Marco and I (mostly Marco, I gave up) are setting up the storefront this week so you can buy totessss this is really happening (the Toasties who did the artwork are getting 50% of the profits and we’re selling them for $20 plus shipping and I’m excited to have them out of my entryway and holding your books.) I’m a little verklempt about them, because LAST MERCH. I think they’ll probably sell out, there are 1250 in total (minus a few I’m keeping back for the artists and Nikki and cherished Toastie houseguests who have nabbed one from my entryway), but if they sell out REALLY quickly we could conceivably have more made? We’ll see!
Feeling a lot of love for Matthew Vines right now, and so much frustration that this is the sort of response his kind, thoughtful work gets (as an affirming Christian, I feel like he is literally doing God’s work, because homophobia is a SIN, but my personal religious views are not the point):
Earlier this week, I wrote an article for Time asking Christians to please mourn with us, not to take offense at our anger, to acknowledge that LGBT people were targeted because of who we are, and not to qualify their laments for us. Even in my shock and horror, I tried so hard to be charitable, respectful, and kind. And I am grateful that most people received it that way, even many people I know who are not affirming but who still shared the article or said they appreciated it.
But then someone from my childhood church commented on my personal page where I had shared the article and said, “I must have missed your post on the beheading of Christians by ISIS. Please repost… I would like to read it.” He then sent me a private message telling me that what I had written in my article was “despicable.” Despicable because I had allegedly made a “moral equivalence” between non-affirming Christians and terrorists. What on earth led him to think that? Because I had said that “most Christians would never kill someone because of their sexual orientation.” And this was deeply offensive, he said, because “most” could be interpreted as just over half.
That is the most uncharitable interpretation imaginable of what I wrote. My clear intention was to affirm that only the most extreme, fringe elements of Christians would ever condone anti-LGBT murders. In almost every talk I give, I defend the hearts, character, and motives of non-affirming Christians. I tell people not to write them off as hateful bigots. I vouch for their sincerity, good intentions, and love for others.
And I should note, the man who sent me this message had not contacted me in more than four years. Four years. He went on to chastise me for “living in a bubble” and supposedly not listening to opposing viewpoints. He ended his message: “Your eisegesis is beginning to overwhelm your ability to continue having the much needed conversation.”
Nevermind the fact that I spent half of the day on Tuesday with a pastor who disagrees with me. Or that I spent half the day today with pastors who disagree with me. Or that I still took the time to meet with them, build and grow in relationship with them, and listen to their viewpoints even though that was incredibly hard for me to do this week.
I am normally very even-keeled in my dialogues with conservative Christians. I am not easily angered or offended. And I always maintain my composure. But today, in a meeting with a number of evangelical pastors in Portland, I started to explain how painful that message was for me to receive and I just broke down sobbing.
A recent survey of 209 students at the schools reveals a generation with a stark familiarity with violence. Of the youths questioned, 43 percent said they witness physical violence one to three times per week, and 40 percent knew someone with a gun. More than 37 percent said they knew someone under the age of 19 who had been killed by violence, according to the survey released in February by Promise Heights, an initiative run through the University of Maryland School of Social Work that provides support to schools and community residents.
Renaissance mourned three students this school year lost to violence:Ananias Jolley, 17, who was stabbed in a biology classroom and died a month later; Darius Bardney, 16, who was killed in an apparent accidental shooting at an apartment building; and Daniel Jackson, 17, who was shot several times less than two miles from the school.
“I don’t know if people understand what is happening in Baltimore,” Renaissance Academy Principal Nikkia Rowe said. “If you just rode around the city and took pictures of the memorials that are standing from the candlelight vigils, it would blow your mind.”
WEIRDLY TOUCHING? Like, I know it’s just advertising, but they really walked the walk:
This search for niche groups led Subaru to the 3rd rail of marketing: They discovered that lesbians loved their cars. Lesbians liked their dependability and size, and even the name “Subaru.” They were four times more likely than the average consumer to buy a Subaru.
This was the type of discovery that the small, struggling automaker was looking for. But Subaru had been looking for niche groups like skiers and kayakers—not lesbian couples. Did the company want to make advertisements for gay customers? At the time, in the mid 1990s, few celebrities were openly out. A Democratic president had just passed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and after IKEA aired one of the first major ad campaigns depicting a gay couple, someone had called in a bomb threat on an IKEA store.
Yet Subaru decided to launch an ad campaign focused on lesbian customers. It was such an unusual decision—and such a success—that it pushed gay and lesbian advertising from the fringes to the mainstream.
If you’ve ever wondered why people joke about lesbians driving Subarus, the reason is not just that lesbians like Subarus. It’s that Subaru cultivated its image as a car for lesbians—and did so at a time when few companies would embrace or even acknowledge their gay customers.
In 1913, the Daily Mirror newspaper responded to Lord Headley’s conversion in a story headlined “Irish peer turns to Islam”.
“That the lure of Eastern religions is affecting an increasing number of Europeans, is again shown by the announcement that Lord Headley, an Irish peer, who spent many years in India, has become a convert to Islam,” the article stated.
Like Headley, many of the early British converts to the religion were young aristocrats or the children of the mercantile elite. Some were explorers, intellectuals and high-ranking officials of empire who had worked and lived in Muslim lands under British colonial rule.
The stories of these converts, says Professor Humayun Ansari of Royal Holloway, University of London, reflect the turbulent times in which they lived, as well as the profound questions that were being raised about religion and the nature and origins of humanity.
Canadian hero (or, well, The Canadian Who Lived, and we are pretending there is no chance this story is a lie, FYI):
What followed was a 12-hour hunt. The wolf continued to pursue Barnaby and Joey, as they were pushed farther from her truck.
“He was dogged. He was just determined,” Barnaby says. “I was in trouble.”
Barnaby said she became dehydrated, her calves and thighs were aching, and there was another vicious attacker that was testing her mental strength.
“I was going crazy with mosquitoes. There were zillions of mosquitoes.”
GASP:
Back in early ’70s, master of slapstick Jerry Lewis made a movie about the Holocaust. That movie, called The Day the Clown Cried, has become one of the world’s great lost films, as Lewis tried to bury it after the blend of outrageous comedy and horrific subject matter went over terribly in test screenings. In it, Lewis plays a clown who is arrested for mocking Hitler and is forced to take kids to the gas chambers (if you want a sense of the kind of comedy that pervades the film, the clown’s name is Helmut Doork). Now, a rare 30-minute cut of The Day the Clown Cried has surfaced online.
I am obsesssssed with the Oneida Community:
Founded in 1848, and in operation for just over three decades, the Oneida Community was profoundly revolutionary for its time, paving the way for advances in women’s and workers’ rights. At the commune headquartered on the Oneida River in upstate New York, women cut their hair short, ditched the corset, and did the same work as the men. Everyone worked four to six hours a day, and no one accumulated any material possessions—not furniture, not fine clothing, and certainly not silverware.
Most scandalously, commune members engaged in a system of “complex marriage,” believing that loving, open sexual relationships could bring them closer to God. They believed the liquid electricity of Jesus Christ’s spirit flowed through words and touch, and that a chain of sexual intercourse would create a spiritual battery so charged with God’s energy that the community would transcend into immortality, creating heaven on earth.
AND then I found this older piece in the sidebar:
I wasn’t buying Leyendecker’s work because I knew it would go up in price; I was buying it because I became obsessed with this man who had the gall to make his lover the icon of American masculinity. I was very interested in the construction of the masculine subject, and it gave me no end of tickles that the man who created icons like the Arrow man and the Chesterfield man was gay.
On slush! I do not like submission fees (although I definitely appreciated reading this, which made good points about why it’s not EVIL) but I think the issue of publications not making money has a lot of good people in the industry scrambling to find a solution, sometimes badly:
Overall, I agree with Mamatas that there’s an ethical issue in charging submission fees. We never instituted them at Electric Literature for Recommended Reading, Gigantic, or any other magazine I’ve worked on. Plenty of journals barely take any work from the slush, but even a magazine that only publishes slush is likely only taking 1–2% of submissions. So the majority of unpublished writers are funding the minority of published, which isn’t a great foundation. Imagine if every worker had to pay to get a job interview? (Or, since most magazines don’t pay, maybe the analogy is paying to get an unpaid internship.) The defense of submission fees is that the fee is pretty small, perhaps only as costly as snail mail postage. But $3 adds up quickly. I’ve often heard the average story gets rejected twenty times before an acceptance. 21 x 3 = $63. The Offing pays $20–50, meaning you’d expect to lose between 13 and 43 bucks per story. Literary writers can’t expect to make much money from quiet short stories about cancer and obscure poems about birds, but surely we don’t need to actively lose money to get published!
Obviously I was going to read this:
Creepy dolls have been a staple of horror movies for about as long as horror movies have been a thing. Chucky. Bride of Chucky. All those nightmares from the Puppet Master movies. More recently, Brahms, the emotionless goblin that Lauren Cohan had to babysit in The Boy. But only one family has built an empire out of their creepy doll. You know her as Annabelle, first seen in The Conjuring and later in her eponymous spinoff. She is the rare horror character who really exists, though in real life she doesn’t look anything like her on-screen counterpart. She lives in Monroe, Connecticut, and if you have $169 to spare and the desire to spend four hours in a room with several possessed artifacts, you can meet her.
On a warm Saturday night in June, a couple hundred people gathered in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant in Monroe called Roberto’s. They were patiently waiting to be checked in for “An Evening With Annabelle,” which consists of a lecture, videos, buffet dinner, and later, we’ll all learn, an impromptu acoustic cover of the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B.” Everyone in line had to sign a waiver before entering, absolving the hosts from “any liability or traumatic influence associated with viewing the items or being in the presence of Annabelle,” but this did not deter eager patrons from making jokes about the lady we were about to meet. “She’s gonna be furious if you go on in there with a phone on,” the guy in line behind me said to his friend.
I thought this was very beautiful.
Sam Irby went and got herself married to a lovely lady and she’s the best:
if i want to do something, i just do it. i don’t have to clear it with anyone or worry about making anybody look bad, once i decide a thing is happening? then i just make it happen. being an orphan is 9/10 amazing!
cons: no one to constantly borrow zero-interest loans from.
pros: LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE.
so when i was like, “let’s just spend an intimate afternoon at the courthouse, bride,” mavis, at first, was cool with it. why waste money on white dresses and an open bar when we could just hit the drive-thru and maybe go to a movie after? i hate smiling and pretending i can tell a whole bunch of cousins and uncles apart. at every wedding i’ve ever been to the happy couple can’t even pause for a bite of rubbery $75/plate chicken because they have to run laps around the room shaking hands and thanking people whose envelope on the money tree might only have twenty bucks in it, which they won’t find out until the next week. i am not doing that. all i wanted to do was swear my fidelity in front of an officer of the court before driving over to the nearest blue cross blue shield office so i can upgrade my insurance and start planning a bunch of dental cleanings and surgeries.but then this hoe started telling people, and their collective response was “GREAT CAN’T WAIT TO JOIN YOU.” three weeks ago i’m in chicago, blissfully unaware, daydreaming about how cheap my ativan is gonna be, and she’s in michigan arranging a processional to the tiny municipal building. i was just going to bribe a dude hanging out at the bus station with a pizza to come bear witness to this unholy matrimony, meanwhile she’s on the phone with the one judge in town asking if he might be able to set up folding chairs and a concession stand before we get there. MAVIS WYD.
Long before she became an opera star, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop believed that Brünnhilde, the heroine in Richard Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelung,” was actually named Bwünnhilde.
Only years later did she realize she thought so because Elmer Fudd can’t pronounce his R’s.
Like many other singers and crew staging the 17-hour, four-opera Wagner extravaganza at the Kennedy Center, Ms. Bishop got her first taste of opera from a cartoon rabbit and his speech-impaired nemesis.
“I could sing you the entire cartoon before I knew what opera really was,” says Ms. Bishop, who performs the part of Fricka, wife of Wotan, king of the gods.
This poem is great.
HOW DO WE BUY A TOOOTE????
ok, I reread it, BUT STILL OMG OMG OMG
Wait, I’ve reread it, and I still don’t understand how to buy it. Where is the storefront? Has there been Toast merch all this time that I’ve been missing out on?
The storefront will be up this week, is what it says. So, not yet.
SO EXCITED. I’ll be checking every day for updates bc I really want one and will be very sad if they are sold out before I get one
I AM IN AUSTRALIA! I AM ALWAYS 5 HOURS LATE (19 HOURS EARLY) TO POSTS. THEY WILL ALL BE SOLD OUT BY THE TIME I WAAAAKE UP!
(No seriously OT averages 1500 comments by 8am Saturday morning AEST which is why I do not join)
Same 🙁 Seriously considering setting an alarm to catch the tote sale.
That was the dude’s suggestion too. Picturing a Hamilton/Burning Man ticket refreshfest situation here.
: /
Me toooo!! We should get an international allotment held for us 🙂
I have some canvas that I was going to make into a bag so I may end up creating my own Toast Tote.
Open to Toastie quotes to embroider on it!
Thanks. I had seen that, but since you said, “Last merch,” rather than, “First merch,” I thought maybe it was a revamp of an existing storefront.
There was merch in the past (shirts!), but we did a link to a third-party provider for those.
My calendar this week now has notifications to check The Toast for totes and to try to buy Chicago Hamilton tickets. Very on brand Toast week for me.
I’m so scared that I’ll slack off and they’ll be sold out when I go to buy one!!!
I will warn you the day before it goes live.
Thank you, I also live in fear of missing the totes!
Me too. Maybe we should all take tote-day off of work? Or even just part of the day, assuming Nicole warns us in advance about the exact time. I mean, I could probably buy them on my work computer, but what if I have a meeting?
you know what i really wish i could put on a bed bath and beyond list is my fucking cable bill. i got cinemax, showtime, HBO, and starz, hoe. the level of entertainment i require is hella expensive. so i went on amazon and made one, but i am a child, so i basically filled it with garbage. things i fear are gauche but i put on the registry anyway: flonase, chuckles jelly candy, a badminton set for the back yard, a bluetooth speaker, the new nick jonas cd, five unscented sticks of dove deodorant, some iphone chargers, and a jar of first aid beauty repair cream.
Once again it is clear that Samantha Irby understands me on a spiritual level.
Taking notes.
I want to get married now just so I can register for Chuckles jelly candy
Literal Gchat I just sent to Mr. BHam: “so: new idea, we register for a bunch of candy and protein powder.” His response: “Maybe also a saw and some body wash.”
A+ marriaging right there
Weird things we registered for included gift certificates to provincial parks, homemade jam/preserves, guest’s art or craft, brewery tour gift certificates, and a cat fountain. We received all but the final item, which we then bought on our own because our cat deserves a fountain while we enjoy all the awesome jam.
Open registries are the best.
That is a FANTASTIC list and sounds like the makings of an incredible honeymoon.
Cat fountains look wonderful but I’m afraid when I excitedly googled I expected something very different.
(A full sized fountain but instead of water, just a ton of cats)
(I did not stop to try to figure out the logistics)
This made me laugh so hard.
I’ll just leave this here.
“…marketers also said Subaru’s dependability was a good fit for lesbians since they didn’t have a man who could fix car problems…”
Marketers had not met many lesbians. Or men.
You know it was a bunch of well-intended straight dudes who had probably never talked to a lesbian in their whole lives and were slightly baffled about how to appeal to them.
“I mean, they don’t have men, so who fixes the car?”
“Oh, good point, Gerald, make sure we point out how low maintenance it is.”
“Great job, everyone!”
I also like that they were looking for “skiers or kayakers” but ended up with “lesbians” as if 1. Lesbianism is a sort of hobby you engage in on vacation or 2. That you can’t be both a lesbian and a skier.
not to mention assumption 3. that lesbianism requires bulky equipment has to be strapped to the roof of your car.
To be fair, sometimes bulky strap-ons are involved.
But I’ve yet to meet someone who keeps those on top of the car.
Solar-powered vibrators, maybe?
#Peaklesbianism, but also that seems very impractical somehow.
I’ve seen one you could power with a USB or …..a hand crank.
y/n?
Always good to have a couple up there, just in case.
#richtapestry
This is a good point. I didn’t mean to shame the top-of-car-sextoy-storage subculture.
re your point 1: My niece (who was 10 yesterday) is currently answering with ‘a lesbian’ when asked what she wants to be when she grows up. We are not entirely sure if she means it or if she thinks it’s a career choice, but time will tell!
We need to start a Toast Icons award for young girls who are living the Toast Dream.
partner with Rookie?
When I was 10 (which was, mind you, in 1969), I was saying that when I grew up, I wanted to be a hippy. I knew I was going to be a writer, but that somehow did not seem to me to be a career choice, and “hippy” did.
I wanted to be “a bohemian” up until I was fourteen! Mostly because of RENT, but still.
Yeah, I’m not only uncomfortable with “lesbian” as a demographic since in my experience many people really do think that’s all they need to know about you, but I’m also not happy having it associated with one of the least sexy vehicle brands on earth.
My Impreza hatchback is hella sexy, thank you very much. She is also badass with her all-wheel drive and her fog lights, thus adequately capturing the badassitude of her skiin’, kayakin’, triathlonin’ owner.
Here to say- I drive a Subaru.
You can pry my Subaru out of my cold dead (bi) hands.
My dad had us drive Subarus as our first cars as teens, because they worked well in the snow/ice and were reliable.
Yep! Our current backup/beater car is a Subaru. I don’t enjoy driving it, but damn it’s dependable in the winter (something that cannot be said for our little Crossfire).
Colorado has erratic winters to say the least, and he definitely appreciated that we would be able to handle it for the most part.
They basically hand out Subarus at the border here in Colorado. I admit a certain loyalty toward my Outback I’ve never really felt for a car before.
Growing up in Boulder, my family would play a game where we’d count all the Subaru Outbacks on our way home – there were just so MANY. The Denver Subaru dealership consistently sells the most Outbacks of any other dealership in the world.
Growing up among many kayakers, skiers, and lesbians was pretty nice, I suppose. My lesbian neighbor called her Outback “the Lezzbaru”
reminds me of my friend who works as a bouncer at the lez bar here in denver. it’s next door to Voodoo. whenever someone drives up and parks, they try to guess whether the person’s going to Voodoo or to the bar. the game is called “dykes or donuts?”
subarus mess them up every time.
100% ditto on both of these as a fellow (new) Coloradan whose Subaru I shall never part from
(English major toasties, please don’t burn me at the stake for that sentence)
Same here. I think my dad was looking for the vehicle that had the most airbags possible, so I ended up with an adorable used Impreza, which I love to pieces. Now the whole family has Subarus!
Awww, dads! My mom drives one now too – she’s a New Yorker and not at all into driving to begin with, so she likes a car that’s small and reliable and not flashy.
I LOVE MY SOOBY…I love her so much, she’s my first brand new car (Crossteck XV) and when, after owning her for a bare 2 months, my 80lb dog destroyed the back compartment in a fit of rage (like, down to the metal frame, he was determined to join me in my friend’s saddle making studio; I was gone for like 20 minutes, I’ve left him in the back for longer when grocery shopping and he was always an angel, sigh) I openly wept for SOOBY.
Happy ending: everything was covered, she came out good as new and I made the body shop guys insert a time capsule note into the frame that stated if I found this note back in my hands under any circumstance, the dog would pay. PAY.*
*empty threat, the dog knows this is and besides, I learned my lesson that day: dog stays home when exciting trips occur, dog always gets to come grocery shopping, weather permitting of course.
I spent many many years driving Subarus and loved them. The only reason I decided not to get one when I got my new car back in September was that I just didn’t need that big a car anymore (which is why I now have a Mini). But if things ever change, I’d absolutely get a Subaru again.
Can we talk about Prudie and the woman who gave her mother’s dog away?!?! Her mother seems like a handful, but unless she is abusing or neglecting the dog you don’t just give away people’s pets without asking!
Related: when people break up and use the pets as bargaining chips with each other is always gross. Ugh.
My uncle and aunt got divorced. Apparently my aunt thought they should PUT THEIR DOG DOWN as a fairness because joint custody of the dog would be stressful for said dog?!
I am so glad my uncle (who otherwise may have behaved questionably during the marriage, but I will never know the truth of it because he’s the one I’m blood-related to) refused that shit. Yeah, dog has health issues because Purebred, but YEESH.
(Caveat that this is secondhand knowledge from my Nana, who sometimes willfully believes things that she has misheard or misunderstood.)
Noooooo. Kudos to your uncle for intervening.
Noooooope. It’s like people who move and just leave their cat behind. So completely unacceptable.
I got my first cat because a family did that. They just ditched him outside and moved out of state. He walked up to me in a parking lot and screamed, hungry and cold. He has been understandably clingy and anxious since then.
Assholes.
we think that is how we ended up with Agnes the Toddler Cat (because how else does an un-microchipped Maine Coon end up under your porch?) and as much as we love her it is absolutely infuriating to think about what happened to her before she found us.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Um I mean glad to hear your uncle prevailed.
When we got my dad a dog a couple of years ago there was a big, older dog at the shelter, I don’t remember the breed. His sign said he has been surrendered to the shelter after a divorce. He looked so sad and confused and I kind of regret that we didn’t get him. I already have two dogs so I couldn’t have taken him and he was too big for dad to take. I hope he found a new home.
I actually had really mixed feelings about this one! Like, maybe Prudie read was spot on, but I also can envision several family members who resemble these people and like… even as a dog lover I don’t think it was the Worst Evil.
Like, okay. I’ll just put my sob story on the table. If I gave away something of my mothers and explained I needed to simplify my own ability to cope with her aging, after a lifetime of abuse, and people were more fixated on the Just Trying to Hurt An Old Woman, The Poor Dog instead of like “wow caring for your abuser sounds really intense and the less to worry about the better, I think human quality of life might count for something here,” I would feel… Hmmm… Gaslit, just a smidge.
I can see that. Perhaps the better option in that case would be to refuse to take on the responsibility at all? I know, one of the hardest things about being raised by bad parents is that the child-to-parent attachment is so strong and it can be astonishingly difficult to break free of it. But it’s almost always better in the long run to make big wide boundaries and stick to them, rather than taking on something you deeply resent doing and know you won’t do well.
Although .. only you know what works for you! Solidarity hug, though.
That’s not always legal, unfortunately (in the US, anyway). Yes, even when the parent in question is abusive.
I had a lot of sympathy for the daughter. I think she was in a really tough spot and I completely endorse her re-homing the dog while her mother was in the hospital. And it’s possible that the mother really isn’t capable of caring for the dog appropriately. But I think my sympathy for the mother comes in when I think that perhaps she got a dog for companionship and emotional support, which has now been taken from her. I don’t think the daughter was trying to hurt the mother, I think she was trying to do the right thing, but I also think the choice she made was probably not the right one (even as I understand why she made it)
Yeah, I can feel this from both sides. I think Mal/Pru veered off course when she was like “Maybe you’re JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER” which if some one said the same thing to me about my dad I would be so incredibly hurt that I wouldn’t take anything from it (especially because I have a secret fear that yes, I really am an emotionally abusive ass and I just don’t know it!).
I think it’s more likely that when you have a terrible relationship with a parent you sometimes can’t see anything but the past abuses. It’s hard to see that this person might have a point about you hurting them. Also maybe stuff got cut for space, but I don’t really feel like we have enough information to make a call about whether the mother is capable of caring for the dog or not.
Yeah that final barb was a big NOPE for me, too.
SAME, I support this answer.
Yeah that was kind of how I felt too… The letter did say that the mother needed in-home care when she was back from the hospital too. Not that people who need in-home care shouldn’t be allowed to have pets! But I’ve seen the caretaker side of the story (luckily not with pets involved) and it is so, so hard. I can understand what the daughter did. Also, there were so many people who were like “just find a temporary place for the dog!!!” and man, boarding fees add up over a 4-month period, and finding a temporary foster is HARD.
Yeah, I agree. My mother-in-law has very serious mental health problems, and has been a terrible parent to my husband. She is also obsessed with serval cats. She has about nine of them. If she has the cats when she dies we’d have to have the cats immediately sold or destroyed, which is terrible and a decision I hope we never have to make, but it’s not like we’d be able to take care of them! I hope people wouldn’t judge us too harshly for it.
“drawing doesn’t need money it needs artism and imagination”
I sort of love this response because they aren’t even pitching to the artist like “come on, it will be good exposure,” they’re just like “search your heart for the magic of drawing!!”
ARTISM
that’s even better than my beloved “prejudism” from days of Harry Potter yore.
You do need some money to buy pencils though.
you obviously don’t have enough imagination. or possibly artism.
wow it’s really unfortunate you don’t care enough about art to use your blood as ink
“i can’t draw unless someone gives me MONEY for PENCILS” ok sure what i’m hearing is you don’t CARE about ART
smh kids these days
just do it with paper its free
[in the distance, the sound of art students trying to raid the local supply store with pitchforks and Viking hats built out of spare chipboard]
I’m remembering a tumblr post where someone basically shit on people who volunteer at soup kitchens, because food doesn’t motivate and inspire people – ART DOES.
Best comment was
“I remember one christmas we were short on money so my brother just drew us some pictures of mashed potato it was poppin!!! We ate the pencils too!!!”
My husband and I both used to work in animation and we have each had actual employers say this to us in different ways. Seriously. Fuck people who don’t pay artists.
“Fuck people who don’t pay artists.” RIGHT IN THE EAR. My biggest pet peeve. ETA…doing something small for a most excellent friend and/or person is my personal exception to fucking someone right in the ear.
People who see me doing something small for a most excellent friend as a personal exception and then think they are entitled to that same thing will be fucked in both ears.
This gave me a mental image that I have mixed feelings about.
(okay mostly I’m guffawing loudly but)
And now I want to watch Bugs Bunny.
IN OTHER NEWS
DATES. I WENT ON ‘EM.
The first was decidedly a dud. Bland as all get out and kind of skeezy. The third was nice, but quiet. But the one in the middle… A self-proclaimed Ravenclaw and all out nerd. It didn’t help that he looked a bit like Idris Elba, ladies and gents, it really didn’t. I think this one’s a keeper.
(Here is video footage of my reaction, post-date. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XRnomLsbbTM)
Three dates in one weekend? You are a champion and a scholar and I respect you forever. And congrats on the middle one! A good date is such a great feeling.
Ravenclaw Idris Elba? GET IT GIRL.
Yay! Awesome!
I want to take to the sea so bad right now, Toasties. I need my tote so people can see my desire to take to the sea and know to leave me alone, because I can’t stop politely smiling and listening, and I’ve TRIED, you know I’ve tried.
If I saw your tote I would not leave you alone. I would squeal like a four year old just knowing you were a fellow Toast. Sorry/not sorry.
FAIR ENOUGH 😀 that is also a good outcome of toast totes!
Ooooh I know I should keep away from the SwiHiddles, not least for the sake of Nicole and CleverManka, but THIS IS THE BEST https://youtu.be/aYuZOl6B-vs
Now I’m off to check if shipping fees for ordering a tote to Europe are copletely insane, or just ordinary insane.
I think I probably shouldn’t click that link. Am I correct?
Hummmm, that depends….if you’re too hurt to even hear about it, then no you should’nt.
Otherwise, yes, do click! Let me say this: it’s a certain new Late Show host at his very finest…
#Colbiddleswift
I think I’d better wait…
This might cheer you up http://tomandlorenzo.com/2016/06/tom-hiddleston-f…
You know, that did cheer me up, but probably not the way you thought. He’s starting to bear quite a resemblance to Michael Fassbender, esp those second two photographs. Maybe it was a good thing to get out of that when I did…
We should develop a smuggling system for Europe.
*whispers* I volunteer to take them as far as London for the bargain fee of one tote.
Yes, smuggling! Let’s do it!
I’m not sure, but I think sending things within the EU isn’t too expensive, after the smuggling from the US is done.
I don’t remember the t-shirts being ridonkulous postage, I am in the UK.
London tote ordering club? Then we can Europe out from there?
Hiddle School Dropout–I’m dead.
I couldn’t care less about the relationship, but I kind of want them to break up really quickly, because I want to see the songs Taylor writes ASAP. Because they would be ridiculous. One of the songs will inevitably have a lyric like “I thought you were a god, but you were just a man.” Taylor can’t resist the obvious.
“trickster of my heart” should also be involved.
#Taytomhiddleswift
#TaytayTomtomSwiftelston-Hiddlift #Hidft #Stonft #Hid-Swi
Shit like this is what I’m gonna miss the most from this website
This is why Stephen and his wife are BFFs with me and Mr. B, and we frequently get together and laugh at terrible celebrity pairings over dinner and nice bottles of pinot.
(You know, in my dreams and all.)
#lifegoals
I only just found Stephen, and now he’s my favorite person of all the persons possible <3 <3 <3
I spend every breakfast catching up on the lastest Late Show clips.
#bestdreamlife
Ugghhhh a friend of mine is in Colbert’s house band !!! and every time I see him I’m like, “Dude, I gave you my number to give to Stephen like six months ago. Is there a reason he still hasn’t called?” And my friend just stares at me in silence and shakes his head.
Here’s some food to go with the pinot: https://youtu.be/GqHI0AXyYaE
Y’all, Vi Hart did a video on Christina Grimmie, Pulse, online harassment, and grieving about tragedy, and it is so good.
Warning though: she talks about all of the above, and it may be triggering.
PS: If you like math, or doodling, or both, her other vids are fantastic!
Totally! I won’t have time to watch the new video until I get home from work, but I love her stuff. I periodically rewatch her 12-tone video–in this country, we have a constitutional right to make fun of people!
Non-affirming (white, male) Christians, and their insufferable sense of privilege, man.
Everything I know about opera, I learned on Looney Tunes.
When I teach Music Appreciation, I use Looney Tunes to ease them into it.
Love the username! Poor, overlooked, genius Zelenka. The Zelenka oboe trios are my go to “need to get back in shape pronto” resource because they are delightfully complex, difficult and so so much fun to play.
As a much older employee before my retirement I did indeed introduce a few unsuspecting co-workers on lunch break to the wonder that is Looney Tunes music cartoons. I have even attended a few concerts, operas (Met at the Movies – we’re poor workers), and jazz concerts with some of them since.
Yes that is my Zelenka, I love him so so much!
And Nikki’s Toast piece about how to tell you’re in an opera.
“Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!”
When the orchestra I was in did Barber of Seville, it was all I could do not to belt out, “Welcome to my shop, let me cut your mop…” during practice. I did sing it in my head though. And pictured Bugs massaging Elmer Fudd’s scalp with his toes.
Everything I know about Longfellow and Whittier, I learned from Bullwinkle’s Poetry Corner.
okay the oneida community is super fascinating but also mutual criticism sounds like an ACTUAL NIGHTMARE i don’t need feedback on literally everything i do thank you very much
(ps SpaceWitch Retreat, formerly known as ToastCon, is happening pls follow us here for updates, we’re basically going to have a weekend summer camp for toasites next August okay bye)
Only one person criticizing you is a nightmare! But the whole town comparing notes on Why You Suck (right down to “you tie your shoelaces wrong” or “you breathe too loudly”) is the center of the icy lake of Hell.
mutual criticism is suuuch a cultish hallmark omg. also what if you’re not in the mood for sexytimes (or not with That One Guy You Can’t Stand) but it’s your turn for the god battery so you Have To ugh awful. at least we got some silverware out of it, i guess?
Weirdest euphemism for sex ever: “time to power the god battery…”
I think people at Oneida were able to refuse consent, because Charles Guiteau generally couldn’t manage to get laid there and thus acquired the nickname Charles Gitout. Then he went on to kill President Garfield.
Oh thank goodness, I believe you’re right. I know some of those historical sex cults you couldn’t refuse, which is really upsetting to think of, and it’s difficult sometimes to remember which is which.
If only people had given him sex, as is his god-given right, then we might still have Pres Garfield around. *sob*
Realz, though, my students and I have been working through books about all the assassinated presidents, and we started with Garfield, and we’ve all decided that perhaps he was the greatest president to ever live (sorry, Abe). Helps that he wasn’t in office long enough to do any sort of damage. But he was pretty sweet and we all love him.
Now, William McKinley on the other hand, that bastard… well, let’s just say none of us were sad when we finally got to the “then he died” part.
Poor sweet bookworm Garfield!
this is just
such a good comment
Followed!
Would this be the right place to ask about Toastie slack as well? And/or gathering place for soon-to-be-orphaned toasts?
(If it’s not the right place, I apologize!)
ETA: saw the space witch retreat slack info downthread! sorry!
I’m tearing up a little bit over an article about Subaru advertising. Today is a Strange Morning.
(I also saw The Book of Mormon last night and spent about a third of it bawling which doesn’t seem like the correct response at all, so maybe I’m just extra weepy?)
I dunno, The Book of Mormon def does that classic Parker/Stone thing of being terribly offensive and misanthropic and then somehow coming back to a really sweet and life-affirming place. Totally weep-worthy.
If you want to find out more about Britain’s relationship to Islam and Islamic culture off the back of that al-Jazeera article, I’ve just finished reading This Orient Isle by Jerry Brotton and would recommend it. It’s a really interesting look at trade and diplomatic relations between England and Islamic states during the Elizabethan era.
There’s also The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen’s London by Nile Green which is about some of the first Muslims to live and study in England in the early 19th century. The students were Iranians interested in learning medicine and engineering to better defend themselves from the Russians and the Brits were reasonably happy to comply, as they were not great friends of Russia at that point either.
I haven’t read the whole book but I’ve very much enjoyed it so far.
See also White Mughals by William Dalrymple.
oitnb thread? anyone else want to admit to binging the whole thing already and want to discuss THE FEELS? or just who can keep me company in being completely enamored with Samira Wiley’s performance?
Okay so I’m only like 6 episodes in, so I won’t check back in this thread after I post this because spoilers, but ohmigod I love Samira Wiley and Poussey is probably my favourite character.
I haven’t actually started the season yet, so clicked through the thread just out of curiosity for what people are thinking so far. I am very pleased to be getting the impression that Poussey plays a big ol role this season since I love her dearly.
I did my usual and watched half the season on Friday and the rest on Saturday, and I have no one to talk to about it, haha. I’m kinda disappointed by the finale (it left pretty much every story thread hanging just as it looked like it was about to pay off), but the show is still so damn good.
It seemed like they really went a lot further with the awfulness of the guards in this season. I found myself getting pretty angry at them on a regular basis, which I guess is what they were going for. I quite liked Piscatella’s character at first (he’s an authoritarian hardass right from the start, yeah, but seemed very earnest about it?), but he’s just as bad as the rest of them.
Lastly: Why’d that have to happen to the nicest, happiest, closest-to-innocent person on the whole damn show? 🙁
I have binged the whole thing and auuugh.
I felt so stressed by the end of the last episode I had to go and sew a tunic. you know. to do something with my hands. (spoiler: I fucked up the collar and the whole thing is ruined, but, the next one will be better!) I predicted the season would end in a prison riot by about episode five, and I was completely right – there’s only so far you can push people (even scared people, even people you can do really, really bad shit to) before they start to push back, and the new guards were basically awful.
I am kind of leaning between That Thing really working for the drama, which it did, and the deep disappointment I feel in One More Dead Lesbian because we can’t have nice things.
I haven’t watched any of this season (or the last one? what’s wrong with me?) but I’m always on board to talk about Samira Wiley because she’s super talented and, let’s not waste breath, SO HOT OMG *faints*
After a convo on Toastie Slack in which I guessed what happened at the end, I now don’t even know if I want to watch this season. Which sucks! I like the show a lot! I want to see what they do with this next arc! But knowing what’s coming…uuuggghhh
While we definitely knew of the lesbian-Subaru connection, Subarus are just super ubiquitous in New Hampshire because they’re really good in the snow.
My first car (the love of my life) was a 1999 Subaru Outback named Sally. I cried when I cleaned her out for the last time (arguably the first time) at the mechanic’s, after they told me that the engine would cost $3000 to replace and that was the time I couldn’t pay for gas and food in the same month.
Sure, at that point the transmission was shot, the brakes were almost gone, the gas valve was slightly broken so I had to trickle in gas, the passenger window wouldn’t roll back up, and the heat kept breaking — but hot damn, she was my girl.
Yes, there are many straight Subaru owners here in the Northern Michigan lake-effect zones for the same reason.
Perhaps ironically, my hometown is also the home of a fairly well-known lesbian-only retreat, but it’s also just the home of a lot of Subaru that are quite rusted underneath from the salt on the roads during the winter.
Also tons of Subarus in CO, which I loved because it made it so easy to get it fixed. Everyone had the parts and knew what they were doing.
My first car was a 1996 Subaru Ouback named LaVelle who went all over the country with me before finally dying rather decisively while I was sitting at a red light one morning. The engine turned off and never came back on. But now I live in DC and I just can’t justify buying a new one. My Elantra cost half what a new Subaru would have. Maybe it’ll make sense next time I need a car…
Yeah, mine died very decisively when after I drove back from the Highlands Games one fall in NH. It was also the night of a really great date/hookup, so I tend to associate Sally’s demise with one of the best dates of my life.
I, too, live in DC, but I have no intention of getting a car anytime soon. But if I did, I would do my damnedest to find a used Subaru and I would name her Sharon.
I was a teen in Denver and my dad insisted on Subarus for our first cars. Mine was a turquoise Outback I called Medelilla after the Smashing Pumpkins song. The replacement cars for my siblings were also Subarus. My mom drives one now as well.
Why do we love cars so intensely? I am sitting in the front seat of Gus, my 2001 Volvo station wagon. I imagine Gus as a stylish Scandinavian gay man, all tasteful sweaters and wine by the fire at a chateau with snow gently falling outside. In reality, Gus is a fucking tire fire, with a shot turbo that leaks five quarts of oil a week, needs a $1,500 AC repair, new shocks, and is leaking power steering fluid from some mysterious place we can’t find because fucking Volvo said in the manual that you’re supposed to put ATF in the power steering system when really they meant CHF-11S (which is $1,000,000 per bottle) and ATF makes it leak?
But I can’t give Gus up. I spent many lunch hours napping in Gus’ beautifully comfy seats while pregnant. I spend a good hour every morning sitting in Gus reading the Link Roundup. Gus has cradled my daughter in loving safety and way-past-legally-dark window tint since she was born. Gus holds so much cargo but still gets pretty okay gas mileage. Gus has AWD that gets me up my parents 45 degree hill in the icy Missouri winter. What will I do without him?
Oh gurl, I know! Sally was such a piece of shit. People thought I was a terrible driver for years because they didn’t realize that in order for me to start and stop the car I had to slam on the gas and the brake. They didn’t realize that the power steering was a bit iffy, and that my weak arms could only do so much. It wasn’t until my friend — who is an excellent driver — borrowed my car when it was super snowy did he realize that, while I may not have been a fantastic driver, 65% of my driving inability was my awful car.
But I still love her and miss her. Once when I was quite poor but had still decided to go to a concert a 5-hour drive away from my apartment, my roommate and I slept in the back in the parking lot of a liberal arts college. That’s something that I will always cherish about that car.
I just found out yesterday that my insurance didn’t deem my ol car worth fixing, and has decided it’s a total loss.
I have to go down to the tow place at lunch today and clean her out. GOOD OLD VAL, YOU CARRIED ME SO MANY PLACES. Through high school, through college, all across the west, from CO to CA, then in two different states with two different jobs post-college. You were rusty on the top, and a weird color, and a little grumbly sometimes, but gosh darn if you didn’t get the job done.
RIP Val – I’m so weirdly sentimental about this car, ugh :C
I am so sorry! I truly understand your pain — it’s hard to say goodbye to your old beater of a car. I’m sending a fist bump of affection your way, because I don’t know how you feel about hugs.
super late, but – my mom bought a 1995 Saturn new to commute in. They let me take it to college (Mizzou) in 1998 when it already had > 110k miles on. I drove that car until last September (from age 17 to 34, literally half my life), at which time it had over 230,000 miles on it and had never had any major work done, burned a little oil but ran like a trooper. It was rusting out underneath though, and the front window seals were both shot so it kind of smelled like mildew for the last couple years, and I’m pretty sure the brakes were shot, but my mechanic didn’t want me to put any more money into it.
Finally Dad bought a new Honda and gave me his old Accord, so I donated Baby to the NPR thing and also bawled for six months. oh the drama. I am resigned to the successor vehicle but, nine months later, still can’t park the damn thing.
Super ubiquitous in Seattle / WA area too. I own one as do my parents.
I really feel for the author of the Annabelle article. Although I would have said NOPE the instant the bird smacked the window and ran out the next morning to get a priest to bless the house.
(ALSO I ROWED FOR TWO DAYS STRAIGHT I LOVE IT I DON’T EVEN HURT I LOVE THE TEAM AND BEING ON THE WATER I MISSED ROWING SOOOOO MUCH)
Today in (Feminist) History [Archive]
On this day in 1911 was the birth of Gail Patrick, who was not only an American film actress in the 30s and 40s, but went on to become one of the first women TV producers. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she graduated from Howard College, where she remained as the acting dean of women as she completed two years of law school at the University of Alabama. Her aspiration was to be the governor of the state, but in 1932 she ended a Paramount Pictures beauty pageant on a “lark” and ended up winning train fare to Hollywood. Despite not winning the contest itself, she was still offered a standard contract– but unlike others at the time, Gail took the time to read the contract and dispute it. She negotiated until she got $75 a week instead of $50, and refused to accept the usual 12-week-layoff provision. She also blacked out the section of her contract that held her to doing “cheesecake stills”, stating, “In the back of my mind I had this idea I could never go home to practice law if such stills were floating around.”
She appeared in 60 feature films between 1932 and 1948. Though she got top billing a few times, in movies such as King of Alcatraz and Disbarred, she was usually found playing the role of the ‘other woman’ or some other form of ‘bad girl’ (aka the rival of the leading lady). Some of her most notable roles were in My Man Godfrey, Stage Door (against Ginger Rogers), and My Favorite Wife (where she played Cary Grant’s second wife and helped write the judge’s lines in a courtroom scene). Later, Gail would attribute her success to luck, stating that she just happened to come to Hollywood at a time where studios were looking for “hussies”, and she thought she happened to fit that bill. While still an actress, she did patriotic service during WW2, including two tours of Canada (promoting Victory Loans), which made her the only film star to visit the whole nation from coast to coast.
Around the time that she stopped acting, she married her third husband, Thomas Cornwell Jackson, who was the head of an LA advertising agency. They adopted two children, one in 1952 and another in 1954. Her husband Cornwell was the representative for Erle Stanley Gardner, the author who wrote the books featuring criminal defense attorney Perry Mason. Burned by disappointing radio series and films, the author had refused to license the character again, until Gail won his trust. Forming a production company of which she was president (and the writer and her husband were partners), she developed the tv series Perry Mason, which ran for nine seasons and won the first Silver Gavel Award for a TV drama. Gail was the executive producer of the show, and one of the first women producers at all; at the time, she was the only female executive producer in prime time, which was incredibly tough. Gail even wrote up her own contract, one incredibly favorable to her production company that she was shocked CBS accepted it.
In her career, she would go on to serve as vice president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and later as president of it’s Hollywood chapter. She was the first women to be a leader in the academy and the only female leader until 1983. After divorcing her third husband (who tried to run a revived Perry Mason series without her and failed), she married for a fourth time, and then eventually passed away from leukemia in July of 1980, having kept the disease a secret from everyone (including her husband) for four years.
Can you imagine what she must have been like in person? I bet she was amazing and terrifying.
Yessss. Apparently she almost never watched herself in her movies and one time she saw herself in one (another where she played the bad girl) and she was like oh, THAT’S why everyone thinks I’m so cold and mean, haha. ALSO I mean look at her. AMAZING AND TERRIFYING:
Resting Bitch Face Goals.
Her past was littered with the bones of men who thought she was someone they could sleep on.
Corneeeeeeeeeeelia! If I had known it was her birthday, I would have worn pearls today.
Artism! That’s what my life’s about.
My charming and funny cousin-in-law offered up the phrase “how’s the arting going” when I was feeling particularily blue one day because she knew that would crack me up. And from that day forward, I use “arting” as much as possible when describing my day to outside folk.
There’s a great song by the Doubleclicks that contains the line “If you demonstrated you knew how to art, I would listen.”
My Subaru is named Zelda and I luff her v v much.
I love how all of the Subaru owners are proclaiming their love for their cars. <3
My first car was a 1986 Subaru named Hermes. My current car is a 2003 Subaru named Artemsia.
I love that Subaru article. It’s such a great story of a company acting in its own interest and also being progressive. And it’s also a reminder of how weird the 90s were.
And the bit about the Japanese executives looking up gay in their dictionaries and agreeing to the campaign, because who wouldn’t want to market to joyful people gets me every time.
I do not have time to read the Leyendecker article right now, but that excerpt makes me wish I still taught history of design.
My favourite part was how they were like “well if we’re gonna advertise to gay people, we better walk the talk” and gave gay couples equal benefits too. Self-serving as any marketing campaign may be, it is nice that it had an actual tangible positive effect for their employees too!
YES
OT, but if anyone remembers when I was asking for advice re: a friend who had broken up with her abusive ex but was still living with him (because of rent reasons), I am happy to report that the ex has finally moved out! This means my friend is now looking for a housemate – so if any New Orleans Toasties are also looking for a new place to live, let me know!
Sam Irby is a national treasure.
I wish I had stuck to my guns about not registering, but the force of wedding Kitchenaids cannot be stopped. Mr. Ada and I both brought Kitchedaids and each our own Alpine piles of kitchenry into this relationship, and we are set. But people yelled at us.
Correction: People yelled at me, because obviously this was my job, as a lady.
Don’t get me wrong–I love this dutch oven I got as my heteronormativity achievement prize, but if I’d had the nerve, I’d have saved myself the trouble of writing thank-you notes (also my job, I guess) for things I didn’t want to ask for in the first place.
The problem with not registering is that you end up with gifts like a $10 ITunes gift card or a copy of The Five Love Languages.
It’s true. But I would have loved a $10 iTunes gift card tho. These Beyoncé albums don’t buy themselves.
MrChouffe and I each brought a stand mixer into the relationship, too. We did a Honeyfund instead of a traditional registry and it was PERFECT–we had been cohabitating for four years as of our wedding and had owned a house together for a large portion of that time, we didn’t need plates or towels, we needed a damn vacation, and people were remarkably cool with that!
We also did a honey fund (in addition to some physical items, like a new printer and such) and we mostly got sweet sweet cash and it was delightful!
That would have been a better option! I think the families (the real culprits) would have totally been fine with it. But the registry was such a last-minute afterthought, I just didn’t think it through…. ah, regrets….
The thing about registering, if you do it properly and have a range of items of different costs, is that someone with limited funds can buy you something small and useful /cool and not have to feel as cheap as they might feel by writing a check for $15.
I did, of course, because I didn’t want to put anyone who wasn’t rolling in dough to feel obligated to buy us some large gift that they couldn’t afford that we didn’t need. But it was sorta beside the point. I didn’t really want to get roped into the whole deal in the first place. I know some wedding guests have strong feelings about having a registry to choose from, but I had strong feelings about it, too. It was one of those cases when some people didn’t really want to listen to what I was clearly saying I wanted.
For me, no gifts would have translated to: No time spent trying to make a rainbow of choices for all budgets, no time spent thinking about what some people wanted me to want, so they’d stop criticizing what I did choose, no nagging Mr. Ada to tell me what he wanted because I was all out of ideas, no time and energy spent on trying to write thank-you notes that sounded sincerely grateful, no anxiety felt because I’m such an ingrate for harboring resentment for having to do any of it, although people had bought us Very Nice Things.
I know a lot of brides have fun with the registry part of it, and that is totally fine. I will gladly show up to weddings with a registered gift in hand, if that is what is wanted. But in that moment, I was realizing how hard I’d have to work to avoid being pushed into emotional labor roles that often come with being a married het lady and how very bad I’d be at both avoiding and fulfilling them. It’s a whole thing I am currently struggling with. I have a lot of pent-up feelings about it… obviously….
Yes I feel you about the emotional labor and resenting the role I was cast into re: effort of creating a registry and thank you notes (I could go on for days about my irritation over thank you notes)
This makes me very worried because I don’t want a registry and I don’t want presents (if a friend really wants to do something I will gladly give them a list of charities we support) but already everyone I have told has been kind of weird about it and I’ve only been engaged for two months.
Why is this a thing? Why do I feel like we’re being weirdly judged and selfish for NOT wanting presents?
That was weird and irritating for me, too–like, how was I the asshole for forgoing gifts? But the charity idea is brilliant! I would have felt much better about the whole enforced-registry rigmarole if I knew it was going to do someone some legitimate good!
When my best friend got married, instead of wedding favours they donated money on behalf of all of their guests to a local animal charity (they’re both animal nuts).
Gifts/registers/favours aren’t that huge of a deal where I’m from (I didn’t even bring a card to her wedding, it just didn’t occur to me), but it was a nice gesture that I’m sure saved them a ton of time and money.
mr. Beana and I had all the stuff we wanted already, so for our wedding, we registered at a travel agency. It worked out well plus no stuff as gifts!
A Kitchenaid is exactly the reason that I’m interested in getting married. Of course, I don’t know where I would put a kitchenaid because I live in a tiny apartment.
Related: I am rationally against the idea of wedding gifts (it doesn’t make sense! We’ve been living together for years and if we wanted upgrades to our shitty stuff, we could afford it ourselves). But I’ve been dealing with feelings of jealousy as I attend bridal showers for friends. Just looking at my cousin’s registry (her wedding is next week and I don’t have a gift yet) and feeling like… WHY NOT ME (answer: you chose not to) but still.
Maybe I need to just budget a few hundred dollars and allow myself a Crate and Barrel little spree
Dear Toasts:
So, I’m a gay guy. And I’m — we’ll just say “non-religious” because sometimes saying “I’m an atheist” opens an entirely different conversation that I don’t want to have (“Oh, yes, of course, you’re right, Richard Dawkins is the worst; I’m not that kind of athe– sure. There’s a smugness to Sam Harris, no one is denying that.”) and non-religious is probably actually anyway even closer because whatever, I’m not trying to take you on this part of my religious journey.
Here’s my question: It seems clear to me that the Bible has some Very Homophobic Sections. I’ve read some arguments about how those aren’t really homophobic sections (“It’s really about being a terrible host!” — as if the story of Lot also doubled as the first issue of Martha Stewart Living) and that we’re taking the stories out of context and David and Jonathan were doing it EVERYWHERE in II Samuel. So, actually, here’s my question: what books do Informed Readers of The Toast suggest to someone who wants to understand how the Bible isn’t, in places, homophobic — or, maybe, how to reconcile the homophobic places with the non-homophobic places.
I’m interested in learning!
I definitely recommend Matthew Vines’ book, God and the Gay Christian. I would actually prefer we not get into a whole discussion here, since religion threads go bad quickly, but the general idea is that we do not pay attention to like 80% of the legalese in Leviticus (the fabric restrictions, the food!) except when it allows us to be shits to gay people, and then Jesus came and was like look, the whole law is to love God and each other in a very radical and self-effacing way and to not judge each other, so let us do that but OPINIONS VARY.
(Also, the Lot thing is about, well, attempted rape.)
YES. And possibly other things? Would love to discuss with you off thread if you prefer.
always, girl
Oh. Well, you guys have a great time. I probably couldn’t have joined you anyway. [kicks sadly at ground]
squeaky wheel gets to join the thread (emailing you both!)
On it. Thanks for the recommendation. And understand entirely about the nature of religious threads.
mutually-assured-thread-destruction
Matthew Vines is lovely, and it is REALLY hard to be, like, the Face of Gay Christianity bc he gets all the shit always from people who are supposed to be all drenched in love and stuff.
I will also note that even for those of us who do take the ritual laws of Leviticus seriously, there are traditions of interpretation and ways of understanding the text that are queer-positive.
/Jewish lesbian.
Yes! Do you have book recs for Mike, by the way? I would enjoy them too!
This is also what is so frustrating when I read things like How Should Christians (Insert Religion Here) Feel About Gay People, as though there aren’t Gay Christians and Gay Jewish People and Gay Muslims, who prob have opinions about it.
Ah, it’s been an embarrassingly long time since I did Serious Reading on the topic but I’ll dig around and get back to you.
Wrestling with God and Man, by Steve Greenberg, a gay Orthodox rabbi, is a pretty great read.
I just found that title, and placed a library hold. I’ve read some of his articles.
It’s not solely about LGBT issues, but a book that’s had a huge influence on my thinking about these topics is Rachel Adler’s Engendering Judaism.
Seconding Nicole! I would love to read them, too.
I am so glad Vine’s book was linked in this LR, and recommended here. Just reading the free preview, I know I need this book and I think it’s the answer to a prayer I’ve had for years now.
I know religion threads are always touchy but I was sort of hoping The Toast would do one open religion thread where people could ask questions and get recommendations and stuff. But it would be a ton of moderation, so I would never expect that. I’ve enjoyed the convert series so much but often my questions aren’t outside the topic/theme.
I would also check out Sarah Bessey’s Jesus Feminist and Elizabeth Edman’s new book Queer Virtue! Also Dangerous Sisters of the Hebrew Bible.
Thank you! I’ll join the Slack group and these books are all on the top of my to buy list now!!
Once the site is over, I will start a Religious Toasties thread on Toastie Slack and then people who are interested can hang out there and swap books and people who do not care can ignore it, OR hang out on Godless Toasties, which is already on Toastie Slack!
We do actually have a religious toast slack channel! toastie_monks (It is not a channel devoted entirely to Two Monks, though I can see how confusion would arise.)
AHHH! I DEFINITELY assumed that was An Exclusive Two Monks Appreciation Channel.
I also thought that was the Two Monks fandom home! I shall join!
Nicole, where did you find these nice Christians? I had the misfortune of linking up with the literal kind that hate the sin, not the sinner and disfellowship you and make you knock on doors. Not in that order.
Find one, and see who they follow and engage with on Twitter. Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, Laura Turner Ortberg, etc. Broderick Greer.
Samantha Field is great too!
Not Nicole, but I am a queer feminist and (nice) Christian and I honestly think the way to do it is to find people who care about the things you do who happen to be Christian.
In general, mainline Protestants tend not to interpret the bible literally. And Protestant and Catholic parishes vary widely in terms of how liberal and how welcoming they are. There are some code words. Reconciling Methodist parishes are queer friendly. Not sure about other denominations.
And a lot of liberal Christians tend to not advertise their faith, so they can be hard to find.
I found my tribe through meditation. Centering Prayer is a Christian form of meditation and that led me back to Christianity and to some wonderful Christians.
It’s quite refreshing that it’s even possible and I hope there’s a renaissance of user-friendly Christianity. I’ll never stop being cool with Jesus. But I had to get out of my church after 30 years of cultish soul-destroying nonsense, and I’m enjoying trying new things right now. Kundalini yoga/meditation is pretty awesome. No sermons. Cool gongs and singing bowls.
Okay so like, the Bible is also Way Gay, too, and gets interpreted out of being Way, Way Gay by Bible Scholars because they have issues with themselves or whatever.
Examples: The story of David and Jonathan is definitely not just about two guys being dudes.
The book of Ruth is definitely just about two gals being pals.
The word that gets translated as “coat” in Joseph’s amazing dreamcoat story is used one other time in the Bible stories specifically to refer to women’s garments. The “coat” is actually a pretty dress. It gets translated as coat because men can’t deal with themselves. Joseph was a beautiful-mean cross dresser AT LEAST and that explains a whole lot more about his brothers reactions to him.
And so on.
Oh yeah re: Ruth. The language she uses in her oath to Naomi is very unusual for an oath. I need to review my notes, but definitely yes, unusually intimate bond between those two women.
Plus it gets used for weddings. Plus Milton, not the world’s most progressive Christian, cribbed from Ruth and Naomi when writing the end of Paradise Lost– the part where Eve declares her devotion to Adam on their way out of Eden together.
Is it wrong that I’m imagining Joseph yelling, “It’s not a woman’s dress, it’s MY dress, Dad gave it to ME.”
You have given me such a gift with this.
And really, Jacob going “this is my favorite son, the very best son I have, I think this son of mine needs a pretty dress” raises a whole bunch more questions.
I didn’t read particular books in divinity school, but my Hebrew professor came into one of our classes and talked about how some of the passages in Leviticus could be translated differently based on the words and context used (note: scholars figure out what words mean in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament based on where else they occur in the text and how they are used. David’s Coat of Many Colors is also Tamar’s Princess Dress. Make of that what you will). The Leviticus prohibition uses a word that is usually invoked to mean incest, so the meaning of the passage isn’t necessarily fixed…it is kind of ambivalent.
as for, say, the Pauline passages, I mean, the Bible says it was ok to have slaves and for women to be subservient and for people to never ever get divorced, and yet that has all changed. Our context and society have changed. We should be looking, as Nicole says, to emulate love to one another. Can the Bible still tell us things about human nature and our perceptions of God? Can it convict us to do justice and be better people? Absolutely. It just takes a deeper dive into the text than the vast majority of Christians will ever do, and it will require more critical thought. Most people want to go to the text and have it say what they want rather than find something new.
My two cents, typed out on a phone. I hope this helps, and check out all the stuff anyone else recommends, it’s The Toast so it’s bound to be good.
“David’s Coat of Many Colors is also Tamar’s Princess Dress”
I will make of that sentence a bed to lay me down in, humming Dolly Parton, and feeling lovingkindness.
I just looked her up on wikipedia and:
“Three months later, Tamar was accused of prostitution on account of her pregnancy. Upon hearing this news, Judah ordered that she be burned to death. Tamar sent the staff, seal, and cord to Judah with a message declaring that the owner of these items was the man who had made her pregnant. Upon recognizing his security deposit, Judah released Tamar from her sentence.”
https://media.giphy.com/media/MncRccQYx7LVu/giphy…
“Here are those receipts you were looking for.” /rides off in chariot pulled by gay leopards
I think it was David’s daughter Tamar (too many Tamars!), but yeah, I love how Tamar 1 totally tricked Judah. Tricksters in the Bible are almost ALWAYS rewarded for their trickery rather than punished.
I thought I couldn’t find anything about an awesome dress! It was just the language that caught my eye – “security deposit”!
This has come up in several threads, and I have a lot of theologians and scholars of religious history in my life. So I’m going to crowdsource a reading list and make a tumblr post about it, if anybody’s interested. I’ll be linking that later.
VERY interested and thank you so much for being willing to put this together.
I mean, I really just need to make a FB post, and I’m sure I’ll have at least 10 books to recommend within, like, 5 hours. I have a lot of queer/queer-adjacent/queer-friendly Christians in my friends group, and also a large number of people with divinity degrees (there’s a really significant overlap in that Venn diagram).
I am also interested!
Plenty of people who are likely to have excellent resources are currently at work, so this probably won’t go up until late. I’ll post the link on r/ToastCrumbs, as well as in a Link Roundup sometime later this week.
http://unreadaethel.tumblr.com/post/146231086432/…
Honestly, I don’t think there’s much benefit to trying to prove the Bible doesn’t have a problem with gay sex. It clearly does. That would be like trying to prove that the Bible isn’t sexist. BUT it’s also a waste of time to try and prove that the Bible is homophobic in the way that modern American conservative Christians are homophobic. Paul 100% lists men who have sex with men as sinners. But “gay” as we understand it is a heavily cultural phenomenon, and it doesn’t necessarily have the same connotations as “arsenokoites” did in 1st century Corinth (for one example, to the best of my knowledge there was no such thing as a gay “identity” and therefore–again, to my knowledge–no gay “community”–sex with members of the same gender was, culturally speaking, something you did, not someone you were). In fact, Paul uses two different words for men who have sex with men, clearly intending them to refer to two different groups. I think most simplistically one means “top” and one means “bottom,” but the fact that those are apparently two separate things and not two categories of the same thing tells you something (experts in Roman-period sexuality should weigh in on that, though).
Also, I read something recently that pointed out that in that passage Paul groups gay sex together with other “sins” like anger. I haven’t done the work on “sin in Paul,” but how an author groups together lists of things is a big part of that kind of study, and certainly part of its findings would be that (surprise!) Paul didn’t think of sin in the same way American Protestants do.
Anyway, my point is that “the Bible” is a giant collection of often unrelated texts from different times and places, and their historical contexts matter. Since you aren’t Christian, I don’t think you need to worry about reconciling anything–I think it’s enough just to make an effort to understand what it says and how our context might warp some of the original meaning. As far as reading goes, I would recommend scholarly works (or at least popular works written by scholars) on sexuality in the ancient world–start with the larger context, and then go back and see how the biblical texts fit into their own worlds.
Can you give me an idea of a good book that could be considered “popular works written by scholars” on the subject of sexuality in the ancient world? Like, what was the first book you read that made you think, “Yes, I get it.”
That’s actually not somewhere my research has taken me yet, unfortunately. The Wikipedia article “Sexuality in ancient Rome” has a gigantic bibliography (for Wikipedia), so if I were going to do that study I would start there. There’s a collection of primary sources called “Greek and Roman Sexualities: A Sourcebook” that I understand is popular. And Marilyn Skinner’s “Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture” is also popular. That one’s a textbook, so it’s geared toward nonspecialists.
Peter Brown’s “The Body and Society” is a fairly indepth look at Greco-Roman and early Christian ideas of sexuality. He’s one of the foremost Dark Ages scholars and pretty readable. I don’t think he specifically discusses homosexuality in that book though.
A Life of Unlearning is a great book by an Australian preacher about his coming out. It’s not so much about the bible per se but it is all about faith and sexuality
I think the short answer is going to be “all texts are interpreted; where you put the emphasis matters a lot”. I see someone else mentioned Steve Greenberg’s book, and you might also enjoy “Trembling before G-d” — it’s a documentary about gay Orthodox Jews and their lives and the compromises they make. For example, there’s one guy who says that he and his partner don’t have anal sex, but other types of sex between men (and sex between women) are traditionally viewed more along the lines of masturbation, i.e., not encouraged, but not such a big deal. Others take the view that the sex between men described in Leviticus has nothing to do with the sex they have with their partners. For more on sexual mores of the ancient Mediterranean, you might enjoy Plato’s Symposium, which is also hilarious (content warning for adult men having sex with adolescent boys, I guess). Short summary is that they cared much more about who was penetrating who, and what their respective social statuses were, then what their genders were. Aristophanes gives a shockingly modern speech on the nature of love.
There was another interesting essay written recently, I think by someone associated with Yeshiva University, called something like “Gay and Orthodox, and the rest is private”.
As a side note, you…might want to be a little less dismissive? I guess? about things like interpretations of the story of Lot. Like, it’s absolutely a traditional Jewish interpretation that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was lack of hospitality to strangers. That wasn’t just my Hebrew school teachers being prudish, the term “sodomy” comes from a Christian gloss on the story. And in the ancient Mediterranean, hospitality was a really really big deal. Idk, maybe I’m being a bit oversensitive here, but Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions really are different (and I assume Islamic interpretive traditions are different yet again, but I know much less about them).
Ok, here’s a tumblr post with the suggestions people have given me so far. If I get more good recs, I may edit the post with that information.
Would you share a link if you don’t mind your tumblr being linked to here?
<a href="http://unreadaethel.tumblr.com/post/146231086432/resources-for-queer-theologyexegesis
http://unreadaethel.tumblr.com/post/146231086432/… />
I sent the “completed church bulletins” email to the clergy earlier without the files attached. It’s been that kind of a day, apparently.
From the Oneida article: To comfort himself, he embraced the popular 19th-century concept of “spiritual spouses,” which held that couples married for earthly reasons such as financial stability, but a man or woman’s true soul mate could be someone else entirely and that person would be their husband or wife in heaven, where they would engage in “angel sex.”
I might as well go back to bed, because that is the best thing that I will read today.
Pretty sure I’ve seen that fic on AO3.
The worst was when he wrote to that woman and was like “you will not be free of me even after DEATH.”
I picture Clippy popping up and helpfully asking “Did you mean anal sex?”
The Oneida Community is so fascinating!! I am constantly on their site hoping they will be hiring an archivist. (Syracuse has a large collection on them (and also Aleister Crowley) in their archives, but they did not want to hire me =( )
Frowny face! That would have been way fun!
My Lesbian Roommate bought a Subaru deliberately because they are Deep Lez and I have to say, they are fine, fine cars. Even as I slide further into “Why Does that Gay Looking Man Have Boobs”, my Historical Lesbianism appreciates a good outdoorscar.
“Deep Lez”
A million thumbs up for this perfect pairing of capitals and words. I’m stealing it and will use judiciously, rest assured.
We just got an Outback and damn that car is fantastic. Also, the sales guy was great (which blew our minds). My wife was the one driving (heh) the purchase, and he was super courteous, and went for a test drive with us where he sat in the back and made suggestions on where to go, and then narrated the features we could use while doing so (e.g., “if you go up a block past this light you can pull in to the turn lane in the median, and then when it is clear you’ll find the turning radius is good enough to make a u-turn into the leftmost lane!”). All in all it was a very good experience.
Yeah buying our most recent Subaru was the best car sales experience I think I’ve ever had or been witness to.
‘ He went on to chastise me for “living in a bubble” and supposedly not listening to opposing viewpoints. He ended his message: “Your eisegesis is beginning to overwhelm your ability to continue having the much needed conversation.”’
I have noticed that this is definitely A Thing with a certain type of conservative man on social media. If you disagree with their premise at all you are Stifling Or Shutting Down Conversation and Living In A Bubble. I had to block someone I knew from college on Facebook after he verbally attacked me when I complained that I was suffering from street harassment on a church conference trip. He told me I was being sexist, and when I said nope, he said I was just trying to live in a bubble and proceeded to say some terrible things. It’s like, they can’t comprehend that what happens to us is real, and when we do try to converse about it, they attack us for just stating what happened and how it makes us feel threatened and horrible.
So seriously, screw this guy who hurt Matthew Vines. He isn’t interested in having a conversation, he’s interested in keeping his faith and privilege surrounded by barbed wire.
Ironically, these are very often the type of people who really do live in a bubble. Certainly #NotAllChurches but I have coworkers who grew up where their whole lives revolved around the Church community. Services multiple times a week, homeschooling, youth groups, mens/womens groups, super conservative colleges- the whole shebang. And an alarming number of them would still somehow think that I am the one living in a bubble.
Not just conservative men! This is the modus operandi of the Bernie Bros, too!
Oof. Have not encountered that personally yet, but that’s discouraging. I like Bernie, but I don’t hate Hillary, so not really down for the way they’ve been going after her.
I used to like him too but I’ve been mansplained to quite enough about how if I just opened my eyes and stopped voting with my vagina, I’d see how he’s the better feminist, which, nope.
There was a bird the size of a golfball on the way home from the store and it didn’t move as I got closer so I decided, hell lets see how close it’ll let me get and so I walked up bent down and touched it’s head!!! Then it hopped a foot away and continued to just hang out!!!
aw friendbird!!! (pls vigorously wash ur hands)
you are my hero
My daughter and I got to pet the chipmunk that hangs out in my MIL’s yard. He was richly rewarded with peanuts, and the toddler was very gentle and careful not to pet him with more than one finger, so yay!
Also, whenever he went off to unload his prize, she would wait patiently for him to come back periodically whispering “He come. He come.” like she was waiting for some sort of religious experience or smtg.
“He come. He come.”
And now I’m trying to keep my snickering to an office-appropriate level at work. It’s hard.
Your story is lovely and your toddler sounds totally adorable!
Imagining your daughter doing that is making my baby-making parts all excited, oh my god
I can’t have a baby yet, get out of here with this
What’s that? You want a picture of her feeding peanuts to the chipmunk? Okey doke!
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(Seriously though, babies are SO MUCH WORK. I am all for people taking their time to have any babies they may want. You do you 😀 )
Nooooooooo that picture is TOO MUCH <3 <3 <3
Oh my GOD.
I love when I pet an animal and it just goes away a short distance like “Oh! I’m not mad, I just don’t need any petting right now, thank you though!”
This is the best and also MY GOALS
A couple weeks ago my wife and I were driving and saw a crow hopping around with what looked like a piece of wood stuck in its claw (it looked in distress). We pulled to the side and I got out to go try and help, and it just dropped then wood and hopped away like “what, I wasn’t doing anything”. Total dirtbag crow moment.
Is anyone else feeling really sad about Anton Yelchin’s death? He was one young actor that always stuck out to me on-screen. I loved his Chekov. He made the remake of Fright Night watchable. And while Odd Thomas wasn’t my favorite movie, he was even good in that. Just a shitty reminder that these meat suits we walk around in are so, so fragile. 🙁
Yeah, I only know him from the Star Trek reboot, but he was so tiny and adorable. And that picture going around of him holding the umbrella over the ducks just broke me.
yes. whatever i saw him in, i enjoyed him in. it just seems so senseless.
and reading the statements of his friends and past co-workers has been heartbreaking, because they make it clear how much they truly loved him.
Yeah, I’m really upset by it. ): As a teenager I had a crush on him after watching Charlie Bartlett. He was just so adorable.
He should have had a long life and a long career. It’s so awful and I feel so terrible for his poor parents.
I have seen literally nothing that he has acted in, but when I read the nature of his death it just hit me really, really hard and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him/being sad.
Yeah, it’s the nature of his death that hits so hard for me, too. Just a freak accident, it seems, and there is no starker reminder of how fleeting life really is. Makes me want to curl into a bawl under a heavy blanket and stare at the wall for awhile.
I’m in the same boat as many of these other commenters. I’ve had a bit of an actor-crush on Anton Yelchin ever since Charlie Bartlett, and it’s led me to track down and watch almost any movie he’s in, even the crappy ones. He’s just so pleasant and charming and I can’t believe he’s dead, and I feel bad about feeling so bad about it, because I didn’t even know him, you know?
Planning on rewatching the 2009 Star Trek and Only Lovers Left Alive soon. What are everybody else’s favorite A.Y. films?
Only Lovers Left Alive foreverrrrr.
Green Room.
Oh no! This comment is how I found out he died! Oh, that makes me so sad; I really liked him. I mostly only saw him as Chekhov and in Terminator Salvation (only good part of that one), but he was so wonderful and I wanted to see more from him! This makes me really, really sad.
No! This is so sad; he seemed like a really nice person.
My husband told me about it after work yesterday and we were both surprised at how upset we were by the news — yes, I think because the accident was so out of the blue, unpredictable, tragic in its cosmic carelessness. I always enjoyed his work and feel awful for his loved ones. I just learned from these comments that he was in Only Lovers Left Alive, so maybe we’ll watch that tonight.
I’m really sad about it. Not only because he was such a talented and handsome actor whose work I really enjoyed, but he was also so. young. Like, not much older than me. And there have been so many deaths of young individuals with bright futures lately. It’s real depressing.
I hadn’t really noticed him very much in the past, but his screen presence and chemistry with Imogen Poots made me a huge fan after seeing Green Room. Such a talent.
I have a million billion totes and I DON’T CARE.
NEVER TOO MANY TOTES
Sing that to the tune of Icona Pop’s “I love it” and you’ve got yourself the song of the summer!
The great thing about carrying a tote as my everyday purse is that they wear out
and then I get more totes!
I use totes as pillow covers. It doubles your maximum amount of totes!
I have totes that I loved and wore out, and so took the message/design squares off and used as the flap of new bags. Totes never say die!
Today is the day I find out if I got the job I interviewed for only just last Wednesday! I was one of eleven “respondents,” but I found that out from someone who responded and was not granted an interview, so I still don’t know how many people they actually interviewed, but I feel very good about it, but also there are no guarantees in life, and goodness I’m glad I don’t have to wait any longer!! I want out of this abusive, depressing, dysfunctional nightmare. Cross your fingers for me, toasties!
EVERYTHING CROSSED FOR YOU
Thank you!!
All the best wishes that it works out for you and you get a phone call by noon with excellent news!
Thank you! I just got an automated phone call from Walgreens and nearly peed myself. Good thing I don’t have any meetings today!
Good luck!
Thanks!
All digits crossed for you! I will find out “sometime this week” whether I got the job I likewise interviewed for Wednesday. It is TOO LONG to wait and I am anxious.
Thank you! Best of luck to you as well. I hope you hear soon! This waiting business is terrible.
Is this where I talk about my fond memories of the Subaru Samba?
When I was living in Ithaca there was an annual festival (uh, called the Ithaca Festival) that happened every year after the students left for the summer. It’s probably still happening, IDK. And there was a parade. Because of course there was a parade. The float lineup changed very little from year to year – there was always a chainsaw “band” (that played along to Chain of Fools), I think some belly dancers?, and the Volvo Ballet.
So for years Volvos were the most common car in Ithaca, I guess? So a bunch of Volvo owners would get together and do formation driving to, like, Swan Lake or whatever. It was strangely beautiful.
But THEN, one of the local reporters (Ithaca Journal woooo!) actually checked the stats at the DMV, and found out Subarus had overtaken the Volvos as #1 Ithaca Car. The answer, of course: Subaru Samba. Basically the same dealie except, you know, a samba.
Sigh. I miss Ithaca sometimes.
I miss Ithaca lots of times….Ithaca Festival was a highlight of my childhood. That and Grassroots
I like the idea that all the locals were celebrating the fact that the students had left.
HOORAY HOORAY THEY’RE GONE LET’S HAVE A PARADE!
Aw man, I love Ithaca Festival. What a weird, great town.
My 6 year old cousin is obsessed with Subarus because she loves the logo with the stars. My aunt and uncle took her to some kind of car show where she saw THE NEW LINEUP OF SUBARUS and it was perhaps the greatest day of her young life.
This is so charming.
That is SO PRESH.
That poem is indeed lovely, but I absolutely cannot get on board with the sentiment that the world is at least fifty percent terrible. It is not. The world is amazing and beautiful and most people do their best to be good, to be kind to each other, and we are curious and loving and generous
this is the weirdly optimistic hill I will die on, fight me
I would really like to think that, but looking at the news makes me think I am being naive.In just the last 24 hours or so I have read news stories on topics including an Australian man who harassed a woman online with rape threats, an Amish couple who gave their teenage daughter to an older man as thanks for help he’d given them, a man who was lynched by a mob for allegedly consuming beef, a young man stabbed to death in London … there is just so much terrible stuff happening, all the time, and it feels overwhelming. (I don’t think most people are bad, but I don’t think most people are good, either – to be good requires effort, because the world we live in makes it so easy to cause harm without even trying, and I think the majority of people don’t bother.)
But… terrible news sells news (I would say newspapers, but we’re not consuming those too much anymore). IMO media skews negative because it appeals to the lowest common denominator and, animal videos aside, I don’t think decent, good, happy stories have the same pull. There are probably studies about this? I am a little bit playing devil’s advocate and mostly trying to reassure myself with an optimistic slant.
Oh yeah, totally (if everything is fine and normal, that will not get reported; it’s the bad stuff that makes it into the news), but even if it’s a small fraction of the stuff happening around the world, the sheer volume of terrible things happening makes me very overwhelmed. It might be a small amount percentage-wise, but it still feels like a lot, and like it outweighs a lot of the good. (And the fact that any of this is happening at all is horrifying.)
Yes to all of this.
There’s definitely bad stuff out there, and I don’t want to deny that. People can be cruel and maybe our worst tendencies are how we treat those we perceive as “outsiders,” all the fear and scorn and hatred that can come with that. That and not being able to see other humans as humans. I’m 100% with you on being good requiring effort, too. But the reason those things are reported is that they stand out, and they go against the desire for goodness that I think everyone feels–whether their “good” is something that’s good for others/for everyone, and whether that goodness is something they have the ability to realize, or not.
But even if humans wind up being 50% or more terrible, there are dogs and their eternal optimism. There are cats and their indignant belief that they’re much more dignified than they are. There are magnolia trees and peach-colored sunsets and the enormous expanse of stars and space and a lot of things that can’t even be measured on a human scale of goodness. The universe is so big and we are so small in it that even if every human in the world turned on each other, we can’t measure up to the vast potential beauty of the world that’s out there.
(like I said… weirdly optimistic hill, here, and I know “ultimately humans don’t matter!!” is not a cheerful solution for everyone.)
I will join you on this weirdly optimistic hill!
This hill is a Good & Mighty Hill and I’ll defend it with you.
I liked the poem a lot but it was pretty pessimistic. And I agree, I’m willing to go in for the world being 95% good, but sometimes there are terrible circumstances.
I thought the poem was really interesting! There are a couple of places where I see it nodding at the fact that any any attempt at pretending to quantify a proportion like that will be drowned in subjectivity. The “For every loved child…” line can’t really be meant literally for instance, but sometimes it feels that way when the negative news is overwhelming. More interesting to me is “For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird” (which has the same asymmetry; if you take it literally there are of course more birds than stones thrown at birds) – birds aren’t inherently good or bad, they just are, so it’s the stone-throwing, the human involvement, that introduces a morally evaluable concept. And she chooses to introduce a negative one. I think there’s a reading where she’s saying that she’s trying to let her children hold on to the more-good-than-bad view because she thinks that will help them introduce even more good. In that reading she’d be happy to hear that you hold that view too!
* nods *
This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
“You,” meaning people in general, and “you,” meaning the children she’s trying to “sell” the world to. Because the world is good– not necessarily in a moral sense, but it’s got good bones — it’s what people see and do that keeps it beautiful. Or not.
Yeah, I agree. There’s no way to get sufficiently outside the world to say “this much of it is good and this much of it is bad” with final authority; it just isn’t something a human perspective can evaluate. What you can evaluate is the experience of living, and there are times when it really seems like there can’t be a good thing without a bad thing following on its heels. There are times when even that seems like an overly positive description.
I’m thinking of that David Brooks column where he read Between The World And Me and then insisted that “for every Jefferson Davis there is an Abraham Lincoln,” and what an absurd practice in optimism that seemed like. We only got one Abraham Lincoln, and he was murdered. Optimism can be life-affirming but it can also be a blithe practice of privilege. Despair can be soul-sucking, but naming the evil one perceives can be an act of integrity and freedom.
I didn’t read the poem (fight me) but I also believe the world is beautiful and, given the chance, most folks are good people. You can’t deny that there’s a lot of bad shit going down right now, but it’s like mr Rogers’ mom said: you’ll always find helpers. (Alberta is my new home province and when i I read the article about Syrian refugees helping displaced fort macmurray residents I def got some dust in my eye)
I’d come down from pessimism mountain and fight you but I don’t think I’d win.
But as an environmental scientist currently working in the 6th global extinction event I’d say the world is at least 65% :(((((((((
I think the world has a lot of terrible even though most people try to be good. Illness and pain and death make things horrible enough, with no need for malice.
[insert Dirge Without Music here]
Guys, this is just a straight up whine to the universe: It’s my birthday, I have some kind of stomach bug, and I am just miserable right now. Plus, I have four hours of conference calls that I really need to be on, so I’m burning a sick day and I can’t just curl up in a miserable ball the way I need/want to. Whine whine whine.
I hope you feel better!
Aw, thank you!
You are allowed to whine here when required. We’ve all been there. Hope you feel better sooner than later.
Thanks.
Oh no, I’m so sorry. I hope everyone is super chill today and lets you just get on with things and the calls go fast so you can hurry up and get into your jammies and into bed. And I hope the bug passes quickly!
Thanks! Finger crossed.
Miserable!! The worst way to spend a birthday!! Sending love and healing magic — hope you get to feeling better ASAP and can enjoy some part of the day!
For events like this, you are allowed to re-schedule your birthday to day of your choosing within one month of original birthday. Fact.
TRUE this is a rule.
I am absolutely invoking this rule. Thank you!
No no no! This is terrible. I am sympathetically whining with you. Take care of yourself, and take a nap as soon as you can.
Thank you!
That Twitter thing about Orlando/the AIDS quilt comes at a coincidental time – this weekend I finally got around to watching How to Survive a Plague and it absolutely destroyed me. (For those who don’t know, it’s an oscar-nominated documentary about AIDS activists in the early days of the epidemic). The strength of the people involved just blew my mind and made me so, so thankful that they were fighting for their community. It was so brutal and so sad to see the government and the drug companies and the FDA just kinda not giving a shit – it makes it all the more impressive what Act Up was able to accomplish. I cried for probably two hours straight while watching the film but it definitely left me feeling very uplifted in a sorrowful kind of way.
That documentary was DEVASTATING and BEAUTIFUL.
it is my favorite documentary/ movie ever. I highly recommend any and all people watch it.
Last night Albania won their football match against Romania, and while I am very happy for them, as apparently this is a Big Deal, it meant that for several hours last night, up to and after midnight, there were lots of people driving around honking their horns and whooping loudly, apparently with ceaseless enjoyment (surely after the first hour or so driving in circles whooping loses its appeal?). When it is late at night and people have to work in the morning and you are in a very residential area, maybe don’t do that, guys? Anyway, it has sent me into a total hate-spiral about WHY DOES NOBODY TAKE OTHERS INTO CONSIDERATION, because it feels like life is just one long onslaught of people being loud and dropping rubbish and spitting in the street and sprawling all over the seats next to theirs on the Tube (I am trying not to think about the worse stuff, like Orlando and Jo Cox’s murder and the vile racist Brexit rhetoric), and I am very sick and tired of it all.
Also, last night I watched a documentary, The Champions, about the fates of dogs rescued from a dog-fighting ring. I had never heard of Michael Vick before last night, but I am already fairly convinced that he is a garbage person. (The dogs were so good, though, and there were people who were so patient and loving with them, so that was very comforting.)
I have now watched The Champions twice! It’s so good! And seeing how the dogs who were rehomed slowly worked their way up to living “normal” life is so heartwarming and gratifying. I want to give all the dogs and rescue/rehab people \a big ol’ hug/head pat/friendly nod, depending on what they prefer.
They were all (the dogs and the people) so good. It was very heartwarming.
I am not really a dog person (like, having them as pets and hanging out with them in person – I have a calendar on my wall of baseball players with puppies because CUTE) and I cried so many times while watching it. Those people were such excellent pet owners.
Michael Vick made some truly awful choices that harmed innocent animals, and his efforts at contrition came off as phony and didn’t show a lot of growth in compassion, but he’s a human being like the rest of us. Sorry, I’ve lost my tolerance for the idea that anyone among us can be called garbage, even though I know you didn’t mean it literally.
Yes, you’re right; I know no humans deserve to be written off, and we’re all worthwhile and deserve understanding. I was just to depressed by the thought that someone would do something that unpleasant (what’s even the appeal? How is the idea of brutalising animals and watching them fight and kill each other more appealing than being kind to them and seeing them be happy?) and then go on to a successful career. I am just very tired of people at the moment.
I agree with you, in theory. But there is no hope for any human I catch in the act of harming a dog or a child. Dogs and children are the most innocent of victims, wanting only to please us adult humans. Will you visit me in prison?
I will bring you a chocolate-zucchini cake with a file baked inside! And I will spend quality time with *any* dog before doing the same with a person who would harm one. But after reading Bronwen Dickey’s book about pit bulls and the ways their mistreatment is so intimately intertwined with racism and how we turn off our critical thinking to malign “certain types” of people and dogs, I just couldn’t read that comment without getting a bad case of hackles up. No bad dogs, no garbage people. I’m working this really hard because I’m so fucking mad at Westboro Baptist again, but those people deserve patience and kindness, too, not the flaming bag of poop I’d much rather send them.
You are a good person. I want to be more like you.
Our dog Beans is a rescued pit bull; he was used as a bait dog and left for dead in an abandoned lot. He is the sweetest, best dog in the whole world and the people who in any way are involved in dog fighting are horrible people and I hate them a whole lot.
Beans these days is chill, although he is anxious around larger dogs, and terrified of rain and thunder. But generally he is happy and likes to dress up. Wearing outfits seems to make him feel good, like being hugged all the time.
he is a treasure in a skele-tutu
Beans is adorable. 10/10. Would pet again.
Aw, Beans.
Oh, he is lovely! What a darling. (One of the dogs in the documentary, who was very nervous, also liked wearing clothes – they likened it to being swaddled.)
I sympathize with opera star, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop. Because of Princess Bride, I used to say that my parents divorce had made me a little skeptical of mawwiage.
Related to the Leyendecker article, does anyone remember the longpost about the manly muscle-building aesthetic of the late Victorian era into the early 20th century, and how it sort of defined the idea of health and well-being as lithe but muscular for men, and it talked a little about Charles Atlas but it definitely wasn’t the Smithsonian Mag article about him, because it also had a little section on people like Buster Crabbe? And it featured early 20th century advertisements as illustrations.
I was googling this weekend to try to find it because it was great, and I could have sworn that it was from The Toast, the New Yorker (they have one about Mr Universe but it’s not the right one), or Collectors Weekly, but none of those searches panned out. The closest I got was the Smithsonian one, which isn’t it.
Also part of the reason I’m trying to find it is so I can provide some context for the weird-to-modern-eyes part in my favorite movie ever, where Olympic Swimmer Buster Crabbe is paraded through 99% of the scenes in just his swim trunks, and it’s a lot like the way women were dressed scantily for eye candy, but Buster’s not given the sexy camera lens, though some comedy is made of Edna May Oliver ogling him, and there’s an entire scene where Gloria Shea shows him off and Billie Burke touches his leg muscles and about faints. It’s amazingly female-gaze-ish (especially for 1934), but it wouldn’t have had quite the same undertones 80 years ago because of the whole manliness aesthetic that came from this weight-lifting movement and Charles Atlas.
ps: help a toastie out and request a DVD release of this movie through the TCM site maybe? http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/850/We-re-Rich-Aga…
I feel like a lot of us would like this movie. Joan Marsh plays a character who would be a bosom friend of ours. She spends the entire movie, when she’s supposed to be preparing for her wedding, with her nose in a book, or the book at hand, if at all possible. But she’s not given the bookish/glasses treatment at all. Her happy ending is to be given $20,000 so she can move to NYC to become a writer. Plus there’s the objectification of Buster Crabbe and Edna May Oliver goes around with a roving pack of virile polo players ready to cater to her every whim.
(It’s not perfect – it suffers from some of the racism of the 1930s. The house’s manservant is Japanese and is studying to become a lawyer, which is played for humorous effect, but also he sort of plays a big part in saving the day because of his law skills? In fact, a lot of the movie is about subverting the typical roles. I just wish Otto Yamaoka wasn’t the slapstick smart guy through most of the thing.)
I really find it funny that Subaru’s are considered plain boring cars by some people, cause where i’m from a Subaru Imprezza is the ultimate boy race wet dream car.
See also, Australian Utes.
(My very gay mother drove a Subaru Forester for many years and I can confirm that it suited her summers spent camping with lots of other lesbians very well.)
I was thinking the same thing about the Impreza WRX Sti. You have this line of super safe cars and then off by itself, there’s this monster with so much power I’ve read articles by pro car critics that say it’s terrifying to drive.
OH MAN THE STI, GIVE IT ME
Out of context, and in all caps, this comment is hilarious.
A friend of mine has a WRX Sti. His wife works in healthcare. He had lots and lots of fun telling her coworkers that she had given him permission to get an STI.
I test drove a WRX yesterday! Not the STI though. The WRX was not terrifying to drive at all. Maybe I need the STI. Also, the people at the car dealership were like “WRXs sell at sticker price. There is no negotiation” which … What?
I’ve heard it’s because they get snapped up really fast. Someone else at a Subaru dealership told me whenever they get a certain used model of a WRX (*insert wiggling fingers because I’m not a car person and can’t remember*) it gets sold within a couple hours after appearing on the lot.
My husband sold his 10 year old STi to a guy who lived 5 hours away, and got about half of what it was worth when new. Then he bought a WRX from the dealership, where he had to order it from Japan, and wait 6 weeks for delivery before he could even test drive it, because they sell so fast the dealership can’t keep one in the showroom. The Subaru performance line has very dedicated followers.
I have a relatively bog-standard Impreza Sport Limited, but it is a unicorn because it’s got the cold-weather package AND a manual transmission. It was one of two manual transmission Imprezas sent to the entire state of Michigan in December 2013/January 2014 and the dealership was legitimately astonished that they were able to get it. Super high demand, turns out, and mine isn’t even a particularly fancy one!
Ok there’s a guy who does “Regular Car Reviews” and they are hilarious
The Impreza WRX was the first one i ever watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhgMEi5aqmY
My dad’s on his second WRX! The AWD is super great in Alberta winters and it feels a lot like a rally car even though he had to get an automatic this time due to developing knee issues.
Logically, I know that there are other versions of the Impreza that are actually speedy, but on an emotional level I cannot find a way to connect “speedy” with the actual lived experience of driving my Impreza Sport. I love that car, but its preferred velocity is definitely no miles per hour, headed nowhere. If you try to take your foot off the pedal on a downhill, it’ll miraculously find away to stop itself.
Friends, I am here to announce that some enemies of the Toast were recently profiled on The Nature of Things and indeed they seem to be preparing for world takeover, starting with Toronto.
http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/raccoon…
heh. I read that and I was like “o gods, what are the MRAers up to now?” Am.. pleased it is only raccoons?
My first thought was Victorian Couple.
The Toast has many nemeses.
All of them Nefarious.
Internationally recognized raccoon expert! #Life goals.
Raccoon Nation is already on US Netflix! That is, to say, if you’re interested in learning more about how they will take over the world.
Late today, but just want to remind Toasties that the Spacewitch retreat (formerly known as ToastieCon) is happening Summer 2017.
Follow our twitter at @SpaceWitchCon & we have a channel #space_witch_retreat on ToastieSlack.
Website, registration, location announcement all coming VERY SOON.
Can we talk about Tom Hiddleston’s W magazine photoshoot? Can we ???
http://www.wmagazine.com/people/celebrities/2016/…
That white underwear is just…I mean…*loses words forever*
MEIN GOTT the underwear ones are a bit TOO intimate… *looks away blushing*
Number three is hilarious. “Serious Man™ ”
Tom, you’re rapidly loosing points.
number three appears to be “What’s Fassbender got that I don’t?”
The standing in only his underwear photo sort of looks like he was waiting for someone to adjust the lights or something between takes. Not that I didn’t enjoy it.
He doesn’t do anything for me unless he is talking, or dancing, and then I get it!
Sorry to derail OT so early, but I had a really straight-forward conversation with one of my oldest BFFs & Mr. Editor on Friday, and I’ve decided to look into finding a psychiatrist who specializes in Lady Problems. I’m *so tired* of feeling terrible 75% of the time. First thing this morning, I made an appointment with my (super rad) obgyn who can perhaps make a referral. It was definitley Toasties & our open, safe conversations about mental health that prompted me to stop dismissing Terrible as something I have to live with. So, basically, Thank You.
I got kicked out of the GP’s office today after calling to explain I needed to change my pill Rx. The doc didn’t feel comfortable prescribing a stronger dose “due to my age”. Controlling my cycle is a huge piece of my Terrible–besides pain/ endo, I get 2ce monthly.migraines that last for days, and suicidal thoughts out of nowhere with the end of cycle drop in hormones. It is all related and, like you, I am sick and tired of it. Unfortunately I’m currently screwed, because I am having a 4 week period at this point and I know I just need a stronger Rx. Now I won’t get it until I get an Ob appt, which could take weeks. Meanwhile I can’t go off these meds due to the above migraines/depression. It is so hard to keep trying to get help for yourself as a woman with complicated issues. I applaud you for getting started and I wish you good doctors and lots of patience!!!
So yesterday I am at the park with my friend and our kids are playing with water balloons. Here’s me, white, sitting on the park bench breastfeeding my infant while my friend, black, is filling up water balloons nearby. Here comes Mr. White Privelege Himself to tell my friend, “you know, you’re not supposed to use water balloons here. It says so on the sign, if you’d read it. They stop up the drains. You should stop.” He walks off. Then my friend asks me,”what should we do?” I reply, “read the sign, I guess.” So she goes over and reads the sign carefully and it says nothing about water balloons. In the meantime he stands and watches her read it (!!!) and she finally tells him, I see you and I am reading the rules here.” Then she comes back to me and says,”now what?” I say, “now we keep enjoying ourselves and make more water balloons.” But it wasn’t as much fun after that.
What gets me is that it took me a few minutes to understand and be fully horrified…By the time I realize he was more than just rude, he had left. So he was policing the black female at the park, as is his white male obligation. She knew it–that’s why she asked me what to do. Why couldn’t I have stood up and used my White Privelege to tell his White Privelege where to stuff it? How come I can recognize this stuff right away in theory but IRL it takes me too long to act? Friend, I am so sorry you have to deal with this shit all the time.
You were nursing an infant. Also it is never anyone’s responsibility to educate horrible people. Run them off like cockroaches. Yet you were feeding your child. I write this with sadness – your lovely friend knew more about this fool’s maneuver because she has encountered this more often than we have. I don’t type these words as an excuse. An explanation. To use that white privilege to tell a jackass like this to back off the next time will be your education. Discuss this with your friend and if it seems like a prevalent problem, devise a plan.
I wish you could have thrown a water balloon at him. But I never know what to do during a moment either.
Out of interest, what is the difference between an affirming and non-affirming Christian? It’s not a distinction I’ve heard before.
In this case “affirming” is being used to mean supportive of LGBT people and their relationships. Churches that celebrate non-hetero marriages are often called “open and affirming”: open, meaning anyone can attend, and affirming, meaning LGBT relationships are celebrated and affirmed there.
Thank you!
Fun story, and part of the conversation in the comments about Kissing Dating Goodbye. So, when we published Vines under its own imprint, the backlash against it was so severe, the more “conservative” imprints (I use conservative is scare quotes because many of their Biblical stylings has its foundations in the 1960s) were actually kicked out of Christian Publishing organizations, for being remotely affiliated with Vines. Authors were severing their contracts because they couldn’t bare to be published under the same roof as Vines. So the parent company went on major damage control, moved the imprint & its founder across the country to the main NY office. I was laid off from the imprint I helped launch (I was working on general, more hippy dippy wellness) to “rebrand” away from progressives and replaced me with a Conservative Christian White Man from the Fox News imprint. In spite of the rebrand, authors were refusing to sign with the new imprint because there were so blacklisted by “God and the Gay Christian.” Lots of people lost their jobs over this book. It’s been 3 1/2 years since I read that proposal, and still, I can’t help crying. It’s actually a huge part of why I’m seeking a therapist!
What a nightmare! I wish you the best of luck with finding a good therapist!
Holy shit, that’s so insane and terrible. Thank you for sharing that story — it’s a huge reminder that there are many places and communities where progress is a long, long way off.
:((((((
Is this an ok place to complain about how I saw end of season spoilers for Orange is the New Black THE DAY IT CAME OUT? And how when I complained, someone on tumblr posted about how it’s racist to want spoilers tagged in this instance, because that just means you’re looking forward to the *SPOILERS* death of a woc?
No, I just wanted to wait until the Orlando shootings were further away before I watched whatever shit was going down in the finale. But no, now i’ve got one more shitty (although fictional) thing to focus on.
Just….I like reading socially conscious stuff on tumblr, but this sounds like something a slightly clueless straight white teenager is making up. Internet hyperbole is wearing me out, and I’m not sure why this riled me up so much.
Oh wow, that is nonsense.
There’s a lot of stuff to love on Tumblr, but there’s also a persistent vein of bullshit that makes its way into even the most assiduously curated feed. I know some people that are ready to quit it because some kiddies decided, ex cathedra, that “queer” was an unambiguous, unpardonable slur.
Yeah, I’ve been seeing the backlash to that on my feed. It’s so strange, because I’m only 2 years out of college, and I joined as a freshman. The amount of change to that community over the last 5 years is crazy.
i’m pretty blase about being spoiled for things (I try not to spoil for other people) but that would annoy me, a lot.
That Sam Irby wedding article! You guys I’m getting married next week and I related to that very hard. We were once like “oh it’s cool we’ll have a low key wedding and not do all that traditional stuff it will be great!” ha…ahahahahahah sob.
Someone please tell me about how you wanted to elope but ended up with a big, family midwestern wedding and everyone was fine at the end of it! Some of the memories are even great! And you only rarely think about how much money you would have if you had instead invested the cost of the wedding. Please?
I wanted a 30-50 person backayrd bbq, and ended up with a 125+ person sit-down dinner. Which, I still wish my wedding was less formal than it was, but the food was excellent, served family style, and I have lovely memories of it, and even the things that didn’t go so well (Dad, /you/ were supposed to be the one bringing the bouquets to the venue!) are now fun little anecdotes that make me smile. (We started 20 minutes late because he had to go get the flowers, and the best man made an announcement for me so that nobody thought I was pulling a ‘cold feet’ moment lol)
Weddings, man. Me and my dude would probably have been perfectly happy with a city hall wedding followed by a nice dinner with the immediate families. Half of me wanted that, and the other half wanted to throw a party for our families and friends where I wear a pretty dress with pomp and circumstance.
The big party half won, of course. Dude has a big family (many of whose weddings we’d attended) and I have a mom who loves organizing and decorating, and our parents are traditional enough to have wanted it (and would have claimed to be ok without it but been secretly heartbroken).
Insofar as possible, it was pretty reasonable. I was no-nonsense about decorations and overpriced BS and traditions that didn’t feel right, but other than being non-religious, it was a pretty traditional 120-guest dinner-and-dancing party (though I did set out our favourite board games and people did play them, take that MIL who doubted whether board games belonged at a wedding). It ended up costing a ridiculous amount (mostly because we wanted good food), and I occasionally lay awake at night thinking about how I could have done things differently or the dividends all that money would be yielding, because falling-asleep brain is obnoxious like that… but in the end, it was a fun night with no drama of which I was aware (and minimal lead-up drama), everyone enjoyed themselves (even us two introverts), no one was offended, and we have great photos and happy memories.
So, yes, encouraging tale of a big-family-wedding-for-introverts gone right. 🙂 If you’re married at the end of the day, it’s all good. Best of luck with the next week!
*raises hand*
I hate being the center of attention, and my family is pretty uncomfortable with the fact that I married a woman, so I definitely would have liked to skip the traditional wedding stuff. BUT my partner wanted a wedding, so we had one. 50+ people at the ceremony, about 90 at the reception. Her family is much bigger than mine, so it was kind of unbalanced, but I like most of her family anyway. Everyone had a good time and I have some amazing memories from the day – the best part was yell-singing the last song at the reception with about 20 friends that I’ve collected over the entire course of my life, many of whom hadn’t met each other before.
The major negative was finally having to deal with the relatives who are super homophobic. I haven’t seen or spoken to a few of my cousins since. And I was DEFINITELY glad when it was over, even though I did have fun.
Ugh, did they come?
We basically figured that the few people in our families who might care about women getting married would just decline. And they did. If there had been a chance they’d come, it would have been much more stressful.
My grandparents came, which was super awkward for everyone involved, but in the grand scheme of things it was nice of them. I get a lot of cards about Jesus in the mail now though.
I had to have a sit-down with my aunt and uncle, which was stressful and of course didn’t change their minds (they didn’t come). All three of their kids didn’t RSVP or show up, thanks to pressure from their dad, though one of them has since apologized. I haven’t talked to or heard from my two oldest cousins since I sent the wedding invitations, which sort of sucks since they both have kids I haven’t seen in three years now. Also my mom is in a feud with my aunt and uncle now, but she was sort of waiting her whole life for that to happen so I don’t really feel bad.
Read Lucy Knisely’s graphic memoir, “Something New.” She was not a wedding planning person and found all the ritual of it rather bizarre, but highly enjoyed the wedding they ended up having. Lots of great writing about family pressures, weird bridal ads, etc. And lots of it is funny too.
I got married this past weekend. I was the one who wanted to go to city hall, sign some papers, and then maybe get lunch with our parents. He was the one who wanted a big party with all our friends and loved ones, and it was REALLY important to him, so I gave in.
Honestly, it was hands-down one of the best days of my entire life, and I am so glad I changed my mind. I didn’t realize until it was happening how much it actually meant to me to have both our families celebrating together. (We did nix a bunch of the traditional stuff though, which felt GREAT.)
Very very OT so I apologize, but I need to hear Vermont toasties’ thoughts on Montpelier as a place to live, and I need to hear them before Friday! Good, bad, ugly?
I stuck to my plan of not crying at our church organist’s farewell party with the choir! Until I got in the car to leave, at which point I ugly-cried for 5 minutes. And then I was just managing to keep it together in church the next morning (this coming Sunday is his last day). But then our associate rector preached an amazing, powerful sermon about exclusion and hatred (and the resulting violence), and how they’re a stain on the entire community of believers (summarizing sentence: when some of us are excluded and harmed, none of us are truly free). The altar had an icon of the Harrowing of Hell, surrounded by 50 votive candles. I then had to excuse myself and go freak out and cry in the bathroom. This was also right before the choir sang the offertory anthem.
(If you want to cry and have a lot of feelings, here’s her sermon.)
And now everybody knows what church I attend, because I feel comfortable acknowledging that here.
What a great church. I’m so glad you have that community.
And it’s a place where I can sit with tears quietly coursing down my face without feeling weird about it. People ask if I’m ok, but nobody tries to fix anything, or suggest that I shouldn’t be crying. I’ve come to really treasure that over the past few years.
That’s what keeps me from attending a Quaker Meeting; I feel like I’d contemplate the Infinite for about 20 seconds before I’d start sobbing as quietly as possible.
This is the best thing, no? Tears are what my body does with strong emotions. I’ve come to find it a lot easier to *hear* the scriptures and preaching, and experience what is going on, and be connected to / supportive of the people around me if I am not spending valuable brain on pretending not to have emotions.
I like Leyendecker’s work quite a lot (there’s a tumblr that regularly reposts work of his), but the article goes a bit overboard when they say that “Somebody ought to dethrone Rockwell and do a study of Leyendecker’s influence on him.” Whatever critiques you may make of Rockwell’s work, I don’t think that you can accuse him of ripping off Leyendecker, at least not without looking foolish in the process. The example given is of two college men reading while perched on a windowsill. Leyendecker is arguably the superior compositionist (overall, his compositions are great and often stunning), but Rockwell is much better at conveying the feeling that “Willie Gillis” is a real person, or at least based closely on one, and not just a sort of symbol; Leyendecker’s model is clearly a model. They both have their unique strengths and their respective artistic reputations aren’t a zero-sum game. See also this comment to the effect that Rockwell rather admired Leyendecker.
The case/lang/veirs album is streaming on amazon prime!!!
What? Is the “lang” here mean k. d. lang? Have I been living under a rock again?
TOAST POST!
Also, if you have me as a Toast Post friend, please include your return address if you’d like me to write back! I’ve got a few lovely postcards and I’m unsure if people want me to write back.
Thunderkont (I hope i got that right from your handwriting) — please write me again or join me on Twitter (@gyip) to DM your address so I can write you back!
‘(…) “An Evening With Annabelle,” which consists of a lecture, videos, buffet dinner, and later, we’ll all learn, an impromptu acoustic cover of the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B.”’
yesss
join us
embrace the nightmare
ph’nglui mglw’nafh brian wilson r’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
iä! iä! iä, iärbärä änn
“Noyes wrote Merwin a letter to explain her status as his spiritual wife. Then he followed the couple to Ithaca, New York, where he started a Perfectionist newspaper called ‘The Witness’ and tried to persuade Merwin to rejoin his movement. She wouldn’t even talk to him.”
Smart woman.
Toast Post friends, I received some lovely and intriguing looking items while my parents were visiting, and i set them aside to read and respond to later, and now I can’t find the darned things. So I apologize for being behind in my acknowledgement and reply, and I will do so as soon as I can cause them to surface.
Oh, Oneida! In AP US History I thought they were fascinating, too. I made a FB group a few years later for the class (when we were in college) to keep in touch called Free Love and Silverware. At first it was just us, and then after it died out but still existed, people who were related to the members of the Oneida community joined it, and I felt really bad and had to explain that this was just a joke, sort of, but really a collection of dorky historically minded college students–and not descendants and/or true believers.
Last year I read “Help for the Haunted” which I found very disappointing in a way that would require spoilers, but googling around it did lead me to those excellent pics of boxed-up Annabelle. (I think the Raggedy Ann face is waaaaay scarier than the movie Annabelle.)
(Help for the Haunted involves a pair of married paranormal investigators, inspired by but not based on the Warrens. Also I am dopey and did not realize until the new one that just came out The Conjuring was ABOUT the Warrens–for a fairly wimpy horror person, how bad is it?)
I have a Subaru and I love her very much. I named her Sutton Forester because I love nothing if not naming inanimate objects with celebrity name puns (see: 15 year old me naming my first iPod mini Fiona)
BEST name.
So a couple of months ago I got a protective case for my new phone with a design of a ship carved on the back because it’s a cool design and it reminded me of the promised future Toast totes. When I saw today’s Link Roundup, I realized it’s the exact same ship!
(For reference, this is the case: http://www.carved.com/shop/samsung-galaxy-s7-wood….
Samantha Irby’s description of “…items that make me look and feel like a functioning adult, even if i do not put them to regular use” is completely identical to mine. I forgot how much I liked that blog/ her.
Chris Murphy, god bless him, just emailed me asking if I would give my senator Ted Cruz a call and talk some sense into him about this gun control thing. I’m about ready to do it just to see what his office has to say.
I finally listened to Hamilton all the way through. I’m still kind of processing my overall thoughts of it, but I can say that I’m now very excited to see the filmed version once it comes out.
My mother, a lesbian, owned a small green Subaru in the early 90s. In fact, now that I think of it the only Subarus I’ve ever been in were owned by lesbians. That article just made me want to buy one for myself. But I live in NY and driving here is the actual worst.
Canadian hero lady: I looked at the photo, and felt like there would be a lot more evidence of mosquito bites if they were a awful as she said. I walked outside in New Orleans in the summer one time without mosquito spray on, and when I walked back inside I was covered with bubos-like lumps. Like, my face looked like one of those heirloom pumpkins.
I reeeeally would like a tote but I’m not in the US and I’m pretty sure they’ll sell out before I get a chance (Australia and I’m always asleep whenever anything is posted). Is there a solution short of not sleeping all week and hitting refresh every hour on the hour?
A dear friend of mine runs Waxwing, and that poem is so beautiful. I’m thrilled to see it here!
Guys, GUYS. There is a dude on r/relationship trying to understand why after years his friends are objecting to his rape jokes. Poor muffin [/s] is getting SCHOOLED. https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4…
Because I am a glutton for punishment, I watched that clip from “The Day the Clown Cried.” Loathsome.
'heteronormativity achievement prize' is killing me.
I may actually die laughing or possibly from sheer sadness that the Toast is ending and I won't have this comment section anymore.
When my best friend got married, instead of wedding favours they donated money on behalf of all of their guests to a local animal charity (they're both animal nuts).
Gifts/registers/favours aren't that huge of a deal where I'm from (I didn't even bring a card to her wedding, it just didn't occur to me), but it was a nice gesture that I'm sure saved them a ton of time and money.
If I ever get married I think I'll ask for Heteronormative Achievement Prizes instead of gifts.
<img src="http://media.tumblr.com/e005ec7dea2c4449a2643e38e20ce9d7/tumblr_inline_mlxv0fIYR31qz4rgp.gif">
“low-key,” omg. you were the king of my heartbut your crown was hollowI guess you thoughtyou'd be a tougher act to follow
Mmm, this burns me a bit. I moved from NZ to the UK, and I simply could not take my cat. I left him with friends, and it didn't turn out particularly well. Thankfully a mutual acquaintance stepped in and took him.
Nearly 20 years later, and owning my own flat, I simply can't bring myself to get another cat.
I'm sorry, that sounds terribly distressing and I'm glad you had that acquaintance who could help. I didn't mean leaving pets with friends, that is how both of mine arrived in my apartment, but I mean leaving them out on the street. Just moving and instead of finding anyone else to even temporarily care for it, simply abandoning it outside. I could have been clearer in my original comment.