Yesterday was Matt and Jaya’s two-year wedding anniversary, so here is a picture of one of their cats.
Why the Roots remake is important:
Many viewers who watched and were affected by the original Roots, like my family was, end up trying to sell the value of sweeping biopics with a simple, “You need to know this. It’s important to know your history.” But often, younger viewers, like my students, push back, earnestly asking, What is the use of it though? What am I supposed to go out and do with it? The Roots remake offers an ideal chance for both sides to revisit the conversation, and for grownups to make a stronger case for learning about difficult historical realities from watching and evaluating major productions like this one, and how transformative consciousness and knowledge can possibly develop from an encounter with it.
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My friend, who is an Arbonne consultant, recently posted this on her Facebook page and I was wondering your thoughts (and the readers’ thoughts) on it:
If your friend sells Avon, try it!
If your friend sells Scentsy, try it!
If your friend sells Tupperware, try it!
If your friend sells Jamberry, try it!
If your friend sells Intimo, try it!
If your friend sells Arbonne, try it!
If your friend sells Juice Plus+, try it!
If your friend sells Mary Kay, try it!
If your friend sells Isagenix, try it!
If your friend sells Bodyshop, try it!
If your friend sells Norwex, try it!
Moral of the story, if my friend owned a restaurant, yes I would eat there! If my friend bought a coffee shop, I’d buy their coffee/tea. If a friend of mine owned a finance company, I would go there! If one of my friends owned a gym, I would train there. At the end of the day when you help a small business owner you’re not only helping them, but you’re also helping put money back into our economy. #SupportYourFriends #networkmarketing #thefutureisonlinebusiness #betterway #helpingothers #workingtogether #team #businessofthe21stcenturyI personally disagree with this sentiment. I don’t think eating a friend’s restaurant is the same as supporting their MLM business. When I eat at a restaurant, my friend doesn’t then ask me if I want to start up my own restaurant business! What are your thoughts?
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I am still reading Rebecca Traister’s long Hillary profile, which is worth your time:
She also edged toward something uglier, harder to talk about. “I think it’s the competition,” she said. “Like, if you do this, there won’t be room for some of us, and that’s not fair.” I pushed her: Did she mean men’s fears that ambitious women would take up space that used to belong exclusively to them? “One hundred percent,” she said, nodding forcefully.
She told a story about the time she and a friend from Wellesley sat for the LSAT at Harvard. “We were in this huge, cavernous room,” she said. “And hundreds of people were taking this test, and there weren’t many women there. This friend and I were waiting for the test to begin, and the young men around us were like, ‘What do you think [you’re] doing? How dare you take a spot from one of us?’ It was just a relentless harangue.” Clinton and her friend were stunned. They’d spent four safe years at a women’s college, where these kinds of gender dynamics didn’t apply.
“I remember one young man said, ‘If you get into law school and I don’t, and I have to go to Vietnam and get killed, it’s your fault.’ ”
“So yeah,” Clinton continued. “That level of visceral … fear, anxiety, insecurity plays a role” in how America regards ambitious women.
The sexism is less virulent now than it was in 2008, she said, but still she encounters people on rope lines who tell her, “ ‘I really admire you, I really like you, I just don’t know if I can vote for a woman to be president.’ I mean, they come to my events and then they say that to me.”
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This may be paywalled, if not, READ IT:
Contrary to the claims of Stop Islam in Gillette, however, the Muslims who established the mosque are not new to the region. Together with some twenty per cent of all Muslims in Wyoming, they trace their presence back more than a hundred years, to 1909, when a young man named Zarif Khan immigrated to the American frontier. Born around 1887, Khan came from a little village called Bara, not far from the Khyber Pass, in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. His parents were poor, and the region was politically unstable. Khan’s childhood would have been marked by privation and conflict—if he had any childhood to speak of. Family legend has it that he was just twelve when he left.
What he did next nobody knows, but by September 3, 1907, he had got himself a thousand miles south, to Bombay, where he boarded a ship called the Peno. Eight weeks later, on October 28th, he arrived in Seattle. From there, he struck out for the interior, apparently living for a while in Deadwood, South Dakota, and the nearby towns of Lead and Spearfish before crossing the border into Wyoming. Once there, he settled in Sheridan, which is where he made a name for himself, literally: as Hot Tamale Louie—beloved Mexican-food vender, Afghan immigrant, and patriarch of Wyoming’s now besieged Muslim population.
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A great interview that spans the history of Black Toronto, filmmaking, The Book of Negroes, and a bunch of other stuff too:
Was it challenging starting your career and knowing that you’d want to make these kinds of stories? As Black Canadians, I feel like we don’t really see ourselves, or it’s unlikely to see ourselves reflected in TV and movies. Was it challenging to be out there insisting on telling these stories?
I think it was easier when I started, actually. I think it’s a bit more difficult now. It is a challenge when you’re trying to cast it and you get the feedback that perhaps there aren’t a lot of young Black Canadians who could get a film made or get a television series made. But it doesn’t stop me from trying to get it done. But now it’s much more difficult. The stakes are higher. But those are the stories I want to tell. Those are the stories that interest me.
When you say it’s difficult now, the stakes are higher…
In the environment that we live in now, there’s a real sense that if you want to sell your movies that perhaps Black faces wouldn’t sell internationally or in parts of Europe or Asia. So if you want to make a film for a certain budget, there’s a sense that only certain kinds of faces will sell in these parts of the world. Sometimes it’s difficult to convince financiers that this young Black woman can sell in Asia or in Europe.
Yeah I feel like the difference between eating at my friend’s restaurant and buying my friend’s jamberry is that actually only one of those things is my friend owning a small business.
Ugh I remember I actually once said this to someone — here in PA, after the deregulation of the power suppliers, this kind of Amway but for electric supply company cropped up? And basically what you do is, the more people you get enrolled, the more you get off your electric bill? So she sends this email out to all of us, and this is at the end of a movement where maybe a million people have invited us (mostly my wife, for some reason these programs seem to focus primarily on women) to handbag parties and shitty jewelry parties and some kind of makeup/moisturizer thing that they had at our house, &c.
So I told her no, I’m going to do this, and she responded with, “I know you wouldn’t, but when you’re starting your own business you have to try everything you can think of.”
This isn’t a business! You don’t make anything! You don’t buy inventory to resell! You don’t own any part of the operation! You are a salesperson who is getting paid in electric bill credit points! That is literally the fakest job imaginable.
bleh I am still mad about this, sorry
Ugh my neighbor does that electricity thing and we’ve had to shut her down on multiple occasions.
Amway? For a power company? Wow, that’s really messed up.
My aunt “sold” Mary Kay, by which I mean she bought about $12,000 worth of product and went to three conventions, and sold maaaaybe a thousand dollars worth (which includes the truckload my mom bought for me). And then left all the stuff in my uncle’s basement when she moved out until it all got gross and had to be pitched.
Awhile ago she was into some smaller (maybe local?) MLM scheme that sold, like, nipple pasties and liners to put in your pants so you could not wear underwear? I only remember this because the marketing plan involved women going into full elevators and asking “is anyone else GOING COMMANDO?” and then I basically was dead so I have no idea how ‘successful’ she was there, either.
I do feel I got a glimpse of how insidious the marketing was, and what a perfect mark my aunt was–home with a special needs kid, untreated ADHD, increasingly disatisfied with what my uncle’s income could provide especially compared to her friends (especially once they put my niece in a very expensive Waldorf school–which is a whole other story), her career skills getting pretty outdated if she did want to go back to work, someone with great charisma but not so much persistence. . .my aunt is in a lot of ways not a very nice person, but she was a sitting duck for Mary Kay.
MLM’s are horrifying but the suggestion to go into a full elevator and yell “is anyone else GOING COMMANDO?” make me crack up.
“the marketing plan involved women going into full elevators and asking ‘is anyone else GOING COMMANDO?'”
(dies laughing at work) I can see how that would be memorable…
Yes. I bled all over myself and decided to ditch my underwear in the office bathroom trash bin! THANK YOU FOR INVITING ME TO SHARE.
(BTW, my mother is totally into sending me weird shit in the mail in an earnest attempt to be helpful and fix problems that don’t need to be solved. This once resulted in her sending me the exact item you describe, branded as “Antipanties!” I still CANNOT EVEN.)
I am oddly reassured to know that this product/company exists!
eta: I mean, in terms of my memory not playing tricks on me, not in terms of personal need. I like underwear.
I own a small business where I have an exclusive contract with a single company who gives me money and healthcare in return for doing some work for them.
Right. I have a few relatives who are deep into the Beachbody thing, and they’re constantly referring to themselves as “business owners,” and it irks me every time. And then I feel like a jerk? But like… you’re not a business owner. Just not.
Just the name of that company pisses me off.
ME TOO
you know how I get a beach body?
I TAKE MY BODY TO THE BEACH
You know how I get my body ready for the beach?
I APPLY SUNSCREEN!
You know how I get a beach body?
A SHOVEL AND TIME
This sounds like you’re going to dig until you find one…
Correct.
Classic relevant Hairpin: Getting the body you’ve always wanted.
(whispers) But they have some kickass exercise programs, i gotta say…
it’s not really their business, and their idea of ‘friendship’ and what that signifies is more of trying to woo a lucrative client. you’re supporting a friend’s business.
I have a minimum of 4 friends involved in one of these at all times. 3 of them are selling those supplement things (like Thrive, Plexus, etc). A of all, that stuff is an expensive waste of time. B of all, even if they worked I still wouldn’t have $300 per month to spend on diet and/or energy pills. One of my friends owns a liquor store. I am happy to give him some money a few times a month. Another one is a hairstylist and I happily pay her every 8 weeks for having the privilege of getting my hair cut by someone who isn’t going to try to do anything she doesn’t absolutely know will look good. Provide a service I want/need/can afford and I am happy to give you some of my money so you can keep doing it.
Lol, the time I posted something on Facebook like “I love being engaged because it gives people so many opportunities to ask me if I’m trying to lose weight for the wedding! I have never successfully dieted and I’m certainly not going to start now, guys!” and my aunt commented suggesting I try my cousin’s MLM supplement/cleanse bullshit.
“I have a device that handles all my cleansing for me. It is called my liver.”
THANK YOU
signed,
all scientists in the entire world
“I have a backup plan for this, it’s called my kidneys.”
I cut off a “friend” when she invited me to two of these parties in a row. At that point I didn’t feel like her friend, but her potential business venture. Plus the second party was Morningstar Farms. MORNINGSTAR FARMS. I buy that at the grocery already. I don’t want to go to a Morningstar Farms party. Ugh.
Jamberry, Longaberger baskets, et al are a friend’s business in the same way that that person is a friend: not really, just taking advantage of others. :
Ok, but the Longaberger headquarters is actually shaped like a giant basket.
Ugh MLMs tend to really push the idea that you are becoming a small business owner by joining in. It’s part of how they market themselves and basically try and brainwash people into truly believing it. I think they really prey on people who are struggling with certain aspects of their life and then you can join this company and be a business owner! it’s the key to financial freedom! You can be your own boss! No more working for the man! Then once your in, they try and convince you that you are really doing your friends a favor by trying to get them involved. And there’s no harm in asking! Why on earth would your friends not want to support you? They love you and of course they’d want to get involved, because this is so great and it’s the key to happiness. If they don’t like it, they are just too small minded to see this great opportunity!
Erm, at least that was the way the one my brother was involved in presented things. Not that i have any strong feelings about it. *ahem* Anyway, it was so, so manipulative and kind of gas-lighty in a way. It actually made me feel a lot of empathy for people who get wrapped up in one and then end up losing friends because of the messages these companies send to their reps.
Yeah, I wrote upthread about how my aunt was a sitting duck for Mary Kay–unexpectedly quit her job because of a special needs kid, increasingly unhappy with the quality of life my uncle’s income could afford, untreated ADHD and (probably) depression, had a lot of much wealthier friends she constantly compared herself to (especially once they put my niece in private school), extroverted and charismatic but not great at long-term plans. . .my aunt has done some really, really shitty things in the past 15 years during the very long separation and divorce (like, forging checks/secretly draining college funds kinds of things), but I think the disaster of Mary Kay–the HUGE financial outlay and lost, combined with her sponsor? mentor? saying if she was failing it was probably because my uncle wasn’t supporting her enough and wanted her to fail–in retrospect seems like such a clusterfuck.
Wait, what??? Morningstar Farms? What the hell?
I might buy into an argument that my friend’s Jamberry venture is like her owning a franchise. The elements are similar– every detail of what you sell is determined by the parent corporation and you are on the hook to buy their branded items to present the product. But people who buy into the “it’s my small business!” idea get REALLY pissed when you imply it’s more like them owning a McDonalds than a locally-sourced independent diner.
Franchise is the perfect word for it. It also bugs me when people bring their jamberry or avon or thirty-one or simply southern garbage to craft fairs. Like, no??? That is the opposite of a craft?? You did not make that yourself???
I didn’t know people did that and now I’m mad.
They do it a LOT. They also turn up at my local farmers’ market. I don’t object to the craft stalls that also turn up because I’ve bought some decent jewelry that way, but with the MLM people? C’mon now.
If the collective angst of people making a token purchase from the relative who got roped into trying to make a go of Amway, then having to have the painful conversation with them of why they wouldn’t be making any further orders because they probably wouldn’t use up that previous box of moist towelettes in their lifetime, coupled with the realization that all they did with the first order was delay the realization on their part that they had to stop throwing good money after bad, were converted into a physical mass about ten feet in diameter, the density of it would punch a hole straight to the earth’s center, and be in danger of forming a singularity that would swallow the planet. Yep, personal experience.
Seriously. I mean, some of it I like, so if people aren’t pushy then I’ll buy a candle or something, but.
Avon and Tupperware both have websites where I can buy shit directly, without attaching it to a salesperson or a party, so they’re in a different category for me.
We had someone doing that with long distance, or some sort of phone program, way back in the 90s. No thanks, move along.
The current one that gets me is ph-balanced water. What???
I would like everyone to note that in a TripAdvisor search of Things To Do in Niagara Falls, NY, Niagara Falls itself ranks at #2.
Well to be fair, Cave of the Winds is the superior Niagara Falls experience.
I visited Niagara as a stop on a trip elsewhere a few years ago and I didn’t know Cave of the Winds was a thing but then some elderly couple came up to me and was like hey we have these extra tickets go have fun and now oh my god I would do it like, every day of my life if given the opportunity.
But it is part of the Falls! The Cave of the Winds is part of Niagara State Park and basically takes you to the base of the Falls. That’s like saying Maid of the Mist boat tour isn’t the Falls.
There’s not a lot left to do Niagara Falls outside of the Falls (at least on the American side), so it’s probably just to pad the list?
But what about the Criminals Hall of Fame Wax Museum??
That’s on the Canada side! I was obsessed with the wax museums when I was there in the *very* off-season when nobody at all was around. The Canada side is all kinds of kitschy/touristy/carnivalesque/so, so weird when empty. The NY side is pretty much not a thing at all… which is to say, empty by design I guess.
It’s been a few years since I went! I live in upstate NY (Rochester), and we used to go to the Falls on school trips fairly often.
There used to be a very cool Native American cultural/ folklore center when I was kid (in a building shaped like a turtle), but I don’t think it’s open anymore, sadly.
The Turtle!!! I went there as a kid. It’s still empty :’-(
Stay on the Canadian side.
That is all I have to say about that.
Did “stare awkwardly at the remnants of industrial capitalism, brownfields, and gutted neighborhoods” make the list? Because it’s kinda hard to avoid in the Falls.
I was reading an article about National Parks, and it actually mentioned that one of the early supporters of the parks was so disgusted by how commercialized Niagara Falls was that he didn’t want that to happen to other natural sites. So….. something good came out of it, I guess?
I think what is so funny is that it is the Canadian side that has become very touristified (restaurants, bars, arcades, attractions), and the American side is either parks or spotty and shady looking tourist stuff between a bunch of empty buildings. With the exception of that awful casino. But in the early part of the 20th century, the American side developed a LOT of chemical industries, and now they’re almost all gone, but the abandoned buildings and brownfields and sad empty neighborhoods remain, and everyone goes to the Canadian side.
My family is from Niagara Falls, and my dad has the happiest memories of growing up there in a beautiful small town. The last time we went back was in 2009 and it was just heartbreaking to see the empty shell of a town that’s left. At least beautiful Lewiston is a short drive away?
Lewiston is beautiful…and it’s slowly getting better since they’ve decided to make it an American version of Niagara on the Lake, though they have a ton more to do to catch up.
I was traumatized as a child by an IMAX movie about Niagara Falls, and my #1 phobia (even 30 years later) is that I’ll somehow end up going over the falls in a barrel.
0/10, do not recommend.
Do not climb in any barrels, and you’ll be all set!
But what if someone tricks me?!? Perhaps by leaving delicious candy inside? (rocks back and forth)
You can get the candy by turning the barrel upside down! You don’t have to get into the barrel to get the candy. It’s okay.
Whew!!!
Oh my god, MLMs. Every time I get an invitation to something I have to try to figure out if it is some sort of MLM scheme; they are nefarious, you never know when they will strike or who has gotten suckered into one. As someone who hates “stuff,” doesn’t like scented candles (beeswax all the way!), and doesn’t wear make-up, carry a purse or wear a lot of jewelry (sensitive skin) it is a total nightmare. I’ve started to avoid going to anything someone is calling a “girls night” because it inevitably ends up being a sales pitch.
Right??? I tend towards minimalism, and more junk is just not appealing. Add that to the fake-o “business owner” “networking” “small business” language they use and I’m nope-ing right out of there.
I’m in the same boat. A friend of a friend invited us over for a “spa night” which ended up being a sales pitch. Whatever products she used caused a reaction that looked a lot like a chemical burn; now I just warn everyone to stay away.
I hate how it ends up being a bait and switch. You think you are going to spend some quality time with your girlfriends and instead you are suddenly a consumer. It leaves you with a really gross feeling.
I always get wary if they’re “fired up” about something.
I am finally learning this lesson, and it makes me very sad. One of my friends whom I do genuinely like spending time with doesn’t sell any MLM herself but has no qualms about hosting others’ MLM parties to get free stuff. After a “girls night” that turned out to be 31 Gifts and a “I really need some female companionship, please say you’ll come over for dinner” that turned out to be Demarle cookware, and would have been fine if the Demarle woman had shut up between products so we could talk to our friends while we ate, I am asking serious questions before going over to her house again.
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive]
On this day in 1968 was the death of Helen Keller, known by many for being blind, deaf, and mute. However, many people’s knowledge of Helen stops there, and doesn’t extend beyond to her work as a writer, lecturer, or political activist. After college, where she was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, Helen began to travel and give lectures, with the aim of helping improve the welfare of blind people. She spoke before Congress to advocate for blind people, helped found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), met every president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson, and was friends with a number of famous people, including Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, and Alexander Graham Bell.
Helen Keller was also a suffragette and a pacifist, as well as a supporter of birth control, and a radical socialist. As a socialist she supported the working class, and found that as she became outspoken about her political beliefs, the media and press turned on her, claiming that her beliefs (as the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote) came from the “limitations” of her disabilities. Helen’s response was to recall a time she had met the editor previously, and remark, “At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. … Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.”
In her lifetime, Helen Keller published 12 books, several articles, and numerous essays. In September of 1964, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (one of the U.S.’s two highest honors for civilians), and in 1965 she was elected to the National Woman’s Hall of Fame. She spent much of her later years raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind, and died in June of 1968, just shy of her 88th birthday.
Also on this day…
In 1310, a French mystic named Marguerite Porète was burned at the stake for heresy, for refusing to recant the views she detailed in her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls (about the workings of Divine Love). In 1533, Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen of England– as you likely know, she was later sentenced to death and beheaded on charges of witchcraft and adultery. On this day in 1660, Mary Dyer was hung after returning to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where Quakers had been banned. And on this day in 1926 was the birth of Marilyn Monroe (then Norma Jean Mortenson), a tragic figure who suffered through neglectful parents, drug addiction, and a series of horrible and/or abusive male figures, before taking her own life.
So take all that as you will!
Wow, today is quite a day.
Right? What is up with that? I was skimming the list yesterday trying to pick someone to write about and was just like “uhhhhhhhhhhh”????
I remember when I learned that Helen Keller was a radical socialist and I was like !!! why have I never heard about this before? Obvious reasons, but God, she was such a great activist.
She was amazing! Anyone who lived through BOTH Red Scares in this country and remained a steadfast activist and supporter of workers rights has a uterus of steel.
O, burning witches. One of my favourite memories of one of my favourite people ever (who was also a dermatologist) is her explaining to me that, in the middle ages in France, I would have been burned as a witch because of my weird skin (I have dermatographia) Legend goes they would have scratched “Satan” into my back, and used the appearance of the word on my skin as “evidence” that I had the devil in me ^_^
Thank you so much for doing these, again!
Wow — Massachusetts actually hanged a Quaker woman for daring to re-enter their colony? Damn, Massachusetts.
You’re welcome, thanks for reading! 😀
And yep! Apparently she kept returning to protest the ban on Quakers (who the Puritans thought of as the worst of the worse re: heresy, I guess), because she was willing to die a martyr if the ban wasn’t repealed.
And they actually called her bluff. “We totally will hang this Quaker woman in cold blood, yup.” There should be a memorial to her.
There’s a statue of her at Friends’ Center in Philadelphia.
Oh, good.
There was a picture of her statue in my AP US History book. I could only ever remember that her name was Mary.
Oh, is it time for me to rant against MLM again? IT PREYS ON WOMEN, it monetizes preexisting social relationships, it’s targeted at sucking money out of your friends and who fucking cares what happens to your relationships because fuck em the company got paid! They’re a poison. Also they do not QUALIFY as small business or entrepreneurship, so that idea needs to fuck right off, AND no legitimate business is predicated on the idea that if you nag and harass people enough they’ll buy your shit to shut you the fuck up.
This has been Shouting About MLM Schemes.
yeah right? And you can see how that post is exactly preying on social relationships — it’s not “try this stuff because some of it is actually good”, it’s “try this stuff because you’ve GOT to support your friends!”
That whole “women need to support women” regardless of any other metric really needs to have a stake shoved through its heart at the crossroads.
YES! They are totally predatory in addition to just being annoying. And they deliberately target people like military wives and ultra-conservative Christian women- neither of whom have great opportunities for work a lot of the time (for totally different reasons, obviously) with the promise that they can make money in their spare time.
Thirty-One (bags and organizers) is literally named after Proverbs 31, which some conservative Christian groups see as the definition of a good wife.
side note, Jewish husbands use it as a Shabbat blessing for their wives, not a list of unreasonable expectations.
I’m not Jewish, but even I can tell the difference between a love poem and a to-do list.
I hate the Conservative ideal of the Proverbs 31 woman, because it does the Proverbs 31 woman such a disservice by putting her in this little submissive box! The Proverbs 31 woman is a super-rad lady with many admirable qualities, damnit, not your biddable, keep-sweet little model.
Ugh. I’m a Catholic, whose grandfather was fond of giving his (very devout) wife rubies and pearls. When I first learned that people used that poem as a to-do list rather than a tribute, I was so upset.
THANK YOU I don’t know how many times I have yelled this at ppl (ok, relatives) who are into these things. It frustrates me So. Much. that ppl can’t see the obvious!
I think it’s not even about the money for a lot of them? Because they don’t make money! So many women who do MLM are women who want to work, but don’t have an outlet for it, either because they’re discouraged from working (conservative culture) or don’t have the stability to have a career (military wives).
And I think that is what is really sad. These are obviously hardworking people who are craving some sort of mental stimulation (insert work joke here). They just ended up getting suckered into these schemes because of a lack of better options.
during my time as a military wife my social life got SO MUCH LESS INTERESTING anytime i opted out of these parties.
i did end up buying a lot of scrapbooking stuff tho. because tiny stickers.
scrapbooking is the best though. I STILL have quality crafting tools that my Mom got when I was *little*, and people wonder how my cards are so bomb.
*brandishes professional-quality cardstock cutter & rubber stamping elements*
…yeah, that’s right, I thought you didn’t feel lucky.
Ugh, it’s so skeezy that the whole “it’s a small business!!!!” thing comes up so often because it’s the kind of thing that’s in all the training materials and suggested boilerplate for social media blasts. “Just tell everyone that you are a small business owner, that’ll really make ’em think, you know?”
Rant away!! My side-gig is at a small mom & pop business that has been struggling to squeak by for YEARS thanks to large corporate stores that have come to the area. It’s not my small business but I’ve worked there for ten years so I’m pretty invested. Whenever someone doing direct sales for a multi-million dollar parent corporation and tries to guilt me into spending my money by saying I need to “support small business” my blood pressure skyrockets.
(on that note if you’re in Southern NH and need a local pet store recommendation I’m your toastie!
Ooh, yeah?
It is a great little place in Milford, NH! It doesn’t have much in the way of dog/cat stuff but is great for small animals/fish and the owner is always super willing to make special orders!
NH Toasties Unite!
Technically I’m a MA Toastie right now, but I’m moving back at the end of the summer!
Ooo! I’m in north western Mass and I can’t even adopt a dog until my lease renews in September but obvs I have not let that stop me from doodling long lists of pet supplies and daydreaming about my IDEAL dog bed. I could combine tax-free pet supply purchases with my monthly NH hiking/liquor-buying trip!
It is a great little place in Milford, NH! It doesn’t have much in the way of dog/cat stuff but is great for small animals/fish and the owner is always super willing to make special orders!
Also I grew up in NH but am currently living in MA and I feel so guilty in the liquor store parking lot because I grew up listening to people complain about “Massholes” coming up for our tax-free cigarettes and booze but damnit, it’s a great deal!
Once The Toast is gone, where will we go to occasionally shout about MLMs?
The Toastie Slack http://toastieslack.slack.com
or the Toastie Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs/
How does one gain admittance to the Toastie Slack? (I’m pretty sure I saw this covered before, sorry.)
Can we all go back to school together to write a group dissertation on MLM from the perspective of various sociopolitical factors?
I’m in yo!
I read that as the perspective of velociraptors at first…
Clever girl.
Would definitely read that.
Frankly, I’m interested in the perspective of velociraptors on most things.
A+ Shouting About MLM Schemes.
So many people have tried to drag me to their fucking meetings. Gah. And the worst is when you KNOW perfectly well that they will a) not get rich and b) not stick with it, but when they’re in the midst of it, you can’t say anything! They are so full of everything they’ve heard and SO convinced. Having to hold out against someone who is so convinced that if you would just come…
I do think there’s a (mild) difference, between the ones that actually try to sell products for real and the ones that just want to drag you into cult-like recruitment meetings. But I’m well over the product and party scene too. Just spend more money! So you too can host a party! And spend a lot of money! (but don’t worry you’re getting x for free, y at a special discount, it’s totally a great deal…) Ugh. The only money I don’t regret spending was on my 31 bags and totes, which have legitimately lasted and been useful. Everything else was a total waste. But I would still never do it again.
Also, if you get a phone call from a “friend” you never see and never, ever calls you, it is 100% leading into the MLM pitch. Last time that happened I called it mentally before the conversation even turned.
That last bit is so true! A few years ago my husband was really, really sick (he would soon be diagnosed with Crohn’s, but we didn’t know it yet) and word was getting out. An acquaintance I had not heard from in a few years called to say she heard he was sick and to ask how we were doing. I was so touched that she would take the time to reach out like that. Then the conversation turned to her new MLM business. Something weird about getting hotels to buy crappy artwork or something– really, really scammy. I was stunned.
I’m so sorry. That’s the part that sucks so much. You think someone’s reaching out to you, and then…
I had felt guilty for a long time about distancing myself from that crowd of friends, so it ended up being a gift in a weird way because it so clearly showed me I had made the right decision and shouldn’t second-guess myself.
I’ve been counter-offering invites from one “friend” by always being busy the day of the party but willing to catch up another time over coffee. She is much less interested in coffee than getting another warm body to attend her damn parties.
:((((((
Good tactic, though.
What about the Facebook MLM “parties”? Does anybody know what they are? My “friends” from junior high school 20 years ago keep inviting me and I don’t get it.
My college friends are super into those! I mean, they all fit the classic victim profile for MLMs-they’re stay at home moms, religious, conservative, sometimes also military wives, and yeah, they don’t have a lot of say over their own lives or free time or spending money of their own. I feel really bad always un-adding myself from their parties but…it is annoying. And they aren’t “small business owners”.
YET ANOTHER REASON I HATE FACEBOOK. <deep breath> sorry, but I really want to burn Facebook to the ground and sow the ground with salt.
The MLM sales and the unbearable memes and the politics and the I support X and the marathon running and the people you never see/don’t actually know anymore… I swear I’m never reactivating my account ever again. Especially not in an election year.
<grumpity grump grump>
OH it’s not just me? I never ever use my account, but I have one, and every time I log in at least a third of updates are about RUNNING.
I have been done with FB for so long, I deleted my account about three years ago. For all the reasons above!
“SHARE if Jesus is central to your life.”
Dude, Jesus is central & important to my life, but I’m not sharing your stupid guilt-trip picture of White Jesus, fuck off.
A bunch of my friends have gotten into LuLa Roe (leggings and shirts and dresses). But the upfront is like 5-6000 for inventory! If I had that much spare cash I wouldn’t need the “extra money” from “running my own business”. I don’t get it.
That’s unreal! wow.
Yikes. Someone from college messaged me just asking if it was okay to add me to her group about Lula Roe, and I said that was okay because I appreciated her asking me. I was hoping it wasn’t one of these MLMs, for her sake. But she’s got people participating in posts (really stupid crap, like “name your favorite Disney princess to enter a drawing to win this free skirt”), so…there’s a market for it. At least she hasn’t directly pressured me to buy or to go to a virtual party or anything.
Oh, that’s what that is! I was at a thrift store recently and found a number of nice never-worn items with that label, I’m guessing someone got guilted at a party and then made a Salvation Army dump the next day.
WAIT IS THAT WHAT LULA ROE IS?
uuuggghhh some of their dresses and leggings looked really comfy.
Plus, you can’t even put their stupid leggings in the dryer!
Whaaaaaaaaaat
Really? My daycare provider “hosted” an online party for one of her friends who does this. I really hope she doesn’t get sucked in any further.
I came into the comments specifically to see if you’d ranted about MLM! I always enjoy it.
Random question: when did MLM start in your group of friends? I’m 24 and haven’t seen any of it in my facebook yet, although there are a lot of requests to like someone’s Etsy. But I know my mom has moved beyond her own friends inviting her to MLM parties and on to her friends’ children inviting her to MLM parties. Is there an age threshold?
Around 25-26 is when it started for me. Mary Kay and those nail stickers. It is absolute poison and so fucking awkward. Luckily it hasn’t been any of my close friends yet, just acquaintances. I went to the stupid Mary Kay skincare party and not only felt like shit about my face, but the moisturizer gave me hives. NEVER AGAIN.
Same boat, none of my twentysomething friends are into it but I work with a number of people who are, most of them slightly older. Oh, and I made the mistake of adding some of my mom’s friends on Facebook. I got suckered into buying the nail stickers– maybe my nails just aren’t the right shape but I would like to state on record that they look like shit and do not stay put.
I’m 30 and have no MLM people in my friend groups, but none of my friends are married or have kids which I think is a big part of it.
Same here! Though I do have some friends with their own Etsy stores.
The MLM explosion on my facebook wall started when I guess a critical mass of my college friends had babies that were more than a couple months old. It’s practically clockwork: so-and-so has a baby. 4 months later, so-and-so is “starting her own business” to “support her family” by “working from home” selling a product she “loves so much” that she “is really excited to share with everyone”
It is such a symptom of the crappy choices for a lot of women of young children in the U.S., I think. The women I know who are into it are stay-at-home-moms who (reasonably) want some sense of professional accomplishment and maybe some spending money as well. But there are few flexible, part-time options for work so this is what they do. Ugh.
I’m 25 and people my age from home sell the nail sticks and body… wraps? One of my cousins who is my age sold Lia Sophia before they went out of business. No one I know here does it. Home for me is rural Wisconsin and I live in a big city now so it might be location more than age?
I agree with the location over age thing. Most of the people I know that are part of these live in my rural hometown where there really are no job opportunities–especially for folks that need flexible schedules. I’ve gotten quite good at politely declining, and my reasons are rarely questioned because I moved to the giant blob that they all call The Big City. My ways are mysterious now.
same! I’m from rural Michigan, it started around age 21-22 for hometown friends.
I got hit up for Mary Kay right after college. It was SO AWKWARD because I genuinely didn’t know what she was doing and accidentally didn’t invite anyone for a party (glad I didn’t now) and then went to a “join us!” party because I felt bad and wished I hadn’t since it was a LOT of pressure to join and just… no.
I did end up throwing one other MLM party for a really, really good friend knowing exactly what I was doing and making sure the people I invited knew what I was doing without saying directly “This is a scam but I love my friend.”
So, yeah, early twenties. There was a brief surge on FB right around 30 and it seems to have dropped off again.
I only have one friend who started selling jamberry stuff a few years ago (so, 24ish, we’re 26 now) BUT she’s also the only friend I have who is evangelical christian and got married straight out of college and has no other job.
It’s really a pretty stark difference – everyone else I know is in grad school or working full time, whether or not they’ve also gotten married by now.
I’m 35 and I’ve noticed that with the women I grew up going to the same (very conservative church) it started as they had babies. I think there are only a couple of women who work outside the home in that crowd and they aren’t part of it but the rest are. It seems to drop off once they have the third kid, maybe it takes too much time, and picks back up when the oldest starts school.
Very few of the people I am currently friends with are involved. A couple of people at work. My aunt does the essential oils but I think that is more because she is a hippy who wants the oils rather than trying to make it a business. She gave me one for my eczema but never bothered me about buying anything.
I’m late 30s and have only 1 friend so far who’s doing MLM (Pampered Chef).
None of my high school friends or family are into it, fortunately (I’m 35). But I grew up in kind of a left-wing bubble, so basically they’re all former Communists and/or art school graduates who are skeptical of capitalism.
Most of my current friends I know either from law school or subsequent law jobs, so they tend to have real employment.
Oh, but it’s especially awkward when your white collar coworkers’ wives’ start inviting you to their MLM parties. Yeah, you probably spend more time with her husband than she does, and that has probably contributed to her desire to start selling this crap. But when he says, “She specifically told me to invite you! She knows how you love to cook/always have great nails/love your jewlery” (and you’ve maybe met this woman once). Also fun: when she emails you or invites you through Facebook, despite having met you one time. Briefly.
ProTip: do not feel obligated to trek out to the far-flung suburb/gated community where this coworker and family live to attend a very awkward MLM party. Just say no.
When I was in college in the early 90’s my workstudy supervisor invited me to “get a makeover” aka buy some Mary Kay makeup. Yeah.
I just have…weird MLM issues. My mom went to so many Tupperware parties in the 70’s that we have a game we play at thrift stores where we hold up weird pieces of Tupperware to see if my mom knows what they are. We haven’t stumped her yet.
Warning below for pregnancy triggers…
I have gone to two Pampered Chef parties. Three years apart. BOTH times the very next day I had a miscarriage that put me at death’s door. Like, three bags of IV fluid before I was stable enough to get in the ambulance awful. I will NEVER buy anything Pampered Chef again. I am not married, I will never be pregnant again, and you will never get me to go near one of those parties. Seriously, I don’t need a third health emergency. I am usually not superstitious but that’s enough of a message for me. Nope, nope, nope, the universe doesn’t need to hit me on the head a third time.
Look, I didn’t eat cup o’ noodles for like 20 years because I got sick shortly after eating one when I was a child. And I’m certain I ate said cup o’ noodles because I wasn’t feeling that great, so I logically know it wasn’t the soup’s fault.
Anyway, all that to say, if I did that for a cup of soup, I do not blame YOU for finding that to be a VERY STRANGE COINCIDENCE.
Yep, I figure better safe than sorry!! It seriously was weird.
I’m glad I’m over that stage of momhood. Complain all you want about grad school, nobody in 3 years has hit me up for MLMs!
Not to be a drama queen, but I think Mary Kay genuinely helped not only to contribute to the wreckage of my uncle and aunt’s marriage, but the culty-speak about how no one in her family was supporting her and we all wanted her to fail and all the employed adults were just sheeple working for other people who didn’t get it and you have to spend money to make money and follow your dreeeeeams laid a LOT of terrible groundwork for years through the separation and the child support finances.**
**I feel compelled to say this really wasn’t my uncle being an asshole. He was totally onboard to pay support and alimony even though the kids ended up living with him 80% of the time. It’s just that the only agreement my aunt would accept involved her getting lump sums and then just ignoring bills, so essentially my uncle paid for her bills before she spent anything, his and the kids’ bills, and then her share of the agreed-upon joint expenses and whatever bills she didn’t pay from the previous lump.
*reads 100+ comments ranting about MLMs*
“Wow, these things suck. I’m glad my friends don’t seem to be getting into them.”
*opens facebook*
*finds message from former classmate pitching their makeup MLM to me*
>.<
I was offline yesterday so today I read ALL THE COMMENTS about MLMs and agreed whole-heartedly, then when I jumped over to FB the very first comment was from a young woman I used to mentor, married with young kids and has recently lost her mom, looking to buy bunches of clothes hangers because she is going to start selling LuLaRoe or whatever it is. I nearly burst into tears; I don’t think I’m in a position now to dissuade her from doing this. 🙁
Brittani Nichols’s twitter is really excellent and you should consider checking it out.
Yes! I follow her and she often gets lost in my feed, but she is amazing.
My, the owner of the balcony that cat is sitting on must be a very important person.
I always get a little thrill when people reference Toast deep cuts.
A friend of mine sells Passion Party stuff and you bet your ass I buy it. However, I don’t feel obligated to buy anything a friend sells, just like I don’t expect friends to buy my bloomers. But I think the mentality of Real Friends Buy Your Shit (with a side heaping of Spending Money To Show Affection) falls quite neatly into the MLM mindset.
You sell bloomers?
DO YOU MEAN BREAD OR GIANT VICTORIAN KNICKERS? I NEED TO KNOW.
These kind of bloomers!
So are these intended to be worn in place of underwear? Or like bike shorts under a skirt so that nobody sees your undies if there’s a strong wind? Or are they just fun (which is totally a valid option)?
Once purchased, you can wear them however you like! I started making them because I wear stockings (with a garter belt/suspenders) and in the winter the tops of my thighs would get cold. But a lot of people wear them under skirts to keep chafing at bay (and I’ve heard they’re also a great way to deal with subway breeze updrafts). And to be honest, I have worn them just like pictured above when running a quick errand to a friend’s house when I know nobody else is gonna see me. A local friend of mine wears hers like shorts, though, everywhere. Totally up to you!
I have a pair of these bloomers. I wear them around the house when it is warm. They are super cute and comfy!
Vouch! I have two pairs. I’m waiting for warmer weather to break them out, but they are so cute!
I do! I’ve just had WAY too much on my plate to relist after the unsold stuff expired last winter. Here’s the sold stuff, since I don’t have any active listings, but it gives you an idea of the style of them. I oughta re-list them now in case any Toasties might want to pick some up before our Toast time ends.
I also listed three pairs on Con or Bust, and nobody’s bidding on them, so you could get a pair cheap: size small, size medium, size large
Woo! Those are pretty!
Those are so cute! You should absolutely re-list some stuff!
I’m meeting with the person who might be managing clevermanka.net tonight (yaaaay) so re-listing is now on the agenda for Thursday evening!
Excellent on all counts!
I have a friend who wears bloomers when she competes in highland games (handy; she once tore her kilt off with a pitchfork on the sheaf toss). I’ll send her the link when you relist!
This makes me so happy! I heart bloomers and tap shorts for not flashing folks while wearing dresses in the summer.
See, now this is the sort of “women supporting other women’s small businesses” that I can get behind.
She was SO PATIENT, bless her.
Oh, I meant the “here’s CleverManka’s Etsy site, let’s all buy her bloomers, because those are things that are useful, made by a fellow Toastie.”
Well I 100% appreciate that, too! =D
*basks in the warm, Toasty glow*
Want!!
First of all, bloomers = awesome.
B of all, I’m already bought into the “I sponsor your kid’s 5K, you sponsor my kid’s readathon” as Spending Money To Show Affection, so MLMs can fuck right off. My emotional-guilt money is already spoken for.
Thanks! My motivation for relisting them has been pretty low, but now I’m thinking I’ll take inventory of current stock tonight and relist things before the weekend.
Also, yes emotional-guilt money. Perfect description of that.
Just here to state I have a pair of CM’s bloomers and I LOVE THEM. Excellent quality, super comfy and every time someone sees them peeking out behind my jean’s skirt hems, they go wild with praise.
I’d post a pic but being a techno-boob, ain’t gonna happen. Take my word for it, the bloomers are worth every penny!
I got THE most amazing Toast Post yesterday, I just have to share with you all. Thanks a million, mmsees!!
I would embed a picture, but I don’t know how to! It was delightful, I assure you.
I got Toast Post from mmsees too! Also from T in Pittsburgh!
Whoa, giant. The better to see all the toast post goodness.
I got those stickers too!! And a similarly cat/classic art themed card. Perfect intersection of my interests.
NOT OWL MEN. *dies*
I NEED those stickers
Queer lady tv talk? Because last night was brutal…
I’m getting so paranoid I’m afraid for no particular reason that the Good Wife spinoff will Skins Fire Kalinda.
Are you talking about Person of Interest? I haven’t gotten a chance to watch either of this week’s episodes yet but I’ve been hearing a sort of distant, generalized screaming all day. I’m starting to get really worried. Does someone die?
NO THEY CAN’T I’M NOT READY. (I will never be ready) (but i’m going to watch ep 10 tonight) :S :S :S
update from the future: fuck.
Do you really want to know? If so, scroll down.
…
…
…
yes
Lesbian handholding=death. You knew that.
Oh fuck. Thank you. Yes I really wanted to know.
——– Original message ——–
🙁
I’m a lesbian who has been looking for a new show to watch that already has a couple seasons wrapped so I can binge and Person of Interest had been mentioned on the gay media sites. I go on vacation in two weeks and need something! But now, nope. Never that show.
Anyone got any recs for a show where someone like me is happy for more than three episodes or so?
To be fair, people in serious fiction are hardly ever happy regardless of their orientation. Happy families are all alike, etc. And POI is in the final arc, in which any or all of the characters might die. And they did have an amazing sex scene in an earlier episode, so maybe give it a try if it’s the kind of storytelling you like? It did start out a bit white-man-saves-world, but lately the women have totally taken over, so there’s that.
To be fair, until they kill off every single straight man in every show and make entire tropes and genres built off their suffering to the point where straight men don’t feel safe watching something with people like them in it until it’s over just in case it happens like it always does, it’s not really an equivalent.
Well, that’s a good point. Nobody on POI is getting a happy ending, I think, but that doesn’t do anything for the general lesbian-in-peril trope, does it. I wonder if it’s a lesbian issue or a woman issue, though? After all, female story lines do have a strong Little Nell/Beth March tendency in general, and if the pairs-up-with-hero path is closed off, writers will naturally go inspirational-death route?
I am sorry if my response trivialized this problem with representation.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, stop telling me the only stories I”m allowed to see myself in are with me dead because of some random book written 100 years ago. I’m sure you love it, but it legitimately hurts me and my peers. I’m sorry that my pain inhibits your enjoyment of the story and your feminism.
Like you don’t get to come in a discussion on queer issues and be like “well as a straight person this is just how things are” and then say “this isn’t a /lesbian/ issue this is a /woman/ issue” when it clearly isn’t.
If you need something where nobody dies and they end up together, I got nothing.
If you just need nobody (gay) to die, have you tried Bomb Girls? It’s short and frustrating but good and she LIVES.
ETA by short I mean like 10-20 episodes. Plus a movie that nobody cared about (but didn’t kill the lesbian).
Lost Girl? I’m not to the end yet but from peeking at spoilers everyone lives. And Bo has lots of sexy times with dudes and ladies with no angst about it, and the female love interest is treated with as much possibility as the male.
[Lost Girl spoilers]
The main f/f couple survives and ends up together- I just didn’t use it as a “nobody dies” example because there are a few dead ex-girlfriends along the way.
Don’t buy any MLM BS! Once you buy something once you are dashed into an unending circle of expectation and obligation! It is a circle of hell made up of too-orange lipsticks and disappointing dip that Dante strangely omitted to describe.
Mary Kay is always running ads during Project Runway and I am always boggled at how bad the makeup looks. I mean, anyone of basic competence in that industry ought to be able to put together mediocre looks that at least blend in with average drugstore-brand advertising. Mary Kay…can’t.
They did use “Miracle” as a background song, though, so there’s that.
The Scentsy vs small businesses things are totally separate to me. A restaurant is a worthwhile thing– those other things are bullshit things that I neither need nor want.
Congratulations, Matt and Jaya, on your beautiful cat! (I don’t know why I’ve added the qualifier; all cats are sweet, beautiful darlings in my head.)
“I remember one young man said, ‘If you get into law school and I don’t, and I have to go to Vietnam and get killed, it’s your fault.’ ”
… is it, though?
The rhetoric of “there are only so many places to go around and they belong by right to (white, non-working-class) men” is so pervasive and poisonous. A few years ago the universities minister in the UK said that feminism was to blame for working-class men missing out on university education, because of the rise in the number of women taking up university places. (No mention was made of middle- and upper-class men taking spaces away from working-class men; they deserve to be there, after all.)
Yeah, that was a really special comment that reminded me to be glad I’m not a few decades older. Can’t possibly blame the government for running a terrible, stupid war when he could be blaming a woman for wanting to do Man Things.
The whole ‘Whatever shall we do for our boys now women do better at education’ thing is so fucking tedious.
I am so sick of that. There seems to have been loads of stuff in the UK news about it recently (as ever) and it drives me mad – would people care as much if it were girls who were consistently achieving lower marks?
They wouldn’t give a shit (and historically, didn’t), and the discussion always centres around ‘What can we do to get boys more engaged in school????’ when the reason girls do better is because teachers and parents expect higher standards of behaviour from them. I could not count the number of times at school where lessons ground to a halt because of disruptive boys who were basically allowed to fuck around until they ran out of steam, while girls sat there quietly and/or got on with work from the textbook.
Yesssss. I mean, I’m fine with having conversations about incorporating multisensory learning modes, etc, but I’m so sick of hearing how it’s unfaaaaaaair to boys specifically to have to sit still in class and learn about things by reading.
And I still resent that in my entire K-8 curricula, we read exactly 3 books with a girl as the main character, and that includes the obligatory To Kill a Mockingbird. (One of my teachers straight up told me it’s because girls don’t mind reading about boys, but boys just won’t read about girls.)
(Actually, in high school, I think all we got was The Scarlet Letter, which–iffy in terms of book-featuring-women–and Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was taught really badly as a diversity token. And I went to school in a pretty self-congratulatory posh public school district.)
Yes! This is especially ironic considering the perception in American education 100 years or so that women/girls were worse at the classroom/academic stuff because of wombs and silly little ladybrains not letting them concentrate and focus and sit still the way boys/men were “naturally” able to do.
One of my most formative moments as a feminist was ranting about a dude who was ranting about women taking all of the good, unionized, landscaping jobs on campus. My WGST prof looked at me and said “next time, ask him what makes him think those jobs are his to begin with”. Proto-Xolandra was stunned into silence, which happened even less, those days.
oh, wow, that is HELPFUL. Also applies to the dude on the (literal) soapbox on my campus, ranting about all the women in his engineering classes who were not even going to USE the degree, they were just going to get MARRIED, so WHY were they there taking up space that a MAN should have?
…Did he time-travel from 1967?
possibly! Maybe the engineering department is testing out time travel on students they won’t miss.
Perhaps he needs to be reminded that most men in his engineering classes are also going to get married, and maybe then they won’t use their degrees either?
I know it is total bullshit,but if someone had said that to me during Vietnam I would have defienetly let it impact me for the rest of my life. Not stopped me,necessarily,but I can’t imagine someone saying that to me at that time and me not feeling a twinge of guilt for the rest of my life
This argument should have died around 1910. Why people still spout this BS is beyond me. Men do not “deserve” spots in college (nor, admittedly, did they “deserve” to be sent to Vietnam) and women are not “taking” something that is rightfully theirs by attending school. Full stop.
By attending AND PAYING FOR that schooling, we should add.
Many years ago I got suckered into attending an Arbonne party given by the girlfriend of a friend of my sister’s boyfriend. At the end of the sales pitch my sister (who was also my roommate at the time) volunteered us to host the next party so she could keep her mystery gift and in my heart I still have never truly forgiven her.
Nor should you, that is untoward!
Legit.
I legit thought an Arbonne party would be for fans of Guy Gavriel Kay. But I guess not. 🙁
That is the only association with Arbonne that my brain has. Thank goodness.
Also, can we talk about the Rio Olympics? And how they are a genuinely Bad Idea All Around?
I mean, I’m so cross at the WHO for not being like “maybe we should postpone until after the inevitable global outbreak” and it’s because there’s money tied up in it, apparently?
That said, I like that most of the big health orgs are just shrugging and going “yeah, it’ll get here, we’ll deal, it won’t wipe out the whole country” because I am so sick of Ebola/The Various Flus/Infectious Disease of the Week panic when really it’s losing the race to find antibiotic alternatives that will lead to the next global epidemic of Bad Diseae
It’s ridiculous that it’s still even being considered. Let’s send a bunch of people from other countries to the site of the outbreak, knowing that they’re going to become vectors and spread the disease in their respective home countries when they return.
I do agree that it’s good that there’s no panicking, but common sense is also key.
I do absolutely see what you mean! But it’s a mosquito borne virus and they’re not as hard to control transmission-wise as the others so if you squint in the direction of “spent too much money on this Olympics already Brazil” you might wonder if the decision not to cancel isn’t motivated by the concern of how much the country will lose out by the massive loss of consumer/tourist faith that results from cancelling an Olympics. And what will that then do to this country with all this sport infrastructure? I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the sponsorship contracts are predatory anyway, given how ridiculous some of the London branding stuff was.
The not panicking is not really related to the handling Rio 2016 so much as it is just nice to see this time around. Zika Virus; every cloud truly has a silver lining.
Yes. Brazil is really suffering right now economically and while I’m not really sure how much the Olympics will help on that front, it will definitely help psychically. They won’t give it up easily.
Did the World Cup have that effect? It seems like things have, if anything, gotten worse after that temporary lift.
Yeah, the World Cup definitely did cheer people up, especially since the games were all around the country, not just in one city. But Brazil wasn’t the champion, so it wasn’t the hugest psychic boost, and I’m don’t know how much it really did help economically. Things have definitely gotten worse, businesses have closed and especially self-employed people are struggling.
I have been predicting a shitshow in Rio for a year, and I’m starting to feel like if they go through with these games it might actually end the modern Olympics as we know it.
I feel bad for the athletes but boy does someone need to step in here and prioritize humanity over money… Oh, wait the IOC hasn’t done that in decades.
I feel bad for all of South America, honestly. This is their first Olympics! They really didn’t deserve a plague to coincide.
Frankly as much I enjoy watching the sports I would like us to just stop doing Olympics because I’m convinced the IOC is totally evil (much like FIFA) but yes, very bad idea for Rio
As a former resident of a host city, I’m more of a “all of them are bad ideas all around” gal, but this particular Olympics has some pretty unique problems.
Honestly we should just have a worldwide Eurovision and let people broadcast from their home countries.
if we’re going to have Olympics and World Cups, it should be 2 or 3 permanent sites that rotate.
THIS.
A permanent summer site in Greece, and a permanent winter site somewhere very very cold.
Helsinki every time.
I’ve never understood why they build new sites every time? That seems mega wasteful?? Like do these places ever get used again?
Yah. My sibling is going to compete, and he and his partner are really ready for kids, and I think is a little devastated by the possibility that they’ll have to wait. It’s so heartbreaking from that perspective – you give up your whole life for something (for 8 years, in his case) and then you realize you have this horrible risk as soon as that dream comes true.
Oh man. Sending really really warm thoughts to your family.
I’m pissed that they are refusing to relocate the open water events, despite knowing that the area is basically raw sewage and there is no way athletes won’t get sick
<a href=”http://khttp://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/opinion/olympians-shouldnt-swim-through-sewage.html” target=”_blank”>khttp://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/opinion/olympians-shouldnt-swim-through-sewage.html
That’s been bothering me for ages! It’s been at least a year since they announced there was no possible way the venues for sailing/etc would be clean in time for the Olympic events to be safe.
Semi-related to MLM and their crowd, but I am noticing more and more popular Instagram accounts of young stay-at-home mothers (usually with two or three children under the age of 5), with those perfectly whitewashed farmhouse scenes. Some of them feature sponsored ads, which is hit or miss with followers (usually miss, especially if the product contains TOXINS) and it’s really interesting to watch that really tiny ecosystem of instagram fame.
man I wish I could get an instagram following based on my messy-ass house with like piles of baby toys shoved into the corner and a week’s worth of laundry I forgot to put away
You probably could–Normcore, man!
‘This brave father shows us what REAL fatherhood looks like with his honest instagram posts’
Its totally never been done before…
oh shoot I actually probably WOULD get a lot of press just because of sexism, wouldn’t I?
All right well, that’s not worth it then, I’ll just find some other way to monetize this baby.
Yelling At Babies About End Stage Capitalism
ugh there’s a commercial for I think a samsung tablet and the blogger guy is like “it’s so amazing I get all this attention just for being a dad, hee hee.” Yeah. Amazing.
Oh my gosh, I see that commercial ALL THE TIME and it drives me bonkers! I mean, on the one hand it’s a nice contrast to the usual depictions of black fathers that we see in American media, but on the other hand why does a dad get a gold star and a (presumably at least semi-lucrative) commercial for doing what women have been doing as unpaid labor for millennia?! (I know the answer to that question. It just makes me rage.)
Hastag that mofo. #blessed #crushingit #superdad #forrealsimawesome etc. You’ll show up in peoples’ tag feeds and eventually the revolution will begin
Dog Instagram is full of this too and it is fascinating.
I never in a million years imagined that one world could contain so many canine Brand Ambassadors.
Dog Instagram is the only place where I put up with that kind of blatant sponsoring. But I always wonder how the owners handle like, a lifetime Barkbox subscription for each of their 3 dogs, when they clearly have more toys than they’re interested in already.
Woooow I’ve never heard of this! Fascinating! I guess there’s an instagram subculture for everything…
Why why why would I scroll down to the comments on the Hillary article? I never learn.
Same. What is my problem?!
Oh dammit, I read that profile and I liked it so much, and then I was like, well, let’s keep rolling down into the comm-OHGODNORUN.
The article was so good…and every good thing must be ruined by the dregs of the internet.
I don’t think it’s helpful to generalize but the NYMag comment section is a cesspool of delusional white men and dumb fucking idiots and even I, lover all comment sections everywhere, cannot handle it.
Guys, can we please talk about today’s Ask Polly? You can tell that I’m (a) single and (b) a monster because my reaction was, “Well, you obviously have to divorce this man-child.”
No, I’m with you – I’m a married woman and for the entire letter I was internally screaming “LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE” because it’s not good for ANYONE. Not her, not him, not their kid, and I’m not optimistic things can improve.
I’m single and have no idea about marriage, but it seems a lot like she’d be better off without him. I feel like that not being presented as a possibility makes more sense towards the bottom when Polly/Heather reveals that her own husband is spectacularly shit at these things and her approach is just to do it all for him and roll her eyes.
Honestly, if it were a case where this dude was not organized and so wife had to do a lot of heavy lifting in one specific area, but he made it up elsewhere, then maybe …But he (a) actively fucked things up by not setting up student loan payments and (b) apparently still hasn’t applied for the second job he promised. He’s actively making the situation worse.
It is really interesting to me that Polly confesses that her husband is so bad at money and so she just does it for him. That was only sort of a workable solution in my marriage, and it was a complication in ending it. I wonder how Polly is going to feel about it ten years down the road.
Heather Havrilesky is a wonderfully empathetic and inßightfilmperson with whom I disagree really strenuously on certain points, and one of her deals is that women should handle money, because men are bad with it. Which, huh. It is a more workable default than ” Male partner works, handles accounts, and grudgingly doles out grocery money to stay at home wife,” but I didn’t marry an idiot, and I think “bad with money” is kind of like being “bad with cleaning.”
Yeah, I have no patience with people who are “bad at” important things that they’ve never bothered to TRY to learn. Unless you have an actual learning disability, neurological issue, etc., that prevents you from doing basic math, it’s not that hard to make a list of your bills and then actually pay them.
Yes to all of this. Also,it’s pretty convenient for those people to continue being “bad at” things other people do for them.
Learned incompetence. Children learn it early to get out of chores, but they are not the only ones who use it.
Also, people who are “bad at” these important life skills often seem to manage just fine when they’re forced to do stuff by, like, being single and living on their own. But you add a partner to the mix, suddenly they’ve forgotten how to make sandwiches and keep track of when bills are due.
Or she can make herself the family’s CFO, if she wants to stay married to him. I mean, obviously she can pay his student loan. The bill comes in, you open the envelope and write the check. And organize things so that the cost of his mess falls more heavily on him. If he won’t get a job unless she sends out his resume, she can send it to a hundred places, not just four.
But it isn’t fair on her to have to do all those things if he isn’t picking up the slack elsewhere, you know? And he’ll never learn, if she keeps doing everything for him. She can send out his resume, but he’ll have to interview and answer phone calls and what if he just doesn’t? What if she handles all the finances but he still finds ways to mess it up anyway? And his poor wife has to handle all this on her own, without him helping? UGH. Nope.
Exactly. I have nothing against one person being family CFO and actually think it makes a lot of sense. But that’s qualitatively different from applying for jobs on someone’s behalf, which I would argue goes way beyond, “He’s bad with money.” He still has to do all the things you mentioned, plus go to the damn job assuming he gets it. She has already set this up so that he has to do the bare minimum, and he still can’t seem to do that.
I can’t imagine that someone who needs another person to send their resumes (etc.) in order to get a job will actually hold down said job for any length of time.
It isn’t fair at all, upasan, I agree. But if she wants to stay married to him, for reasons best known to herself, she has to mitigate the damage. Staying with him and letting him fail when his failure punishes her and the child is not a good option.
I am straight up flabbergasted that she didn’t intervene before they garnished his wages. She knew it was about to happen! That is an impressive amount of faith that a particular consequence will change his (awful! oh my god so awful!) ways.
Wow. I am so glad that the Toast has of late had this trend of posting advice column and r/relationship stuff and just going “leave him, unacceptable, you deserve better” because I have a better chance of drawing boundaries in future with the weight of all of this de-social conditioning behind me.
She should leave him? He’s terrible? Maaybe she could take over finances but he’ll probably just drop more slack for her to pick up and then where will be? He didn’t change when they started taking away his money! Leave!
My father didn’t do taxes for years until my mother met him, but he was ex-military and the government just enjoyed not having to give him any of his entitled tax returns or anything while he blithely paid full whack. But he was very well paid! They were never short or anything and my mother sorted it out and he does it himself now! I am not sure that Polly doesn’t have that kind of background, where the husband’s ineffectual behaviour is annoying but doesn’t actively making things Terrible unlike LW’s situation which is terrible
My time on Ye Olde Hairpin, Captain Awkward, and The Toast has been so, SO crucial to my ability to draw/maintain boundaries and to recognize insidious bullshit from miles away.
Yeah, The Toast has greatly increased my supply of “no, fuck you, this is not my problem.” Given how many things are, in fact, not my problem, this has improved my life enormously.
I initially read that as ‘recognise insidious bullshit from *males* – which still makes sense.
A friend of mine recently ended her marriage for similar reasons and she is SO much happier now! This guy is doing his best to passively destroy their lives, including of his own kid!
Yes, reading this I was thinking “this guy is my best friend’s ex!”. Guess what, letter writer, when she got very sick and needed him to step up, he stepped off. My friend is also much happier without him and surprise, remarried to a grownup who IS there for her and her children.
THIS. Broken pelvis, in a wheelchair, dislocated hip, broken arm…he left. The judge actually said, ” you are going to leave the mother of your children, unable to walk, unable to work, and with no health insurance. Do you really want to do that?” He smiled and said yes.
I had a lot of personal feelings about this one, too. I’m about to move in with my serious boyfriend, while I know him to be as cheap as me (yayyy!), remembering how comfortable my ex was with literally describing his own spending habits as “like a drunken sailor on shore leave,” it’s definitely a conversation that has to happen sooner rather than later.
Oh man, that’s a MAJOR red flag from your ex, yikes.
That whole thing makes me furious. I mean, if this were a case of him not emptying the dishwasher or something? Sure, ok, roll your eyes and deal with it. But he drove the family finances off a cliff!!! And Polly’s all, oh well, you’re both wrong, whatever? WTF? How are they both wrong? And then she’s also telling her that she made rash decisions about getting rid of the car and stuff? when she also said in her letter that she can’t afford groceries? I’m not sure Polly read the same letter I did.
Also how many times does he have to drop the (fill in the blank) baby before she just does… everything? Break enough plates and you don’t have to do the dishes anymore, right?
And also, she was wrong to stop nagging? Because nagging is something you have to do to other adults?
I’m single, and when I read letters like these, I’m really happy about it.
I’m married (to a cis man! you know, the ones Polly says are often useless at… things… ) and I can’t think of a single thing I nag him about, or could think about nagging him about. It sounds like an exhausting way to live.
Ok, he could scrub the shower more often, but that’s it.
I feel like 6 months of daily nagging should be enough nagging? Like, if that’s not enough nagging, then clearly no amount of nagging would ever make even the slightest difference.
Polly’s 100% wrong on this one, which makes me sad. That is not a partnership. That is a fuckup who is being dragged to near-functional levels through the superhuman efforts of his partner, who he does not deserve.
My (probably unfair) instinct is to grumble a little at the LW, because why would you have a baby with someone five months after you met them and also because I will never, never understand the idea that marrying someone is less of a commitment than creating a new human being with them, but that’s in the past, right now the problem is that this dude has been a fuckup for a decade and he clearly isn’t changing it, so she needs to be making decisions based on her welfare and the welfare of her child.
I have a very good friend who recently told me that, though she doesn’t feel quite ready to marry her (asshole) boyfriend – she’d pull the goalie and have a baby with him tomorrow if he were up for it. Now, I know marriage isn’t for everyone, and that is totally fine! But I must admit I don’t understand people who say they’re not ready to make a lifelong commitment to a romantic partner b/c their relationship is troubled, but ARE willing to consider the lifelong commitment of creating and raising a child. You can divorce your husband or break up with your partner, but if you have a child together, your ex will always be a part of your life (in an ideal world, at least).
(I will say one thing in defense of friend’s jerkass boyfriend, he’s apparently 100% unwilling to consider procreation until he and friend are at the very least engaged to be married.)
Yeah, I don’t get that, either!
I’ve never particularly felt the need to get married, so I understand that perspective. I like having my own house and my private space. But I know a fair number of couples (who are already living together, raising kids together, on joint mortgages together, etc.), where one person wants to get married and the other person thinks it’s too much commitment or something. Really??
Married lady here, and also voting LEAVE. He’s made it clear that he has no intention of changing or stepping up. You don’t have to be a perfect person yourself to DTMFA and take care of your kid.
I’m single and she’s clearly married to my ex husband, so my deeply rooted instinct is to shout LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE and tbh I’m kind of annoyed at Polly’s response that basically just tells to LW to do it all for him because he’s a manbaby who can’t handle finances.
Wait, I thought she was married to MY ex-husband?
She should leave his ass. At some point you have to take care of yourself first.
Oh. My. God. I would throw his shit onto the street and light it on fire. Ok, I wouldn’t do that. But I would divorce him.
But….but…he does housework! Not all of the housework or even most of it, just the chores that she likes the least. So OF COURSE he’s a keeper!
Polly’s answer was BULLSHIT! For example:
“I still get mad at my husband sometimes when he doesn’t handle the one small financial thing I asked him to handle. But here’s a sad truth I’ve learned in ten years of marriage: Some people forget everything, always, and yelling at them doesn’t change a thing…At some point, I had to forgive him for his absent-minded-professor routine and he had to forgive me for being a shrill know-it-all. We’ve learned to roll our eyes and get over it instead of losing sleep.”
Maybe that works for Polly, but it’s a terrible analogy for the LW, who’s in a dire straits situation ENTIRELY bcos of her crap husband. I really don’t like the kind of advice that basically goes ‘I can tolerate an annoying situation that vaguely resembles yours, so you should STFU and stop complaining!’ People are different! Not all situations are the same! Some are objectively bad and shouldn’t be tolerated! And while she might have been trying to do a tough-love thing, Polly just sounds like she’s shaming the LW and accusing her of secretly wanting everything to go to shit to punish her husband. WTF?
Used to like Polly, but this, plus her family advice which seems to boil down to ‘tolerate crap from your family because they’ll be dead some day’, plus her long-windedness, has really put me off. 🙁
Yeah, Polly is a good writer, but she is too prone to assuming a LW is just like her and the problems in their lives are always sufficiently similar to ones she’s had for the same approach to work. I am often not convinced that this is true.
I’ve only ever read the letters linked on the Toast, and I can’t say I’ve been impressed with any of her advice so far. (Especially re: abusive family members).
And, yeah, long-winded is putting it mildly… I’ve never seen someone SO badly in need of an editor!
Also, I suspect it works better for Polly’s husband than it does for Polly, because when he “gets over” her being a “shrill know-it-all,” she’s doing all of his work for him, and when she “gets over” his inability to be a functional adult, she’s…doing all of his work for him.
Bingo! Like, if you have a particular thing you’re good at, and you and your partner mutually agreed that you’ll be responsible for that thing when you’re doing the division of labor, that’s fine. But if you ask your partner to do something, and they say will and then don’t, or just put it off because it’s not fun and if they wait long enough they just know you’ll end up doing it for them–that’s not a partnership, that’s you suddenly becoming the only functional adult in a situation and this is not ok.
Yeah. For example, my mom pays the bills and takes care of most of the banking, because she’s more organized than my dad, and they both recognize the importance of having credit card payments made on or before the dates established by credit card companies. He does most of the cooking, because he enjoys it more than she does.
(I tend to use my parents’ relationship as a model for how I think all relationships should work, because our household is unsettlingly functional.)
DING DING DING! we have a winner!
But… She says clearly she can’t afford to leave. I don’t think telling her to do so is helpful.
There is always a way to leave. It can often appear impossible, and I don’t have enough experience personally to feel equipped to advise someone on the exact steps, but I’ve seen Captain Awkward walk people through the steps. And even if it’s going to cost you a lot to exit, sometimes you’ve got to do it in order to survive. I don’t know if the LW’s situation is comparable to a victim of serious domestic violence, but there’s got to be a way. She just needs the right tools, resources, her Team Me all committed.
Thanks for sharing! I’m going to check out Captain Awkward.
Here’s the latest post describing a horrible relationship and her no-nonsense steps to get out, taking into account a young child as a factor: https://captainawkward.com/2016/05/31/867-my-part…
Thank you!
Staying with him may end up costing her a lot more in the long run, if they share finances and he continues to make terrible decisions.
I don’t know. I’m married and I kind of agree with some (but not all) of Polly’s advice. I agree that the LW needs to stop protecting her husband and tell him they’re in a crisis and he needs to step up. But I also think she needs to say if he doesn’t step up, she’s out of there, and to be ready to actually leave.
I’m a bit sensitive to some of this because I’ve recently come through a period of serious depression/ anxiety and unemployment and it almost ended my (14 yo) marriage. We were in a similar cycle to what the LW describes – I wasn’t very functional (although I didn’t default on my student loans, thank you very much) and Mr Cleo felt like he couldn’t ask me for anything and was at the end of his rope. It took one couple’s counseling session for me to realize that I needed to make some serious changes if I wanted to make my marriage work and I did make them. I’m still looking for work but my mental health is much, much better and so is my marriage. I would not have blamed Mr C if he left, but I’m glad we worked it out.
I agree with this. He seems pretty clearly to be depressed. I think there’s a difference between someone who’s depressed but *trying* to get better (even if it’s unsuccessful) and someone who’s depressed, not seeking treatment, and doesn’t see the costs his untreated depression is imposing on his partner as a problem.
I don’t know, I’ve known plenty of people like him who don’t appear to have any obvious signs of depression and are equally terrible/ blase about money. And who are happy to unload all sorts of adult responsibilities onto their partner, simply because it’s easier and they like it that way.
I’ve experienced clinical depression (as has my partner), and we’ve both had financial ups and downs, but we’ve still managed to avoid anything as serious as defaulting on non-dischargeable loans.
Yeah. I agree. I think it doesn’t actually matter why he’s not stepping up. Maybe he’s depressed. Maybe he’s a user. Maybe he’s just never had anyone expect him to be a grown up. What matters is how he reacts when / if she tells him that she *needs* him to step up.
My partner and I of 12 years have separate finances and homes, largely because he’s terrible with money. (I’m only slightly better, really, but I have a steadier income and I’ve been at least trying to get things under control).
People who have different approaches to money can have a good relationship, but I think you really need to set things up in a manageable way from the beginning. I think it’s probably too late once you’re already living and raising a child together, hoping desperately that the other person is going to get their shit together and getting progressively more annoyed.
In this case, he’s not apparently willing to make an effort, and it’s just going to make her life more and more stressful. And I’d be willing to bet that’s not the only way in which he’s a giant ManBaby. If I were her, I’d jettison him and try to salvage my own credit score.
(I am very perplexed about why she let his loans go into default, though, when she must’ve known it would affect her own ability to buy a house, car, etc., in the future. That was just a terrible idea).
A couple I know, the man was hesitant about marrying because the woman had huge debt. They married anyway. Over 20 years and two children later their finances are now, have always been, and always will be a disaster, because he can’t stop her from wasting both of their funds. Separate accounts sound wise to me!
When I was in law school, my family law professor always referred to two students getting married as a “union of debts”. (Which has always stuck with me).
I always avoided dating other lawyers, in part because we can be awful, and partly because I couldn’t imagine taking on *another* six-figure debt in my household. And I think that’s a perfectly valid reason not to marry someone.
Advice like that is what kept me quilted into my marriage for about 13 years too long. Burn it. Somebody rescue that woman like extracting a person from a cult. Her life could be so much better!
Oh boy. I know a couple in a similar situation. Her financial dysfunction got so bad, they were evicted from a rent-controlled NYC apartment that had been in her family for decades. The first he knew about it was when the marshal showed up with an eviction notice. They had three days to get out, find another place to live, find another location for his work (the apartment was a legal work/residence space, very rare), figure out their child’s school commute, etc. She had stopped paying rent months ago, then ignored calls and hid letters and legal notices about court dates, so there was nothing he could do about the eviction.
Unbelievably, she kept some financial control going forward and it happened AGAIN, months later: he found out about some massive judgment against her (can’t remember now if it was student loan or credit card debt) and her wages were garnished. It torpedoed the family finances and they spent the next few years scrambling to stay solvent, barely.
I cannot imagine staying with someone who could sink me financially and not let me know about it until the water is at my waist and rising.
Update on boy crush: he did message back eventually and I’m beginning to suspect he’s just a shitty texter and has limited facebook access. Which is annoying because we’re stuck in that ‘we’re only talking on FB’ phase and haven’t actually graduated to properly texting even though I have his number already. I just want to get on with it and see him again, but I’m so busy and he doesn’t live in London that the next available time to see him is weekend after next, and I’m waiting until after this weekend to bring it up and I’m hella impatient and this is taking too long.
If this sound stupidly overly complicated to anyone that’s because it is. I’m kinda terrible at this and desperately trying to toe the line between ‘interested and want to talk to you’ and ‘crazy person who text someone constantly even though they’re not answering’.
Okay: you don’t have to talk to him all the time, or even every day if that’s not your style, but definitely make an effort and get plans on the books and follow-through even if you sorta, kinda hope he’d take the reigns in terms of planning. I am also a bad texter but it’s a terrible excuse and if the person is into you and you are into them, then making the teeny, tiny amount of effort to chat is really nothing. Really, texting/messaging takes 5 seconds and I encourage you to lead it because that’s how you get stuff done. And if he doesn’t respond, if he’s wishy-washy, if he doesn’t want to make plans: he can fuck right off. You make time for the people you like!
My style is texting all day every day, but I don’t know if that’s his style! I’m just waiting for him to reply to all the texts I send!
I’m super busy this weekend, but after that I’m gonna take the bull by the horns and see if he wants to do something next weekend! He’s already suggested doing something but we didn’t make a plan
Yeah, nail those plans down!
Last night a possum visited my dining room and I’ve been feeling phantom bugs all up and down my legs all morning.
A million thanks to Toastie Twitter for getting me through the experience with more helpful suggestions and energy than any of my sleeping 6’+ sons, my husband currently in another country, or my smartass mom and siblings via text.
oh nooooooooo
oh, man, I’m glad it resolved okay. Sorry about the cleanup – gross!
OMG! I just read your possum story and I was cringe laughing the whole time. I’m so glad it turned out ok.
Me toooo. I started giggling at the cleverly constructed possum run and completely lost it at the “Get an owl,” while simultaneously remembering past bat-wrangling episodes of my own and being deeply relieved the possum was finally evicted.
I’m still shuddering. So glad you’re okay. Possums creep me out more than almost any other animal. I don’t know what I’d do if one just showed up in my house.
I know what I would do: SELL THE GODDAM HOUSE
i think you meant BURN THE GODDAM HOUSE
Yes, burn it.
And then sell the still-smoking ashes and the empty, desolate lot.
It’s going on the market this week. I just figured I should, you know, get the hellscape beastie out of it before asking people to look at it like their fabulous new sanctuary from the trials of this world.
Apologies if this was in your original story – I simply could not bear the trauma of reading about a possum in the house, let alone LIVING THROUGH THE NIGHTMARE, so i didn’t even click – I just auto-suggested getting the hell outta there. So, I am the scum of the interwebs since I commented without reading.
And now I am clicking but with my eyes semi-closed because I want to right my wrong and I don’t want to be scum. Like possums are scum.
Don’t read! There are too many pictures of possums!
You’re not scum, it is a perfectly reasonable reply and I’m going to be very very glad to move. Even though my move will be to a house way closer to the bayou, and therefore I am scared that I’m going to have more of these stories.
That was A LOT of pictures of possums! Excuse me while I stand on a chair for the rest of the day.
The shower I took after was lengthy.
When you get a good look at a possum, you realize that the Rodents of Unusual Size in The Princess Bride were pretty accurate.
I wouldn’t mind having a capybara in my house, which are far larger but cuter. There’s just something SO UNPLEASANT about a possum (as elaborated so well by Mallory).
This was magical. Thank you.
OMG Possums in the house!
I see your possum and raise you a 6 foot long black SNAKE in my living room while of course I am alone in the house.The rest of the story is the same.
If I knew it wasn’t poisonous, I could, I think, approach a snake with a lot less wild adrenaline-fueled crazy. But this is all theory based on my past snake ownership and my current possum problem.
We used to stumble across rattlesnakes occasionally when I was growing up, and that was never a fun time.
AAHHH! AAHH! NO SNAKE! NO SNAKE!
Melllll! We had a Possum Visit some years ago (in our old house). I got peed on when I shooed it away. :/ Poor little guys get scared I guess. At least he didn’t poop at me like yours did.
He kept the poop under the cabinet, so I got to clean it up and those shoes are being sanitized bc I am Not Happy about any of this proximity.
I am sorry that happened to you!!! Glad you are ok.
Oh man, that Twitter timeline was captivating! You just got yourself a new follower.
If your husband’s anything like my boyfriend, he’d be useless. I showed BF your Twitter saga and he was confused by the panic. He loves possums, it’s absolutely his worst trait.
That would border on a deal-breaker! 😀 Though I guess having one person around not freaked out would have helped with my adrenaline levels.
He once brought home a stray possum so he definitely creates more possum problems than he solves.
NOPE. Not okay. lol
I moved yesterday and in my new mailbox was a lovely Toast Post and stickers from Hey_Cinderella! It was awesome. As soon as I figure out which box the stationary is in, I am sending out a reply!
Every time I am asked to attend one of those sales parties, I smile politely and say, “No thank you,” without equivocation. I did this once to a colleague (who was holding one of the damn things for another colleague) and she was shocked. She asked me why not, and I said, “I just don’t go to parties that have sales attached to them, but thanks for thinking of me.”
After going home to her wife and telling the story of my refusal, her wife pointed at her and said, “YOU NEED TO HANG OUT WITH JILL MORE.” Apparently she didn’t appreciate having her home invaded by an MLM…
A+ strategy. Will use.
What a lovely, politely firm way to say that; I’m going to hang on to this.
Yeah I mean, my oldest niece sells Younique and I bought a couple of lipstains because I am a dutiful aunt – but also, that fact that she’s in her late teens means that she’s not hardcore into recruiting other people into selling it as well (and the few that she has are her peers). I anticipate she’ll get bored of it within the next couple of years, if not sooner.
Oh god. The Younique thing is just…weird. I bought a brush from a friend because I like makeup brushes and it was reasonably okay, but holy crap her salespeople circled like seagulls just waiting for people to say “mascara” and…BAM!
YES I’m telling my favorite MLM story again, even though I’ve told it here at least once. Back when my ex and I were first dating he decided to invite all his friends over to hang out so I could meet them. Then he decided to invite a woman he knew who sold tupperware to give a presentation while we were all together. I strenuously objected (of course) but he brushed me off (of course). The entire thing was super awkward and no one bought anything so ex felt obligated. And that is the story of how I got a $50 salad spinner for xmas.
brutal. that level of good judgement usually at least gets you a “hey y’all watch this!” and a cool explosion.
$50 for a SALAD SPINNER?!
Tupperware is waaaay expensive!
My sister in law did Norwex, and now does Shakeology and is a Beach Body coach, and it’s hard because on one hand she’s gotten in shape and is really happy with herself and that’s fantastic! And it actually making some money! But on the other hand yeah she had to buy all her supplies and it just feels so cult-ish and uuuuugh.
just wanted to say your cat is doing some A+ catting.
Ooo, that Hillary profile. My favorite line: The history of politics and of progressive movements, after all, is one of women doing the drudge work and men giving the inspiring speeches.
DAMN.
YESSSSSSS THISSSSS
(╯ರ ~ ರ）╯︵ ┻━┻
MLMs also totally target teachers and others in care professions. I’m going though my facebook right now and I can’t think of any of my teacher friends- and I have several!- who don’t sell something, or at least host several ~parties for other people annually. I’m sure it’s to make extra cash/have something to do during the summer months. I can only imagine waht kinds of sales-pitch nightmares their schools’ staff rooms are.
So, please, write your elected officials and tell them we need to pay educators more. I can’t take another day of sweaty, grimacing post-workout selfies extolling the merits of some shake that probably has the nutritional merit of astronaut ice cream.
It’s built in to the teaching experience. The school year is one “fundraiser” after another. Run in sponsored laps for this. Sell wrapping paper and cookie dough for that. Magazine subscriptions, kitchen gadgets, terrible candy, you name it, there isn’t a month in the year when the teachers aren’t handing out fundraiser materials to the kids. So it’s hardly surprising they do it themselves; it’s part of their normal.
This totally makes sense, and I’m pretty sure one party or another was actually a fundraiser.
Oof, that’s a good point. My college friend who started a Lula Roe group is a teacher.
I think you’ve got a point here, unfortunately. We happen to live near one of the “rich” neighborhoods in town, and my child will soon be attending the neighborhood elementary school. During orientation, I bristled at the PTA president’s presentation until she got to “We will ask you for a check once at the beginning of the year, and that’s it. No door-to-doors, no wrapping paper, etc.” And I started to come around.
Holy shit, I’m not even a parent and that woman sounds like a saint.
That stuff bothers me SOOOOO MUCH! Especially since way more of that money goes to the company peddling the crap than the school. The kids end up getting a tiny cut at best.
I went to urban schools in a poor district for 1st through 12th grade. In theory, fundraisers help the school afford things they otherwise couldn’t (e.g., field trips), and I get that there’s some value in that.
In practice, though, having to sell that stuff ended up being yet another visible class divide for the kids at my schools. Middle-income parents would buy their kids’ stuff themselves or take it to work, while kids from low-income families would be unable to meet their “sales goals”. It was very much a marker of poverty, like having cheaper shoes or hand-me-downs.
Yep, my sister is a nurse and she reports that Jamberry is popular, which seems backwards for nurses, who aren’t supposed to have anything on their nails.
::gets on soapbox:: Actually, as an RN, at least in the US, the guidelines are that you should not have acrylic nails or any other kind of fake nail, but you can wear polish (or presumably stickers) if they are not chipping.
OK, done now, thanks for listening.
Ugh, shortly after my parents got divorced my dad got roped into an MLM. My claims this was because she was no longer there to stop him. But he would drag my brother and i around when we was trying to recruit people, and he definitely attempted to sell to all of our friend’s parents. It was the most embarrassing dad thing he ever did, though I supposed it didn’t help that I was 12/13 at the time.
The product he was peddling was Proactiv, and he made me try it out so he’d have the review. But it was awful and made me break out even worse. Which my dad brushed off as me not using it right. I still get mad when I see their commercials.
ohhhhhhhhhh nooooooooo
That’s like the worst thing he could have sold, socially speaking.
OT cat question. I was out of town for 2 weeks, and left the cats in the hands on of daily cat sitter visit. One cat, L. is dominant, but at least before i left we had mostly peaceful coesistance with weekly bouts of hissing. It appears that without human intervention, her behavior deteriorated, and she was chasing the other cat away from food and cornering her. Cat sitter set out an extra bowl for A, and she seems fine. But I am not. How do I get back to only occasional cat brattiness?
Feliway?
Extra cuddles for dominant cat when you come home. Extra treats for both. They miss you, so they’re acting out, but they’ll get over it. Also, make sure submissive cat has a safe retreat–a way up, if she’s a climber, or some safe tunnelly lair if she’s a caver. Cavers usually find their own lair but climbers might need help.
Agreed on giving her a retreat! My submissive kitty is a climber and she has been a lot happier since I got a cat tower like 5 months ago. (She’s the only one who can climb it and she’ll raise right up there when my dominant kitty is being rude to her.)
Keep them separated for a little and slowly reintroduce them. Feliway helps a lot with this. When we came back from our honeymoon our cats had had nervous breakdowns and one was fleeing and pooping in fear from the other who would behave like he was having a PTSD flashback and not recognize her and basically be batshit. What we did is keep one cat in the bedroom and one in the living room, feeding them on opposite sides of the door. We switch them periodically so that they can get used to the other cats’ smell. You work up gradually to having supervised visits. Also highly recommend giving the cats more high up spaces so that one cat can get away from the other if necessary. Jackson Galaxy’s show My Cat From Hell is WONDERFUL in it goes over this process and other things you can do to restore cat détente.
Don’t ask me why but my first thought at that photo was ‘It’s Professor McGonagall when the weekend comes…’
The Citizen Khan article was fascinating. And this quote…..
“At the start of the Second World War, the United States was the only developed nation other than Germany to explicitly restrict citizenship on the basis of race”
Wow.
I’ve read large parts of White By Law by Ian Haney Lopez which is referenced in the New Yorker article and how the U.S has defined and regulated race is horrifying and often really fascinatingly bizare
Ouch.
I heard an interview on Fresh Air about eugenics and the worst Supreme Court decision and the whole thing was shocking and upsetting but the thing that got me the most was the influence that eugenics had on immigration laws. So horrible.
Germany’s Nuremberg Laws were also based, in large part, on US eugenics policies.
I’m kind of surprised Australia didn’t, considering how many other policies they had to deny non-white immigration. Or maybe they just weren’t -explicit- in the same way cause poc never got far enough to apply for citizenship?
I think the latter was the case, they either never got far enough for citizenship (denied entry completely or were given impossible entry tests that no one passed, etc) and if they were from a country that was later restricted, they were deported (Pacific Islands Laborers Act).
My Facebook right now is crawling with MLM stuff. The force-adds to online “parties” are bad enough, but the worst was when an acquaintance messaged me asking me to join her weight-loss “challenge” for whichever company – Advocare or Herbalife or something. I couldn’t think of a way to interpret the message that wasn’t insulting, so I stopped trying and just unfriended her. Jesus, people.
There are people that force-add me to online parties when I don’t even live in the same *country* as them.
I sat through an Amway presentation once. I subscribed to a timeshare-like, points based, vacation thing (company called Blue Green) for a year. I will never again buy anything that requires a presentation or going to a “party” in order to purchase it. I don’t care who’s benefiting from it.
Are Pure Romance parties still a thing? They were an MLM I was subjected to in college in the guise of “floor bonding” and “horrible girls night my roommate hosted”, but they are not on this shining list of small businesses
They are definitely still a thing. High school classmates I barely remember keep inviting me to them, which makes me have two reactions: 1) The hell is a Pure Romance party and 2) Honey you know I live three and a half hours away WHY are you inviting me??
I have a lot of strong feelings about being invited to events I could not possibly attend.
Definitely still a thing! My roommate hosted one and I was thankfully busy that evening.
Oh man, I went to school in western Mass (think: women’s college, lots of lesbians, generally super crunchy, there was more than one local lesbian-owned store for one’s fun time gadgets-n-things etc), and the queer cultural center got roped into this shit. I remember it being talked about as a “fun sex toy party!”* So we get there — a bunch of queer-identified female-bodied people in 2005 at a very liberal women’s college — and it’s a sales pitch done by a very VERY heteronormative, married-to-a-man woman who keeps going ON AND ON about how much her husband LOVES to join in with whatever thing she was using. She did a very bad job of reading the room, and it was super awkward. Yes, of course, a room full of 19 year old baby dyke undergrads is going to be super interested in how much your husband likes fluffy handcuffs.
*There was a local queer lady who actually hosted awesome sex toy parties and we had them in the dorms, and she was just this fun, awesome, hilarious lady who owned a nice little store in town.
From today’s Dear Prudence, this is possibly my favorite answer ever, and I must remember to use it some appropriate time:
‘“What a remarkably ungenerous thing to say,” followed by a willingness to endure strained silence.’
The ‘bad at maths friend’ in that letter is *literally* the Live Laugh Love lady from the I Seem Fun podcast.
Thank you, that is literally what I’m listening to right now. You have made my day so much better!
It IS! Oh, this is glorious.
I imagine that this is a great way to handle almost anything, if you can handle the awkward silence afterwards. I’m going to try it.
I’m trying to figure out how to make it extensible to more passive aggressive situations– like, what if the friend says something biting and bitter on their, say, twitter or tumblr, clearly timestamped with the time of your IRL conversation?
That “Citizen Khan” tamale article is the best thing I’ve read in ages- I have sent it to everyone I love and hold dear, and some I don’t.
I now desperately want good tamales. (I haven’t really found many of those in the Boston area, so I has a sad.)
Show of hands if at least three friends you follow on Instagram have recently changed their username to reflect their MLM affiliation
That’s horrifying.
It’s especially horrifying when you’re plunged into existential confusion over whether these people, who you once considered actual friends, now only see you as potential customers.
My favorite thing about working at a big state university was aggressively throwing MLM recruiters out of my lecture classes.
Frustratingly, I actually do like some of MLM products (before I went full crunch and started using coconut oil, I was rather fond of arbonne’s makeup remover) but buying them is such an unpleasant experience that I normally avoid sellers.
I’ve only been invited to one MLM party in my life, and I RAN BREATHLESSLY to it because I wanted so badly to experience one. Hoo Boy, I am going to be OFFENDED! I thought, but no! Legit one of the weirdest and most interesting nights ever, kind of like being in the studio audience of an infomercial with the added delight of watching my friend shapeshift into a hoor for Hostess premiums. She locked us in her dining room like the congregation of Calpurnia’s church and made us buy jello molds and cake keepers until she got her chip’n’dip, and then turned up the thermostat to sweat a set of knives out of us.
I think about that night fondly, and wonder what she might have done for a full collection of pantryware.
A++ for the Mockingbird reference
I feel like there is some sort of Southern Gothic parody to be made out of this story, preferably with a basement full of the skulls of women who did not purchase the salad spinner for only $9.99.
Beloved II: Number 124 now haunted by the ghost of that person you unfriended on Facebook after they posted too frequently about Herbalife.
Gothic parody MLM just makes me think of the episode of Eerie Indiana (which I can only just barely remember anyway) with ForeverWare.
tupperware beds!
Oh, MAKE IT SO. I like the way you think!
Oh man my best MLM story: my friend scratched a car in her company’s parking lot and left a note. The car owner called her back, waived off any reimbursement, and was just really gracious about the whole thing. Then she emailed my friend a few days later and invited her to a Mary Kay party. I mean, super impressive power play.
My friend and I spent an uncomfortable hour being made-over by this previously unknown coworker and calculating how little we could appropriately spend. (Answer: $40/each. It was a big scratch!) The evening was made even more awkward because our company was a classified government agency full of super awkward introverts; it was the most somber MLM party I’ve ever been to.
“Is there a certain shade you prefer? Maybe to complement your warm skin tone?”
“That’s classified information.”
I used to work in a federal office, which banned any kind of financial solicitation at work (including things like selling wrapping paper for your kid’s school) under the Hatch Act. It was blissful.
In awesome news, truly awesome news, regarding the issue of sexual violence on college campuses: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/sports/sec-tran…
“This week, the Southeastern Conference is expected to approve rules that would prohibit players with a history of sexual assault, stalking or interpersonal violence from transfering to any of its 14 member universities … One big difference this spring from last year is that there is unanimous agreement on the changes from the conference’s 14 head football coaches.”
A step in the right direction. Let’s look forward to seeing more of this.
Oh, that IS good news! . Am very impressed all the coaches bought into it.
(Ahhh, just realized my first instinctive line of “Hit them where it hurts” is SUPER inappropriate for this subject, can’t think of anything less offensive at the moment)
Hi! This is off topic but I love this toasty group of women and wanted to share:
We own a commercial fishing boat. We troll for salmon in Alaska. We need a deckhand for the summer. I posted an ad on a Facebook fishing classified group. Lots of interest. The best applicants are all women! There were 3 who responded and they all sent nice introductory messages. None of the dudes did. One woman looks pretty promising. I even have convinced my husband (boat skipper, most of the time it’s just he and the deckhand) that a woman would be a better fit.
Anyway, I now want to highlight all of the amazing women who make a career in fishing. It’s been a shitty week and these glowing women have been my saving grace.
I just love your story and now I want a photo journalist to document all the Alaskan women fishermen out there kicking it.
Me too. The women up here are all around great.
@aksalmonsisters on instagram has a lot of photos of badass AK women in commercial fishing (and they make really cool designs!)
Ooh, checking it out for sure! Thanks for the link!
I love them.
http://www.glamour.com/story/women-fishermen-alas…
🙂
I love this!
In the same vein; I’m looking for a new housemate, and in the ad I have said female preferred and please don’t call me. Not a single woman has called, they all send nice messages introducing themselves and asking questions. Its always the dudes that call, and then are annoyed when I say its a girls only house, read the ad guy.
Ugh, guys are the worst. I was doing some roommate searching lately and it’s always a guy who’s like, “Hey I’m interested, here’s literally nothing about me, when can I come see the place.” No dude. No.
YES! it’s always ‘hello I want to rent this room when can I view it’ and then they get shitty when I message back and ask for some info about them. Like hold up dude o need to know you’re not a maniac and can pay your bills. Tbh that’s why I say it’s girls only, not only is it a good excuse to turn away the skeevs, I’m better at getting a quick read on women and they tell you more about themselves upfront.
Yay!! Hire a woman deckhand!! I live in a fishing town in Alaska too (in a fisheries adjacent job) and all the fishing women I know are such incredible hard-working badasses.
Which one? I’m in Sitka.
Gah, Sitka is so gorgeous. I’m in Fairbanks!
I have never been to Fairbanks! I would like to get there some day.
It’s a strange place, and tragically short on oceans, but we love it nonetheless.
I’m in Sitka too!!
I probably know you then. I’m at USFS and own the Axel. You?
Haha! Sitka toasties!
I don’t think I do know you but I’ve only been here a year… I work at UAS! So great to have toasties nearby 🙂
I live close enough to Alaska to visit fairly regularly (Yukon). As a transplanted Maritimer, I’m a huge fan of Alaskan fish and have greatly enjoyed “Fishes and Dishes”, the seafood cookbook published by and featuring stories from women commercial fisher folks. So great and so yummy!
i cannot quote enough amazing things from the hillary article. i will say though that i think you buried the lede:
These days, I think of her as General Leia: No longer a rebel princess, she has made a wry peace with her rakish mate and her controversial hair and is hard at work, mounting a campaign against the fascistic First Order.
OOOH, that is SO GOOD. Love love love. “Rakish mate” indeed, still beloved by the public despite all misbehaving.
“a wry peace with her rakish mate and her controversial hair” is, like, 10/10 political writing and i can’t even express how unironic i am being about my deep excitement over the OBVIOUS BUT I DIDN’T NOTICE IT alignment between Senior Leia and Hillary
also this article is very clearly, like, old-millennial bait so of course it got me — full feminism article using the touchstones of my thoughtless 90s youth yes please. see also: ‘There is an Indiana Jones–style, “It had to be snakes” inevitability about the fact that Donald Trump is Clinton’s Republican rival.’ CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOME MORE STUFF RELATING HILLARY’S PRESIDENTIAL BID TO YOUNG HARRISON FORD SURELY THERE IS AN AIR FORCE ONE OR FUGITIVE REFERENCE TO BE MADE HERE
We still have five months to go, I’m sure there’s time for those references to be quite apt!
Let’s all take a moment to imagine Hillary Clinton punching Donald Trump out of Air Force One and saying “get off my plane.”
::heart eyes emoji::
I sure did, and it was great.
As he sails through the air, hair flapping wildly.
Would watch this movie.
Would probably even pay to watch this movie.
She’d probably get through the whole movie without rumpling her fabulous pantsuit.
Wait was I the only person who immediately that of Hillary Clinton when Carrie Fisher came out in her last scene in The Force Awakens? Like, it was back in Dember before primaries, when we were still innocent, but I definitely poked my brother and asked him who he thought Abrams was going to vote for in the democratic primary.
that’s the thing, it did not occur to me at all! but now that i’ve read this i’m like HOW DID I NOT SEE IT
I agree that this is perfect but want to interject that I’ve always thought of her as Laura Roslin.
I just realized “Jamberry” is a manicure set. Originally reading all of the comments, I thought it was an MLM for actual JAM and JELLY and I kept wondering what population exists in this world that eats so much jam there is a market for MLMs and jam!
Same!
I eat that much jam, would definitely join
that is my family but without the money? crazy jam makers with out of control home gardens providing the ingredients.
Seattle Toasties! if you like sci-fi, burlesque, and lesbian romances where the women don’t die, maybe consider coming to the burlesque play I’m producing/writing/directing in June? I feel like it would be y’all’s jam.
http://spaceopera.brownpapertickets.com/
This looks amazing! Are you on the Seattle/Tacoma Toast Facebook group? Posting there seems like a good idea too.
I did not know that group existed but now I do and I have requested to be added!
I would totally go if I was on the right coast. This looks awesome
How could you present us with that list of things as if you honestly believed there were a single person here who was NOT interested in that combination of items?
I mean maybe some people don’t like romances? I try not to judge.
Late, but wanted to say that if you have not read and watched The Book of Negros, DO SO ASAP.
I LOVED the book and enthusiasically second your recommendation. I read an article by the author about the series adaptation and he said the filmmaker wanted to cut the scene where Aminata’s head is forcibly shaved because it was offensive, but keep the rape scene in. Because rape isn’t offensive?! Fortunately the actress herself insisted the head-shaving scene be kept.
Oh, and The Book of Negroes was originally sold in the United States under the title Somebody Knows My Name, though I understand that with the miniseries they’re selling it again under the original title.
All I can think is, “Leave the Khans alone!” I worked for a branch of the Khan family when I lived in Wyoming. They were a integral part of the community. Nobody ever thought anything of them other than they owned a motel in town.
I learned so much about Wyoming in that article and I lived there for many years. I have posted it on facebook because I still have so many friends in my life who need to read it and know what’s going on there.
Speaking of Jaya and Matt, I was just enjoying Matt’s webcomic Please Listen To Me and it seems weird to see Jaya in cartoon form.
Also, Jaya tweeted “I have not been crowned the Queen Of Love And Beauty. This is an outrage.” I didn’t realise this was at Medieval Times until I scrolled down to more tweets; I thought she was upset that the world wasn’t giving her her due.
The BEST and MOST FABULOUS television MLM-related plot line is on Schitt’s Creek. If you haven’t seen it, you have to. I laughed for days over that episode.
oh boy, there were exciting times when my sister got involved in Landmark, which is MLM for self-improvement but maybe worse than regular MLMs because you don’t even get some make-up or containers out of it. Instead you get to hand over a lot of money for their seminars, donate a lot of your time, and prove that you’re correctly applying your newfound self-expression by signing up everyone you know for the next round of seminars.
A good three years of being told that my life sucked and that I needed help and the fact that I wasn’t prepared to go to the seminars was a sign of how badly I needed to go and enlisting all my family to try pressure me…GOOD TIMES LANDMARK YOUR TACTICS REALLY IMPRESS ME AND MAKE ME SPEAK HIGHLY OF YOU
Correct.
Oh man. Landmark is terrifying. There's an episode of Weeds where it gets a shoutout as a "self-help pyramid scheme."
one of my friend also own a restaurant…sometimes i go there..yes what you have mentioned here is true….yes it’s not as same as supporting their MLM business….thanks for sharing your opinion….