“The child said I could eat the bear.”
I am going to your nation’s capital tomorrow for 24 hours! I am having dinner with my best friend in the whole world, who is visiting DC for a week from Australia, so obviously I, too, had to go to DC, that’s just common sense. I am seeing Nikki (the first time in person!!!) the next day and basically cannot handle my excitement.
You have probably already read the beautiful piece about the creator of Frog and Toad, but if you haven’t, buckle in:
When reading children’s books as children, we get to experience an author’s fictional world removed from the very real one he or she inhabits. But knowing the strains of sadness in Lobel’s life story gives his simple and elegant stories new poignancies. On the final page of “Alone,” Frog and Toad, having cleared up their misunderstanding, sit contently on the island looking into the distance, each with his arm around the other. Beneath the drawing, Lobel writes, “They were two close friends, sitting alone together.”
TAP DANCING
Friend of The Toast Tasbeeh Herwees on the teen shoplifters of Tumblr:
In the summer of 2015, Barbie and her longtime friend, who goes by the handle Unicorn-Lift, had just discovered Liftblr. Liftblr, Tumblr’s notorious shoplifting community, is an ever-changing group of mostly young female bloggers who trade tips, write about criminal exploits, and post images of stolen merchandise known as “hauls.” Unicorn-Lift actually discovered the community through an anti-lifting post, written by someone enraged by the existence of the “shoplifting fandom.” She showed Barbie, and the pair found themselves drawn into the Liftblr world. They wanted to be part of it and earn a “lift” title. The only way to do that was to steal something. Unicorn-Lift, also 15 years old, hit the local Wal-Mart. Barbie found herself at the Dollar Tree.
Q. Bad-at-math friend: My friend “Nikki” has been a stay-at-home parent for years, though her one kid is in grade school. She gripes often about how they’re just scraping by (despite eating out a few times a week, the kid being in private, pricey lessons, and that kind of thing). I don’t care what folks do with their time or money—truly!—but she seems genuinely befuddled as to why they are struggling. And if our friends are discussing something like summer plans and someone says she’s going to Disney World (or the local theme park or almost anything), Nikki will say something biting and bitter, like, “Well, my kid’s going to have to enjoy vacationing in our backyard. Not everyone can afford air travel.” Is there a gentle way, when she says something like this, to point out that she’s being a jerk, or that we all make certain trade-offs and financial choices and hers are keeping her cash-strapped and angry?
A: “What a remarkably ungenerous thing to say,” followed by a willingness to endure strained silence.
I am known (mainly in my own mind) for my obsession with tornadoes, so this thing on how Twister ALMOST DIDN’T HAPPEN is very important:
During filming, director Jan de Bont used a special type of electrical lighting to make the sky look stormy behind the actors. When the crew turned on the lights for the first time, Hunt and Paxton began to complain and when they returned to their trailers, they couldn’t see. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Paxton said, “Those lights, they were like sun balls … These things literally sunburned our eyeballs”.
After flying in an ophthalmologist from UCLA, the diagnosis was that Hunt and Paxton had been temporarily blinded and it would only get worse if they were exposed to the lighting again. While the actors recovered with the help of eye-drops, special sunglasses and a few rounds of Marco Polo, a filter was placed in front of all the lighting rigs while de Bont had to deal with another big problem: a crew ready to strike.
“And Brexit? Your position?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“Brexit.”
“Hmm.”
“The Brits leaving the EU,” I prompt, realizing that his lack of familiarity with one of the most pressing issues in Europe is for him no concern nor liability at all.
“Oh yeah, I think they should leave.”
healthcare is a nightmare and you do the work yourself, always:
Patients have lives outside of their doctors’ offices. They have jobs to do and children to take care of. I’m lucky that my job comes with flexible hours. I can shoot off emails to my doctor’s office and wait on hold, at my desk, without fear of getting fired. Last Thursday I spent 90 minutes waiting to see my doctor, right in the middle of a workday, and my boss didn’t bat an eye.
Not everyone has this luxury. Some have to make a choice between doing their actual work (which pays the bills) and their patient work (which doesn’t). In those cases, prescribing health care with a high patient work burden can be equivalent to denying health care. Medication won’t do much to help a condition when you don’t have the time to make the phones calls necessary to track it down.
There is a risk associated with not measuring patient work: namely, that patients will give up when life gets in the way. This is an especially acute worry for lower-income patients, who often work for hourly wages and have little space to change their schedules.
yes (this is all very fascinating, also no one is making money in media, did I mention that, I probably mentioned that):
The Times, of course, does not have a storied history of making big, successful bets. Its billion-dollar purchase of The Boston Globe in the 90s backfired; it sold the paper for $70 million in 2013. It sold About.com for $300 million in 2012 after buying it for $410 million in 2005. More recently, it created a series of beautiful apps—including Opinion and NYT Now—that were all deemed commercial failures. And unlike a V.C. model, none of its current portfolio of investments seem like unicorns with the potential to underwrite everything else. Their greatest potential would be to bolster the foundering economics of the place. Either way, it appears to those at 620 Eighth Avenue that all paths to growth must begin with severe cutting.
Here is a good round-up of criticisms of Me Before You.
THE STORY OF THE TOASTER PASTRY:
The story of the toaster pastry begins with dog food. In the early 1960s, General Foods was hard at work trying to make a moist dog-food patty that wouldn’t spoil on the shelf. They found success in Gaines Burgers, but realized the technology could be used for more, and shifted their focus to the Post cereal division. In February 1964, Post debuted “Country Squares.”
If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of “Country Squares,” it’s because they weren’t around for very long. It’s not that people weren’t into the concept, but in 1964, a name like that implied the product was for uncool country bumpkins. While that may not have bothered the parents, who were the ones doing the buying, it certainly bothered the kids, who were increasingly the ones being advertised to. The 1960s were prime time for cereal brands’ cartoon mascots to grace TV screens, hawking sugar-coated flakes and oat bits that were part of anyone’s healthy breakfast. When you have Tony the Tiger, “Country Squares” just aren’t that appealing.
Not rich, not white, seeking therapy:
Last year, Decker Ngongang realized he needed to find a good therapist to help him with a lot of little stresses that were piling up.
“I grew up in a single-parent household,” he said. “A lot of the things I wanted to talk about were just childhood-related, but also the stress of being a black man in America.”
He figured it would be similar to getting someone to take a look at a knee injury. Ngongang has good insurance through his work as a consultant for NGOs in Washington. So he opened up his insurance company’s website, typed in “psychologists,” and started calling.
And calling. And calling.
A very big day indeed, and a very big job for Cherrelle Skeete, shown here in Rose’s brand new Hogwarts uniform. Cherrelle has previously appeared in productions ofThe Lion King and Wind in the Willows, as well as television series Call the Midwife andDanny and the Human Zoo – which coincidentally, starred Harry Potter actors Evanna Lynch, and James and Oliver Phelps.
‘I can’t think about how big it is or I’ll just faint,’ Cherrelle said. ‘Putting on my uniform, ready to go to Hogwarts, and seeing everyone else in their uniform was exciting. I’ve been looking at it every day in the wardrobe department, waiting for the day I can get on the Hogwarts Express.’
Toast Mix CD Swap News
By now, everyone (all 83 of you!) should have received an email with your partner’s info. If you haven’t, you’re fucked let me know! Same if we made a mistake while matching people, or if I forgot some crucial piece of information in my email.
Now get mixing!
Thank you for doing this!
I got mine!! Can’t wait to start playlist creation. (And to see whether the external DVD R/W drive I bought can also do CDs.)
Sausagedog! I’m making your mix! You didn’t include any preferences. Genres you love or hate? Themes? Prefer CD or USB? I have STRONG FEELINGS about tailoring mixes to the recipient or to a theme, so please feel free to contact me with some guidance. You can email at my user name at yahoo dot com.
I forgot my preferences! I will not say no to any genre (and appreciate the opportunity to learn about new ones) but particularly like rock + related genres (punk, metal, industrial), followed by rap and pop. Will be going back to school in the fall, so if you were looking for a theme, “HIGH ENERGY STUDY JAMS” would be it. Small preference for USB but only if not-cost-prohibitive!
Yay! Thank you. That is helpful.
I got mine and I AM EXCITE, thank you for organizing this!
Thanks! I got mine! Hopefully my partner likes what I’m putting together!
Same! All I am listening to lately is Rancid, sooooooo
I squealed out loud when I read my partner’s description. I AM SO EXCITED!
Thank you for organizing this, I am so excited!
Are partners Top Secret Surprises, or is it okay to reach out to the person you are mixing for to ask about preferences?
I don’t see why not! Go ahead and reach out.
Sansa, pretty girl! I want to snuggle her all day instead of working.
Sansa, THIEF OF BEARS.
can i just say i now mainly associate “sansa” with this baby dog to the point where when someone says “sansa!” on game of thrones (which i just started watching again after skipping most of last season and the beginning of this, will accept congratulations in the replies) i look up excitedly for a foofy dogmuffin and am disappointed when i see sophie turner (who’s pretty cool and all, but WHERE ARE THE EAR TUFTS)
Now I’m imagining Sophie Turner dressing up as Sansa dressing up as Sansa the dog, complete with ear tufts, and it is excellent.
best cosplay ever
I am always mystified by how quickly these particular breeds embiggen. Sansa has gotten ginormous — particularly her feet. She is still floofy and beautiful, though.
How damn big is she anyway? My tiny cat doesn’t even weigh 5 pounds, so I cannot even fathom having an animal around who weighs at least 10 and probably closer to 20 times that.
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive]
On this day in 1907 was the birth of Dorothy West, a writer during the Harlem Renaissance. She was born to Christopher West, a former slave, and Rachel Pegues Benson (who was one of 22 children!). Dorothy wrote her first story at the age of seven and had her first published story in the Boston Post when she was only 14. After attending the Girls’ Latin School, she went on to Boston University and then the Columbia University School of Journalism. In 1926, at the age of 19, she entered a writing contest sponsored by Opportunity (a journal published by the National Urban League). Dorothy tied for second place with her story “The Typewriter”… the woman she tied with was none other than Zora Neale Hurston (a black author best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God).
Around this same time, Dorothy had moved to Harlem, where she unwittingly became a part of the Harlem Renaissance. (As she said much later, in 1995: “We didn’t know it was the Harlem Renaissance, because we were all young and all poor.”) Langston Hughes, another writer of the Harlem Renaissance, gave Dorothy the nickname “The Kid” and it stuck; she also later travelled with him to Russia for a year, for a film on American race relations that was never produced. During the Renaissance, Dorothy’s biggest contribution was publishing the magazine Challenge (and later it’s successor, New Challenge), which published the groundbreaking essay “Blueprint for Negro Writing” by Richard Wright.
Later, Dorothy would remark about how hard it was for black women to get published, let alone have a career in writing, prior to the Harlem Renaissance. She was in fact one of the first female writers of color to have her work published in the United States; her first novel, The Living is Easy, was published in 1948. She worked as a journalist for several decades until her work gained a resurgence in the 80s and 90s, with a republishing of her novel by The Feminist Press, and her inclusion in the anthology Daughters of Africa. At 85 years old, she published her second novel, The Wedding, which contained the message that love knows no bounds, despite the false distinctions of race. The novel was a bestseller, and led to the publishing of The Richer, The Poorer, which was a collection of her short stories and reminiscences. The Wedding was also turned into a two-part movie by Oprah.
Dorothy West died in 1998 at the age of 91, presumably of natural causes. Asked previously what she wanted her legacy to be, she replied, “That I hung in there. That I didn’t say I can’t.”
(FYI I totally teared up typing that last quote???? Dang PMS.)
What a goddamn champion, her books are going on my list.
(Also 22 CHILDREN WTF? The things the human vagina can endure…)
There is no mention of Gretchen Weiner’s father in that toaster pastry piece
Also, still not over that picture of the Granger-Weasley family from the Cursed Child. CHERELLE LOOKS LIKE SHE COULD BE THEIR ACTUAL DAUGHTER. RON IS OF COURSE WEARING AN ORANGE STRIPED JUMPER. IT IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED (ron haters can step to the left over a cliff)
What do you think of the styling? I am loving the actors but really wish everyone was in robes. They are wizards and witches, people! Put them in their robes and hats! I know the movies were inconsistent (at best) about that, but I was hoping they would go more with the book outfits for the stage adaptation.
I sort of don’t mind? I can understand why they wouldn’t, from a costuming perspective. Without the robes and hats covering things up, you can say a lot more about the character through their wardrobe choices and hair styles. I think it works better for theater.
I am surprised his jumper isn’t a Chudley Cannons jumper but otherwise I love this cast especially the Granger-Weasleys
My bet is that he saves the Cannons jumpers for game days and wears orange as his subtle nod towards them during the week (it’s a compromise with Hermione)
I thought that Harry and Co. looked disappointingly bland (and they put poor Ginny in the worst outfit they could; wasn’t this woman a pro quidditch player and therefore a celebrity at one point, or something?) but the Granger-Weasley’s are ADORABLE. Rose could absolutely be their kid! And the actress could play Hogwarts era Hermione herself! Ron’s stripey sweater!
THIS. Ginny would never wear something like that.
And I agree with all of you about the Granger-Weasleys, they look great!
I used to be a Ron hater. I also didn’t believe in Ronbledore.
That has changed for me. I like Ron a lot more now that I believe that he’s Dumbledore.
I almost cried when I saw Hermione. She looks so gorgeous and perfect.
oh jeezus I am so lucky that shoplifting tumblr didn’t exist when I was a kid, I would be so deep into a life of crime now there’d be no going back.
as a child, my actual dream was to lead a gang of petty thieves into shoplifting history
I was a teenage art nerd just just at the point in the 2000s when the internet was making these kinds of subcultures readily available. I wanted so badly to be a notorious graffiti artist; I managed to paste up a handful of crappy posters in uninteresting locations before I ran out of ideas. But I am sure that 2016-level internet would have pushed me to a higher level of mischief.
I read that article while half-napping (it’s a thing, you should try it) and almost decided on a life of crime last night in my recliner.
Have you thought about stealing recliners?
But don’t you think once is enough though?
That article was so fascinating. I definitely wouldn’t have had either the guts or the inclination to shoplift things as a teen (I never perceived myself as adequate enough for nice clothes or makeup) but as an adult I can absolutely see why and how this subculture flourishes.
This was my exact same thought when I read that.
Sis/bro, do you even (shop)lift?
I shoplifted for the thrill waay back in the AOL days of the Internet. I lost interest because, well, jacked drugstore makeup is kind of “meh”. I’m sure with a bunch of my peers egging me on, I’d have gotten in deep.
Hijacking Link Roundup to inform interested parties that I relisted the last of my bloomers last night. I’m out of lace and probably won’t be ordering more until fall, so this is all the stock I’ll have for a while. There are also two pairs of bloomers that don’t have bids on Con or Bust here (size small) and here (size large). If you want to bid against the other person for the medium, they’re here.
I just added a 20% off coupon that’ll be active until June 30: TOASTIE20.
Do you have a tumblr post promoting your store? I know some of my followers might be interested in bloomers.
I do, now! I am TERRIBLE at self-promotion. Not that I don’t like to, I just don’t think about it…So thank you for asking!
Bloomers, now with bonus Hiddlegif!
Awesome! Reblobbed! (and heee, thank /you/ for the gif! 😀 )
They are lovely! Do you ship outside the US?
I do! Let me know if it’s not showing as an option. When I relisted these, somehow the category designation got stripped and I had to fix it but I didn’t think to check if anything else got lost.
I just bought a pair and I’m very excited! I have been coveting these ever since I first saw them mentioned around here.
Don’t be giving me stealth Trump links, I cannot be playing that game with you.
Was it really stealth, though? Was there ever any doubt who it was about?
I have a real issue with people who don’t understand the difference between “poor” and “broke,” as someone who grew up squarely in the former category and is now in the latter. “Poor” is not being able to fix the car when it breaks, being on gov’t assistance, picking which bills you are going to pay, going without meds because you can’t afford them, constant fear of layoffs at work, and worrying about the house going into foreclosure/ getting evicted. “Broke” is going over your personal budget while knowing that the lights are going to stay on and that there is a paycheck coming next week. Broke means having a fall back- like a savings account or relatives that have the means to help you out if things get really bad.
Broke is no fun but poor can be life-threatening. (Coming from someone in the same circumstances.)
The worst thing for me right now is that “broke” brings back a lot of the panic that “poor” had for me. Even though I logically know that I am fine, it still brings back that panicky, stomach-clenching feeling. I have to remind myself to be logical about it.
IT ME.
Getting the mail from the mailbox and opening it is still super stressful even though things are mostly ok and even periods of broke-ness are becoming less of a thing. I still send every unknown number calling straight to voicemail just in case it’s a bill collector.
My mom’s (old Southern) expression was, I’m down on my ass [broke] but not on my knees [poor].
THIS IS SO USEFUL, I will remember this distinction the next time someone tries to tell me that poor people have all the advantages because social programming. *rolls eyes*
Yes. YES.
I have been broke, while living a modestly middle-class life that was beyond my means as a recent college grad with a job as a receptionist. I built up credit card debt on the (correct) assumption that eventually my income would rise to the point I could pay it off.
I have never been poor and wouldn’t presume I have any idea what that is like.
Yeah, I have a friend who doesn’t necessarily get this distinction and I’ve learned to steer away from any conversation in which she could mistake her “broke” for something more than it is. Like, I get it. Sometimes money is tight for you and that sucks. But, have a little perspective about it, please.
I can’t like this enough.
Yep. There’s a huge difference between “I can’t go out to drinks tonight because I used up all my spending money til I get paid in a week” and “I can’t go out to drinks tonight because I have $12 to pay all my bills and buy all my groceries with til I get paid in a week.” One is frustrating; the other has actual life consequences.
Always worth reposting: John Scalzi’s essay on being poor. Also, his reflection on it a decade later.
Thank you for this! I have a relative who has told me “I enjoy being poor”, meaning she accepts a lower standard of living in return for not killing herself at work, and it drives me crazy. Because her version of being poor is having her parents and in-laws buy her what she wants instead of buying it for herself. That’s not poor!
I spent over an hour in the liftblr tumblrs last night after reading Tasbeeh’s article and they are FASCINATING.
These conflicts have played out in the #liftblr tag, which is contested territory between the shoplifting community and the fitness community.
Did you find any good arguments?
That was genuinely my favourite part of the article
“THEY DON’T EVEN REALLY LIFT BRO. THEY STEAL SHIT. THAT SHIT AIN’T EVEN HEAVY.”
THAT WAS MY FAVORITE LINE
MINE TOO
So if you stole a bunch of weights, would they be impressed?
came here with that line ready to paste. AMAZING.
(genuinely the whole thing is fascinating, but that single line is a thing of beauty and a joy forever bro.)
Honestly, I just googled #liftblr and browsed from the first blog I found. That blog, funnily enough, warned people not to use hashtags. I think the fitness community just uses #fitblr at this point.
There were some posts complaining about anti-liftblr, but nothing very interesting. The blog I read reblogged a few things that basically said “You guys, we’re thieves. We’re breaking the law.” I appreciated that.
I enjoyed the piece, but I found it baffling that it referred to the post listing some liftblr tumblrs as “doxxing”! Like… your tumblr is public, your username is “l-lifterlove,” you explicitly refer to shoplifting in your posts and you use tags like #liftblr to make sure that your posts are easily found by people who want to read about shoplifting on tumblr. It is not “doxxing” you to say “l-lifterlove is a tumblr all about stealing for fun and I think it’s obnoxious.”
Yeah, I was confused about that part.
I mean, I can understand the girls feeling burned by it — they weren’t exactly hiding, but they were posting in a space that outsiders were unlikely to see unless they specifically went looking for it, and then someone made a big post calling that space, and specific people inside it, to the attention of outsiders. It’s not surprising that a bunch of people got upset and angry and deleted their blogs. But it definitely is not doxxing.
No. Doxxing is when they find your real name and your facebook account and your phone number and your employer. It’s happened to people I know and it’s terrifying.
I signed up for the Toast swap but haven’t got an email 🙁
Aw, damn 🙂 We’ll check and get you a partner ASAP
Thank you!
me tooooooo
Are you talking about the CD swap or one of the other swaps? If it’s the former, I’m so sorry you were omitted–I don’t see an email from you, so please send me one at figwiggin-at-gmail-dot-com!
No worries, I meant the package swap. Too many swaps!
Me three!
Are you talking about the CD swap or one of the other swaps? If it’s the former, I’m so sorry you were omitted–I don’t see an email from you, so please send me one at figwiggin-at-gmail-dot-com!
Adding my name to the chorus of people who haven’t gotten a match yet. This is for the summer swap, not the mixtape swap, though– don’t know if those were sent yet?
Do you mean the care package exchange? I apologize for the delays with that. I am still doing it; it’s just taking longer than I had anticipated due to life issues. :/
I haven’t gotten a care package match either, but as long as they are forthcoming?
Yep! I just wanted to make sure because the people upthread didn’t seem to be talking about the mixtapes, they seemed to be talking about the care packages, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss something.
Ah, Fig and I are only in charge of the mix CD swap. So if you didn’t sign up for that one, no email for you 🙂
Ooooo, if you need someone to do double duty for CDs, am happy to make more than 1!
Great! I can’t find your username in our massive database, though: do you mind posting your real name here? or emailing Fig with the info, if you prefer?
ETA: nevermind, found you 🙂
Well peas, because I just emailed 🙂
Gotcha, thank you!!!
Hi! Is this about the CD swap or one of the other swaps?
I was talking about the care package swaps. Sorry for the confusion!
Me four… for the summer swap. I did get a confirmation, just not a match
“I’m a democratic socialist and think capitalism is a plague to America.” And then, an addendum: “yes I still am a greedy materialistic person. But it’s okay because I’m self aware!”
*gently closes tab and goes to read about toaster pastries*
Oh no, you stopped way too soon! It goes into the clash between the shoplifting community and the weightlifting community, both of which want to use the #liftblr tag, and then into a historical examination of kleptomania.
I think Mallory might have already skewered this for us:
“His substance abuse problem was different because of how self-aware he was. “I’m making a bad decision,” he said, and then made a bad decision, but no one could say anything about it because he’d already explained that he was making a bad decision.”
Yeah, I really wanted to get in to that article but…nausea.
I totally thought you were quoting a part of that Rolling Stone Bernie Sanders interview that I hadn’t read yet. :/
It made me think of a Vachel Lindsay poem:
“Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket”
I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies—
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
So he will be, though law be clear as crystal,
Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony.
Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.
This is… too apt.
I read the addendum as a self-deprecating joke, if that’s what you’re referring to.
Is it just a teenage girl thing to get really into shoplifting? Or is it a poor teenage thing? Cause me and my friends got very deep into it and we were all girls from pretty poor families so we couldn’t go shopping unless we were getting a 5 finger discount and also it was something to do after school that wasn’t sitting in a park (Because fyi there is fuck all for teenagers to do if you don’t have parents paying for activities and parks get boring very quickly before you discover the joys of alcohol.)
I had to stop pretty quickly because I had terribly anxiety and couldn’t steal anything without shaking like a leaf. I have friends who’ll still do it if they don’t want to pay for something (Only from shops, don’t steal from people, that’s a dick move.)
I think (speaking as someone who was a teenage boy into shoplifting) that it tends to skew more towards girls because it’s closely associated with regular shopping, which girls are also acculturated to be into? The pressure to actually go shopping I think are not as high on teenage boys.
I think my male friends stole more in terms of dollar value, but it was all torrents of music and movies, not physical items from a store. I had a friend who was extremely proud of his terabyte hard drive filled with video games and movies. Buying everything he downloaded would have cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but because it wasn’t a physical item it felt less like stealing somehow?
My female friends torrented stuff too, but the boys had more unsupervised computer time.
Is torrenting the new shoplifting??? I would read a whole article on the gender politics of this. *is maybe a nerd*
I would also love to see an article about this! It’s less cool and risky, but probably less stigmatized among teenagers too?
I can see the argument for that, but to me torrenting is an act of last resort? Like, I tried to give them my money, they refused it (region-locked media etc), so I’m torrenting because they would not let me buy the thing properly.
I’ve met people over the years who could afford things that were readily available, but torrenting meant not having to spend money and probably getting more things.
In many cases it’s what you describe, though.
I’ve paid to watch a season of my fave show via amazon streaming, but the episodes don’t go up until a couple of days after they air. I refuse to watch TV with ads or pay for cable, so I end up streaming them the day they air. I feel zero guilt because I’ve paid for the episodes.
I don’t think so. There’s a bit more crackdown on torrenting as of late (though it’s arguable how much people actually view it as a risk, or if getting in trouble is one of those things that happens “to someone else”) but torrenting is far, far safer than physically going to a shop and stealing from there so presumably factors like doing it for the thrill don’t apply the same way. When people steal directly from a shop, it’s a lot clearer that they’re affecting that shop but the downsides of torrenting are more abstract. This is probably why a lot of people just don’t equate torrenting with stealing.
My husband does not view this as stealing at all. It’s a source of conflict for us.
It’s something I struggle with too, because sometimes you’re already paying for three streaming services and you *still* can’t watch the one show you want to watch, and it feels ridiculous to pay for a fourth service with nearly identical content just for one show, you know? And then there are all these grey zones with sharing passwords, or getting around country restrictions, or downloading something you already bought in another format.
Especially when you’re young and don’t have a lot of money to spend on entertainment, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re not really stealing, and then it’s hard to get back out of that mindset that you need and deserve whatever entertainment you want for free.
Data point for it not being simply a teenage girl thing: I have never shoplifted anything, ever (during or outside my seven years of being a teenage girl). However, a few other data points that may be relevant: I had basically no social life and preferred staying at home with a book (so the lack of activities for teenagers was not an issue), and (as noted in a comment a few weeks ago along the lines of “does this sound like ASD?”) I have always been very law-abiding and fixated on rules. I was not comfortable even undoing the top button of my school uniform shirt; actually breaking the law would have been unthinkable.
(Addendum to my previous comment: this is more answering the question “Is this behaviour typical among teenage girls?” rather than “Is it predominantly teenage girls who do this?”; I wasn’t sure how to interpret “Is it just a teenage girl thing to get really into shoplifting?”, but this answer addresses the former interpretation.)
I think it also comes down to the increased pressure on girls with regard to their appearance. Makeup is expensive. Girls’ clothing is often more expensive. I think for a lot of girls, the social rewards associated with being able to wear that stuff outweighs the risks of stealing it.
Make up is so expensive! It still annoys me to pay £10 for a tube of black paint and a brush. I think that was part of it, we were all at the age where we were getting really into make up and getting ‘dressed’ up, but had no money (and no parents willing to supply either money or makeup), and its usually small and easy to put in your pocket or up your sleeve.
I definitely remember there being things that I really wanted (like an expensive foundation or something) but would never have been able to buy, and at that age, when consequences don’t really feel like a *real* thing and your completely self absorbed, it was easy to take it because I wanted it.
+1 to all of this! I jacked crappy makeup because I was trying to figure out what I liked and didn’t like and that’s hard when you don’t have the means to experiment.
I’m still annoyed by this and frankly its half the reason I don’t wear makeup regularly. I wear foundation maybe 10 times a year and I still have a box of foundation bottles that are barely used because I bought them to try and didn’t like them (see also, why I won’t spend more than £10 on foundation.)
Again, I don’t know if this is a case of it not being a universal experience or just a case of me being weird, but I never really got into clothes/make-up in my teens (I have literally never owned foundation), so I didn’t really have that pressure. Also, I never understood when reading books and watching TV and seeing teenagers doing all sorts of risky things with no thought for the consequences how anyone could behave like that – the consequences were always front and centre in my mind.
You weren’t alone with the worry about consequences. I was always pretty anxious about making people mad when I was a teenager and there is absolutely no way I would’ve shoplifted anything. I wasn’t into makeup, but even if I had been, I would’ve borrowed my mother’s or something.
I think shoplifters tend to be teenage girls but certainly not all teenage girls shoplift.
Making people mad is deeply distressing.
I’m very similar–I’m in my 30s now and it’s fascinating to listen to my other female (I’m a cis woman, for context) friends talk about their experiences with clothes and makeup and teenybopper culture when they were teens because I was completely oblivious to all of it. I never had a shred of interest in clothing or makeup until probably circa age 26 or so. I never would have shoplifted any makeup because I had no idea what to do with it and no interest in wearing it. I always HATED shopping (still do–god bless the internet, I’d so much rather order clothes online than go to a store) so that aspect of it didn’t catch me either.
…Not really much to add, just wanted to chime in, I guess. FWIW, I don’t think you’re weird, but maybe I’m also weird. 😉
It does often feel like I have somehow failed to grasp things that are large parts of the lives of other women (and it’s not just that I don’t do particular things, it’s that it doesn’t even cross my mind to do so), so it is nice to know others are the same!
I was very into clothes and mKeup, but wouldn’t hav dreamt of stealing. Trying a get as much as possible for my £10 was an art form!
Now I’m richer, trying to get as much as possible for £100 is an art form, hence my eBay habit.
Would you be willing to provide the names of ebay sellers you like? Is that a bad idea? I haven’t shopped on ebay in years, and have never tried it with makeup/skincare products for fear of getting fakes.
I’m 99% sure that the reason I never shoplifted much as a kid is that I’m a terrible liar and I knew I’d get caught.
Yep. This comes up in the article and I felt a little bit stupid that it never crossed my teenage self’s mind to get a… discount on make-up. It seems so obvious in retrospect and I can understand why teenage girls do that, especially considering that besides being broke, teenagers usually have their money a lot more closely monitored by their parents.
Which also made me wonder about the 19th century women mentioned. The status thing is a good point but I wonder if they didn’t steal, in part, because of being so financially dependent and so many men probably seeing those things as unimportant.
It’s funny you say that cos the girls I knew who got me into shoplifting were all nice private school girls whose parents would probably have bought them the eyeliners and tops they stole. I know I was doing it in part out of a self-destructive depressive streak that I was not dealing with well, and in part because I didn’t have the money to go shopping like my friends did. I’ve never really understood why the rich girls were doing it – I guess rebellion, a desire for edginess, and in some cases that same self-destructive streak. They were also the only people I knew who did drugs other than weed. None of my other friends could afford that shit at 15!!
I think shoplifting is mostly a teenage girl thing, though there are certainly class and economic factors at play as well.
Hear, hear to parks getting boring until alcohol is involved! Once we figured out the places that didn’t ID, my friends and I spent a lot more time in the variety of parks London has to offer.
That is true, there was always a streak of posh girls also getting up to no good! I think for my group of weird, poor, outcasts, part of it was being cool and edgy and part of it was trying to keep up with the Jones’s. Even within the emo crowd there was so much pressure to buy all the clothes and make up that were fucking expensive, I never understood how everyone had all these clothes when I was wearing the same pair of primark skinny jeans for at least 2 years.
I think people who steal come from all backgrounds and do it for all kinds of reasons. I was part of a bling ring similar to the one described in the article in my early 20s and it was mostly young women who would not otherwise have been able to afford the items we took.
ETA: I wish the article had accounted for the role of racialization in shoplifting subcultures. The biggest takeaway for me was that race is one of the most significant factors in who gets to be a pro shoplifter, if not the most significant. Loss prevention in Canada is defined by anti-black and anti-indigenous logic.
Yeah, I was never into shoplifting (if nothing else, I was way way to anxiety-driven and guilt-prone), but it was a big thing in the very expensive suburb I grew up in (DuPage county area, for Chicago suburb afficianados)–the girls who were shoplifting nail polish at 13 were the ones mad at 16 that they ONLY were given a $30,000 car for their birthday, so definitely not as a direct response to financial need. Or they’d steal drug store makeup while simultaneously being very snobbish about only wearing one particular expensive brand.
I actually think for some of them, it was more okay in their minds because they could pay for the stuff? It made it more like a game and less like actual acquisition.
I definitely went through a pre-teen shoplifting phase that I am at an utter loss to explain. I definitely got stuff my parents wouldn’t get me, but it was mostly total crap that I didn’t even really want. My best explanation is that it was a weird form of passive-aggressive rebellion because I was (and basically continue to be) a total goody two shoes.
I stole a lipstick once, and got such guilt that I returned it and apologised three days later.
I *accidentally* stole some hair elastics once. I put them inside a box or container or something I was buying. When I got home and realised what I’d done OH THE GUILT. Over two dollars worth of hair elastics. I remember it distinctly.
I definitely had some teenage girl friends who stole pointless stuff just because they could, when I was with them, unbeknownst to me until we were out of the store. I felt a rush just by association, so I understand on some level why they did it, but teen-me was WAY too much of a rules-follower to do it myself.
As a teenager I walked out of a bookstore once with a book in my hand. No one stopped me because I obviously wasn’t shoplifting, it was right there in my hand! And I had just realized I was late to meet a friend and so I wasn’t thinking at all. About 40 yards from the door I realized what had happened and rushed back to the store to pay for the book and apologize profusely. The guy at the register found it all pretty entertaining, but as a book nerd, the idea that I would steal from A BOOK STORE was just unfathomable.
That said, I totally wanted to shoplift other stuff, but was too scared and anxious to ever do it. I even bought my copy of “Steal This Book”…
Near the end of our time at university, a friend of mine took a water bottle emblazoned with the college crest from our dining hall (while I told her that this was STEALING and while i would not stop her I could not condone it). She felt bad enough about it the next day that she went to the Bursary and asked how much a water bottle would cost “if someone wanted to buy one from the college as a souvenir”. (I suspect they were all too used to undergraduates nicking stuff.)
I wonder how much of that is a regional thing too. (I’m making the assumption that you grew up in a suburban or urban area because you mentioned a park but please correct me if that is not the case.)
I grew up in a rural area where you couldn’t get to a clothing store without a 30 minute ride in a car, and there was no public transit. The people I knew as a teen who shoplifted clothes were all wealthy and shoplifted for the hell of it, and all of them had their own cars (or older siblings with cars) and so they had the ability to get to the mall to shoplift in the first place.
I remember being scoffed at for stealing food and toiletries because it was a “poor kid” thing to do, because I could get to the convenience store in the center of town without a car.
It probably is a bit regional (although it seems it does cross EU/US borders!), probably more in the ‘how easily can you get to a mall/high street’ vein.
I’m from a suburb of a big city, and we were always just a bus ride from the shops so we could get there on our own, and anywhere in Dublin/Most of Ireland or the UK, your never far from a high street that has all the usual suspects and also acts as a gathering point for all teenagers in that city.
The majority of the shoplifters I knew in HS were involved in the Goth subculture, and it was guys and girls from a variety of economic levels doing it. It usually happened when they needed to buy something they couldn’t get a Spencer’s or Hot Topic from a “preppy” store. So like, hair accessories from Claire’s were one of the big items, anything from Walmart, and it was done with a real “Us vs Them” mentality which of course is a big thing with teens of any subculture.
When I heard about boys shoplifting outside my friend group it was mostly sexy magazines they weren’t old enough to buy and they always called it “stealing” never shoplifting.
#NotAllGoths
-gcf, Founder, Only Member of AARG (American Association of Retired Goths)
I don’t think so. Maybe he’s an outlier, but my ex liked to shoplift tiny objects as souvenirs well into his late 40s. Just a couple of times a year at most — usually from places that had behaved in an annoying way to us — little frogs and things like that. It used to make me laugh.
Ah that reminds me… a friend of my brother’s shoplifted an actual toad once. He was so proud. My brother made him take it back. This was the same friend whose great plan was to keep terrapins in his bathtub.
That was the first time I saw my brother as someone outside the family might see him, as the Responsible One in his group of friends.
I didn’t shoplift as a teen, but I did a few times in elementary school. It was always a solitary thing (no bling ring) and it was always small, stupid stuff like tic-tacs or chapstick. I think it was partly born of the fact that while my family had no money, the other girls I spent time with came from families who did (in reality they had a modest income but when I was little they all seemed rich because they had brand-name THINGS and REAL VACATIONS). I was very ostracized by the other girls for various reasons and got frustrated by how they had all the things AND the great friendships and I was this also-ran. So I impulsively stole small things a few times until my mom caught me once and did the I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED speech and the guilt made me stop.
Well…not strictly true. For a brief time I transitioned from shoplifting to “swapping out my crappy thing for someone else’s newer thing” like swapping my busted old scissors for a pair of good scissors from the classroom bin. I also once (still elementary school) got to go to this actual rich guy’s house once because my mom had met him through work and we got invited to his family’s holiday party. When I saw HIS daughter’s room I was so blown away by the amount of STUFF (and fancy stuff!) that this kid had. Her copy of the Pretty, Pretty Princess game was sitting out so when she wasn’t looking I pocketed the pink plastic ring from the game I think probably as a “fuck you, you won’t miss it” move.
I was also a compulsive liar in elementary school. I think I just had a lot of unresolved issues and no counseling or anything to cope with them.
I did things like that as a young child too; I would pocket bits of lego at doctors offices and peoples houses, I think just because I wanted them.
And yeah, taking shit I know people won’t miss; did that a hell of a lot (more from schools/organisations than people/friends).
I too started lying very young, although it was mostly lying to my mother because I didn’t want her to know things (either because she wouldn’t like something I was doing or would react badly/worry a lot) not making up stories.
Huzzah for children with unnoticed issues!
I did this too! It was always totally worthless stuff, like loose buttons and sticky tack. I did mostly manage to channel that impulse into collecting items that didn’t belong to anyone, like cool rocks from the playground.
Ah yes, channeling the klepto impulse into collecting. I’ve done a lot of that (it doesn’t help that my mom has a major collecting impulse, too, so we tend to feed off each other). I collected all sorts of things: bottle caps, writing utensils, pennies, pins, etc.
This is just a personal anecdote, but when I began attending a rather expensive private university on a coast (a big culture shock in itself) I was shocked at how many girls from very wealthy backgrounds “casually” shoplifted. It was usually makeup or cheap jewelry, things they could afford themselves or with their parents’ money. I knew they thought stealing from a big corporation was harmless, but I wonder if the Sephora employees got in trouble over missing merchandise?
This is what t I was wondering about; it seems that there is always a portion of teenage girls who get into shoplifting, and I’m wonder is it a just a universal western teenage girl thing (people from non-western cultures; does this happen there too?)? the tumblr stuff seems to imply that. I always thought it was just because me and my friends were dirt poor, but you have reminded me that the posh rich girls did it too.
Like what is it? the thrill? the rebellion? the lack of understanding about consequences and responsibility? It seems like an interesting phenomenon that happens in every generation. I need to go read the full article now, but I definitely imagine if we’d had tumblr we’d have done exactly the same shit.
I’m amazed at how prevalent this all is; I was also a pretty conscientious rule-follower growing up, have only stolen a couple things (like a juice from the coffee shop in college), and it was always about…”this looks so easy, let’s see if I can do it.”
Afterward, I always felt so unsettled and a little freaked out at myself — “is this the person you want to be — a petty thief???”
So all I can extrapolate is that for kids growing up, it’s a testing of boundaries, much like a lot of shit adolescents pull (arguing with parents, defying all sorts of other rules). You hear about consequences all the time, but do they actually exist??? Only one way to find out!
My parents were retail managers and my mom got fired over missing merchandise. Not that they thought she had anything to do with it, just that it happened during her shift. It was appliances and stuff though, not makeup, although makeup and perfume can be so expensive that I guess the losses might be similar.
Yes, at pharmacies and department stores (at least in my region) the cosmetics counter employees are indeed the only people held personally responsible for theft in their department.
That’s what I was always worried about! I brought it up once to a friend who loved to “take” expensive makeup and got an exasperated eyeroll, like she thought I was concern-trolling or being self-righteous. But come on, at 19 you’re plenty old enough to realize that your actions might hurt someone else.
Agreed. Back when I shoplifted I depended on a network of local retail employee friends to give me the down-low on whether or not a store’s employees would suffer consequences. It varies a lot from store to store. Some places have insurance and plan for loss through theft, others pin it on their workers…
I have an acquaintance who works for a dollar store as a manager, and they are always after her for thefts. It’s ridiculous.
A good friend of mine went to a boarding school on a coast (scholarship) and said his stuff regularly got stolen. His theory was that the rich kids could buy anything they wanted and had a warped sense of what it was to “earn” something – stealing was a kind of “earning”. I have my own ungenerous thoughts about the ethical failings of rich kids.
I went to a small university with a theft problem, and you’re totally right, the most persistent thieves were the ones who didn’t have a sense of how many hours it would take to earn the value of an item while working an actual job.
There were several types of stealing among students, actually: stealing other students’ possessions (generally a dick move), stealing small items like forks from the dining hall (I don’t know anyone who didn’t do this–there was a sense that since we were being overcharged for food, we’d “make it up” by bending the rules), stealing large items from the school for fun, and stealing that was only stealing because the school had weird rules around it (like not allowing students to take food from the dining hall back to their rooms).
I remember at my expensive, nerdy summer camp, it was considered a fun thing to do to steal dining trays, silverware, etc from the dining hall. I was always appalled and pointed out it was stealing but again, people didn’t think of it that way.
When I was 5 I stole a toy kitten from a doctor’s office, my mother found it and knew it was stolen and made me go back to the office and return it and apologize. It was beyond humiliating and I hate thinking about it and would never, ever steal as a result of it. It was very effective parenting.
Stealing forks and other small items! Did they make them into various accessories at your school too?
Not letting students take food they’ve paid for with them is a really weird rule.
I didn’t see any craft projects, but I’m sure they were out there. We had “amnesty bins” at the end of the year so you could return items with no penalty.
The problem was that you paid a flat rate to load a tray up, but then they didn’t want you to take anything on that tray out of the cafeteria, and they didn’t want you to take more than one apple or banana or whatever. In retrospect, the company that ran the dining hall seemed to be struggling financially (not because of theft, but because they were a mess and had vastly underestimated how much college students eat).
Oh, they weren’t craft projects at the schools I went to, just bending them to turn them into stuff you could wear.
That makes more sense, thanks for the explanation!
haha, I remember arguing distinctions about food stealing from the dining hall–like, a bagel wrapped in a napkin or a couple of apples for later is fine, a whole loaf of bread, or an unopened container of soy milk, not fine.
(We were on a fixed price food plan, fwiw–at the main dining hall you just swiped for “lunch” or whatever regardless of what you ate. This probably made me feel more justified, because I was sick a lot and not up for eating whole meals some times.)
Personal theft was much lower than my high school, though–people uneventfully left bags and jackets unattended all the time.
ooh yeah, this is very similar to my experiences in middle school/high school (wealthy suburban public school). Graphing calculators were a big thing constantly being stolen within school grounds, and it was not underprivileged kids just trying to get through pre-calc taking them, for sure. I definitely think there was some kind of thought process where the fact that they COULD pay made it more like a game to them.
I knew they thought stealing from a big corporation was harmless, but I wonder if the Sephora employees got in trouble over missing merchandise?
Depends on the place, but employee theft is apparently a really big problem. When I was a janitor working at Target on the graveyard shift, we were scrutinized closely upon entering and leaving the store (the manager in charge wrote down everything we were wearing and carrying in our pockets, not including underwear but including socks), and got interviewed more than once by security when there was some significant theft, but the only people that I was aware of who got fired for theft during that time were regular Target employees. A year or two later, when I was moonlighting at a chain drug store, the bulk of my employee training was watching videos telling me not to steal from my new employer, and in particular warned against trying the scam of passing merchandise around the scanner (so that it wouldn’t ring up) for friends of mine going through the line, which frankly wouldn’t have occurred to me. (I later read, in Roseanne Barr’s autobiography, her contention that young people who work at mall boutiques can afford to dress so well because they and their friends who have similar jobs steal for each other from their respective employers.)
I worked at Best Buy in college and heard stories about other employees stealing stuff all the time. Even rolling giant TVs out tho friend’s cars and things.
I work in retail. If the loss is bad enough, the entire staff is punished. We are absolutely held accountable for theft, internal or external. People who argue that they aren’t hurting someone directly because they’re just stealing from whatever store are the WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORST.
Theft hurts retail employees. We lose our jobs over teenage girls stealing cheap earrings.
Full Stop.
I remember two of my female friends in 4th grade talking about their shoplifting adventures. They seemed very happy and carefree about it. Both their families were very well off. I was horrified and very scared they’d want me join them. I don’t think I had any strong moral feelings about it, but the thought of getting CAUGHT was the most terrifying thing I could imagine.
As a 16 year old working in a drug store, I once spent most of my shift slowly and subtly opening a pack of cigarettes so that I could steal one. I was terrified the whole time of being busted (in retrospect, I’m quite sure my manager would have just rolled his eyes at me) but had some weird need/desire to “rebel”. That was the only thing I’ve ever purposefully stolen, and I never got up the courage to even smoke the damn thing since I was sure my parents would somehow detect it. I also never told anyone.
My toddler son accidentally shoplifted a couple of things from large chain stores without my notice. One was a 50 cent horse figurine, and another was a stuffed monkey worth less than $5. I don’t tell those stories anymore after being met with some judgment about not righteously marching back in and paying for them.
i stole some dried apricots fro. Waitrose by not noticing that the toddler had dropped th into the changing bag instead of the shopping trolley. Though possibly it wasn’t stealing because no mens rea.
#mostmiddleclasscomnent
I bet it could be more middle-class. Quinoa instead of apricots?
Kale.
I don’t think it’s just a teenage girl thing… I know a few shoplifting men in their twenties and thirties.
But I do think it’s extra interesting when teenage girls do it, for exactly the reason one girl gives in the article:
““Being a teen girl is hard—you have to be skinny, attractive, put together, well dressed, etc. society teaches girls through media and the beauty industry that they need to be perfect… I’m sick of handing my money over to corporations that profit on this bullshit … so if i have to put up with this kind of stuff, i’m certainly not going to pay for it.”
And that sounds great, until you think of the retail workers who suffer the consequences. :/
Stupid capitalism… can’t make a move without somebody getting screwed 🙁
I think/hope it would be illegal to do pin it on retail workers in the EU though?
I don’t think it’s necessarily illegal. If an item is missing from the shop and there’s no proof that a worker *didn’t* steal it, it might be easier to subtly pin it on them and cast “reasonable” suspicion. A bit like how it’s illegal (in many EU countries, at least) to not hire someone based on things like sexual orientation or race or gender, but it can still happen because it’s hard to prove that this was the factor that ruled out someone.
I think it might be just a general teenaged female thing. I was browsing through a medical book from 1901 or so that described polite, well to do, young Victorian women (generally pretty young) with ‘stealing manias.’ Just rich young women going through stores and making off with books or perfume or little nicknacks.
Yea but they suffered an array of gender bias/dynamics that parallel what girls today do. It’s dangerous to say this is a female thing because of gender as opposed to a common response to a particular set of pressures that most commonly applies only to females. Maybe it is, but we don’t know enough by far about the shape of things created by a patriarchal mold to say for sure.
I’m not saying they did it just because they were women. I’m just saying that there’s historical evidence of people a hundred years ago noting ‘hey, there’s a lot of well-heeled young ladies stealing things for a thrill’ which seems to indicate that it’s not a purely ‘modern’ (for a given value of modern) phenomenon. I just like bringing up more examples of stuff not being as new as people like to think.
(Also, ye olde book seemed to think that a lot of them were doing it because they were secretly hooked on morphine which I’m guessing wasn’t really the case… Like Freud and the case of the shoplifted phallic symbol pencils.)
MY FRIEND* went through a stealing phase as a teenager but never really shoplifted. She just stole random pointless things that weren’t worth much because she was kind of self-destructive and maybe as a boundary-testing thing. She was too terrified to even try to shoplift, even though she often wanted things that she wasn’t allowed to have or couldn’t afford. The terror of getting caught was just far stronger for her than wanting to look great.
I think it might be both a teenage girl thing in general but the actual reasons for doing (or not doing) it probably vary a lot within that.
* MY FRIEND who is absolutely not me.
I think the main reason I didn’t shoplift in high school was because courtesy of my father and brother I was already on bigger crimes. The cost-benefit analysis didn’t work out–why would I lift when I was helping them make more money by picking or skimming cards?
That said, now that I work in an office, I do walk off with whiteboard markers pretty often.
I have an awful lot of binder clips at home despite never having once bought binder clips.
Retail Employee Rant: Stealing from a shop is 100% stealing from people. Some stores make you replace the loss, or the employees will have benefits docked, or they could be right out fired.
Stealing from stores is a dick move, and it’s the worst kind of logic to justify it by saying “But I’m not stealing from anyone in particular so no one gets hurt!”
Retail employees are punished because people like your friends don’t want to pay.
I shoplifted as a teenage girl. I was in the middle of my first big mental breakdown, couldn’t work or go to school, so was completely financially dependent on my parents. I hated shoplifting but I hated being dependent on my parents more – I stole things like clothes and makeup so that I wouldn’t be asking them for money. I stopped when I turned 18 because getting caught then would mean an adult criminal record, which would have hurt my mum a lot.
I have a ticket for Cursed Child for next April and I am going to be getting steadily more excited until then, or until I pop, whichever comes first.
I hope it’s good.
WHAT HOW DID YOU EVEN???? Serious question, I have like 80 millionty frequent flier miles I have been hoarding for just such an emergency, where are tickets even on sale?
My sister and I plotted before they went on sale and I spent an entire afternoon in a queue on their website!
Tickets here: http://www.harrypottertheplay.com/ticket-informat…
Have fun (assuming you don’t pop in the interim period)! I should really look into buying tickets, as I am in London.
Man, a good joke that we made on Twitter yesterday was about how reporters should just ask Donald Trump every kind of inane question they can think on, because regular politicians won’t answer stupid questions, but you could trick Donald Trump into having an opinion on anything AND, because his approach to interviews is “say whatever he thinks you want to hear”, you could probably trick him into having any opinion.
My favorite is asking Donald Trump about the Phantom Time hypothesis.
has he been asked about Rombledore yet?
SNAP
…but what will we do if Trump supports Ronbledore??
I want to know his views on Ronbledore.
“Now you see, Charlemagne, I like. I knew him very well, he said how much he admired me many times. But in the end, Charlemagne’s a loser compared to me.”
That’s a great question, a really wonderful person. I know a lot about history, things you don’t even read about. People say I don’t know much about kings, but I am a very smart person, very good at remembering things and knowing things. Charles the Main, I think he was a smart guy, a really great guy, but he didn’t know how to make deals, that’s what really got him into trouble. See, I know how to make deals. I can really take control of a situation. Believe me. He could have done a lot more. A disaster. Sad!
This is eerie.
God, I want to be less easily baited by “I know stuff that the public doesn’t know, look at my secret knowledge, you guys don’t even know how much secret stuff I know,” but it just fills me with absolute rage every single time.
“Ol’ Charlie? Great guy, would golf with him any time. But Charles? Just can’t keep this country together like I would”
What’s his position on Ronbledore? Won’t someone ask this question?
Hey, it looks like LOTS of people are asking this question. Great minds, right?
Anything! Any possible question that a person could have a ludicrous opinion on, just ask yourself whether it’s more likely that Donald Trump would have a ludicrous opinion, or if he would just admit he doesn’t know what it is.
“When I’m President, we’ll get to the bottom of this Roswell thing. We’ll get the aliens out of Area 51 and fly their saucers to the White House.”
I mean….
Ooh, good one. What about Time Cube? I want to hear his views on Time Cube.
Sansa has not grown into her ears yet.
And with any luck, she never will!
I’m half heartedly but not totally unseriously considering for,OMG a General #Content Strike for higher wages and page rates…
…..except I have this sneaking feeling they’ll realize they don’t actually need writers or artists or journalists and have everything computer generated from previous articles and no one will even notice.
Given the ratio of chintzy viral-style articles I see people share versus actual good stuff, I fear you are right.
oh I love the piece on Frog and Toad. I used to get them all the time from the library as a kid, I read them over and over for years, and now I have a huge book of every Frog and Toad story in my room and the kids love it. I hadn’t read one in years until I got that and I still love them so much, more than I thought I would. They are hilarious as an adult, but still really touching and lovely. Everyone should read Frog and Toad.
Frog and Toad was the first book I ever read without any help with an adult.
I don’t even remember the specifics of the plot, but that is an Unassailable Fact about my formative reading years.
There’s a Frog and Toad musical! It’s lovely.
Except for Mallory. She has lost her Frog and Toad privileges after she made them horrific. I would follow her to the ends of the earth, but on my deathbed I will ask my sister to read me the cookie story and I will say, “I have never told anyone this except on the internet, but I will never forgive Queen Mallory of-the-cave for making Frog bang his head against the wall, and for Toad’s remorseless indifference. She may have eradicated the Great Opossum Menace in the days of the Uprising, but she hurt my heart about Frog.” And my sister will brush my hair and whisper, “This morning when I woke up I felt good because the sun was shining. I felt good because I was a frog. And I felt good because I have you for a friend.”
Your hair will still be glorious and shining.
I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying over the Frog and Toad piece.
“Oh, yes there will,” said Frog,
“because I have sent you a letter.”
“You have,” said Toad?
“What did you write in the letter?”
Frog said, “I wrote
‘Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend.
Your best friend, Frog'”
I’m not crying YOU’RE crying!
I totally AM crying over that piece, AND NOW YOU’VE MADE ME CRY HARDER.
Just finished reading this Reddit relationships thread which I clicked on with an eye roll when I saw the title ‘Me [25F] with my boyfriend [25M] of 5 years, is he treating me poorly or am I just too picky?’ thinking girl he’s treating you poorly I’m sure, and God it’s so much worse than I expected and so depressing.
It’s a stellar example of the way women are told to expect so little from a relationship – she ends her post with ‘My instincts tell me that he is being emotionally abusive, but I’m also thinking that maybe I am too picky and relationships aren’t always perfect.’ It is so fucked up that people end up coming to that conclusion – that they’re being ‘picky’ if they expect anything more than ‘he doesn’t hit me.’
OH MY GOD
I hate everything right now.
Seriously. And, let’s be honest, it’s “he hasn’t hit me yet.”
That image of her sitting in a parking lot for an hour just so she doesn’t have to be at home with that monster boyfriend is going to stick with me awhile.
Time to get on making that rocket to launch monster boyfriends into space….
FUND IT. I remember the low point of my life was the relationship where I’d go spend three hours at the laundromat to avoid being near my boyfriend.
Let me know when that kickstarter campaign launches.
Sometimes I get sad about being forever single and then I read things like that and yep im in a good place
I don’t understand what she’s getting out of this “relationship”. Financial security, nope; fantastic sex not even mentioned; compassion, caring, companionship, a shoulder to cry on, an intellectual equal to enjoy conversations with, nope nope nope nope. LEAVE ALREADY.
As someone who’s been there, she’s getting two things:
1. The feeling that she’ll never do better, because he’s fed that line to her so convincingly, and
2. You know that sign people were posting on social media that said something like “Don’t be afraid to admit you’ve made a mistake just because you’ve invested so much time in making it”? That. I think many of us get really afraid of how much shame we’re going to feel when we tell people that we were wrong about a person we invested five years of our life (or more) in.
So much yes to both of these.
Ouch. I hear it.
ETA: you know what confused me so much? Most of the letter writers in similar situations start out with “I’m in love with a wonderful man, he treats my family well, he’s reliable…BUT [insert big relationship problem].” Or if he’s textbook abusive, the writer says “but then he apologizes after verbal/physical/emotional attack and says he’ll do better and I realize how much I love him…what should I do?” This poor woman has NOTHING positive to say about this guy: he acts like an asshole all the time, doesn’t even try to make nice with her, and she’s wondering if this is the best she can expect. Heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time.
TRUTH. I spent far more time in a relationship than I should have, in my early 20’s, specifically because everyone had reacted so badly when we first started dating. (With good reason!) I am, if nothing else, extremely stubborn; and I was so desperate to prove my friends wrong.
Our culture really does brainwash women into thinking that they need romantic love and that love – or even a pretty shitty facsimile of love – is worth any kind of horrifying treatment. How have we gotten to a place where she doesn’t know that this isn’t okay?!
Also, you cannot be with someone who won’t let you sleep or pee or perform any basic bodily function.
I was just thinking about this. The fact she hasn’t left already will be partly due to all the wonderful ways abusers have of stopping the people they’re abusing from getting away, but I think a factor is also that being single is so demonised that she thinks even this terrible relationship is better than no relationship at all.
Re women are told to expect so little of a relationship: I have been on 2 dates with a childhood friend who’s very kind but just incredibly shy, and I was telling my mother that I know what I need in a relationship and I don’t think he would be a good partner for me. She literally said, “WELL, A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND.” Are. you. joking, Flannery O’Connor? I was so flabbergasted I just dropped the conversation. Maybe it’s a generational thing but I am 100% sure I’d rather be a quirky spinster who travels the world than married to someone who needs constant emotional labor.
Oh God, my mother was constantly telling me to lower my expectations/standards when I was a teenager (“You’re just too picky!”). She doesn’t do it explicitly any more, but she implies it. Last year, when I broke it off with an OK guy after three dates, she said “You don’t have much stamina for dating do you, someone’s really going to have to impress you” and I was like – yes! They will! What’s wrong with that?
This surprises me even more because my mother is a natural spinster who happened to find a life partner. She’s told me that she can see how her life would have turned out differently if she hadn’t married and had kids, and how it wouldn’t be worse (not that she doesn’t love us, she can just see that she’d have been happy either way).
If I had an online dating profile, it would consist of a pic of me drinking out of a male tears mug with the simple tag line “impress me”.
wait
are male tears mugs a thing that exists
or is this entirely hypothetical
https://www.etsy.com/market/male_tears
I actually want one that reads “male tears” on one side and “white tears” on the other so that it is multi-purpose, but idk if a white lady can get away with the latter. Opinions, o venerable Toasties?
Oh god there’s one that is a flask! I WANTS IT. GIVE US THE PRECIOUS.
Actually, my birthday was last weekend and my parents asked what I wanted and I was all, IDK, leggings? But maybe this is the perfect gift!
I also almost lost it at the flask. I already have one that is a prezzie from my bro, so not replacing it, but man, temptation!
Yeah, I’m not certain I need a flask but what a perfect one that would be.
You say this as if more than one flask would be a problem.
honestly i am ok endorsing white tears despite my own whiteness but yeah, i suspect i would get some sideeye
though really, who’s sideeying my coffee mugs? if you are in my house at 9am or whatever and you’re judging my mugs THAT’S ON YOU, GUEST
I also am ok endorsing white tears, because I feel like it means that the crying person is/should be learning a hard truth? TBH, I want mine for at work, so that the normies know that they should not be complaining to me about some things.
OTOH, I don’t want to be co-opting things that aren’t for me (is this a thing that is not for me, or can everyone enjoy white tears? I know I do!), so… maybe the “racism, no thanks, I’m unionized” poster will do for now.
agree with the pluses of tears as well as the concern over co-optation. but if you’re co-opting something and no one sees it, is it still co-optation? that maybe only matters if you’re looking for credit or something? i feel like a “white tears” coffee mug might remind me to get the fuck over myself.
I think so, personally; repeated exposure to a thing breeds familiarity, which might mean that you are more likely to co-opt in public, since you are used to doing it in private? idk, this theory might not hold out.
I don’t want cookies for my mug! I want it to serve as a warning to others! But there is no way for a stranger to know that, so probably it is best to err on the side of not being a douche. *nods*
okay now i want this on a mug: “let us err on the side of not being a douche”
YES, brilliant idea, I would totally drink out of that! I wonder if one could get 1 (or 2) mug(s) custom made?
As a fellow white lady, I enjoy seeing the “white tears” mugs and whatnot in the same vein as the “male tears” ones, but I wouldn’t personally feel comfortable buying one, probably for the same reasons you’re questioning it (co-optation!).
There’s an article by Jazmine Hughes that an acquaintance posted on facebook a while back that really made me think about my relationship to these kind of jokes, as a white person. It also includes the fabulous line, “White people be like ‘white people be like,’ but they be the white people that white people be like!!!!”
White-people jokes don’t punch up; at best, they punch sideways, but usually, they punch down. YUP.
I love this article, thanks so much for sharing!
Yes! My roommate got me one for Xmas a few years back and I use it every day.
I have been coveting this pin:
THERE ARE PATCHES AND I JUST STARTED A PATCH JACKET.
Dammit, i am too broke for this right now.
The number of times my mother has brushed away something my father/brother did with a, “Men are just like that.” !!! NO. NO. Expect better.
You know who gets super-pissed about stuff like that? My brother, who puts in the time and effort to be a genuinely good person, and has never once used his masculinity as a way to evade responsibility for emotional labor. Although I think I probably get more pissed on his behalf, since I’m an overall angrier person than he is. My point still stands.
Someone commented on a Captain Awkward post a couple of weeks ago to say, well, he’s not abusive, you shouldn’t break up with him. Like, do you even GO here?
I had the nightmare ex who was deliberately using sleep dep tactics against me and I’m willing to bet it extends past “no naps.” There’s probably also “no one really NEEDS more than six hours, you’re so lazy” going on and she’s not getting enough sleep by any measure.
Yep. BTDT. He is a piece of work.
Holy shit. What a dick lord.
This is a good example of how women are conditioned to stick with their man no matter what, even when he’s an abusive manipulative child.
HE TEXTS HERE WHEN HE’S IN THE ROOM TO HAVE A FIGHT WITH HER. NO. nononoonononononoooo. CHILD.
And he doesn’t even text her what he’s mad about! Instead he swears at her and makes HER beg HIM to tell her what’s going on and jump through hoops to figure it out.
This is unbelievably bad. He doesn’t have a driver’s license or a car! He wouldn’t eat if she didn’t cook for him! He starts fights by texting “Fuck you!”
It is and it isn’t shocking that she doesn’t know that she shouldn’t put up with this shit. JFC, how can we start some official The-Toast Remedial Anti-Misogyny Training for the young women of the world?
Not only does she drive him everywhere, he refuses to walk the 2/10ths of a mile to walk, which if I’m reading it right is 200 YARDS. That’s like a 5 minute walk. Fuck you guy.
He clearly wants a mother not a girlfriend and at least this girl is starting to realize that this is NOT OKAY.
I don’t think he even wants a mother! No mother worth her salt would stand for the constant belittling I’m sure he dishes out. He needs a servant. Maybe there’s some sort of uncanny-valley female robot from Japan that he can buy. No human deserves this treatment.
He does not need a servant, servants deserve to be treated better than he treats his lady friend. He needs to be lashed to a rocket and fired into the sun.
Or, alternatively, to be alone for a little while, so that he can _learn to feed himself_.
Maybe we can crowdfund a taking-you-to-the-sun rocket that is cleverly disguised as a sexy fembot?
Like those barbed condoms they invented in South Africa! But a whole fembot/jetpack combo. And once he’s in, *whhhoooooshh!* and *aaaahhhh!*
Like those barbed condoms they invented in South Africa
This sounds amazing, what are these please (at work, cannot google).
Iirc, it’s not so much a condom as a vaginal insert that a woman can wear when she feels like she is in a situation with a risk of sexual assault. It’s like a tube with spikes in it that point inwards, so if a penis is inserted it will become trapped in the painful spikes which require a doctor to remove.
A+ humans learning from insects.
I would never dare to put that in, personally, and yet.
And also hyenas? Except the reverse; hyena males are so non-dominant that they need to have barbed penises in order to stay put (on the backs of the dominant females) long enough to ejaculate, or so I have heard.
which require a doctor to remove
Mwahahahaha. I am aghast that this is considered a reasonable solution to sexual assault, but also terribly impressed with the ingenuity.
Did you read “Snowcrash” in the early 90’s? The heroine has one with automatic tranquilizer injectors built in.
genius!!!
A+, would contribute.
OMG yes.
Reading things like this, I’m not so much anti-misogyny as pro-misandry. Grrrrr.
Oh my God. Girl, you in danger.
Ugh, that poor girl. I just want to send her a gift basket full of snacks and nice bath products (and forbidden MAKEUP) with a card that says “dump him!”
I so hope she gets out and also writes an update.
Here’s a similar story that has a happy ending–the abuser’s brother/parents were so horrified at his behavior that they facilitated her getting out: https://ud.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4m…
A friend of mine, after leaving an abusive dude, contacted his brother (who she’d become friends with) to tell him “I’m breaking up with him, he was an abuser, and I can’t give you my contact info,” and the brother apparently replied with something like, “I totally believe you, I’m so sorry, I’m glad you’re getting out,” which surprised her.
where the fuck do these people come from and why are there enough for r/relationships to get someone writing about a new one every fifteen minutes
The only good piece of news I saw in there was that they never combined their bank accounts.
Yep, that’s the only good thing in that post. Makes getting out a lot easier.
I would read an entire post of Mallory’s Patented Coolly Delivered Responses to Other People’s Shitty Behavior.
It is truly her calling in the world.
Indeed. And the original Miss Manners (70s and 80s) was queen of the polite refusal to smoothe over other people’s rudeness. If you have never read her.
Between the tap dancing and today’s Google doodle, I’m feeling all kinds of mesmerized this morning.
I saw Hamilton last night. Daveed Diggs is just…I am without speech. And Chris Jackson. And the surprisingly short Leslie Odom, Jr. And everyone else, although I’m going to go ahead and commit Toast treason and say that Lin-Manuel Miranda, while being an obvious lyrical and musical genius, is just entirely outclassed onstage with these people. There were also some audio balance issues with the percussion that drowned out lyrics here and there, but OMG OMG OMG! The hype! It’s real!!
It’s true, AFAIK (I didn’t see LMM perform, but from clips) – he’s got a ton of charisma, but just isn’t at the level of performance that the rest of them are.
I’d still love to see him, of course. But his true genius is the writing.
If that’s Toast Treason, I’m with you. I was glad to be able to see him perform it, but more from a cult-of-personality standpoint than being impressed with his performance. Like Alexander, LMM might be a host unto himself but he was the best actor or singer on the stage by a long shot. To his credit, he’s 100% aware of that.
So happy you got to see the show, though!
It’s true about LLM but I love that it fits the show so well – his Hamilton is this scrappy outsider who is never as smooth and polished as the people he surrounds himself with.
I didn’t see it with LMM – I saw it on Sunday, and 98% feel like I am okay with that. Daveed and and Leslie are INCREDIBLE, and while I would like to see LMM, I feel like Javier Muñoz was really great and I didn’t miss out- the show is just really well written.
I also saw Javier and thought he was amazing. I love Lin of course, and he’s a better rapper, but Javier is definitely a better singer and the rest of the cast is also just … heart eyes emoji
“What a ______ thing to say” is something I learned from Captain Awkward and have been employing with great success on a nearly daily basis. 10/10 would definitely recommend.
Ugh yes! “What an odd thing to say” is my all-time favorite iteration!!
Seconded! And it’s not a guilt trip, it’s not manipulative. It’s plain facts, the simplest form of calling someone out on their bullshit/bad behavior.
You don’t even need an adjective. Just, What a thing to say.
I need to remember this more often. I did once manage to blurt out “Wow, that’s kind of awkward” and let it hang there. He deserved it.
When I was little I went to Jewel with my mom to buy supplies for my upcoming Beauty and the Beast birthday party. We picked up some little figurines to decorate the cake, and I decided to see if one of the Belles would fit inside a paper towel tube. It did, but her skirt was so perfectly round that it got stuck! I knew my mom would be mad at me for fooling around if I told her what happened so I said nothing and we ended up basically stealing it. I never understand when people say shoplifting is a thrill because I still feel really guilty about that $.50 toy all these years later!
Once when I was about five I picked up a pack of Trident gum while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store. I don’t remember any feeling of being sneaky, just like, “ooh, we have this at my house!” so I picked it up. My mom realized it before we even left the store, and was SO APPALLED – she marched me up to the cashier, made me hand it over and apologize for what I had done. Even though I hadn’t realized I’d done something wrong, the immediacy of the shame and guilt was powerful. So much so that I never have ever again even thought about shoplifting something ever again!
I mentioned this further up the thread but similar experience. I stole a stuffed cat toy from a doctor’s office, my mother found it, made me return it and apologize and oh my god it was so awful. I was five. And I never stole again. Very effective parenting.
When I was very little (6 or 7, I think), only just starting to understand what money even was, I remember being very thrilled to visit one of the local grocery stores that would let you take a sample out of the bulk candy bins for a nickle. My parents would give me a nickle or two and let me pick out my own candy.
Well, being the child genius that I was (am?), I began to stash every coin I could find at home in a baggie. Couch cushions, my dad’s pocket change that he left on the counter at the end of the day, dryer pennies, everything. I must have saved up a pound of mostly pennies (because I couldn’t tell the difference!).
Next store trip, I took my savings with me in my little stuffed cat backpack (my parents had no idea). I don’t remember what my parents were doing, looking at something further down the isle probably, but I took an opportunity to start shoving fist fulls of candy into my backpack and feeding my change stash into the money jar. I finished before my parents noticed what I was doing.
Walked out of the store with probably $20 worth of candy for about $2 worth of loose change. My parents realized what I had done once we got in the car and I exclaimed excitedly about how much candy I had! They were mad, but didn’t make me go back in or anything, just had a lengthy conversation trying to explain how the samples actually work. Once I grasped what they were telling me I was appalled! I didn’t mean to steal! I still feel embarrassed about it to this day.
As a doctor in residency, I have to say it sucks on both ends. After a long weekend, I can expect at least 3 hours of unpaid paper-pushing work (in addition to the constant stream of paperwork). I shudder to think of how much time I spend on hold every day as well; it once took a full 25 min to call in a new Rx and cancel the old one.
I wish we weren’t hamstrung by HIPAA restrictions that strongly discourage email communication of private health information (at least without expensive servers/software that are difficult for small clinic practitioners to have). I was playing phone tag with a patient the other day, and we were both frustrated we kept missing each other.
In summary, the American healthcare system is the pits. Let’s all move to Sweden.
I play SO MUCH phone tag with doctors and I hate it. The only private place I have to take calls during the workday is my car (or I guess the bathroom, but that’s only kinda private), which makes things harder. Maybe I should adopt my cube neighbor’s DGAF policy and just take the calls where everyone can hear, but on the other hand, I didn’t NEED to know about the blood in his urine, but now I do.
Seriously. My mom was a home-health RN for most of my life, and I can hardly think of a single work night where she wasn’t doing an additional 1-4 hours of charting after she got home from all of her visits. Did she get overtime for any of this? Almost never. Was it absolutely imperative to her job? Definitely. Not doing it wasn’t an option if you wanted to keep your job. That’s just how fucked the system is.
Some have to make a choice between doing their actual work (which pays the bills) and their patient work (which doesn’t). In those cases, prescribing health care with a high patient work burden can be equivalent to denying health care.
Seriously. Sometimes I feel pretty sure the insurance companies do it on purpose: it’s a feature, not a bug.
They absolutely do it on purpose. They make it so difficult to get the right care because 50% of the people will give up (none of us have time for this bullshit) and they wind up saving money that way. In the last few years I have decided I cannot truly respect someone who works for the health insurance industry.
One time, when I was an obviously depressed 23-year-old with daily migraines who was still dragging herself to work every single day, doing a 40+ work week, I went to a neurologist who told me that the problem was that I “wasn’t trying hard enough” and if I tried harder to never take rescue medication, the “REALLY bad pain would only last for two weeks.” I didn’t have the sick leave to cover a solid two weeks, let alone someone to take care of me while I vomited my guts out for two weeks. Jesus. And if the really bad pain went away after two weeks, what about the kind of bad pain, where you can get out of bed but not concentrate? At the time, I just cried for three days after that appointment, but if someone tried telling me that now I think I would punch them.
It’s never to late to leave a virtual punch by way of a bad review…
(I had a neurologist tell me that my fibromyalgia pain was “all in [my] head,” and initially I responded with “Well it is true that the latest theories are that it is in fact neurological and not local, that it’s a pain-response/pain-perception problem, not an organic issue, meaning that literally it is in my head, and how will we be dealing with this?” only to have him shake his head and say “No, I mean you’re imagining it.” I was LIVID. I reported back to my referring GP (who was wonderful, and said “oh so he’s sexist as well as not up on current research” and promptly wrote me a referral to someone else, and even apologized for my bad experience even though there was no way she could have known), and mentioned it to every nurse and practitioner and receptionist I could ever find, because while they are not allowed to give out-and-out recommendations to people, they CAN give responses when patients ask them things like who other patients seem to prefer.)
Ugh, that is horrible! I’ve had acquaintances tell me my pain was in my head and that I’d feel better if I didn’t think about it, but never a doctor. As terrible as it is, I’m glad you had the self-confidence to be livid and not accepting of his answer.
Your story unfortunately reminds me of one my mother tells, about getting a copper cross IUD in the 1970s, subsequently having extremely severe cramps, requesting that her (male) gyno remove it, and him telling her that cramps weren’t a side effect of the copper cross and so they must be in her head. Good grief. Sexist male doctors for the fail.
Toasties, I am engaged! Took my beloved shopping for a suit this lunchtime, and in contrast to all the positive, supportive cherishing I’ve felt in bridal boutiques, I was really disappointed at the way he was treated as a larger bloke.
He hates shopping at the best of times, and the first place looked him up and down and said “Well, we only have one that would fit you. This is it.” By the third place I was reassuring him “You know who else must have this same challenge clothes shopping? THE ROCK. You’re in great company.”
Finally found a little quirky tailor’s and took the lead, saying “We are getting married. What do you have that might suit my man?” The dapper chap in his three piece suit was so kind, twinkly-eyed, bringing out lots of options and folding the fabric to explain how he’d tailor it for a better fit. My beloved was standing taller, meeting his own eyes in the mirror, and shyly saying “I actually quite like this.”
Thoughtful customer service makes such a difference!
That image of the kind, twinkly-eyed tailor brought a smile to my face. Congratulations, and I’m glad your shopping trip turned out OK in the end.
Gosh, I teared up at this. Mazel Tov, you lovely kids and good on your twinkly tailor.
Me, too– it is a lovely thing, to recognize what will be a kindness and then do that.
This is what I want human interaction to be like!
Much happiness to y’all!
yay for going to the tailor’s (and for you two!)
Eeee congratulations!! And yes I agree, service like that really does make all the difference. My partner is also big and tall, and when none of the clothing works and he starts getting discouraged it’s hard not to want to burn the place down while holding him like “Shhh. There there. Fashion sucks, not you.”
I’m so glad your guy had a good experience at the tailor. That is so heartwarming.
o god, it’s the worst. my boy is tall and skiiiiiinnnnnnyyyyyy, which you would think we be manageable, but whenever we need to buy him Nice Things it’s such a demoralizing effort and i hate watching his face fall as all the associates assure him that the sleeves will be plenty long enough provided he doesn’t move his arms too much
Mine too! If it is an option for you, Scandinavian clothing has been a life saver for him. It’s all made for his proportions. When we went looking for a wedding suit, he couldn’t find anything in any chain stores, and I just had such a hard time with it, thinking “most women’s clothing is made for the tall and skinny, and men’s…. isn’t?”
oo. huh. he has had better luck at h&m, maybe there is a reason for that!?
Aaw. Such a sweet story, I have actual tears. Congratulations to you both.
There’s a place in downtown Houston where I got all of my dress clothes handmade (for pretty reasonable prices). It is run by a nice fellow who was very much like this (except he wears Hawaiian shirts and strongly resembles Bruce Vilanch). Plus, the shop was half a tailor shop, and the other side of the room was a bar. Duke of Hollywood Tailors/Char Bar (in case anyone in Houston needs a tailor) on Market Square.
The guy makes clothes for many of the Houston Texans (American football team) and Houston Rockets (basketball), so he was able to fit my powerlifter’s frame quite well.
Add me to the list of people who wept a lil at this story. Your fiancé sounds like a sweetie pie, congratulations to you both!
Congratulations! You and the tailor sound great, and I am appalled that people in the other shops were so shit. (Do they just not want people’s money?)
In 1911, Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel published “The Sexual Root of Kleptomania,” arguing that the disorder was the result of “ungratified sexual instinct.” The paper cites, among other instances, the case of a 26-year-old woman who stole pencils from a shop. “She was an incapable sort of person of wandering and inattentive mind,” Stekel writes. “The excuse she gave was that her father kept her too strictly. This girl was also symbolically in search of a phallus (pencil).”
Torn between finding this hilarious and also feeling like an ‘incapable sort of person of wandering and inattentive mind’. Maybe I should get me some pencils…
Equally torn. I do *love* that Freud and his ilk were so enraptured by their own genitalia that they thought women’s behavior MUST be dictated by an obsession with penises. Haha, so cute.
I I certainly only like pencils because I want to feel like I’m holding a penis and lovingly grinding its point away on a piece of rough paper
Amazing how much of early (and maybe recent, I dunno!) psychology comes down to “welp, guess you need some D.” I’m sure those guys weren’t… ahem… projecting… at all.
Okay, so where’s the Link Roundup mailing list I can sign up for so I can still get a list of really great reads to keep me informed and a good citizen after July 1??
That’s a great idea!
I can’t pretend that mine are going to be even a fraction as good as The Toast’s, but I plan to have a weekly link dump on clevermanka.net. If you want to be on the list of people I email when the site goes live (I’m shooting for July 1, but I can’t make promises), drop me a line: [email protected] (yes, I have my own address, now! small progress!).
Today in Tabs is on hiatus right now, but I assume it will be back; it is more concise than The Toast’s LRs, but it covers some of the same types of news and makes an effort to promote young writers of color who deserve more exposure.
We’re going to make an effort to continue this at the r/ToastCrumbs subreddit. Come check it out! All of your favorite people have joined and are having fantastic conversations. We have both CleverManka and chloekevil/Charlie Potato Hashbrowns, so, y’know…we’ve already won this “Toast dissolution” thing.
Oh, is that where the Charlie Potato photos have gone? I haven’t gotten into the habit of checking it regularly.
Toastie Slack has a linkroundup channel too!
Do you know how I sign up for it? I know I saw a comment with instructions but I cannot for the life of me find it again.
You can email ppyajunebug [at] gmail for an invite 🙂
Thanks!
My apologies re: Toast Summer Care Package Exchange. It’s still on. It’s just been the kind of two weeks where I had a break-up, I put in my two weeks’ notice from my job from mental health reasons, and yesterday, I was hospitalized for a panic attack. So. Technical difficulties, please stand by.
OH HONEY
I hope someone is sending you a care package?!?!?!?
Sending you very gentle thoughts and hugs.
You come first! ::toasthugs::
Take care of you, friend. Thinking good thoughts.
No hurry! Let us know if you need help. I hope things calm down for you soon.
OH NO you poor bunny! I hope things go on the upswing soon. Take care of yourself and know you are adored.
🙁 🙁 🙁 *hugs* What a stressful two weeks, I hope the next two are much much less so.
I hope you get better! We can wait 🙂
Aw honey take care of yourself. *hugs*
Absolutely no worries! If you need a helping hand, you know where to find me!
Sending good thoughts your way!
I’m so sorry if I added to the pressure! Take your time and take care of yourself – the last bit should always be the main priority.
Toasthugs!
You’re good! Take care of yourself, the packages will wait.
dude. sounds like you need a care package.
(I know that sounds like a horrible joke, but it was unironically the first thing that popped into my head, I’m sorry and I love you and please let us know where to send a care package.)
No, it’s true, I totally do.
You (or anyone else reading this) are totally welcome to send me a care package. If you send an email to the toastsummerexchange(AT)gmail(DOT)com box, I’ll send you my address.
I definitely went overboard in shopping for my original care package, but figured I’d ultimately sort out what I wanted to include and keep the rest in my “future gifts” drawer for when I need goodies for people. I absolutely have a surplus of care to send and will be emailing you!
Sending warm thoughts toward you. You are carrying so much right now. May you be well.
<3 It is so good of you to take the trouble to organise this lovely thing; please take as long as you need! I’m so sorry you’ve had such a bad two weeks.
All of the hugs.
The theatre where Cursed Child is on is about 100 yards from my office and I have to walk past it every morning knowing I don’t have tickets and probably can’t get them and this is unfair for some reason.
Bye.
I have an interview tomorrow for the agency that did the Cursed Child website (they’re a theater specific ad agency).
TOUCH ME.
HOW EXCITING.
I just read this morning that there’s gonna be a little exhibition of design things from the movies, also on the same street as my office.
This just months after we had a creme egg cafe pop-up. This street truly is the best street.
ETA: Good luck with your interview! Crossing appendages.
may I suggest, as a solution to your problem
::steeples fingers::
crime?
I either got really lucky or got ripped off by a mirror website because mine took like two minutes to buy??
Oh really? My friend said she was in a queue for hours and that getting them was like gold dust. Hmmph.
I was in a queue on the website for an afternoon – this was a week or so after they launched.
Mine took like 2 minutes as well. I’m in the cheap seats, so I’m probably going to need binoculars!
On the other hand, you will also be super close to scope out any cancellation lines? Or any lottery if they decide to run one? (I am only really familiar with Broadway, does the London theatre scene do either of those?)
Accio Tickets!
There is exactly zero coincidence in the fact that Harry Potter actors were in *anything* else produced in England. We all know that there are only (approximately) twelve actors in England. If you add together “anyone who was in Harry Potter” and “anyone who was in Sherlock” you’re pretty much covered.
If you’re British you know that everyone who ever got anywhere in acting was once in Casualty or Holby City, or possibly The Bill or Doctors, looking incredibly young and acting incredibly badly.
But nobody can be bothered to go back and find the episodes containing famous people before they were famous because these shows are so interminably shite.
I watched the first bit of the episode of Casualty with Tom Hiddleston in it when I saw that listed in the programme for Coriolanus. It’s on YouTube. I really enjoyed it, but then I’ve always been a fan of the ridiculous red-herring set ups for Casualty, and that one was particularly hilarious. I think he abseils down a building and manages to kick a woman off a balcony or something? Like, you think him or his mate are going to fall and then bam! whacks her right off the balcony.
That sounds amazing. Maybe I should get into watching Casualty.
I have definitely gone looking for certain actors’ bit parts in both The Bill and Doctors, thank you. Granted I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full episode of either, just the fan cuts. They did not inspire me to search for more.
But nobody can be bothered to go back and find the episodes containing famous people before they were famous because these shows are so interminably shite.
I think you’re underestimating people’s drive to mine and collate pop-culture trivia. Someone out there is doing it for sure, either because they’re paid to write “Before They Were Famous” articles or just as a hobby. It’s the same drive that built TV Tropes and swathes of Wikipedia.
also anyone who was ever in Doctor Who
I recently explained to a friend my totally made up “Tobias Menzies Rule,” i.e., if it is produced in the UK, there is a 75% chance Tobias Menzies is in it. Oh, there’s Tobias Menzies in Catastrophe! There’s Tobias Menzies in Outlander! There’s Tobias Menzies in Game of Thrones! Apparently he’s in The Night Manager. Last year I saw him in An Honorable Woman. And, yes, imdb is telling me he’s been on Doctor Who.
Except Christopher Lee. He lamented that he was the only actor in all of Britain that wasn’t in Harry Potter *goes and tries to find that interview*
yeah and what a fucking crime that was, oh man I am so mad at the Harry Potter movies about that HOW DID YOU NOT CAST CHRISTOPHER LEE AND NOW HE’S GONE
I KNOW! I love Christopher Lee madly (and was crushed when he died) and would have loved to have seen him. He could have been Abeforth! Or something!
AGREED
(plus also Sir Ian and Sir Patrick!)
The “coincidence” comment was very confusing. The Harry Potter films had loads of actors and our acting pool is relatively small! People are in the same stuff as each other all the time.
This is one of my favorite games to play when I’m watching British mysteries–figuring out where I’ve seen that actor before (usually another British mystery. Or Harry Potter).
I remember a review of Gosford park with a line, “starring every British actor that wasn’t in Harry Potter, and some that were.”
Everytime I go to the theater here (Washington DC) I look through the programme to see how many of the cast had an appearance on “Law & Order”. There’s always at least one.
I’ve often discovered that a TV show is filmed in Canada by the sudden appearance of one of the apparently 15 actors in all of the country.
That Frog & Toad piece could have been ten times longer and I still would have read more.
Same, I did not want it to end.
This morning I’m reading Megan Garber’s revisit of the dreadful Newsweek article that led to the claim that a single woman over 40 was more likely to die at the hands of a terrorist than get married. (still smdh)
And what’s most jarring, today—30 years after the article was published, and 10 years after it was officially retracted—is how true it feels, still….
“Too Late for Prince Charming?” may have been debunked; its idea, though—the too lates, the you wanted too muches—remain. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/…
I hate the “you will be an old maid” vibes that so much media, even today, likes to push. I, and many like me, aren’t going to settle for someone. If that means we never get married- fine. I would rather be single than married to someone just because I was worried I would never find a guy.
This, so much: “It assumed a cultural attitude that remains with us, today, in news accounts and the products of pop culture: . . . That matrimony is, on top of everything else, a social status that can be conferred only when another person willingly weaves their life to yours.”
Y’know, I’ve been trotting out Miss Manners’ “That just won’t be possible” for years now, and while effective and queenly, it leaves my desire to STOMP unmet.
Literally cannot wait for someone in my earshot to deserve “What a remarkably ungenerous thing to say.”
OOOH. I definitely know who I’m going to use that with.
Unpopular opinion warning-
I loved Frog and Toad as a kid, but rereading with my kids I noticed that sometimes they were really cruel to each other. (did we talk about this before, maybe in horrific childhood stories? Or I may be hallucinating, it happens.)
http://the-toast.net/2016/01/07/childrens-stories…
I reread some to my kids recently and agree but also I think they are cruel in the way that kids are often cruel to their friends – thoughtlessly, because they don’t have much filter and don’t really understand that other people are people. I think it must feel familiar to children and from a parenting perspective offers some teaching opportunities for empathy.
All right, I have Informed Opinions on American health care and economic inequality.
Numerous studies have shown that when one includes economic information when looking at health outcomes for cancer treatment, those who are lower on the economic scale will have consistently poorer outcomes. When this is controlled via heavily subsidized or free treatment, outcomes are almost exactly the same. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24889699 , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24888800)
Not only that, but African Americans overall have poorer outcomes with cancer due to a combination of racism and economic factors. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC43988… , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21351084
Go us.
Your first set of links didn’t work for me, and I would really like to read them!
A friend does epidemiological work in this area. He once explained to me that the economic factors involved don’t just concern who can afford to get care, but which research projects receive funding. For example, African American women seem to be more likely than other women to have breast cancers linked to DNA methylation, and this is an under-researched mechanism. Insidious.
Everyone should know about this and be appalled and fix it, and yet.
(As it’s the only thing I personally can fix, I fixed the links.)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24889699
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24888800
Here’s the latest on our old friend Christopher Kimball http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/dining/americas…
Slightly afraid that he’s designing knives now…
Prullory nails it again:
Dear Prudence,
I’m a 33-year-old woman, and my 41-year-old boyfriend has been in the process of moving out of his house and into mine for the past three weeks (he has a renter moving out of his house at the end of the month). Things have not been going well lately, and I’m at a loss as to what to do. Since he moved in, it has become apparent that he drinks daily and is not interested in stopping. I feel he has become more hostile toward me for no apparent reason. I’m wondering if this is just a rough patch, or if I should have him move back into his house before it’s too late and his house is rented out.
—Moving Out
This is not a rough patch. This is who your boyfriend is. If this is how he acts while he’s moving in, allow yourself to imagine how he’ll behave once he really feels at home.
Sing it, sister!
<a href=”http://(http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2016/06/dear_prudence_regrets_of_a_bridezilla.html)” target=”_blank”>(http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2016/06/dear_prudence_regrets_of_a_bridezilla.html)
The expectant father’s rejection of his unborn daughter even moreso! What a hideous person, what a terrible situation for everyone.
NOBODY said you could eat the bear, Sansa.
CHILD SAID
The child probably did. They do odd things.
*extremely warner herzog voice* “You must not chew the bear”
That Twister article just reminds me that I’ve now been waiting TWENTY YEARS for the Twister sequel that we all deserve. WHY AREN’T THERE MORE TORNADO MOVIES?
Jesus, right? We’re getting a second Independence Day but not a second Twister?! What a travesty.
Thank you! I’ve been looking for my fellow Twister fans in this comment section.
It is a terrible movie and I LOVE IT.
It is one of those movies where if I come across it flipping channels, I am ALL IN.
Toasties, pro-Bernie tumblr is overflowing with conspiracy theories and complaints that the election is “rigged.” My instincts tell me this shit is being overblown, but I never really feel like I have all the facts, and even though I don’t engage, it’s just… tiring. Anti-Hillary sentiment on the left is getting so intense and disturbing that I’m feeling worried and uncomfortable even before you factor in Trump sucking all the oxygen out of the air.
I’ll probably still vote for Bernie in the primary (I’m in California), but like… ergh. You know? Ergh.
Frankly these conspiracy theories are not just overblown, they’re fictions. FiveThirtyEight ran a good analysis on this recently.
I am straight up swimming in conspiracies and anti-Hillary vitriol up here in Vermont. It’s pretty… well, it’s pretty interesting. (Interesting here meaning terrible.)
I used to follow a funny Twitter thing (SnekforPresident, warning is snek pictures.) but I’ve had to stop because whoever is writing it is turning into a caricature of a Bernie Bro.
Okay, I could be totally off-base and inappropriate in putting forth this theory, but here goes. I think that a lot of what’s happening with these conspiracy theories is that a lot of young, straight, white men have watched social movements taking place around them which they can participate in but which aren’t FOR them and which they are doomed (/sarcasm) to be nothing but allies in.
I think Bernie has felt to them like their chance for a “revolution” that was THEIRS. And it’s really attractive, really easy to get swept up in that revolutionary spirit. But for a revolution to be legitimate, you need to be fighting against a powerful and malicious enemy (patriarchy, white supremacy, etc). So they’ve created a narrative in which The Establishment, including the Democratic Party, is as grand and malignant an opponent as they can possibly conceive of– as a way to keep their momentum going, because they don’t want to lose the sensation of being a part of this community, of standing for something.
I think that’s where a lot of the tilting at windmills is coming from. I don’t want to detract from the probably 99% of his supporters who are genuine, thoughtful, politically active people who just happen to prefer him over his (not too dissimilar) opponent. But there’s a reason young white straight dudes have been the ones calling people cunts and at least metaphorically throwing chairs, and it’s because I think they feel excited by this little taste of being the underdog that the rest of us have grown weary of because we actually live with it.
And I hope I haven’t offended anyone too much. My deepest apologies if I’ve said anything out of line.
Yes! At least, that’s an apt description of the more fervent Bernie supporters in my social circle. I’ve noticed they also are the (mostly) male academics I know who sincerely believe student activists, trigger warnings, and PC culture are destroying free speech in universities (“Thought police! Liberals are as bad as the far right!”).
YES they are absolutely the same guys, and I just cannot wrap my head around that.
I think that is an excellent generous interpretation. I think a goodly portion of it is good old fashioned sexism, but I think that’s a very convincing explanation for the portions of it that come from a good place.
…leaving aside the toxic white male entitlement, that is. I guess what I mean is that I can see a very young white dude feeling what you hypothesize, and it’s not coming from an entirely bad place.
My brother morphed into a Bernie bro recently. It’s very concerning. He told my dad he might vote for Trump in the general election because something something burn it down. Of course, as a straight middle class white guy, he doesn’t have much to lose regardless of who wins.
But the rhetoric is so distressing, I don’t know how people can make decisions in this environment. I definitely feel you on the ‘I don’t think I have all the facts’ thing. I’ve been reading a lot on FiveThirtyEight, but that doesn’t help with everything.
Well, here’s the thing. The primaries are “rigged” in the sense that the political parties are free to set any rules (with a few exceptions) they want for nominating who will be their candidates for POTUS in the general election. Those rules as they stand for both political parties tend to favor establishment or political-insider candidates, although a huge populist surge can over-ride the preferences of party insiders (see Donald Trump, for example). Everyone in this current election cycle knew those rules going in. I would argue that those rules are supremely undemocratic and tend to leave the selection of candidates in the hands of a very few powerful political players rather than in the hands of the people. But as long as this is the playing field, we follow these rules. Your role as an ordinary voter is to vote your conscience.
I disagree that the role of a voter is to vote your conscience–not generally, but as it’s being used by BernieBros to justify not voting at all or voting for Trump in the general b/c they can’t stomach Hillary. I would put it in less inflammatory terms, but I agree with the article linked below–your duty as a voter is to vote for who you believe will be better for the country. If you truly believe Hillary will be as bad for the country as Trump, then don’t vote. But don’t use “vote your conscience” as a justification for not voting for Hillary just because your One True Candidate didn’t get the nomination.
http://thedailybanter.com/2016/03/voting-your-con…
Ah, I see I wasn’t clear. What I meant is that as an ordinary voter in the primary, your role is to vote your conscience. It’s a whole different ball game in the general.
Yeah, sorry–the phrase “vote your conscience” is what I’ve been hearing from Bernie supporters IRL. I should have clarified that my response wasn’t really to you specifically, but to that phrase, which makes me see red when it comes from BernieBros.
I can understand that, and since that phrase has been co-opted I should probably look for a different one. Like, the primary is the time for you to vote for your ideal president. You can write in someone if you want! And the general is when you vote for the best available option, because doing otherwise can cause irreparable harm to major, major portions of the population.
When one of the two major political parties is still in 2016 treating women and POC as less than 100% autonomous human beings, the choice of who to vote for is really, really clear–and in this particular election cycle not only does the GOP candidate have all the usual racism and sexism problems, he’s also literally a fascist if we’re to judge him by his public statements.
SAVION
my mother is still convinced she saw him once at the six flags in Jackson, NJ in the late 90s. To this day she goes on about how she should have talked to him.
That article about the shoplifters on Tumblr, who sound like the embodiment of everything I hate about Tumblr, reminded me of this- the response to the second letter is, with apologies to Mallory and Ask a Manager and all the other fabulous advice columnists out there, the best advice column response I have ever read:
http://tomatonation.com/vine/the-vine-september-1…
As soon as I saw that it was a link to Tomato Nation, I just knew it was about Jack the Canned Tomato Thief.
I KNEW there had to be overlap between the Tomato Nation and the Toasties.
Agreed. One of my least favorite activists of all time was Abbie Hoffman, who advocated this same kind of routine shoplifting in Steal This Book with the same stick-it-to-the-man rationalization. I wondered if mom-and-pop grocery stores started dying out around that time, not only because of competition from supermarkets, but also because, unlike the supermarkets, they couldn’t afford “loss prevention specialists”. Thanks, Abbie.
Sars! Sars! TWoP!!!
Her Dawson’s Creek recaps sustained me through the traumas of high school.
I just saw the most incredible example of mansplaining ever.
1. Blog post about an example of mansplaining, conference code of conduct chastised the woman for her outburst “stop mansplaining and listen!” because it was offensive to the man
2. Copyright Librarian RTs someone else’s quoted RT that says “ugh, yes and familiar” ( https://twitter.com/sshreeves/status/738342466634… )
3. Copyright Librarian adds “Awful & annoying interaction; multiplied by an apparently backwards “civility code”.” ( https://twitter.com/sshreeves/status/738342466634… )
4. Man proceeds to ask THE SAME THINGS AS IN THE BLOG POST and mansplain all over her.
Be sure to click some of the “view other replies” on the thread I linked in #3. My favorite is when David Fiander pipes up “do your own fucking literature search” ( https://twitter.com/djfiander/status/738373260140… )
Nancy Sims was way too nice to this guy, tbh. But it was a seriously incredible example. Like, dude, are you even remotely self-aware?!
ETA: dog dammit Intense Debate stop fucking up links if I put parentheses around them!
In high school and college, I tutored migrant workers in English. I started right around the time Twister came out, and since we were in central Illinois, my students’ top fear, hands-down, was about tornadoes. The movie made it look like the average Midwesterner would encounter between 4 to 5 tornadoes per day, and the people were TERRIFIED. I had a man who’d been an architect in either Colombia or Venezuela, and we spent an entire session talking past each other about tornado protection.
“How can you construct a tornado-proof house?” he’d ask earnestly.
“You can’t. I mean. I guess you could build a bunker?”
“OK, what if it were shaped like a cone?”
“Wind-resistance is not really the problem? It’s all the stuff that’s flying through the air, like pieces of straw which can penetrate trees.”
“…What if–”
He was really determined to solve the terrible tornado tyranny we Midwesterners were suffering under, bless him.
I went to school in New England for a while (I’m from Ohio) and I got a lot of questions about how I coped with all the tornadoes. Even people from wildfire-prone areas of the West Coast seemed to think that tornadoes were the most terrifying of natural phenomena.
I’m from the West and Southwest but lived in Indiana for 6 years. Can confirm that tornadoes are in fact the most terrifying of natural phenomena.
(In all seriousness, I think a lot of it depends on where you grew up. You get sort of inured to the terrifying natural disasters in your native region so the ones from outside are the worst.)
I’m from ohio.
I also study in a department of climatologists who study tornado safety. The number one way they could keep people safe in Tornado Alley would be to BUILD HOUSES WITH BASEMENTS. Guys, this isn’t a code requirement. All over the place you can just plop a home down on a slab without any tornado safe rooms and it’s perfectly ok.
You only have to worry about tornadoes when the storm clouds go from black to GREEN. This has happened to me 3 times. Once when my son was small I went out to try to put the ducks away before the storm. My 5 year old was with me. The cloud above literally started spinning and descending directly over my house. The ducks were on their own, and we ran to the 200-year old basement. It was sighted and officially called a tornado 5 miles down the street.
I grew up on lake Erie, we could watch the waterspouts out the windows. Every year or two one would jump to shore and make it to our front yard, leaving either our neighbors’ treetops or random fish on our roof.
But what happened to the ducks?!?
The thing about houses on slabs reminded me of living in Oklahoma briefly, and many of the houses having “storm cellars” out in the backyard that were these little bomb shelter things, so you had to go out and risk getting a piece of straw stuck through your brain or whatever. Plus, when we were looking at houses, the realtor, for whatever twisted reason, started telling us about the tendency of brown recluse spiders to nest in storm cellars. Thanks, dude, excellent sales technique there.
I can’t speak to other parts of Tornado Alley, but in NE Oklahoma, the storm cellar thing is because we have too high of a water table to put a real basement in (I think storm cellars can be shallower than a basement built to code, or maybe it’s just that if it floods it doesn’t put the house at risk). After the big tornado in 1999,demand for those super reinforced above ground safe rooms went way up, but every time we go a few years without a major tornado people get complacent again.
That said, I do love Twister and all the real OK stuff in it (some of the actual local weathermen have cameos).
we have brown recluse spiders on the lake, too. My mom pointed them out to me at night on the porch while my dad was in the middle of a summer-long read of The Hobbit. It took me years to finish that book because the spider scene did me in.
The ducks were fine. We had a very broad-minded rooster at the time and he rounded everybody up into the rose of sharon bush. They weren’t so lucky later in the summer, though, when the local coyotes cased the place, figured out exactly where the electric fence wouldn’t go, and massacred them all in the hours between 2 and 4 am when I brought my dog inside. I could hear them underneath my window all night, just waiting for me to bring the dog in. But I needed to sleep without worrying about my dog getting in a fight with a pack of coyotes. We awoke to very dramatic carnage. This is when I learned that the phrase “sitting duck” is accurate. They didn’t have a chance.
Good lord.
One of the more interesting anecdotes from our production head is about a book printer in the Midwest we used that had built a multi-story underground bunker full of emergency supplies but also production supplies, presumably so that they could keep working if a tornado came and destroyed their above-ground operation. I don’t think they’ve ever had to use it. I delight in thinking about the one guy just terrified of tornadoes who got the entire company to go along with his crazy idea to build a fully habitable, fully functional duplicate of their business underground. Just in case.
I’m not gonna lie, if I ever become a Midwest book printer I may just build the whole deal underground and have done with it. Working on books while a massive storm rages overhead is my Aesthetic.
I’ve had the tornado-vs-hurricane debate with someone from hurricane country (i.e. their local highways have the hurricane evacuation route signs on them). I pointed out to them that tornadoes tended to be random and sudden, but relatively precise in their damage, and their response was that it was the randomness that they would fear.
Too precise. When the ex left me with a house in foreclosure, I moved to the south of the state into a friends’ barn/guest quarters with my kids for a field school, leaving the on-the-market house. Right at the end of the summer, a tornado blew through our town. It touched down across the street, ran two miles down wreaking havoc with our grocery store and houses on the other side of the street. It was like, 300 yards from my house. I was so, so, so hoping the house had just been destroyed and I didn’t have to go back. No such luck. It turned right.
That’s what scares me. Plus, you can get a lot of prior warning for a hurricane (and for a lot of forest fires, although by no means all of them), but with tornadoes, it’s like – “welp, it’s the right conditions! Could be one or maybe not! Do you want to drag the baby out of bed and crate the cat to drag them to the underground staircase a door over (through the driving rain and lightening!) for nothing?” Maybe if I had had a basement in Indiana I wouldn’t have been so scared of them, but the randomness and a difficult to reach safe place made it extra upsetting.
I think about Brexit every day and am terrified.
Same same same.
But I did find out today that I am not yet disenfranchised (but I will be in another 5 years’ time), it’s not too late to register to vote by proxy, and the registration is all done online these days so no need to be at the mercy of the postal service. Small comforts.
THANK YOU.
it is ALARMING.
honestly I have no idea which way it’s going to go and I feel a sense of inevitable lovecraftian doom settling over my shoulders like a mantle.
(which is to say, it is not absolutely implausible that Boris Johnson is somehow connected to the King in Yellow, and will someday remove his face to reveal inhuman eyes in a sea of suppurating maggot mouths, upon which his dead/dread eyes roll like ships in a storm)
Yes, me too. My partner is Irish with British citizenship, so we won’t be directly affected but it will sure as hell feel like s giant fuck off to our family.
It is scary. I have voted already (I applied for a postal vote for the London mayoral elections and they gave me one for this election as well, for no apparent reason), which at least feels like doing something positive, but the thought of all of the scary Vote Leave rhetoric out there and the people who agree with it is depressing.
Calling @calliope and other Sitka AK toasties! I thought I was the only one. Maybe we are legion! Let’s meet up or something. (Not the p-bar because I am an old who can’t handle the smoking anymore.)
Off topic, etc, but I am so excited to know that you exist in my tiny, remote town. Thank you Mallory and Nicole for starting this community. Just FYI, I actually take to the sea in my big steel boat when life becomes a dumpster fire.
Twister was my first ever PG-13 movie, so it holds a very special place in my heart. My parents were somewhat justified in their caution though, bc afterwards, li’l ol’ me started jumping on the couch yelling “SHIT! SHIT!” bc I thought Bill Paxton was super cool and he said it, sooo
Mary Kate in Ardmore, PA! Your Toast Post card is finally on the way, even after a most unpleasant scene in a small-town post office yesterday, which I was wholly unprepared for.
THERES ANOTHER MARYKATE TOASTIE?! Hellooooooo, fellow MK!
Indeed there is!
YAY!!! I’ll keep an eye out for it.
I’m putting this here, because. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/02…
!!!
Hmmm, I have a request from y’all. I’m heading up to the Bay area this weekend, and I’m wondering if you guys have any recommendations for places to hit up? Maybe around the Berkeley area? I am woefully unfamiliar with cool places.
I love the Cheeseboard for lunch (and their bakery for breakfast – I have the cookbook and their scones/muffins/etc. are AMAZING) and the Lawrence Hall of Science! Although the Hall of Science is up in the hills, so may or may not be accessible to you. Other than that, Shattuck and other streets around the University have a lot of little bookshops and interesting things. And I always go on campus and visit all the animal statues, but that’s probably something that mostly appeals to me; my dad went there when I was little and we used to visit his office and feed the bear statues by the physics department flowers and climb the sabertooth cat statue!
Thank you! I love cheese and books, which may not come as a surprise, haha.
The story about your dad is so sweet and charming!!!
Well you picked a good weekend to come, because it’s the Bay Area Book Festival in downtown Berkeley! http://www.baybookfest.org/
Also, if you have time, I highly recommend the Oakland Museum. It’s right next to the Lake Merritt BART station. Galleries are half price on Friday night after 5 PM and they have food trucks and music and it is super fun.
Omg that all sounds so wonderful!
Do you have any favorite food spots?
Cookies Rule Everything Around Me. Also, there is a big bookfest in the area this weekend…I am thinking of going! Except it will also be hot and I might go w family to the beach. Decisions!
Seconding Cheeseboard. I’ve never had a disappointing slice there.
I’d like to recommend Lush Gelato; there’s a branch in Berkeley and another in Oakland. I used to live in walking distance. Easily my favorite frozen thing currently available.
If you are fond of hiking, there’s a set of East Bay routes available here. I am totally going to do the tour of tiny libraries when my friend H is visiting next week: http://berkeleypaths.org/self-guided-walks/
If it super-hot, you might want to spend some time hanging out by the Berkeley Marina– guaranteed it will be windy and cool there, if it is windy and cool anywhere at all.
Have a good time!
Last December, a doctor told me to get an MRI and see him again three weeks later to go over the results.
I realise UK people expressing horror at US healthcare is overdone, but GOOD GOD. (I had an MRI a few years ago. My GP referred me for it and I was contacted by the department who would be doing it a few weeks later with the details of my appointment. No insurance was needed.)
Daniel Craig is starring in a TV adaptation of Jonathan Frazen’s novel ‘Purity’.
I would like to register a protest that the tap dancing video is not available to me…just because I’m Australian, is this a reason to punish me with a lack of tap dancing videos, broadway.com?!
Good lord.
I have an awful lot of binder clips at home despite never having once bought binder clips.
Kale.