who lives with her. so he didn’t say “what happened that hurt your feelings?” he said “i wish you wouldn’t say things like that to your mother.”
it’s been a hard couple years of wanting to be known and seen and loved, and having people back away from that. so when my mom does it, it’s just extra discouraging.
I’m so sorry.
My mom and I over the years have tried many many ways to define a place in our relationship where we can connect, and it’s just. Not. There. She can’t see who I am, and I can’t ignore the hurtful things she say.
I hope you have other people who know and see and love you, and I hope that helps over time.
I’m so sorry to hear that! It hurts a lot to have someone who says they care about you to show no interest in knowing you. *hugs*
My sister is a bit similar. She has a number of other issues too (she’s on the spectrum and possibly other things too.) To my sister I am still the same person I was in high school, which was 14 years ago. Whenever I try and talk about my current interests she just shuts down or won’t acknowledge it.
I just wanted to let you know that you and your interests and your person is worthy of love and acknowledgment.
This is so hard. I’m sorry. It is right and proper to grieve what might have been and likely will never be.
I had an advantage in that it was clear from my childhood that I would never have a close relationship with my parents. (One was abusive, the other neglectful since only sons were worthy of attention.) So it was a little easier, as an adult, to consider them no different from the rest of the adults I encounter. Some become friends, others do not. I accept what is offered if it is something I want, and expect nothing more.
You’ll need some time before you can shift your thinking to that perspective. These are your parents, after all. But I think eventually you can find a serenity in aiming for that goal, or one that suits you better. They are just another pair of adults you happen to know.
that last part will definitely take some time. my parents are good parents; i brag about them. they’re supportive and helpful and raised me well, and i love the person i’ve grown into.
and then (for example) when she learned i’m no longer a christian, my mom asked if i thought i didn’t deserve god’s love anymore. and, uh, no. that hadn’t occurred to me. i think i’m great. it gave some insight into what she thinks, though.
and, i dunno. i brag about them. and then i remember the rest, and it all feels fake.
Eesh. I cringed at the god’s love thing.
One of my best friends realized a couple of years ago that she could not have any kind of relationship whatsoever with her very toxic mother (it was… a very bad situation). It’s been painful for her. The disappointment and the loss is a very real grief, which will likely never subside entirely. It’s next to impossible not to want a mother, I think. But like all grief, it will become more manageable in time. The benefit is that she’s been able to unravel a lot of the damaging patterns that went into trying to have a relationship with her.
Ultimately, having realized that your mother is not going to be able to change and adapt and grow into a new relationship with you, maybe figure out what reasonable expectations you can have, and commit yourself to processing the rest. I’m sorry you are going through this.
Gosh, this sounds so much like my own parents. Hugs. I think you just have to accept that your relationship with your mom is what it is, and it takes two people to make it work.
Oh God, I could have written this five years ago. I’ve spent a lot of time grieving that my mom is not who I wanted or needed as a mother (narcissistic, bipolar, fucked over by her own mom) and trying to figure out how not to replicate her in my relationships. I ended up realizing that I had so much pent-up anger at my dad for enabling her, too. Things are better now, but only because I recognize they don’t/can’t see me as who I am, and I limit their access to my soul.
Limiting Access To My Soul is a skill i need to work on from this point out. that’s a great way of putting it.
I am so, so sorry. I have no advice, but lots of empathy. It can be very painful to realize what you have just realized and decide how best to protect yourself.
I’m sad to be so late to this, because WOW it’s so painfully and precisely familiar.
Stay strong!
My dad has too many creepy friends — I used to go to a church aimed at Chinese communities in the area, back when I was growing up, and there were all these rando middle-aged white men who came to hang out for some reason. My dad hosted a Bible study for such individuals and they would all come to our house to hang out and talk about the Lord.
When I was about 16, one of them asked me out, in a “if you have free time, I’d like to hang out and get to know you more and maybe have coffee. Please give me your cell phone number and your schedule.” Such comments would be accompanied by comments about my appearance and how mature I was for my age.
and your schedule
ughhhhhhh
“who came to hag out for some reason”
Think we could guess at the reason :-/
Off-topic but : Any Boston area Toasties going to the Simmons Leadership Conference (Women Leading Change) tomorrow? Anita Hill is one of the keynote speakers!
The “Your Dad’s Friend” piece will probably generate a lot of Facebook comments from that guy like, “It just sounds very friendly to me. Why wouldn’t a young female want some help from a guy who has connections? He’s just trying to be nice. Can’t a guy be nice anymore?”
Had the creepy dad-friend (more like acquaintance) who rubbed my back at a party once, felt the bra strap, and said “Oh, you’re not a little girl anymore, are you?” My dad was very understanding of why I demanded we never see those people anymore.
uuuuggggghhhhhh sorry no substantive contribution to this comment but
uuuuggggghhhhhhhhhhhh
Go Dad!
TOASTIES!!! I know this is not open thread but I am losing my mind. I applied for a job at a company in my dream country!! And now the waiting begins and I hate trying to act cool while my whole future is at stake. The job would be a bit of a promotion but it’s stuff I know. BUT I AM READY TO START MY NEW LIFE NOW.
Am I the only one for whom the deleted comment images are always teeeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiny? I have OK eyes and sometimes they’re hard to read even for me!
Also tiiiiiiny for me.
Same.
They are for me too! I would like them to be regular-sized but the teeniness does amuse me.
I find them very small as well.
yeah, they are itty bitty!
Right-click, Open Image in New Tab. You can then revel in that comment’s awfulness.
True, but I wonder what kind of technical thing is responsible for this, and if they can just be a more legible size without clicking….?
I think it’s just a general WordPress thing, where if you upload an image through the backend, it defaults to a smaller size instead of the origina. So in order to show the original size in the post, you have to tell WordPress to do so.
I have wondered if the small size is accepted by our beloved Toast Editors as appropriate to the measure of respect these comments deserve.
The history of life insurance and related schemes is so interesting. Round About a Pound a Week, a writeup of the findings of members of the Fabian Society providing assistance to working-class London families in the 1910s, has a lot of stuff about burial insurance and how it was a pretty major expenditure for a lot of working-class families, because having to have the council give your child a pauper’s funeral was the most shameful thing imaginable. But that was money that could have been spent on better food and medicine during illnesses and warm clothes, and if you stopped paying you no longer had a right to the benefit, however much you had paid in already; it was a terrible system.
Yeah, before I read the article I immediately thought of the insurance agent in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, who also serves as kind of a messenger between Katie and her sisters when he comes to collect for their “nickel a week” policies. And the part where when she’s really financially strapped between when Johnny dies and she has the baby, when he tells her to cash in the children’s, since if anything happened she would probably still be able to scrape together a burial, but keep hers so that if she died Francie and Neely would be able to pay for the funeral. 🙁
I never used to hit my NY Times paywall with such frequency until I started reading The Toast.
Link of interest to many Toasties:
Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote an op-ed in the NY Times urging relief for Puerto Rico’s economic crisis, also available in Spanish.
With the Glen Gray’s story, were his elaborate arm tattoo, his job history in food service, or the fact that he dropped out of school because he couldn’t afford it actually germane to the narrative? Sure, he may have shared these facts with the reporter, but none of those details seems relevant to the story of what happened to him on March 17.
Yeah I noticed that too. Poor editing maybe? I thought it might have been more relevant if the reporter had explained how or why he started working for the post office, but that was not mentioned. Like, “Determined to have a career in spite of his lack of college education, Gray applied as a postal carrier in July 2011 and started working a week later. Since then he has been a faithful employee, whose work has been recognized by his supervisor and the people on his route.” Or whatever.
Though now that I have written that I realize that it doesn’t matter. He could be a terrible mail carrier, but that’s no excuse for the cops to treat him the way they did. I tell you what, Mr. Gray showed some ADMIRABLE RESTRAINT in his reaction. I think I would have lost it and kicked and punched and they would have had to taze me to get me into that car. It makes me sick.
He was probably well aware that if he had not showed admirable restraint, it is very likely he would have been killed.
OT, but my family’s dog passed away today. He was a very good boy and I picked him out from the shelter myself when I was 15. I’ve been a total mess since my mom called me last night. Please tell me I’m not a big baby for calling in sick today to cry and eat easter candy.
Sending you and your family lots of love. I called out sick once when my cat died and have no regrets.
You are mourning. Do what you need to. Good bye puppers, you were loved. I’m sorry he’s gone <3
Calling in sick and having candy is a completely appropriate response. Pets are family members, and we mourn them with our whole hearts because we loved them with our whole hearts. Take care of yourself, and I’m sorry for your loss.
Exactly what I came here to say. So sorry for your loss, bird_internet.
:hug: I’m so sorry.
And not at all.
I am sorry for your loss. It’s very hard. You deserve all the candy and all the hugs.
*offers Toastie hugs*
We have an unofficial policy at my work that pet passings fall under our bereavement policy, which makes so much sense to me as anyone would be useless at work and needs to grieve. Of course you should take time off. I am so sorry.
Oh my gersh, you are SO not a big baby. I’m so sorry for your loss. That’s crap.
Found this:
https://medium.com/the-secret-history-of-america/…
was delighted.
“The douchebag is, quite literally, a useless sexist tool.”
Can’t believe I never made that connection before.
I actually became GAY specifically to spite Paul – all the Pauls, Michaels, Daves, &c. – so, you know, fair cop.