“Mooooom why won’t she play balllllll with meeee.”
You knew I was going to link to the beach girl behind the Beach Boys:
Early in 2015’s Love & Mercy, a film based on the life of Brian Wilson, a foxy blonde in cat’s-eye sunglasses addresses the Beach Boys leader. “Hey, Brian? I think you might have screwed up here,” she says, gesturing to the sheet music with her pencil. “You’ve got Lyle playing in D, and the rest of us are in A major. How does that work? Two bass lines in two different keys?”
As she often was in real life, that blonde bassist Carol Kaye is the lone woman in the studio, and the only female member of an informal, unheralded lineup of talent — drummers, guitarists, percussionists, piano, and horn players — that you hear on the Beach Boys’ legendary Pet Sounds. She’s also on a jukebox’s worth of hit songs from the ’60s: Ritchie Valens’s “La Bamba,” Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair,” to name a few.
This is deeply wrong, and heartbreaking:
Eighteen-year-old Yefri Sorto-Hernandez was waiting at a school bus stop at 6:20 a.m. when an unmarked white Ford pulled up. Two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents got out of the car. They were wearing jeans, vests, and guns.
The agents asked Yefri, who is from El Salvador, about his identity. Yefri’s school bus arrived while he was being handcuffed. The agents led him to their car as other students on the bus watched the scene unfold. They took Yefri to an immigration detention center, where he continues to await his deportation proceedings.
Yefri is just one of hundreds of teenagers arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents so far this year, as the Obama administration has carried out extensive immigration raids focused on targeting Central Americans who crossed the border after January 2014. Yefri was swept up in a raid known as Operation Border Guardian that took 336 people into custody.
Stories like Yefri’s have recently made national headlines in part because they appear to contradict ICE’s own policies. Immigration agents have typically agreed to avoid arresting teens at “sensitive locations” such as churches, hospitals, and schools. Field officers are supposed to exercise discretion in these cases to avoid causing “significant disruption to the normal operations of the sensitive location,” according to a 2011 policy memo.
Cherished Friend of the Toast Morgan Jerkins is going to be back at her alma mater of Priiiiinceton Uniiiiiversity this Saturday to talk to undergraduate student leaders about work, diversity, and leadership tactics, so if you’re in the area, do NOT miss it. More info here!
Equally cherished Friend of the Toast Carvell Wallace on Thelonious Monk:
Everything about Monk’s life and work suggests a person unconditionally committed to the world in his head. Even in his poorest days, he never left the house unless cleanly appointed in a pressed suit and tie accessorized with an array of ascots, wild glasses, and funny hats. But while magazines and movies ran with this cartoon version of the scatting hep cat, Monk’s visage was authentically acquired, a product of his unceasing creativity. This desire, indeed, was what drove his offbeat and mesmerizing compositions. Early pieces like “Well You Needn’t,” with its spastic call and response, was laid out on a bed of chromatically rising and falling tones; “In Walked Bud,” a raucous tribute to best friend and mentor Bud Powell; and the Monk standard “Round Midnight,” which managed to fashion purposeful dissonance into a kind of slowly rollicking ethereal bliss, all stood out as pieces well ahead of their time. Not only musically, but in shape and meaning. In vibe. A vast cosmic wink permeated all of Thelonious Monk’s work. You never knew if he was crazy, or if he was just trolling you.
Rembert on “The Art Of Pandering To Your Non-White Audience”:
I, for one, truthfully don’t care that Hillary has hot sauce in her bag. And Ireally don’t care about the proof that Hillary has, in fact, loved hot sauce for years. I honestly couldn’t care about anything less. There is nothing on planet Earth I care about less than the number of years Hillary Rodham Clinton has enjoyed hot sauce.
But there is something sneakily significant in these moments of perceived “pandering” — something both Clinton and her Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders have been guilty of and unfairly accused of during their campaigns. It’s just another reminder that everyone is in a rat race to successfully appeal to non-white people. (Even Donald Trump tries to tout his relationship with “the blacks.”) And it’s not just black people who are being cozied up to — that was just Monday’s program — it’s all racial and ethnic minorities. This should not come as a surprise: There are few things more appealing to politicians — not to mention media companies, brands, Hollywood, really everyone with the possible exception of David Duke — than tapping into the natural and growing resource of “non-white.”
The trouble is doing it well. Rarely does anyone do it well.
If I ever meet this man, I will FULL ON facepunch him, because there is “oh maybe chemtrails” and then there is “HARASSING SANDY HOOK FAMILIES WITH YOUR BULLSHIT”:
This light sentence comes as the result of a plea deal. The judge “suspended a one-year prison sentence,” which Mills would have served for harassing the late Soto’s sister. TPM reports that “Mills was accused of approaching a sister of slain Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher Victoria Soto during a charity race in November and angrily claiming the shootings never took place.”
So, one of the stupidest things in the whole world is this little cabal of snowboarders in Utah who think they are Rosa Parks bc there are TWO RESORTS out of eight resorts where you can only ski, not snowboard, so these little punks got all hepped up and claimed FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS to try to get Alta to let them bring their stupid snowboards in, and some lawyer was like “sure I’ll take your money” and obviously they lost:
The snow sports advocacy group Wasatch Equality, snowboarders Rick Alden, Drew Hicken and Richard Varga and snowboarding pro Bjorn Leines filed suit in January 2014 against Alta and the forest service, arguing that the ban has no place on public land.
The suit claimed the snowboard prohibition was the result of animus “towards the type of people they believed to be ‘snowboarders.’ ” The boarders alleged they were being irrationally discriminated against and deserved protection under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which historically has been used in cases involving discrimination based on race, gender or sexual orientation.
“wasatch equality” oh my god get a life
this is nightmarish, and normal employers will NOT contact your current boss:
I’m currently employed but am exploring the possibility of moving to a different part of the country and have recently been putting out applications. As it turns out, a resume I sent to one company made it into the hands of someone who used to work with my current boss. Without speaking to me at all, this person contacted my boss to ask about me. My resume clearly states that I am currently employed (and where), and I state that references are available upon request. Today my boss called me in to let me know this woman contacted him, and that he hoped I wouldn’t leave.
I am furious. I cannot believe this woman had the audacity to respond to my application by contacting my current employer, and not me. Thankfully my boss has been good about it so far, but it obviously could have gone the other way, and who knows what’s being discussed behind closed doors. My boss mentioned the company where this woman works, and I noticed she had recently looked at my LinkedIn profile. To top it off, as of now she hasn’t contacted me for an interview. If she did, I’m not sure I’d want to go due to the blatant unprofessionalism displayed thus far, but if I did decide to go, I’m not sure how I should react. Should I bring it up? If in the end she doesn’t contact me for an interview, what on earth was she trying to do by contacting my boss??
Domestic felicity is the MOST important thing to me in the whole world and I desperately want this person to move out and find a more chill situation that reflects her own personality:
Q. Avoiding my roommate: I’m a grad student rooming with a friend. After moving in, our friendship became stressed. While she is a lovely, sensitive person, she is not always punctual about paying her half of the utilities or respecting agreements (notably, we had agreed that I could bring my dog up from my family home and she changed her mind the night before). The biggest issue, though, is that she’s much more chatty than I am. She knocks on my door at random times to have brief conversations. She’s also frequently upset about something I did or didn’t do, or something I didn’t anticipate she would need. We’ve talked about this in the past, but this dynamic keeps creeping into our interactions. My best friend has an empty room in her house and has offered to let me crash there for a few weeks. I’m inclined to take her up on the offer. How do I tell Roommate I’m moving out without offending her? I do like her as a friend, and she frequently looks to me as a source of emotional support. How do I respectfully sever ties without ending our friendship?
This is everything journalism should be:
Boaty McBoatface was too beautiful to live. He was a rare and precious flower, simply not cut out for these ugly times. We created Boaty McBoatface. We created him after our own image, in a rush of optimism, deluding ourselves that he was ever worth a damn. Boaty McBoatface was a perfect idea in an imperfect world. He was all that we were not. He was strong. He was resolute. Truly, he was Boaty McBoatface.
Boaty McBoatface is dead. The government killed him.
Actually, that’s an exaggeration. The government has strongly hinted that it’s about to kill Boaty McBoatface, for it understands that vanquished hope is a more powerful tool than relentless despair. Present the people with an idol, then smash it before their eyes. Soon they will learn that resistance is futile, and the state’s power is absolute.
u are wrong:
“Snow sports advocacy?” Now I have truly heard everything, goodnight.
“Snow sports advocacy group” is not a phrase I would have thought anyone needed to use.
Vermont has the other one of three resorts in the US that don’t allow snowboarders. I don’t think anyone’s sued them yet, though, just used them as material for an April Fool’s article a few years ago.
I love their slogan – Mad River Glen, ski it if you can! It’s a giant fuck you and it’s wonderful.
With the lack of snow we got over the winter the slogan took on a whole nother meaning. It was beautiful.
Any time I see somebody complaining about SJWs from now on I’m going to assume they mean “Snow Justice Warriors” and nod my head in agreement.
It’s really about ethics in snow sports journalism.
Surely you aren’t denying that these are not choices. It’s obvious that people are born as boarders.
Would totally 100% read a version of Wuthering Heights with newspaper comic Cathy.
Would 200% read a version of Wuthering Heights in which Heathcliff was also Heathcliff the Cat.
Would prefer Wuthering Heights with comic Cathy, tbh.
I have always argued that the lyrics to the Heathcliff cartoon theme song have a strong correlation to the plot of Wuthering Heights itself. To wit:
Heathcliff, Heathcliff, no one should
Terrify their neighborhood
But Heathcliff just won’t be outdone
Playing pranks on everyone
There’s a race to be on top
The competition doesn’t stop
Mixing with the ladies fair
Being charming, debonair
The gang will reign supreme
And no one can deny
They’ll make some history
And always have an alibi
So join in the jubilee
The cats are great, they’ll all agree
You’ll find in each calamity
The cat’s superiority
Heathcliff, Heathcliff, no one should
Terrify the neighborhood
But Heathcliff just won’t be outdone
You should realize, he can win it WITH YOU!
This is just so dead-on I just can’t even with it (or, in other words, ACK!):
You’ll find in each calamity
The cat’s superiority
An old SCTV episode: Jane Airhead, with Mr. Rochester played by Mr. Rochester from the even older Jack Benny show. (Mr. Rochester was Joe Flaherty in blackface…late 70’s maybe)
Somehow I read “Jack Benny” as “Benny Hill” and my brain went poof.
I like to think a few “acks!” and some ice cream might have leveled Cathy 1.0 out a bit.
Mewthering Heights
By claiming discrimination based on a preconceived notion of what it is to be a snowboarder, “Wasatch Equality” has officially confirmed every one of my preconceived notions of what it is to be a snowboarder.
I would really like to talk about this Atlantic article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/…
It’s basically about a guy who made terrible financial decisions and now regrets them. I’m sorry that the “secret shame” referenced in the article is not more interesting!!!
I just feel like the whole writing smacks of privilege in a way – like, I should be able to pay for my daughter’s wedding, dammit! Let me cash out this 401(k)! Of course I had to send my daughters to private school, because I wanted to live in a cool area, but the schools here are bad! Of course I didn’t want my wife to take an entry-level job, so I concealed our financial troubles from her and told her I could support the entire family through my writing career! Of course I couldn’t be the one to take on childcare responsibilities, even though presumably as a writer my schedule is somewhat flexible!
It’s like, I know there are plenty of middle-class Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, couldn’t they have found someone more sympathetic?
yeah sometimes I think this kind of stuff does more harm than good, because the dudes writing it don’t actually realize just how shitty it can be for some other people.
I mean, is the secret shame that he’s an irresponsible douchenozzle and a terrible husband? Doesn’t seem to be a middle class only thing, tbh, but maybe his shame is also blaming external factors for his own bad decisions.
Yeah, I really spent some time thinking about this one yesterday. At first it came off to me like that too, and it’s a bit frustrating that it takes too long to get to the point. A lot of readers are going to nope out long before they get to this:
“I don’t ask for or expect any sympathy. I am responsible for my quagmire—no one else. I didn’t get gulled into overextending myself by unscrupulous credit merchants. Basically, I screwed up, royally. I lived beyond my means, primarily because my means kept dwindling. I didn’t take the actions I should have taken, like selling my house and downsizing, though selling might not have covered what I owed on my mortgage. And let me be clear that I am not crying over my plight. I have it a lot better than many, probably most, Americans—which is my point.”
I think he’s clumsily trying to say that if even people like him, privileged people with good incomes, are in this situation, how much more the people who face real crises and don’t have a lot of options. And I think he means it to be a wake-up call to people like him who might in his mind be the average reader of a piece like this one.
In the end, I became more sympathetic, though the private schools and so on stretched it pretty thin. I think he is honestly wrestling with the consequences of his own actions, but the framing of the piece as the plight of a lot of everyday middle class people does not help.
Right – I think he does prove his point at the end that people need to be more thoughtful about their finances – but the whole article just made me want to slap him in the face, and that really, really distracted from the main point.
Notably absent from the list of actions he should have taken: being honest with his wife.
The part where the only regret he mentions about pushing his parents to spend their savings is that now there’s less for him to inherit pretty much torpedoed my sympathy.
I’d say “smacks of privilege,” full stop. This was such a great idea for an article but so, so poorly executed. Middle-class Americans being overextended and overoptimistic is a real thing, and letting this dude conflate a societal trend and his own wall-to-wall poor judgment really detracts from what could have been a thoughtful analysis of a troubling phenomenon.
BTW, we were talking about this aspect a few weeks ago, but THIS is why the calculus of balancing the cost of child care against the mother’s salary makes so little sense. Staying home may make financial sense in the short term, but it may mean money trouble in the long term, because the stay-at-home parent may have a tough time getting back into the job market.
Not only that, but even here in Canada the Canadian Pension Plan earnings of the stay-at-home parent will take a nosedive because it’s based on years in the workplace. So on top of having trouble getting back into the job market, that parent will be penalized into retirement.
Same with Social Security here in the US – it’s based on your earnings through the years.
I liked the kind of summary/broader strokes overview of this article in the Atlantic, which frames this one story (which acknowledges how privileged Gabler is, and I agree– why not someone more sympathetic??). I appreciated the discussion of secrecy and insecurity that many middle class Americans face and the larger picture of how much we hide finances and how one bad health event or mistake, etc. could make someone become so financially insecure http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/… Especially that line how “nibbling at the margins” is AWFUL advice — when we’re talking student debt, forgoing Starbucks is not going to matter really
That’s very good, thanks for sharing!
If you’re plunking down $5 or more at Starbucks every weekday, that’s $100 every month that could be repurposed if you made your coffee at home or something on a par with that. Adds up to over $1000/year. For someone making $35000/year, that’s 2.8%. My merit increase last year was about 2.8% although I admit I make a bit more than $35k.
What if you could find one or two other margins to nibble? If you can start chucking $2-3k extra at the principal on your loans each year, they’re going to pay down a hell of a lot faster.
I got myself out of a lot of credit card and car loan debt over a period of about 4 years using a combination of nibbling at margins and big lifestyle changes. The nibbles were the easiest to start, and the quickest to see the impact as I started using that money to pay off my smallest credit card, then the next and the next.
Four years out from there, those margins are the quickest way for me to get out of line and find my pockets empty and in danger of busting my budget.
Imma hit you with some HELAINE OLEN: https://storify.com/reportermike/helaine-olen-on-…
Nothing that Olen says in those tweets strikes me as untrue, but it doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
If you are a person with a crapload of debt and no idea how you’re going to pay it all, you can either make a (series of) change(s) and pay off your debt, or you can continue to stare at the numbers in horror and growing anxiety.
All of that stuff about shifting percentages and profits going to the 1% is 100% true and it is 100% something I have no control over. I have control over the money that I earn. And every day I can engage in wasteful spending that has a cheaper alternative, or I can choose the cheaper alternative (or I can choose to refrain from spending) and send the difference to pay off my debt, or save for retirement, or whatever.
I’m not here to beat the drum about lattes specifically. I’m just saying that all of us except perhaps the very poorest have unexamined regular money sucks that we can sit down and examine and decide to handle differently.
Lattes, lunches out, $10 mixed drinks, lotto tickets on the reg, major soda habit, the current MLM hot thing, any place you have a hole in your wallet. Not exclusive to lattes at all.
My word choice of “awful advice” was strong and I do like how you say it can be something/somewhere to start that is visible and make you feel control, but when we are talking large, large debt or even daily required expenses… I feel like pop financial advice (a la top 10 ways to save toward retirement by shaving off the margins) adds a lot of guilt , takes away from relatively inexpensive pleasures (which can help calm the stress of debt!) and promises big, while making a little dent toward achieving the must-pay (taxes, mortgage, healthcare, groceries). Like you said, if you’re making several of these small changes it may help, but there’s got to be some big change too. I am glad this method helps you control what you can!
And thank you britomartian for this storify! “The Two Income Trap, the problem with our bottom lines was our fixed costs, not our luxuries…by the aughts, @elizabethforma found we were spending 75% of our incomes on housing, healthcare, and education.”
“Adds up to over $1000/year.”
Well, that’s only one student loan payment for me (out of 25 years’ worth), so I take the OP’s point about “nibbling”…
Not that I buy Starbucks coffee, but those kinds of savings really wouldn’t allow me (or a lot of other folks with substantial student loans, medical bills, etc.) to pay down debt faster in any significant way.
Ditto. $11 every three or four weeks for a nice lunch out with friends isn’t going to add up quickly enough to offset the fact that my property tax has gone up each year for the last three years and the last raise I got was 2% five years ago – a raise that was promptly eaten up by changes to how the state covers its employee’s health insurance, so it had no effect on my savings whatsoever.
If you can afford 5 buck drinks at starbucks every weekday, you’re making a heck of a lot more than 35k.
What do I do when I don’t buy stuff at starbucks and bring my lunch from home? Where do I cut then?
I’m of both minds on this. We have to cover some unexpectedly pricey repairs on our very old house and we went through our finances and found that it was so hard to nibble at the margins without destroying the handful of tiny joys (ordering pizza, a few glasses of [box]wine on the weekends, getting the passable coffee from our cafeteria instead of Folgers crystals). Now I feel guilty every time I want to just buy a meal instead of spending Sundays planning and parceling food for the whole week.
OTOH, fuck me, Starbucks is expensive and the overhead on ordering pizza over just frozen is insane. I eat fewer calories and save a lot of money by packing every day and that’s good. I am definitely spending less money with the nibbling and just because student loans are thousands of times larger than a $5 coffee doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be conscientious.
That said – I used to work at a non-profit and the head of my dept. owned two homes[1] (one in an expensive Boston suburb), made 6 figures (as did her husband) and had no financial worries and told the rest of us making barely a living wage for the geographic area that it would be so easy to just drink the free coffee and put that money we would otherwise waste on a trip to Starbucks into our shitty retirement fund with no match. I’m still mad, years later. She might have been right, but when you are barely scraping by, getting advice about austere living from monied titgrislers just makes me want to grab my torch and pitchfork.
[1] We worked for a homeless shelter, making this more twisted.
“titgrislers” is amazing – please explain. Did you make that up?
I hate that standard Starbuck’s advice. No one concerned about money is going to Starbuck’s every day.
If you are doing that and are concerned about money, it’s a pretty easy change to make. But if you’re starting from a place of not buying new clothes hardly ever, rarely eating out, etc. then that kind of advice just reads as frustrating.
For the price of whatever a grande frappuccino with soy costs these days ( I honestly don’t know) I can buy a pound of coffee and drink all the coffee I want all month.
Well, I don’t think he was *trying* to be sympathetic. I had lots of problems with how well he articulated his financial privilege relative to others, but I found his writing about why and how he made poor financial choices to be pretty good.
But then, my biggest problem with it aside from the way that he elided the experience of people with less privilege: he makes it about dick by comparing “financial impotence” to “sexual impotence” which is a bad comparison and also gross. That was what made me most annoyed about it.
Yeah, I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. But in a way I imagine it would be easy for many Atlantic readers to dismiss a similar story from someone who is actually working class/middle class…and they might take this guy seriously because, outwardly, he exhibits the same social status markers they do.
But really my biggest takeaway is, did their daughter know they spent their 401k on her wedding?? Because if I were her and just learned that I’d be HORRIFIED.
Yeah, I wondered about that too! I also found myself wondering if he had talked to his wife about these issues before the article was published, as he specifically says that he hid things from her:
“In any case, with my antediluvian masculine pride at stake, I told her that I could provide for us without her help—another instance of hiding my financial impotence, even from my wife. I kept the books; I kept her in the dark.”
This also made me wonder how gendered the “we don’t talk about it” thing is. He frames it as a male pride thing so much, so…is there a counterpart of female openness about this stuff? Or a racial dimension? The “secrecy” thing is such a big part of his point and I don’t know, but I can easily see, that being a middle class white male cultural thing rather than a middle class cultural thing.
I know that when my husband and I were going through wedding planning, I had to sit him down at point and tell him that he had to be specific about (a) how much money he made and (b) how much he had in savings. And it really was that he had just never shared that information with anyone and it hadn’t occurred to him to share the specifics with me because he was so used to it being a secret. We were able to get on the same page pretty quickly, but it wasn’t a conversation I had expected to need to have.
This x1000. Señor Negroni took a long time to realize he had to be completely forthcoming about exactly how much money he’s bringing home. The biggest fight we ever had BY FAR was when I accidentally discovered he’d taken a 50% cut in pay from a freelancing gig he had but never told me about it because it was the only thing he had going at that moment.
It was such a nightmare. I was trying to figure out what was going on with our spending because I know exactly where our money goes but he’d always be out of cash sooner than he should be and he was cycling into this horrible shame spiral.
We weren’t in any financial stress because I’m financially secure enough for the both of us, but I felt like I was going crazy because if he earns X and spends Y, why doesn’t he have Z leftover?
We got past it, but for a long time after that I had to make sure he brought home what he said he did by actually holding the cash in my hands (our country is a cash society) which was humiliating for everyone, but it was the only way I could feel secure. It was so miserable, and I felt so bad (but also angry) for him.
I was so angry with my boyfriend a few months ago. I’d had a bureaucratic snafu with my food benefits after my unemployment ran out, and was living on dry toast and rice and beans for a solid month (we live together but cook food for ourselves) AFTER which I discovered he was sitting on a thousand dollars in savings.
WAT
I was raised in an upper-middle class white family and as an adult (woman) have dropped considerably in means. I still know almost nothing about my immediate family’s finances and as a child was explicitly told if asked to answer with something vague like “we don’t want for anything” or “we get by.” until I was almost in college I didn’t even know what my father did for a living.
Yeah, I definitely grew up with it being vague until FAFSA time, too, though unlike the guy in this article my parents at least had the “we’re not doing great this year so we can’t do X or buy Y” conversation with me when needed. It’s still difficult to get my mom to tell me specifics about what “I’m doing ok, I want to help pay for your wedding, but not TOO much, because I’m not doing GREAT” means.
But I think of some of the conversations I have with female friends about our worries and insecurities, and how okay we are with admitting that stuff to each other…it’s not money specifics, but that culture of “we’re doing FINE” isn’t there.
Yeah, I definitely think it was just originally a belief that Money is Private and we shall not speak of it, but given what little I know of more recent stuff, I also think there’s a layer of “it’s not your problem, we will deal with it” highly linked to the fact that my parents both grew up poor, moved up in class, and were determined to provide better for their kids, only to fall back slightly again. They are still both very reluctant to give specifics.
My current set is all grad school scroungers, and we’re much more open in spite of throwing ourselves at the same pots of money.
This is one of those things that makes me realize that life is a rich tapestry. I come from a long line of oversharers and blabbermouths and I honestly cannot conceive of a world in which I didn’t know what my parents did for a living. I’m pretty sure that anyone who runs into my dad at the grocery store will find out what he does for a living, not to mention his knee problems and his mother’s maiden name.
I suspect that it’s weird, even for the area and general demographic. Dad went to an office and did things with computers, ok? It was not until my mother was switching back to full-time work after doing the stay-at-home/part-time thing that I had this conversation (my parents were in the same field and met at a previous job). _(ツ)_/¯ My family is also pretty shit at communication generally, though, other than my mother’s tendency to gossip. [anecdotes of unnecessary awkwardness and dramatic reveals]
THIS IS ME. I still don’t know what my dad does for a living!
Holy shit, if my parents did that I would freak the fuck out. There’s no way she knew because if she did she wouldn’t have gone through with the wedding, right?
Which makes me think– it’s one thing to keep hush about your finances in general social settings, but I don’t think it’s normal to keep your immediate family in the dark. Is it? I feel like I usually know when my parents (and aunts and cousins and close friends) are low on cash.
OMG seriously. I would NEVER let my parents do that.
Also, this guy just needs to learn to say no. I mean, it’s great that his kids went to good schools. Yay! But “No, mom, you can’t use your savings to pay for my kids’ schools; they can take out loans or go to cheaper schools.”
Put on your own oxygen mask first, or your kids are going to be draining themselves to pay for your nursing home and this whole cycle is just going to replicate.
Not to pile on that guy. I have strong feelings about it because I myself live in terror of this kind of situation. In fact I just sent my husband this article saying in all caps LET’S NOT BE LIKE THIS.
Okay, so I’m currently in the middle of wedding planning, and I feel like this author could have been my dad. Not literally – we live in the midwest, not the Hamptons, and I’m definitely not a Rhodes scholar.
But, I do know my dad has liquidated his retirement savings before for things they felt they had to pay for and yet had not budgeted or saved in advance to be capable of paying for (a kitchen reno, sister’s college, regular vacations). My parents have direly mismanaged their savings due to aspirational living. They both grew up genuinely poor, and I think that warped a lot of their expectations and also is part of why they seem not to know basic tenets of personal finance.
Last week my dad gave me a 10K receipt for my wedding. I know he has cried about his finances and considered bankruptcy in the last year. It is absurd. But good luck trying to tell your father – who conflates financial power with his masculinity and worth as a human- that you are declining him the opportunity to contribute.
I actually tried to say “no, thank you”, and he went to my bank and talked the teller into providing him with my checking account number and then directly transferred the money to me.
So I’ve secretly put it in a low risk investment which I’m contributing too. I’ve titled the account “Parents”, because I’ve basically given up hope that they are ever going to be able to properly manage their money and are probably going to be dependent on me at some point in the future. I’m paying for the wedding myself, letting them believe they are paying for it, and may or may not reveal that I just invested the money for them if I think it will make it easier for them to accept help later.
It’s awful. I wish I could count on them to manage their own finances, but I can’t.
tl;dr you might know when parents are low on cash but that doesn’t mean you can make them act more responsibly with their money.
I… know I’m kind of missing the point here but I’m stuck on what bank teller discloses your account number to someone without asking you for permission. That’s just such a bad idea on so many levels.
That is such a smart and generous plan! Your parents are so lucky that you are so understanding. My husband is going through a similar thing with his parents now — after frittering away a fortune, his parents are now living off of the money they put in trust years ago for their grandchildren’s education but have made very few adjustments to their lavish lifestyle — and there is a ton of resentment and hard feelings on all sides.
Very normal in my family. My parents have loosened up a tiny bit in the last few years (…I’m 32) but still don’t like to talk hard numbers. It’s some sort of holdover thing where talking about money is seen as shameful if you have less than the people around you and braggy if you have more.
Weirdly, my parents are EXTREMELY financially responsible and organized. I wish they had been more open about money, because I feel like those skills didn’t pass along to me.
+1 to your last paragraph.
Your entire post is me, even down to my parents being much more financially responsible than I am. This came up the other day when I was visiting them, because my mom doesn’t have her own computer and occasionally this is an inconvenience to her, but she doesn’t feel that she works outside of the house enough to justify the expense. And I was like, “Wait, you guys keep offering to pay for my grad school, how is the cost of a laptop this big a deal?” But the reality, I think – I can’t be sure, because I have no idea what their finances actually are – is that my parents were able to put me and my brother through college and occasionally take us on a nice family trip because they NEVER go “eh, it’s only $200, no big deal.” And that’s something i’m not able to do with any consistency. I often buy the thing I think I need because hey, it doesn’t cost that much in the grand scheme of things, and then I have no savings.
Yeah my parents were always really upfront when we were kids about “no you cannot have that because we cannot afford it” even though I grew up upper middle class surrounded by the super wealthy. Clearly my parents did not feel the “pressure to be silent” that haunting_of mentioned. The idea that money stuff would be a secret even within the immediate unit is very weird to me too.
Same here. But ONLY within the nuclear family. I was brought up with my parents telling me don’t share financial info outside as otherwise people will look to you for money. I still stick to that – although I know if any close family really needed money we’d be there. My parents are I guess solidly middle class but thanks to inheritance and a few stellar investing choices they are very comfortable.
Sadly, my in laws are definitely of the “spend beyond your means” type. They have basically no retirement savings although they are both over 65 and they at least talk like the dad is/was a pretty high earner, and the first holiday meal I had with them they expressed the importance of children taking care of their parents, and I was like “yeah good luck with that.” Of course his mom also said that “with my job she didn’t see how I could ever get married” and I was like, dude, I’m stepping your son up several economic rungs, if our genders had been reversed you’d be down on your knees begging me to marry your offspring.
So, uh, the article really struck a personal chord with me…
My family doesn’t really talk about finances. I didn’t know how much my parents made until I saw a tax form by accident one year – I was probably in college or close to it. I don’t think I’ve ever told them how much I make either, and they definitely don’t know my partner’s salary. I do know a little, now, years after the fact, about how much my mom inherited from my grandfather and what they hope it will do before I inherit it.
My mom dragged me to her financial planner once and then got mad when I didn’t want to talk specifics with her in the room, and I was just like “…what did you expect, this is how we’ve always been.” Joke’s on me though, since apparently she was going to give me money to invest with the financial planner, until I pissed her off. Which I wouldn’t have done if she had TOLD ME WHY WE WERE GOING.
I’m about 90% convinced that the built-in schadenfreude is a feature, not a bug, and is designed (consciously or otherwise) to reinforce the idea that it’s almost always the broke person’s fault. I know lots of people that would have trouble scraping together $400, and at least a few that would have trouble with $40, and it’s not because they felt that their kids had to go to high-ticket schools instead of, say, a flagship state university.
Yeah honestly that’s the immediate reaction I had, which is why it bothered me so much. I am relatively well-off although not wealthy, but I also made lots of savings decisions as opposed to spending decisions, and the first thought I had was, if this dude is representative of middle class people who are living paycheck to paycheck, I have zero sympathy for them. Doing some more research and talking to some friends about what their monthly expenses are for things like childcare and student loans was really eye-opening and I feel like it gave me a much better sense of what things are like for people in, uh, realityland.
To me, there are points where I’m like, “ahhh don’t send them to private college!!” and “don’t cash out that 401K!!” and “have an honest conversation with your wife!!!” but overall I think he lays out what it is to make decisions that are bad in hindsight but seem reasonable in the moment — I mean, once you’ve made the idiotic decision to be a freelance writer, the rest sort of naturally follows. (I am a freelance writer.) Yeah, New York is expensive … but that’s where the industry is. (I can say my career has certainly suffered because I refuse to live in New York.) The real estate and tax factors truly do suck. And I think his point was that if even a few bad-but-mostly-understandable decisions can put his family on such a poor footing, what does that mean for everyone worse off?
Obviously he wants to have his cake and eat it too (Send your kid to Stanford and have emergency savings? Yeah, right), but I think it’s interesting how many of his worst decisions were in service of the kids. It sounds like they cut to the bone so they could have the stay-at-home parent, the private schools, the wedding, the hope of security for the next generation. That whole aspect of it could have been explored a lot more, I thought. What does it mean when you’re gambling your financial security on the hope that your kids will make it into the tiny slice of people who aren’t drowning in debt or living paycheck-to-paycheck? In a time of stagnant wages, is that a sucker bet?
I don’t think it’s a bad decision to be a freelance writer (I’m sure you don’t either)… 🙂 I just feel like, ok, you made a few decisions that lessened your economic security in hindsight (career choice, living in NY, private school) and then just kept compounding them in an effort to keep up with the Joneses – after those first few decisions it’s not just hindsight anymore, it’s bad foresight too!
Oh, I do think it’s a bad decision, no joke! I like to think I’m in it with eyes wide open about the earnings potential, and it felt like the best option at the time, but I could be kicking myself in the future. Anyway, I think you’re 100% right that he needed a good old-fashioned financial Come to Jesus earlier and that many of his problems could have been avoided, but that’s why I think a deeper exploration of why he made the choices he did would have been interesting. Like, we’re all sort of bumbling through life and financial decisions, some better than others, but I think his point about how hard it can be to tell the difference between doubling down on a bad choice and pushing through a rough spot is a good one.
I keep coming back to this paragraph: “In a 2010 report titled “Middle Class in America,” the U.S. Commerce Department defined that class less by its position on the economic scale than by its aspirations: homeownership, a car for each adult, health security, a college education for each child, retirement security, and a family vacation each year. By that standard, my wife and I do not live anywhere near a middle-class life, even though I earn what would generally be considered a middle-class income or better. A 2014 analysis by USA Today concluded that the American dream, defined by factors that generally corresponded to the Commerce Department’s middle-class benchmarks, would require an income of just more than $130,000 a year for an average family of four. Median family income in 2014 was roughly half that.”
This definition feels very outdated to me. My parents could have checked all those boxes, and their income when they were working was, I think, about the same number of dollars as my household’s now. But I feel like health and retirement security, despite my job with good benefits, are terrifying and out of my control. Homeownership is a distant maybe…overall that list of aspirations feels like something I could pick one or two from, and don’t even necessarily want all of. I think I’m middle class, maybe even upper-middle, but I see that definition and I’m like…that person is doing extremely well.
I’m seeing it from a generational standpoint but I’m sure it doesn’t resonate with folks from other cultures, financial backgrounds, etc….in different ways. I guess what I’m saying is while this article is making great points, it’s still based on this concept of a middle-class life that I’m skeptical was ever universal to begin with, much less post-2008.
It seems like a lot of those things would vary a lot by geography too. For example, if you live somewhere like suburban Texas where a car per adult is pretty much a necessity and real estate prices put homeownership within more people’s reach than it is for people in a big city, then those aspirations make more sense. If you live in NYC, you have to make WAY more if you want to own a car and a home.
Yeah, it’s VERY different in various parts of the country.
I’ve spent most of my life in the Rust Belt, in low-cost-of-living cities with lots of housing stock and declining populations. Around here, houses are quite affordable, and buying is often comparable to (or significantly cheaper than!) renting.
So it’s a lot easier to Adult here, if home-ownership is part of your definition.
I thought it was an interesting article. The woe-is-me stuff got on my nerves, but the actual statistics he cites, about how few families actually have any type of substantial funds laid by for an emergency, are pretty compelling.
I also think there’s definitely a generational shift in terms of one’s expected career trajectory. It seems to be a lot less “get a job in your chosen industry, advance along a predictable hierarchy, possibly even within the same company, make more money once you’ve risen high enough in the ranks” and more “get whatever job you can, industry-hop if you have to, accept that financial security and an eventual higher payscale are no longer things that can be taken for granted.”
That article is like a good article and a bad article in one. Everything other than the personal narrative is super solid and well done but I agree: no sympathy for the author. I thought “rich people are also poor” only worked in the Times style section.
Or on the campaign trail.
Look! A sick finance burn! http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bills/…
Sorry to drag us OT yet again, but I have a job interview in a hour at a video production company and I’m quite nervous and really, really, want the job.
I’m hoping they turn out to be as good as I think, and that its a real company (they’re very small and not much online about them) and that they like me enough to invest in training me in video production.
*deep breaths*
gooood luuuuuck!
*fingers crossed* good luck!
Good luck !!!!! I know you will be awesome. I hope they are equally awesome.
Toasties give me such self belief! Thanks guys!
Thanks! It went really well, I think, I was done in 20 minutes though! Dunno if that’s a good sign or not!
I had the same thing-20 minutes! They only had 5 questions though. Thanks for making me feel more normal. Good luck!
Did you get the job?
These guys are really small so there wasn’t much talking about the company which I guess is what normally fills up the time?
I’ll find out in a week or so!
Fingers crossed! I hope you get it!
My current company is me plus 2 people, and if I remember correctly my interview was around that length.
I think with small companies they just don’t have the time to spend on lengthy interviews. They have shit to get done.
How do you find working in such a small place? This place would just be me and the two co-founder if I get the job, this is their first official permanent hire!
I’ve worked in tiny teams before, but not in a office/professional type job; my current place is about 150 people! I think it will be alright, but then I’m wondering about all the systems and processes I use everyday that they probably don’t have! Like HR and such, who’s going to process all that crap?
I personally like it because it’s relatively low-stress and I enjoy the stability (prior to this I was working for only 1 guy and he was kinda nuts). And of course the people themselves are a factor. My bosses are pretty mellow and treat me well, and they leave me to my own devices a lot of the time, which suits my personality.
It’s probably much more of a culture shock coming from a larger company. They might not even have HR at the smaller company. My dad was asking me when I was going to have a performance review, and I told him, “I see them and interact with them every day and if they need to give me feedback, they give it to me on the spot. There’s no need for a review.” I would imagine at a larger company there’s a lot more distance between you and the higher-ups.
That’s cool, I like the idea of working closely with them and not having to do formal reviews and development plans (they are such bullshit. At least in my current company)
But then I wonder how they do time sheets and billing and tracking time if they don’t have a report engine! I’m sure they have something in place, and it’s the kind of stuff I might ask about in a 2nd interview, if I get one!
Go in and win!
Best of luck!!
Have to read links later (snowboarders LOL), am finally reading Ron Chernow’s Hamilton bio in between doing actual work. Related to that, realized I cannot in fact listen to “Hamilton” while reading about Hamilton without losing track of the timelines.
So true. Also, try giving tours at Hamilton’s actual house while listening to the album.
Generally I have no issue with forgetting the actual history and substituting the musical, but talking about Eliza makes me think of the finale and then I almost cry in the middle of my lecture and it’s reeeeeally embarrassing.
I was puddling up at my desk the first time I heard the OST all the way through. And my boss walked up with a question (luckily, she knows about my obsession).
You work at the Grange? I’m hoping to visit when I’m in New York this summer!
I do! I just volunteer on Sundays, though. Please come by! Just take the A/C/E to 145th street, and we’re right at 141st and Convent Ave. Big yellow house, you can’t miss it! 😉
I finished reading it on Sunday. The timelines are really different! That book definitely made me want to read more about that period of history, or to at least read Chernow’s biography of Washington.
snow sports advocacy group OH GOD SHUT UP let the skiers have some place to go that isn’t overrun with snowboarders who don’t know what they’re doing and plow into you at top speed because they haven’t learned how to stop yet and/or don’t care
(okay maybe I am a little biased, but I have been hit more times by unruly snowboarders than literally anything else on a mountain, and I am the girl who once stopped the entire lift at Mount Snow because I fell on the ramp)
NO THIS IS GOSPEL, APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING
Snowboarders are NOTORIOUS for cutting you off and running you over (in the US). Also, if you are a Northeast skiier, snowboarders are notorious for destroying any powderlike substance available so that you end up skiing entirely on ice, which…can be done, but isn’t exactly ideal when you are not an expert skiier.
I went skiing in Klosters for a day and the snowboarders were nowhere to be found. Perhaps the Swiss locked them up for being R U D E.
Destroying the snow is actually SUCH AN ISSUE. We’d talk about mountain conditions like “this area should’ve been good, but it was very skied-off” and then we’d side-eye the snowboarders and hope they felt at least a little shame. (They didn’t.)
#truth. Learn how to turn snowboarders!
Way back when, mid 80s, when you started seeing snowboarders on the hill, I belonged to a ski club. It was mostly a social club, but there were about 50-100 members that would go on ski trips. Sometimes they’d set up the flags for races, and you’d find someone that was close to your skill level and race against them. Damn, that was fun.
Anyway, one time there was a mix-up, and whoever was organizing had double-booked us and a snowboarder group. After a bit of discussion, it was decided the skiers would go first. I think we had arranged it earlier. Well, you wanna see vicious! The boarders were incensed because the skiers would ruin the course. As we were waiting in line for our turn, they stood there beside us screaming, yes, screaming, and swearing at us, and some were spitting on the ground in front of us.
SAME. In my experience as a relatively novice skier, snowboarders are the ones who will run into you at top speed and knock you on your ass with your poles and your hat spread all over the mountain, and skiers are the ones who will stop to help you and make sure you’re okay.
As a former ski lift operator (the best of times, the worst of times) I can assure you that most operators don’t mind stopping the lift to help a lady skier out. (Although I do admit to just dragging someone out of the way if there were biggish gaps between chairs, some days the line’s gotta keep moving).
I can also assure you that depending on the size of the flail, you were laughed at HARD behind closed freezing doors.
Snowboarders are the WORRRRSSTTTTTTT. I can’t count how many times I’ve been cut off, knocked over, or had to make quick evasive maneuvers because snowboarders think they can do whatever they want. UGH and then they sit or lay down in the middle of the g-d slope and block the way. I just hate them, all of them.
Did folks see @XLNB’s barbershop story on twitter this week? https://twitter.com/xlnb/status/72170482841033114… Make sure you click on allll the gifs.
I’m still thinking about this Slate article about maps and truthtelling and obfuscation about the CDC, UN and cholera epidemic in Haiti. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/f…
Lastly – I’ve been a Stephanie Nolan fan for years – she’s a foreign correspondent with the Globe and Mail – she wrote about the ongoing search for the 43 missing students in Mexico; and it’s place in the larger context of disappearances and government inaction/collusion http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/unforgo… ref>
Thank you; that @XLNB story is the Iliad of hairstyling. Love! Betrayal! Revenge!
That barbershop story is amazing. AMAZING.
I want to know what Deron was even thinking! Like, was he thinking? You don’t date a service provider’s ex, let alone bring them with you to get something done.
The twist in the middle when it turns out the good guy is the bad guy! But the bad guy-who-isn’t still broke the code of honor!
Really truly everything. Plus gifs.
That slate article about cholera and Haiti, and the cdc covering up for the U.N., I feel like ten years ago it would have been big news, and now it’s just not surprising at all.
Edit: and I’m sad and distressed about that
I watched the whole of The West Wing a year ago, when I was on maternity leave, and there’s at least one excruciating conversation along the lines of
“who do we need to talk to to get the black voters?”
“Oh, you need X’s endorsement, so you’ll have to talk to him about what he wants.”
“so that will be [superficial list of “black” issues]?”
“yup”.
It was almost word-for-word the kind of conversation Eli and Peter have in The Good Wife, except that the point of The Good Wife is that everything Eli and Peter do is incredibly cynical and gross, and usually the point of The West Wing is that everything that Bartlett and his administration does is noble and amazing (except when they very obviously have to make Hard Decisions or understandable mistakes.) I genuinely couldn’t work out whether it was Aaron Sorking having an uncharacteristically cynical moment, or whether he thought that was a perfectly reasonable way to talk about black voters, and I’m still not sure but I think it’s the latter.
he gets into some more questions about race in Studio 60 that make me think that it is almost definitely the latter — that he kind of thinks that “black stuff” is something that black people get worked up about but it’s otherwise not really important and/or a distraction to the serious business of (in West Wing) politics or (in Studio 60) comedy.
In the West Wing (only aware of this because am in the middle of watching it for the first time), he does at various points have black characters bring up the futility of thinking of black voters as a block/criticizing the white characters for talking about Black Issues as the only things black voters care about, so he doesn’t always miss the mark. (Not that Sorkin isn’t a clueless dweeboid, I think he often is, but it’s interesting to see him miss the mark in addition to the occasional flashes of insight.)
my favorite part about Studio 60 is that it was about Saturday Night Live, but with the exact same level of seriousness and stakes as the West Wing.
Your little brother is STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN!!!!
Aaron Sorkin has only ever had One Show, to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
What. Kind. Of. Day. Has. It. Been.
There’s always a Dan or a Danny.
This SO MUCH.
Also, it honestly seemed really obnoxious to me with so much of the posturing relating to 9/11, because I at least fall into the category of respecting the 2001 SNL cast, and all the late night hosts based in New York, for speaking honestly about how hard and confusing this was, and then committing to doing their jobs and hoping any little bit of enjoyment they provided was solace, and part of them doing their bit for the city, as compared to the incredibly self-absorbed teeth-gnashing Artiste Angst of whatever his name was.
Also, the appalling sexism of the one episode where the two male actors, including 12 year old Corddry, have to “explain” to Harriet that Maxim is trying to EXPLOIT her by having her pose in a bikini, as if a woman simultaneously managing a mainstream and Christian-entertainment career wouldn’t have any concept of Madonna/whore imagery or how to level/control her own image.)
(Then again, the extent to which Sorkin wasted the brilliant Sarah Paulson by making her wishy-washy, having no idea how to write non-fundamentalist Christian (even if he did fine with Bartlett before) and generally forcing her into idiot plots so his Matthew Perry alter ego could be right, is practically criminal–even Ryan Murphy at his schlockiest does better by her.)
I still have a lot of feelings about this!
Oh, Aaron Sorkin, why? I am very fond of so much of the West Wing, but his handling of some topics is just painful. (Isaac & Ishmael, obviously, but I just rewatched The Indians in the Lobby and felt very uncomfortable.)
I have made a rule to limit how often I re-watch West Wing because sometimes I just get so mad. As we get better and better tv actually capable of nuance and having multiple women characters and people of color*, the WW seems more and more dated, plus we see more and more of Sorkins disgusting world view the more often he opens his big yap.
The one that hit me recently is the one where Sam tells Ainsely that she’d make a good dog break his leash. Another woman in the office objects and Sam spends his time polling people to prove that it wasn’t harassment. Which by the way, IS HARASSMENT. He creates a hostile work environment after his coworker experiences his comment as sexist. Harassment includes when someone else overhears you say something inappropriate that the recipient doesn’t mind! I mean I thought it was icky, but after 8 years of an annual harassment training at my job, I can tell you for sure, that’s fucking harassment. That lady should sue them hard.
*(I recently found out the only reason Dule Hill was hired for WW was because of protests of how white the tv season was that year from NAACP, and Sorkin put a little jab about a casting call that really comes off snarky once you know that. Ughhhhh/ aka the less things change the more they are exactly the same)
aah your breakdown of West Wing v. Good Wife is so correct, and the reason why I prefer the Good Wife (and wish that they would do a crossover episode in which CJ makes an appearance because she deserves to exist in the world of the Good Wife).
omg that would be amazing. CJ and Diane bonding about Back In The Day!
There is at least one fanfic in existence which involves CJ and Malcolm Tucker being friends who bond over their shared experience as a press secretary/spin doctor, but as I have yet to watch The Thick of It I have only skimmed it.
LINK PLEASE
http://archiveofourown.org/works/104059
I loved the first episode of “The Thick of It”, but I had to stop watching because the hand-held shaky camera was giving me motion sickness. 🙁
Damnit, this reduces my desire to watch In the Thick of It.
SO CORRECT
Sorkin writes many things well, and I really enjoy the West Wing. But he suffers from “Great Liberal Intellectual White Man Syndrome” like NO OTHER. Look no further than the “America used to be a great country but isn’t anymore” rant from Jeff Daniels character on the Newsroom.
Sorkin’s approach to politics is basically, “We used to be INTELLECTUAL. We used to be STATESMEN. We used to have JOURNALISM, not entertainment news. We used to be the Great White Hope of the World! We used to be STRAIGHT WHITE MEN!” It’s so easy to be caught up in the lovely writing and the idea of brilliant people solving the worlds problems that you forget he means paternalistic white dudes mansplaining everything and running the world.
“We used to build skyscrapers. Now there are Kardashians.”
(Edited to change Kardassians to Kardashians. Totally different rant.)
“ATTENTION BAJORAN WORKERS!!”
Now I’m thinking about a threesome with Bashir and Garak.
It’s uh not a bad mental image if you’re into that sort of thing.
Uh NO why would you think that
(drifts off into reverie)
We most certainly did not use the term socialite until this century, with Paris Hilton.
When the Kardashians first hit the scene, I always ALWAYS thought of this. 🙂
Listen here, Internet Girl: everything wrong with the world is a woman. If we could bother ourselves to pick up a newspaper once in a while we would have figured this out by now.
I already had issues with Sorkin before, but Hey Internet Girl was when I got a subscription.
for me that shifted my feelings about him from “beloved figure with some problems” to “ugh, that guy.” I still love West Wing and Sports Night though.
That fucking Jeff Daniels Newsroom speech! Whenever someone I’m friends with on Facebook shares it, I pretty much immediately unfriend them. “Things used to be so much better (for me)! America was once the greatest country (for me)! Stuff is changing and that is bad (for me)!” FUCKING NOPE.
I always reply with a really long rant. THANK YOU SO MUCH, LIBERAL WHITE MAN! Your fb post about how America used to be so great is SO FUCKING INSPIRING
I hate-watched the first season of that show and it was so awful I felt embarrassed for the actors. It was like a Republican’s fantasy of how liberals see themselves.
YES! It was awful, riddled with logical holes, condescending, and generally gross–and OF COURSE it was set up to shame a dumb girl, because students in the masters program for journalism at Northwestern are notoriously simplistic an d naive thinkers. :grrrrrr:
A good tweet on this topic: https://twitter.com/MartinBelam/status/7206429841…
Then there’s that whole scene in “The Crackpots and These Women” (I think?) where Bartlet’s extolling the virtues of the women on staff and it’s supposed to be charming and complimentary but instead just comes off as, “aw, aren’t the girls so cute, trying to politics?”
That scene really rubs me up the wrong way, particularly Josh talking about how he wants to spend time with his friends and “these women” – what, are these women not counted as your friends, Josh? What even is this?
The new podcast West Wing Weekly just got to tCaTW this week, and while the show is mostly an Aaron Sorkin fanclub meeting, even these folks got to that bit and basically talked about how…. that bit was just inexcusably terrible. And that if it had just been Bartlet and Leo, it could have been played as an “old boys club set in their ways” kind of deal, but because Josh joined them and didn’t challenge it even slightly……. it… just… was…. terrible.
“We used to care about our neighbors, except when those neighbors were POC and/or poor and/or women. God, those were the days.”
This is slightly tangential to the general discussion on this thread (much of which I agree with) but there’s a new West Wing podcast! It’s called the West Wing Weekly and Josh Malina and Hrishi Hirway (he does the Song Exploder podcast). They’re starting from Season 1 episode 1 and it’s been fun so far. Dule´ Hill was their first guest and he was great. If you’re a fan and haven’t watched in a while — or you’re just starting it for the first time — it’s a lot of fun.
Everyone please read this NY Times opinion piece by Cokie Roberts about how Eliza Hamilton deserves to be on the $10 bill more than A. Ham because he was a shitty dad-
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/opinion/the-ham…
“Elizabeth would be better than her cheating, selfish husband, Alexander”. GO IN, COKIE!
BEST OF WIVES AND BEST OF WOMEN <3
I don’t mind keeping A. Ham but I am all for Eliza love!
I think it makes sense to keep A. Ham but it kind of made me laugh to see this article in the newspaper this morning. Cokie is clearly not a fan of the recent Hamilton craze.
If we’re going to keep men off of the money because they are cheaters or shitty dads there will be precious few men on the money. (Not a bad idea)
I think this piece is a little shallow. YES, Alexander Hamilton was a little shit in so many ways. He cheated on his wife (maybe more than once), he definitely was super hypocritical (he was on a committee to abolish dueling after his son’s Philip’s death, and then he goaded Aaron Burr into a duel), and he was the most stubborn man in history.
I would really hesitate to call him a bad father, though. The Hamiltons had eight children (well, seven at a time. Poor Philip), and he was a remarkably involved and loving father, at least from the evidence we have. He would individually write his children when they were away at boarding school, and brag to his friends about how smart they were. He and Eliza also split up many of the parenting duties; there were times when Eliza visited upstate with the younger half, and the older half of the kids stayed downtown with Alexander.
Maybe he wasn’t the best husband, but he wasn’t a bad father. I would blame Burr just as much for leaving Hamilton’s widow and children fatherless, because he obviously intended to kill Hamilton in a duel (http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/aaron-burrs-target-practice) in which it was rare for either party to be killed.
Yes! I just finished the Chernow biography, and there was a touching description of him sleeping with one of his little kids in his arms the night before the duel. I definitely got the impression that he was a good father, especially for the time.
And fatherhood is all well and good but – nobody’s on our money for being virtuous at home. Jefferson was presumably a fairly crap husband, Franklin, I love the guy but he sounds like a dick…. Would anyone but Lincoln really get to keep his status?
Grant definitely would! Washington was a solid husband as far as I know, and Jefferson was pretty dedicated to Martha although of course he doesn’t meet a “virtuous at home” standard that includes anything more than that.
It has been so long since I saw a $50 I honestly couldn’t recall who was on it! And yes i was on the internet but declined to look it up, I know, I know. (Agree w Washington, afaik an upstanding fellow.)
Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates talked me into a certain fondness for Grant and now I always feel a little miffed about how he gets remembered as a bad president and a drunk. It’s anti-reconstruction propaganda! Dude saved the country!
I like it! Also okay now that I’m home and actually looked at the list, FDR would stay I think (?), JFK was not a good husband and would be cut – and Lincoln is actually on a coin and a bill and how did I not know that in an active way! I feel like I’ve noticed before (as a child, probably) but – he has two denominations! That is twice as many as anyone else! He wasn’t twice the father of any other, surely, if that’s our new criterion now..,..
FDR was a big philanderer. That was also a complicated marriage, what with Eleanor writing love letters to Lorena Hickok, so–well, tricky waters to wade into, and others are much better qualified to do so than I.
Washington has two denominations too, he’s on the quarter! Jefferson technically has two as well but you don’t really see two-dollar bills anymore.
Sorry but I just have to stir this up, especially after the LR the other day with the anti-anti-slavery tourist:
Thomas J was so dedicated to Martha that when she died he repeatedly raped and abused her unacknowledged half sister.
Yeah I mean, maybe I was too coy about that in the second half of my comment, but the Toast is very WITH IT about Jefferson’s sins, I’m not too worried I’ll accidentally convince people to like him. I was just responding to the assumption that he was a crappy husband.
The only important thing about this recent development is that PIECE OF CANINE EXCREMENT Andrew Jackson is not going to be on money anymore and GOOD.
If the musical Hamilton has revived enough of a passion for Alexander Hamilton that the treasury decided to put a woman on the $20 instead of the $10, I also find that kind of cool in a government imitating culture kind of way. I’m all for Eliza being on the $10, too. Best case scenario is Renee Elise Goldsberry being on the $10, but that is just too much to hope for.
HE DIDN’T EVEN LIKE PAPER MONEY. Ok, I mean, he was really into the gold standard, which is not exactly the same thing, but still, he rolled over in his grave when he got put on our currency. Andrew Jackson can go pound sand.
How many times can I like this? Andrew Jackson was a terrible person and a terrible president and he does not belong on our money.
I enjoyed this take from Alexandra Petri: http://wpo.st/r1nV1
especially “This is correct! Well done!”
Do we actually know that the Treasury has made its decision? It seems like it’s been leaked that there will be an announcement, but the announcement hasn’t been made yet, if I’m not mistaken?
Her closing was great and too true!
“Besides, with current ticket prices, the $10 bill is the only opportunity most people will have to see Hamilton. To remove him from that too would have been too cruel.”
I think they just decided Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill?
I just saw a link saying that posted elsewhere!
I just saw that on my local news website!
Friend of my roommate once applied to a job, got an interview, didn’t get the job. Walked into work the next day and his boss immediately called him in. The person he interviewed with, AFTER DECIDING NOT TO HIRE THIS DUDE, had called his boss to inform him that one of his employees was looking for other jobs. Just as a “heads up.” Luckily his boss was pretty understanding, but still WTF.
yeah bosses are terrible by their nature and should be destroyed
Nightmare city.
Once upon a time, at the Christmas party afterparty with my coworkers at my last shitty minimum wage food service job, I excitedly confided in some of them that the reason I was taking the next day off was to go out of town to interview for my (current, excellent) job. Because yay! Major exciting life news!
And yeah, one of them went and told the owner. Who, when all was said and done, gave me a hug and wished me the best, but I did take enormous pleasure in freezing out that awful coworker for the rest of my time there, and also doing a subpar job whenever she asked me to make her a sandwich.
See, class solidarity is great when it’s between bosses.
Some non-Toast readers who happen upon the Toast:
“So I don’t think you learned to much”
“I don’t want to sleep with a cartoon fox!”
“That’s not how monks talk!”
Remember that guy who was so mad about all of the facts that Mallory had learned about crows?
“What? Crows don’t roll into a giant ball at night at all, what are you talking about!?!?”
Wasn’t there a disappointed entomologist once who had to educate us about moths or something?
Oh yeah! He did NOT appreciate Mallory’s misinformation on the subject of moths!
BEES DO NOT HAVE SEX MALLORY.
But they DO signify royalty. #jupiterascending
Bees don’t lie!!
“But X literally IS a dirtbag! You hardly had to change anything!”
“Dick in a Box is not the most romantic Christmas song.”
“Texting was not invented before modern times.”
“Once more on Slut Road, I see.”
Yup, ridin’ shiny and chrome down the Slut Road, on the way to the Thunderdome *wiggles eyebrows*
may we all arrive at the gates of Sluthalla, shiny and chrome.
I just kind of translate all of them into their basic form, which is:
“I neither understand nor appreciate irony.”
Bless their hearts. 😉
Oh, yes, I forgot the best one! “Is this supposed to be ironic?”
For those who love a little dishy advice column action, Lainey (LaineyGossip.com) and her friend/advice columnist friend Sasha, have turned the column into a half-hour podcast, which is such a better format for their style. They cover three reader questions per episode, and it’s just a no-holds-barred session that I’ve come to look forward to every week. You can listen to it on her website, or through iTunes. (This sounds like I work for them, but I’m just a super nosy fan!)
Oh, hey fellow LG fan! I’ve been reading LaineyGossip for yeeeeeeears. I love her mildly academic approach to celebrity gossip. It’s like getting a glimpse behind The Great Oz’s curtain of PR and mass media manipulation tactics!
Hillary and her hot sauce is making me grumpy. A writer on another site said it well: just run your race, but don’t pretend you’d answer “hot sauce” if the same question were asked in Iowa or New Hampshire.
Now I’m off to make some scrambled eggs….with KETCHUP, thank you very much. This African-American is Midwestern born and raised.
Shouldn’t that be ranch? Are you really midwestern, or are you just pandering? 😉
As a Kentuckian expat, ketchup is in fact the only proper condiment to put on eggs. Ranch sounds like a southerner thing.
Look, I’m from Iowa, but that’s disgusting. Eggs get hot sauce on them, damn it. Tabasco if it’s all you’ve got, but preferably Tapatio or Cholula. Sambal oelek, which I just got turned on to a few years ago, is also acceptable.
Laoganma’s black bean chile oil is my favorite. The spicy chile crisp is good too but I keep overdosing it.
Cholulaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I recently became obsessed with Cholulua’s Chili Garlic variety, only to discover it’s only sold in one little local grocery store and they’re ALWAYS OUT. I’ve seriously considered buying it online.
I am all about El Yucateco, preferably the green kind.
I put cholula on all the things (all the things that aren’t sweet or aren’t better suited for sriracha anyway). I am also a member of a the hot-sauce-in-my-purse club and I promise I am not pandering to anyone when I say that, there are just too few restaurants that offer cholula and it makes all the things better. That is all.
*vom* Noooooooo no no no no if I add anything to my scrambled eggs besides the butter I cook them in, it will be salsa (ideally mango salsa, ohhhhhh yes); but really they’re Done Right with onions and turmeric!
Salsa on scrambled eggs FOREVER. I will die on this hill.
I will be right there beside you on it.
I will be right there next to you on that hill, adding strips of fried torilla and black beans, because I like a hearty breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Or snack.
Scrambled eggs + cheese. No sauce of any sort required. (
The thing I miss most about my stomach’s rejection of tomatoes is ketchup on eggs. Please enjoy extra for me.
I am Midwestern, and I have a growing tendency to put Frank’s hot sauce on everything. I’ve even been adding it to my ketchup at home.
Tabasco, Crystal, and Louisiana are also good. Not a Sriracha fan.
That being said: the H. Clinton hot sauce remark was dumb and ketchup and scrambled eggs is serious comfort food.
Between the resurgence of that old Toast post and the new season of Kimmy Schmidt, I’m so glad that fox Robin Hood is getting the recognition he deserves. He is animated, he is a fox, and he is sexy, and it doesn’t have to make sense to be 100000% true.
it doesn’t have to make sense to be 100000% true
Word. I haven’t read anything as wrong as the deleted comment in a while. Crooked smiles and fox Robin Hood are all any woman wants, that is undeniable factual information and anyone who cannot accept that reality is wrong.
Sister in law and I bonded over the sexiness of Fox Robin Hood the first time we met circa 2005, so I too feel this is way overdue.
MY FIRST CRUSH AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS
That entrance is a #lifegoal tbh.
My first crush was Lt. Cmdr. Data. My second was foxy Robin Hood.
I wanted to marry fox Robin Hood, but I also wanted to *be* fox Robin Hood. (Ditto for Han Solo, really. It wasn’t until later that I truly appreciated the excellence of Leah, because patriarchy.)
Between Robin Hood and Simba I maintain that Disney deliberately drew them like attractive men/boys from the 90s.
One of the best examples has got to be that one lion from Lion King 2.
I’m blanking on the name, but it was the tortured soul guy. You know what I’m talking about.
I told my friend he looked like him and he was just like,
I LOOK LIKE WHAT?
*cough also Kovu cough*
Simba was too white bread for me, I was for sure a kovu girl.
Well I mean Simba was voiced by Jonathan Taylor-Tomas, who was THE preteen heartthrob of the era.
I’d forgotten this!!!
Robin Hood was released in 1973 and his attractiveness is timeless.
I remember at some point Buzzfeed had a question on a quiz that was “hottest Disney dad”, and you bet I picked Mufasa.
Also, MUFASA.
“That voice? & how he didn’t wear pants?”
Is this the time to confess my number 1 Disney animated crush? For a long time it was foxy Robin Hood (where he still maintains a strong second ranking). Number one is Clopin from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He’s the minstrel who sings the opening theme and here’s why he’s the Disney love of my life: 1. THAT VOICE (seriously, go listen and tell me you don’t get goosebumps when he hits the high note. Much better than nanny goat vibrato guy voicing the actual hunchback). 2. Athletic and flexible. Dude is an acrobat on top of that singing voice. 3. Fiercely loyal to his friends and fellow traveler outcasts
I know Hunchback has all sorts of other problems but damn Clopin my man!
You get it
I think lots of people are just naturally into tricksters.
Casting Tom HIddleston as Loki was basically perfect.
My lab is getting a new vessel (hopefully within the next 2 weeks but I’m not holding my breath). Its official name will just be numbers but yeah, definitely making my coworkers call it Boaty McBoatface.
Since Boaty McBoatface I have struggled to understand how anything with a name chosen by the public came to be named anything normal.
Sensible name-this-thing contest runners who don’t want silly names weed out the silly names before the voting stage, and don’t publish them until after the official name has been chosen and announced.
Picture when it happens, please!
The name printed on the boat will be a string of numbers, I’ll just call it Boaty McBoatface informally. I don’t want to step on the NERC’s toes. (And also there’s no way the person who actually makes these decisions would go for it!)
I have to confess being a little disappointed that your new vessel is an actual boat, mostly because I saw “lab vessel” and was excited you were getting a new Erlenmeyer flask or a distillation apparatus or something and naming it Boaty McBoatface.
Um, carry on. Congratulations on your new boat!
My immediate assumption was that a dog was getting a new body. I don’t know what that says about me.
What are the chances of a small bit of paper taped to the prow for a photo op?
There’s probably a boat parked out back right now…
from the first sentence i thought your dog was getting his own boat and I got really excited
ME TOO. I’m here for independent dogs captaining themselves into the wild, wild oceans (or lakes or rivers or estuaries).
Sandy Hook truthers: I am torn between thinking these are just pure monsters v. definitely very mentally ill people that need help. I mean someone doing something that fucked up is definitely very mentally ill….but I still don’t actually want to help them? My bleeding heart is confused.
“I mean someone doing something that fucked up is definitely very mentally ill”
TBH I don’t like the notion that being an awful harasser is a definitive sign of mental illness. Maybe this guy is mentally ill, but this reinforces the notion that People Who Do Bad Things must be mentally ill, which further stigmatizes mental illness. People without mental illnesses are incredibly shitty to other people all the time.
True! Certainly so many lovely people who might have some mental illness of some sort. Also there are monsters with mental illness– and I think anyone who obsessively deals with something to the extent of a truther might qualify as one? Either way– should we help them? I think yes though I want to say no?
If they are mentally ill, then they should absolutely be helped by the appropriate mental health services (which are not as numerous or as well-resourced as they ought to be, I know). The general public is not obliged to reach out to these individuals or to have to give a statement of intent about whether they would in X situation.
I think it’s okay to be angry with them without worrying or speculating over their mental health. Their harmful actions are enough.
Yes to this! I understand the impulse to want to explain why people do horrible things, but mental illness is not an answer or an explanation.
Some people just chose to be awful human beings.
I spent way longer than anyone should doing academic research on conspiracy theorists. A majority of the Sandy Hook/Boston Marathon Bombing/Insert Tragedy Here never happened and was staged by the government school are just dicks. Plain and simple. Hateful, paranoid dicks.
Whenever I got done with their message boards I wanted to dip myself in bleach.
you can be both
Has anyone read anything by the actual researchers who have designed or will be working on Boaty McBoatface? I really hope they are enjoying the joke, but I keep worrying in case they feel hurt and like they’re not being taken seriously.
I know the librarian at the Polar Research Institute, who seems quite happy about it! As he will not have anything to do with the boat itself, this can probably be discounted, though.
(Actually, now I think about it, you know his partner!)
WHAT? Well, now I am thinking of people whose partner is a librarian – is it I, who is a lawyer?
That’s the one!
Also, apparently I meant the British Antarctic Survey, but yes, he works for the organisation whose ship it technically is.
Perhaps some of them are fans of The Culture and will enjoy working on an advanced vessel with a silly name.
Ok, in my new headcanon there is definitely a Culture ship named Boaty McBoatface.
there’s probably a whole class of Culture ships like Spacey McSpaceface
According to Wikipedia, there is a GCU Pure Big Mad Boat Man.
There was also a Trainy McTrainface, albeit only briefly.
I cannot give this comment enough thumbs up.
If they’re like most researchers I know, they have Very Little Gravitas Indeed.
(Fuck, why am I not reading a Culture book RIGHT NOW? Unacceptable.)
Matter is finally available in Kindle form so I bought it about an hour ago.
I’ve been saving Excession for when I really need it someday.
I think a Culture ship name would be more like GCU This Ship’s Name Has Been Changed by the Government
If their bosses were smart, they would be investigating licensing opportunities for a range of educational Boaty McBoatface books, toys, and an animated series for kids.
I would spend good money on that line.
Oh deleted commenter, honey, you’re only lying to yourself.
“This is BS, I do NOT want to sleep with a sexy cartoon fox thank you very much, I mean a regular cartoon fox whose voice is garbage and not sexy AT ALL YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME.”
RIGHT???
This might be the first time one of my comments has elicited a CleverManka gif and it could NOT be better.
Oo-de-lally indeed.
Definitely the most classic case of ‘the lady doth protest to(o) much’.
The Carol Kaye article is great, thank you!
Also, the documentary mentioned, The Wrecking Crew is similarly wonderful and should be seen by all, preferably the same weekend as Love and Mercy.
Strongly seconding the The Wrecking Crew being wonderful.
Thirding!
I want to cradle that deleted commenter to my bosom and protect her from The Internet, and humour.
Also this: The boarders alleged they were being irrationally discriminated against and deserved protection under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which historically has been used in cases involving discrimination based on race, gender or sexual orientation is some CLASSIC shade from the Salt Lake Tribune.
THIS IS SO SATISFYING: http://usuncut.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-blas…
It really was.
so glorious.
FOR REAL. I tweeted “Can Elizabeth Warren take Curt Schilling to task next?” and immediately some dudebro that I’ve never seen before replied “for what?” Took a look at his profile, and he’d tweeted in support of Schilling and his dumb transphobic business, and said out loud to myself NOPE, NOT ENGAGING, DUDE.
One of my very last acts as a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was to vote. Specifically, to vote for Elizabeth Warren. I delayed completion of the move to join my spouse until I had done my part to make possible the gift that is Senator Warren.
All USian Toastfriends, you’re welcome.
You have my undying gratitude.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
That picture of Nicole’s dog and cat really does speak a 1,000 words.
Sansa: Oh, I do wish she’d play ball with me.
Cat (to Nicole): Is this f-ing dog serious?
I want more Sansa/ Nicole’s Cat interaction stories.
A very nice picture of Susan B. Anthony’s gravestone that had me tearing up a little.
I’m tearing up just seeing the link to it. I really hope that at some point there will be a genuine acknowledgement of the big milestone Hillary is achieving. (edited for my crappy grammar).
I hope that if/when she gets elected at least then we’ll all feel a little freer to do that.
I’m not crying at my desk, YOU’RE crying at your desk
The parts of this I can verify are certainly true.
I saw this last night, and just. broke. down. And it was my birthday & was all full of cupcakes & joy (relief?) of HRC winning my district and then, o, my heart. It’s like a gratitude practice, you know?
omg why did this make me tear up so much? this is so sweet and lovely.
Yes! Jessamyn West, librarian supreme and MetaFilter moderator emeritus (emerita?).
I keep seeing this all over and as a native Rochesterian, all I can think of is the last time I visited Mount Hope Cemetery and there was something like “please do not place rocks or other objects on the gravestones” on their map. But someone to whom I mentioned this sent me a link from Smithsonian saying that the staff really like the stickers, as it shows engagement with historical legacies? The historian and former archival assistant in me is conflicted.
The compulsive rule follower in me is glad that other people are a more willing to disobey posted signs and do this beautiful thing.
I don’t know if I’d have it in me.
Huh. As another former museum worker/ compulsive rule-follower, I admit I was wondering about the adhesive stuff in the stickers, but I never heard the thing about rocks.
Placing rocks on top of gravestones is a common Jewish tradition, and we always do that with my grandparents’ stones. They’re buried in Mount Hope. (It’s a very lovely spot! I grew up across the street from there).
When I wait in line to vote, I often feel the presence of all the people who agitated for enfranchising those of us who are not white male landowners. I have to blink very hard and think about other things, because I don’t have the faintest idea how I’d explain to people near me in line why I’m crying.
The sad thing is I’m not even surprised at that snowboarder thing. It’s just got #Snowboarder written all over it.
I recently skied with a boarder and he was so unbearable that I rented a board the next time we went up, made a big deal out of it being my first time snowboarding in 7 years, and (through sheer force of will) boarded way better than him and just tore him apart.
Probably the proudest and pettiest moment of my entire life.
That is amazing and I thank you for it.
You’re doing the lord’s work, GoatlessSon.
!!!!!!!! To have been a fly on that mountain. Go you!
Urrrrrghhhhh, that sweet sweet pettiness. SO GOOD.
kudos to you
(I loved their argument that there’s discrimination against “the type of people […] believed to be ‘snowboarders.’ because my first thought was …white fourteen-year old dudes? definitely a protected class then!)
Obama’s record on deportation and immigration is really disgraceful and should get much more attention.
For further reading: http://fusion.net/story/252637/obama-has-deported…
Oh man, how many of the comments on that AAM post are about the person asking if their coworkers should chip in for the candy bowl, because that is my favorite kind of internet argument. Everyone has beliefs, and they are often diametrically opposed and strongly held, but it’s over something entirely trivial.
ETA: “It’s a classic example of the tragedy of the commons.” YESSSSSS
see also: every discussion about weddings ever.
See, that’s less fun to me, because the people involved are often dealing with:
– families
– tradition
– religion, sometimes
– societal pressure and expectations
So it makes sense that emotions run high and feelings are strong and can get hurt.
The candy dish? It’s a bowl! Of candy!
OR they could be me inexplicably in tears over a bad manicure two days before my wedding. I don’t even care that much about my nails, which are noticeably visible in approximately 0% of all photos taken of me, AND YET. Boy did I care at the time. Weddings, man. They really do a number on you.
My problem re: candy dishes is that I will compulsively eat any candy/free food around me. I am currently eating waffle cones neat because for some reason they requisitioned three boxes of cones but no ice cream.
Also: waffle cones are delicious.
“waffle cones: neat” sounds so classy.
Candy is totally a Very Serious Issue.
In our office, there are extremely complex, naturally grown, informal rules regulating who gets sweets from whom, who fills up which bowl, and whose interdepartmental birthday cake is being barred from exactly one person by devious means. You could track the movement of sweets here and accurately deduct everybody’s affiliations, friendship, and current work load. Horrible tragedies develop over the distribution of sweets, wars are being fought, wonderful friendships forged.
Or maybe we’re just a bunch of 12-year-olds.
One of the good parts about working in a tech office: there’s a shit ton of constantly replenished snacks. It’s a post-snack-scarcity society without conflict! Well, except when management makes even the tiniest change in available snacks…..
This is true of my office until the summer interns shows up
When they stopped buying certain sodas and instead starting buying different sodas in my office. HOO BOY.
My old office did Friday bagels, and the order was so convoluted and the demands so ridiculous we ended up with an SOP. For bagels.
There you go. Sweets: Important.
Question that’s more of an OT question but WHATEVER.
Seeking thoughts on Couples Counseling?
A year and a half ago, my lifepartner did some dumb stuff, then there was a lot of health stuff going on, we haven’t really talked it through, despite repeated requests from me. Partner suggested some form of couples counseling. I’m not opposed, I’m just worried that the process of trying to find a science-based poly-experienced queer-friendly therapist with an opening we can make is going to be a difficult task, and is going to be used to kick this can yet further down the road.
Thoughts?
Worst. Diversionary. Tactic. Ever.
Speaking only from personal experience, so YMMV. But. I think in my situation, both of us conflict-avoidant-types were sort of hoping that agreeing to couples counseling would allow us to duck present-tense fights. Instead now we have bimonthly sessions where we HAVE to fight, on schedule, in order to get our money’s worth! It’s been super-useful, albeit painful AF. Our therapist seems great, but fundamentally I think it had more to do with respect for the amount of money we were spending than therapeutic rapport.
Part of me wonders if we should take some larger-than-is-quite-comfortable-but-not-ruinous amount of money each (week/every other week/etc) that we would otherwise spend on a professional, and unless we sit down and talk about stuff formally, that money gets contributed to some cause we disapprove of. That way we get the benefit of the structure and not wanting to waste the money, but we don’t have to FIND someone.
Oh, interesting! It could certainly be a great strategy as you’re looking for someone!
My mind is blown. This is a potentially life-changing strategy. (In general I am a big fan of the DO THIS THING or else the money goes to hateful things modus operandi, and I’m kicking myself for not ever envisioning it could be applied to this.)
I am a big fan of weekly state of the community conversations with anyone I’m living with, romantically involved or no. There are things for which I think a neutral third party is helpful, but scheduling and honoring the time to talk and listen to each other is the bigger portion, in my experience.
It really depends! (I know, helpful.)
When my husband and I were getting married, counseling was mandatory, but it didn’t have to be religious in nature. We live in a big Midwestern city, and I found that we could get scaled counseling from a program at a local university, and paid $5 a session for a grad student counselor to work with us on better communication. We ended up learning so much from it that we spent a whole year working with her (a year that turned out to be pretty bumpy actually), and got a lot out of it, and got separate therapists for ourselves as well. It was/is science-based (despite being affiliated with a Catholic university), and we’ve gotten no judgment whatsoever for a) discussions of (possible) polyamory b) ambivalence and painful wrestling with religion or c) queerness. And when my partner was having issues this year, our counselors held a joint session for us so that I could try to communicate better with him.
What I’m saying is that it is possible! But it’s a lot easier and faster to find someone if you have access to a sliding scale program like that. Do you live in a city with a university?
We do live near plenty of colleges/universities, this may be helpful, thanks!
In terms of finding someone… if you go on Psychology Today, you can sort therapists by zip code, and then by speciality (and that includes, poly or queer friendly, as well as many other things). I’m in a huge city so I was lucky to have options to choose from when I was looking for a therapist who could deal with my own niche needs, but I highly recommend searching on there. Most therapists will write a bit about themselves on their profile and mention things like what you’ve said above. (And if you by any chance happen to not be near a major city and it’s harder to find options, I know many therapists offer skype sessions now if you think that is at all workable for you guys).
I wish you luck and that you find someone who works for you and is available to see you guys soon 🙂
I did a veeeerry quick search, and it looks to me like there’s someone worth emailing that is very close to where i live! We live close enough to a big city that it’s an option, but it would be so so so so convenient if we didn’t have to go all the way in the city.
I think to echo some other thoughts here, it may take a while but it very well could be worth it. My partner and I found a counselor we trust and feel open with, but it did take a few ‘dates.’ Do you have an EAP or something for a few free visits? Or talk over the phone with prospective counselors and ask if they have experience with queer and/or poly couples? Our counselor specifically listed queer friendly on her areas of speciality – which was a bonus to me, non-queer person because it indicated her general qualifications to offer advice at all.
O ye gods and little demons, there is a link within the Boaty McBoatface article (which is truly great, ty) to a Wiki article about a human what died having sex with a horse. AND I CANNOT CLICK BECAUSE WORK. Regrets. I has them.
oh man sometimes I forget that there’s whole new generations on the internet now
sit on my knee, youngun, while I tell you the tale of Mr. Hands
Right?! I mean, maybe it’s because I live in Oregon so I was geographically close to the epicenter of the case, but this whole deal is VERY COMMON KNOWLEDGE in my area. They made a freakin’ movie about it (Zoo)!!! Does this mean people don’t understand your user name? Are there people in the world now who haven’t tricked/been tricked by their friends into seeing Goatse?!
I read somewhere that goatse is now a site promoting BitCoin or something.
I don’t know if it’s true, because it’s not like I’m actually going to check, you know? But it’s a rumour I saw somewhere.
!!!
I feel in my heart of hearts that this rumor is just another level of trickery designed to get the too-curious-for-their-own-good to go to that website and see the original again. One last troll from beyond the meme grave.
Right? My reaction is about one part “huh, what an interesting and unexpected change,” and eight parts “HAHA CAN’T FOOL ME THAT EASY.”
idk about that but lemonparty got domain-jacked by the libertarians a while ago
bahahaha… ahh, all the old classics. Cannot unsee.
the day that weird gross porn(?) no longer becomes peoples’ formative experience of the internet is that day that I will no longer understand these goddamn kids anymore
I object! I am fully an Old have been on the Internets since it existed; my first “surf” involved everyone piling into the car to go to the university where my dad worked because that was the only place in town with an Internet connection. The boy who broke my heart insisted I get my first email address in 1996. I just was clearly in different parts of the internet.
But I mean. I will still sit on your knee, if you like 😉
wait… there’s a segment of the population who know neither of Goatse nor Mr. Hands?! what blessedly sweet and unsullied lives some lead.
OH MY GOD last week i was sitting next to a coworker on the couch and he had a word document open that was entitled ‘Horse Fuckers’. i betrayed myself by making a noise when i looked at his screen and he quickly closed it.
Oh NOOOOO!!!!! Then what happened?!?
I definitely saw an article recently–maybe on NY Mag?–that was an in-depth interview with a guy who is sexually attracted to horses. It was weirdly fascinating in an “oh noooooooooo” way, but I am not googling it at work so you will have to find it yourselves.
I saw a really fascinating write-up about a dude what had (he claims) been seduced by a dolphin. The best part of the interview was when he was like “I was expecting the doc maker to be all judgy and grossed out about it, but he was really compassionate”. It made me really want to watch the documentary.
She knocks on my door at random times to have brief conversations. She’s also frequently upset about something I did or didn’t do, or something I didn’t anticipate she would need…How do I respectfully sever ties without ending our friendship?
Best gif. Right click, open, bookmark.
Right?? It doesn’t sound like this person likes her roommate at all (and…for good reason), so why make an effort to be friends? I think when people say “I don’t want to end the friendship” what they really mean is more like “I don’t want to be friends with this person, but I don’t want to make anyone mad at or upset with me, or hurt anyone’s feelings”. Which is understandable, but, you know, you can’t have it both ways.
No, I think she said they were friends before moving in together, and it turned out to be a mistake. And as someone who has done that (and who is still, 20+ years later, friends with that person), I completely get how you would want to stop sharing a living space with someone who is, in all other respects, your sister from a different family, without burning bridges.
That happened to me too. Tried living with my best friend from high school. It was a disaster. But we’re still friends!
Yeah also the dog thing was shitty. I would definitely peace out if a roommate took my dog away from me at the last minute (so to speak).
But I also get that someone can be an alright friend, but bad roommate. It’s all about compatibility.
At my last job my managers would routinely get calls from places where current employees had submitted applications, and also would make such calls themselves. Just to ask some questions about the person before even interviewing them. It made it very uncomfortable for us to look for jobs, and generally sucked.
How is this not against the law?
I have no idea. At that job my manager was very involved in the local professional groups, so if we got an application she probably knew at least one of the applicant’s current or former managers and had their contact info. It was all very gossipy.
Of all things professional, it seems to me that HR is universally understood to be the most confidential category. This not extending to applicants seems like a massive ethical oversight.
Ruth Graham at Slate called the Craigslist feminist tutor poster, and if we thought it was hilariously bad yesterday, it’s actually really much worse:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/04/20/t…
Oh. Em. Gee. Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.
I’m so glad you shared this, because I was about to. This is madness.
Yeah, I don’t even have words. Also turns out Lyz Lenz was working on the story for Daily Dot at the same time – which she and Ruth are now talking about on Twitter. http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/craigslist-femi…
what the actual fuck, holy shit
So the whole ad is a bizarre trap to get feminists to unknowingly engage with a known MRA guy? Did he get to lazy to troll Jezebel like other MRAs? I for one hope his laziness keeps him from bothering people on the internet for awhile.
That became horrifying very quickly. Anyone want to join me under the bed?
oh noooooooooooooooo
Re: the person whose employer was contacted.
Years ago I had a terrible job at a terrible company which did all the signs for the Big Local University. I wanted to leave pretty much the second day I worked there, and after 4 months I got an interview with the Big Local University. One of the members of the hiring committee turned out to be the person who placed orders with the terrible company through me. I had no way of knowing this, of course. I had never even met this woman before.
Well, she told my boss I had interviewed, and the next day, I was fired. And I didn’t get the job.
Oh. My. God. Was the terrible company just a terrible place to work or was it bad at making signs as well? So the woman thought you were incompetent?
What ended up happening? Did you find a new job?
It was a terrible place to work, at the height of the recession no less, so the managers worked hard to make sure we knew how lucky we were to be employed at all. Highlights include having a 4-day/10-hour schedule, but being judged harshly for not also coming in on the 5th day; never being allowed to talk to my coworkers (if we had questions for each other, we were to leave notes in our various inboxes and wait for a response); my supervisor deliberately sabotaging my work; getting yelled at for writing a purchase order incorrectly, having no idea the correct quantities were written on the back of a receipt I didn’t see until I got in trouble for said PO; and being scolded for daring to take my lunch break.
I don’t know what that woman thought of me. I think perhaps she was the incompetent one.
I ended up bouncing around the temp world for a year or so (this was in 2008, so finding full-time work was nigh on impossible), but eventually I found a decent job and stayed there for three years before going back to school.
The terrible company is still in existence and I still see them hanging around Big Local University from time to time and it takes a LOT of willpower not to let the air out of their truck tires.
Oof. Thanks for sharing. I’m glad you got out of there and got on to what sounds like a better path!
(PS – I didn’t write very clearly. I just meant to suggest that maybe if your terrible company wasn’t very good at making signs, maybe the university woman thought you were incompetent by association. Not that you actually were! I don’t know if you read it that way but I just wanted to clarify.)
I am so impressed at how close the dog and the cat are getting. They are on the very cusp of either furtive snuggles or a Garfield/Odie-style rivalry of Dog Annoying Cat with Friendship and Cat Smacking Dog’s Nose But Kind of Enjoying the Attention.
“Sorry I ANNOYED you with my FRIENDSHIP.”
I was actually so relieved by the fox Robin Hood posts because I thought I was the only one.
This is fascinating (to me anyway): http://www.whitenessproject.org/millennials/
Definitely don’t have time to delve into this at work, but thanks. I feel like this could be fascinating and edifying (and also maybe maddening)
Yeah, it is all of those things.
“Oh Robin, You’re so brave and impetuous!”
Maid Marian nailed it.
Impetuosity is one of the sexiest qualities. Is Fox Robin Hood kind of a male equivalent of manic pixie dream girl?
I’ve always felt that #10 is the Manic Pixie Dream Doctor, so it’s definitely A Thing.
Does anyone else remember those obnoxious ‘skateboarding is not a crime’ t-shirts from the 90s? There was a boy in my neighbourhood who had one and used to go on rants about discrimination against skaters like it was the civil rights issue of our time. I ran into him when we were in our early 20s and he had gone full Ayn Rand conservative.
http://xkcd.com/172/
There truly is an xkcd for every occasion.
Oh god bless!
Yep, story checks out with the local punk scene: frustrated suburbanites teens are now middle-aged suburbanites, having learned NOTHING in the interim. Especially not what “fascism” means. Or how someone stating that your favourite band has some problematic aspects is not actually a personal attack and MAYBE your rape threats are a little bit overboard there, sir.
Makes a girl want to turn to the EDM scene instead. *sigh*
This is Dirtbag Ethics Professor to a tee.
He and my Dirtbag Ethics Professor from last fall may be one and the same. He has got to be fortyish now and was going on about the gall of the government in making his small children wear safety gear while boarding. Also that one time someone threatened to call the cops cause he trespassed on their property to catch some sweet boarding action with his straightedge Christian boarder buddies. (idk what slang was used, I blocked it.)
So discriminated against yo.
ahahahahahahahahahahaaaa THIS GUY http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-coded-…
So I started reading because I love mysterious inscriptions and old writing systems and the non-Han history of southern China, and gritted my teeth as it took a turn for the insufferable-white-guy-Indiana-Jones-complex, and was rewarded for my fortitude as the writer turned on him to point out the shittiness of Westerners obsessing over “lost” civilizations YESSSSSSS
I’m pretty intrigued by non-Han histories of China as well! Do you have any recommendations of articles or books?
Unfortunately my interest is hampered (and probably exacerbated, tbh) by how little information seems to be available on the subject, so most of what I know comes from late-night Wikipedia sessions and various unsourceable things I learned while living in Yunnan. Any history of Yunnan province is a good place to start, I think– the Han weren’t able to wipe out local cultures there as thoroughly as they did elsewhere, and a fair amount have actually survived, even if they’re weirdly fetishized now.
Also go to Yunnan it’s unspeakably gorgeous
No, that makes total sense! I mean, my own interest is partly due to my own Wikipedia sessions on Viet Nam (wiki is maybe the least obnoxious) and learning that there’s a high probability that Vietnamese folks were/are a splinter group of the Yue people in what’s now China who just rolled out and started their own country. Really interesting stuff, and it kind of blows up the Western conceptualization of China (and East Asia) being one homogenous mass, culturally, historically, and otherwise.
Thanks for that – this guy indeed. The picture of him in a turban made me physically cringe. Also him and Joseph Needham swanning around their Cambridge house in Chinese or Egyptian clothes, like at what point do you realise you are a parody of yourself?
Seriously, dude.
This is how I feel when I find weird shit buried in my back yard. EVERYONE, LOOK AT THIS! Oh, wait, it’s just trash or something a kid left out in the rain, or a squirrel dug out of a garbage can 20 years ago.
Aaron Sorkin may be becoming ever more obnoxious by the day, but never was “No rich young white guy has ever gotten anywhere with me by comparing himself to Rosa Parks,” more apropos.
“I don’t think anyone ever really felt that [Carol] was a woman-woman,” says Hal Blaine, which probably passed for respect at the time.
ugggghhhhh
but that said, I can basically feel the author rolling her eyes as she wrote the latter half of that sentence, which makes me happy.
Ragnar says sometimes it is better to sleep.
(I wish I were sleeping right now; spring allergies are killing me softly.)
RAGNAR! <3
<3
My allergy head and napping dog are 100% with you.
Your dog is so snuggable.
Me too on the allergies. Why can’t the city just shut down and let everyone sleep on the days it’s especially bad (answer: because lately that’s been LOTS of the days).
Carol Kaye AND Thelonious Monk in one link roundup!? What did I do to deserve this blessing?
I think that not only should Boaty McBoatface live and prosper, but she should be staffed by sweater wearing goat kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa17JE8JkIA
There is also the good news that a racehorse in Australia is now named Horsey Mchorseface
Toasties, how do you forget or at least diminish the effects of reading or seeing something horrifying? I foolishly read something very upsetting just before bed last night and so didn’t sleep a wink. Usually I’m OK with ‘true crime’ type stuff but I can tell this one’s going to stick with me for a while. Pictures of kittens aren’t really doing it this time.
Maybe watching something lighthearted? A movie (Austen movies would be where I’d go but YMMV) or a fun show like the Great British Bake Off?
GBBO is a GREAT idea. Thank you!
I second this emotion. I’d go with a half-hour comedy show of some kind: Parks and Rec, Archer, Brooklyn 99.
I use the same technique as with other unhealthy/unhelpful scripts that run on loop in my head:
– try to notice them
– switch topics/tunes immediately
– repeat ad nauseum
Eventually the noticing and switching starts to happen faster, and then the occurences decrease.
obsess over upsetting thing
“Oh hai there. I don’t want to dwell on this.”
“I’m going to think about plans for my garden instead”
“How many kinds of kale are too many?” (spoiler: no such thing)
If something is big/really upsetting or it’s the middle of the night – sometimes I need help with the topic switching. I might read/watch a movie; listen to a podcast.
*big hugs*
Thank you so much, that’s really helpful! <3
I am currently using this strategy to avoid thinking about surgery tomorrow, and it works great. My distraction is studying for my second A+ cert exam, so it’s also soothing test anxiety. Highly recommend!
link to the article for the curious?
But also, my strategies: crying. watching a cute sitcom on netflix. copious amounts of chocolate. talking about it with a friend. going for a walk in the lovely spring weather (if you have lovely spring weather).
I deal with this because my job involves reading about grisly murders, looking at crime scene and autopsy photos, etc. I have found that reading is the best way because it takes my whole brain in a way that watching TV/doing other normally soothing things does not. I also meditate to clear my mind, but that takes practice. Cool trick if you can do it. Good luck.
Wow, that must take a lot of strength. Thank you!
I’m sorry, I am dying to know what it is you read. Like the book/article, you don’t have to dredge up the specifics.
It was a recent-ish Newsweek article about Michelle Knight and her years of imprisonment, I’d rather not google again but it should be easily findable.
I throw myself into something else–exercise, work, cleaning, anything that either requires my full attention or puts my focus back on my body. And when I’m done I make sure to have a specific task lined up. Disclaimer: this doesn’t really help my insomnia but at least it feels less terrible…
I’ve had this sort of problem for as long as I can remember so I’ve developed coping mechanisms that help. When the bad image/thought enters my head I start by blasting it out by thinking of a word over and over again and focus on an image of something good, like my dog. Then I will go through a recipe I know by heart and picture each step and say in my head what I’m doing when.
Two nights ago I was having issues at 2 am so I went through the recipe for chicken pot pie and fell back asleep before it was out of my mind oven. Sometimes I go through making something else (like sewing a wallet or getting my loom set up to weave) or I’ll remember a good trip day by day, memory by memory. The combination of both thinking about sound and images (supposedly) can also help you fall asleep (which is why counting sheep is a thing).
I love the idea of going through a recipe. Thank you!
Fantastic advice.
I use the advice from this article, mostly because it was the first Google result for “how to stop thinking about something”.
Short version: First, remind yourself that not thinking about something is hard, and so you shouldn’t beat yourself up when you accidentally think about it. Second, make a specific plan for what you will do when you think about the thing by accident. The article says “If the thought comes, then I will ignore it” can be enough of a plan, but it also suggests more specific plans.
I’m so sorry. I wish I had better advice, but what I do when I have intrusive thoughts is to do something like work on a crossword puzzle or play Tetris on my phone — something that requires me to focus really hard on it, but where the outcome or my performance is unimportant.
This sometimes happens to me and I’ve found that getting it out of my system helps some. A good method is discussing it with someone who won’t be as upset but will be sympathetic about why it’s upsetting.
A great bonus with the Boaty McBoatface piece is that all the related pieces on the bottom are about / have in the headline “Boaty McBoatface”
Someone retweeted a French article about it yesterday: “L’affaire Boaty McBoatface”.
You have given me great joy with that fact, and for this, I thank you
Seconded <3
That sounds like an early They Might Be Giants album.
Boaty McBoatface has given me indescribable joy.
Also, someday there will be a spaceship called Spacey McSpaceface, I just KNOW in my heart that this is true.
I can’t remember the last time I went “holy shit, she did that? And that?” as much as I did with that Carol Kaye article. I’ll see if I can get ahold of that Wrecking Crew documentary, but apparently Kaye had some objections to it. For some reason, just looking at that one picture, I imagined a biographical movie with Kate McKinnon in the lead role. (Yes, flavor of the month, but still.)
The Wrecking Crew is on Netflix! Not sure what objections she had to it, but she comes off like a total badass in it.
Noooo, Victoria Wood has died. Here, have The Ballad of Barry and Frieda:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNU5KVa_Tu8
I was just coming to see if anyone had posted that! I am so sad and may have to go and get a women’s weekly for commemorative purposes.
I am totally unashamed to say I had a very misty-eyed episode at my desk earlier about this, and am still sad.
Can’t get this one out of my head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThtTrfF0QVk
Here’s hoping she gets to keep coming back…
I watched Victoria on VHS for a shockingly large proportion of my childhood and had never seen this one, so thank you for sharing!
As someone who grew up near a ski resort, can confirm that snowboarders might be the worst humans on the planet.
I snowboard and I’m so second handedly embarrassed. Just go to one of the many, many other places and have a nice time! It’ll be more fun than a court case, I’m sure of it!
And why would you even *want* to go to a ski resort as a snowboarder?
Maybe it’s because I’m terrible at snowboarding, but the one time I went to a primarily-ski resort, it was awful. Full of flat, narrow bits and moguls. I’d imagine a skiing-only resort would have the same issues. Resorts aimed at snowboarders or a mix of both are way more fun. It’s really ok to have some things that aren’t *for* you.
Of course, I’m the sort of boarder who manages to fall over about half the time getting off the lift, but I’ve managed to figure out how to fall off *out of the way* so I don’t hold everyone up.
I’m very forgiving of people who ‘hold everyone up’ etc, because, y’know, it’s sliding down a hill on some bits of wood, the fate of the world isn’t at stake. (Yes, awful dads who yell at their kids for not being perfect first/second/fifth time, this IS supposed to be fun >:| )
On the heels of the Monica Lewinsky article recently in Link RoundUp — this is a really great article reexamining a lot of “scandalous” women from the nineties — definitely opened my eyes a bit!
https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?ur…
That URL contains something that might be your email address. Just a heads up in case it is and you don’t want it to be visible.
Thank you for the article, though, that sounds really eye-opening.
Guys. Guys. I know this isn’t the open thread but I need to share this with you all (I guess as part of our never-ending conversation about the vagaries of men) because I am so BOGGLED.
So I’m talking to this guy I’ve been sort of casually seeing and I suggested that we sit down and talk about what we both want out of a sexual relationship because that’s what you do, right? And he goes “maybe if we have to try this hard, we just don’t have good chemistry,” which puzzled me, so I replied “sex is about communication, isn’t it? Haven’t you ever talked to your sexual partners about what they do and don’t like?”
and he just goes “. . . no?”
Guys. This man has reached adulthood somehow with the idea that you don’t need to communicate with the people you’re sleeping with, because if you have “chemistry” then you’ll just magically know what the other person likes without having to ask.
I . . . I just . . . what?
0______0
Edit to add: you aren’t seeing him again, I take it?
Unfortunately this is VERY common, even among men in their mid to late 30s, I have found!
Yeah, I’m kind of surprised by how surprised people are, haha. <Awkward laugh to replace more appropriate tears>
You would think they would WANT you to be so refreshingly open and communicative about what you want and don’t want! Men are so weird.
They always claim they want that. They’re usually lying.
Ain’t that the goddamn truth. I’m hoping they want specific directions on what I like, they’re hoping that I’m going to tell them how badly I want to do [thing they prefer].
“I want someone who doesn’t make me guess what she’s thinking, and doesn’t play games.”
“God, you’re so bossy and demanding. Where’s the feminine mystery?”
What…how.
oh noooo
No, that doesn’t actually surprise me at all. We definitely get messages from all our pop culture (romance novels, movies) that sex just HAPPENS, there are no displays of people discussing what they want and what suits them better. That isn’t seen as ~romantic~.
Oh definitely, but I was still shocked to hear it coming from 1) someone in their thirties (you’ve had time to figure this out, dude!) and 2) a guy because I tend to associate that kind of cultural message with stuff that’s aimed at women (i.e. romances). There’s probably a fascinating cultural study to be made into what messages men and women get about sex from mass media and how they each internalize it, because it’s definitely. Uh. Well, it’s something.
One of the things that makes me happy, is that in the corners of fanfiction I tend to read the most, there has been more and more discussion among characters about what each character likes and dislikes. And not in a weird preachy kind of way, but in a “this is how real adults chat when they’re hooking up” kind of way. Which shows to me that it’s becoming a more-accepted thing among real people? Or maybe just the kind who read and write fanfiction.
Magical “chemistry” where partners intuit what the other wants or needs is such a terrible ideal. Communication, either in media res or fully clothed sitting on the couch, is one of the best parts of sex and encompasses everything from fully composed sentences with clauses and subclauses to moving a hand into a better position to the appreciative vocalisation. Mister and I had a fully clothed conversation last month and even though we’ve had 15 years to figure out what the other likes, now we know even better and of course, so is the sex.
Sometimes I just feel so bad for straight women.
I’m bisexual, but more and more I find myself thinking that maybe just dating ladies is the way to go.
I have promised myself that if my marriage to my husband ever ends, I am done seeing men forever.
Saaaaame
HAHAHA ME TOO. I mean we’re not married yet, but yeah. If this relationship fails I am specifically going to try and date only women.
(I hope this relationship doesn’t fail, though; I’m rather fond of the guy.)
“If you really loved me I would never have to tell you what I’m thinking or feeling.”
Lots of people believe this, and it never ends well.
“If you really loved me, I wouldn’t have to work at anything.”
“sex is about communication, isn’t it? Haven’t you ever talked to your sexual partners about what they do and don’t like?”
and he just goes “. . . no?”
File under Why They’re Exes.
the WORST is when even after you have that convo, the dude just keeps doing what he was doing beforehand.
Ugh yes and then gets all pissy because you don’t like this thing you explicitly said multiple times you didn’t like.
“But my ex-girlfriend LOVED when I sucked blueberry jam out of her navel!”
(ETA: I am not judging navel-jam-suckers.)
I think this is kind of common. It seems like so many men I’ve encountered are convinced they just know what women want without getting that there’s TONS of variety in what works for different women and just cause you gave the last one you were with orgasms (if you even did, instead of just assuming you did), does not mean you know what to do with everyone else.
It is not the open thread, but I cannot delay in alerting you all that a shelter pup this week had Sansa levels of ear floof.
GORGEOUS
Also, the dog looks so friendly! I want to pet that soft head!
SO friendly. SO chill. SO soft (I straight up whimpered when I pet his head). Was like “why are you running around trying to make me chase a ball? can’t I just sit on your lap? no I do not recognize that I am very big and climbing into your lap is maybe not a great idea”
Aww, chill cuddly dogs are the best!
I am glad I didn’t have to wait until Friday to see that.
That there is one beautiful dog.
A+ Goofy Dog Face!
I think I might need that dog.
Come to san francisco, make him your own.
I firmly believe that this boat’s name should be Boaty McBoatface. Lack of respect for the people’s will must lead to revolution against this tyranny.
I long for the day when my first thought upon reading this has nothing to do with a “contested convention”.
As a member of a different minority of that gets cyclical election pandering, I say: pander harder. I don’t want your lazy-ass, low-effort panders. I want the top shelf pandering. Give it to me. Really sell it. C’mon, you schmucks. Pander.
You know what the good stuff looks like- they could totally pander better if they tried.
Dance! Dance for my amusement!
http://www.askamanager.org/2016/04/my-boss-freake…
Holy crap! Holy crap!!!
Hoooolyyyyy crap.
If we have to live under the patriarchy, can men at least stop making it the babiarchy?
As I was cleaning out my menstrual cup in the sink at work today, I reflected upon one of the underappreciated benefits of working in OB/Gyn, which is that all my coworkers also are OB/Gyn professionals, and so we talk about our periods the way that everyone else talks shop. Even in “mixed company.” You never have to whisper when you ask someone else to check your pants or lab coat for butt-area blood stains. You never have to hide your period-blood products. You can say things like “why is it that every time we have [such-and-such meeting] I have my period?” and your coworker will point out that certain meetings, like many hormonal processes, are indeed cyclical. No one ever makes dumb comments about chocolate, or uses dumb euphemisms for periods (unless they are being intentionally hilarious). Everyone’s offers of help / tampons / small pieces of chocolate / ibuprofen arise from a place of both genuine concern and also quotidian acceptance.
Back in the day, this was also one of the things I loved about working for Planned Parenthood.
i asked a couple Current Coworkers to be personal references for a vague, future job search, and within a week one of them had told my current boss. WHEEEEEE.
Holy crap, what is wrong with people.
HARRIET TUBMAN ON THE TWENTY!
Is it really true?
YESSSSSS IT ISSSSSSS
I can’t believe they were trying to get out of replacing Jackson by putting a woman on the ten instead, I’m not on the Hamiltrain but it is clearly a force for good in the world, SUCK IT JACKSONNN
I’m watching the treasury website for an Official Confirmation but it’s looking likely. <does tiny excited dance at desk>
I was honestly so upset and sad when the plan to replace Hamilton on the $10 was announced, not just because I didn’t want him to go (for hipster cred, I’m gonna note that I’m an OG Hamilfan who didn’t know anything about the musical at this point other than that it existed, which I was in favor of), but because that genocidal fuck Jackson is The Worst and deserved to be thousands of times more gone. So all this is just the best outcome possible, in every way.
(I mean, it would be Actually Perfect if a Cherokee/Creek/Seminole woman supplanted Jackson, but Harriet Tubman is such a fucking badass and she 1000% deserves this)
Jackson IS the worst! And Jackson shut down the national bank causing the PANIC OF 1847. No one knows why they put him on the $20 in the first place!
Hamilton, musical or no musical, Pulitzer or no, devoted fan base or no, LMM or no, invented our money. Especially given his involvement with fighting counterfeiters, I like knowing he’s on the bill most frequently counterfeited!
Yes, getting Harriet Tubman is great and so is rid of Jackson, he was so terrible even by the standards of his time. Except he’s apparently still going to be on the back of the $20, which I’m angry about.
OH MY GOD last week i was sitting next to a coworker on the couch and he had a word document open that was entitled ‘Horse Fuckers’. i betrayed myself by making a noise when i looked at his screen and he quickly closed it.
ETA this was supposed to be in response to the comment about boaty mcboatface but now it just seems like i’m excited about horse fuckers
LOL. If it’s any consolation, I’ll share a related anecdote: my old boyfriend and I used to do a bit sometimes where he would call me a chicken fucker, and I would indignantly say, “I do not have a chicken for my lover!” and he responded by making a chicken sound. The two of us always thought it was hilarious.
I’m not even heterosexual and I like crooked smiles so that comment is wrong
… y’all have a lot of feelings about snowboarders.
so this is how it feels to be on the wrong side of a Toast Stance 😉 (I had no idea snowboarders, as a collective, had this terrible reputation! Oh well!)
My friend and I wanted to name that polar exploration boat “Large Marge the Barge in Charge.”
Love thissss
Aww, chill cuddly dogs are the best!
“Council titgristler” caught my eye in a periodic table of English insults.
Bees don't lie!!
My reaction to Presidential Candidates pandering to non-white voters: hand-mouth fart noises
My reaction to Presidential Candidates pandering to non-white voters: hand-mouth fart noises