Snuggles.
This is not the general election, where Democrats will (hopefully) feel obligated to suck up their qualms and rally loudly behind a candidate because the other one might accidentally nuke China. The only reasonable reaction to this primary race is bewilderment, and right now, critiquing each other for supporting the wrong candidate is probably less useful than critiquing both candidates for providing detractors with so much ammunition.
It’s okay to be unsure, and it’s okay to wonder whether your vote will haunt you five years from now, because any which way, it very well might.
Many many friends of The Toast won Pulitzers yesterday, and we congratulate them! NOW GET OUTTA THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.
nope, dealbreaker, she’s going to be a colossal pain:
I’ll start by saying I’m a new manager — six months. I just hired for a PRN position that I desperately needed. I consider my interview style to be blunt and straightforward; I don’t tip toe around the hours or responsibilities of the job. During the entire interview process, I reiterated the hours needed and what would be required in the job, and the candidate was eager in her affirmation that she would be able to meet those requirements. When I called her in again to formally offer her the job, I reiterated the schedule required before having her signing any papers, and again she confirmed that it was no problem.
I schedule her for orientation, and during orientation the HR Director calls me into the office because the new employee is now saying that she has a second job (that was not once mentioned during any of the interviews or the day of signing the offer) that conflicts with the schedule that she agreed to. In fact, she said that the day I had her sign the offer, she was heading to her second job. I told her, in front of HR, that if she is now feeling as though she can not work that particular schedule, she needs to tell me now because that is the schedule that the position requires. She confirmed that she could make it work and that she’s excited about the job.
The next thing I know, after she’s signed all of HR’s paperwork and completed orientation, she comes to me and tells me she can’t work those particular shifts and that she doesn’t want to get stuck with “crappy shifts” because she’s the new person and she knows how they do the new person.
Within minutes, Weir’s and Lipinski’s televised gay/straight figure skating lovefest/high fashion show proved authentic. That dynamic between the sport’s most fabulously attired and entertainingly honest duo has reinvigorated NBC’s broadcasts and hooked viewers during the Games. But can Weir and Lipinski make people care about figure skating, a sport that’s two decades past its peak, for those other 206 weeks out of the four-year Olympic cycle?
Your husband is being cruel and shitty:
Q. My husband thinks I tried to murder the cat: I have been with my husband for four years. One of the things that brought us together was our mutual love of cats. We each had two when we met, and we now have a happily blended family of four cats. All was well until my 18-year-old cat began having health issues. In the past year, he has been diagnosed as blind in one eye, with severe glaucoma in the other, and now diabetes. Combined, his medications and special food cost approximately $400 per month. I wanted to have a discussion to determine at what point we would want to have the cat put down. My husband freaked out and accused me of trying to MURDER the cat. To this day, he refuses to discuss it and will often say things to the cat (while in my presence) like, “Don’t worry, buddy, I won’t let momma kill you.” To be clear, I did not want to have the cat put down right now. I just wanted to begin the conversation so that we would both be prepared. How can I address this with him without being accused of caticide?
actual nonsense, stana katic is a gem and a beautiful, strong Canadian woman and better than Castle
the hero Gotham needs (this is legit hilarious):
I really wanted to buy these kicks, and Nike was sold out of all the Le Bron models for women, and then my friend Alyssa told me that a women’s size 8 is a youth 6.5 and BOOOOOOOM I GOT LE BRON SNEAKERS FOR A CHILD BUT IT IS FOR MEEEEE:
i do not usually hate-link but lol this fool:
Two weeks into our journey, we arrived at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. In front of the ticket office was a sandwich board display advertising a smartphone app called “Slave Life at Monticello.” The goal of the tour and experience was an attempt to divert attention from the man who owned this property, one of America’s Founding Fathers, to slavery. The docent leading the tour of the house never missed an opportunity: as we moved from one floor to another, we were instructed to imagine how difficult it was for the “enslaved servants to carry meal trays up and down this narrow stairway.” At every hearth: “imagine enslaved servants having to carry wood up to these fireplaces…” It just went on and on.
Jefferson’s philosophical and political viewpoints were omitted to leave time for an explanation of how difficult life was for his servants. Not once did the guide omit the adjective “enslaved”—his demeanor was patronizing and condescending to those who made the journey to see Monticello, for anyone vaguely familiar with Thomas Jefferson would know that he owned slaves.
“Look at me, I’m next to a dinosaur!”
“Hi, new dinosaur friend! You’re the herbivore kind, right?”
“They can’t see me if I don’t move, right? Or was that ditched by the second mov–“
I like to imagine they are conducting the melodica version of the Jurassic Park theme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w-58hQ9dLk
Perhaps he’s waving to a friend?
“Oh hi Bob! How are you?”
“THERE’S A DINOSAUR ABOUT TO EAT YOU, YOU NIMROD”
Now imagine being trapped in a motor home for a summer with that “But What About All the Times Jefferson DIDN’T Own Slaves?” lady.
Do I have to cuz I don’t wanna noooooo
Hi, it’s me again.
“I took this moment to inquire as to whether the Marquis considered Mr. Madison a caring human being, because had Madison simply freed his slaves, they likely would have starved.”
So, I’m not saying that ::this:: particular lady is doing what I’m about to describe, but just that her rhetoric here is often in close proximity.
People often take a negative view of paternalism, especially in government. “You can’t take our giant sodas away,” or “You have no right to tell me what to do with my own body,” “::I:: am the master of my fate!” and “Mike, that butterscotch bread pudding you’re eating — that you’ve eaten three times this week now — is supposed to be a ‘sometimes food’ and you ::know this::.”
And yet, when we talk about American slavery, and this idea of “they likely would have starved” rears its paternalistic-shaped head, that, all of a sudden, seems a ::fine:: use of paternalism. Slavery then becomes a benign form of welfare. Slave owners are caring, rather than mercenary. And then I go find another butterscotch bread pudding because I’m a stress eater and all of this makes me VERY anxious.
Yes!
Also, there’s a great alternative to just letting them starve: offer freed slaves a job, paying actual wages, and then let them decide what they want to do.
That literally is never proffered as an option by that type of arguer. And that same mentality has trickled all through our economic ideology so that now we almost never pay what something is actually worth.
ooooooooooh that is a really, really, really good point and not one that had been pointed out to me before, or that occurred to me.
An amazing letter from a freed slave whose former owner wanted him to come back to work for him:
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-ma…
This was my first time reading that letter and it was BREATHTAKINGLY AMAZING. Every part of it. SO! GOOD!
That was exquisite!
I LOVE this letter.
Wow, so good. What would be the 1865 equivalent of a mic drop? I would like to reach across 151 years and give Mr. Jourdon Anderson all the high-fives.
HOLY SHIT. THAT LETTER.
That letter should be included in all of our history textbooks, god damn. Maybe it would have taught that awful lawyer in The American Conservative a thing or too.
That is AMAZING. I want to insert it in every eleventh grade U.S. history book post-haste.
Thank you for that!
I mean, that’s the whole view John C. Calhoun came up with, right– the shift of opinion from “necessary evil” to “positive good” (spoiler, slavery was neither) that occurred right before the start of the war and kind of persisted in certain popular imaginations because of the erasure and modification of historical narrative to fit that argument?
yeah it’s bonkers because it makes it almost seem like people use of rhetoric has less to do with considered political ideology than it does with justifying whatever it was they already believed
^ ^ ^ Literally this, all day, every day.
Just last night, my dad tried to convince me that the Three-Fifths Compromise was actually a good thing because it allowed for the creation of the Union and passing of the Constitution and I was like, “…it was EFFECTIVE, but it wasn’t a moral victory because you’re still talking about OWNING PEOPLE, so no, not good.”
I think the key distinction is whether one is on the giving or receiving end of paternalism.
After reading that, I want to send a sympathy card to those unlucky enough to be on the tours with her. I so feel the person who interrupted one of her tirades at Madison’s house to beg to talk about the architecture.
This, yes! And the docents who are just trying to lead a tour that includes people other than this woman.
Sadly I’m sure the docents have seen this type before and will see this type again. All love and strength to the docents!
I’ve heard that at the Field Museum in Chicago the docents get specific training on how to talk to aggressively anti-evolution people. . .I hope the docents there have a few fallback scripts to prevent the Blue Screen of Inner Death feeling when faced with that kind of thing over and over.
“I resent the inclusion of facts in this presentation, and I demand they be removed!”
Every time I’ve been to Montpelier, there’s been some asshole who.does this, or asserts that Madison was a good slave owner (does.not.compute). Somehow Monticello and Ash Lawn-Highland (Monroe’s house) don’t have this problem. What is it about Madison that attracts these jerkoffs, I’d like to know.
There was actually a recent book about Paul Jennings, one of Madison’s former slaves, who wrote the first memoir about living in the White House, which I decided to read instead of a book about Madison. (Madison was pretty quiet and not uber-demanding as a slaveowner, which doesn’t make him good, but Dolly Madison was flat-out terrible.)
:scurries off to see if she can excerpt Paul Jennings’ memoir for her global slavery course:
(I try to avoid American subjects, because it’s a world history course taught to American students, but primary sources written by the enslaved are so priceless…)
Her condesending, “Oh sure, talk about the wallpaper” is such bullshit. Lady, you don’t want to talk about important things, you want to *censor* the talk of important things.
If there was ever anyone I can picture spending their time home schooling her two sons and lives a homestead lifestyle in the mountains of Northern Utah, it is this woman.
She makes it seem so effortless!
That is really all you have to know about her, isn’t it? Two strikes against her right there, and then, she’s a lawyer, too.
Imagine being her home-schooled children. Talk about being trapped. Poor kids.
Thanks for being sympathetic to the kids. (Been there.)
I want to imagine one of them rebelling. . .at the library.
Except that she’s “homesteading in northern Utah.” How much you wanna bet there’s no library for several hours’ drive?
aka Mom?
Have you seen Ask a Slave? It’s a youtube series based on real interactions the woman had as a slave re-enactor. She got a lot of those people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1IYH_MbJqA
Also https://twitter.com/afamhistfail?lang=en
Yeah. Like I saw this movie once about some guys putting on a broadway show and I learned that Hitler was a better painter than Churchill.
Why is that whenever a man wants to leave a show his character moves away or something but when a woman wants to leave a show her character dies?
YES. THIS.
THIS EMPHATICALLY INDEED.
Colonel Henry Blake’s bucket hat, fishing lures still attached, bobbing gently in the middle of an oil slick in the Sea of Japan, would like a word.
Way to find a recent example
Kal Penn got killed off on House when he went to work at the White House.
Perhaps I should have phrased it as white men and not white men, rather than men and women. I know the same thing also just happened to Ricky Whittle on The 100 when he booked American Gods
Also the Good Wife guy! Will. Super dead.
SUPER dead. Really, really violently dead.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry, didn’t know there was a statute of limitations. (Blake’s death was notable because he’d already left, having been discharged from the army; lots of people thought that it was gratuitous for this reason.)
I know. MASH was one of my mom’s favorite shows, and i watched the re-runs when I was little. But the fact that you went for an example that’s over 40 years old is indicative of the fact that there’s a significant imbalance here.
This conversation has come up because of a recent slew of women characters (and POC men) getting killed off. There isn’t a statute of limitations, exactly–it’s just not relevant to the conversation for you to say “not all male characters” and then cite a decades-old example.
OK, yeah, that makes sense.
See also: Matthew Crawley.
:sobs:
(P.S. Of course, there’s also–just to look at Trek–Tasha Yar, Jadzia Dax, and Kes and Seska. Dr. Pulaski and Yeoman Rand made it out alive, I guess.)
I mean, Kes technically just became a noncorporeal spirit entity and decided to go find herself or w/e.
Unfortunately, her last appearance was in “Fury”, which was weird and problematic.
At least on Grey’s Anatomy, McDreamy died and Yang moved to Switzerland!
if it had been the other way around i would have set myself on fire.
Somebody mentioned Will from The Good Wife upthread, but I have to plug them again because he died and Kalinda LIVED.
True – I was really* worried they’d kill Kalinda and delighted when they didn’t. I’d like to see a breakdown of how often male vs female and white vs POC characters are killed.
*As worried as you can be about someone who’s not, y’know, real.
Yes, I too was worried. I was hoping she’d run off into Witness Protection with her FBI lady or something, but she’s alive and doing Kalinda things in the sunset, so it’s ok with me.
I gave up on Grey’s several years ago and this news brings joy to my heart in some strange way.
Grey’s Anatomy, which is run by a woman. I really believe it makes a difference. Male showrunners see themselves in their male characters, but don’t see themselves in their female characters. So they’re less willing to kill off the men than the woman. I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, but since they’re so freaking disproportionately represented, it doesn’t end matter. The effect is still what it is.
I’ll be over here having a rage-blackout about Sleepy Hollow.
I love it here in the land where season two didn’t happen. Or even a significant part of season 1 to be honest, come join me in my head cannon. Irving’s still there and having a great time being Mr.&Mrs.BAMF with Jenny*, Katrina has moved to California to join a commune and Abby and Ichabod might hook up, might not, but Yolanda has def. found her True Love.
*yes, age difference squick but their chemistry was incandescent.
I am here for any fanfic recommendations with this premise (one of my favorite Sleepy Hollow fics was a one-shot from the point of view of the people in Yolanda’s call center, which I sadly do not have the link to).
Sadly I have no recommendations to give you. I am left only with my collection of what-ifs. Mostly relating to the fact that clearly some of the writers and showrunners etc Got It as evidenced by such masterful ridiculousness as “Franklinstein” and a genuinely tense and disturbing episode with the bond flute guy. So what happened?
I would also like to know more about the horse Headless rode in the pilot because that was one of the prettiest horses I’ve seen in years.
Orlando Jones on twitter: “”The white male lead should totally sacrifice his life to protect the *dark skinned* black girl” said no development executive EVER.”
I love him.
What a BAMF. Seriously, that’s awesome.
Because you can use a lady death to give a man Feelings that spur him onto action, but everyone knows that ladies don’t do anything much and so killing off a man in their lives can’t have any impact on the story.
Well, as long as it stokes some dude’s thirst for revenge, TV writers 😛
Also, a man going Revenge/Honor berserker is admirable and noble; a woman going to emotional extremes is scary and unpleasant because women are so naturally unstable and hysterical and so forth. (Because our wombs keep zooming about inside our bodies, iirc, which I suppose would be distracting, if it were a thing.)
where’s that “you know why” gif
If Kate Beckett is going to disappear from Castle, and Castle is going to keep investigating crimes without her (which makes no sense at all) the only way I can see that happening is for her to die, and for him to investigate her death. Otherwise, Castle would be betraying Beckett in a huge way.
The thing about character deaths that I think sometimes gets forgotten in these discussions is that they’re not all equal. There’s a huge difference between a character being created to be killed off, either to manufacture pathos or to make the show seem high-stakes, and a real character, who we know, dying and being mourned. And sometimes having a character just move away can seem dismissive to me – more so than having the character die.
Take, for instance, the brilliant and amazing show Homicide, Life on the Street, which sadly suffered from a lot of network interference. In the third season, the network insisted that Crosetti, one of the main cast, leave the show, and the show responded by having Crosetti commit suicide. They did an incredible job; the episode may well be my favorite episode of television ever. At the end of that season, the network made the show drop two more characters, who were given no send-off at all; they were suspended for something that happened offscreen and never came back. It was incredibly disappointing to just have them disappear like that, and I felt like the actors and the characters deserved more acknowledgment of how important they’d been to the show.
Pulitzer has the same number of syllables as Hamilton; alas I’m not feeling especially creative this morning.
But, such excitement!
When I saw it, I told my boyfriend that I didn’t care which /how many Tonys it won, but I would be super disappointed if it didn’t win a Pulitzer. I was very excited yesterday even though I had a terrible migraine.
They also have the same number of letters. It’s like it was fated…
SERVANTS?!?
Attempting to rectify the injustice/bummer that “not once did the guide omit the adjective ‘enslaved’,” of course.
Yeah, if you take umbrage at the word slave, you have no right to even pretend like you care about historical accuracy.
When I watch that guy get out of the car, I hear the music from Curb Your Enthusiasm
*edited – I originally said Arrested Development, but I guess they both work.
Watching him, I was warp-shifting through a potent, exquisite blend of rage, hysterical laughter, and schadenfreude. It’s very early for this many emotions all at the same time.
I love exceedingly fair people (if mostly only in small doses) and my sister is distinctly one of them. She scratched up my parents’ car while she was learning to drive, and then, when they offered to sell her the car years later, argued that she really shouldn’t have to pay full blue book price for the thing because of the body damage. That she caused.
This seems… unfair.
I really want to know how your parents handled that one. Something like “OK, nope, we’ll sell the car to someone else, you can go buy your own”? Or perhaps “OK, but you are going to have to pay us back for the damage you caused, with compound interest, so get your checkbook out”?
I think they just gave her some light side-eye and she (correctly) let it drop.
I don’t see how that’s….”fair?” Funny, yes. Fair? Ehhhhhhhhh.
“Fair” in that she wants the rules applied exactly, every single time, no favors, etc., which is not dissimilar to the email shared where he wanted it treated as work for money rather than a favor. Fair in a less benevolent way, but I think still fair in in a uniformly evenhanded way.
That just reminds me of this now:
Credit: oglaf.com (currently featuring a NWS comic on their homepage, beware)
Oglaf on The Toast! It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.
Psssst – I once bought women’s shoes (suede LLBean slip-ons) for my kid when he was that size between kids and mens that is impossible to find. Eh – shoes.
I’ve bought children’s Easter shoes because I wear a women’s 7.5 and the equivalent girls’ size (a 5 or 5.5) can sometimes be found at Payless.
Wait, what? Yes, I am behind on Link Roundups and reading one from last week and very late with this but. . . how did I get to the ripe old age of mumble-mumble without knowing this??? Kids 5 or 5.5 is really equivalent to 7.5?
My favorite thing about Stana Katic is how you can rearrange all the phonemes in her name and it’s still a plausible name:
Stana Katic
Kana Static
Stata Kanic
Kata Stanic
except that means that I never remember what her actual name is
I always get her name right, but every time I say it, I’m worried that I’ve gotten it wrong.
It works just as well if you forget about phonemes and rearrange the letters! For example:
Satanic Kat
Attack a Sin
Canasta Kit
oh man, very flexible name, good work Stana Katic
Canasta Kit would be a great name for a Jasper Fforde character.
When I read that Prudence about the husband and “you’re murdering my kitty”…FIRE IN MY EYES, ACID SHOOTING OUT OF MY PORES
All I wanted to do was pack that guy’s shit and throw it into the street. But I’m a little hostile today.
And the thing is: it’s ultimately selfish to want to prolong a pet’s life when its quality of life is so low. Euthanizing a pet can be the kind, compassionate thing to do.
Definitely. And another thing is that it’s so much easier to cope with when you’ve thought about it beforehand and have an idea of what signs would mean it’s time to say goodbye. I had my old horse put to sleep last summer and it absolutely broke me, I’m crying even now just typing it. But for the last few years of his life I had spent quite a lot of time thinking about what his quality of life was, what things I definitely didn’t want to put him through, etc etc.
When the time came, although it wasn’t an emergency, it so clearly ticked the boxes on the ‘no way, this is not fair to him’ list, that it was surprisingly easy to blubber at the vet that we should do it now, and although it was one of the worst days of my life, I don’t regret the timing of it, or having done it. I’m absolutely at one with it being the right thing to do at the right time for him and I am sure that a big part of that ease with the decision is that I’d thought about it when emotions weren’t running high, and when it wasn’t a decision that needed to be made now.
I knew a year or so beforehand which bit of his body was most likely to give out first, so I’d been able to make plans about it and knew when the time had come.
Refusing to even have the conversation is juvinile and selfish! If this guy is a ‘cat lover’, has he not had an animal get sick or die before? Or can he not understand that animals can feel huge amounts of pain and not tell us, so we have to advocate for them?
I’m in the middle of an opposite problem right now with my geriatric dog (he’s somewhere around 18ish, we’re not sure), since I live abroad and he’s not good with children, its fallen to my mum to care for him and for the last 6 months we’ve been going back and forth about it being ‘The Time’. Apart from being old and the ailments that come with it (Arthritic, deaf, a bit blind probably, bad digestion and a heart thing he needs pills for), he’s pretty happy and relatively healthy (he’s not having strokes or tumors or anything).
But he is a lot of work, he needs pills multiple times a day, special food and he really doesn’t like being left alone, so its a big time burden and its getting expensive for my mum (I send her money when I can), and until recently he had constant diarrhea (special expensive food seems to have helped). So now I’m thinking its probably time because someone has to make a decision, and my mother can’t do it and the rest of the family are cowards, and I’d rather it be slightly too early for him than even a second too late.
“I’d rather it be slightly too early for him than even a second too late. ”
This. I’d do anything to shield my dogs from suffering.
Its tough because we don’t want to take any life from him; We were going to wait until he wasn’t happy/eating anymore, but the little shit loves life. He’s still happily chilling in sunbeams and attempting to chase cats.
He’s had an extra six months longer than we thought he would (well, to be honest, its been an extra 5 years. He’s been Old for a long time now), and I think its ok to admit its too expensive and too much of a burden for one person, but my mum (and me a bit) is terrified of feeling guilty because ti was too early.
It’s OK. Yes, it’s all very, very hard. But your beloved little old dog is happy. He’s obviously well loved. It’s OK. ::Toasthugs::
I totally know what you mean, and I agree, it’s so so hard. Our old man dog had diabetes that we had been managing for over 2 years, and the treatments were becoming less effective, but he still seemed to enjoy his sunbeams and being with us. We were discussing as a family what “the right time” would look like and whether we had indeed arrived at that time, and decided to do one more visit to the vet to see if there was something minimally invasive we could do to help keep him with us a while longer. We woke up the morning of the appointment with him clearly slipping away and not seemingly in pain, and we just held him and loved on him and cried until he was gone. He was a good dog.
Thats a good way to go! My family so emotionally messed up that this whole thing is bringing up all kinds of issues for everyone (there are members of the family who won’t even talk about it, they just call it the ‘the thing’). He’s been with us for a long time, and lived with everyone at different times, that he’s taught us a lot, and my mother keeps going on about how he has one last lesson to teach us (None of us are good with death and most of the deaths in the family have been very sudden, so its really weird having this long build up to it)
As far as I know the vets are happy for him to continue with the medication as long as its working (but its £5 a pill!!), but I’m going to be home next week and I think I’m going to bring him in and have a talk with them and probably make the decision. Although every time I’ve been home since last year I’ve been saying that but then he’s fine and we can’t do it.
My cat died five minutes before we were due to leave for the vet’s to have her put down. She was such a good girl. (She had suddenly declined that morning – had a stroke or some other neurological thing – and my sister and I had dashed home to say goodbye to her. She was clearly not going to get better, but she died just before we could make the decision for her.)
My cousin had a very sick, elderly (13-year-old) cat, which she posted about regularly on Facebook. I was utterly appalled when I saw her make a new post TRYING TO REHOME THE CAT because when it suffered yet another health crisis she couldn’t take care of it and her infant, and the cat “could live another 6 months with proper care.” It just seemed so much crueler to prolong the suffering of this animal and to make it adjust to a new home rather than have it put peacefully to sleep. But she said she couldn’t possibly bring herself to do that. Mercifully, the poor thing died before she found anyone willing to do hospice care for this cat.
Wow, that would have been cruel…
My cats are even older (they were estimated as 14 years old when we adopted them two years ago), but luckily they are in reasonably good health (one is very very wheezy, and gets out of breath after chasing his brother around the room, but that doesn’t stop him). But yes: we have already talked about what we’d do if they get sick. If it’s just something requiring special food, of course we’ll buy that. But both are quite easily scared (probably didn’t have the best life before being abandoned), so anything involving an operation would probably not be worth the stress at their age.
Because that’s where a very sick, elderly cat really wants to spend its last few months: in a strange environment, surrounded by strangers.
“But she said she couldn’t possibly bring herself to do that.”
Then she isn’t cut out to be a pet owner, sorry. It’s not just about hugs and cuddles. It’s about dealing with the end of their life and taking humane action so they’re not in unnecessary, prolonged suffering.
I 100% agree. My dad instilled ideas about animal husbandry in me and my sister practically from birth. And the most important principle in his view was that your own needs come second to any dependent animal. If you get home late after a long day, you feed your animals before getting your own dinner. Because you as a human can understand and rationalize pain and hunger and need. It might be terribly emotionally difficult to you to lose a pet, but it is nothing compared to allowing an animal to suffer when there is no hope of a meaningful recovery. An animal cannot be philosophical about pain or learn from it like humans can. They can only experience suffering without the means to end it themselves. It is immoral to let that drag out.
Wow, your dad sounds really wise. Someone like him needs to sit down with everyone getting their first pet.
THIS. Animals get dinner before you. 6 am this morning I realized that the tired girl had forgotten to take care of the bunny we’d just moved outside last night when she got home from lacrosse. (the other three were still inside when she fed them). You can damn well bet she got out of bed and went straight outside to give him food and water before getting dressed, doing homework, or eating. And that was WITH homework undone that she fell asleep doing and needed to miss the bus to finish. Animals. First.
*applauds your dad*
That is A-cruel to the cat and B-a really shitty thing to do to the next pet owners. “Hey, adopt this cat so that you can get the guilt and sadness of putting it down without any of the fun happy memories of healthy years with this fur baby!”
Look, some people adopt older animals with health issues who will not live long in order to give those pets a comfortable ending to their lives and they are HEROES. But people who are willing and can do that need to focus on shelter pets, not your pets just so you can avoid the hard parts of life.
Poor cat. I’m glad it didn’t have to be passed around. (And 13 isn’t even old! Mine lived to 15, 17, 18 and 19.)
It’s definitely selfish. My mom and I were sitting at the vet’s office with the very healthy, happy family dog and there was a woman there telling us how she was picking up medicines for her 19-year-old cat with diabetes, I think, and how she had to inject it several times a day, and we were both politely nodding and then when she walked out we looked at each other in horror. That cat could not have been happy or comfortable.
I have cat-sat for a very happy diabetic cat. You put food in front of it and it ate while you injected it twice a day, and it didn’t even notice. It was also at least 16 or so. Obviously there are lots of situations where it’s better for the cat’s welfare, but diabetes and age in and of themselves are not the end of the world.
I believe that.
If I’m remembering correctly, there was more going on with that cat than just the injections; it seemed like it had to be seriously medicated, which is why we were upset. I probably should have added that to the previous post, but it’s a little fuzzy.
I can’t speak for the cat or its owner, but my diabetic dog would walk over to the fridge and sit when we reached in to pull out his insulin and syringe twice a day. He was very easygoing before he got sick, and continued to be until the day he passed away.
Exactly. I had to euthanize one of my beloved old lady rats last week, because her brain cancer had destroyed her ability to eat solid food and move without assistance – she was clearly suffering and my biggest regret is we couldn’t get it done sooner because she went downhill on a sunday when the vet was closed.
I’ve had six rats, and they can go downhill so quickly, they just have such small bodies. When they passed on in their sleep I was sad but otherwise okay; the few times I had to have them euthanized I cried myself sick. Even when I knew it was the right decision I felt awful.
LIsten, jerk. If I can have a convo with a couple of tweens/teens about quality of life and end of life decisions for a beloved pet, then you can surely suck it up and do the same thing since you’re an adult and shit.
Yeah that guy sounds creeptastic honestly. “I won’t let her murder you” OMG. How can you even live with a person who does that?
YES. I would be out the door so fast if my partner made me feel even the tiniest bit bad about choosing to end my pet’s suffering.
When we had to do it totally unexpectedly, she left work early to come to the vet’s. She held me and talked it through with me, and when I couldn’t bear to actually be in the room when the vet administered the drugs, she held him so he would have someone he loved and vice versa with him. It was some a-plus level partnering. And I’m fully prepared to hold ‘her’ cat when the time comes if she can’t be in the room.
Also — it’s the letter writer’s cat, right? And he’s accusing her of wanting to maliciously murder her cat/pet/friend/family member of 18 years?? How hurtful! I love my sweet animals so much and it’s agony when a pet has to be put down — it’s hard enough as is without him making her question her judgment or have the added guilt of rationalizing why this is the most humane option.
I’d have ripped anyone to shreds when I was in the ‘when is the right time’ phase with my old git if they had dared suggest anything of the kind! Especially if it had been someone who was meant to be in my support network,
It is so hard. One of my cats was put down last autumn, after about nine months of decline; my parents agonised over when the right time was, and wanted to make sure she didn’t suffer more than she had to without having her put down while she was still getting some enjoyment out of life. They worked very hard to keep her happy and comfortable and consider her needs, and I can’t imagine how hurtful it would have been for me to accuse them of wanting to murder her.
My in-laws have an incredibly old dog who is basically a zombie now, and it makes me so mad. She is in pain all the time, her body about 80% tumors, she can barely walk, she’s been incontinent for over a year, she keeps refusing food so they have to come up with new systems to get her to eat. I swear to god she keeps trying to sneak away to the neighbors’ place to die in peace but now she’s too decrepit to get very far (the food refusal thing – she’s trying to tell you something, guys). There have been about 5 times in the last 18 months where they could’ve (should’ve) put her down, but they refuse to do it, and at this point it’s cruel. They’re keeping her alive for their sake, not for hers. Poor baby. I will NEVER do that to my pets.
Basically, I feel you on the white hot rage.
When I read the part about getting her to eat when she is refusing food, I may have gasped audibly.
Right? Like, she’s not my dog, and they’re not my parents; I can’t tell them how to live their lives. But it is incredibly unsettling.
Oh my GOD I am so angry just reading that. I had to put down my dog a few years ago because she developed a mystery illness in which she couldn’t keep any food or water down. We tried everything–including a (very expensive) week in the dog ICU, and… yeah. She was her same, super friendly, super happy disposition, and she clearly WANTED to eat, but she lost 20 lbs in a month and was literally starving to death. I was not going to let her die in such an awful fashion. I can’t believe your in-laws are doing that. Ugh.
(For the record, she was 12, so she wasn’t young. My other dog also lived to be 12. I miss them terribly, and I cried profoundly both times, but I have zero regrets about putting them down.)
Why are you doing that? WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT!
In response to which link? Could be any of them really. Just wondering.
The guy driving into the flood and the super-annoyed reporter having to help him.
I wasn’t sure either but decided it could be a blanket response to pretty much anything. I like it.
“Leave the car!”
“Stay in the car?”
“LEAVE THE CAR”
That cat question! That husband made it through his entire X decades of life without anyone talking to him about pet death? Without knowing anyone who had to put a pet down? He’s terrible, but I’m also mad at his parents and whatever shelters/pet stores allowed him to own his own cats without having a frank discussion with him about mortality, like, does he know? Does he know that cats don’t live as long as people?
I’m just boggled.
I wish cats could live forever 🙁
Me too.
Mine will. :not just a river in Egypt.:
I told myself that about mine. I was extremely disappointed in her when I was summoned home in the middle of a workday to say goodbye to her. This wasn’t the deal!
Maybe his previous cats had all gone to live on a catnip farm upstate??
Some people just… can’t? My husband’s beloved dachshund was fifteen and had diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart murmur and her quality of life had gone really downhill, but he just couldn’t talk about it. She couldn’t get up the steps to our back porch and just laid on a pillow all day, and I would try to have gentle conversations about when we might decide it was time to let her go, and he was just never ready to. I wish I had been more forceful because we ended up having her put to sleep when she reached a crisis and was in total heart failure and I really think if we had done it six weeks earlier she would have avoided a lot of pain and suffering but all my husband saw was that she still lifted her head and smiled at you when you petted her head and couldn’t let himself understand that the poor thing was miserable.
I had a couple of trusted friends lined up to tell me if they felt I was doing that when it came to it, I have seen similar and it really preyed on my mind that I didn’t want my pet to suffer because I couldn’t cope.
Oh, man, I went through that with my roommate and her elderly, very ill cat. I mean, I know how difficult it is to make that decision, but like with your husband’s dog, the cat had a very poor quality of life for months and my roommate was spending so much money she absolutely couldn’t afford to spend just keeping the cat alive (but not necessarily happy or comfortable). Needless to say, the times I had to cat-sit in those last few months were nerve-wracking. I wound up having to make the decision in the end – roommate was out for the evening and I had to call and tell her to come home asap because things had taken a dramatic turn for the worse and it was time.
I’ve been on the other side of this, where I was navigating that decision. Some people assumed that because I was spending a lot of money on treatment that I was torturing the cat. But really, no one knew the cat’s well-being more than I did after living together for 16 years. I knew when she was suffering and not suffering. It was almost literally all I thought about. But I wasn’t in denial about having to make that decision (which I eventually did).
I grew up without knowing anyone who had to put down a pet; I didn’t even know a lot of people who had pets in the first place. Maybe this is the case here and he only got his cats as an adult.
I’m not saying his reaction is right, just that it is possible he never talked to anybody about this or experienced an animal’s death; it could be that therefore, he’s even more attached to his pets now – he probably has never lost a pet before and doesn’t know from experience what it’s like.
I’m the opposite, for some reason as a child all our pets had very short lifespans. No reason other than bad luck. So when I became an adult and got a pet, I was amazed at how long he LIVED. 14 years (and still not nearly long enough), probably more than the rest put together.
We didn’t have to put down many cats, but where I grew up there were lots of coyotes.
“Ugh, there was just pictures and information about slaves EVERYWHERE! Like, I just want to know how these great men of history totally singlehandedly created our beautiful country and how the fact that they had the money, time, education, and liberty to do so was totally unrelated to the fact that they had literal slave labour at their disposal! I mean obviously Jefferson was just great enough that he would have definitely been a Founding Father even if he had to build his damn mansion himself and farm his own food and stuff! The fact that he had slaves to do all that for him is totally unrelated and not something I care to hear about!”
*slow clap*
A+ pt.
When I did so, my comments were met with obvious displeasure by a woman working in the gift shop, who likely disagreed with my feedback.
Or also, who likely was like, “Oh shit, here’s my raging racist of the day. I can’t believe I have to smile politely at these people.”
Did anyone else notice that she home schools her children? The only education those kids are getting are from her warped point of view and that is so terrifying.
I just started a rant about how she’s visiting a historic house and so of course they’re going to talk about all of the intensive domestic labour the slaves would required to do to keep it running so the family could have that level of luxury, and then realized, that, no, that’s not a given at all .
your debts are paid ’cause you don’t pay for labor
(FWIW I tried to resist, but I succumbed in the end.)
Confession: I’ve been thinking “we know who’s really doing the planting” this whole time.
Ooooh, have you seen this cut section that appears in the Hamiltome? Lin-Manuel said he might put a demo of it in the mixtape version!
Dayum.
I went to Monticello recently and wanted to go on the new Hemings family tour they have, but due to my own ticket-buying goof, ended up just doing the outdoor tour, “Slavery at Monticello.” I really appreciated the work they’re putting into telling the stories of the enslaved people at Monticello. I’m sure it’s not perfect, but I thought the tour did a good job of not just citing statistics but actually telling the stories of individual people and their families.
Yessss Nicole. I love being just able to fit into ‘youth’ size sneakers, and what’s even better is that they aren’t taxed so I get to save money too*
*naughty but…
I just got this tip yesterday to buy boy’s runners rather than women’s!!
what’s the cutoff size for women to still be able to fit into youth sizes? asking for a friend (it’s totally me)
I think it depends on the brand! I feel like girl-oriented shoe brands tend to cut off smaller, like around a women’s 6.5-7, but apparently some boys’ shoes can run all the way up to around a women’s 9?
ooooh I’m a women’s 9! so I guess the equivalent would be a boys’ youth 7.5?
Yeah, that sounds about right!
Boy shoes also run a bit wider than women’s shoes, a bonus for me, but ymmv.
i wear a 7.5 in women’s, a 6.5 in men’s/boy’s. YES to slightly wider shoes!
It’s good for boots too, if you’re short! I’m barely 5’0 and a size 5.5/6 and I have kids’ Hunter and Frye boots. They were a lot cheaper than the adult sizes and (sadly) they fit much better on my calves, especially in the case of the Hunter wellies. I had the regular women’s version first and they cut into the back of my knees and rubbed against my ankle bones and took forEVER to take off.
I have men’s Frye engineer boots. Half the price of the women’s, fits on my wife calves and feet, and hand made in Mexico (last pair of women’s I saw was from China, and notably poorer quality). Highly recommend.
I did a similar thing to AAM girl, but I definitely didn’t drag it out as much. It was a bar job and when I went for a trial shift the owner asked me a few questions, including ‘Is there any other commitments you have that would interfere with this job’ and I said no. I had already told her I was in college during the day and only available for evening and weekend shifts, but I didn’t mention that I had horses at home that needed care and I regularly had to do evening chores at 4.30-5pm. I didn’t leave it out intentionally, I just assumed she meant other jobs and I had told her I was only available for evening shifts during the week (so like 6pm onwards).
Of course the schedule for my first week come out and she has me on 4pm-close every weekday (and splits at the weekend, uggghh). So my first night I went to her and clarified that i could only work from 5pm onwards at the earliest because I had horses that had to come in at 4pm. Anyway she didn’t like that and I got a bollicking. I didn’t last long at that job anyway, for other reasons (This lady was crazy and had hired a really good bar manager, so any time she was in the bar she was just in the way of the staff trying to work.) and she eventually fired me by not giving me hours for 3 weeks straight and then replacing my name on the schedule with someone else (For some reason they wouldn’t email the schedule, every Tuesday you had to drop in to the bar and check if you were on. For 3 weeks I did this like a fucking lemon not knowing I’d been fired.)
Anyway AAM girl obviously thought she’d have wiggle room around shifts when she got the job and didn’t realise they were serious.
Yeah I’ve never been in this position myself but I’ve seen it happen to a number of people I know– you don’t mention the second job, or the fact that you’re taking classes part time, or the fact that you have kids, because you’re afraid you won’t get the job if they know you have any kind of scheduling constraint. And then you just sort of hope it all works out.
Eh, I don’t think it’s the same as your situation. As many times as they brought it up with her, she knew they were serious. She just thought she’d be able to negotiate it once she got hired. I have no sympathy for her.
Sounds like you made an assumption about what ‘evening’ meant that was different to them, whereas with the AAM person it looks like they were pretty clear about exactly what hours they wanted her to fill. She wasn’t saying ‘oh the shift starts at 7am, I can’t come in til 8:30’ she was saying ‘don’t give me the crap shifts just because I’m new’ even though they said from the start, these are your shifts.
Yeah I mean, her situation was obviously different and she was making different assumptions about the job that I do not understand. If they give you explicit hours, they are definitely your hours. Sounds like its going to be a pain for the manager, I wonder at what point is it ok to rescind the job offer/fire her over this? Since its probably in the US then they can just get rid of her, but in other places I imagine after the offer is accepted there’s then policy covering whether they can let her go. I suppose that’s what probation is for?
Yeah, you can actually do it in the uk too. Where I work, someone got taken on and was repeatedly told “these two weeks are the busiest of the year, can you just confirm your definitely available?” Anyway, when she’d literally just started the job when she said she’d actually booked a holiday for those two weeks. They pretty much let her go on the spot.
How did she think that was going to work out? Wow.
BO SHORT FOR AMBROSE
He probably thought about going with ‘Bro’ but couldn’t handle its implications.
Talk about missing the one acceptable opportunity to call someone “Bro.”
And yes, youth/man shoes in US sizes are the same and usually 1.5 down from women’s US sizes (why the whole world does not switch to Euro sizes where a 39 is a 39 is a 39, I do not know).
Bit OT, but seeing the 39 shoesize made me very happy.
All my life I’ve never been average in anything. That sounds like the American dream, but is actually a total pain. I, too, want to experience the protection of blending in to the masses. 🙁
Anyway, the only thing that IS standard is my SHOESIZE. And I’m so happy about that 🙂 Inconspicuous, normal, available, aaah…bliss.
oh jeez Europeans and their standardized units of measurement MAYBE WE LIKE BEING CONFUSED ABOUT IT OKAY
It’s fun being different sizes depending on the manufacturer!
I got to say that the notion of “dress size” has always seemed laughable to me.
Dress size means nothing. I have two dresses in relatively similar styles, but one is a size 10, and one is a size 16. They fit me exactly the same.
The notion of dress size is laughable, period.
Dress sizes are crazy in Europe too. An Italian 42 ( theoretically a US 12) is roughly equivalent to.a German 36 (a US 6). Grumble grumble.
The Euro sizes are so much easier. My mother dragged me out to look at Danskos yesterday and because all the shoes she’s bought recently are Birkenstocks, she goes by her Euro size. But the shoe store had plastered over the original sizes marked on the Dansko boxes with American size stickers, so we had to pull them out and look because neither of us are really sure how the stores convert the sizes.
Meanwhile, my feet are big enough on the women’s scale that I buy a lot of men’s shoes and it’s a lot nicer when I have one consistent size to look for.
As a shoe fitter who sells both Danskos and Birkenstocks, the idea of a shoe store trying to use US sizes instead of Euro for them boggles my mind. They don’t actually convert nicely, unless you’re right in the middle of the size scale! A good rule of thumb is to add 31 to your US women’s shoe size, but if you’re feet are smaller than a US 7/Euro 38 or bigger than a US 9/Euro 40 then it might not line up so well. I wear a US 6.5 and a Euro 37, but I know that a lot of people who wear a US 6 need to size down to 36 in Euro for the right fit, even when size charts say things like “Euro 36=US 5-5.5” or some such bullshit.
Apparently I have a lot of feelings about converting shoe sizes!
They really don’t convert well at all! Even US and UK sizes don’t convert well to each other and the scales are basically the same. It drives me nuts going to the shoe store in town that stocks almost only Euro-sized shoes because the salespeople won’t listen when you say ‘oh, I usually wear a 43 in Birkenstocks’ and insist on getting your US size instead. So frustrating.
Except that I’ve worn different sizes in both Danskos and Birkenstocks depending on the style! My size in Birkenstock sandals is different than for shoes, my size in Danskos clogs is different than for dress shoes with a heel.
Definitely the eternal shoe problem there, sadly. Stupid shoes.
Screw that, let’s have Japan’s system, which is literally your foot measurement in centimeters.
nooooooo that video made me cry 🙁 He’s so confused!
I know! I kept thinking about how I would panic in that situation, and nothing would make sense to me, and I’d look like an idiot to the entire world.
I did laugh when the person called him “dude.”
Yeah, I know. I get the reporter’s exasperation, but you can see the total bewilderment in the driver’s face when he opens the car door. It seems like such common sense not to drive into those waters, or even to leave the house that day (but maybe he was somewhere else when the storm started, and was trying to get back home, like many people were) — but when familiar streets have become rivers, and you have no clue where to go now… It’s easy to see how overwhelmed you can get.
ETA: Holy shit, I just watched the video (I saw a shortened version of it earlier) and just realized that street is fucking Studewood. That’s in my goddamn neighborhood that I moved out of less than a year ago (three days until the anniversary, in fact), and my mind is just. Augh. I drove through that underpass countless times.
Storm started before midnight, and the city was shut down well before sunrise. No one should have been on that underpass – we KNOW from driving that underpass countless times! It’s the worst possible route in that area. Take the feeder over to Taylor or something instead.
I mean, no way to know if that guy was a regular in the area, and it’s not like it’s excellently marked, but he had to have passed the overflowing White Oak Bayou to get where he was. And it was over its banks before sunrise, too – I know because my sister called me before sunrise from our parents’ empty house in Woodland Heights, where she was watching to see if she would have to salvage rugs, etc. (We’re moving to that house in a few months. Happy to say that the water stopped a few feet from the doors.)
Anyway, yeah, it was a bad underpass to go anywhere near, and aren’t you glad you missed this storm?
Yeah, knowing now that location, it doesn’t make much sense unless he was new to town and the storm dropped his car down right there five minutes ago.
To be honest, I would have loved to get the day off from work for the excitement of a storm, and I had a second-floor apartment in the Heights. But then again, if I still lived in Houston there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be employed at all (my project/company/industry has really been hit hard with layoffs due to oil prices).
I noticed that too. He doesn’t look especially old … I wonder if he has some sort of early-onset dementia?
I’m guessing terrified as fuck. Because I would be, and the reporter would probably have to explain to me, “this water. Big water. Big water BAD. No drive.”
Can someone … just … copy and paste the important parts of the Jefferson/slaveholder article? Because I really don’t want to click on something called “The American Conservative.” I feel like it would sully my computer.
Also I think someone should send that lady the link to the “Ask A Slave” webseries because it is amazing. If you haven’t seen it: http://www.askaslave.com/home.html
Just imagine the most annoying person with an ax to grind that you’ve ever been in a class or on a tour with, and you’ve more or less got the picture:
TOUR GUIDE: [Mentions existence of slavery]
WRITER: MY GOD why do you keep bringing this UP you simply must HATE THE FOUNDERS, stop with your PROGRESSIVE ANTI-SLAVERY AGENDA already.
Rinse, repeat at multiple historic homes.
Ask a Slave is SO IMPORTANT. I do re-watches pretty regularly.
You might start getting Viagra ads.
No really. I troll myself by reading Fox News and now I have Viagra ads.
I get Viagra ads when I watch Supergirl on the CBS website. Shudder.
I get a ton of Viagra ads watching Playing House on demand.
I watch sports, so I am very familiar with the advertisements for myriad penis medicines.
Also beer, fantasy football, sports bars, and diamond jewelry.
She writes for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt now!
Toasts, I don’t know where else to put this right now but my beautiful sister-in-law may be dying right now 10,000 miles away and her newborn is still in the hospital and I don’t even know how to cope or what to do, I’m at work trying not to sob at my desk. If you are a Praying Person will you pray?
Sending love and healing and best wishes. So hard to be so far away in a time like this. Hope things take a turn for the better.
oh honey I’m sorry. praying for you all.
I definitely will, also is there anyway you can go home and care for yourself right now?
I’m not a praying person but I am thinking of you, your sister-in-law, and her newborn baby. I hope they both pull through, and we are all here for you no matter what <3
^^ same
Yes. So sorry and sending prayers and thoughts.
I am so sorry, and thinking of you all.
Done. You and your family will be in my thoughts today.
Done, and sorry to hear this is happening.
Tons of prayers headed out to you guys. I’m so sorry.
I am so, so sorry. Praying all day.
(Cold, wet paper towels pressed gently under the eyes are great for cry-swelling, if you have to hide the evidence/can’t go home for the rest of the day. If you have any lotion or moisturizer that you carry with you that is safe for face use, maybe stick that in a discreet corner of a lunchroom fridge [or whatever’s available and chilled, really] and use that to reduce redness around the eyes/nose. I hope you don’t need this advice, but…if it helps.)
This is so lovely, thank you. Fortunately my boss is great and happy to let me go home any time.
Go, go — take the time to quiet your mind if you can. I am so very sorry. This is devastating and I hope against hope that all will be well in time.
Unless it’s actually good for you to be distracted by work stuff and/or have people around you, definitely go home, or go and be with friends or family. This is definitely not a situation where people expect you to soldier on.
All good thoughts with you.
Sending love and hope to you and your family.
What an absolute nightmare. My worst one, actually. Please, go home and take care of yourself if you can and that is best for you. I don’t have a god to pray to but I still do, and I’m praying for your family. I hope you can find peace and comfort in each other despite the distance.
I am so sorry and I am praying for you and sending you and your family much love.
You and your family are in my thoughts. I am so sorry.
I am praying for you, your sister and her tiny baby, and will hold you all in my thoughts all day.
Sending you love and hope for better days.
Sending prayers to all of you all. Please let us know if there is any other way we can help.
I’m so sorry. Praying for you, her, and everyone.
Praying for all involved. Love to you and yours.
Thinking of you and your family, so sorry this is happening to all of you.
Oh, no, I’m so sorry to hear this & I’m sending good thoughts your way.
I’m so sorry. Your family are in my thoughts.
So many prayers to all! You don’t cry alone.
I’m so sorry, I’ll be praying for you and your family and all the medical personal involved.
Oh, so many internet hugs for you and your family.
I will! Love and prayers for you and your family!
Keeping your family in my thoughts today and hoping for the best possible outcome for you all. Take good care.
Yes. I’m so sorry. I hope your whole family is okay.
Will keep everyone in my thoughts. I’m so sorry such a terrifying thing is happening to your family.
I am so sorry. Here’s hoping modern medicine can fix things (there are some things about childbirth that can be fixed almost as dramatically as they can go wrong, so I’m choosing to believe that’s what’s happening and that the surgeons will fix it). I will keep you all in my thoughts.
Praying for you and your family. May you be fortified. May you be surrounded with love and care. May the doctors and nurses be well-rested and alert.
Oh honey. Definitely praying for you and your family.
Praying hard. Good luck…
All my love and prayers to you and your family.
Praying for your family, so sorry to hear this.
Hi Toasties! I hope this isn’t inappropriate for the link roundup, but I wanted to put in a plug for one of my favorite organizations, HIPS in DC. HIPS works with sex workers and does sooo much in such a positive harm-reduction way. They’re trying to raise money to build a medical room for transgender health services and Hep C testing and I just thought I’d leave a link here in case anybody would like to help them out! https://www.razoo.com/us/story/Give-Us-A-Hand
Thanks for sharing this!
I feel a little weird having such a strong reaction to the news about Castle, a show I haven’t watched in like six years, but the show is ABOUT the relationship between Castle and Beckett. I genuinely don’t know what the show will be with her gone, and it says a lot that her character is seen as disposable and his isn’t.
And of course (a) this is one more woman on the list of slaughtered tv ladies this spring and (b) Tamala Jones is leaving, meaning there’s one fewer black female character on prime-time tv.
It actually reminded me of this fantastic interview the AV Club did with Paget Brewster a little while ago. About 2/3 of the way through she talks about when she was let go from Criminal Minds, and this situation stinks of being exactly the same.
When I heard they were axing Stana for “budget cuts” I immediately thought of Criminal Minds. Same deal: network wants to “reduce costs” so they fire all the women. ABC wants to “reduce costs” on Castle, so they fire the two main women. Because the women are ALWAYS expendable, even if the ENTIRE series is based on their partnership with the main dude.
And they’re clearly paid more, too…..
I bet they could have saved more money by firing the other two cops whose names i can never remember
Wow. That’s horrifying.
If they kill her off, I’m done. There is no Castle without Beckett.
I similarly haven’t watched Castle for a long while and find myself particularly sad about Tamala Jones. So much of my will-they-won’t-they show love is reserved for the secondary characters who more or less get to have lives and relationships more like normal people do, so Lanie was my jam. I hope both actresses go on to better things.
ugh, and the new season will be all Castle dead wife man-pain, all the time. I don’t watch it regularly anymore either, but this just pretty much confirmed that I’m never going to pick it back up.
Yeah, I think there’s a high probability of fridging here, although we can’t know for sure until the episode airs.
I have been still watching this show for no particular reason (it sucks, especially the last couple seasons), but I am also surprised by how upset I am at this news. I deleted my DVR recording last night and am not going to watch the rest of this season. I imagine the show will lose most if not all of the audience they have left. It is utterly insane that anyone would think this was a smart thing to do!
Also, sadly, this makes me like Nathan Fillion less 🙁
Anyway, in my mind Beckett does NOT DIE. Nor do they break up. (It has not actually been confirmed they are going to kill her off, though that seems the most likely scenario.) And what about Lanie?! Uggggh. Sticking my fingers in my ears and la la la-ing through the rest of the TV season.
Castle’s right up there with Sleepy Hollow for “why would I even watch you without the female lead”-factor, too. Blegh.
“A visit to the historic homes of Jefferson and Madison was spoiled by a progressive agenda”
I hope she never comes to Mount Vernon because the evidence of slavery is everywhere here.
The neighborhood of Gum Springs is near mine and has a historical marker that says this is where Washington’s slaves settled after they were freed. A quick look into their history shows none of them starved to death from the deleterious effects of freedom.
We are neighbors! I live near Mount Vernon too. I guess I never noticed your username before… And I thought the Mount Vernon tour that I went on a few years ago did a really good and fair job of presenting what life was like for everyone that lived there, including the Washingtons and people who were slaves there. Which is important! You go to historical sites to find out what life was like there.
Hi Neighbor! I’m just up the hill from Mount Vernon, literally across the street from the overseer’s house. My husband walks Belle all over the area; you might see them at Ft Hunt park, Mt Vernon, or the Grist Mill dog park or Old Town where she goes to dog school. I post pictures of her adventures on twitter @kathilatte
“because had Madison simply freed his slaves, they likely would have starved.”
oh my GOD.
I feel like various slave narratives demonstrate that a lot of enslaved people were absolutely willing to take that risk.
like… does she think those human people were akin to captive baby penguins or something that would die in the wild if they were set free? Not skilled artisans or knowledgeable farmers? what in the heck…
Sometimes it’s a challenge for the spud to control his tongue. To be fair, potatos don’t usually have tongues, so this is a new challenge for his breed.
Charlie Tater has maybe the most boopable nose I’ve ever seen.
I spend a lot of time booping it.
Is that an eye?
Also, the perfect shiny black nose. And the lips. I have never seen so much potato face.
I know you hear this not infrequently, but C. Tater updates are a genuine link roundup highlight for me!!
Potato oh Potato, I have not been able to make Link Roundups lately and I have missed seeing your face.
So much so that I tried to log in as smallpotato and couldn’t figure out why IntenseDebate said it was wrong.
So yesterday I was driving my kid to work and he saw a dog leaning out of a car window and said, “aww, look at the wittle puppy!” and my first thought was, “It’s Charlie Potato!”
I like to watch Castle when I’m writing papers. Something about having Cap. Tight Pants in the background is really soothing, BUT I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL IF THEY KILL OFF BECKETT AND LAINIE LIKE WHAT THE FUCK, MAN.
This week has been shitty. Like, I spent this weekend confirming whether my family and friends survived the earthquake in Ecuador. Everyone I know in Guayaquil is shaken but safe, but I keep refreshing the fucking dead list from El Universo because one of my dad’s friends was in Manta and only some of his family members have checked in. My rational brain says Mr. C and his wife are probably without cell service in one of the arenas/other temporary shelters, but I can’t stop the WHAT IF WHAT IF WHAT IF especially when it’s been nearly 72 hours since my father spoke to him last. I would just like to know one way or the other.
*Toast hugs*
*hugs* if you want them. *prayers* if they are welcome. good thoughts for your loved ones either way.
When I saw that Stana Katic was leaving Castle I wondered what you thought.
I also wondered what the POINT of Castle is without Beckett, because as much as I love Nathan Fillion the dynamic between Beckett and Castle has always been the heart of the show. It’s okay to say you’re done, guys! You don’t have to try to make 10 seasons.
I agree that I will not watch with out her on. Their relationship was the show. But whenever I think a show is going on too long, I think back to Scrubs. They did not need to do the final school season. But the creator said when they approached him about it, he and the stars did not need the money or jobs, but the hundreds of other people who worked on the show would be really helped out by another season, and that is why he did it.
I feel that way about The Office. There was no point in going forward without Steve Carrell, and he announced that he was leaving a good year in advance. They could have wrapped everything up beautifully but they made a whole ‘nother two seasons, which I like to pretend are just a different show.
I hated that last season of Scrubs, but now I feel a bit less resentful about it having aired knowing that it was in part for benefit of the crew/staff.
Two or so years ago, I thought Castle could update to Alexis Castle solving crimes and letting Castle and Beckett go off do whatever elsewhere (I still think that) but getting rid of just Beckett and not Castle? No. And my reimagining gave MORE to Lainie who has been underserved for a long time.
I feel like this season of TV has been particularly bad in getting rid of characters who are not white men, is it just getting more press? (I’m a little scared to write this because I am not a huge fan of spoilers but on the other hand it’s nice to know that I never have to catch back up on Sleepy Hollow.)
I’d watch your reimagining. I mostly only watch Castle now because it’s easy to have on in the background while I wash dishes
The ONLY way that this could be in any way okay is if it becomes a show about Alexis (I also wish for a bonus Hayley as her partner in LOVE AND CRIME SOLVING but I know that will never happen, I can’t have my dreams).
Otherwise I’m out.
Nicole. I do not have £60 to spend on an utterly ridiculous pair of trainers. And yet my soul yearns for them. I’m sure I could wear them all of the time, right?
Sparkles go with everything!
Yes, especially in bed.
I am going to the doctor this afternoon and I am going to tell her I think I am depressed and then I guess things will happen and now I feel very nervous! But it’s a good idea, right?
Yes! It is a good idea! Very best of luck to you. It is even a relief just to tell a medical professional about it, and they will (hopefully) give you a referral to a therapist or psych who can help you even more.
Thanks!
That is nervous-making and an excelleny idea – be sure to give yourself kudos for this brave step!
Thank you, I will.
Yes, this is exactly the right thing to do. You are valuable and you deserve to feel good. You do not deserve to suffer anything like depression. No matter what is wrong, it can be treated.
Would it ease your nervousness to write a list of your symptoms? Then you could hand it to the doctor in case you have trouble talking about them? Maybe that was just me.
Possibly! Handing over a list sounds much easier than actually speaking words, for sure.
I prefer lists of symptoms because then I’m less likely to 1) get muddled in the middle, stammer, and leave out something important, and/or 2) minimize the fuck out of all of my symptoms. “This thing happened and this was my inappropriately muted reaction” works a lot better for me on paper than it does when I try to say it out loud.
It’s a good idea!
Thanks!
What kind of doctor? Is it one that knows you well? Are you hoping to get medication, or a referral to a therapist?
It’s my GP, who knows me okish (probably 25 visits over the last 12 years?). I don’t know what I’m hoping to get – I’ve been seeing her a lot lately for a variety of small semi-unresolvable things, and this is to be my new hypothesis for what’s going on…
That’s awesome, good for you for taking care of your mental health with someone who knows you well!
It is a GREAT idea. Good luck, you are doing an A+ job of taking care of yourself! 🙂
Thank you.
You are proactively taking care of yourself. Go you! *internet hugs*
Thanks!
This is an A++ idea, I think, especially if you trust and like your doctor. Be prepared to do something very awesome for yourself afterward, maybe? When I made the Big Appointment to blat all my guesses and research (on ADHD and anxiety, not depression) at the psychologist, I came away vindicated (I WAS RIGHT BOOYAH) and exhausted (oh my God I have an Ominous Acronym now what does it MEAN FOR MY LIFE aaauuughhh).
Anyway! I would recommend some self-care afterward, regardless of how the appointment goes (and I hope it goes swimmingly). Good luck good luck good luck!
The office is right next to the fancy mall – maybe I’ll go get something fancy!
Definitely a good idea <3
Thank you.
I think calling and making the appointment is the hardest part, so, you did it! Congrats, and keep up the good work!
I’m actually going to sneak it in to a different appointment – yay!
It is a great idea, and good luck! When I first went to a doctor to talk about anxiety I was SO nervous but everyone I interacted with was SO nice and encouraging and super affirming about it being a positive step. May you have the same experience!
Thanks!
I remember doing this and feeling the exact same way. It was so goddamn hard. Completely 100% the right thing to do, however. And holy crap, good work for taking care of yourself! You damn well deserve to feel happy again!
Thanks!
Hello, I cried at my doctor and now I have some Zoloft and also I went to Target and got some Marimekko things the end.
Been trying to get up the courage to do a similar thing for a while, but the nerves always get to me! Congrats on getting to this place, it really is a good idea. Hope it went well!
It did go well, thanks! I encourage you to set up an appointment too! You can just call it a checkup, and then tell the doctor you want to talk about depression (or anxiety, or whatever) and they will ask you questions after that.
I’ve tried really hard to not pay attention to all of the Bernie/Hillary shit happening but I’ve just been getting so fed up with Bernie supporters acting like he is the actual Messiah that suddenly I am reading all kinds of articles about it and getting even angrier.
There’s an article I saw going around yesterday that is basically a long list of Bernie criticisms and of course I took everything with a grain of salt because I know both candidates have their flaws, but there was a bit that really struck a chord with me that talked about how Bernie and his supporters are basically telling people they shouldn’t care that Hillary is a woman. Like it shouldn’t be a big deal that a woman might, for the first time in history, be a major party’s presidential candidate. Like her or not, that’s a pretty fucking big deal and in the grand scheme of things is good for the world. Obviously you shouldn’t vote for her just because she’s a woman, but it is not a non-issue. Especially since Bernie is not exactly the least sexist man on earth.
It’s so bizarre that now a political conversation between liberals can be as tense and uncomfortable as a conversation between liberals and conservatives. I was at a bar recently with a couple of friends and my sister (who basically thinks Bernie is Jesus and volunteers for his campaign in her spare time), and one of my friends said something complimentary about Hillary and I just saw my sister’s face turn to stone. And she is the sweetest person I have ever known! I had to immediately change the subject because it was about to get super uncomfortable. And that’s fucked up! Hillary is not the devil. She is a qualified candidate. Just because you prefer another candidate doesn’t mean you have to completely vilify her to prop up your guy.
I voted for Bernie in my state’s primary but would be 100% on board with Hillary too, and I too am baffled that there’s no real conversation happening around the whole First Woman President thing. I know Hillary probably doesn’t want to push it herself because people are terrible and will go on about women ‘voting with their vaginas’ but like you said, it’s a big deal! And nobody’s talking about it! Why!
The “voting with your vagina” thing is awful but at the same time, I do feel that my own vagina would be happier with a president who understands what it’s like to have a vagina and is going to look out for everybody else’s vagina.
Not to mention the jerks who use that phrase are, no doubt, voting with their insecure dicks.
I feel like the whole “voting with your vagina” thing should be dead and buried after Hillary supporters failed en masse to support Sarah Palin. We do not vote blindly based on perceived biology! Many of us don’t even equate vaginas to womanness because even those of us whor are cis-women do not forget our trans sistren. But we recognize that a candiate like Hillary has a long history of viewing issues traditionally associated with women as central to progressive advocacy and not dispensable. That is a big deal. I do not believe Bernie has the same record.
But mostly, I am just disappointed that Bernie’s not encouraging his supporters to take a higher road given that Hillary is the most likely nominee at this point. I know it’s possible for him to pull out an upset. But he shouldn’t pull it out by discounting the support she has the votes she’s won and doing that stupid Nader thing of trying to portray her as a Republican in Democrat’s clothing. She’s a great candiate! She’s a groundbreaking candidate! Yes, I wish she didn’t come with the baggage of her creepy, probable rapist husband, and I don’t entirely know how to reconcile the fact that she does with the promise of her own positions. But she’s not Bill; she’s not responsible for his probable crimes, and there’s every reason to believe that she will be a good progressive president if elected. I am not convinced that she will be better than Bernie overall because I am a flaming socialist, but I think there’s no question that she’ll be better than the Republican horror show and that she’ll be a good, solid President, who every progressive should be excited about.
When I see women pulling the “I’m not voting with my vagina” thing it makes me want to run away to the hills and live in a cave forever. I saw it a lot in response to the Albright comments and the idea that started circulating that it’s sexist not to vote for Clinton if you’re a woman (which I agree is ridiculous) but the response to people criticizing you for your voting choice is not to double down on sexism and accuse all women who vote for Clinton of voting with their vag!! It’s a handy way of eliminating all legit reasons a woman might have to vote for Clinton, INCLUDING the fact that having a woman president will be something worth getting excited about, even if you don’t like her! ugh!!
I live in an open primary state. As I think the country would do adequately under either Sanders or Clinton and I don’t have strong feelings towards either, I deployed the “please not Trump” strategy and voted for Kasich in the primary (though he’s super unfriendly towards reproductive rights).
I do enjoy the way Kasich just came out of nowhere after biding his time while the other GOP candidates dropped out one by one after saying stupid things.
I totally do not endorse Kasich’s political positions, but I hope he clings onto his candidacy by his fingernails TO THE DEATH (by which I mean the nomination).
And if, God forbid, he managed to win both the nomination and the presidency, it would be terrible, but almost certainly way less terrible than a Trump or Cruz presidency. So the worst-case scenario with him is less dire, which I appreciate.
Yeah, I think it’s debatable whether it would be better or worse than the last Bush presidency. And I don’t know the answer to that because he’s barely gotten any media coverage! He could be a real dark horse (I don’t think I’m using that term right, but you know what I mean).
It’s just so funny because the Republicans started out with a football team’s worth of candidates, and many of them were just as unknown and unlikely as Kasich! And yet he somehow survived them all. He is the cockroach of candidates.
Playing the long game, that one. His campaign managers really are terrifyingly brilliant.
I do wonder — I don’t know if he has exceptional campaign managers, or it’s just that they never expected to be the frontrunner, so they spent and campaigned accordingly? They never ran the risk of falling victim to the “expectations game” that felled Rubio and Jeb, I think. For those two, they had to win certain early states (South Carolina and Florida), or else they were deemed total failures and the only choice they had was to resign.
In a normal election year, though, Kasich wouldn’t have been such a long-shot candidate! He has (terrible politics) the pretty normal presidential candidate resume of Congress-Senate-Governor, plus he’s from a big swing state.
I think you’re right to call him a dark horse for the nomination, but it’s so, so weird that this normal-ish Republican politician is losing to a businessman who’s never held elected office and a one-term senator who most notably shut down the government.
Kasich has the familiar trajectory you describe, BUT he doesn’t have one other important ingredient: establishment support (none of his Republican buddies like him much, it seems). I heard an informative discussion — I think at FiveThirtyEight — about how he’s really more of an outsider/lone wolf in the party than most people realize. He just looks like a company man compared to CRUZ and TRUMP.
But yes, yes, yes to your second paragraph. The GOP is blowing themselves up to smithereens, and it’s fascinating to watch from the vantage point of a distant hill, where you won’t get hit by any of the falling pieces (spoiler: we only have two viable parties, there’s no way to avoid the fallout).
Hmm, I wonder if that helped him survive the establishment candidate slaughter (I think your point above about expectations is pretty important too). The GOP primary voters who actually want an experienced politician in their breed of crazy take him, and the frothing outsider frenzy doesn’t kill him off because he doesn’t have the same funding/family associations as a Walker or Jeb.
Too late to me for edit, but I want to point out I messed up Kasich’s history- it should say Ohio Senate-US Congress-(away-)Governor.
I read the last sentence of your second paragraph as “Especially since Bernie is not exactly the least SEXIEST man on earth.” And I was like “………waaaaaaaaht? am I missing something? Is there a whole subtext of people voting for Bernie Sanders because they’re attracted to him that I have somehow missed?” It took a few re-readings to figure it out. Ah-ha. Moar coffee.
But also, I agree with your whole comment.
I mean I don’t doubt that somewhere out there is a 19-year-old who yells “Fuck me daddy” at his rallies but as far as I know it’s not A Thing. Thank god.
Thank you for this Actual Real LOL, and also for your insightful original comment! Your feelings about this election are very similar to mine, and I’m reaaaalll sick and tired of liberals getting at each other’s throats. And don’t even get me STARTED on the people who are like “I’m gonna vote for Trump if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination!” Come on now, y’all, that’s just a ridiculous opinion to have.
I see those people that are like “I’m voting for Trump because it will hasten the revolution” and I’m like, uh, are you familiar with revolutions? Because a real, legit revolution would be NOT FUN.
#robespierreorbust doesn’t have the same ring to it…
I have seen that, too, and I just feel like….America has been in much more polarized spots w/r/t class warfare. Honestly, if the socialist revolution didn’t happen when Carnegie was straight up murdering people for trying to start a union, in a time when socialism and communism was a much more acceptable political ideology, four years of Trump isn’t going to do it.
But, like, maybe being really politically active and engaging with moderates to convince them of more socialist practices instead of yelling “Sheeple!” at them might have an impact.
I always want to ask if they fully understand how late modern capitalism works because screwing things up for the US for a couple of years sure as hell isn’t going to do what you think.
I’ve been blocking most of the Bernie supporters on my Facebook because it’s a lot. (I like my echo chamber, I go elsewhere for news). But on the other side of things, I also had to ask my mother in law to stop talking to me about politics. We’re both supporting Clinton! We agree on like 98% of politics! But she gets so snarky about millennials supporting Sanders and I just can’t listen to it anymore.
Well, and there’s also some real misogyny coming from some (not all! I know!) Bernie supporters, and a tendency to conflate “I support Hilary because I think that her record shows that, as a woman, she has done a lot for woman and has put a lot more thought into women’s needs” with “I am voting for Hilary because she is a woman.” I just think it’s a better default to assume Bernie supporters are acting in good faith disagreement with my own views, and hope that most of them do the same for me.
Yeah, seriously, it’s not like she’s Sarah Palin or something.
I straight up stopped posting anything about Hillary on Facebook because it was like a dog whistle for every bro I’ve ever met to come out of the woodwork frothing about Bernie. Dudes, I know in the last two elections you were into the libertarian candidates because you want both legal weed and unregulated firearms, don’t act like you’ve always been into socialist principles.
Omg, feeling this SO HARD from my very libertarian-friendly area.
Oh, hell no. I would tear those dudes apart, Farmer Refuted style.
all of the Bernie/Hillary shit happening
I, uh. I definitely misread this as “Bernie/Hillary shipping” and I was confused and concerned before my brain corrected itself.
Oh my god I wish that that was what was going on right now. It would be so much more hilarious!
Well, that’s a dark corner of the internet to fall into before 9am http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Hillary/works
oh my god
not clicking this not clicking this not clicking this-
*clicks this*
…what
Wow, I’d only seen the Republican slash this cycle.
I think I just found my new WIP obsession: Zodiac v. Election. It starts with Jeb! dreaming about becoming a turtle and just piles on the awesome from there.
There’s an impressive number of mentions of the Zodiac Killer in there.
“Donald was in highschool, and he only had eyes for one man. His family told him he was straight, but no. He could only TRULY love,… *Senpai bernie* oh how bernard made him swoon.”
YES. It’s the dogwhistle sexism that gets to me. Calling Hillary “unqualified” or “power-hungry” or “ambitious” or a “corporate whore” or a “shrill shill” and then backing up and being like, “but you’re taking it out of context!” (which is what makes it a dog whistle), or my favorite “I’m not sexist because I’d vote for Warren” is really, really tiresome. You think Warren could have achieved all the things she could have if she acted like Bernie? If she showed up to interviews saying, “I never really thought about how the enact this policy. I don’t know” she’d be roasted. Elizabeth Warren is spectacular because of her clear mindedness in the face of chaos, her ability to articulate the convoluted, and undeniable moral compass. We DON”T hold Sanders to the standards we hold women counterparts, including and especially Warren.
And every time there’s a discussion of Bernie Bros with women talking about their experiences with them, and then the rapid denial of Bernie Bros existence and the sexism from his (loud) supporters, and it’s like, you don’t get to define my experience! I’m telling you my experience and you can’t just say, “No, that’s isn’t true.” And it makes me so so worried about so many other circumstances outside of the election when this happens. From rape culture to racism: Person says, “I have this experience when I interact with you” and then the response is “No you don’t. Not only do I passively ignore the ways I’ve hurt/offended you, I’m going to attack you as a liar & make it harder to speak out.” And it’s infuriating that Sanders hasn’t done more to reign this in.
This is a lot of how I feel as well. I’ve supported HRC since the beginning of the primary, and while I would still 100% vote for Bernie if he got the nom I have gone from “yeah, I like both of them I just prefer HRC” to being really frustrated with him and his campaign. I think your first paragraph is really important – there seems to be a lot of rhetoric around Bernie that boils down to if you don’t do things exactly like he does, you’re Doing It Wrong, ignoring a fact that Warren or Clinton could not both be successful and act like Bernie. (also with the whole denial about how politics works basically disqualifying literally everyone. I believe American politics is severely fucked up, but saying that anyone who has ever worked within the system is a fraud seems a bit strong to me).
What’s blowing my mind is how many just plain untrue facts I am seeing from my Bernie supporter friends. Like photos of hugely attended “Bernie rallies” that a simple reverse google image search or, I dunno, looking at the absence of Bernie signs, will tell you are not Bernie rallies. Or the conspiracy theory stuff about keeping him out of the media and his voters away from the polls. It makes me so mad that my really smart, politically active friends are falling for this shit. (But, yknow, it’s feminists and anti-racists who have a victim complex and don’t have enough ~real~ issues to get mad about, they have to make stuff up.)
It makes me nervous when i see Bernie supporters attacking Hillary with the right-wing garbage lies that conservatives have been peddling for decades. That can only hurt us in the long run.
This piece articulates my ambivalence-turned-into-opposition for Bernie Sanders: https://medium.com/@robinalperstein/on-becoming-a…
ETA: I just realized (duh) that this must be the piece Catweazle is referring to.
So far, I’ve seen a lot of criticism of it, but ONLY based on the fact that the author is a New York corporate law attorney, and therefore she is in Wall Street’s pocket (which mirrors one of her critiques of Bernie Sanders/his supporters), and that’s bullshit. I haven’t seen anyone engaging with the substance of her arguments.
Yup, that’s the one! I have not put forth the effort to actually look into any of the critiques to see if they’re legitimate, and since there are no citations I’m not taking anything she says as gospel. But there’s enough there that resonates with me about the vilification of Hillary and blind worship of Bernie that I think it’s a worthwhile read.
This article came out of a closed women for Hillary fb group Robin and I are both a part of. I’m so glad someone as smart as she is finally synthesized our many private rants into an eloquent public post and I am disappointed (though not surprised) she is being personally attacked. This sentiment has been bubbling for awhile, at least for me, I am just so sick of Bernie Sanders’ weak sauce revolution.
I especially liked how she articulated how Bernie’s position as a “protester” in the Senate is used to claim the moral high ground while also excusing him for not accomplishing anything. Contrast to Hillary, who gets shit done.
That article is UNREAL. I am not a very politically knowledgeable person and don’t know whether there are tons of legitimate arguments with her points, but even just assuming her facts are straight…wow.
And if the arguments do hold up? Forget the current candidates, Robin Alperstein for president.
Your friend has my respect.
I wish I was actually friends with Robin! We just have some former co-workers in common and happened to both be invited into this group. I’ve never met her in person, though I have shared many a comments section with her. Hillary’s campaign really is bringing people together.
Send my compliments to Robin, I can’t imagine the guts it took to write that and then face down the comments section and social media. (though the info nerd in me wants citations for everything, especially the gross stuff he wrote)
Shakesville wrote a thing about that awhile ago.
The Shakesville series is fantastic. I remember reading part 1 when it first came out, but somehow missed parts 2-4. Thanks for posting!
Holy cow.
This is such a great piece, and it’s not even close to documenting all the issues there are with Sanders and race and Judaism (I actually agree with him on Israel, but implying that he’s the only person who will say no to Netanyahu while in front of HRC means that he’s either been in a coma or not paying attention at all for the last seven and a half years)…and I’m not sure if I should post it because I don’t want to have the fight. Maybe I’ll just block the most annoying BernieBros on my feed.
THANK YOU. From this lifelong Ohio Democrat, who literally spent her childhood in political campaigns, and remembers sitting in City Council meetings at age 5 in the 70’s, THANK YOU. Because my dad jubilantly announced via group text that he was pro Bernie weeks ago, and I haven’t even been able to bother to write out all the ways he’s wrong without seeing red. That article just got forwarded to him.
These are the criticisms I’ve seen too! Like, “Lookie here, it says the word ‘Corporate’ on her attorney bio page. Obviously she is a shill.” WTF. It’s like some of them have completely evacuated the world we live in. You know, a place where people work jobs for money and then buy things they need with said money.
What really gets me is that I have the exact same job as her (with the caveat that I’m not a partner). From my perspective, an attorney drafting a divisive opinion piece like this is acting against her own interests. No hedge fund or bank is going to hire her because they liked her essay–that just isn’t how it works. But it could piss off a client or a perspective client. Also, we are not corporate shills. I represent my clients zealously, but their interests do not affect my personal political views. It’s a job, not a cult.
That Medium article was a Cabinet Battle #1 level burn, and I loved it. I don’t like Hillary’s foreign policy and I will absolutely vote for Bernie if it comes to that, but some pushback is needed against the Bernie as messiah message. First of all, Bernie supporters seem to be somewhat confused about what it is actually possible for a president to do. Outside of foreign policy, the executive is perhaps the least powerful branch of government (and for good reason). Second, just saying the words corruption and Goldman Sachs over and over doesn’t prove anything. If they want to argue that Hillary’s actions were dictated by corporate overlords, they’re going to have to have something specific to point to. And they don’t. Third, The Establishment is bad, but somehow a (white male) career politician is not part of that Establishment at all? All of this is in addition to the whole First Woman President thing everyone else has raised.
Plus, as the Medium article points out, he has labeled Planned Parenthood (among others) as “establishment.” A group that has been working on a crucial issue for decades and is constantly under attack is not “establishment” just because they disagree with you!
I am legit angry that Bernie supporters are willing to hand wave away any complaints that Bernie doesn’t raise money for downticket races with “I don’t want him raising money for democrats who are basically republican.” And then complaining that the democratic party leaders support Hillary. Yeah, well, if you refuse to work with people why are you surprised they won’t work with you?
I vaguely remember some of this happening in 2008, but I don’t know if it was as vicious or if the internet echo chamber is magnifying it. I have posted exactly one article on my Facebook about Clinton versus Sanders and it descended into a name-calling, gaslighting shitshow faster than any of my super-liberal fringe posts ever did. It’s making me not like my friends right now.
My Facebook feed is dominated by a group of dudes who are posting non-stop Bernie Love. ALL THESE DUDES ARE CANADIAN.
Dudes — our progressive left-wing party (which is tbh way more progressive than Bernie could be) is currently undergoing a major upheaval — why don’t you post about that? Why don’t you get a party membership? Why are you caring so much about a politician who is never going to govern your country, and whose policy proposals fall somewhere along the lines of Paul Martin’s Liberals? Do you really just not want a woman to be US President that badly?
Some dude I’m facebook friends with has posted multiple INSANE Bernie articles and he’s Canadian AND living in the UK for the foreseeable future. I mean I know US politics affects worldwide politics, but posting conspiracy theories about how Hillary just needs to drop out now for the good of the party makes literally no sense.
I … I just can’t deal with them. Like, I would take them a lot more seriously if they were heavily invested in Canadian politics? But they’re not! It’s mind-boggling.
The last time I saw this much vitriol on my facebook wall was when Portland had a general measure on whether or not to fluoridate (not even joking). I’m a Bernie voter, but I’ve shared plenty of pro-Hillary articles because it bothers me to see how many people treat Bernie like the goddamn Messiah. And every time I do, I politely ignore the long screeds my friends write trying to prove me or the article wrong.
I will vote for Hillary in the general if she’s the nominee and would not consider it the end of the world.
DON’T DRIVE INTO WATER LIKE THAT, PEOPLE. IT IS NOT A JOKE.
Uuuugggggghhhh this happens with EVERY FLOOD. “I just didn’t realize…” Well, REALIZE IT.
Kudos to the reporter, who successfully rescues the guy *and* keeps his mic dry and doesn’t miss a beat.
I get antsy driving into very large puddles sometimes. How in the world can you look at a huge amount of standing water and think “yeah, cool, I’m gonna drive in this”? Like, unless you’ve jacked up your truck it’s going to be a bad time! Not only will this ruin the car, you might die! Where is the sense of self-preservation?
Yeah, the heck with dying, it will possibly ruin my car and that’s going to be expensive AF! Why would you do that!!
So you get rescued from being a complete Grade A+++ dumbass for driving into floodwaters. Not only are you at risk from whatever gross fucking pathogens are in the water, and not only will you receive a fire and brimstone lecture from whatever good Samaritan/rescuer that saved you, but YOU COULD HAVE DIED. I feel like a ruined car is a small price to pay compared to drowning in said car, but this all could have been avoided! Completely preventable!
Right?! At the very least, there could be a pothole that can really mess up your car, but OMG definitely when the ENTIRE underpass is flooded, and there’s a REPORTER AND CAMERAMAN standing in front of the water, maaaaaaybe slow down and think about what you’re about to do?
But then, I’m usually horrified by how many people just go on autopilot when they’re behind the wheel. If you cannot be an actively focused driver, you should not be driving. Period.
I’m just confused as to how he missed all the flood warnings and got on the road anyways. Autopilot probably started as soon as he got his keys, which is an even scarier thought.
No joke, I have watched people pack up their kids into the car and leave the apartment building when there were active tornados on the ground. Zero sense of self preservation.
Right, like, I try to be sympathetic in general to people who make dumb flood mistakes — I know you can get into trouble in a surprisingly small amount of water, and I can’t pretend I’ve never confidently driven through high water and just been lucky that my assessment of “it’s not that deep and it’s still, not flowing” was in fact correct. But, types of high water that even my dumb ass knows NEVER EVER to drive into:
– underpasses, of any kind, period, fuck that
– high water with one or more visible abandoned cars already in it
– high water with a reporter and cameraman standing in front of it — this PROBABLY means it’s very deep, and even if it isn’t, there’s a strong chance that you will end up on TV looking like a jackass, how could you live with the embarrassment?
When I lived in Arizona, there were parts of the road that were clearly marked all year round like “hey, fool, if it rains this bit is gonna flood, so don’t drive here!” and yet every single time it rained, someone would have to get rescued because “I thought I could make it.”
Nothing good comes from “I thought I could make it!” Nothing!
Are you driving a Duck? If not, then no.
The world needs a gif of “LEAVE THE CAR!” “… S-stay in the car?” — Relevant to so many situations but mostly grad school.
Actually cackled at this
The thing that drives me most bonkers is it floods in Houston like ALL THE TIME. I do not blame the reporter for being like WHAT DID YOU EXPECT EXACTLY, DUDE.
Houston born and raised here. This shit ain’t new, people. Wet place capable of getting wetter. Sometimes *too* wet for a little while.
I know! Like I distinctly remember local news shows covering not only “run in a zig zag to get away from an alligator” (they can’t turn so well) but also “18 inches of water will move your car, just don’t do it amigo”.
I really really want that to be A Thing in kindergarten, like Stop/Drop/Roll. With posters and everything.
that underpass in particular is notably always flooded – it’s yards from a bayou. Which is why the reporters pick it as a nice reliable spot to get footage for how very deep the floodwaters are.
My dad used to be a supervisor with the Dept of Transportation. He has lots to say about these people, and none of it is suitable for print. 🙂
What made me laugh the most was the wipers turning on.
Although, looking at it again, it looks like the car had stalled or he had shut it off (?) and at about the 25 second mark, he tried to start it up again. So maybe the wipers were on before? But then, it doesn’t look like it was raining, so why would he have had the wipers going?
The wipers going as the windshield slowly descended into the water was perfect.
But what really got me was when the car is floating around and the backup lights come on. “Well, maybe if I put it in reverse….?”
Plus, swimming when he could walk.
i JUST WATCHED THE VIDEO AND HEARD HIM SAY THAT STREET IS STUDEWOOD, IN MY GODDAMN NEIGHBORHOOD, I DROVE THROUGH THAT UNDERPASS COUNTLESS TIMES.
It is so fucking weird to live in a city for twenty years, never feel that attached to it, then move across the country and watch it beset by natural disasters. And this is the second time — it was flooded like this last May, less than a month after I left. Hell, it was downpouring like this in the weeks before I left.
Hey, me too! That underpass is so close to where I lived for two years (Rice Military/a.k.a. Wash Ave/a.ka. rarely have I been less conflicted about leaving a neighborhood). I feel like I really dodged a bullet as we moved to Houston after Ike but got out of there before the next round of super-fun floods. It is really weird to see the place on the news covered in water.
A visit to the historic homes of Jefferson and Madison was spoiled by a progressive agenda.
I got to say, I will take “anti-slavery” as a “Progressive Agenda.” Like, I am okay with that, with being known as a guy who opposes slavery.
“Do you have a progressive agenda?”
“If by that you mean, ‘do I think slavery was way bad,’ then yes, yes I do.”
seems kind of weird to me that you’d want to implicitly define your politics as being on the other side of the argument from “slavery was bad”, but I guess that’s where we are in life.
I also had the experience of visiting Monticello before there was much of any information on slavery or slaves’ lives there and it was complete whitewashed bullshit. I even heard a tour guide refer to Mulberry Row, where the slaves lived, as “an early African-American community.” I’m sorry the Progressive Agenda of actual history so offends this dude. It must be really hard for him.
she’s a lady but yeaaahhhh
Thanks, I didn’t want to click on it for rage containment.
I get it. I resisted at first also, then did, couldn’t do more than skim before exploding.
Even scarier is this woman is a lawyer who practices homesteading and home schools her children in the mountains of Utah. Indoctrinating them in her pro-slavery views, I guess
“A version of history driven by political correctness—all while ignoring the essential contributions that the American founders made to our Constitution and founding ideals.” ?!?! I have been to Monticello, and Montpelier, and Ash Lawn, and they really don’t ignore the historical and political achievements of the presidents. FFS
I don’t get why it has to be either or for these people. Like, these dudes did in fact develop a new form of government, a form with extraordinary flexibility and potential for human betterment. They also participated in and upheld a horrifying system of domination. So many great scholars have pointed out the paradoxical, complex nature of the relationship between American freedom and American slavery. But this lady 100% assumes that they must be heroes or villains and there is no in-between. Saying one thing =/= ignoring all other things.
Like, one of those essential contributions they made to the Constitution was making it legal to OWN A HUMAN PERSON. I’m not saying don’t talk about separation of powers and representative democracy, but the history of slavery and the history of the constitution aren’t exactly mutually exclusive.
Yeah. Sometimes *reality* has a ‘liberal bias’.
It boggles me that that essay was not only written, but published. Everyone involved should be so fucking ashamed of themselves.
It reminds me of the recent thread we had in a LR about the anti-vaccine crowd, and how the reason they exist is because we haven’t had these terrible diseases in our lifetimes. That godawful author visiting Monticello even made some reference to how the slaves have been dead for “a hundred and fifty years,” like that makes it less consequential (but of course doesn’t diminish the nice parts of Jefferson’s legacy).
I can’t fathom someone having so little compassion or imagination. She has sons. I want to physically force her to consider what it would be like to see them sold to places unknown, to be forced under the lash to toil as manual laborers every day of the week, on the hottest and coldest days of the year, without any of the worker’s or human rights we take for granted, until they died when their bodies broke down. (And that’s just a tiny sample of the horrors of slavery, of course.)
Has anyone else been keeping up with the comments/conversation on Jamelle Bouie’s Twitter and related, his most recent article? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/p…
It’s making me so angry, you all. I am a white woman who lives in a very conservative area of Virginia (with the small cities being little purple pockets), so I’m not even a voter of color nor in the Deep South but this whole discussion is filling me with so much rage I can hardly see straight.
How hard is it to understand that voters in a DEMOCRATIC primary are not the same as voters in a general election? If I’m a liberal, a person of color, a queer person, a single woman, living in a red state, do I not have the slightest right to have a say in who the party’s nominee is? WTF?! Surely, you’re even more acutely aware of the stakes and have seen with your own eyes the damage of the policies enacted in your state and are invested in keeping that from happening on a national level.
The dismissal of the South as a monolithic, backwards place is so depressing to me. We need to support people, fund state elections, help overturn terrible laws, and fight back! Not abandon it! As if black voters and people of color generally don’t face enough obstacles to even cast their votes in the first place.
*HULK SMASH*
Expatriated Kentuckian here. I feel you, I really do. *hugs* if you want them. I raise a glass in your honor today for this awesome rant.
*hugs* thank you.
Former Texas and South Dakota resident, and current Wisconsinite here: I feel you. Every election year this shit happens. I’ve voted for Obama in red states both times, and the idea that your vote doesn’t count from dumbass folks up north really doesn’t make the moderates who would vote liberally want to vote for Liberals.
Because you know what makes me want to vote for people? The fact that they care what’s happening in whatever state I live in at the time and that I think they can help the general population. Bullshit like that makes me think that they don’t actually care about people in red states. They just like the schadenfreude of seeing them suffer.
Exactly. Like, it seems perfectly obvious to me that people can tell when they’re not wanted by a political party and it turns them off voting. Not sure why it isn’t obvious to other people.
And honestly, I think a lot of people don’t care about what happens to people in red states. Lots of nonsense about how the US should’ve let the south secede when they had the chance and all that. Because talk like that definitely doesn’t send a message that people bristle against at all.
You’re absolutely right about people knowing when they’re not wanted by a party – I’ve got family members in Arkansas who are actually in support of things like the Affordable Care Act and reducing restrictions on birth control and abortion, but they just vote for the most moderate Republican available because they feel like the Democratic party doesn’t support them, just the people who live in big cities up north. I’m not sure they’re right about that, but I can definitely see where they’d get that impression.
I think a lot of the dismissal of the South has to do with the fact that it’s a way for everyone north of the Mason-Dixon line to feel like they’re so enlightened and not at all racist/misogynist/’backward’ if they’ve got the South to point to and say, “look at how terrible these people are, we’d never stand for that around here”. Which is, of course, self-congratulatory bullshit.
So much self-congratulatory bullshit. Like, there are legitimate problems in the south and they absolutely shouldn’t be overlooked. Should not. I have spent way too much time with my face in my hands despairing over some of the nonsense that goes on here in TN. (Not all my relatives are voting Republican out of a sense of neglect from the Democrats, I’ll just say.) But just because the south is louder about its problems doesn’t mean it’s the only region in the country with them.
And then it all feeds into this idea that the south is entirely populated by conservative white Republicans, which leads to terrible things like writing off sizable blocks of black voters and Latino voters and other minority groups outside the stereotype. And it hurts people on the state and local level too.
It all just irritates me so much.
anyone who says ‘we should have let the south secede’ to a black person needs to seriously reconsider their whole life.
I’m pretty well convinced that people who say crap like that are either deliberately ignoring all the black people who live in the south or are the kind of person who also thinks saying ‘just move somewhere better!’ is a viable solution. Reality is not coming into play either way.
I totally get this because I feel the same way. I don’t know how Sanders can just gloss over the fact that when he discounts southern voters he is really discounting black voters.
Also, I am planning on living in the Deep South for the rest of my life. I grew up in GA, and I frequently get confused looks when people learn that I am not planning on leaving the south. I work in a field where that would be easy and I usually give a vague “family/the weather” answer, but the real reason is that I think it’s important for me, a person with relative privilege, to stay and at least try to invest and change things. I don’t judge people who do want go get out, but I do get frustrated at the people (always white!) who constantly ask me why I would ever stay here.
Also +++good rant, 10/10 would hulk again.
“when he discounts southern voters he is really discounting black voters” ding ding ding
I feel like this is so obvious to anyone who lives and votes in the south that it kind of boggles my mind it’s not what people outside the region are interpreting it as automatically?
It’s especially annoying when the same people insisting that Southern votes shouldn’t count are the same people insisting that Utah should count *more*. Which friends of my friends were arguing.
Hang on. Why, exactly, should Utah count more in their argument?
Probably more white people and Bernie won Utah?
Good on you for wanting to stay. I have such mixed feelings about the south and ultimately I may not end up staying here. But I don’t think people should feel obligated to move away from their homes and their families to find acceptance/tolerance/jobs that pay a living wage, and so while I’m still living here, I’m trying to do what I can to change things. Knowing that people are committed to staying and working gives me hope for my family’s future.
I’m very impressed by your stance. I just moved out of Houston, TX for the liberal paradise of Portland, OR. I did feel some twinges of guilt over leaving even my blue city, because there was so much work to be done still (especially with HERO struck down, the last Planned Parenthood standing), but it was still the right choice for me for a lot of reasons. And I was never really attached to Houston, so I did not want to grow old and die there. I wanted to experience a different region of the country.
But yes, you’re definitely doing good work. (And I’ll be visiting your state later this year to visit a couple college friends, so hurrah!)
The dismissal of the South is making me so angry and I don’t even live there (I’m a New York expat now living in California). There have been things that have been frustrating me for a while about the rhetoric around Bernie’s campaign but this whole “south doesn’t matter”/”red states don’t matter”/”black voters don’t matter” is really, really upsetting and frustrating to me.
Ditto, I am here for this.
I have this conversation often with people who are important to me who can’t understand why I continue to live in South Carolina after having briefly “gotten out/escaped” for my first job.
They sometimes see me coming back as a capitulation or a reconforming to what they consider a universally backwards way of life, and it is anything but. I actually care about my family here and the rest of our residents who remain disenfranchised by current state politics.
I care that my mom and my sister and my lady friends and cousins live in a state where we’re the number one target of domestic violence. I care that my friends live in a state where they worry about losing jobs or face active discrimination because they’re gay. I care that our kids are getting sub par educations and that their parents aren’t allowed to unionize.
And I’m going to vote every time to change it. You can’t change it if you don’t live here, because we’re one of the states that will fight federal laws we don’t like as unconstitutional every chance we get. You HAVE to change local and state laws for it to stick. And you can’t do that by complaining about it from whatever lovely progressive state you may have “escaped” to.
hey, where in sc are you? upstate, at all?
Greenville 🙂
You?
Same!!! We should meet. Maybe we secretly know each other already.
Coming back to say, after our sad news today, that if you’d like to hang out, my email is lallred86 at the gmail.
Yes to the grossness of writing off the moderate+liberal voters that do exist in red states.
Writing off outnumbered voters also bothers me because it’s so stupid. You need those people to turn out and vote for state legislators (much better if the GOP doesn’t have a supermajority to do whatever they want) and Congresspeople and Senators. We have 11 Democrats in Congress from heavily-Republican Texas because there are liberals and moderates who do want to be heard in a conservative state. It’s really, really hard to convince Congress to do anything, and it’s only going to get harder for Democrats if we tell red-state liberals not to bother voting.
Thank you for this!!! It is so true and so frustrating.
I am a bisexual North Carolinian, and I have been thinking about the ways in which people denigrate the South in regards to HB 2, and all of the boycotting that’s going on right now. We queer North Carolinians are hurt by boycotts too.
In case you haven’t been following tonight, Jamelle Bouie’s twitter is KILLING IT with regards to voter suppression/disenfranchisement vs. legitimate election rules you disagree with. Basically that you can think closed primaries are a bad thing, but it’s disingenuous and really diminishing to the long history of really shitty voter suppression in the US to conflate the two. I hadn’t been following him before, thanks so much for bringing him to my attention!
hi, I’m going on a 2nd date for the first time in literally a year and i’m freaking out. why is emotional intimacy so much harder than sex?
It will be ok! Worst comes to worst just pretend to be Janet Snakehole (or your alter-ego of choice) all night.
I’m with you on that one.
Is this a serious question? As a former slut4eva (slut4my20s?), I can tell you that for me it was: sex is powerful, emotional intimacy is vulnerable, and I am actually a sensitive person who is easily hurt! My dad left my mom when I was 13!
Good luck!
For me, it’s because sex can be a performance or just masturbation with an audience. But emotional intimacy is unfakeable and for the most part unperfomable. It requires that you show up in a way that sex might not. Good luck, you got this
So just before lunch the water in my office building crapped out. The whole building. No water. Meaning no toilets.
And it seems I’m EXTRA thirsty today and its just running through me. so I’ve just been sat at my desk for the last hour like
The water finally came back and the women in the office made a mad dash for the loo.
I had an hour-long meeting this afternoon and realised 15 minutes in I *really really* needed a wee. I work at home but it was a veyr talky meeting and my phone crackles massively when it’s as far away from the pluggy-in bit as the bathroom. By the end of the meeting I had my jeans undone!
I have always dreamed about moving back to Seattle, which I love SO MUCH MORE than my current city on the east coast, but when that earthquake article came out it made me change my mind. So I guess that deserves a Pulitzer? I’m still pretty pissed about it though.
It stopped me from looking into living in Portland, that’s for sure! I love it there despite its white person problem, but I’m not even comfortable visiting anymore.
I grew up at the other end of that fault line, and buildings in that area are definitely built/retrofitted with monster earthquakes in mind, so you’ll be much safer in a quake there than in an east coast city, if that helps!
Very good point BUT the article discusses the possibility (inevitability?) of a major tsunami following an earthquake, and that is the part that really got me scared. It says something about the entire region being “unrecognizable” afterwards?! And I can’t imagine there is really any way to prepare for that… Ughhhh the dread!
Seattle wouldn’t be hit by that tsunami, though, thanks to the entirety of the Olympic Penninsula between us and the actual open ocean (where the true Cascadia Subduction Zone really is). Westport is fucked, though.
Only the coast will be hit by tsunami though, which absolutely absolutely sucks if you’re there, but inland will be fine from that threat. The thing about the vast majority of the coastline along Oregon and Washington, is there is a mountain range that runs directly along the coast. So you might have a very small flatish area where small coastal towns are, and then the foothills immediately start, within about 5 miles from the coast you might be at 500-1000 feet in elevation. If you look at maps of Oregon and southern Washington, this is why there will be a very small strip of towns along the coast, and then almost no towns to the east for a hundred miles or so. This coast range would block and significantly minimize the impact of any tsunami.
But no expert I’ve read who predicts what will happen has ever actually said the entire region will be unrecognizable or that it will take decades to recover. Overall, Portland and Seattle are removed enough from the fault line that they won’t get the main impact of the shaking. The biggest threat to Portland is our airport and other industrial hubs like gas and train lines are along the river, where there would likely be serious damage and disruption to them and then some of the large buildings downtown and older bridges have not be retrofitted (though they are doing a project to retrofit the I-5 bridges so the interstate stays passable. And then for new bridges, they have the strictest construction requirements out of any state to withstand earthquakes…they’ve just been really slow to update old bridges to meet that). Seattle I believe their big issue is threat of liquefaction along the water. A few PNW earthquake experts did a reddit after the New Yorker article, which I think was really good at talking about the real concerns without the hyperbole of the other https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3da1mh/we_…
Okay, but: I have looked at the maps of the tsunami zones on the coast. I can’t speak for Washington, but Oregon’s really is Not Flat, and in many places, the worst-case “inundation zone” is a half-dozen city blocks or less.
I mean, there are other dangers; but the tsunami one isn’t nearly as bad as people worry about.
– I like the Jezebel piece (something I haven’t said in a while, although it appears to be a sub-blog), although it’s still a little Both-Sides-Do-It-ish for my taste. They throw in “Clinton has also benefited enormously from the system that Sanders would like to dismantle”, glossing over the fact that Bernie really doesn’t have a chance or even any sort of plan for that dismantling. I’ve seen a bunch of people get elected with big promises and no strategy, and they all tend to end up the same.
– I feel for people who have to work two variable-hours jobs; it’s very rarely easily doable, and then often only for too-short periods of time, and even more rarely does either of your managers care that you’ve got this other thing. But the AaM subject seems to have simply straight-up lied about being available, and also seems to be gambling that she’s too far into the hiring process to be let go.
– “Don’t worry, buddy, I won’t let momma kill you”? What the shit? Maybe the cat isn’t the one who should worry, ace.
– That dude in the minivan–or crossover or whatever the fuck it is–has brothers at every type of disaster or tragedy: the person who thinks that they can just soldier through thanks to a staggering amount of denial. Speaking of disasters, there’s this recreation of the sinking of the Titanic–no, not the movie, but a 2-hour-40-minute digital recreation of the entire process, including occasional captions regarding the emergency procedures and progress of the sinking. Warning: although the passengers aren’t shown (making it an odd, ghostly spectacle), there are screams at the very end.
– My comment on the Monticello thing: “Waiting for your essay on visiting Albert Speer’s home and complaining that they didn’t spend the entire time talking about his philosophy of architecture.”
I went to Monticello a few months ago, and (as a Canadian who has little interest in American history) I thought the focus on slavery was maybe kinda grudging? Like, “we know you’re going to ask about it, because well why wouldn’t you, all our excavations are on slave quarters right now, and everybody wants to know about his descendents, so here it all is, take it all in.” But I have little to compare it to, I don’t even really go to museums and historic sites much.
In my experience the focus on slavery does often tend to be grudging if it’s brought up at all. I was on a tour of a mansion somewhere in Georgia a few years ago and the only mention of slavery came up when we were in the tiny one-room shack that served as the “cook’s” quarters and the only thing said was “She was like part of the family.” So…
I also went to Monticello recently, and I thought the same thing. They knew they had to bring it up, but it definitely wasn’t what they wanted to be talking about.
OT: But I am at “Bitch eatin’ crackers” with Grandboss and outreach co-worker this week and it’s only tuesday.
Grandboss, I feel I only need to quote him: “We need the space [1000sqft where shelving was] to be empty so we can visualize the future.” The actual fuck?
Outreach co-worker: keeps saying I do her job better than she does. How? BECAUSE I TALK TO PEOPLE AND ASK THEM WHAT THEY WANT. “Do you know anyone in admissions who could get me a table cloth?” No, go ask them yourself.
On top of that, she’s the lead librarian on space planning, but guess who never contacted any vendors? Oh, that’s right, outreach co-worker. Guess who didn’t bother to review any of the literature or grab any of it for the meeting (clearly available on my desk) when my car wouldn’t start yesterday morning? Guess who got on my case for being a bit flustered in my presentation because I had to walk/run to work because my car wouldn’t start? If you guess co-worker, you’d be right.
We have a poster presentation at a conference this week. Guess who said she would contact the art department to use one of their large format printers and didn’t? RIGHT AGAIN. Academic posters are supposed to be large fuck off things, right? Guess who went to kinkos this week and got a wall poster sized poster? You’re on a roll!
Outreach co-worker also is going to all the sessions that one institution’s Librarians are speaking at, since she applied for the job, only did the poster because she thought it’d look good on her resume, and basically made me set up collections in Dspace so she could post one thing on there and say it was something she was heavily involved in.
I’m seriously contemplating eating the 100 bucks from this conference and teaching an instruction session in the history department instead. Which would be a dick move, but man, it must really SUCK to have someone drop the ball and make more work for you so they can do what they want.
Opinions? My name will still be on the poster and the thesis, layout, and unique take on the topic are still mine.
I don’t think that would be a dick move. You sound like you’re at the end of your rope and a few days at work without your colleague would be a huge blessing and relief. She totally has it coming too, sounds like, but that’s not your reason for doing it, just a pleasant side effect, the way I see it.
If it was a session you two were leading that would absolutely be a dick move, but a poster presentation… not so much.
On the other hand maybe you can go to the conference and find a new job?
Don’t go to the conference and teach the instruction session instead. Look out for yourself, because clearly that’s what your coworker is doing. Plus, the name on the poster is more important than who is standing in front of the poster.
I have literally just come back from a job interview. And it’s lucky I didn’t take my jacket off because I’ve just discovered *I hadn’t done my blouse up*.
Aaah what a nightmare! Did it go well?
i think it did! I don’t have direct experience of one of the major things they want, so they might very well decide to go with someone else. But I feel like it was non-humiliating and that I gave a respectable account of myself, despite my inability to get fully dressed.
That’s a relief! I have an interview tomorrow and instead of preparing I am eating biscuits and looking at the toast.
Good luck!
Ahahaha. I once HELD a series of interviews with all-male candidates and only realised when I went to the bathroom afterwards that my blouse had unbuttoned itself (I am a large-breasted lady and it was a cheap blouse). None of the candidates reacted in any way – either my jacket successfully concealed it or they all thought it was some sort of Machiavellian test and just fixed their eyes grimly on my face.
Me at my first serious job interview:
INTERVIEWER: were you asleep when I called you for this interview?
ME: ……yes.
Still got the job. Honesty! Sometimes it works!
I had to buy a pair of Chuck Taylors for a wedding and was able to get the largest kid’s size instead of the women’s – and they retail for $15 cheaper! ._. How much money have I wasted on adult shoes in my life!?
In a Honda Insight! It’s the least go-ahead-and-drive-it-into-standing-water car ever made! And they’re discontinued now! You can’t get a new one, Larry David looking dude! I know they’re really excellent and underrated cars, but… did you think “hybrid” meant “amphibious”?
Seriously! Did you see the backup lights come on? Did he really put it in reverse while *floating*?
“Oops, shouldn’t have gone this far. I should back up now.”
I think the guy in the dinosaur scale is waving like a doofus because he’s resigned to the fact he’s about to get killed by a big ass dinosaur.
“We who are about to die salute you.”
Toastpersons, I just read something on Prudie that hit a little too hard.
(He trotted out the “I’m a horrible person, I knew I was going to hurt you, etc.” spiel, which to me means “I plan to wallow in my pattern of relationship-destroying self-loathing, not fix it.”)
Is there a name for this? A tag on Captain Awkward? I need know more.
I’d bet the “manipulation,” “boundaries,” and “Darth Vader boyfriend” tags on CA would be a good starting point.
Yeah I’ve looked at those… I guess I feel like my situation is more “diet coke of evil” than darth vader boyfriend.
I have suffered from a SO spewing that out, too.
I will say, though, when I was younger I know I did it, too. Now that I am trying to be a better person in relationships, it can be difficult to express, “I feel a lot of shame and bad stuff around this issue, and I think you should know that in case I respond in messed up ways” and not have it be “feel sorry for me, not mad at me!!”
It’s possible, but just difficult.
IDK about a tag on Captain Awkward, but I think she’s referred to it as ‘if someone tells you what they’re like, believe them’?
ha! yes! The last time I had an argument with the person, that phrase hit me like a rock in a pond. I basically gave an ultimatum at the time and we’ll see what happens in the future. Getting tired of the whole thing.
Can the primary be over now? Please?
I am so sick of my friends and family fighting.
Two good friends of mine are the Democratic delegates for our area, and at the caucus last night they had to be GUARDED BY SECURITY because they were PHYSICALLY THREATENED by Bernie supporters.
What the FUCK, people.
My primary isn’t even until JUNE and I am so tired. So tired.
Mine isn’t until June either… I’ve been doing some serious unfollowing on Facebook these last few months.
My in-laws were over for dinner last night and my sister-in-law’s husband is the most Berniest Bernie bro and our father-in-law is the Trumpiest Trump guy and there was NO POLITICS and everything was going GREAT until the brother in law just straight up jumped in with both feet talking about “what do you feel about your candidate being a racist garbage pail.”
I just had to leave. It was awful.
oooh, I just gasped out loud. I’m so sorry. I love healthy political discussion but I would have also noped right out of there, because when it’s family it gets soooo ugly.
Yeah, also their only point of agreement is how Hillary is bad, so that was an extra dollop of unpleasantness.
The woman with the declining cat and the jerky husband reminded me of the time we had to put our dog in the kennel.
No kidding, one of the questions was (paraphrasing) “If there is an emergency and we cannot get a hold of you, what is the maximum cost we can expend to save your dog’s life?”
After a little back and forth between my wife and me, we put $10,000 to make it very clear that we didn’t want them to put our dog down without speaking with us first and explained our reasoning as we turned in the form. “Whatever happens, do whatever it takes to keep him alive until you get a hold of us.”
I’m always on edge about the dogsitter when we go on vacation, but that one was the worst. Just because awful questions like that are usually the result of the situation coming up at some point.
… I did actually ask my partner’s brother basically that question when we cat-sat for them. (“Are you going to want heroic measures, or what?”.)
Yeah I think that’s about what I’d put. Mostly because I can’t imagine any (pet) medical procedure costing more than that (sadly for humans that’s not the case).
ehhh… we just had to get surgery for our cat and it came out to around $5000, so $10k might not be so unreasonable. [eta: and it was a normal-ish surgery]
Yes, unfortunately I just found out even $20K is not out of the question. My FIL’s schnauzer was attacked by a wild animal and he found her in very bad shape. When he took her into the vet, he was told the procedures necessary would require a week of surgeries with 24hr care. Their estimate on the tab was $20K+, so he decided to have her put down.
ugh, it is so heartbreaking to make that decision and have to put a price on a dear part of the family. Every time we have to take our cat back to the emergency vet I wonder if this is the time I’ll have to make that decision, and I don’t know if I can.
We had to put the dog mentioned in the kennel story down a month ago, and it was awful. He had a growth that was hemorrhaging and thankfully price never entered the conversation. The doctor described what she would have to do, explained he wasn’t a good candidate for that surgery and that it would likely only by him a little time after a tough recovery. Hearing that, we decided to have him put down without ever having to hear a cost. Even knowing we made the right choice, I was a mess for days.
Holy crap, that’s terrible 🙁
Emergency care for pets can get crazy expensive. I’ve had to make a tough choice in that position before, but not to the tune of 20k.
When I was in high school my mother told our neighbor I would be happy to pet sit while neighbor’s family went away on vacation. And I was. Until I went over there for instructions.
Mrs Neighbor introduced me to their Aged Cat and told me Aged Cat was liable to die any day because she was so old and was showing signs like not wanting to eat and sleeping much more than usual. Mrs Neighbor showed me where Aged Cat liked to sleep, the center cushion of a sofa. Mrs Neighbor had clad the cushion in a few layers of plastic trash bags under Aged Cat’s favorite bedding material. Mrs Neighbor said this cushion is where Aged Cat will die. Aged Cat is certain to lie down there and just not wake up. My instructions were to look for the cat on that cushion twice a day. If Aged Cat did not respond to my voice and touch, I was to check her abdomen for breathing. Mrs Neighbor told me over and over she expected Aged Cat to die, and Mrs Neighbor assured me she would not be mad at me if it happened while in my care.
I was aghast the entire time Mrs Neighbor was instructing me. I could not do more than nod. What had my mother gotten me into? Every time I went into that house, I said, “Aged Cat, you’re still alive, right? Show me you’re alive. Pleeeeease be alive!” Every time I left I threatened her, “Don’t you dare die yet. You have to wait for your people to come home. Don’t you die on me!”
Aged Cat survived to greet her people after their vacation. I found my first gray hair the next week.
Gaaaaaah, that is too much trauma to push on a high school kid!
(But I like to imagine she really was addressed as “Aged Cat” every time, that is precious.)
Aaah how could you stand it, I would have completely freaked out!
I had a new catsitter ask once what she should do if she found my cat dead, stressing that she has to ask as protocol, not because she expected it to happen. I asked if it ever had happened and she said yes, that’s why she asks now. She found the cat dead, called the client, and the client told her to PUT THE CAT IN THE FREEZER.
Next to the other ones, probably. “Oh, I know I’ll get around to burying them evENTually… meanwhile there is a little bit of cat hair in this ice cream, no matter.”
I had a similar cat sitting experience a few years ago. Not as traumatizing as it would have been as a high schooler, but still super stressful. Thankfully the cat also survived during my care. I am very glad said acquaintance never asked me to cat sit ever again.
Apparently my preschool had a geriatric guinea pig. Every holidays it would go with a different family who were told again and again ‘it’s very old, it might die, don’t feel guilty if it does’. It survived my family.
I have now scrolled past this comment three times and each time I’ve gone, “reclining cat? Like a reclining chair? Wha- Oh, declining.”
I LOVE those shoes & have been wanting black sneakers to replace the awful lime green ones I am currently wearing (& hating every time I look at my dumb feet) but are basketball sneakers suitable for doing, like, cardio dance & HIIT workouts or are they mostly particularly either for basketball or streetstyle?
SUPER IMPORTANT QUESTION, AMERICA NEEDS TO KNOW, THE PEOPLE ARE RIOTING, &c.
Nicole, WHAT is the name of your gorgeous gray kitty?
Rory!
RORY!!!
My 10-year old nephew got a pair of those LeBron basketball sneakers for Xmas and we discovered that he and his Auntie Jinx had the same size feet. I told him to send them to me when he was done with them, since he will surely outgrow them before they wear out.
My stepson & I have the same size feet. IN UNRELATED NEWS, I recently bought him a pair of classic old-school Adidas*.
*In addition to his school/play pairs of gym shoes. I’m not, like, using him for shoes.
Sansa is officially a direwolf now.
A beautiful, majestic, poof of a direwolf.
My dog has been the size and color of a loaf of Wonderbread since 2007, so he does not convey the same sort of gravitas. He is, however, fully aware of how very loved he is.
That sounds super-adorable actually.
Thank you! I think that he’s the best kind of Wonderbread, but of course I’m not biased at all.
http://chronicleddelusionsofgrandeur.tumblr.com/p…
I feel like every long term resident of the PNW should write Kathryn Schulz and nice thank you/congrats on the Pulitizer note. Nope, out-of-towners, you should not move here. In fact, if you’ve moved here recently, perhaps you should consider leaving and going to some other part of the world where obviously no natural disasters are ever possible and you and your family will live forever.
The sheer volume of letters from women with contemptible manchildren for partners is tragic. These dudes are straight out of Charles Dickens.
Or John Updike.
OT, sorry, but I’m a bit of a mess – my Dad died last year and it’s his birthday tomorrow.
I miss him so much. I miss talking to him, hearing about the quality of the soup at the old people’s day centre. I miss seeing him, mooching around the market together. I miss sitting in the garden with him, doing nothing much, reading the paper, having a coffee. I wish he were still here, it’s horrible without him.
(((girl_toni)))
Thank you all so much, I’m not sure why or how sharing this has eased the feeling of being overwhelmed by it, but it has, so thank you again.
Tomorrow I plan to mark Dad’s birthday by eating soup and mislaying my glasses.
Soup sounds like the right thing. I am a sentimental sort, so I might pick up the paper and read a few tidbits to his memory. Anniversaries are so poignant; I wish you strength.
Sending you love and soup, my dear.
Hi all, I’m New Here! Read a few articles, decided I liked the comments a lot and wanted to join the party.
People seem to post some off-topicky things in these roundups? Is that a thing? I’m gonna do it. I’m a recent grad who accepted a job that has me move 3 times in 2 years, and then less-often moving after that. I like it; I’m learning a lot and get to live in new places, but I think I underestimated how hard it is. I make easy friends with the few other people in this program with me, and they’re great, but I’m still reminded sometimes that we’re all “friends of circumstance”. Outside of that, it’s hard to make friends with people not in our circumstance, because who wants to invest in a friendship with a person who’s moving soon? Any tips on connecting with a place and people despite not being there long?
On topic things: I feel like my grade school sister had a better acceptance of our dog’s death than this grown-ass man does of his cat’s. How does this happen, and why do people marry them?
Also, looks like children’s shoes are my next purchase. Adulthood is nothing like I thought it would be.
Welcome to the land of toast! It’s awesome here, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
Yeah, people post off-topic stuff in the roundup. You’ll see a lot of people apologizing for doing it, which I just read as a way of acknowledging that they know it’s not something to be done *all the time*. If you can, you might want to try posting this on another roundup closer to when it goes up (or the Open Thread on Friday) because people don’t really hang out on these after the day they’re posted.
Good luck with the friendmaking! I have no suggestions myself, being similarly low on friends.
Good to know, thanks! I’m realizing now that these things seem to be less “comment” and more “chatroom”, which is pretty fun. I was running out of ways to waste time at work.
And thanks, good luck to you too! I’ll let you know if I find where the friends are hiding.
Haha, love your nym! I know one of the posts you read.
Thank you! Glad someone caught it! It was either this or “DickRibbon” honestly
Remember when Coates wrote something critical about Bernie and then just re-tweeted the meanass exaggerated shit that Bernie supporters tweeted at him for a couple of days? People were quick to call him shills for Clinton even after he wrote something critical about her.