Classic cute.
Your friend is being a real turd and you should consider poisoning them or instead doing what Captain Awkward suggests:
I have a friend that comes over to my apartment, usually a few times a week. We’re quite close, I often serve dinner and occasionally they spend the night as their workplace is closer to my apartment. In the last few weeks I’ve noticed a pattern that is really starting to grate on my last nerve – they criticize how I keep my apartment, everything from if I’ve cleaned under the heating elements on my stove to how I organize my kitchen. They’ve even done little tours when another friend is over, showing all the things they think I’m doing wrong in a “get a load of this!” condescending tone. Because I allow them this friend into my home for extended periods of time, I feel like they should just be gracious, or at least not embarrass me in front of mutual friends like that.
For the confused:
I am 100% sure that Jon Lovitz and Jessica Lowndes are goofing on us and I will not be swayed (update: I am now on record as a Lovndes Truther in People Magazine):
In my year and change at Jezebel, I don’t think I’ve written the name of this mystery man in a single installment of Dirt Bag, but, knowing what we know today, that’s probably because the Gossip Gods (show idea) were saving him for something bigger—like being the surprise fiancé of a mostly unknown TV star 31 years his junior named Jessica Lowndes, who revealed their relationship to the world after a series of teaser Instagrams suggested she’d become engaged to her “sugar daddy.”
The Unbearable Sadness of Ben Affleck:
Which might explain Affleck’s conflicting impulse to both defend Lopez and transform her. He corrected those who called her “J.Lo” instead of Jennifer, a move that presaged Tom Cruise’s attempt to turn Katie Holmes into “Kate.” He toned down her sexuality: “Jen has had fewer boyfriends than your average high-school junior,” he said. “In the physical sense, she’s extremely chaste. She’s had a much simpler, more easily explainable, more clean romantic history than I have.” He encouraged Lopez to fire her longtime manager, who’d help craft the tabloid-friendly strategy that made her famous. The “popular theory,” according to Newsweek, was that Affleck wanted to “sophisticate his wife-to-be’s image in case his long-rumored aspirations of a political life as a congressman from Massachusetts become a reality.”
Lovely digitized photographs from Virginia Woolf’s Monk House album, courtesy of Harvard’s Houghton Library.
Patricia Lockwood on Trumplandia:
I had touched down in Manchester a few hours before, just as darkness began to fall together with snow. I entered the Verizon Wireless Arena, a 10,000-seat venue, to see a jumbotron projecting a photograph of Melania Trump in a bikini embracing a blow-up doll of Shamu. A hallucination? It was no longer possible to tell. The great crush around me seemed to be made up of two kinds of people: Trump supporters, and people there to goggle at Trump supporters. I flowed between both, listening. The second kind loved concession snacks. The first loved snacks and also hated Muslims.
This is a video of a gentleman in a T-rex costume doing the opening dance from A Chorus Line.
David Remnick on Aretha Franklin:
Franklin has won eighteen Grammy awards, sold tens of millions of records, and is generally acknowledged to be the greatest singer in the history of postwar popular music. James Brown, Sam Cooke, Etta James, Otis Redding, Ray Charles: even they cannot match her power, her range from gospel to jazz, R. & B., and pop. At the 1998 Grammys, Luciano Pavarotti called in sick with a sore throat and Aretha, with twenty minutes’ notice, sang “Nessun dorma” for him. What distinguishes her is not merely the breadth of her catalogue or the cataract force of her vocal instrument; it’s her musical intelligence, her way of singing behind the beat, of spraying a wash of notes over a single word or syllable, of constructing, moment by moment, the emotional power of a three-minute song. “Respect” is as precise an artifact as a Ming vase.
ugh:
A producer from a well-known NPR show gave me a call. Would I come on the air to discuss the recent developments? Of course. But I was soon disinvited when, during a preparatory call, the producer made clear she expected me to talk, and only talk, about my experience reporting an attempted rape to my school five years before as a freshman. I wasn’t interested. I wanted to talk about the policy change my colleagues and I had championed. “We already have an expert,” the producer told me, exasperated. “We need a survivor.”
Every time I am in awe again at how AHP can take celebrity gossip and contextualize it in a way that actually tells us something about society. In the case of Ben Affleck, I’d never thought about how class played into his insecurities and image, and it’s fascinating. It may even have made me feel for him a little.
And the interplay of his image with Jennifer Garner’s and how she’s managed to evolve and change (albeit in a conservative way) but he really hasn’t? I love talking about this stuff and AHP is magical.
I know she needs time for research and writing and living but honestly I wish she could just put out an in-depth article about a celebrity and/or Hollywood in general every day.
I am eternally thankful she gets paid actual money to write these articles.
I love all of this and the depth and cleverness of her writing.
She perfectly critiques Chasing Amy with just four words- “In Chasing Amy (1997), Affleck was finally in the lead role, but he was still no leading man: just a New Jersey schmoe who, like the movie itself, doesn’t really understand lesbians. “
Oh, man, yes. And it that article drives home just how much class *matters* in MA.
I’m really surprised she doesn’t mention the whole kerfuffle after he was on PBS’s “Find Your Roots” and it came out that he’d used his influence pressure them to remove any mention of his slave-owning ancestors (though of course, they managed to find time to highlight his mom’s involvement in the civil rights movement). To put this in context, plenty of other people have found out awful things about their ancestors on the show, and none of them deployed the Hollywood pr machine to go after PBS (I mean, really?”). Why would it even matter that he had a slave-owning ancestor anyway? Maybe he’s just controlling and insecure?
Anderson Cooper’s reaction to finding out about his slave-owning ancestors on that show is great. I recommend looking it up on youtube.
Except Affleck’s working class routine isn’t true. Mark Wahlberg had that cred, not Affleck.
Sansa’s tongue is the pinkest and her snoot the cutest.
And her dog smile is the contented-est!
Today may be the day Nicole finally kills me with cute. (This is the year of all my friends having babies, so I’m nearing my cute limits as it is.)
The coyote tweet was absolutely perfect even without context.
In the last few weeks I’ve noticed a pattern that is really starting to grate on my last nerve – they criticize how I keep my apartment, everything from if I’ve cleaned under the heating elements on my stove to how I organize my kitchen. They’ve even done little tours when another friend is over, showing all the things they think I’m doing wrong in a “get a load of this!” condescending tone.
*screams*
This review of Texts From Jane Eyre was in the Guardian on Saturday! http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/22/text… I took issue with this part: “Ortberg, who presumably never considered a transatlantic audience very much in the first place, has included text parodies of three series I didn’t know (Sweet Valley High, American Girl and The Baby-Sitters Club) and one I know only by name (Nancy Drew), which for me undermines the book’s subtitle.”
I don’t think that’s a nationality thing. I think it’s a gender thing. (I am assuming Nicholas Lezard is male; I realise this might be incorrect.) I am from the UK and read vast amounts of SVH and BSC books; they were not hard to find in libraries and bookshops when I was growing up. Do other non-US readers want to weigh in?
I (in the UK) also grew up on Nancy Drew and SVH – BSC wasn’t really my cup of tea (I think I was a bit old when they came out) but I knew they existed.
I read some Nancy Drew books, but was never that into them; the BSC books, however, I was all over.
Yeah, I don’t quite get this criticism: “The second is that if you don’t know the source of the parody, there is nothing funny about it whatsoever. ”
Um, yes. That is the nature of parody.
Also, Wikipedia exists, FFS.
Honestly, I haven’t read all of the source material Mallory’s parodying, but I have enough cultural awareness to figure out some of the original context (“this is clearly a jokey line, where this character talks about how she’s glad everybody has awesome boundaries and respects each other. I can infer from this that the source material is full of boundary-breaching and douchebaggery”) and enjoy the jokes anyway.
Perhaps this is because, as a woman, I’m required to do extra legwork to relate to characters in books, and so don’t find that difficult anymore.
I think you’re right on that last point. I mean, I didn’t grow up in the UK, but I grew up in french speaking countries where Nancy Drew was all over the children’s section of the library (though in translation under a different name – Alice Roy – so it took me ages to realize I’d actually read a dozen Nancy Drew books), and in the Netherlands, where the Sweet Valley High books weren’t really a thing but the television adaptation was on TV all the time.
I also love that the comments have devolved into an argument about whether Jane Eyre is great or “shite”. Feels very appropriate, somehow 🙂
Nick Lezard is male as far as I know – he used to be Laurie Penny’s flatmate and she certainly wrote about him using “he” pronouns!
And yes, thinking that it’s a nationality thing to not have heard of SVH and BSC is ahahaha. I think Nick Lezard is also in his late forties, which is about ten years older than me and means that he might have missed out on SVH and BSC even if he was female. But GOOD GOLLY GOSH why does the Guardian give a book which makes perfect sense to a 20-30 something female audience to a forty-something bloke to review. Lucy Mangan or Hadley Freeman would have made far more sense!
Excellent, thanks for the confirmation!
I assume his thought process was something along the lines of “What do Mallory Ortberg and I not have in common? I know, she’s American and I’m not! That MUST be why I’m not familiar with these books – she’s failed to consider a transatlantic audience!”, when a cursory check would make it clear that most of the series he named were published and popular here, and perhaps there’s another factor at play such as gender or (as you point out) age.
I would much rather see that review in the hands of Lucy Mangan or Hadley Freeman.
But, the subtitle says “*your* favorite literary characters” (if I recall correctly), how could that possibly not refer to him directly?? It does in every other context. Certainly no need to give the matter one moment’s thought past his first theory.
https://twitter.com/probirdrights/status/36854208…
Goddamnit, men.
This Nicholas Lezard column doesn’t do primary reviews of books – it’s for his “personal recommendations”. I was really pleased to see he chose Mallory. I don’t know if the Grauniad reviewed it separately when it first came out, but basically Lezard gets to choose whatever he likes, however unlikely or exotic or obscure, or, indeed, mainstream. In our house we ended up reading a couple of translations of Finnish novels which were virtually unknown in the UK just because he featured them. He will sometimes choose something that was published a century ago. They’re always paperbacks.
I agree this piece of his is a bit annoying re “failed to consider”. He didn’t mention that the Finnish writer “failed to consider” a UK audience. But on the whole I am glad his column exists.
Also, whilst I am here, if anyone has not read Red Lemonade’s recaps of SVH books, they should:
http://redlemonade.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page_25….
Best link for a slow work day ever!!!!
Ahhh I’ve read some of these, but I’m so delighted to see them again. Skimming a few before I leave to work and I just need to point out that in the recap of Book 3, Red Lemonade accidentally starts reading a 2008 rewrite instead of the original and the updates are fascinating.
“Her dark hair was combed into her face and her eyes were rimmed with black kohl liner. She was wearing a faded black t-shirt with a red peace sign on the front and baggy shorts with combat boots.”
JOY.
As if the Sweet Valley timeline wasn’t screwed up enough already! I love how the books tend to be set in the time they were written, but you have different series written at wildly different times, resulting in Elizabeth and Jessica being in high school in the 80s but then using the internet in junior high school (oh, Sweet Valley Junior High, you were a terrible spin-off series). It makes no sense at all.
Thank you! Reading humorous recaps of beloved childhood books is up there in my top ten pastimes. I remember some of the ones here being good: http://1bruce1.livejournal.com/
I’m from the UK and absolutely inhaled the BSC books – our library had tons of them, as well as SVH, Nancy Drews, Judy Blume
totally a gender thing. USian here, read all of those series. (was not huge on SVH, but i can tell jessica from elizabeth.) see also: men centralizing their experiences yet again
“Men centralizing their experiences” is exactly what pissed me off about it. He seems to be assuming that his experience was that of the default UK reader, which it isn’t.
I can’t tell if I’d be more annoyed if he went the other way, and said it wasn’t universal because it focused on books for women.
I haven’t read quite a lot of the higher-brow “Real Literature” that appears in TFJE (I haven’t read much Shakespeare, or almost any mythology, etc) and yet I still managed to get the jokes in most of them. See also: men failing to relate to anyone without their specific life experiences.
haha you were looking for non-US replies i can totally with the words etc
Yeah that is ridiculous, I grew up in Australia and I read BSC and Nancy Drew, and a few SVH but they weren’t my jam. Also the tv shows and movies based off these series were released here too.
Also Australian, also lots of BSC and Nancy Drew, no SVH but that’s what context and pop culture osmosis is for.
Also, Jane Eyre may be widely read, but it’s not exactly a book that someone with no knowledge of 19th-century British history would pick up and be like, “Oh yes, all the things, they make sense.” There’s a fair amount in there that the Euro-centric take for granted as common knowledge, but the reason it’s beloved is because it manages to be universal in spite of its very specific setting. Being familiar with the source of a parody can add a layer of humor but isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker in terms of finding the parody funny, SO in conclusion, this guy is an asshat and just mad that something wasn’t written with exactly him in mind.
Hello from Australia – SVH and BSC were massively popular when I was at school. I also read Nancy Drew, she wasn’t quite as popular but certainly wasn’t unheard of.
Bad enough that the home criticizer was doing this to this person’s face, but to show “wrong” things off to other friends?! Poisoning is too good a fate for this asshat.
I’m touchy about clean judginess. It always seems to be one area where everyone, for no good reason, seems to think they’re allowed to offer unsolicited criticism. I can’t think of one friend who would insist on telling me what I’m doing wrong in my professional life, but I’ve got several who would chime in about my kitchen or my bathroom or even, for that matter, my muddy car.
Uggh. I didn’t know friends were in the list of eligible judgers on this. Parents? Sure (although it’s obnoxious). But friends?
It’s that tone of, “Ahaha, it’s adorable that you’re a mess,” that I’ve heard from friends, the joking-but-also-feeling-a-little-superior. This is less true of my current situation, but for years I was the one that would get that kind of, “Oh, you’re so cute, but some day you’ll learn to be responsible and boring just like me,” nonsense. No regrets for prioritizing my time on things that weren’t cleaning, though!
Prioritizing a clean home is a sucker’s game. Entropy cannot be defeated!
I want to hand letter and frame that.
http://www.theonion.com/article/man-who-got-shit-…
So the end of this actually makes me really sad, because I struggle with similar feelings of being a fuckup, and now I’m mad at all the family and friends in this piece.
This piece goes firmly into the category of “truth in The Onion”, because one of the things that I’ve found, first in my mid-twenties when I broke out of my post-college minimum-wage trap and started grad school, and then more recently when I sobered up, is that there were certain people–not a lot, and not necessarily intractably–who wanted or on some level needed me to be a fuck-up. I say “not necessarily intractably” because some of them did in fact listen when I told them that I would no longer play that role. The ones who didn’t, well…
I don’t even have people reinforcing that message for me; I do it for myself. I was in the post-college minimum wage trap after grad school, which is depressing as fuck.
oh god I feel this so much. I took a while to finish college because I left and came back after a few years because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. BUT, I finished 4 years ago (when I was 28) and I still get friends and family acquaintances asking if I’m still studying, and being condescendingly encouraging when I talk about my job (in a field I love.)
I graduated in spring 2009, just as everything had gone to shit. That was balls. So much balls.
There’s some excellent writing at Capt. Awkward about the “helper/fixer” dynamic and how toxic it is. (I can’t think of a letter off the top of my head right this minute though.) It’s so damaging, to both people, and gets in the way of actually building good friendships and intimacy.
man there is NO friendly friend-teasing about one’s messiness that includes how clean the stove heating elements are! Who’s even looking?
YES THAT TONE. uuughh
THISTHISTHISTHISTHIS.
One of my roommates does this- I wouldn’t mind if she did it about actual shared space stuff but she does it mostly on personal stuff (“Oh, one of the contractors left the door of your room open so I went in and it’s so funny the way you have it set up!” “Why don’t you keep your toothbrush in the bathroom?” “Why do you use that instead of this?”), and if I start cleaning she will watch me and try to micromanage THAT.
I do not yet know where I will be living when my lease expires, but I will not be living with her.
(Obligatory disclaimer that she is a lovely person in other respects.)
If you are that particular about how things are done, good on you, but you should never ever try to live with someone else!
Let’s pour one out for all those who were meant to be neat and particular (or sloppy and devil-may-care) and living by their own rules who’ve been forced into shared living situations by sky-high urban rents!
Someday she’ll have her own place and be happy. She’s very upwardly mobile.
Friends and family who bitch about how you keep your house should be thoughtfully spared the terrible punishment of being invited to your house. If you’re obligated to host people who give you that kind of crap you’re actually running a hotel, charge accordingly.
Flip side: Some of my friends (and most recently my in-laws) criticize me for tidying up. “Stop cleaning, MopRocks!” I mean, if you hadn’t shown up with no notice, this would have been done already!
Yeah this. I’m not ULTIMATE CLEAN PERSON or anything, but general tidiness matters to me. I’m an optimizer of systems and there’s nothing I love more than finding a trick that makes things easier in the long run. Which sometimes means I will wash a dish or two when I have friends over, or whatever. No biggie. It takes 45 seconds. Just let me live my life, man!
Yes! It made me want to crawl into a closet with a copy of My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag.
Also, if someone’s home is that offensively messy, what is the criticizer doing there?
I have definitely had friends who didn’t clean enough for me to enjoy being in their apartments (thick layers of dirt covering all surfaces). But, as much as I was tempted to buy them bottles of bleach, I never said a word about their places and just didn’t spend time there.
If there had been a hint of inability to care for their places due to mental health reasons or some other factor that might merit meddling and offering help that would have been different. But, I’d have to be very certain i could help before I mentioned anything about cleaning to a friend.
THIS. If you’re going to criticize my living space, you can damn well help me clean it up.
Yes, this. I have some friends who used to host our weekly game night until the rest of the group quietly decided we should move it to another person’s place, because we couldn’t really deal with the mess anymore. But we never said anything to the messy friends! We made up a perfectly reasonable excuse based on more convenient location.
i mean granted I’m messy as hell but I think the only time I’ve ever objected to the space a friend was offering me (or actually had a problem, your home is your business!) was a squat that gave me real concerns about hantavirus if I stayed in the basement. like, if it’s not actually hazardous to hang out what is this, “ugh, these grapes aren’t peeled!”
Price of friendship at times? I mean, I just finished some cat sitting at a friend’s place and, frankly, there are elements of the mess that are really hard for me to deal with (stove with calcified crud all over, kitty litter kicked into the bookcase and left there in…not small quantities). And some of this is me being a Certified Clean Person, but I think some is mess beyond the pale.
I will likely never say anything, but at the same time, I envision getting tapped for more cat-watching in the future since she just went long distance with her (kind of anti semitic & racist boyfriend, which is a whole other can of worms), so the situation may come to a head.
Public friend-dumping is called for here.
Yeah I’m hesitating to invite my bestie and her bf to my apartment because while her bf is a good guy he’s also kinda judgmental. I KNOW she literally doesn’t care about the state of tidiness and would rather see me in a dirty apartment than not at all. But for some reason (see also: disability stigma) the thought of being judged Unclean is the worst thing in the world.
I texted her anyway but there will be no boyfriends.
Btw, this ties nicely into that post on executive dysfunction we had a few weeks ago! http://the-toast.net/2016/02/29/conquering-execut…
This, so much. My struggle to maintain the apartment feels like such a fundamental moral failure, no matter what extenuating circumstances.
(Bonus: I gritted my teeth, paid for a deep clean prior to being professionally organized, and the cleaning crew ignored my written instructions and left garbage temporarily in the hall and overnight in the trash chute, so I’m probably going to get fined by the condo! I literally cannot win!)
My landlord keeps giving me shit about ‘cleaning up the place so it looks nice’. (Our boiler keeps breaking and other things so he’s over a lot.)
Now keep in mind, the stuff he’s telling me to clean up is the accumulated possessions of 10 years worth of housemates, all left behind by the previous, male, leaseholder that I inherited the house share from. And then he turned up and started spraying (cheap, useless) limescale remover around the bathroom and telling me I should clean it up more. (This man has probably never actually cleaned a bathroom in his life, he has a wife for that.)
I would bet good money he never told the previous leaseholder to clean up more and the house usually looked like a warzone until I moved in, kicked out all the gross boys and moved in lovely clean girls who keep the place looking lovely. Asshat.
It is absolutely a gendered issue; I think you’re completely right about that. There are definitely different expectations for the cleanliness of my male friends.
This is a classic workplace lunchroom topic, too. I have a handful of coworkers who regularly have that horrible, “Hmmph, husbands, how useless around the house are they?” cliched conversation. I try and leave the room when this comes up, err, about weekly, and only occasionally delight in calmly telling them about all the things my partner does around the house.
I won’t go into it, but my landlord is from a culture that doesn’t seem to value women’s thoughts or opinions too much, and the way he and his friends that he hires treat me is so fucking annoying.
Like when the heating in MY HOUSE breaks, I would like to be told what happened and what is being done to fix it instead of three men marching into my house, speaking to each other in a foreign language and then marching out again without once speaking to me. (There is often an element of a language barrier, some of the younger guys don’t have good english, but most of the time its just plain rudeness. They’d prefer for me to stand in the corner like a lemming while they wait for my male landlord to turn up so they can talk to someone who understands these important complicated things.)
Uuuuugh. Today I hang my head in shame, for I am this friend. Lately every visit to one of my BFFs ends with me cleaning his apartment because it’s such a beautiful space and I can’t handle the grime.
noooo don’t do it! he must learn to clean up after himself and such. I mean if it brings you JOY, do it, but otherwise…
I honestly don’t think he can see it. He considers himself a clean person and regularly talks smack about a messier mutual friend, but it’s like, dude, no. (And yes I do derive a perverse joy from cleaning something really gross but really pretty underneath.)
Noooo don’t do it. I have a friend who will literally clean after I clean. Wipe down the counter? He’s there five minutes later wiping it down again because mine wasn’t good enough. My friend has some OCD tendencies so I usually forgive him, but it has seriously and negatively affected our relationship.
But… but there are Doritos crumbs everywhere! And somehow everything is sticky?!? But yes, point taken. I will change my behavior going forward.
That letter is like my nightmare assumption of what everyone thinks about me all the time made manifest.
That Captain Awkward “friend” is the stuff of nightmares! My junk drawer is PRIVATE, thankyouverymuch.
this is the exact reason Bluebeard kept his closet
I am an avid CA reader, and that is true of so many of the people in the LWs’ lives. I feel like half the time I’m reading letters thinking “you really don’t have to put up with this. Life is too short.”
Once I had a bunch of my friends over, and I walked into the bathroom after, like, all of them had used it, and found my medicine cabinet ajar. I don’t keep anything ~*~SECRET~*~ in there, but these friends have known me for YEARS! Why did one of them go into my medicine cabinet! I’m not mad about it or anything, but wtf.
Probably looking for tampons. I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt and that’s the only reason I would be looking around!
That was my first though too. When you need em, you need em and they may have felt awkward coming out and asking.
That’s such a better way of looking at it… hadn’t even thought of that. I guess, like, I always assume they’re under the sink, but that’s me, not everyone.
I have to admit I have gone into a friend’s medicine cabinet looking for Tums when I felt sick to my stomach. it was a baby shower and I’d eaten too much weird baby shower food, and I didn’t want to interrupt the game-playing to announce that I felt sick, especially as that could have seemed like a commentary on the food. I didn’t look at anything else in the medicine cabinet, just found the Tums, ate a couple and put them back.
The survivors vs “expert” false dichotomy discussed in Alexandra Brodsky’s article reminds me a lot of the similar false dichotomy that exists in disability policy.
People with disabilities are included in policy discussions to relate their personal experiences with x policy but their opinions are not as valued as actual policy experts.
I think this comes from the misguided idea that experts should be neutral and dispassionate and that personal experience with the issue at hand removes a person’s ability to think critically and logically about the issue.
experts should be neutral and dispassionate and that personal experience with the issue at hand removes a person’s ability to think critically and logically about the issue
^^^ this.
Succinctly put.
Not only that, but I think people are more likely to think “disabled people” or “victims” are simply not experts in their own right. It’s only the accident of their having personal experience that gives them validity, therefore if you treat them as an expert you are elevating them beyond their otherwise respectable and *serious* accomplishments.
there’s the experts, smarties who have lots of deep thoughts about the theory of things, and then the walking Lifetime Original stories who merely know the subjective non-Platonic Ideal there to provide entertainment between serious discussions of Theory
Most physical-disability advocates are usually able-bodied people who have BECOME disabled & that’s always bothered me. A friend born with cerebral palsy said to me once that if you want to know what it’s like to be confined to a wheelchair, ask HER, not Christopher Reeve. But we’re only interested in people who were once like us because we could end up like them. The same friend told me that people will approach her and ask if she has MS, and when she says no, I have CP, they’ll walk away. Because they could get MS, but can’t get CP.
Some things rub the wrong way in the Patricia Lockwood article, but this line? This line (about Melania Trump) is the perfect chilling line just left hanging to birth a thousand terrifying conspiracy theories: “The last thing she ever tweeted was “Happy Fourth of July!” with a picture of an American flag, two weeks after her husband announced his candidacy for president of the United States.”
(nb: it looks like Melania has since tweeted “Happy Easter” on Sunday. But the point, I think, still stands about the eery blankness of a stepfordian twitter account.)
I wasn’t crazy with how she portrayed her Sudanese uber driver and friend. It sort of drifted into some not so great tropes.
Also I’m all for realizing that there are real people who in limited one-on-one interactions (with a white person) seem nice and are voting for Trump but I just feel no need to sympathise with people who turn to hate in hard times. I’m just so tired of the bs “he’s so honest” yes Trump is honestly racist.
Sorry rant over!
I watched Stephen Colbert last night since TDS et al were reruns, and his guest was Laura Benanti, and they had a whole long riff on how in demand LB would be as a Melania impersonator. So she was talking about watching Melania during Trump’s speeches and thinking, “Blink once for I’m okay, blink twice for send help get me out of here, blink three times so we know you can blink!”
Patricia Lockwood is a gift.
“I suppressed an urge to grip her hand and ask, Where is this gay lake, Diana Ross?“
If you check her Twitter she will show you the gay lake: https://twitter.com/tricialockwood
OT but I just have to share this interview with a photographer that did some famous series of pictures of teens in their bedrooms in the 90 and not only are the photos totally awesome but the photographer talks about photographing teens and issues of power and consent in a really good way.
http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/photo…
That first photo, the room that’s all guitars and posters and license plates, is my older son’s room now. He’s off at college, and yesterday we decided we’re moving this summer after 18 years in this house, which means there’s only about 4 more weeks of his life he’ll live in that space before it’s dismantled.
So: good article, but now I have to deal with my feels.
Internet hugs and on the bright side it warms my heart that teenage room decorating aesthetics have not changed much!
2 of his walls
I like the odd stuffed animal in your son’s room, it is a nice touch!!
Ha, that actually reminds me of my brother’s room.
Teen boys: as they ever will, so shall they ever be.
This is everything! The girl with pictures of Exclamation! perfume and L’Oreal hairspray on her walls is KILLING ME!
It’s so interesting that they all wanted any mentions of sex removed from their interviews when the book got published. If I had been photographed for that series as a Teen I probably would have been too self conscious to say anything about sex, and then would have wished that I was cool enough to talk about it when I reread the interview in the future!
I thought that was interesting too! I thought it could be because the 18 year olds were embarrassed about the way they discussed sex at age 14-16 not necessarily that they discussed it.
That’s probably it, it was just funny that it was universal for every single one of them. Maybe if they had been older when he asked they would have been more open to it, and would have seen it as less embarrassing since it was less recent for them. But being embarrassed of your 14 year old opinions on sex seems pretty reasonable at any age.
Mine was mostly just posters from the Star Trek Giant Poster Book (really a magazine that folded out to a big poster, usually a fuzzy blow-up of a still from one of the TOS episodes).
Oh, that’s painfully close to my teen years. I should try to dig the pictures of my room up, because they were AMAZING.
Very late to the party here, but my teenage bedroom was covered in those terrible/not terrible punny Absolut Vodka ads. And I used my closet door as a chalkboard. Tell me I was cool twenty years ago, people of the internet!
In case you don’t fancy scrolling through the Virginia Woolf photo album today, I just wanted to highlight the fact that she pulls the exact same “WHAT do you want!? Can’t you see I’m reading?” face as I do.
Can’t remember how to insert a photo, so hopefully this link suffices: https://twitter.com/ClareGS87/status/714806265357…
Official face of the-toast, I’d hazard.
I use more teeth. But I bet my partner is chattier than Leonard was.
Remember when Sansa fit in the baby’s bouncy chair?
Now Sansa IS the bouncy chair!
And now she IS the baby’s chair!
They grow up so fast 😉
Dakimel, I read Eye of the Tiger over the weekend and *LOVED IT.* The characters are so charming and realistic and believably flawed. I felt like I was reading a romance novel populated by Toast readers.
Toasties, I cannot recommend highly enough: http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Tiger-Roll-Dice-Book-eb…
Aw! You glorious angel, thank you for saying that. Toasties are my Ideal Reader, always, and I’m so glad it worked for you.
“We already have an expert,” the producer told me, exasperated. “We need a survivor.”
Oooh, I really want to know the gender of the expert.
You do know the expert’s gender. We all do. No mystery. No need of confirmation.
Thank you for the Chorus Line video. I love all the inflatable T-Rex videos soooo much.
Every time I see it, I worry about the ceiling fans hitting his head. I’m sure it’s just perspective and there’s no danger, and even though I know it’s not a problem, I fixate on them every time.
There’s clearly just no pleasing me. Show me something made of pure delight, and I find a way to ruin it.
WAIT A MINUTE, I thought you had a BABY. That giant boy is nearly as giant as my own so-called baby!
This is obviously not the most important part of the article AT ALL, but I’d bet real money that the NPR producer was from Terry Gross’ show. She asks the most fucking invasive and insensitive questions. I’ve only heard a handful of her interviews, but they included asking Maurice Sendak what it was like to be old and have all his loved ones die before him and is it lonely (jeez), and asking a stage actor who came out late in life whether he was sad because, basically, he was too old to have sex with men in his decrepit wizened age.
Terry Gross is the WORST. INTERVIEWER. I only heard a portion of her latest interview with Meryl Streep and it managed to enrage me multiple times. Highlights include “What was it like to have your fiancee [they weren’t engaged] die, and be in super popular movies while you were doing mostly nothing?”
I am still incredibly bitter that they canceled Michele Martin’s Tell Me More in part because they could only really afford one long-format interview show. Michele Martin 5ever!
I would rather listen to an hour of the pledge drive than hear Terry Gross interview another musician. Her music interviews are the WORST.
I don’t think it was Terry Gross, since she doesn’t usually interview more than one person on a topic.
But I have a lot of Terry Gross feels – I’ve been listening to her for a long time and I have a love/hate relationship with her show. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand my reaction to her (and now I have someplace to share my theories – yay Toasties).
I believe that she asks artists those personal / invasive questions because she’s interested in how artists translate their experiences into their art. My biggest problem with that (beyond the uncomfortable questions) is that I think it’s too literal about artistic inspiration and doesn’t leave enough room for the magic of creativity and craft. Sometimes artists know where an idea comes from, sometimes it comes directly from their lives, and sometimes it doesn’t.
I heard her interview a poet once – he read this amazing poem and at the end, she said “wow, did that really happen?” – and I felt like that was missing the point.
I do think she’s done some amazing interviews – I really loved her last interview with Maurice Sendak. It didn’t feel invasive to me because they so obviously had a good rapport built over multiple interviews (to me at least). And he was willing to get personal.
I’ve heard other interviews that made me cringe and cringe hard. Her interview of the authors of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (I may have the title wrong) was so cringe-worthy I had to turn it off. And there was another recent one that I seem to have blocked completely, it was so cringe-y. All I remember is being annoyed – I can’t remember who she interviewed.
I actually feel this way about Terry Gross, too! I think that for the most part, when she asks invasive questions, she’s built up enough of a rapport with the person over multiple interviews that she can ask these things without it being offensive…but that’s not always true.
I think she and Dick Cavett have something in common –they ask these almost naive-seeming questions that aren’t necessarily “good” or hard-hitting, but people say really interesting things in response to them, and often talk far more openly than they do in other interviews.
I don’t know. Maybe Terry Gross is awful.
I’m only an occasional listener, but I appreciate what she does a lot. Having interviewed people for various jobs myself, though not live on air, there’s a definite art to just kind of opening the door for people to talk and then letting them come through. You also have to consider that if you’re doing this for an audience, they may want to know things outside your frame of reference, and anticipate and include those as well. She gives people plentiful opportunities to shine and, if the material is complex, to drop some useful clarifications on people. I always come away a little smarter, but that’s a low bar to clear, so.
Aw no! She’s not awful. I just don’t like her style.
Her interviews are very definitely a mixed bag. A lot of it may simply depend on the interviewee; her philosophy seems to be, if you don’t bring it, I will drag it out of you.
if you don’t bring it, I will drag it out of you.
This is what bothers me. But I’m listening with my own feelings/biases/sensitivities about sharing personal things.
Actually LOL’ed at the “did it really happen?” with the poet. It’s like struggling through English class!
I once heard Terry Gross ask Stephen freaking Sondheim is studying composition helped him write music. (That wasn’t the exact question, but it basically came down to that.) His response was great, but also basically came down to: Well, of course?
Once she asked Neil Diamond something like, “I feel a sense of urgency when I listen to your music. Can you talk to me about that?” and he was just like, “no urgency, no clue what you’re talking about. [long silence]” and it was delightful.
Yeah, it’s like……sometimes she is good and her interviews are interesting and deep and meaningful, but sometimes you get this idea that she’s asking questions based on a very unsound and shallow understanding of the topic or background of her subject, and I get a LOT of those “you are totally missing the point” feels from her questions. Once she asked someone what it felt like to get shot (can’t remember who it was or in what context, maybe a journalist?).
And oh man, her interview with Werner Herzog. That was the moment I stopped listening to her forever because she just so clearly was going through a list of questions and not really paying attention — after Werner spent like five minutes describing his upbringing in a very remote Bavarian village with no electricity or running water, she asked him what he thought about the Nazi propaganda. He was like “I just told you, we had no electricity or running water, I never even knew movies or radio existed until I was 18” in this REALLY exasperated voice. Like, that’s inexcusable.
I don’t know how effective this is in helping the guests, but the show is pre-recorded and my understanding is that she makes sure guests know that they can refuse to answer questions or say they don’t want to talk about something. I know this because she was interviewing Keith Richards and when she or the producers gave him the line about not answering a question he said, “Try me!” Which was very Keith Richards.
I like her show, but I can see why her questions grate on people.
I haaaaaaaaate herrrrrrr so much.
Judging from the topic of her show I heard today, you might be right!
That Affleck profile is amazing. I almost feel sorry for him– culture shock stemming from class is incredibly difficult, and I think it’s admirable that he’s trying (and sometimes succeeding) at being more than the stereotype Hollywood wants him to be– but he’s gotta stop using women as the means to achieve an image.
Yes! Culture shock. I’m from a blue collar family and I now work in public service. A lot of my coworkers take certain life experiences for granted. I don’t feel like I fit in with them, and I don’t feel working class any more either. Example: I’ve been asked to feel sorry for a colleague who feels unfulfilled in her well-compensated job. I told my boss’s boss seeing as how my father has worked at the plant for nearly 40 years and my grandfather basically drove a truck in circles at a quarry for 50 years, I am not overly sympathetic to this colleague’s plight. He asked if I find my work fulfilling and I was like “that’s not what I look for in a job per se”. I make a good salary, I’m doing what I went to school for, my hands stay soft. I’m good.
I had a friend in grad school ask without irony if my partner and i wanted to buy a summer house next to his in the Hamptons. Still not over it.
imagine how terrible it must be to never be able to resolve the problems ruining your life, because none of them are actually problems
+1 to this ’cause the single thumbs-up i’m allowed isn’t enough.
Also from a blue collar family. I’m married to a man who is…not. He went to cotillions. We have something of an age gap but the class gap is often more glaring when it comes to differences. In the US we love our myth that class doesn’t matter. My experience is that it matters a great deal and is incredibly difficult to overcome. The biggest asset when I got to college was the fact that we always had books in the house and my mother’s priority was weekly trips to the library. At least when people talked about their experiences I could say, “Well, I’ve heard of that.”
Here for over analysing celebrities I’ll never meet.
I wonder if Affleck’s reliance on women to improve his image comes from being raised by a single mother? Maybe he grew up without strong male role models in the mold he’s trying to emulate, so he turns to women who seem like the kind of women the man he wants to be would date?
e.g Boy I know was raised by a single mother and almost exclusively surrounded by women and useless men, so now he just waits around for a women to fix his problems and tell him what to do; it worked out fine, he found a very strong woman who wanted a man who would fit into the life she wanted with no complaints, but its still mildly annoying.
women who seem like the kind of women the man he wants to be would date
WHOA WHOA WHOA I just realized this was 1000% me for my whole adult life, going after men who seem like the kind of men the woman I want to be would date, BRB going home to kiss my actual flesh and blood husband who broke apart my paradigms for what to look for in a partner now
Yeah there’s a reason my tinder is full of tall blond Cambridge graduates.
So a couple of years ago, to my great shame, I not only watched the movie Bounce, that Affleck/Paltrow vehicle that sank like a stone, I also listened to the director’s commentary. The movie stars Affleck as a recovering alcoholic, recovering douchebro who is trying to be a better person through dating Gwyneth Paltrow – so basically Ben Affleck.
Quick plot summary, which you can skip if you like: Affleck’s character is in an airport, waiting for a flight, when he meets a nice guy who’s trying to get home to his wife and kids, but who’s just been bumped from the flight. Affleck wants to stay and hook up with the hot blonde he’s been chatting up, so he gives his boarding pass to Nice Guy. Then the plane crashes and everyone is killed, Affleck spirals into survivor guilt and alcoholism, and a year later, post-rehab, he looks up Nice Guy’s wife, played by Paltrow, and tries to make amends to her without actually telling her who he is. It’s absurdly melodramatic in a Victorian novel way, which is why I kind of loved it.
Point is, Affleck and Paltrow and the director are all on the commentary track, and their dynamic is really fascinating. This is after the Affleck/Paltrow breakup, and Paltrow is being terribly condescending throughout – telling us that she pushed Affleck to take the role because it would stretch him as an actor, repeatedly telling us that this scene or that scene was a challenge for Affleck (but, she implies, not at all a challenge for a Serious Actor like her.) And there’s one scene that Affleck talks about, where the director, to get the right look of self-loathing out of him, kept whispering things like, “You’re not good enough for her,” “This is the kind of woman a guy like you doesn’t get.” Affleck kind of laughs it off, as just one of those shitty things directors will say to get a good performance out of you, but considering that he and Paltrow had recently broken up, and that she obviously did think she was too good for him, it has to have stung.
“but he’s gotta stop using women as the means to achieve an image.”
THIS. I do feel bad for him in the sense that he obviously feels out-of-place and incredibly self-conscious about every single thing he does (I relate so hard to that). But, wow, does everything else gross me out.
Exactly, his quotes (from the time!) about being in a relationship with J. Lo which basically amount to “how crazy is it that I could fall in love with a beautiful woman who happens to be not white and from a working class neighborhood, I mean like who would have expected that I would like a woman like her, not me!!” fucking own it dude! She seems like a lovely person, and even if the PR surrounding their relationship got out of hand, his attempts to distance himself from a person that it appears he actually did love just because she turned out to not be good enough for him are distressing and very telling.
Once again confirming my suspicions that men date to impress other men.
Once again confounding my mind that dating J.Lo is not good enough a status upgrade to impress other men.
Not the right men, anyway.
They totally do. I was looking on a depression forum once and men kept posting the same thing: I have a girl who loves me and she’s okay, but I want a BEAUTIFUL girlfriend. Not because the girl they’re with isn’t attractive to them, but because they need other men’s approval to feel good about themselves.
Yeah. AHP was talking on twitter last night about how racialized his discussions – and, frankly, the media’s discussions – of J.Lo were during their relationship. Some of the coding of her as “not classy” certainly reads to me as her being branded as too Puerto Rican.
YES. Especially after reading AHP’s essay on Jennifer Garner, I am even more convinced that the whole “we were separated for a while before we announced it! so he tooooootally wasn’t CHEATING with the nanny” story is an absolute fabrication to preserve what’s left of his image, and JG is going along with it for image/alimony/whatever reasons. He grosses me out so much and I am ashamed that teenage me thought he was so much hotter than Josh Jackson in Pearl Harbor.
Toasts, I was #blessed with a 4-day weekend and now I’m quite bummed out about being back at work already. There’s so much I could get done at home instead 🙁
Same… I keep thinking it’s Monday and I haven’t quite recovered from the switch to summer time (it was nice to get an extra day to get used to it though)
I spent all day yesterday thinking it was Sunday. Long weekends apparently completely throw off my sense of time.
I took a comp day Thursday and so was off five glorious days, and I am having trouble kicking it into gear this morning let me tell you.
And now that you mention it, if I were home, I could totally be repainting the other kitchen cabinet and finishing the trim.
Me too. I was out of town so yesterday was a long drive through the rain plus a long practice and my house is now a mess because I brought back an entire car load of stuff. I’m going to take another 4-day weekend this weekend I think…
Same. This Tuesday-that-is-my-Monday is some bullshit, I tell you what.
I woke up this morning and shut off my alarm because I thought it was Sunday. And then I realized. And was so sad.
me too solidarity!
Tiny, tiny, thing in the Aretha Franklin article that has latched into my brain: the word “d.j.” Is that a quirky New Yorker house style thing, or do regular people also say d.j.? I say “DJ.” Maybe “deejay.” As far as I am concerned, that word does not have DOTS in it, like, enough that seeing “d.j.” tripped me up and made me reread the sentence.
Please tell me how you refer to someone who plays recorded music.
As someone who does facebook posts about upcoming music for a weekly event, here’s why I use:
noun: DJ – “Francis is the DJ at the dance tonight!”
gerund: dj-ing “Francis is dj-ing tonight!”
And I pretty much avoid past-tense altogether. So yes, I agree that the dots are terrible.
I write it DJ. “d.j.” is a cute nickname for, like, Daria Jean.
Dots are terrible, but AFASIK it was a standard for abbreviations and initials in a bygone era (so Disc Jockey becomes D.J.), I think generally we’ve all agreed that abbreviations without full stops are a-ok and much nicer to read, but it still crops up in places.
ETA: Acronyms. I mean acronyms and not abbreviations. Forgive me, it’s basically Monday for me and I am not with it yet.
Boom: Wikipedia has my back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Punctuation
I think four of us finding dots weird is enough to declare this a New Yorker Style Quirk.
BUT I got to the end of the article and it used “deejaying.” What.
they also put umlauts over cooperate, so.
Ha, I was JUST logging in to comment on this! The fact that they still use diaeresis on their double vowels always throws me. This article might excite the people in this thread: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the…
“We do change our style from time to time. My predecessor (and the former keeper of the comma shaker) told me that she used to pester the style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at the magazine since 1928, to get rid of the diaeresis. She found it fussy. She said that once, in the elevator, he told her he was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died.
This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.”
You taught me a new word: Diaeresis! Love it.
Oh, New Yorker, you beautiful dinosaur dancing to A Chorus Line, never change.
Yes, and the New Yorker also helpfully tells us it’s pronounced “die heiresses” (which is priceless in itself), and that it is (was in 2012 at least) the most common complaint in their letters. “And then he died.” And then I died.
I am beguiled.
That is helpful! I had been mentally pronouncing it as “die-er-ees-is”. How gauche of me.
I am pretty much always on board for behind the scenes New Yorker business, especially from the copy-editing department.
who in the hell punctuates their acronyms
I have to stop the lawyers in my firm from doing it all the time (looking at their marketing stuff–I have no truck with their actual filings and so on). Also, I have to explain that, yes, cum laude etc get italics, but just the words “with honors,” do not.
It definitely seems like something that got written into the house style manual back when people did often say “disc jockey” and the abbreviation was a novelty – so, 1984? And of course the New Yorker isn’t going to change it so quickly.
I write “a.m.” and “p.m.” because I like how they look, and as far as I know that’s still acceptable Chicago style, although in the newsletter I edit I’m changing it from “AM” and “PM” in almost every item anyone submits. I dunno, “AM” looks like a radio setting to me. (I think I sound a lot older than I am in this comment…)
Gee, after reading that snippet about Affleck, it’s a wonder so few celebrity marriages work.
Oh, and also, I love Aretha Franklin. Obviously, for her music and her being tied to Detroit, but there’s so much more. I didn’t much care for Murphy Brown when I was a kid and my mom watched it (but what was I going to do? NOT watch TV?) but her guest appearance on that show is one of the things I remember most about it.
By the way, did anyone read this AAM yesterday? http://www.askamanager.org/2016/03/why-are-job-ca…
Little alarm bells ringing everywhere– as many commenters have pointed out, you don’t have three women in a row turn down a lunch interview sans explanation unless the guy is being weird about something. (Warning, there are a few trolls in the comments as of last night.)
Steakhouse lunch interview for a standard office admin job is already kind of weird – even aside from all the women being, ~for some reason,~ uncomfortable enough to turn it down. Definitely something off/creepy. (Also, steak? For real? Just going for broke with the tricky to eat foods huh?)
Right? Like, if you’re hiring for a vice president position, okay. But if you need administrative support for a medical office, the offer of a steakhouse lunch interview is going to get you some side-eye no matter what.
It absolutely boggled me that out of that entire comment thread, no one had ever served as a medical office admin.
Well, dear reader, I HAVE served as a medical office admin, in a small (single-physician) practice, and let me tell you, a restaurant lunch interview is WAY WAY WAY outside of generally accepted practice. Working lunch with drug reps, sure (we had a couple regulars that brought Panera once a month or something like that), but interview in the office, for sure, or coffee shop if there were concerns about patient privacy.
Right?
I also thought it was weird how Alison kept coming into comments to be like “no this is totally a thing people do” when I would say more than half the commenters were like “I have never in my life seen this happen.”
Yeah, that really bothered me too.
The thing about that thread that absolutely bothered me more than anything else, though, was that as soon as the conversation turned to “Look, can you appreciate that these applicants, who are likely young women, are probably just not comfortable with this scenario because of all the ways in which it could be physically dangerous?” Alison said that was derailing the OP.
Which.. no, no it wasn’t at all. That pissed me right off.
Ooooof I missed that. That’s….no. Ugh.
Yeah, it starts here.
Alison is usually good, but sometimes just seems really unaware of her privilege. It’s very clear her experience in service industries, including medicine, is minimal.
Hey! Is it weird if I comment on this? What I said was derailing the thread was the commenter who wanted to argue about women “assuming every guy is trying to sleep with them” and who was getting offended by the idea that women might be wary of harassment. Definitely not the rest — so sorry if that didn’t come through.
I totally appreciate that regardless of whether business interviews are A Thing (and I totally get now that they clearly aren’t in every field!), there are still applicants who aren’t comfortable with the scenario. D.C. has warped me.
– Alison
Yeah, I mean, it is totally a thing for midlevel or higher jobs in the DC area, but… Even there, it would be super weird to take an admin candidate to like Fogo de Chao for a lunch interview. I would assume the doc was trying to interview my pants.
Yeah, I am a vegetarian so whenever someone suggests “steakhouse” as the go-to business lunch, I’m already a bit put out, but still I don’t think I’d turn down the interview out of hand unless I got the idea that the guy was being less-than-professional in his invitation.
SO MANY unanswered questions there! (Unless there’s more context in the comments?)
I get that steakhouse lunch for an interview isn’t unheard of, but it pings that “I’m doing something unusually generous and expensive for you, so I’m going to get prickly when you say no to me or ask me critical questions” creepdar.
Apparently OP showed up, I’m going through the comments again to see if there’s any new info!
I read that! I feel like it’s a question of raising the stakes way too high for a job interview and people getting skeeved out.
If I was being interviewed (maybe for the second or third time) for a high-level position, I might be in a culture where fancy steak lunches were A Thing, and this wouldn’t bother me. But if I was meeting for an admin or entry level position, I’d expect to meet on-site, and if that wasn’t possible, at a coffee shop or cafe—something that matched the “level” of the job. I think the guy is creating a level of discourse that is way, way too high for the position, and creating a red flag there. it’s easier to just go, “eh, no thanks,” and keep looking.
A few people in the comments mentioned that this might be a question of power dynamics (young women being “wooed,” either literally or professionally, by a guy who doesn’t quite get that the situation he’s setting them in isn’t equal), and I tend to agree. And abusing or turning a blind eye to power dynamics right from the get-go is a red flag for me personally.
Yeah, there’s something more to this than three random candidates just not being hungry… And for one of them to mention her fiance specifically in her reply? She’s telegraphing a very deliberate message.
Yeah, the fiance thing + the fact that OP specifically mentioned that the guy was single–why was it pertinent information?– suggest something specific. OP emailed AAM back and basically said the guy was an inexperienced interviewer and didn’t understand how he was coming across– no specifics, but I would still put money on him coming off like he was asking them out more than asking them to interview.
“OP emailed AAM back and basically said the guy was an inexperienced interviewer and didn’t understand how he was coming across…”
It may be because I grow progressively colder and deader inside with each passing day but I just…don’t buy this at all. It reminds me of people who make excuses for creeper dudes generally insofar as they just don’t understand social nuance or w/e and yet at the same time those Schrodinger’s creepers have managed to hold down jobs and live in the world for a fair few years.
I think in ye olden days it was more common for men to take other men on an interview luncheon, but that was then and/or an episode of Mad Men, you know? Like we are still living in a time when people make assumptions about the relationship status of any random man and woman they see together, so dude plus lady plus fancy lunch = date isn’t some arcane social ritual that this guy isn’t grasping.
There’s an old Dan (Bizarro) Piraro cartoon in which a guy is interviewing for a job, and behind the boss (who bears a resemblance to Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin from Daredevil), there’s a picture window that looks out onto the cubicle farm… and on the other side of the window are a bunch of the prospective co-workers, holding up a sign that reads BEWARE.
Oh lord this takes me back to the only interview I ever changed my mind about and just didn’t show up up for, which was to edit for some guy’s private pornography press. he left me a message to meet him at a Red Lobster, “the one by the airport.” who knows what twists and turns and adventures my career would have taken by now had I had the courage to keep that fateful rendezvous
The only world in which I feel like this is a normal interview protocol is the world of Mad Men, in which one does not want to be a woman anyway, period.
The Jessica Lowndes/John Lovitz thing was a PR stunt: http://jezebel.com/fuck-jessica-lowndes-fuck-jon-…
does this mean i can go back to having no idea who she is? i looked through her filmogrpahy and i’ve not seen a single thing she’s been in. who is she???
Apparently she was on that 90210 reboot? But now she’s just trying to be the poor man’s Lana Del Ray, I guess, based on her music video.
I want Omar to move here to Houston. He sounds like an AMAZING person to know.
I am firmly on Team Leave Ben Affleck Alone, which includes all media outlets forever, even Buzzfeed. As someone wrote in the comments, “he is clearly struggling with something that doesn’t look very fun,” possibly mental illness. While I support openness around personal struggles like mental illness — or even if it is simple class consciousness — that’s only when the sufferer actually comes forward and claims it, not when journalists write speculative articles about that person’s inner torment.
Ugh, sorry, that whole article just rubbed me the wrong way I guess.
(Forgive me, I couldn’t help myself. I totally agree with you, his life and mental state have clearly had extra pressure due to all the media attention!)
This is exactly it though. The media’s treatment of Britney, Lindsay Lohan, etc… same deal. Maybe it’s some measure of parity that this is happening to male celebrities too.
I sometimes feel uncomfortable about the stuff AHP has been writing for Buzzfeed. I really enjoy her style of writing and love the in depth looks at classic stars but it feels invasive when it is about someone who is currently active. There’s something about the distance time gives us that somehow makes it better. Or at least makes me feel better.
Yeah I think classic stars (especially after they’ve passed away) are fair game for this treatment, but this piece had the same sort of slimy feel as coverage of Britney/Amanda Bynes/Lilo’s meltdowns, or Rihanna and Chris Brown, or even certain interviews with Heath Ledger and Philip Seymour Hoffman prior to their deaths.
Glad I’m not alone in feeling uncomfortable.
We really need some kind of long-term limits on Supreme Court appointments. 18 years, 20 years, whatever, but it’s really ghoulish that my union was saved because Scalia died. Now, this could have happened anyways if he had died within an 18 year limit, but it at least would be hopefully less morbid.
I am glad the decision came down the way it did, http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/split-suprem…
Do you know anywhere I could read up on this more? I work for a place that has a union (tons of employees, big mix of job types – “professional,” and more service oriented positions) and a lot of my coworkers complain about it. For reasons I’ve never understood. You don’t have to join!
I’m glad your union is going to stick around.
This has a bit more about this specific case, http://www.npr.org/2014/01/21/264575979/high-cour….
Thank you!
Or just have less monstrous justices? Scalia ruling on this case would have been a disaster no matter how many years he had previously served. And if we had term limits we would have long ago lost the wisdom of Ginsburg and Breyer as well.
Term limits are only solving the issue of it being weird and uncomfortable that someone dying is good for one side or the other. Be that Scalia or Ginsburg. It would also solve the issue of incentivizing Presidents to choose younger justices over older justices, which is weird and less than optimal.
Of course it will not stop Republicans from picking terrible justices. Winning elections is the only thing that’ll stop that.
Before Scalia and Renhquist a sitting SC judge hadn’t died while serving since the fifties so while it is a bit weird it’s not the norm in terms of how SC judges leave. Also the Senate confirmation hearings will always serve as a check against the president appointing an unqualified young judge. No judge appointed in recent times has been younger than 43 at the time of appointment which I think could be enough time to have the necessary experience.
I’m really against term limits in general for many reasons I won’t bore you with here so I think we may just disagree on this.
I oppose term limits for politicians, because they can be voted out. We shouldn’t vote on judges at any level, so it’s a different situation. We do clearly disagree on Supreme Court justices, which is fair enough.
Not sure where I stand on this issue. But on this point I am firm: Any SCOTUS term limits legislation must explicitly state that RBG is exempt and, furthermore, shall be the first human to be immortal.
Did you see this? http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11323914/ruth-bader-…
I love her to pieces.
I have an OT question but I don’t really have time to wait till Friday, so I’m going to tack it into the link roundup.
My future father in law is suffering some pretty severe complications from diabetes & has been in the hospital for several days with a wretched kidney infection. His lungs, liver, appendix, and pretty much everything else is also affected. Mr. Editor and I are planning on sending a care package, and we need ideas! He loves cooking–it’s his biggest hobby–but it’s been a point of depression since his diet has become so restricted. I’m thinking of packing up some disguised diabetes cookbooks for him to flip through & get inspired from, because cookbooks are the only kind of thing he really likes to read.
What else would you send? I think he’s in too much pain/is too dopey on meds to focus on a denser book. I don’t think he’s an adult coloring book kind of guy. Favorite movies? He has netflix and hulu and the rest on his TV. He’s going to be bed ridden for a while, so I want to give him entertainment & cozy things. Maybe PJs or good slippers? Magazines? Any ideas Toasties?
Maybe you could print out blog posts/recipes with diet-appropriate recipes as well, so they’d be even less sad than a diabetes-disguised cookbook. Plus usually bloggers have little stories related to the food that can be interesting and a little different from a cookbook.
There are yearly “Best Food Writing” books, which will have shortish things that he could maybe focus on better.
One of those super-fuzzy blankets that feel like they are made out of Muppet fur.
Maybe some comfy clothes that make it seem like you actually got dressed today instead of just staying in your PJs, but still feel like you’re wearing PJs.
Memoirs from chefs and/or food bloggers? Something with a little narrative, and recipes? I’m thinking stuff without copious pictures of perfect food. Or not without, just with additional stuff.
I would want something to do with my hands; he might miss the tactile productivity of cooking as well as the food. All the crafty stuff I can think of is coded feminine, culturally, which might give him pause. Maybe woodcarving kits?
Yes, Ruth Reichl is a fave with Mr Rose, aka my personal chef. Even I, ever the non-cook, enjoyed her Comfort Me With Apples.
tactile sensation is a really smart point. I do cards/solitaire and lots of jigsaw puzzles when laid up, but I could see carving/scrimshaw as very helpful.
Not sure what you can get by the hospital staff, but my very diabetic mother really likes good tea and honeys, as well as schlocky romance novels, which she reads on her iPad. I really like knitting but I get distracted and lose track of the stitch count, but that could be a possible use of time.
Oh and best wishes for the best possible recovery.
I love the food-related book suggestions, but maybe not for right now? I love reading and watching shows about cooking and eating, but when my diet was severely restricted due to illness I couldn’t bear to look at any of it. It just made me miss what I couldn’t have, and reminded me of how much it sucked not to be doing one of my main hobbies/passions.
Personally, I love stupid, humorous TV and movies when I need cheering up. And jigsaw puzzles sound good, if he’s into them, or even phone/ipad/computer games. Opiate pain killers make all of these things more interesting than they might be normally.
Speaking from experience, PJs and slippers! Being in the hospital can be a dehumanizing experience– you’re detached from normal life. You become “the patient.” Wearing real clothes is a way to remind yourself of who you were before admittance.
They’re also just plain cozier than hospital gowns and pants.
The Ottolenghi books are simply gorgeous eye candy, and a lot of the recipes are vegetarian, I think.
Does he do video games? Silly ones that anybody can do like katamari or something might be nice.
Or a bunch of comic books. I am sorry he’s so sick
Are there any kinds of. . .idk, quirky collections books he might like? Something you just sort of flip through and read a bit of whatever catches your eye rather than a front to back plot? I’m thinking of something like one of the collections from The Onion/Mental Floss/Cracked type thing, The Devious Book for Cats/Dangerous Book for Dogs, Horrifically Bad Album Covers/How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books, etc, whatever might fit his taste.
I love cooking, and one thing I’m always happy to receive is good-quality (like, better quality than I would normally buy for myself) basic ingredients. Like fancy olive oil and vinegar, imported canned tomatoes or fruits, sea salt, etc. Don’t get pre-made stuff as it tends to be high in sugar, and if he likes cooking he’d probably (projecting here) prefer to do stuff from scratch anyway.
If he’s going to get depressed reading “diabetic” cookbooks, there are plenty of cookbooks by serious chefs that focus on vegetables and healthy foods – Ottolenghi springs to mind, though his books do have some dessert recipes the definite focus is on vegetables and the pictures are glorious. Would he be into a cookbook with comic book illustrations? Check out the Dirt Candy cookbook (dirt candy being vegetables, not actual candy.) Generally, maybe look into good cookbooks from non-Western cooking traditions, which might give him a new area to explore and which are generally not dessert-focussed. If it’s something he loves doing I really hope he’s able to keep going with it!
non-link related RANT AHEAD:
Daughter came home from dad’s house yesterday. Before bed, came into my room, says, “I want to talk to you about something, don’t freak out”.
“We were going to the movies and dad was in a hurry and didn’t know I wasn’t in the car and…he only ran over my foot a little bit…”
KILL KILL KILL KILL are pretty much the only thoughts going through my head right now. Talk me out of prison orange.
whaaaaaat.
If the jury was stacked with Toasties, you would not do a single day of time.
HE ONLY RAN OVER MY FOOT A LITTLE.
wut
I am almost as alarmed by the fact that she felt the need to downplay that as by the accident. What the everlasting hell.
Is your daughter OK?
I’m guessing that you’ve been super-calm with your daughter and you just need somewhere to go all HULK SMASH, but on the off-chance that you’re serious: you don’t want to be like one of those dudes whose response to hearing about their daughter/girlfriend being assaulted is “I’LL FCKING KILL HIM” and the person who has been assaulted has to spend their energy talking them down. Hopefully your daughter isn’t downplaying it, and genuinely isn’t hurt and thinks it was kind of funny, but if she is actually hurt and/or shaken by it, then she even more needs you to be calm and help her figure out how she feels about it and whether or not she can trust her dad to keep her safe.
Good luck and I hope she is actually as relaxed about it as she sounded!
haha, yeah, I could see how you’d worry, but there’s a bunch of backstory you’re not getting. Yes, I am merely venting to internet sympathizers in order to remain calm outwardly.
Also, I am sadly very well acquainted with staying calm while I am regaled with “how I got hurt while I was at dad’s house” stories. They started literally the first time he had them for a whole week–that was a bike crash and a ct scan, then there was the easter concussion when I got off the plane and went straight to pick the kid up at the hospital, and the broken hand in january that he watched the kid fall and do yet didn’t look at, and the two other broken bones he sent kids home with….
Yeah. And of course there’s the whole parental-alienation facet where he tells the kids, “don’t tell mom stuff, you know she’ll freak out”–those have been some doozies, like letting the 11 year old drive a pickup backwards around a barn at a picnic, and telling the 16 year old it was ok to go driving on a temp license without a parent (and the court date after kid got caught, of course)….yeah.
I can do low key and seethe inside without her knowing.
But she is still very much getting an xray. I will send him a stern email. He will tell them next week that they shouldn’t tell mom things because mom yells at him. same old same old.
aaaiiieeeeee! 🙁
” they shouldn’t tell mom things because mom yells at him. same old same old.”
[seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeethe]
It is not the job of your kids to keep you from getting “yelled at” by their mother.
[seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeethe]
You remind me of a certain parent (not mine) who didn’t notice when his son broke his arm. TWICE.
ugh. I’m sorry other people have had such sucky parents also.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Dude, if mom yells at you after your kids tell her things, stop doing the things that get you yelled at.
Hey, it me! I never told my mother anything that happened to me because she would throw such an epic freakout it would completely eclipse whatever incident had happened.
Its a hard line to walk; but I think positioning yourself as someone who can be confided in and trusted, and will help the child in a way that they see has helpful and productive is the way to go (age dependant, but if you’re dealing with teenagers, ask them what they want to do and support them in it). Its unfortunate that mothers often get cast in the bad guy role, but for a child caught in the middle its usually easier if things go away quickly and life moves on, instead of their mother kicking off and causing more headaches for the child when they eventually have to see the father/other siblings again (this is based on my experience, not the OP’s comment!)
Same! I was in a car accident when I was 16 and ooohhhh how I regret telling my parents it ever happened. There was zero love in their response, even though I was hurt (not badly, but still).
That poor girl!
1. She knew she had to tell you
2. She knew dad wouldn’t tell you
3. She knew that dad wouldn’t want her to tell you
4. She didn’t want to get in trouble on either side
I’ve been there, and my heart breaks. I can’t imagine how infuriating this must be for you.
Me too. All of this.
Child of terrible family situation here; I hope your daughter is ok and this doesn’t have any lasting damage!
Dad is an ass and I’m sorry you have to deal with him; I was very lucky in the end that my parents weren’t married when I was born and he had no legal claim on me (thanks to lesbian scheming on my mothers part) because it meant I wasn’t forced to have a relationship with him or be in his care after a certain point (Mother eventually realised the trauma wasn’t worth it and it was safer to leave 14yo me at home alone than being emotionally tortured by father and siblings). And he’s definitely the kind of asshole who would have fought for custody just to punish my mother if he could have (he did with his other children).
It will be alright in the end and you’re girl will be fine! (I was, after I realised just how colossally cunty my father is and that I didn’t need him in my life in anyway, its so freeing.)
my friend’s mom ran her car over my foot when i was in middle school. surprisingly it did no damage
This happened to a friend – she was fine, too. Even had x-rays and everything. The foot was bruised, so that sucked, but there was no lasting damage.
A friend of my mom’s ran over her pre-teen’s HEAD (it was a total bizarre accident, like he tripped and fell into the path of the tire in their driveway or something) and he just had some road rash on his head and face. Apparently skulls are quite strong?
I am going to unread that comment!
Oh
My
God
Really?
So, funny story, my dad once ran over my foot as we were getting ready to visit relatives and he didn’t realize I wasn’t in the car. But my parents weren’t (yet) divorced and my mom saw the whole thing and I was OK and we teased Dad about it for years after that.
Plus I was 27 so there wasn’t any issue around protecting minors and custody. So sorry this has happened to your daughter! You should definitely call your ex out on this – not acceptable.
Holy shit. 🙁
I’m so sorry– both about what he did, and both about your daughter’s reaction, which I would find hella concerning.
I want to believe in human goodness, and your ex makes it harder.
I wanted to edit, but I can’t. So there’s a big convention poster I’m working on with my advisor so I haven’t communicated to her dad yet. Our deadline is pretty much now.
My mom took her to the pediatrician (he knows the drill about the dad) and my mom said he was asking all the ‘right’ questions. IT IS NOT BROKEN. I was going to cry if it was.
Just bruised, and sore.
I wrote something and deleted it about that Brodsky piece like five times, but, uh. “Totalizing identity” is a really good way to put it
Y’all, I am 98.5% certain that a recent Ask Prudence submission is about some people I know. Like, I could have written it myself, but I didn’t and instead just talked to a mutual friend about the shitty situation. I’m a little spooked, like the barriers between worlds just became thin.
Who the fuck cleans under the heating elements under the stove unless they have to? (Full disclosure: I never clean anything if I don’t have to.)
I’ll occasionally take everything off the stove for a soak and a scrub because I feel good when my stove looks clean.
I couldn’t care less about other stuff, like dust. But yey clean stove!
I clean the heating elements if and only if there is either smoke coming out of them or I’m about to move out of that apartment, forever.
One of my college roommates once spilled parmesan cheese on a burner and it was kind of stuck under the heating element, like a thin layer of grated parmesan. And we couldn’t figure out how to lift the coil part to clean under it, and didn’t really try that hard anyways. So it remained there forever, and became a blackened parmesan stain underneath the burner that probably stayed there until the dorm got demolished last year.
replacement parts for under the burner are very cheap in any case. Generally if you pull the coil away from where it’s hooked into the stove, it pops out and you can lift out the basin underneath. Have never seen one that wasn’t in some way removable although I’m sure it’s a possible design flaw.
As long as it wasn’t smoking enough to trigger a fire alarm I’m pretty sure no one cared… Standing outside in a towel in January in MA because someone burnt the popcorn was extremely annoying though.
Nope it never smoked or anything, just looked bad. We (and my mom, who is pretty good at these things) tried to lift the burner and didn’t succeed so it must have been some sort of flaw.
Cleaning the intimate guts of a stovetop is one of my foremost pleasures.
Mine as well. Although for some reason I find cleaning inside the refrigerator deeply annoying. I don’t even keep that much stuff in it!
My wife is an ultra-cleaner and does this regularly (she gets this from her mom, who mops every night).
ETA: We currently have a gas range so this is easier but she did it with electric ranges in our apartments too.
One of my requests to my realtor when I was househunting was “one of those stoves with flat heating elements” so that I wouldn’t ever have to clean underneath one again.
Yes! Big fan of the flat heating elements. Though I’m finding out just how warped my cookware is now.
I do! Mostly because it can get kind of gross in those places and it’s really easy to do. Pop them out, soak them, run them through a dishwasher cycle, and pop them back in. Scrub down the top of the stove and my kitchen feels 500% cleaner. I don’t do it more than once a quarter, though.
Someone used to solid surface stoves maybe? Those are way easier to clean.
OT: For those who need to know, my Kate Spade bag I got last week during the surprise sale I learned about here can hold the following
A mill file
Power Drill
Pliers
Lunch
4 pairs of reading glasses
machine screws
tiny water bottle
inhaler
wallet
phone
date book
So, this was an excellent use of my money.
Are you all eleven of Ocean’s Eleven? Wait, don’t answer that, let me have this.
I also got a bag during the Surprise Sale and the tracking info hasn’t updated yet even though it shipped on Wednesday. I called customer service and the guy told me that because I’m in Canada, it won’t update until my purse has cleared customs,, which I have never heard about in all my years of ordering stuff online from the States 🙁
Which purse did you get? Mine is this one.
I got the holden street lanie http://g.nordstromimage.com/ImageGallery/store/pr…
It is glorious and has a bag. FOR THE BAG. I feel fancy and adult.
Also in Canada and my shipping was updated today!
AHHHHH mine is arriving TODAY according to the tracking info, this is the most I’ve looked forward to a package in a while. My first brand-new designer purse (and wallet)! I hope seeing and stroking the new wallet will be a deterrent for other impulse purchases for some time!
I’m delurking to comment that my secret sale purse is also arriving today! I love to think about multiple Toasties ’round the country simultaneously celebrating new bags.
Yay! So glad I shared that link.
But how much purse sand can it handle?
I am delighted and intrigued by the fact that you carry a power drill around in your purse.
I just got my new wallet in the mail! LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!
Slightly off topic, but I don’t want to wait for the open thread.
If someone gives you the gift of a substantial check, you write them a thank you note, even if you thanked them in person, yes? My husband and I were recently given some cards with checks at a family gathering. One was just to him, so that is his business, but two of them had my name on them, which makes them my business. And I am a firm believer that big checks from relatives get short but sincere thank you cards in return.
I’ve already written half the card for each. “Lovely day, great to see you, thank you for the card and generous gift, hope to see you soon.” That sort of thing. Husband, however, is acting as though I have asked him to push a boulder up a hill. He feels that he already said thank you in person, and writing a card is SO MUCH WORK. (Except he’s mostly just being passive aggressive about it.) It’s a post card, btw. Not a huge writing area.
I realize that it is his family, and maybe they don’t do that sort of thing? So maybe I’m out of line? But someone included me on some of these, and I’m damn well not going to be a recipient of a generous financial gift and not write a thank you card. (And a thank you card from just me for a check to both of us also seems wrong.)
Anyone got the modern Miss Manners on this? Am I being pushy? Is he being a baby? Both? Neither?
He is being a baby. If he can cash a check, he can write half a thank you note.
Giant baby.
Also I probably need to write thank you notes for my wedding that was (hmph hmph) weeks ago.
It took us several weeks, possibly a month or two, to get all the thank yous written after ours. I think the trick is to have a formula you can follow, but also to do it in small batches so you don’t burn out.
Also, if you don’t already have the cards themselves, I highly recommend the post card format. Pretty picture on one side, words on the other, but not too much space to fill. (Folding cards can feel like a lot of room.)
I think you’re both right and it’s totally fine if a card comes from you and isn’t signed by him?
When I say substantial, this was way more than a card with a twenty in it. Even if his half a postcard takes him an hour each to write, the hourly wage is… obscene.
Half a postcard. “It was a lovely afternoon, thank you for the card and gift, see you again soon, love you.” Bam!
Yeah but, he thanked them in person. That would be fine for me! I don’t particularly like receiving thank-you notes in addition to an in-person thank-you – it just seems over-the-top to me, though I appreciate that obviously it’s important to some people so if I get one I just consider it a nice gesture that doesn’t particularly do anything for me.
If it’s so minor, why’s it so important?
You are definitely right. However, when dealing with a big baby who’s dragging his heels, it easiest/fastest to just have him sign his name under yours and call it a day.
Cripes, you never go WRONG by sending a note. I’ve done the thing where I’ve written the note itself and slid it under my husband’s hand to sign his dumb name.
exactly! I don’t feel they’re necessary anymore, given the number of other communication methods available – a thank you text or email isn’t rude, IMO – but they’re a classic for a reason. Once your wife has done 90% of the work (remember to do card, acquire card, address and stamp card…that is more than 50%!) there is no reason not to add a Thanks and your name. The work left for him to put into it <<<< the amount of day-brightening a nice thank-you in the mail can give someone.
Yes, even if he doesn’t add a personal note have him sign the thank you. It does matter.
Mail the note before you cash the check is my rule. And it depends: It is a sticking ground/fight worth fighting about the implications of the card, or can you save yourself the aggravation, and ya know, sign his name? I think both are good solutions–putting up a stink or just singing his name–but your solution depends on your motivation.
I grew up in a family where we think nothing of signing each other’s names to cards. Mr. Editor got *very upset* the first time I signed his name to a birthday card or whatever, and was totally insistent that I give him the card to write his own message. So, if you come from a place where everyone must write their own thing, but he’s from a “hey, just write my name on the bottom” crowd, you might be having a different fight than you think you are?
I’d feel very grumpy if I wrote a note and he just signed his name. I do a lot of the household work, the taxes, the budgeting, etc. I’m strongly resisting the job of Social Secretary for All Things.
Yeah, screw that. Just mail the card from you. It’s not your job to fool his family into thinking that he’s as thoughtful and gracious as you are.
THIS. You are wedded, you are not one entity. You can do things that make you feel good even if he doesn’t do them too.
I don’t think my boyfriend had ever given anyone a card of any kind before we started dating. He said he didn’t see the point, because they weren’t meaningful to HIM to receive. Contrast that with me, who has been raised my whole life to write thank-you notes, send birthday cards, the whole nine yards – by a mother for whom cards and gifts hold an astonishing amount of value, personally. Different upbringings, and different personal preferences (I also like getting cards) are part of it.
But in addition, for me, it’s ringing some bells in the emotional labor category. You may have already seen this toast article, http://the-toast.net/2015/07/13/emotional-labor/ , and the resulting metafilter thread, http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On… — or that may be a bit too much reading to work in to a Tuesday morning!… but the basic idea is that women are socialized to care about the emotional well-being of others, and put forth effort in order to maintain positive social relationships with others, while men…are not.
Oh, I’ve seen them. Which is why I’m not just writing the thing and having him sign his name to it.
I did consider just writing notes from me alone and sending them, but that felt weird, too.
That makes sense! Sorry if I came off a bit overbearing. The emotional labor thing had a bit impact on me and now whenever it seems relevant I find myself being like, “hey hey this is this thing, this emotional labor thing, look!”
In your case it seems like there isn’t a perfect solution. But for what it’s worth, I also think he’s being a big baby.
Would he be receptive to this sort of thing? I’m not suggesting you divorce him over this (lol), just that the post does a good job breaking down how a husband might think something is stupid and insignificant, and he wants his wife to acknowledge he’s right, while the wife is having a completely different argument–you should do this because it is important to me, even if you think it’s insignificant.
It seems WAY more emotionally laborious to me to nag someone who doesn’t care about signing a card into signing a card than to sign and post the card yourself.
Since we’re talking about thank you etiquette here, what’s the statute of limitations on sending a thank you card? There’s one that I missed on a Christmas gift and now I don’t know if sending one months later would be a case of better late than never or if it would just bring attention to how long I went without sending a card. It doesn’t help that I have a history of being really bad about sending thank you cards.
Better late than never, for sure! I mean, it probably depends on the person–I have people in my life who do not care about getting thank-you cards, and I have my mother and grandparents, who LOVE getting thank-you cards and think you are an ingrate if you do not send them one. The latter type will appreciate the gesture, especially if you apologize for being very late.
Thanks!
Another vote for better late than never, here. Someone who IS going to be offended by lack of a note hasn’t forgotten, and someone who wouldn’t care/wasn’t expecting it, will be pleasantly surprised.
Maybe he’s digging in his heels because he already said thanks and now you’re telling him it didn’t count, his sentiment is invalid because it wasn’t expressed in the manner you wanted it to be (even though it wasn’t being expressed to you).
It maybe people don’t need an easily expressible reason for just really not wanting to do something and people aren’t babies because of that.
They 100% won’t be offended to receive one and there’s at least a chance they will be if they don’t. There’s 0 reason for him not to take 5 seconds to sign the cards you’ve already prepared and written.
Miss Manners is timeless and she would definitely say you are right. But she would also say that although you shouldn’t literally sign for your husband, it is proper to write “Husband and I were so pleased to see you/we appreciate/etc” in the body of the note–sort of in the role of family social representative.
This doesn’t help the emotional labor/relationship dynamics type stuff, but on points of order, you’re right.
If it were 100 cards or something I could see feeling overwhelmed, but for 2? Better to unexpectedly but pleasantly surprise someone than make them feel offended or forgotten.
I saw a snippet of that Aretha piece on Twitter and immediately worried that she’d died. This is also my reaction when I wake up and KEXP plays more than one song by an artist in a row. “Oh shit, Sigur Ros died!”
Dear Aretha, please don’t die, my heart can’t take it.
Really good piece on teeth and class buried in the Affleck piece https://aeon.co/essays/there-is-no-shame-worse-th…
I had braces as a teenager (paid for through loans from family members and my dad’s work’s excellent dental benefits), but no permanent retainer and wisdom teeth meant my teeth didn’t stay perfectly straight. A friend’s girlfriend made a snotty comment about my teeth and I solemnly told her that in fact, I had paid extra to have braces that left my teeth slightly imperfect so that the end effect was more realistic. She was very impressed. It was my proudest moment in a long career of toying with the credulous and mean.
Oooh that’s a good one! (Also, commenting on peoples teeth is super rude.)
I haven’t had to deal with the same levels of teeth as a class signifier as in the States (good quality teeth will always be a class signifier, but it’s not as explicit in Europe), but having good teeth is one of the things I feel truly blessed with (#blessed. I’m not even spiritual.) as both my parents have struggled with their teeth and we didn’t have a whole lot of access to dental care when I was younger; but it was always a priority for my mother, so after I had a load of silver fillings from the public healthcare dentist as a child (only the bare minimum is covered in Ireland, they were terribly done too.), she paid for me to have them all taken out and replaced with white ones privately as a teenager so they’re not visible when I talk (and the white ones last longer)
And now I have sever teeth anxiety. My greatest fear is having my teeth damaged in an accident and I’m not even exaggerating.
Here for the dental horror. I come from an upper middle class family but had a horrific the experience in college that involved root canaling the wrong tooth (which was only dying because my childhood dentist insisted on giving me bridge for a missing tooth).
I am highly self-conscious about my teeth but so afraid of the dentist that I have not been in years in spite of an ok dental plan. Afraid of being judged bit more afraid of going back. There’s a dental museum at my uni and I literally and viscerally dread being assigned a classroom by it…would petition for a new one before showing up to teach.
My dad grew up poor, no money for dentists, probably malnutrition, and he had to have dentures at 25 as a result. It really is a big class signifier. Our country has free health care, but that doesn’t cover the dentist.
My grandpa got dentures at around age twenty, which was not uncommon for people of his generation in my neck of the woods.
I am here for more stories about messing with rich people if you feel like telling them! 😀
That is, not exaggerating, the single best lie I have ever heard. I’m really happy, knowing there is a mean person out there in the world who believed such a lie.
Ahhhhhh Trump’s campaign manager was just arrested and charged with battery for grabbing a reporter (the Breitbart one!), what a wonderful day in politics. The best, perhaps, in this whole 2016 election season.
*celebratory action of some sort*
This is going to be my response to all good news delivered in electronic form from here on out.
I “love” that there’s video and Trump & co are still denying it happened.
I AM SO GLAD THEIR LIES HAVE ENCOUNTERED A WALL OF REALITY. I am so glad a semblance of the justice system exists and is showing signs of life today! I am fascinated to see if they will commit to the lies in court, thus elevating them to perjury (something Trump has been careful to avoid in previous court cases). I hope this dude goes to JAIL for a year, which is entirely possible for misdemeanor battery!
And I love how this exposes their sham of a campaign. I mean, this is first priority for any other campaign manager: don’t derail your candidate’s news cycle with your OWN ARREST. It’s frustrating that this probably won’t make any impact whatsoever with the Trump supporters, but all the same. This is going down on the asshole’s record. Don’t put your goddamn hands on a woman, fucko.
A link for those who like madcap adventures and fascinating alt-histories about historical scientists: http://howl.fm/audio/playlists/4326/the-mysteriou…
Jermaine Clemens’ Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Bertie’s Botanarium, the bizzaro world of Joseph Banks on a flat earth with a gravy sea.
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/boys-will-men
Amber Frost is great and she wrote a great thing about pickup artists and Tucker Max and growing up.
That was super interesting, thank you.
I lived in the remote Texas desert for a brief time and encountered coyotes often, as if we were just fellow commuters, and without fail a line from Joni’s song would come to mind. Thanks for sharing that glorious clip.
Nicole! Thank you so much for today’s roundup. I am often impressed and delighted by your curating, but today had so many big long reads I had to space them out. Nearly everything here is gold. As for Sansa, I am more convinced than ever that she is half koala, half Sasquatch, half Malamute, half goddess, half ManBearPig. I do not worship at the church of Sansa, but that is probably only because I live too far away to watch her burgeoning, fluffening, herdexpandening.
Oh my god, the T-Rex video!!!
These videos seem to find their way to me at times when I need a laugh the most. They are one of my very favorite things in the world. I am afraid to seek them out on the YouTubes for fear the magic would be lost forever.
But to stumble upon one on the Toast… I just… Nicole, it really feels like you GET me.
Nitpick – Virginia Woolf’s house was Monk’s House, not Monk House (it’s near my hometown!).
We are earnestly awaiting the end of DST here and every morning is a struggle to wake up and get out of the house on time. By which I mean to say since I am not currently working, LR was perfect excuse to continue lying in bed and snoozing instead of hustling to get myself to yoga at 9.30.
(2nd interview, this time w GMs, this afternoon. Wish me luck)
That left me with an odd feeling. I had been told to prep for STAR type questions, which I did, but then it didn’t end up being that sort of conversation. It was good and the HR person even commented on the rapport built but then followed it with “you need to prep for STAR questions for the next round, have you read the JD?”
So. Not sure where that goes.
They don't even have to be nice, exactly! Francine Prose, for example, is not considered a "nice" professor (for workshopping purposes, at least–not however she might be otherwise), but I'm pretty sure the way she challenges people is actually about the pages, not by sexual manipulation and harassment. Marilynne Robinson definitely doesn't need to use double entendres or sketchy BDSM moves to make you quake in your boots. You can be a grouchy misanthropic writer who runs a tough workshop AND still not sleep with students!
Also, this, from the VIDA site?
"Once, I made a statement that I suppose Thomas Sayers Ellis found upsetting, during an online chat in which I thought we were having friendly banter; he quickly turned and said that I better watch out, that he could ruin my career. This from someone who, during our first meeting at a writer’s conference years before, asked me if I was schizophrenic and when I said no, he insisted that I must be because there were at least two separate voices in my work. "
is incredibly inappropriate for a writing professor, all sex aside. If that's what people consider to be valuable "provocative" teaching, I can't even.
I agree!! The particular problem in this case is a total lack of knowledge about what diabetes is or how it works. That's how we got into this mess… I think he needs a book that spells out what diabetes is along side basically all recipes that aren't sugary desserts. Then he can graduate back into his normal food routine (whilst also being conscientious). I was thinking, actually, about gifting Blue Apron or similar, because it's all proportioned, new recipes, all whole-foods. Since he's laid up & can't go to the store, it might also be one less thing his wife needs to think about too.