Most important link of the day: Carvell Wallace, for us, on The Negro Motorist Green Book. If you do not share it on social media, I will hunt you down like the ungrateful Giving Tree boy you are:
The fact that the American Dream presents two very different faces depending on the color of yours is why Victor H. Greene created the Negro Motorist Green Book in 1936. Greene, an African-American postal worker, and an early social entrepreneur, saw opportunity in the fact that Black people wanted to enjoy the vast American landscape, but had to take into account inconveniences like being refused service, spat on, or lynched. Jewish newspapers had long published comprehensive listings of establishments for readers to avoid and the analogy to Black life was not lost on Greene. He developed a solution to what he termed the “embarrassment” that comes with being refused service for the color of your skin. Greene created a travel guide that listed all the restaurants, filling stations, museums, hotels, guest homes, grocery stores and establishments that readers would feel safe being Black in. The Green Book, as it was affectionately known by Black families, began publishing annually in 1936 and ran for 28 years, growing steadily in listings and readership, and becoming a staple in Black homes. The final issue ran in 1964, by which time the combined forces of the Civil Rights Act and the development of the freeway system made it easier to avoid uncomfortable stops, rendering the book theoretically obsolete.
The totes are GONE. Holy crap. Okay, here’s how this is gonna go down (I will be playing “Landslide” as these things happen):
- The freebies are mailed out first (this week, actually!)
- The International orders are mailed out, each individually, as I instruct the post office to tell me the cheapest and slowest way possible.
- The weird one-offs go out (these are usually, like, people who bought three totes over different days, or people who are “can you actually send it to my niece, Bertha,” etc.)
- I hire a dang Taskrabbit to address and stuff the thousands of normal domestic orders, they go out.
The general idea? Do not ask me when your tote will arrive. It will arrive. If it gets bounced back to me, I’ll email you. If it’s September, email me. Deal?
Angels in America, the oral history:
Stephen Spinella: I wasn’t a core member of ACT UP, but I was on the issues committee and knew all those people. So I started to get a really more politicized view of AIDS issues. Then I found out one of my good friends, a teacher at NYU, Paul Walker, was sick.
Jeffrey Wright: The first director who hired me at Arena Stage in D.C., Hal Scott; my favorite teacher at NYU, Paul Walker; these people were so important to me in my early days, and they all died of AIDS.
F. Murray Abraham (replacement for Roy Cohn in New York): When I did The Ritz, that was a big cast. Eighty percent of that cast died of AIDS.
get yours, mama:
Q. Mama’s boy!: My mom is 66 years old and has never been married or dated very much. She’s not rich and looks good for her age, but not unusually so. Last month, she told me her boyfriend was moving in with her, and this weekend I met him. Prudie, he’s my age (31), devastatingly handsome, nice, and seemingly intelligent. I’m totally baffled. My mom seems head over heels for him, and as far as I can tell, he reciprocates. I don’t even want to think about why my mom and this 30-year-old hottie are dating, but should I meddle or leave her alone? A part of me worries she’s being scammed in some elaborate way, and another part is just reeling. Advice would be much appreciated!
Sharing ROOMS on business trips varies a lot by industry (corporate never, nonprofit often!) but I would NOT want to share a BED with a COLLEAGUE:
Some coworkers and I recently went on overnight travel, and the plan was to have us split two hotel rooms. Sharing a room with people I work with is less than my favorite thing, but we’re a nonprofit, and it has been decided that this is what we’ll do to save money, so I grit my teeth and vent later if needed to friends and family.
I expected this trip would follow the standard room sharing format, and that I would probably be the one who ended up sharing a room with my boss. However, there were some unexpected changes that ultimately resulted in three people sharing one room with two beds. Those last two points I did not realize until the moment we walked into the room. My stomach dropped when I saw the beds. As the more senior of the two, I quietly told my coworker to take the extra bed for themselves; through what remaining crumb of fortune there was, it ended up that I shared a bed with Coworker instead of Boss.
I hope it doesn’t require much explanation to convey how very, very upset I was to have to share what amounted to every last inch of personal space. It’s bad enough to lose any potential downtime during these trips because I am sharing a room with a coworker who usually is more interested in continuing work conversations late into the night, or who snores, or who talks in their sleep, or who gets up an hour before I need to, or who simply by virtue of their presence means I won’t be able to take my brain out of work mode after a 12- or 14-hour day. But to share a bed?! There is a very, very short list of people who I want to share a bed with, and no matter how much I will ever like the people I work with, they will never, ever be on that list. I have enough things to worry about on these trips. Kicked or being kicked by my coworker as we toss and turn, or not being able to actually sleep because there is a strange person in my bed, should not be one of those things.
The best of Jessica Williams
Aziz Ansari’s dad continues to crush it:
Did it make sense to you? Was he funny growing up?
Ah, no. The thing is, in front of us he’s always obedient. “Yes sir, no sir.” He will be very nice. He won’t joke with us. But when he gets out of the house, he’s always surrounded by friends and telling his jokes. His friends only make him try these things. Today Aziz is a famous man but I know how he started. He worked hard and sold tickets in the middle of the night. Zero degrees outside, Times Square and all. He’s always worked hard.As a child, his goals were different. When he was in the first grade he was moved to the second grade in six months. And when he moved to second grade, they called me and said, “We want to talk to you.” I said, “Did Aziz do anything wrong?” “No, we want him to speak in the Parents’ Night.” He was about seven years old and he gave a small talk. They gave him a paper and asked him to read it. I said, “You cannot read. You just memorize that.” And so he rehearsed it two or three times and he took the mic and just rattled it out.
okay this recap of the Game of Thrones finale by someone who has never previously watched an episode of Game of Thrones is very funny:
The girl from Whale Rider works in like, some kind of all girl castle and they all discuss…something?
That piece on the Green Book was devastatingly good. What am I going to do without the Toast? Nowhere else will we able to discuss pieces like that without the comment section devolving into racist blithering in about 3 comments.
I have a list of websites that I am going to attempt to use to cover the Toast-spaced hole in my heart, and it is at least ten sites long and counting. Nowhere else did all my random interests come together so perfectly!
Ooooh, can you share the list? I don’t have any good replacements lined up.
Seconding the request for sharing!
Sure thing!
1. Toast crumbs and Toastie Slack, obviously
2. The Hairpin, for the obvious reasons
3. English Major Humor, for all my random nerdiness
4. Pajiba, for such articles as “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Isn’t Interested in your Bullshit”
5. Signature Reads, for well-thought out book reviews and such
6. Fred Clark’s “The Slacktivist” over on Patheos for religious interest
7. The Catapult, great essays
8. The New Republic, where Suri Kim’s excellent article was published
9. Atlas Obscura
10. Electric Literature
11. One Star Book reviews
If anyone has anymore, please post!! Obviously none of them replace The Toast, but I have to go somewhere after tomorrow!
I love Slacktivist on Patheos buuuut the orig Slacktivist community was My First Toast…
It was the first amazing comments section I encountered, along with TNC’s blog. I rarely was brave enough to jump in either place, alas.
Thanks for the list! I also like:
The Establishment (feminist news, essays, humor, Make Your Face)
Reductress (feminist satire)
Wonkette (it’s pretty obnoxious, may be an acquired taste)
I love Slacktivist too (and I’m not even a Christian).
Atlas Obscura is also A+.
I am an atheist and I love the Slacktivist. His “Left Behind” reviews give me LIFE.
Thank you! I’ve been collecting sources for my own weekly link dump and you’ve got several that I didn’t know about. Here’s the list I had (there are repeats but I’m including links)
Ann Friedman‘s weekly newsletter
Longreads.com
Atlas Obscura
This.
The Morning News
Bitch Media
NPR
Slate
The Atlantic
Pacific Standard
and yesterday I added
Catapult
this one just started, and is funny but needs commentariat: http://www.maximummiddleage.com/home
I’ll check it out, thank you!
Thanks! I’d never heard of that one! I like it!
You guys, the blog I write and edit for Pome is young and unmoneyed, but we have a commitment to daily content, including a once-a-week link aggregate, and we’d love to see Toasties in the comments. (Which we do strictly moderate, resulting in very few comments getting through because most of them are spam.)
*ears perk up* moderated comments? Shall have to check this out!
This looks great! Thank you for posting the link!
ETA: Forgive me, I can’t find it on the site–do you have an RSS feed or an email subscription service?
Oh this has so little overlap with my own list, I am excited to go poke around all these new internet places \o/ Mine was just:
Captain Awkward (advice, nerdery)
Ask Polly (advice, weeping at desk with existential feels)
Autostraddle (queer stuff)
Any articles linked by my twitter friends who are all amazing & well read
Please be quick to share good links from these sites on reddit and/or slack. I should try to be more productive than visiting 11+ sites a day would allow, but would still like to encounter some of the gyms from these places.
Note: I totally recognize that I’m asking you to do emotional labor here so feel free to avoid and roll your eyes if it’s not actually something you’d want to do 🙂
I discovered wearyourvoicemag.com via a call for pitches & had a piece run there this week, only to realize “I am SO in need of the information here.” Intersectional feminist site, and my likely campsite for a while as of this Saturday.
Thanks for the recs!
I also want to throw McSweeney’s in there too, one of my favorite humor sites.
I like a bit of Aeon. And Longreads to get you to other good places.
Can you share? I have been meaning to curate my own list, but haven’t had a chance and THE END IS NIGH.
Oh, I see the list above. Thanks!!!
I sent the link to my dad and he loved it.
It wasn’t a very long conversation, but I posted the link to Metafilter and people generally liked it. Metafilter has its faults, but there are a number of Metatoasters and it’s an increasingly-better place to be a woman on the internet (though, definitely with its fault-lines). There’s been a lot of work on improving the climate for people of color and queer people, and my sense as a straight white cis lady is that things are getting better, but could definitely improve more.
Another Metatoaster here; one of the things that I really like about MeFi is that it can have a reasoned conversation about itself (via the MetaTalk section), which is not the same as saying that all such conversations are equally well-reasoned, but still. And there are, as you note, still some problematic areas (just about any thread having to do with fat, for example), but things are improving, as can be noted by going back to just about any post 10+ years ago.
Oh man. I used to read and post to Metafilter way, way back. And then the site started to take on an unpleasant edge and I left for greener pastures. But if there are other Toasties there… (It was one of my earlier “Kayjayoh” sites.)
No! It was Kayjay! I had not yet started adding the “Oh”.
Wow. That was a long, long time ago.
For example, here’s the discussion about that terrible, terrible man who cheated on his wife after they couldn’t have kids. https://www.metafilter.com/160641/Sad-Boner-Confe…
I have really appreciated the linking The Toast has done to articles by writers of color, and to articles related to social justice issues, especially with respect to race. It has exposed me to content I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and has helped me think about how to be a better ally.
Does anyone have any other go-to spots that they would recommend that might help to fill this particular hole left by the Toast?
the Establishment and Bitch Media, which a couple folks mentioned, are great!
Kind of specific to race issues in law enforcement and criminal justice, but The Marshall Project is great. They also have a daily link roundup email that really gets good stuff to me.
I pop in to The Root sometimes, as well as Racialicious, and sometimes Crunk Feminist Collective.
Ummmm that piece will be published in glorious book-length one day, and we can discuss it on #bookclub in the Toastie Slack, right? RIGHT?
Here are a few more sites from my feedly…
BookRiot, where you can read the comments
Language Log Half the time I don’t understand what they’re talking about, but it’s always nerdy fun
Roads & Kingdoms for travel essays/photos
Role Reboot – I feel like it’s Feminism 101 compared to the Toast, but often good reading
Edible Geography
Yes and Yes – best life, very fun link roundups
TYWKIWDBI
The Book Smugglers
This one just started, and they are funny but need commentariat: http://www.maximummiddleage.com/home
I’ve been subscribing to newsletters, and among my favorites are Anne Friedman’s, along with her Call Your Girlfriend podcast.
As a middle-aged, eye-rolling, f-bomb-dropping person, I thank you for this lead!
My thoughts exactly. The toast is not allowed to leave when it still has things to teach me about places whose secrets I thought I knew.
*sob*
That Dear Prudence letter sounds a lot like the child is jealous that her mom got a good catch. Unless this guy is an obvious scammer (like he has been added to the bank account or something) let your mom have some fun! There are plenty of good looking-guys out there who like older women, and her mom sounds like she is an active, young-at-heart kind of type. As Mallory correctly pointed out, no one ever writes her because a 60 year old man is dating a young, attractive woman.
I don’t see jealousy. I mean, I’m sure it’s true that nobody has written to Mallory yet about the older man/younger woman dynamic. But I’ve personally known people who’ve said (and have seen others write to other columnists) that they are concerned this much younger person is using their dad. That’s actually kind of a theme that shows up periodically in advice columns. And for various reasons, it is unusual to see a 30 yo man with a 60yo woman.
I totally agree with Mallory that if there aren’t any of those suspicious factors, she should let it go. But I don’t think the letter is a sign that the LW is jealous. I would not be jealous if my mom started dating a man who is younger than I am, and I would definitely be nervous for her heart until I’d seen enough of him to trust he wasn’t using her. I wouldn’t say anything to her and I’d be nice to him, but I’d be watching.
I guess I thought the “this guy is my age, and super good-looking, and has a great personality” description, followed by the “why would he want to date my mom” vibe sounded a little jealous. I could be wrong, though, it is so hard to tell with the write-ins.
This was my first thought, too! I mean, the implication of dwelling on the good-looking part is that it wouldn’t be of any concern if the guy was hideous? Or just average-looking?
My own mother is seeing a younger, good-looking man (who sends her enormous bouquets of gorgeous flowers on the reg) and my response was GO MOM!, because that’s what she deserves.
I am a little jealous of the flowers though.
My mum’s partner is my age. They’ve been together for over a decade, he treats her like the queen that she is, and my response has always been GO MUM! because that’s what she deserves.
I get the sense that the “good-looking” part was added because the LW assumes that, as a good-looking fella, he could probably attract women his own age, so it just makes it a bit more suspicious that he is dating a woman more than twice his age. I don’t sense that she is jealous.
That’s how I read it, too.
But I don’t think attraction works that way.
Normative-beauty-compliant people date people who are not normative-beauty-compliant for reasons of age, weight, disability, skin colour, gender presentation etc all the time. Most of the time, probably, since there are so many many ways to not be normative-beauty-compliant.
It doesn’t make the normative-beauty-compliant people suspicious. What’s suspicious is the idea that a person cannot be beautiful and attractive if they fail to comply with normative beauty standards (e.g. by being older).
I do understand being suspicious of the older party, though, since youth correlates with ‘being easier to manipulate due to inexperience’. But hopefully someone in their 30s would have enough experience that this would not be an issue.
Yes! I thought the letter was going to end with “and we had a moment and I’m pretty sure he and I belong together.”
I don’t think this is the case since it sounds like the letter writer is in their thirties, but to be honest I hate the “daughter is jealous of mother” narrative because it pops up so often in cases where a kid’s stepdad is a legitimate creep. I’ve heard way too many stories about moms accusing their teenage daughters of trying to steal their predator boyfriends.
And aside from that, a lot of legitimate concern about a loved one’s partner who is too good to be true can be waved away with claims of jealousy. I think Mallory’s advice to “trust but verify” is good. If the age difference is the only thing that’s concerning, then the relationship is fine. But if my dad started dating a woman my age, I would definitely be concerned initially.
If my father, may he rest in exactly the amount of peace he deserves and not one jot more, started dating a woman my age, I would be concerned that she is the one being taken advantage of.
Yeah, I really hate that narrative, and the “you’re just jealous” thing seems to get thrown at women a lot in all kinds of situations. I am probably too negative and untrusting, and because that much of an age difference is not that common, yet it’s not uncommon for it to happen in a “I’m using them” context, I would be concerned. But I’d keep my mouth shut until I had a real basis to be concerned.
I assumed the writer was male, and was just squicked out by his mom being essentially a pedophile (not really, but it feels that way when your parent starts dating, say, someone you went to high school with).
I too assumed the writer was male! I guess I thought a woman would be happier for her mom?
Hell, that’s not even my mom and I’M jealous.
I say ‘go mom!’.
signed, someone who is dating a younger man
I propose a toast! To all the people at The Toast that ever moderated in any way the comments, especially if they were about something you wrote. Thank you for taking in all that toxic waste to save the rest of us. (Raises glass of Champagne to salute their courage)
hear hear!
To the Toast moderators! *Clink* Skål!
Santé! ♥
Hear, hear.
Cin Cin, my beloved Toasties!
A willing foe, and another willing foe, and here’s another one, and a SUNCANNON. *clink*
Hear, hear! To the Toast!
To the moderators!
Yes! To your good health, Toast Moderators! Thank you for all that you have done and will do.
To family! Alla famiglia!
(pretend there’s a gif of the end of Moonstruck which the internet somehow has not provided and I am not gif-ted enough to make…)
Yay moderators! You took on a dirty, depressing job and thereby created a Thing of Beauty.
<3 <3 <3
To the moderators! May the gods stand between them and harm in all the dark places they must walk.
Oh god yes to this.
Cheers to The Toast moderators! There is no where else on the internet I have felt this safe.
Yes, to the mods! *clinks glass*
“The girl from Whale Rider works in like, some kind of all girl castle and they all discuss…something?” Weird, I had no idea that The Toast was a part of Game of Thrones.
That recap is me anytime I walk in on my roommates watching GoT. I just check in to make sure Sansa and Brienne are still alive (because those are the only people I recognize and know their names), and make bewildered faces at the television for a few minutes, then go on my way.
Twin Cities meetup today at Sea Salt, drop-in/drop-out from 4-7! I’ll have a book titled “Meet a Baby Lemur” with me!
Primates of the Toast, unite!
Agh I don’t think I will be able to make it! What’s the best way to keep abreast of any future meetups?
Most of us seem to be in the _midwest toast slack channel! Also you can find me on twitter (liz_the_lemur) and I’ve got a running list of Twin Cities Toasties.
My partner works in the private sector, in a reasonably large company, and yet last month when there was a staff-wide “morale trip” to Frankfurt, people were asked to share hotel rooms. It sounded like a nightmare. (He did not go, obviously, because room-sharing and teambuilding activities, even when he likes his team very much, are hellish.)
“What if our team-building exercise was…doing our job together as a team?”
ahahahahahaha. No. Teambuilding is humiliating and stupid, and generally speaking requires that management compare you to bugs, cogs, or some terrifying combination of the two. IME, of course.
back when I worked at the Borders, our supervisor gave us a lecture where she compared us to Pac-Man ghosts.
Or, I guess maybe we were Pac-Mans and the ghosts were the new inventory we had to sort?
It was an intricate metaphor, is what I’m saying.
My boss once compared us to Rocky. He said “we have to take a lot of hits, but we will win in the end.” I pointed out that Rocky lost, much to my boss’ irritation. Which might have explained my not-so-great performance review.
Metaphors can be dangerous things. It is better not to approach one in the wild unless you are well trained.
yeah the set of analogies about “famously heroic guys who actually lose now that I think about it” is dangerously large for untrained managers to try to handle.
Similarly, you can’t actually win at Pac-Man, it just gets harder until you lose or give up, so I don’t know, obviously that is what our job was like, but maybe you don’t have to put it that way.
Right? The bug comparison was literally from the movie “ants”, and at the end of the clip everyone on my team was all “ooooo, that is interesting and useful, yes, managers should be guides” and I was like “DID YOU JUST COMPARE ME TO AN ANT?” I was considered unreasonable when I pointed out that this was probably not the best comparison to use.
I’ve never seen Rocky, and now it seems especially hilarious that the Rocky Theme has become synonymous with underdog triumphs.
I mean, Rocky knows he doesn’t stand a chance of winning, he just wants to last the whole 15 rounds with Apollo, which no one had ever done before (he won all his bouts by KO). So it is a great story about not giving up even when you know you are beaten, but that doesn’t make for a great work comparison.
“Boss, that was a great speech. But, I’ve been wandering the aisles all day looking for the pieces of fruit, and I can’t find any. On the plus side, one of my co-workers did share some power pills!”
But… there are pretzels, right?
My boyfriend really enjoyed the escape-the-room teambuilding activity he went on, but he is very close to the other members of his small team and voluntarily socialises with them out of work. Anything involving people from other departments, however, is apparently The Worst.
Someone suggested this recently. It did not sound good to me! On the plus side, I’m pretty sure it would hone my escaping skills…
The first few times somebody mentioned an “Escape the Room” thing to me, I thought you were literally just locked in a room and had to escape, which sounded claustrophobic and dangerous. Someone finally explained that there are puzzles and stuff, which sounds way more fun, but still, every time I hear about them, I have a brief moment of panic and terror at the idea of being trapped in a tiny room with a bunch of other people.
The first job I ever had was in an office where our manager was really big on shit like trust falls.
My next several jobs were mainly in retail and restaurants because I was scared that all offices would require tipping myself back into the hands of a near-stranger.
I would like you to be my boss always and forever for this. We recently had to talk our boss out of a fun thing he wanted us to do. And by fun I mean “figure out how an all-remote team was going to film a ten minute long video.” We are financial analysts, by the way, so outside of Snapchat, none of us is necessarily well versed in making videos.
team-building exercises are part of the long-term corporate strategy of replacing portions of a worker’s personality with a personality that is of better use to the company
Our team-building exercises at my office are cookouts on the patio. A couple of weeks ago we made pizzas. The team-building part of this is that everybody gets to bring what they want to cook, and if we want alcohol, we have to bring it ourselves.
Great team building, would build again.
Our new line of ceramic smokers claims to make great pizzas, so we had to test that claim. For customer-service reasons. Can now confirm that ceramic smokers make A+ pizza.
Now that’s teamwork I can get behind.
One of the pizza crusts managed to form itself into a heart shape. We felt this was appropriate for the atmosphere and whatever. And then I got to caption that FB photo (I’m our social media person) “pizza = <3”
A great team-building exercise is buying folks breakfast during the workday. Or maybe donuts. Impinging on personal time (nights, weekends, even lunchtime) is complete crap.
I enjoy building team morale on long lunches which the office pays for. I will also spend a Thursday afternoon in a cute cabin not far from town building team morale on occasion, so long as there are cookies.
But the very best way to build the team is for the bosses not to be dicks.
We do a monthly breakfast! Which we have to pay for (work for gov’t, cannot spend taxpayer $ feeding me), or can opt out of (optional team-building = best team building). Once a month a get a meal that lasts aaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllll day, and get to go home to my partner with great Twilight Zone stories, about tables full of people whose biggest concern in life is how difficult it is to get out of the Costco parking lot.
To be fair, the Costco parking lot is pretty difficult.
I work in a retirement home that recently had their “employee appreciation week.” All of the events were during the day (many employees work evening/overnight hours). One event involved pie-throwing–pies which were baked here by our dining department, and then had to be cleaned up by housekeeping. It was mostly admin that threw pies. I think it did the opposite of what they were hoping.
I had the best team-building retreats at the worst job I ever had, so. Beautiful Cape Cod mansion with a pool and a beach, incredible food, genuinely interesting and productive exercises. It made returning to the job itself especially grueling.
An afternoon at the ballpark, with free soda and hot dog, is a pretty nice team building exercise, in the scheme of things.
I love baseball and would be in favor of this!
It’s not Thursday it can’t be Thursday ima just stick my head in the sand over here, m’kay?
But in the interest of keeping the commenting community of love and kindness and toast together, I will first post your daily reminder that many of us are migrating to toastieslack.
For gently self-moderating groups, discussions of our personal dirtbaggery and crushes, shouting at the tv, and much more, email ppyajunebug [at] gmail [dot] com
Please join us as we mourn the loss of our favorite breakfast food site and all take to the sea.
I joined yesterday & was almost immediately overwhelmed by the size of the group and the thought of Unknown Norms (and I am not unfamiliar with slack in general! my work uses slack!) but this makes it sound all very manageable and lovely. So I shall definitely work up the courage to try again soon.
Can someone explain Slack a little? Is it kind of like a closed-universe twitter loosely devoted to certain topics (which is how it seems to me)? Or is there a way to respond to certain comments so that replies are nested underneath, the way there is here?
I joined and was also overwhelmed. Maybe it is easier to grasp for people who tweet?
Maybe we can start a channel for slow, infrequent conversations?
There is no nesting of comments, sadly. It’s more of a group of themed chatrooms with ongoing discussions. A lot of new members who are finding the large channels overwhelming are joining some of the topical/local channels (game of thrones yelling, Pennsyvania toasties, etc) and getting into the discussion there. But feel free to jump into a channel and ask what’s up; we’re all quite friendly, even though some of us may get into long arguments about things like whether pies are meant to have fruit or meat in them.
pies are meant to have all things in them. but not at once. the end.
And don’t forget the ToastCrumbs reddit!
https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs/
Also, UK political news is just completely ridiculous at the moment. A few hours ago Boris Johnson announced that he wasn’t running for Conservative leader. Suddenly a Theresa May-led party seems almost appealing. I don’t even know what is happening any more, and everything feels like a fever dream. (I feel like the only thing that could make all of this even more of a mess than it already is is for the Queen to die. I’m calling it now.)
Andy Murray has to lose at Wimbledon in a spectacular fashion before the queen dies. You know, for the proper build up.
Boris Johnson isn’t running? oh thank god I thought I was going to have to go through with it and emigrate
Right now he isn’t, although with the way things are going it feels like by tomorrow he’ll have announced that he’s changed his mind.
who knows where we’ll be this time next month. In europe? out of europe? the whole of the UK lifting off and heading rapidly for mars because we have given up and it’s time to seek a brave new frontier?
I feel the last option would be best tbh
Wasn’t there a Doctor Who episode about that?
yeah, I’m pretty certain it was the one with the space-whales. I mean, it said planetary disaster iirc, but this nonsense counts, surely?
Star whales. The SPACE whales were in Torchwood. Very important distinction.
What even is 2016 anymore.
I don’t know. There’s a thing floating around on FB with something about “who knew that David Bowie actually was the glue holding the earth together” or something to that effect and idk, seems legit
Haha, I hadn’t seen that, but I was just talking to a coworker friend who I’ve known for a million years, and we were saying, “Did David Bowie leaving cause this? Or did he just peace out back to his home planet because he had a premonition that this year was going to go to hell in a handbasket?”
Now we’re just talking about how we’re living in the prologue origin story of a dystopian novel and debating whether they’re going to roll out Skynet before or after the Hunger Games start. Because we’re out of responses to give that aren’t just a bleak sense of humor right now.
Because as she just put it: “The world is becoming such a strange and scary thing.”
Hahahaha, oh God, I post this and immediately get told that Andrews Air Force Base vaguely near us is on lockdown because of a reported active shooter. I just. I give up on this year entirely now.
The good news is it appears that was just a misunderstanding, thankfully.
Thereby further proving my long-standing opinion that men (generally speaking) possess absolutely no functioning foresight whatsoever.
Both him and Cameron have used this referendum to try and take power without considering the consequences of what would happen if things didn’t go to plan. Now neither of them are in power and the country’s on its arse. Thanks, men.
#banmen
Suddenly a Theresa May-led party seems almost appealing.Which shows how bad things have got. Then again, the alternative now appears to be Michael Gove* instead. What have we done?
*To be fair, his stabbing of Johnson was almost as good as Anne Widdecombe’s job on Michael Howard twenty years ago.
I know. What is even going on? How have we got to a state of affairs where that looks like a desirable outcome? It’s all horrible.
Did you all hear about the email about Boris that Gove’s wife “accidentally” sent to a member of the public? That’s some serious Slytherining.
Husband is throwing his hands to heaven: “So now they get Theresa May as PM and she’ll make Thatcher look like Bernie Sanders. Good luck to them all.”
Turns out that after nearly 20 years in the States, this, Brexit, is what’s finally making him consider US citizenship. :-/
Ah, Theresa May, legendary Hogwarts headmistress.
We had her for a high school principal for five years… it was tricky.
ETA:(Umbrage, I mean, not whichever deranged politician this refers to)
Theresa May’s greatest hits include London mobile signage that told immigrants to go home or face arrest, shutting down Saint Paul’s for the first time since the Blitz, because clearly the Occupy encampment posed an imminent threat, and advocating the bulk collection and storage (for security of course, hem-hem) of private browsing data. She’s Maggie Thatcher for this era and as odious as the rest of the Tory swine-molesters, but since Boris pooped the bed everyone else moves up a notch, and she’s next.
I went to hear her speak at the Oxford Union once (not, let me make very clear, because I have any sort of positive feelings about the Conservative Party) and someone asked the excellent question of how she could reconcile being Equalities Minister with her terrible voting record on LGBT issues. She gave a non-answer about how that was a different time (one of the votes in question was in 2002!) and that if she voted on them again now she *might* choose differently. She is awful.
she sounds DREADFUL – I am so sorry
“THE QUEEN HAS DIED”
omg that would be a terrible/hilarious/terribly hilarious headline right now
I’ve realized I need to suspend my disbelief for all news out of the UK for the immediate future, because wtf is even going on.
It’s weird, but it’s also the most interested I’ve been in UK politics for a long time, including my recent forays with WEP. I’m normally so more into other countries’ stuff.
I’m super happy Boris is off the agenda, and I have a secret love for Theresa May. I know it’s wrong, and I know she’s just to the left of (insert right wing trope), but dang it she’s a woman and I’ve seen her speak at a city networky thing and she was really good. I cling to the hope that a leader has to compromise. I’d rather her than all the others that are on offer.
My real concern is that Boris has paved the way for there to be no general election with his previous comments. He really is an egotistical self-serving tool. I actually love the idea of him being shafted because he wasn’t organised enough, even though the likelihood is half of Westminster and Fleet Street have a massive amount of dirt on him.
I CANNOT stop reading the Guardian liveblog. My productivity has been low for a week, I’m having to work at night to makeup for not getting anything done during the day. I cannot look away. It’s amaaaaazing, in a terrible, awful way.
Given the transient nature of Slack, I’m posting this here as well – would there be any interest in an eating disorder recovery Slack channel? Let me know here or via Slack (I’m @annecara there as well)!
Thursday, June 30, 2016.
I accidentally past tense’d The-Toast this morning 🙁
Ha, I was THISCLOSE to posting that today.
Someone had to do it!
I am really, really sad this morning. I don’t want to say goodbye, Toast.
I will, however, be going to a ToastWake in Chicago tomorrow, so that will be a good place to explore those very sad feelings with people who understand *exactly* how it feels.
Nobody else could understand, it’s really hitting me today.
I am definitely having this too! I need like a Toast black armband or something to signify that I need to be treated with great sensitivity and kindness right now, and perhaps given lots of offerings of Toast or something in order to console me.
I had a one-off Toast-mourning tee shirt made at a local screenprint shop last night. I’ll be wearing it tomorrow (and posting a pic on OT).
I’m thinking of doing this with the Toast broken-heart pic from Nikki’s post yesterday. A really beautiful illustration that says it all.
Oh, please do! I’ll propose a selfie thread!
I plan to have an undetermined stomach ailment tomorrow that prevents me going to work. I will offer to edit the SOP document from home.
I wish I could join you in the tummy ache (which, really, is probably gonna be an ACTUAL tummy ache when it comes down to it). I don’t have enough PTO to stay home tomorrow. Ugh. I already did the math and nope, not with my July Vegas trip. Tomorrow’s gonna be a rough day.
I know myself well enough to know that I will accomplish nothing at work tomorrow (I’m accomplishing p. much nothing today, for that matter).
I haven’t accomplished much of anything ALL WEEK.
I mean, there’s that. I’ve been depressed since Sunday, which was our church organist’s last day. It’s a shitty week, is what I’m saying.
I am accepting record-breaking levels of low productivity this week, but given that Toast Wake happens but once and I have to be at work all weekend anyway . . . I am at peace with it.
I do have several things I need to do around the house, as well as practicing for ages on an upcoming cello accompaniment for an anthem at church (I’m not at all sure it’s going to go well). So I can be productive at home in between bouts of weeping.
A piece of burned Toast, maybe?
Also, Chi-town peeps, if you are not in the facebook group this is the deal: We are meeting around 6 tomorrow at Parts & Labor in Logan Square. Some people will be coming later than that. If you are on the fence, I implore you to come and keep us company. <3
I hate facebook with an undying passion. Thank you so much for posting the information about this here!!! I will try my best to join you lovely people.
Also, if you’ve asked to join the FB group, we’re trying to keep out robots and creepers, so check your filtered messages!
HOW CAN I LIVE WHEN WE ARE PARTED???
AND YET WITH YOU MY WORLD HAS STARTED!!!!
was going to post another line, googled the lyrics to make sure i had the phrasing right, started crying when reading the song, giving up on this before my thursday ends at 10am
TOMORROW WE’LL DISCOVER WHAT OUR LORD IN HEAVEN HAS IN STORE……….
ONE MORE DAWN
ONE MORE DAY
ONE DAY MORE
ONE
DAY
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE
I had heard nothing about this until today: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/why-the-…
Utterly horrifying. Can we revoke his status as a human being, yet?
I think he has already revoked it. He certainly doesn’t seem to view anyone else he meets as human.
I am gonna stop saying that I don’t think this political cycle could be more fucked up, because I feel like the Universe keeps calling me on it.
Not to defend Trump – ever – but the reason you haven’t been seeing it because the story is essentially unverifiable for some really sketchy reasons:
http://jezebel.com/heres-how-that-wild-lawsuit-ac…
tl:dr – Jezebel, among other publications, were shopped this story months ago by a man – a tabloid producer, I think? – who had come across this info and was trying to sell it. Every time they have tried to get into contact with the victim (even to just confirm her existence) they are stonewalled by by one of the men involved ranging from her lawyer to the head of some random anti-Trump conservative group who has nothing to do with the case, but claimed he knew her. The address on the court docs turned out to be a foreclosed house that no one has lived in since it’s owner died last year. A supposed video of her appeared, but she’s wearing a wig and has her face pixelated out. No one has yet been able to confirm “Katie Johnson” is the plaintiff – no news publication has met her, anonymously or not.
I’d believe near anything of Trump and I don’t care about smears to his reputation. But I do care about accuracy in reporting, and there’s good reason no one wanted to pick this story up.
The whole thing is worth a read.
“I’d believe near anything of Trump and I don’t care about smears to his reputation. But I do care about accuracy in reporting, …”
Me too. Thank you so much for this. You’re doing good work.
Especially since the UVA Rolling Stone story, we really need to be extra-zealous about confirming details.
A couple years ago, my boss made me take a trip with him to work on a project with our consultant. We left on Sunday evening and got to the hotel at about 10pm. At some point during the trip, it came out that he had reserved just one room. Already miffed about losing a Sunday at home, I was really not happy to find out I’d be sharing a room with him.
So we made the four hour drive, got to the room, and went to check-in. As we walked up to the desk, I had a flash nightmare about the clerk telling us they were booked and through a clerical error, the only room left was a king-sized bed. Thankfully, that was not the case and the room at least had 2 queen-sized beds.
My wife works for a corporation (I work for a municipality) where people travel quite a lot and every time I told one of her co-workers about having to share a room, they were mortified.
Oh god WORST. I would have been an anxious mess that whole car ride.
We had a decent boss/employee relationship before that trip. I was pretty well done with him after it.
Very quick but SpaceWitch Retreat (aka con for former Toasties) is happening Summer 2017 (for anyone who hasn’t heard yet). Follow us on Twitter @SpaceWitchCon or join the #Space_Witch_Retreat on ToastieSlack.
Don’t have either Slack or Twitter and want to learn more? Let me know here.
Yes, I would like to know more, and I am an Old who avoids social media.
Yes! Submit your email address here and you’ll get email updates: http://goo.gl/forms/9cIlzIfoAsvUCT4U2
I checked out the slack channel and I’m cautiously excited. has a general geographic region been selected yet?
Two options have been floated – Los Angeles area and somewhere North Carolina. I haven’t seen anything saying when that decision is expected to be made.
Soon! Like, within the summer. Most places only do bookings a year out, hence the delay.
I need to carve away enough time in my day today to read the Green book piece! Luckily my boss is away today, so this Toastie shall play.
Also, I am thinking about maybe reading all of the Hey Ladies! today — I woke up feverishly at 3:30 a.m. with the thought that if I don’t read them now, I won’t fully appreciate the final one tomorrow. Ahhhh
You may just have inspired me to go and do the same thing, even thought I reread Hey Ladies! like once a month as it is…
Hey Ladies! is my favorite Toast feature by far and every day this week I’ve checked the toast to make sure the last Hey Ladies! isn’t there waiting for me
That Angels in America piece, though. I saw both plays on Broadway, when I was doing my jr year “abroad” by studying experimental theater in the east village. Too many feels!
It’s going to take me a little while to read that.
I’m so happy it was linked here, because we can have a normal non-Slate discussion about it! Slate’s comments have been better-moderated lately, but they’re still full of blowhards all hung up on the subhead and debating whether it’s really the most defining piece of art of the last 25 years. (One guy yesterday was saying it’s actually the Sopranos, which … okay.) Who cares about the subhead, people? That play is incredible.
Also: It’s weird that my favorite hypothetical baby boy name is Prior, right? Like that would not be a good idea, right? (Tell me it would be a good idea.)
Hmmm, naming a kid Prior…
-He’d have to life with “who’s the latter [your last name]?” jokes all his life
-It does read very Boston Blue-Blood to me, but on a gut level, not sure of the actual history of the name. I’d almost expect the kid to have a “IV” a the end of his name (yeah, I went to school with a “IV”) and to come from a family that really liked to emphasize their Mayflower connections
-You’d obviously be wishing the character of Prior on the kid, and not the health trajectory
If you’re cool with all that, it’s an interesting and unusual name!
Ha! Yeah, definitely the character, not so much the heath complications. Anyway, I have actually looked this up, and I don’t think there is much of a history to the name Prior. It doesn’t really show up on baby name lists (though it is a Latin surname, of course, which probably accounts for the Blue Blood sound of it). So it would totally be an obnoxious made-up special-snowflake baby name. Which they all are now anyway.
Anyway, as I wrote below, I do like the ‘Y’ spelling better. Which has a more Western connotation. And none of this really matters, except that if I have a hobby, it’s naming imaginary babies.
But have you yet run the numerology of that name with your last name as well as any hypothetical husbands’ last names? Because (not kidding) that’s how I got the spelling of my name. Special snowflake indeed! My husband has a first name that’s not the least bit unusual in other countries, but quite rare here, and we’ve both spent our lives spelling them for people. So, we gave our kids very old-fashioned, traditional-anglo-saxon-ly-spelled names.
I would love to see a multigenerational study on how people name babies in relation to their own names. My husband and I both have very standard top-of-the-chart-in-1980s-America names, and we’ve definitely gone for more unique choices for our daughters. Not too far out there, but lower down the list. And I’ve certainly heard other uniquely-named people say they’re giving their kids more traditional names. Grass is always greener, perhaps? Watch, if you have grandkids they’ll be named Kylo and Smorgasbord, and mine will be Jane and John.
I think most parents are guilty of overcompensating for whatever they perceived as the insufficiencies in their own growing-up.
By the way, creative naming is in no way new. My great-grandmother came up with some doozies: Judson, Vintent, Audray, etc.
It’s not so much that it’s a known name as that it’s a religious title that makes it sound, well, Puritan/Boston. Like, I’d expect his siblings to be named Abbess and Deacon?
I knew a man named Pryor. Pryor was his first name. He was born, probably, around 1930. Pryor was his mother’s birth name. As if her birth name were Mary Pryor. Since I knew him in the Deep South (US), he would have been Mary’s second son. Many southerners name the first son [dad’s name], Jr., and the second son gets mom’s birth name as a first name.
He was a good person. Your son would grow into such a name. It might be easier on him if you spelled it with a “y”.
I agree with the Y, actually — If I did this (and will I even have another kid, much less a son? Would my husband agree to this name? Probably not! So hypothetical!) I would spell it with a Y. There’s a range of mountains in Montana, where my husband is from, called the Pryors, so that would be fitting. The Angels in America connection would mostly be in my brain.
I tried to read “Angels” when I was a senior in high school and understood pretty much none of it, coming from a rural area where gay people were commonly thought not to exist and not knowing anything about the AIDS crisis or Mormons. The oral history is not only giving me a new access point (I bet I’d understand it more now, being queer and all!) but the realization that I *still* don’t know what was happening that shaped the play. Googling Roy Cohn has been… instructive. And scary???
I read the play in a college class, which helped add context, but one thing I really loved about it was how it opened up a whole alternative history of the 1980s that I hadn’t been exposed to before. (Was raised on a more ‘morning in America, Reagan yay!’ information diet.)
Absolutely Fabulous has a movie:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/29/abso…
Coming out July 22nd in the US, July 1st in the UK and August 4th in Australia. No word on other countries.
IT’S FINALLY HAPPENED. :hyperventilates:
Today in (Feminist) History [Archive]
On this day in 1966 was the founding of the National Organization for Women, formed by a group of women at the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women. The formation was sparked by frustration at the recently formed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which had decided not to fully enforce Title VII and its prohibition on sex discrimination, and ruled that sex segregation in job advertising was perfectly allowable. A month later, Dr. Pauli Murray (a civil right’s activity, women’s right’s activity, lawyer, and the first black woman ordained to be an Episcopal priest), then a law professor at Yale and part of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, denounced the EEOC and it’s recently stance. She was almost immediately contacted by Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique– it was this first connection that led in part to the feminist movement re-emerging in the U.S.
Both Friedan and Murray were representatives at the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, DC. Though many of the representatives wanted to pass a resolution remanding the EEOC for its action and demanding that it end employment sex discrimination (as it was legally mandated to do), they were told that they didn’t even have the authority at the Conference to pass a resolution, let alone to have any authority. Friedan had heard rumors that those involved around the EEOC were privately suggesting a need for women to have some sort of organization to speak on their behalf, inspired by the civil rights groups had done for those movements. She invited others at the conference, equally frustrated by the proceedings, to join her that night in her hotel room.
The number of women who were present at that first meeting including Pauli Murray, as well as Catherine Conroy, Rosalind Loring, Inka O’Hanrahan, Dorothy Haener, Mary Eastwood, and Kay Clarenbach. Frustrated, angry, and ready to do something, they began to form their new organization. It was Friedan who wrote down the acronym NOW on a paper napkin in her hotel room, but the organization itself gained its first official members the next day at lunch, when, as Gene Boyer later recalled, “Catherine Conroy pulled out a five-dollar bill from her wallet and, in her usual terse style, invited us to ‘put your money down and sign your name.’ NOW was a reality and I think we all felt somehow we had participated in a significant beginning.”
Twenty eight women were part of setting up the “temporary” organization, according to Analoyce Clapp, “To take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, assuming all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” By October they had 300 charter members, both men and women, and in had their first organizing conference from October 29-30 of that year, forming a Statement of Purpose and filling positions, including naming Kay Clarenback as Chair of the Board, Betty Friedan as President, and Aileen Hernandez (who had been a member of the EEOC, but resigned) as Executive Vice President. Writing about the conference in 1966, Betty Friedan reported, “We wasted no time on ceremonials or speeches, gave ourselves barely an hour for lunch and dinner…At times we got very tired and impatient, but there was always a sense that what we were deciding was not just for now ‘but for a century…’ We shared a moving moment of realization that we had now indeed entered history.”
The National Organization for Women still exists today. It now consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states. It focuses not just on women’s rights, but civil rights, LGBT rights, and equal rights.
“put your money down and sign your name”
This needs to be my next motto for…something.
Chiming in to say “I LOVE YOU ALL!”
And if anyone has suggestions for what to do on a free afternoon in NYC I am here for them. (The afternoon is this afternoon FYI)
Last week we meandered along the high line, went down to Chelsea Market to buy lunch (Num Pang banh mi), went back up to eat it while looking at the Statue of Liberty, and then went to the Whitney museum. (where my teens whined about how art is boring and said “once you’ve seen the bean you don’t really need to see the shiny balloon dog, too, mom”.) But it was a lovely time.
I love the highline! Last night we dragged the 10 & 12 yr old on the subway to Brooklyn Heights to look at Lower Manhattan/Statue of Liberty/World Trade Center in one magnificent vista. Never before have you seen 2 kids SO RESISTANT to enjoying any of NYC. If they could stay in the hotel w wifi forever they would. Central Park was great!
And I love the Bean!
The Cloisters, if that’s your kind of thing.
Ooo I will Check It Out.
Thank you!
Oh and that park, Fort Tryon, is gorgeous. My pal and I bopped down to a diner on 186th, I think, near the river afterwards and ate some good ass burgers.
Beautiful AND Hamilton adjacent. Thank you!
The Cloisters was EXACTLY my kind of thing and I had In Western Art History commentary running in my head the entire time.
Thank you. This is part of what made the Toast the toastiest.
Not technically from the right scene, but I will second that emotion. (Go watch Frank! It’s a beautiful and great movie.)
Hot tip if you want to walk over a bridge – take to the Manhattan Bridge, which has *views* of the Brooklyn bridge but not the crowds! Just a few rando joggers. It is glorious and calming. Walk down to Brooklyn Heights Promenade afterwards and marvel in the fanciness/pretend you are Cher in Moonstruck.
NYC fare waived for the metro then i need to change trains at the next stop because the one I am on has a 50 block outage but this one takes me to the doors of Fort Tyron! Looking forward to the wandering and exploration. Sunblock powers activated!
Go to Confectionary, in the East Village, for the best chocolate of your life. 440 East 9th Street.
If you like fashion, the Manus x Machina exhibit at the Met right now is a lot of fun and worth seeing if only for the giant sparkly wedding train featured on most of the ads.
I have shared beds with colleagues. But it was for a convention for which we have to pay for our own rooms, so like six of us packed into a suite a couple times. There were people everywhere! Sharing the bed was actually the choicest option, because it meant you were on the bed. 🙂 BUT it was something we all did totally voluntarily, to save our personal money. I would evaporate into nonexistence were I asked to share a bed with my boss.
I’ve shared beds at cons plenty of times now, but I was there for fun! And I volunteered to do it to save money! I apparently would much rather spend a whole weekend in bed with someone I only know online, than a single night with a coworker.
Well, I lie. Several of my coworkers are also nerds and have become friends and I would share a hotel room. AT A CON.
I came to the Toast this morning, and all I could think was, “What fresh emotional hell are we going to read and cry and mourn over today???”
This is OT…but I have to post one last “how bad is my ex? THIS bad” story.
I handed off the kids to him for a month at 5:30 pm yesterday. Handed him a printout with who goes to dentist, band, instrument lessons, karate, lacrosse, and when. Discussed that it would be hard to pick up boy at work at same time as dropping girl at lacrosse (7pm) on other side of valley. He blathered on about no, no no he had a plan and boy was usually late from work and he’d manage (my solution last week was to send boy to coffeeshop next to work and tell him to hang out for 30 minutes–he’s 15, this is fine). Also gave ex a map of the bear sightings showing that the bear on Saturday was 1.7 miles from his house through the woods, and no updates on bear locations have been posted since. Apparently I should have specified that ex had to turn around immediately and go back to pick up girl after picking up boy from work. I tried to but he brushed me off.
So, by 8:20 pm? Boy and ex are in my driveway loading the tuba into the car, ex has already picked up boy from work. Since that is plenty of time to have done both pickups, I assume girl is in backseat of jeep.
But then I get several phone calls and texts from girl’s teammates’ mom–Ex didn’t pick her up and they stayed for 20 minutes so she wouldn’t be alone, can they drop her off at my house since my ex didn’t give them his number?
Less than three hours. Less than THREE HOURS and he’s already stranded one of the kids. Despite written instructions. And he has to wait in my driveway for my daughter to get dropped off.
Ugh, this kills me on your behalf! I’m one of those people who also gives DETAILED lists of instructions and texts everyone reminders — so that this EXACT thing won’t happen, and when it does, you’re like, WHY do I try?!
Well, maybe one day he’ll ignore the bit about the bear. To his detriment.
Yeah, if this was a novel that would be almost too-obvious foreshadowing. “I gave ex a map of the bear sightings…no updates since Saturday….”
I cannot like this comment enough.
Oh, I am so adding this to my list of ways in which I gleefully imagine his death!
Uuuugggh OF COURSE it falls on you to be on top of everything in their lives and create detailed plans and schedules for him, because that’s the mom’s job, *obviously* and the dad can’t be expected to have a calendar of their activities figured out. Eyeroll.
It’s so not fair that you have to be the only one doing this, and I wish you could just throw up your hands and let him handle it, and laugh when he screws up… but of course, it’s your KIDS that are getting screwed up, so you can’t.
🙁 Hopefully he realises he fucked up and gets it together for the rest of the month. Hugs to you.
welp, no. There are six people in that house who can drive (and two with temp permits). Four of them are teenagers, and it is not their job to transport my kids.
But they ALL went out this Friday night, including ex and his girlfriend.
And made no plans to pick up high school boy from work at 8pm. Guess whose friday plans got cancelled to go rescue him and drive him to ex’s house. Kid would have been stranded with a dead cellphone, at least he thought to call me on the store’s phone before the store closed for the night.
Wow.
Truly stupidity is the strongest force and most infinite resource. Every time I think I have plumbed the depths of it, lo, there is more!
I am experiencing some free-floating anger today, and suddenly I have a place to put it.
Could he even be any more of a jackass?
It is not fair that you are stuck co-parenting with a malevolent turd.
I love when people provide resting spots for free-floating anger.
Can I just say that I love that you admit to just randomly having free-floating anger? It’s so nice to not be alone!
Maybe this is the summer the kids learn to look out for each other – I won’t let him forget you if you don’t let him forget me. If it hits them both equally, it can be a bonding thing.
I’ve lost track of the age of your youngest, but I think junior high school is accurate. Mine are 14 and 16. What I do is put all of that into a Google calendar, and add each child to their own appointments via their own Gmail accounts. If the activity will take place while they’re with their dad, I add his Gmail account too. No one is “forced” to accept the appointments, but no one can say “I didn’t know!” and it seems to work pretty well for us (in general, we don’t work together so well).
I’ve lost track of the age of your youngest
So, presumably, has their father.
Ha ha, yep, this. I give him a three month detailed schedule on the google calendar on May 1st every year. The dentist appt. wasn’t on it because it was “he has a cavity, come back in 2 days” thing. Everything else except lacrosse is at the same time it has been for 8 years now—band camp, band practice, karate lessons–they have been same time same place forever, we just cycle through which kid is in MS/HS. He’s just too lazy to care.
Yeah, we don’t work together either.
ETA: the high schooler’s counseling appointments vary, but kid puts those in google when he makes them, gives dad a card, and the office calls him the day before.
This is giving me flashbacks to my teenage-hood with my divorced father.
Good god, what a useless fuck.
LOL, the fun continues. He asked college boy’s girlfriend to drive the other two to the dentist today. She texted me because he didn’t tell her the dentist’s name, phone number, or address.
Oh, and his not getting the girl was my fault because the website was wrong and I should have told him.
I just… here.
Your ex is the worst, and I am sorry he is a continued presence in your life (and probably sorry he is still in your kids’ lives too, although I am slightly less comfortable saying that). I know it is weird to hear this from an internet stranger, but… I have been reading your comments for a long time now, and I really hope that you will have a place that gives you the support you need and deserve now that the Toast will not be here for that any longer. *internet jedi hugs to you, if you want them*
awww, thank you! I am a bit terrified of the slack thing. I need to break down and join reddit but I’ve been in denial.
When the middle kid was a baby I joined a parenting forum…and we proved too controversial/assertive and were kicked off the mothering boards. And then off another board. And then we made our own. Now there are only 3 or 4 of us who check in every few days, but some of my closest friends are people I met through that particular corner of the internet, and we’ve camped together, visited each other, supported each other for 15 years now. I hope that the ex-toasties will be able to find a bit of that in the relocation. I have a feeling we’re mostly too stubborn not to!
OK I am at work and cannot post a link to youtube but y’all gotta google the Blood ad from bodyform if you haven’t seen it. I’ve been waiting for it to be in a link roundup but at this point I’m just afraid people will miss it because it is truly A Toastie Thing that must be seen!
Here is a link if anyone needs it. I loved this ad!
excellent! thank you!!
Um, holy hemoglobin.
That commercial was amazing, and also made me cry? (guess who has two thumbs and is about to get her period? THIS GIRL.)
(I also cried)
This ad makes me feel like taking up some sort of physical activity.
I’m going to see my parents tomorrow and I am SO STRESSED that I will be spending PRIME Last Day of the Toast time DRIVING.
but oh man this GoT review is hilarious.
I will also be driving for much of tomorrow. Alas!
Driver solidarity!
I’ll be flying!
Me too!
You guys I *think* I just saw Aziz Ansari walking down the street outside my office? But I couldn’t stare to make sure because I didn’t want to make a random dude feel awkward, famous or not.
I didn’t want to make a random dude feel awkward
Quite possibly my last ever CleverManka gif reply *weep*
I dunno, if we believe the news, white people making non-white people feel uncomfortable is kind of in vogue in the UK right now and I like to buck the trend.
I’ll troll some white dudes on Tinder later to appease the misandry gods for this imbalance.
While this was my first thought as well, I love everything about this thread and how it has transpired.
I think you should just assume it was him!
I flew to Denver a few weeks ago, and one of the things we were going to do there was watch my baseball team play there. Boarding the plane, I passed what looked to be one of my players sitting in first class. There he was again standing in baggage claim, and Reader, I probably looked like a creepy lady staring this dude down, waiting for a sign that he really was a pro ballplayer. No one at all talked to him, he was wearing glasses when he doesn’t on the field, and when I see him play he is usually wearing (obviously) shades and a ball cap.
Later I googled him to look at his face and try and decide, and lo and behold, there was a photo of him wearing glasses. DAMMIT IT WAS HIM. But really, was I actually going to say anything? No, I was not.
Thanks for giving me that opportunity to tell my story, I guess.
I have spotted a few famous people since I moved to London, in like, normal walking-down-the-street contexts not in ‘being mobbed by fans at a premiere’ contexts, and it’s so weird cos you’re like “I recognise you but why?” and then you realise OH you’re a FAMOUS! But then what if you’re not and I’m staring.
Tbh, I strongly believe you get your Londoner card taken away the minute you act excited or acknowledge the presence of A Famous in your vicinity – we have to act uninterested and chill or else they will stop venturing out among us like this! So my reaction would’ve been the same whether I was certain it was him or not.
This is something I told my friend in no uncertain terms when she OH MY GOD-ed all over Damian Lewis that time we saw him in Covent Garden
I followed Jason Segel for a LONG TIME before I realized I knew him from the television and not from some other circumstance where it would be acceptable to speak to him. I kind of wish I had a video of my squawk of realization and about-face!
When I was working for my hedge fund, I would do the recruiting trip to UC Berkeley every year and I would stay at the Claremont and order room service and never get out of my robe except to swim and if I had been asked to share a room, I would have thrown a literal NO LEATHER FLATS fit and hurled a decorative vase. AS LONG AS THERE IS CAPITALISM, I WILL NOT SHARE A ROOM ON A BUSINESS TRIP.
AS LONG AS THERE IS CAPITALISM, I WILL NOT SHARE A ROOM ON A BUSINESS TRIP.
New life motto.
CORRECT, that is the only way to do it. I am on a work trip next week and I can’t WAIT to take extravagant baths and lounge a lot etc. Thanks, capitalism!
My boyfriend was in Tel Aviv for work a while ago, and the hotel breakfast cost £17. I was vocally horrified by this. Even if my employers were paying for me, I would feel so guilty!
That is a sense of loyalty to a company that is deserved by no for-profit company on this good earth.
I should stress that it’s not company loyalty, just a horror of extravagance and spending unnecessary amounts of money. (“How can BREAKFAST cost £17?”)
The same way a glass of orange juice can cost eight of them? http://o.canada.com/news/bev-oda-top-hotel-16-ora…
NB: this was a member of a party that campaigned (and won) based on their promises of fiscal responsibility.
The hotel I stay in in Euston when I go down to London for work has a £15 breakfast. (It’s included in our room rate, but for some reason we had to get the breakfast-by-itself rate once.) It is AMAZING though – a massive, massive buffet with fresh breads and pastries and yoghurt and fruit and fruit coulis and cooked breakfast and omg it is very very nice.
Yeah, like, I am a student and haaaate spending money, but I would have nothing wrong with a $15-plus breakfast that was actually worth the $15-plus.
When I went to the Nine Worlds convention a few years ago I was staying in a dismal concrete hotel near Heathrow airport, and the breakfast was completely amazing. They had a wafflemaker and a constant supply of freshly-cooked mini-waffles, with a choice of three toppings! I loved it. (More recently, I decided to push the boat out and stay in a super fancy Oxford hotel, and the breakfast was just nondescript and blah. So apparently hotel cost and the breakfast quality don’t necessarily bear any relation to each other.
(The Heathrow hotel also had a shelving unit in the reception full of glass water bottles, and you could wander in and take some whenever you wanted – I drink a lot, and am always unsure about whether or not it’s okay to drink the water in hotel en-suites, and don’t know how to interact with staff and ask for things (we didn’t really go to hotels when I was growing up), so this was basically the best thing ever for me.)
My brother took a photo of the $100 Indian buffet at the hotel he was put in when his company sent him to their Singapore office and he needed to stay an extra week beyond what was planned, because the building where he was supposed to be training the local IT department didn’t have wiring yet.
He generally has a horror of expense. But he was irritated enough at having to skype his spouse and small children to say, “I know I told you I’d be home on Tuesday, but there’s a problem” that he felt pretty good about that buffet.
Omg if this was the buffet at Straits Kitchen I will be so, so happy
Raffles Tiffin Room.
I am delighted, though, that there are multiple places fitting that description.
Ok I would be all about this buffet if someone else were paying for it
If I had to stay abroad for work for an extra week, I would consider access to a nice Indian buffet the very least my company could do to make up for it.
That was basically his thinking!
I sent him a long list of must-see sights, courtesy of a friend who’d been in Southeast Asia the previous year, and he wrote back to say, “I am not built for the heat and humidity here. I am bored watching people wire the building, but at least it’s air-conditioned boredom.”
Thank goodness for the solace of the buffet.
My brother worked for a congressman, and he and some other staffer went with him to a breakfast meeting at the Four Seasons. My brother is a picky eater with a temperamental stomach, so he got a $17 yogurt. My family and I were amused and horrified.
I just did my expense report for a trip I took to Vegas for a convention and it continues to boggle my mind how much some stuff cost. I had a highly mediocre dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the hotel consisting of one glass of their cheapest wine, dumplings, and beef with broccoli. It cost over $50! But I didn’t have to go outside when it was 110, so my company can pay for it.
LOL – at our last retreat we were exhorted to order room service for the last breakfast because I guess they didn’t want to organise/attend a final meal? Everyone’s breakfast cost like $40+. Glory. I did not feel any guilt or horror at all.
Fancy hotels are basically designed to help business people rack up big business write-offs. Like the $21 salads downtown. Same deal.
But my thing is, do I need to be participating in that culture? If everybody does it because everybody else is doing it, then waste and corruption become part of a toxic culture.
No you do not and the whole thing is very very gross. I am too glib sometimes.
This is my issue with it, really. I could afford the odd expensive breakfast if I wanted to, but I find the culture of extravagance and conspicuous consumption really depressing, especially when I think about how little so many people have. (Watching stuff about really rich people spending vast amounts of money on pointless things just makes me sad and angry. I am middle-class to the bone and could never be posh.)
Well, and also the widespread understanding that “hey, it’s the company’s money, so I can absolutely waste it doing whatever, as long as I can justify it as a business expense,” and vendors marking up their products accordingly. Because they know that people are willing to frivolously overspend company money, so they might as well charge 3x what anything’s worth, right? And then this is understood to be COMPLETELY NORMAL.
The $21 salads downtown are precisely the reason that during the year I worked in the financial district, I brought my lunch and ate outside every day it was not raining. As part-time support staff making $8/hour, that was too much money to pay for something that was (a) daily and (b) not actually filling.
The problem I have with expense accounts is how expensive they make life for people without expense accounts (or people who, even if they could get reimbursed, would have trouble coming up with the $21 at any given moment).
I keep being flummoxed by kids in the program I just completed who are surprised and impressed but a little concerned when I speak of my “hotel” and not “hostel,” they want me to know that plenty of European hostels don’t have age restrictions. that is really terrific to know but OLD PEOPLE LIKE LUXURIES. I wouldn’t even have shared the city of Rome with all the Romans if I had the option of paying a little extra to have it all to myself,never mind a bedroom
My previous boss would always stay in hostels when he traveled. I learned this when I mentioned I was going to Santa Monica for a weekend and he told me how nice the hostel there is. He is in his mid-40s and was making six figures. He was just cheap.
That’s sweet of them, though.
Lots of hostels have private rooms (with a bathroom down the hall), and a breakfast buffet of some kind, and are much, much cheaper and more centrally-located than many hotels.
But! To each their own.
I’m enjoying the image of Nicole in a fluffy robe, propped up on the bed with massive pillows and a breakfast tray, interviewing Berkeley students.
I always assumed that’s how the Toast worked.
This is really the best way to deal with being in Berkeley, IMO.
YES. I work at a non-profit where we are all under-benefited and under-paid. A chunk of our staff travels 60-80% of the time, and folks like me a little less (10-20%) but no one EVER shares hotel rooms. There would be RIOTS. We all work nine hour days together when traveling AND are endlessly interfacing with the public, the sanctity of watching NCIS while eating a take-out calzone and farting ceaselessly CANNOT BE QUESTIONED.
My non-profit, too! I don’t travel as much as some of my coworkers but my trips tend to be to run longer events (4-6 nights instead of 1-2), and as an introvert, the *only* thing that keeps me in “on” mode by Day 5 is knowing if I just make it through dinner I can hide in my room and not have to wear pants or make pleasant conversation with anyone for a few precious hours.
one of my best female friends is turning 50 next year and married a 27/28 year old guy last year. the age difference isn’t as stark, but it’s still enough to draw attention. literally neither of them have considered it an issue, apart from one of mechanics (i.e., is she too old to have kids? what about her retirement/potential illness when he is still young? which are super hard issues to talk about but also important ones!)
their families reeled when they announced it, but they came around so quickly you would not believe. all it took was…. are you ready for this? all it took was them seeing how HAPPY they made each other, and suddenly they were all about it.
(meanwhile i am dating a guy 4 years my junior and like, he was in high school at the height of emo/screamo and so that’s sort of his thing while i am like “oh my god?? no?? it’s all about alternative rock and alt-metal??” and then i remember that if that, and the fact that he appreciated shit like pokemon and harry potter when he was appropriately aged, UNLIKE ME WHO WAS JUST A WEIRD TEENAGER, is our biggest issue, we are doing OK.)
My best friend’s little brother got married a couple of years ago. He was 21 at the time and she was 35. And same re: seeing how happy they make each other.
Mr. LF is four years younger than I. Through a series of twists, he was actually 7 years behind me in school, so I get to say things like “he was in 5th grade when I started college!” and it is hilarious.
My boyfriend is the same age as my youngest brother–we’re nearly six years apart. But I’m 36, so who cares??
There is no inappropriate age at which to appreciate Pokémon.
One of my friends, who is my age, married a man nearly old enough to be her father who was also in our circle of friends. They’re amazing together, and they just adopted a baby.
I was very rude to Mr. Ada and finished reading the Carvell piece over the pork chop he so kindly cooked me last night. It was so much genius, I just couldn’t help myself, despite the clear shade he was throwing over the dinner table. #noshame #oksomeshamebutanyway #thatporkchopwasalsogeniusthough
I’m actually around for the Link Roundup, but somehow this doesn’t mean that I have some spare time, but rather that I’m even more stressed than usual; had to leave work early today because I have an appointment. Between the Toast ending and everything I have to do at the moment, I just want to go to bed and sleep for a good long while until I’m feeling better.
I know how you feel. I blame the weather, absolutely everyone here is “meh”, grumpy and stressed. Basically I just want to find a cave to sleep in for the next ~three weeks.
Yes, the weather! It rained over night, so I dressed for lower temperatures, and of course it got stupid got again. I can’t take this any longer.
Well, and I dress to warm because it looks like autumn out there, but five minutes later it’s sweltering heat and sun and somebody please just shoot me and/or give me pool.
When I was an undergrad, i had the opportunity to present some of my research at a conference. Which is a huge deal when you’re 19. So I didn’t really blink at the fact that I had to share a room with two fellow students (all female). But about a week after the conference, I learned that one of those students has scabies, and I freaked the fuck out. Thankfully it had been the other two of us who shared a bed (it suddenly made sense why she’d insisted on her own bed). I’ve never even considered sharing a room on a work trip since then. Luckily it hasn’t come up because I work for reasonable employers. But I would straight up pay for my own room before sharing with a semi-stranger again.
Once on a weekend field trip in grad school, four of us shared a king bed! It was rather awkward to be one of the middle ones and have to get up to pee… No scabies though, as far as I can tell!
On a high school trip, 4 of us were sharing a 2-bed hotel room. I went to bed first, and apparently I sprawled out so fully that none of the 3 freshmen had the guts to wake me up and get me to move.
Grad school has inured me to sharing rooms with people, and most of the time I don’t mind sharing a bed. However, my junior year a friend and I were sharing a room for a conference in Chicago, and our advisor asked us to share the room with one of his grad students, who was Kenyan and couldn’t afford a whole hotel room by himself. He had incredibly, mindblowingly smelly socks, which he washed in the bathtub and hung on the towel rack overnight to dry.
The other problem was that there was only one bed. My friend and I said we’d switch off with him, so every other night we’d get the bed and he’d get the sleeping bag, and then he’d get the bed, and we’d get the sleeping bags. Which was fine, fine, fine until my friend was out grabbing drinks and the grad student was getting ready for bed (in the bed) and I was getting ready for bed (on the floor) and he told me I should come up and share the bed with him. Not to worry, he told me, although he’d been away from his wife for 5 months, he would control himself and he would not be like a snake in the night.
I decided to go hang out in the lobby for the rest of the evening.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
ALSO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The first thing I did when I finished the Green Book piece was promote it on social media. No worries there!
I then emailed GentlemanX another of his pieces (an obit for Bernie Warrell, keyboardist for PFunk http://www.mtv.com/news/2898249/bernie-worrell-ob… and also the specific instructions to read the Green Book piece. He also loved it. It is such a lovely parting gift, thank you.
My thoughts are with the UK toasties, especially after seeing (CN: racism, xenophobia) this piece in the Guardian. I hope the atmosphere changes for the better soon.
I think there’s some sort of campaign going on right now about that. Apparently if you want to be identified as a ‘safe’ person for immigrants, you wear a safety pin. The woman that promoted the idea says you can’t just wear it idly, you have to stand up for people if you see that garbage happening, or document it somehow, whatever the people involved need.
I am waiting for the unintended consequences though. As much as I like the idea I know there’s gotta be something I’m missing, right?
I have only seen this suggested by white people, and the black people I follow on Twitter are like, “this is about you getting cookies, right?”
Yeah, that’s the general impression I’ve seen as well.
I’m just wearing mine so that no one mistakes my lily white arse for a Leave voter.
To an extent I worry about men using it as an excuse to harass women. Like “Oh, you’re wearing that safety pin, that means I can sit next to you, invade your personal space, and make you have a conversation with me”. I don’t know whether that’s likely to happen, but it is a concern.
I feel like it’d be so easy for people to wear the pin in order to find victims. Pull them in disguised as an ally and then attack from closer range.
‘Cameron condemns xenophobic and racist abuse’ bit late for the man who implied that Sadiq Khan was allied with terrorists during mayoral election campaign.
I love you all and I’m going to miss you so much. That is all.
Angels in America! I wrote my undergrad thesis on that piece, it has a special place in my heart.
Guys is Toastpocalypse today or tomorrow? I need to calibrate my emotions accordingly.
eta: saw the One Day More comment above. Whew!
Fittingly, tomorrow is also the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
I know you didn’t mean to be trivial, bookworm, but my Grandad fought at the Somme and isn’t really in the same ballpark.
Of course a much-loved website closing down is nothing in comparison to a battle in which so many died (and I apologise for upsetting you; the fact that it was 100 years ago, and the fact that I have no personal connection with anyone who was directly involved – my great-grandmother was born in 1914, so even she was too young to remember WW1 – makes me forget that that’s not the case for others). Everything is just so appalling at the moment (and, again, the Toast’s closure is only one small part of that, against a backdrop of horror) that commemorating bleak moments from history just feels unpleasantly apt.
I know. Thanks. Things _are_ appalling (I’m in the UK). I would probably find the WW1 stuff distant if it wasn’t for my mother, who was very close to her Dad, and who rang me in tears this morning after seeing the pictures in the paper of the battles. Grandad survived but suffered greatly.
I’m really upset about the Toast too :((
Internet Hugs (if wanted) (I want them!)
I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through and wish today wasn’t a difficult day for you and your mother, but just wanted to say that this exchange with bookwormV is the epitome of what I’ll miss about the Toast. A different point of view is gently highlighted followed by immediate commiseration and acceptance.
Internet hugs to you.
Thanks aqueousmedium. I agree – the Toast is so humane (womane?). Hugs back.
It is so horrible in the UK at the moment (I’m here too).
That sounds very distressing for your mother, and I’m sorry for touching a nerve; it was insensitive of me.
Internet hugs sound like a good idea.
It is actually Memorial Day in Newfoundland tomorrow for precisely that reason. But also Canada Day after noon. Extreme emotional whiplash: just part of the Newfoundlander experience.
Oh whew didn’t realize that! I thought today was the End of Days.
A reprieve! One Day More! I’ll take whatever Toast Crumbs are on offer because, well:
ETA: wow, embedding that gif was a STRUGGLE in a long line of 2016 struggles!
I wish I could hug each and every one of you. Unless you don’t want to be touched. Then I would give you a respectful head-dip.
Still pretty bummed that Jessica Williams didn’t get/take the Daily Show lead job, even though she said that she wasn’t really interested.
I believe that she wasn’t interested. Now she gets to create her own show. I’m excited.
So excited! <3 Jessica!
Yeah, honestly I’m *more* excited to see what she does on her own than within the Daily Show paradigm.
I am so very frustrated that this is a very busy week at work. I want to give the Toast all my attention, and yet life intervenes. Don’t they know I’m grieving?
Same. Saaaaaame. Last invoicing day of the month and a presentation to prep for tomorrow. AND some freelance work to do. Ugh.
Also same. 🙁
and me. the fiscal year ends today and all week has been last minute billing and annoying conversations with the accountant and tomorrow is all about closing the year. BOOOOOO to work getting in the way.
“Corporate never,” eh? I’ll make sure to let my last three jobs know that.
I just got petty revenge on my cat for scratching the shit out of my hand earlier. I waited until my housemate was holding her and they were having a nice moment and then I played Willam’s parody of Hello by Adele. My housemate laughed until she cried because it was so apropos. The cat got jostled and squeezed and jiggled and cried on. I’m so happy. My housemate is so affirmed. The cat is so disgruntled. Gold star.
I started on the drag queen videos when I read the end of yesterday’s Tolkien piece to try and console myself through comedy. Thanks for that.
How are you consoling yourself and/or annoying your animals?
So far, my roommate and I are failing to keep my cat from harassing his new feline roommate. The only consolation is the black humor derived from this being like a very, very bad romance novel (they’re both neutered tho).
My male cat is pulling the dudebro just-wanna-be-friendly (for a value of ‘friends’ that includes ‘eat your canned food’), and my roommate’s female cat is hissing, spitting, and retreating in the face of his apparently unstoppable and oblivious determination to invade her personal space. My roommate has dubbed him ‘ninja cat’ and is reaching the end of her rope. I keep offering to lock him into my room more but so far she has some weird inability to get on board with that. IDK why. I suspect this will be our first real problem as roommates, because so far everything has gone pretty well.
As someone who had to convince a big, friendly, oblivious dudebro cat and a tiny, ferocious, territorial lady cat to coexist, I recommend feeding them in separate rooms, possibly with a closed door between them, which may make your roommate’s cat feel less threatened the rest of the time since she won’t feel like her food source is at risk.
Also, if there’s some way to create a space that the roomate’s cat can get to and your cat can’t – based on size, or balance, or how high they can jump – so she has an escape route, that can help too. (our dude cat spent several hours a day on top of the fridge because he could jump up there and my tiny terror could not)
Hopefully your cat will eventually get a clue that he needs to back off and the situation will settle on its own.
They already mostly live in separate rooms – he in mine, she in my roommate’s. They have separate cat towers, litterboxes and other accouterments. They spend most of the day apart. My cat is also apparently much more alert and athletic than roommate’s cat.
Mostly I’m concerned that my roommate is becoming flustered and extremely unhappy. I could absolutely come up with a gate for my room door that would work, but roommate is extremely opposed for reasons that are extremely unclear. Then they go and buy expensive semi-solutions so ‘no one needs to do work’.
I am much more mystified by my roommate than my cat, but alas I cannot construct a gate that will sort their issues out. I can only make a gate that will keep my cat in, if they would ever stop freaking out at the very idea of it.
The next door neighbors’ dude cat likes to come into my yard and stare at my cat. One time he dashed up and pounced her, but he mostly just comes up on the deck and looks at her, either face-to-face or through the sliding door. I thought he was trying to intimidate her, until the day he got stuck halfway down the steps, while she was hissing at the bottom and I was standing at the top looking at him. I think he just wants to be friends/take her on a date.
Bye, Toast. Please think of me when you turn over a US$10 bill and it says “WHO LIVES, WHO DIES, WHO TELLS YOUR STORY” in block letters, and know that it’s a secret coded message from me meaning “You are awesome, and don’t let anyone tell you different.” XOXO
I love this and will be doing this to all my US$10s, now.
SAME!
I’m not ready for this to be our last link round up. Who’s going to tell me what to think now?
Oprah?
aaaa guys I just found out I am blocked by Lin-Manuel Miranda on twitter, and I don’t know why! I don’t even talk to (/tweet at) him!
I mean, I admit that I was less-than-enthusiastic about Hamilton, but I don’t think I ever really made a big deal about that, I’m not like actively opposed to it or anything.
how bizarre! Now you have your Jeopardy! fun fact.
do you have a lot of twitter follows in common? I’ve blocked perfectly nice people just for constantly showing up in my timeline when I don’t really know or want to get to know them.
I don’t…*think* so, I am not exactly a force on Twitter. Also, celebrities usually have their twitter streams set to “Verified Only” or “Mutuals Only” so it’d be weird that he’d see any of my tweets at all?
I don’t know I must have made a joke that didn’t go off as well as I thought it would; that is pretty in character for me.
anyway I think the thing that makes the most sense for me to do is to throw myself full-bore into becoming a successful Broadway playwright and force him to acknowledge me as a peer so that I can challenge him to a duel
Muskets or epées?
well, you don’t fight a duel with muskets, but I’d prefer swords over pistols since 1) guns are symptomatic of spiritual weakness and 2) I am 90% certain I could take Miranda if it came down to a swordfight.
Except if I want swords, I have to trick him into challenging me, so that I get to choose the conditions of the duel, and for that reason I mean to found the New York Post specifically to publish insults about his character.
Perhaps you ended up on a block list that he uses? I’ve known of other people to end p on block lists for no good reason. (The small downside of block lists.)
Also possible, I guess. I might have got caught up in the Hillary-Bernie crossfire, since I muted a bunch of feeds rather than unfollowing, so if it’s a chain block then I guess I could have gotten hit too.
I forget the name of it, but there’s a plugin you can use where it blocks not only the person you block but everyone following them. You’re probably collateral damage.
Yeah there’s a couple different ones I think, with different degrees of collateralizing effects.
I found out I was blocked by the Toothpaste for Dinner guy on twitter. I rarely tweet at all, mostly just in response to people I follow, and I am CERTAIN that any interaction I’d have had with him was “I love your stuff!” because I do. I hate hate HATE how personally I took it when it had to have been some block list weirdness or something.
Yeah it’s weird but also this is like the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in a week? Being snubbed by a celebrity is like the second-best thing after being acknowledged by a celebrity.
Especially when the celeb is LMM. I mean, he’s a big deal from what I understand. 😀
I think that needs an asterisk. Depending on the celebrity, being snubbed by a celebrity is better than being acknowledged.
I was blocked on Instagram by a random person. I had followed them because they posted a lot of cute cat pictures and Instagram knows I’m into that. I don’t think they are famous at all. Fortunately for me there are plenty of other cats on the internet.
Thank you for restraining your less-than-enthusiastic opinions here so that I didn’t even know about them! I’ve always really enjoyed your comments, and of course everyone can feel however they like about Hamilton, but my parade is easily dampened.
Well, I haven’t seen Hamilton or anything, I don’t think it’s bad, and I think it’s great that other people like it, I am just…neutral with regards to actually being personally interested in it. That has never seemed like a very important thing for me to mention, but I guess LMM knew, somehow.
He knew.
Hahaha, I love that. But OF COURSE it was just some weird block list glitch, I cannot believe Lin actually resents anyone for not liking his musicals.
No man who radiates such intense devotion at the entire world could possibly bear that sort of resentment in his heart.
I am baffled by all the stories about sharing rooms on business trips. My company throws money around like no one’s business on trips. I’ve almost gotten used to having a room with two beds just for myself (I think a business trip I ever didn’t share a hotel room). And then last time I was randomly upgraded to a suite. It was at least three times larger than my apartment. It had a private balcony. It was bananas.
And I work for a nonprofit and I’m like, WAIT, it’s NORMAL to not share rooms? I had a room to myself once and it was incredible.
Having a hotel room just for myself still feels like the most decedent thing in the world. Other things I did for the first time on the company dime: order top shelf liquor.
This reminds me of the cruel reality that was brought home to me by dating a lawyer: most of the rest of the world lives a whole lot better than academia. My boyfriend is an associate who has been at his firm for like 3 years and he has an ENTIRE OFFICE with a WINDOW! With a view of downtown!!
My advisor is a full professor, has been at this university for 20+ years, and she just got an office with a window LAST YEAR, when someone retired. Her previous office was a supply closet.
Ha, right? I got updated to a suite last year and it was crazy! I don’t travel often so it was such an awesome thing to have happen. And now I think I never want to work for a non-profit if it’s going to involve travel. This sounds awful.
My company is pretty cost conscious, but I’ll never forget the time a coworker and I had something like 6 bedrooms between the two of us when we booked into a little boutique hotel. The place was a mixture of rooms, suites, and apartments and it was the off-season so they charged us the regular room rate and put us each into giant apartments. I arrived first and actually had to double-check at the front desk that we’d in fact been booked into separate spaces.
Two beds means one bed for eating take-out in, one bed for sleeping. Apologies and tips to the housekeeping staff.
I always request a king size bed on business trips. Last trip I was upgraded to a room with a giant soaking tub. I went to Lush that afternoon and bought a bath bomb.
A+ to you. Way to take advantage!
I’d like to take the time here, since this is active thread, to do two things.
The first is to thank and appreciate The Toast for everything it’s given me: lovely writing, thoughtful and thought-provoking pieces on social justice, an education on issues I (as a person living in a country that’s just beginning to grapple with immigration and with what “diversity” means) hardly knew about because my country’s public discourse is too often still stuck at the “we’re all white, right?” phase. Thank you. Oh, and thank you for the misandrist moments, too, because sometimes you just need to be angry about the patriarchy and it was nice that this was a place to go.
The second thing is… talk about my feelings, I guess?, about a thing I’ve seen here, especially in the commentariat, which is a bit of a tendency to address everyone here as if we all came either from the US, the UK, or Australia/New Zealand.
I’m hesitant to say this, because it probably is true that the vast majority of readers here are from English-speaking countries, or live there, and my very-recently-moved-to-the-UK Italian ass is part of a tiny minority. So maybe my role here is to accept that no matter how well-intentioned and noble a person is, they will still have practical limitations — it’s impossible to address yourself to everyone, everywhere, all the time, especially when all you’re writing is an Internet comment and you’re on your lunch break.
Still — it sounds like most of the folks here want to be as inclusive as possible, so I thought they might want to know that when they write “we have X problem”, where “we” seems to be “the Western world”, and the problem is actually exclusive to the United States, or the US+Canada+UK, there is at least one person (me) who feels excluded from the conversation. (This comes up a lot when people write about schools and college. I am appalled and deeply saddened by the issues that schools and colleges in the US are dealing with. Italian schools and universities have entirely different problems, and it weirds me out to see people talking like we all have the same problems.)
I realize this is almost literally the last possible moment to point this out, so I’ll clarify: I’m not asking anyone to do anything right here, right now. But I’d appreciate it if you thought about this while moving towards your future endeavors.
I meant to add some more examples to this so people don’t feel vaguely attacked, but I’m running out of time. Will try to return later. In any case: if you read this, thank you for reading.
I think this problem may be a function of this being an English language site, but I wish you had spoken up sooner because i, for one, hunger to hear examples of how things are done differently elsewhere, whether better or worse.
I also wish I’d been in the position to do something more about it (like write an email to the Nicoles and Mallory, or maybe even pitch an article of some sort). TBH it took me a long time to figure out what was even bugging me. I did write a smattering of “this is how it’s done in my country” comments, which you can probably see if you click on my username (not that they’re super interesting).
I’m sure the fact that this is an English language site means you don’t expect a lot of readers from Southern Europe, where English is notoriously not common. But I think the issue is also a cultural one — every country has its points of reference, places and cultures it considers more “relevant” than others. I’m fairly sure we get more about the US in our national news than Americans get about Italy, for instance (and by contrast, we barely ever hear anything about Northern or Eastern European countries, to say nothing of what happens outside the Western world).
For some last-minute compensation, here is an article about the possible reactions to Brexit on the part of European countries that are generally less prominent in the news. (It was written pre-referendum so Brexit is still referred to as just a possibility.) http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2016/04/21/prep…
I second the notion that chiming in with your own particulars is an easy way to broaden the discussion and offer useful points of contrast (with the caveat that in some instances that could be seen as derailing, so choose well). People doing that regularly have made up for a lot that I missed in school and I genuinely value it.
I will hunt you down like the ungrateful Giving Tree boy you are
I choose to believe this is a shout-out to me: occasional commenter; one-time contributor; religiously devoted lurker and reader of The Toast.
I’d like to dedicated the warbly, off-key version of Rhianna’s “Stay” that I’m singing in my head to you, The Toast.
I have to spend a lot of tomorrow travelling and hanging out with my Mum, trying to avoid talking to her about Brexit as we were on different sides. I hope to catch the Last of Toast later on.
Thanks for everything. Thanks.
Gnh. Ok, Toasts, I have a problem and I’d like some insight on it before the very last Open Thread.
I worked my first election as a poll worker this week. It was very, very slow — it was a primary for the congressional district I live in, we had about 30 total voters over nine hours. Anyway, as I’m sure you guys are familiar with, poll workers tend to be retirees with lots of time on their hands, so I was expecting a certain amount of uh, generational difference with regard to stuff like language and racial issues and whatever (I’m in my late 30s and queer, fairly visibly so). I was hoping to keep conversation light, I brought a book, and was just hoping to get through the nine hours as comfortably as possible.
Except….there was one person, an older woman, who just would not stop talking. And the stuff she talked about was peppered throughout with offensive racial stuff, ranging from commentary on “the blacks” and how “those people are,” to the insidious infiltration of Guatemalans (very specifically for some reason), to actually using, multiple times, an offensive racial slur for Muslim people.
I want to say something, but I don’t want to be blacklisted from participating in future elections. I have very little capital built up here, this being my very first time doing this, but I also strongly, STRONGLY believe this person should not be representing the county government! How do I approach this? If I email the coordinators, what even do I put in the subject line? Obviously SOMEthing needs to be said!
Do you have any kind of code of conduct or anything that poll workers are supposed to abide by? If you do, I would email your coordinator (whoever told you where to be an when and trained you?) and say something like, “Hi, I have some concerns about some things I heard during my work which were not in line with the Code of Conduct. Who should i discuss this with?” If there isn’t a Code of Conduct, or you don’t know if htere’s one, I’d email and ask if there is one!
Hm, no code of conduct that I know of, and the only part of the training that touched on what I might call disadvantaged populations and how not to be an asshole was the ADA section. Under federal election law, you aren’t allowed to discriminate based on the usual list of categories, though. Ugh.
Is there a “hostile work environment” angle you could take in the email? I mean, it’s volunteering, not work, but still. SURELY you can’t be the only one bothered by this horrible person and if they want to get future volunteers, I would think (hope) they’d want to know that someone is driving people away.
We actually do get paid as regular employees of the county, so this is probably a good angle to take.
If you are a county employee there will probably (somewhere, buried in some obscure, falling down office) be a code of conduct. It might actually be online! This may have been a breach of the code of conduct though if you are contract workers or temps it may be harder to get anything done. Good luck!
Hmmm…maybe you could email the coordinators saying, “This person’s comments may be detrimental to those trying to vote and may discourage a diversity of poll workers in the future,” or something like that. Put the focus not on your own discomfort (which is totally valid!), but on how this could hurt others and keep them from participating in the democratic process. I mean, poll workers should appear impartial and business-like, yes? A person who repeatedly uses racist language and slurs is not someone I would trust to handle my (liberal) vote carefully. I haven’t had any personal experience using this tactic, but it has worked for people in other situations.
Maybe next time you could also try shutting her down yourself: http://www.askamanager.org/2015/11/my-new-coworke…
I actually need help with what to do now, not with how I fucked up at the time.
Oh definitely! I didn’t mean to blame you or anything like that, I apologize if the comment came off otherwise.
I hope the rest of the comment(s) above helped more!
As for a subject line, I’d say something like “Follow-up on working at poll site #53, June 23, 2016” or however it’s identified.
I’m having some lag/hang times on The Toast right now. It’s crashed three times while I’m trying to read the Hey Ladies (maybe it’s the Hey Ladies). I’m surprised it’s letting me post this comment, tbh. Anyone else having problems or is it just me (hopefully just me)?
Nope, me too. Mostly on Hey Ladies.
I’ve been trying to finish the Miss Havisham piece for twenty minutes now and the page won’t stay loaded for more than a minute at a time before I get an unresponsive script error which completely crashes my browser. I wonder if the servers are getting overloaded from everyone trying to show up for the last huzzahs. This…does not bode well for tomorrow.
I like the idea that the unrestful and/or vengeful spirits of the Hey Ladies are hanging around heir own funeral and making things awkward and stressful.
I wouldn’t mind so much if I could get through A SINGLE ARTICLE. I can’t even get comments to load, much less comment on them myself. This is a serious bummer.
I just finished the Miss Havisham piece, and wow! I can see why you didn’t want to have to put it down!
Things are starting to fray as we approach The End.
I finally finished the Miss Havisham piece, but Hey Ladies is not having it. =(
Woke up this morning and had the horrible realization that this is The Toast’s penultimate day, immediately followed by the equally horrible realization of how deeply in denial I’ve been about that fact. This is going to hurt.
I’m still in denial… but I can’t avoid the Toast anymore and truly dread tomorrow. I don’t cope well with change.
“This is going to hurt.”
Most accurate statement about this so far. It’s terrible when you see the impact coming and can only brace yourself, no way to stop it.
I’ve been helping my boyfriend move into his new flat for the past two days so I haven’t even been around for The Toast’s Last Days 🙁 If anyone tries to keep me from the OT tomorrow I will fight them.
I am hoping commenting will remain open for a long time/indefinitely so any conversations I have missed will not be closed to me forever, but stuff other people have said has made me uncertain if that’s going to be the case.
I would literally quit on the spot any job that asked me to share a room. The horror! We introverts need to decompress at the end of a work trip day, especially if it is conference. Plus, also, just, no.
I have loved you all.
Going through toast loss and last two weeks of job feels all at once is terrible.
♡
Hm. Having done battle with raccoons in the past, I instinctively see that gif as ‘racoon mauling dead or drugged cat’, and the vengeful rage renders me incapable of seeing it as cute.
I’m reading the comments on the AAM hotel bedsharing link (horrifying enough), and now all I want to do is share some of my more memorable AmeriCorps bed/tent/housing stories…
The time in the warehouse/garage with the wasps with all 35 corps members.
The time in the cabin attic with the snoring floormate.
The time in the metal hunting shack during an ice storm (not me, thank you lord jesus. I was in a heated cabin that night).
The time in a converted garage with the ticks.
The time in the basement movie theatre on a concrete floor with probably ~150+ people.
I know I’m missing some, but those are the more colorful situations. I did disaster response, conservation, and wildland firefighting, so it definitely lead to interesting accommodations.
I forgot to add this one:
The time I slept in a truck with windows up in the Rockies to get away from the mosquitoes.
Its corollary is “The times I slept out under the stars in the Rockies because stars.” So obviously I had some great sleeping locations too, lol.
I am going to be late to tomorrow’s OT, if I make it at all. 🙁
A developer is doing a walk through, and legally someone needs to be there the whole time. I drew the short straw. The bright side is, I’ll have shorter hours next week. But then there won’t be any Toast on which to spend them. 🙁
I have a feeling OT is gonna last into the wee hours tomorrow, or at least until the commenting system is shut down.
until the commenting system is shut down she says all casually and I’m just like
I can’t help but think that OT is going to be a last call situation, where we are going to have to get kicked out of the bar at closing time.
I’m trying to decide which would be worse: Calling it a day when I leave the office or hanging on and commenting until the system tells me no. Ugh. Just thinking about it is terrible.
I have a bad feeling I’m going to stick it out, like a captain watching her ship go down.
Until the lifeboat clevermanka.net comes along that is.
If I decide to stay, I know I’ll be in good company.
I will go down with this ship, and I won’t hold my hands up in surrender…
… the commenting system is being shut down?
I understood that was going to happen, since there wasn’t going to be anyone moderating the comments. I might have misunderstood, but I think it makes sense. It would be awful to see Deleted Commenters sullying our beautiful, peaceful water.
I remembered Nicole talking about the comment moderation no longer being a thing that’s likely to happen, but wasn’t sure what that meant – if comments by non-Intense Debate people will just never be approved and hang in the ether forever, if commenting as a whole will cease to be possible (please no) or if it will become a free-for-all.
I have been feeling so anxious recently about getting behind with reading and commenting (because of work, life, etc.), but tried to comfort myself with the thought that the posts would still be there and I could jump in and comment very late if necessary. If that is not the case, tomorrow will be stressful.
If the comments do stay open for pre-approved commenters, that would be fantastic. I hope you’re right!
Aziz Ansari’s Dad is a cover of Dad Magazine dad.
You know that’s right.
Cannot face tomorrow as the last day of Toastness. I’m going to start a Jessica Williams appreciation thread instead. Pics, gifs, and video links to follow below.
Here for this.
HERE YOU ARE, FRIEND:
From John Oliver’s first night in Jon Stewart’s chair, and Jessica mimed hitting a glass ceiling: “It’s unbreakable, and all I see up there are a bunch of white penises!” followed by this look:
More to come…
This whole gifset about the racist corruption in Ferguson, culminating in:
HER VERY FIRST APPEARANCE ON TDS, when I immediately went “omg, she is so cute”:
She’s so tremendous
And now for some favorite videos… hope these links work, CC redesigned their website after Jon left…
She has a great bit here in the Hurricane Sandy aftermath.
Another follow-up on street harassment, after that douche on Fox recommended just applauding as a hot woman walks by: her delivery in this bit about street harassment. “Since going to work isn’t a performance, we’re not looking for applause.”
I would like to thank leaping_rabbit again for being such a spreadsheet badass and organising the Toast Post Summer Care Package Exchange and also to my Toastie match for sending the package in such good time.
Mine has arrived already. I am waiting for tomorrow to open it, and it is something sweet to look forward to on a day that will be probably be more than a little bittersweet otherwise.
Thank you!
I am THE WORST because I have done nothing but have thoughts about the package I need to send. I am totally going to miss the deadline. I AM SORRY.
Oh no! I sent an email but I guess that means I never got a match :((
Hmmm, I never got a response either. (edit: I just sent her an email)
Me too! I sent an email and never got a match. 🙁
Me neither. Maybe we should care-package each other!
I haven’t been contacted about a match. 🙁
I haven’t received my care package or my mix CD and on one hand I’m sad because of because but also I’m sad because I know when they do arrive it’s going to be MORE TEARS so I’m kind of in this horrible lose-lose emotional space and whyyyyyyyyy
I have all my things sitting here on my desk, ready to go (care packages and CD), just need to be boxed up and taken to the post office!
Also I would like to say to my partners, do not worry about being late or anything! Just send as soon as you can.
I never got a care package match email 🙁
Me neither. I think (hope?) they’re still being rolled out?
This roundup of favs and farewells from Bitch Magazine is making me teary right now: https://bitchmedia.org/article/toast
Toast eulogies from the outside world! I love them but they HURT, you guys.
Hurts so much <3
Toasties, I know this is not the right post, but even though I’ve never posted here I’ve been reading and lurking since the beginning, and the supportiveness of the community makes me hope that I can post this…
Because I’m sick and lonely and need a Toastie hug right now. I’m European, but living in South-Asia, and I was hospitalized a few days ago on suspicion of appendicitis. After three days of poking and prodding and CRP and CT and examinations and antibiotics there’s still no evidence that my appendicitis needs to come out, and so they wanted to discharge me tomorrow morning… But now it’s late night, and my pain just got worse and I feel nauseous.
They’ve taken new blood samples and are checking them, and I’m sure things will be fine – but oh, Toasties, I’m so scared. I’m so scared, and lonely, and my family is five time zones away. Most of my close friends are out getting drunk tonight, and my mum and dad are so far away. My mind keeps spinning with all sorts of doomsday diagnoses, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
I don’t know what I’m more scared of, being told that I need surgery or getting more test results back saying that there is no physical sign of anything being wrong…
So many hugs to you — I’m sorry you’re in such a scary and uncertain place right now. Sending you my good and strengthening thoughts.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 toast hug
Hugs and positive vibes to you. Uncertainty is awful, and I hope you get some answers quickly.
Sending toast hugs to you. Don’t be shy about calling your friends and asking them to come see you, even if it would ruin their fun. Times like these are what friends are for. Hope you feel better immediately!
<3 I wish we could help.
I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this upsetting and uncertain time while halfway across the world. We’re all here for you. There are lots of people messaging all the time over on the Toastie Slack if you want some people to chat to and distract you. I think you have to email ppyajunebug at gmail dot com for an invite. Otherwise keep posting here if you can <3
Toast hugs
So many Toasthugs. Appendicitis is a scary thing, and even more so because it can be really hard to diagnose! I have been through the surgery though and while it’s no fun, it is very good at clearing up the problem. We are here for you.
Big hugs to you. Draft your friends into a Comfort Squad if at all possible, and find gentle distractions to keep from worrying. I’m keeping a good thought for your wellness.
Ohhh, *every* hug. This will be over soon — you’ll be taken care of, you’ll be out of the hospital, you’ll feel better.
Thank you everyone <3 I’m having a rough night of it, I just woke up from a doze to a full-on panic attack. I’ve taken a sleeping pill now and hope I’ll feel better in the morning.
You will get through this and you will be stronger because of it. Sending you all of the hugs.
Hugs! Lots of hugs! You’ll be ok!
You will have more information on what’s happening soon, and then you will be able to take action to make things better. I’ve been ill and slow to be diagnosed while living very far from family and the uncertainty is somehow the worst part.
I also remember not asking for help and reassurance when it would have been freely given. I’m glad you posted here, and I hope the doctors can give you an answer soon.
Sending Toast hugs and supportive thoughts your way!
Maybe you already have more information by now, but if you _do_ end up needing surgery, I had my appendix out a few years ago, and I remember waking up after the surgery and asking what wonderful drugs I was on because I felt AMAZING, and they told me I was on nothing. I just felt that GOOD to have the damn thing gone. So even if you need surgery, you will be OK and will feel better immediately.
Oh my god, the interview with Aziz’s dad made me tear up a little. He is SO PROUD of his son and I love it.
LISTEN I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL WEEK TO POST THIS.
https://youtu.be/44DOp0IQBd4
Maybe it makes me a terrible person but it’s been all I’ve thought about.
Work and job-hunting have been a weird traffic jam of eye-strain so I am actually holding off on reading a lot of the final Toast pieces, which means I’ll have a tiny cache of pleasures to look forward to. Tomorrow I plan to run out super-early for a few groceries, then cry until roughly 1:30 pm, then go to a poetry reading in the park and our local art walk thing as a gesture of rejoining the outside world. But I’ll be doing so with that little heart shape missing from my piece of toast (and maybe stenciling that image onto a T-shirt). Love you all.
In case I miss you tomorrow…
One last ride down the mountain.
I had a job where the woman who booked our travel very kindly did not seat us together on long-haul flights. But once when I was traveling with my boss (whose last name is a homophone for “mate”) the woman at the check in counter took us for husband and wife and said “Oh no! Looks like you’re not sitting together, we’ll have to keep the mates together.” Followed by an uncomfortable game of chicken where neither of us wanted to be the one who said “please let us keep our assigned seats.”
The thought of 5 hours stuck next to each other was horrifying enough (and I liked him! But it’s so hard to be work me without actual work to do), I cannot begin to imagine sharing a hotel room.
I have had a (hated) colleague somehow wrangle us seats together despite the fact that we checked in separately. The wooooorst!
There was a terrible, terrible incident once where I was flying first-class to London with one of my least favorite bosses and I realized that this meant I had to see him lying down sleeping. It was awful. I pulled my hoodie over my head and prayed for death.
I usually hate special treatment for being a woman while doing fieldwork, but when it means my own separate women-only side of floor or being the only one to get a private room I will take it every time. I’ve managed to recruit a few more women for the next trip and I’d choose sharing rooms and beds over being the only woman on the team any day, though.
The times I’ve been the only woman in a school or work environment, women-only privacy has been useful precisely for getting away from the fact that I was the only woman in that environment.
I admire you all and I’ve felt welcomed here and I shall miss you. I don’t know what slack is and I’m a recalcitrant twitterer, but we’ll keep in touch, right? Of course we will! Never forget that play we were in together! Have a great summer!
I’ll always remember the good times we had! Have a totally kick ass summer! LYLAS & KIT
-Hattie
2COOL
2BE
4GOTTEN
H.A.G.S.!
See you on the astral plane!
I’m getting nothing done at work today because I don’t want to miss out on any last Toast moments. This place is magical and you are all perfect witches.
Also Aziz Ansari’s dad is so adorable, I just want to squeeze him.
Thank you, The Toast, and all the toastie staff/editors/writers/comment moderators (will The Bartender’s identity ever be revealed???). Tomorrow, other than reading the site and the Slack and Toastie Twitter and crying, I will be going to an appointment at Planned Parenthood and seeing a screening of Lemonade, neither of which I chose because of the end of The Toast but they do feel like the best way to honor it.
If you find time to go to a library (preferably one that specializes in old and/or rare books), you will have created the Toastiest memorial day ever!
I understand. And yet The-Toast.net was such a wonderful, interesting, safe place for their audience and participants. With a motto such as ‘A Willing Foe And Sea Room’ (a traditional toast in the British Royal Navy) this website provided a wonderful site for any interest you may have had and a welcoming spot for those with questions. I will miss it. Where will I be able to discuss dick ribbons in Renaissance art, medieval English, The Game of Thrones, Dean Martin, Miss Havisham, Dad Magazine, as well as experiences of non-white citizens in the US? Not to mention the plethora of dog and cat pictures. Today, we all take to the sea.
Dear Toast– as a librarian with an unholy affection for L.M. Montgomery and YA fantasy, you have been my most bosom internet friend, even if I haven’t been here all the time. My Toast tshirt is my running shirt, and when men yell at me about “yes sir yes sir kill all men” I can’t hear them because I have Beyonce/Sleater-Kinney up too loud. I’m sorry I missed the totes, but I was always so very excited to see people pop up here that I hadn’t seen since the halcyon (i.e.2008-9) days of Jezebel (or on Tumblr).
Thank you for everything, thank you for bowing out instead of selling out, and may you take to the sea with joy and misandry in your hearts.
I’m just now realizing how screwed I’m going to be without The Toast–I now work mostly swing shifts, and my work computer blocks everything fun EXCEPT The Toast and Archive of Our Own. My current fandom does not produce anywhere near enough fic to keep me entertained when things slow down at work. I work a reception desk and can’t spend all that time looking at my phone or a book, and knitting would take up too much space.
I am so fucked.
I mean, I can try and plow through literally every post on The Toast that I haven’t yet read, but honestly the comments sections are always half the fun of any post, and I’m not leaving comments on posts that are three years old!
SOB SOB
Oh Toast, dear Toast, it’s late and no one is reading this, but I may be too late to the open thread tomorrow, and I wanted to make sure I got this out. It’s been an honor and a privilege to be a mostly-lurking member of the Toast community for the past few years. Nowhere else, on the internet or in real life, have I found a place where I can discuss books and Broadway musicals, cooking and cotched kittens, L.M. Montgomery and P.G. Wodehouse and Dorothy Sayers, while reading and learning from a spectrum of brilliant and talented people whose paths I might never have crossed otherwise. I’m not a queer librarian, only a queer veterinarian, but I’m glad to have have had the chance to hang out in this corner of the internet for a while. I wish I’d been able to act on my vague notions of commenting more, or pitching a piece about James Herriot and 21st century veterinary medicine, or jumping into the open thread to rave about how awesome Audra McDonald is. I don’t know anything about Slack or Reddit and how they work, but I’ll figure it out, if only so I can continue to spend time with all of you, and maybe join in the conversation more often. Thank you to Nicole, Nicole, Mallory, and Marco for creating this space and sustaining it for as long as you have, and thank you to all of you in the greater Toast community. I’ll miss you.
Delurking for the very first time to say this: Mallory? I don't know if you'll read this but you recommended Robert Benchley (I forget if it was here or back at the Hairpin), and because I was very curious, I had my sister pick up a used copy of "Benchley at the Theatre" at Powell's and ship it to me here in Manila. I keep it on my bedside because it makes me cackle after a long day at work. Thank you.
I finished my Too Witches design and put it on Red Bubble. http://www.redbubble.com/people/katastrophy/colle…
http://www.redbubble.com/people/katastrophy/colle…
Eh, I would just go ahead and do what you're planning to. Just say the situation with the cats being unfriendly it's stressing YOU out, and you'll get rid of it when they're calmer with each other.
Definitely feed each other out of sight of each other, and where one can't interrupt the other.
If one or both of the cats is stressed by the situation, keeping them stressed just makes it take longer for them to get used to reach other. If you need another argument for your flatmate, although I wouldn't bother justifying my arrangements to de-stress my cat.