The remaining webmasters of Heaven’s Gate:
Today, only a few Heaven’s Gate believers remain. Two of them sit on the other end of the website’s sole contact email address, and will promptly respond to your inquiries. Which seems odd for a group whose members are all widely believed to be dead.
The people who respond to HeavensGate.com queries refer to themselves simply as “Telah” and “we.” They’ll answer questions if you ask—that’s part of the gig—but they’ve wearied of the rubberneckers that have passed through ever since their fellow active members committed suicide in 1997. Which is perhaps to be expected when you’re the only official contact point for one of the largest, most bizarre mass suicides in human history.
In fact, what’s most surprising about the Heaven’s Gate website is that for all the hundreds of pages of sermons and prophecies and transcripts held within the site and its advertised wares, the bizarre, often incoherent text really doesn’t tell you all that much.
And what it does tell you isn’t half as interesting as the people who are doling it out.
*
The books that made Roxane Gay who she is.
*
In fourth grade, “making it” did not mean anything to my friends and me. All living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, we knew no one who had “made it.” We knew of people who “made it,” but because “making it” seemed to be predicated on that person no longer being here, in Bed-Stuy, we did not care to know them. “Making it” meant that, to be successful, you had to get out of Bed-Stuy—you had to escape. It did not matter so much where you went after you left (it could even be jail); all that mattered was that you left. This was how success was measured for us: “If you want to be successful, leave. I don’t care where you go but if you’re here, you won’t make it.” It didn’t matter if this was ever actually said because the implications were loud and clear even if unspoken. We did not listen—who wants to be told that what formed them is something they must escape?
*
The Gawker Review of Books is alive! And I am pretty excited about it, honestly.
*
Rainbow Brite fan-fiction of one’s youth!
*
The Misty Copeland profile in The New Yorker is really good, and gets at a lot of interesting things, I think:
Bradley waived Copeland’s ballet-school fees, and other community members contributed to the cost of her leotards and pointe shoes. “When I was dancing, I felt in control, and happy,” Copeland said. “I’m a Virgo, so I really like to be in control.” For most of the next three years, she lived with the Bradleys. Fairly predictable tensions arose between the two families. “I felt very loved and accepted by the Bradleys—I felt like a member of the family,” Copeland told me. “I’m not sure my attitude was so great when I would go home and complain about canned string beans, and say that I preferred shrimp scampi. My mom was working all day, and she had six children.” Copeland shared a room with the Bradleys’ young son, Wolf, attended synagogue with Bradley’s parents, and at the dinner table all attention was centered on her and her goals. Bradley’s husband, a modern-dance teacher, was Copeland’s pas-de-deux instructor and partner. “I loved the attention,” Copeland told me.
*
ABOUT the deleted comment of the day (I was not gonna give him the venue, but here’s a taste):
*
AND THEN, AND THEN, he typed out his entire 600 word comment a second time, I deleted it, and then he commented:
So, let me be very clear: we will never be interested in the thoughts of A Man about a woman’s lived experience of misogyny, even when helpfully stated in the form of a numbered list. That will literally never happen. I am so happy to have had the opportunity to clarify our views on this point.
*
How many step trackers there are in Washington is impossible to know, but there are some hints about the city’s collective walking capacity. Jawbone has stats showing its D.C. users average about 8,262 steps a day, which is less than U.S. leaders New York at 8,704 steps and Boston at 8,471. D.C. beats slender and tony Miami, which somehow manages only 6,734 steps per day.
THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT (pacing while watching The Wire, and ranting about McNulty):
Men get so upset when you refuse to let them have An Opinion about things they don’t experience.
And they call US oversensitive.
Men are sensitive and easily upset creatures. They should not be allowed in positions of power, nor should they be allowed to run for public office. The best place for men is in a cloistered, contained system–some type of male nunnery, perhaps–wherein they can devote their lives to thinking calming thoughts, free from the distractions of women.
I love men. They are dear, sweet things, when in their sphere, and when not unmanned by attempting to exceed it.
For their own health they should stick to fathering children, fixing cars and making the occasional shelf. They have no place in the wider workplace, or in public discussion.
Listen, I know this is satire, but I’m sold.
Who said anything about satire?
TOUCHÉ.
I am a man who cannot fix a car or make a shelf. WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH ME?
If you’re anything like me, we can hang out and play Magic: The Gathering together.
That sounds delightful. I will bring some Cheetos.
Sign me up.
When the misandrist revolution comes, we’ll just sit quietly in the corner debating combo decks. Legions of women will be filling the streets, gleefully displaying heads on pikes. But we’ll be spared because the three of us will be juuuuust boring enough to be inoffensive.
Hmmm.
Mothers, see the great tragedy that occurs when you don’t spend especial time in educating your sons? You see before you a hopeless man, one who will never make a good marriage and know the simple joys of manliness. Do not neglect your sons! Help them learn the masculine spheres, lest they be a burden on you in your old age.
And be sure to train them in proper morality, else they will fall, and become poor, frail haunters of the streets, afflicted with disease and madness.
We may have the electrify you, cut bits of your brain out, or dump you in ice water baths until you accept your masculine sphere. It’s for your own good.
oh this made my misandry so tingly inside
This sort of tragedy is why boys should be encouraged to stay in school. It’s true that many of the classes are too intellectual for them, but shop class is a valuable resource for those whose parents neglect to teach them important manly skills like car fixing and shelf making.
And how else are they going to find a capable woman to support them! Got to go to university to get that M.R. degree, amirite?
You can lock me away, cut bits of my brain out, and dump me in ice water, but I will retreat into a realm of pure imagination where, in a sexy schoolboy uniform, I will subvert your gender expectations by baking cupcakes, mopping the floor, and gently weeping over Benedictual Cucumber fan art on tumblr. Loudly. In slow motion. And with an unecessary framing story. And they will make a movie of it and the movie will be called SUCKER KISS.
I would watch that movie. I don’t know how I feel about myself now, knowing this.
I’m like 90% sure there’s a manga of this somewhere.
Many a woman has had to pay the price for her husband’s failure to learn important masculine tasks before embarking upon marriage. Namely, she has to pay another woman to put up shelves for her, as her husband is unable to perform even the most basic of husbandly duties.
You may have a future in our Dad Program. Please fill these papers with all the jokes you know and a representative will contact you at a later date if you are accepted.
I am already a Dad so I think I got this down.
Let the women be the judge of that, sir.
are you good at puns
I liked the Gawker line about the sensitive guyflowers of Tinder: “It’s always about their feelings. It’s always about their feelings. It’s always about their feelings.”
“Sensitive Guyflowers of Tinder” sounds like a sci-fi novella. I’d read it.
Yes, they appear to be quite ruled by their emotions and unable to process events logically. I think all of this hysteria must originate somewhere in the body – the prostate perhaps? Bless them, they really are bound by their own feeble nature.
If only doctors could find a cure for Wandering Dick Syndrome.
Heeeee! This made me squeal with delight!
It’s not our fault; it’s the hormones.
I’m in love with this gif. Thank you for bringing it into my life.
Also I need these cards.
I think we should all have at least a dozen on us at all times.
I especially like when they argue for the importance of logic and rationality in all uppercase text and exclamations marks.
“Your emotions are silly and irrational! MY emotions about the same thing are the plainest logic! My MAN-NESS makes it so!”
I mean he spent TIME on it. His Valuable Man Time!
My experience with this is whenever A Man is calling a woman oversensitive, or irrational, or emotional, or what-have-you, it is almost ALWAYS projection.
“There are so many emotions right now! Where are they *coming* from? I know they can’t be coming from me, because THE HORROR. They must be women’s emotions, hanging thickly in the air!”
An ethical question: Is it okay for me, A Man, to tell a female acquaintance who is very prone to explain about how neither misogyny nor discrimination exist and all feminists are screwed up idiots that she’s being wrong? I have no right to tell her how to experience things, yet she’s the one who keeps going on the exact sort of rants about how it’s All Just Nature and my overly sensitive male brain cannot resist mansplaining.
How…how does this come up? Is it like in the midst of otherwise normal conversation her one eye starts to twitch, she stands up ramrod straight, and starts shouting in a monotone? Does she just blurt this shit out when you’re trying to talk about, like, a book? The clouds? A bumblebee?
There is some part of me that delights in the idea of you being horribly overcome by the urge to mansplain how she’s wrong when she actually is wrong, but probably you can argue against the whole Nature bullshit on the merits pretty easily without telling her about her experience. Or just hastily change the subject, because holy shit that sounds about as fun as having a conversation about gay people raising children with a self-loathing closet case. Just UNCOMFORTABLE.
Well, she is able to derail a conversation about, say, sharing house responsibilities with a spouse by saying, very innocently, “You do know that the emancipation is the worst thing that ever happened to women, right?”… once I heard this brought up while talking about Murakami and the type of people who usually read him.
Your last two sentences are pretty spot on as to how it actually feels. (See also: debating if Pride parades are bullshit w/ boyfriend)
Oh God. Yeeeeeaaaah that is…man. I am always tempted to resolve such situations by saying something like, “please do not be self-loathing AT me, I’m not interested,” and then walking away or ignoring the person in question if it continues, but I’m also pretty comfortable being an aggressive dick when I think it’s warranted, so. (This does absolutely work if they’re looking for validation. If they never get it–like you just ignore the shit out of them when they do this stuff–eventually they look elsewhere. You have to be pretty confident and consistent in the role of Asshole, though, and pretty sold on the idea that it’s not your job to change their mind / you wouldn’t be able to if you tried, bc of all that self-loathing. It was a last resort for me.)
But yeah. The persistent desire to involve others in that self-flagellating weirdness is a problem.
There… have been arguments about this and other similar stuff already. She walks away feeling victorious because people disagreeing with her or being pissed off are walking proof that she is right and everyone else is deluded, somehow. Which might be a sort of validation, probably?
Ugh, sorry for going on rants like that. Venting, I guess.
Venting can be so helpful, though!
Yeah, that’s kind of what I mean–any response at all is validating, but negative responses up the ante and get them more involved, bc they still need to win. Just IGNORING, though, is like…cruel magic. Nobody wants to shout into the void, because it’s demoralizing and depressing as hell, so eventually they stop talking about the thing that gets them ignored. (At least with you.)
So selectively ignoring behavior is super effective, if also kinda manipulative. I mean, I don’t judge. I’ve done it, even if at the time I saw it as drawing a big ole personal boundary (“I cannot talk about this with you”) and then enforcing the fuck out of said boundary. And housemate craziness is just it’s own world of terrible, especially if boundaries are being ignored.
On the plus side, if you draw the boundary explicitly, maybe she’ll respect it? (I mean, no, if she’s working out personal issues and is unaware of it, probably she won’t. But one can hope!)
I hope it gets better.
Yeah, I guess this would be the best course of action but 1) I have so far been unable to discipline myself enough to exercise it, 2) even if I managed to do this in real life I still get contact with her online because of an internet discussion community we have in common, where she sometimes hijacks random threads she disagrees with (hateful enough to be an issue, rarely going far enough to warrant a ban or something). It’s not a huge issue, but it can be… unpleasant.
Man I did the Fitbit thing for about a month and it made me so neurotic about getting all of the steps in. It took over my life and I had to wrestle it back. Is there a way to pedometer-ate without going insane?
A group of health professionals I’m following recently had a message board convo about a similar topic. Someone suggested using Fitbit and other phone apps to change diet and increase exercise. Several other people shared multiple instances of patients using similar technologies to support controlling behavior (anorexia, excessive exercise, what have you). I don’t think they came to much of a solution other than “if it is a problem, don’t use the apps”. I know this is extreme and not exactly the problem you had. Interesting to see the technology going both ways, helping people track health and also helping people track unhealthy behaviors.
Nope! Reducing your life to numbers means you will inevitably be ruled by them. Bow to the machine (I say, as my robot vacuum cleans my house without me there to supervise it).
This (and the budding disordered eating) was the biggest reason I had to stop doing weight watchers. NREAM?
I am having a current similar problem because my doctor was like “Your cholesterol is too high! Your carbs are too many! You are overweight for your height!” and I had to start cutting out a lot of things and now it’s like, I’m not really eating a whole lot. It’s weird, but I’m trying to find a balance that I can work with over time, because I really only feel happy when I can have cereal.
Same issues here. Numbers! So … controllable, and neat! So easy to think about all. the. time.
I just use a set of phone apps (Moves and Balance, if you really want to know), so it’s just an app running in the background while I go about my life and not, like, a bracelet serving as a constant reminder? In fairness, I’m really just curious how many steps I happen to take in the course of a day instead of attaining a certain goal (though if you make/break a record number of steps, you get a happy little notification which makes me smile), so part of it may just be my own approach.
The must-get-steps-in thing lessened for me after about two months. Also, sometimes I reduce my goal in the Fitbit app so that I can hit it more easily, and then if I get more that’s a bonus.
The whole concept of all this personal data–steps, calories burned, sleep patterns, etc–gives me the utter willies. My dad’s super into it and I refuse to go near it. It seems like an impossible way to live–but then, I can’t even weigh myself regularly because I will get wayyyyyyy too hung up on the data and trying to manipulate it; that’s the kind of personality I have. I guess there are some people in the world who can have this information and not make themselves miserable, but I hear about my cousin’s mother in law frantically lapping the hallways at 11:30pm in order to meet her steps target for the day every night and I wonder.
I just…like, people are so up in arms about government surveillance (for good reason), but then you’ll just put all this out there for a corporation to do with as it will? (which I know is paranoid, but that’s what squicks me out the most. Plus also I haven’t weighed myself in years because the numbers weren’t helping, so I feel like this might be a bad idea)
Yep. Except most people I know are pretty blase about government surveillance too.
“stay nice and try not to hurt the blogger”? Fuck off.
Is it bad that I’d prefer not to know about the deleted comments?
I don’t mind it because it’s kind of like they’re in a cage and we can poke them with sticks if we want?
I also find it refreshing, a reminder of the relative horribleness of other sites and how lucky we as a community are to have our high priestesses of misandry keeping that bullshit out of here.
If, during the course of your regular commenting, it takes effort not to be hurtful? You are the problem, guy. Not the blogger. You.
“Nature and not misogyny.”
If there were fewer people in this office, my head would be banging against my desk repeatedly.
I think it’s the “so far as I know” thing that kills it for me.
“So far as I know”…what? As just some dude? As some non-expert in the subject of anything? As a clumsy and irrational not-very-observant-observer of nature? SO FAR AS I KNOW you mean what, you mean, “it looks like to me”? You mean “in my opinion”?
Well who gives a shit about your opinion, random nameless dude commenter?
I wanna strap him to a chair, clip his eyelids open a la A Clockwork Orange (which I’m sure he loves, because a violent rapist and murderer no longer being able to rape and murder is a TRAGEDY) and force him to watch female praying mantises eating the heads of male praying mantises over and over again.
I approve of turning him into a lettuce.
BUNNICULA.
Yes, that part made me say something along the lines of “lwakgergsuerjkkjefbhahahahasdklfjghsruejpr”
So that’s the noise I heard!
THAT HEAVEN’S GATE ARTICLE. I read it a few days ago and proceeded to plaster it across all of my social media because, damn, that article is SO INTERESTING. If you look at the comments (which, I know, we never do unless we are here) a surviving child of two members that “crossed” spoke up and it continued to be interesting.
I kind of love reading about things like that (Heaven’s Gate, Jonestown, other doomsday cults, etc) but I could not stop thinking about it.
To throw a different link into the mix, let’s talk about GWAR’s new female vocalist, Vulvatron.
I remember there was an article about Heaven’s Gate in a link roundup a few weeks ago, and I commented to ask who on earth still pays for their webhosting. And now there’s an article about that! I feel like past me was vindicated somehow. Thanks, Nicole!
Aha, it was you!
I read the article, and kept wondering why I semi-remembered something about their website and the fact it was still ongoing.
The cult narrative! Why is it so compelling?! I mean, I grew up in prime cult country, but it is so fascinating and weird and strange and frightening – this idea of giving up your identity to someone else. Your identity, your autonomy, and eventually your life.
Where is “prime cult country,” anyway? And what makes it so?
edit: I saw downthread that you’re talking about Northern California. My second question remains! What is going on up there?
Man, I have thought about this so much and it is mostly a bunch of half-baked theories based on my own personal experience, but I really think it’s California, and to a lesser degree, the West Coast. Lots of space, a settlement narrative that was built around escapism/ untold and easy riches which drew a very specific type of personality, and a propensity to be the landing ground for all the whackadoos driven west by their pissed-off peers. I mean, that’s how the U.S. has always sort of progressed, with fringe types forging ever and further west as social order became more established in the east. My brother and I were talking about his the other day, and he says that’s why he loves New England so much: more rules, less chaos, fewer nutsos squatting in the woods on their compounds. Seriously though, Northern California is just full of this kind of stuff.
Edit: oops, I posted this before I saw your edit, but it all still stands! Though I seriously would love to hear other people’s theories on what makes a fertile ground for cults to take root and spread, both on an individual and community level, and if my perspective on N. California just is skewed b/c I know a bunch of weirdos.
Interesting theory! Makes sense to me. Not to say that New England doesn’t have its fair share of weirdos (as I’m sure your brother knows), but they do seem to be more isolated and less LET’S FORM A COMMUNITY AROUND MY CANDY-STEALING HERMIT BELIEFS.
Haha candy-stealing hermit was discussed at LENGTH during my conversation with my brother!
I would love to know what causes this type of regional disparity. Like, what is it about Northern California that apparently breeds whackadoo cults? And what is it about New Mexico/the Southwest that breeds mystical New-Age hippie woo-ness? I WANT TO KNOW
Me toooooooooo! (In no small part b/c I fear certain family members are just one charismatic dude away from joining a cult themselves.) (Absolutely based on past experience.)
I mean, N. California has New-Age hippie woo-ness out the butt, but I wonder how its manifestations are different from what’s going on in the Southwest? Are there fewer freaky-deaky compounds? Are people more prone towards individualism down there? Someone please write a comprehensive survey of cults in the US from 1500-present day, because that is the only book I would ever need again.
I would buy six copies.
“Just one charismatic dude away from joining a cult” should be on a t-shirt that you can give to people to let them know how you REALLY feel about them.
This made me laugh super loudly in my open-floor plan office. Bless you for this image.
It doesn’t go back that far, but…would this suffice?
http://www.amazon.com/Mystics-Messiahs-Religions-…
Well partly it’s also that once these poles of woo-ness get established they’re self-sustaining. People who are drawn to that will migrate there. So it’s not totally that specific places keep breeding it, somehow (though it’s not totally NOT that, either). Sort of like immigrant communities–it’s not always that a specific place holds an intrinsic attraction to a specific population, but rather that a few families ended up there and then that was enough to make it a destination because sticking together is attractive and helpful.
Oh my god, yeah. I am on the complete opposite side of the country, so our contact with cults over here is limited (though Mother God preached on our campus and approached people and I actually know someone that got sucked into it, VERY WEIRD) so I have this morbid fascination with them (and off-the-grid sorts as well like Ruby Ridge and Waco and by proxy the Branch Davidians). I think it is mostly because I do not identify as a religious person that the curiosity sets in – what drives this cult in particular? How does it function?
idk idk idk you’re right though, compelling is ABSOLUTELY the word I would use.
If I am superficially nice and use correct grammar, then everything I am saying is valuable!!
— Mr. Deleted Comment
The best part is that he didn’t even USE correct grammar. “I have spend time” NOPE.
His comment reads like English is not his first language, which could perhaps make it understandable that he does not comprehend that The Toast is not a forum for his views.
Understandable. Not forgivable.
Am I the only one who is reminded of the blokes in the “Women listening to men”-paintings?
Also: “Anyone who commits the crime of having views opposed to mine is obligated to DEBATE ME any time I wish for that to happen.”
I have not used derogatory language or referred to anybody’s genitals, so my contributions to this conversation are clearly valuable!
Re: Nicole deleting the comment
If I were not at work I would be weeping copiously at the beauty of Roxane Gay’s booklist.
The Gawker review site led me to this article about Heidi Julavits and Sheila Heti’s new book on fashion… http://review.gawker.com/reviewer-slams-new-fashi…
This really disappoints me. I like both the authors and haven’t yet read the book, but what Rebecca Carroll describes about the hair-braiding section just makes me shudder. Come on, white ladies. Not every story is about us.
On the other hand, I think ‘narcissism’ is often used as a dog whistle to criticize fashion as a fluffy feminine pursuit when it’s way more than that.
ETA: to clarify, fluffy feminine things are awesome. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world does not share this view.
I filled out one of the surveys they drew from when I was bored at work, so I got a free copy of the book. I’ve only skimmed it, but it does seem a little self-involved (I mean, the first thing I did when I got it was go to the index and find my name, sooo…)
But yeah, it seems like not just a white lady thing but a rich coolest-girl-in-school white lady thing. I’m not sure I’m going to spend much time with it.
oh, I have the survey bookmarked so I can take it later — I love clothes and thought the questions were thought-provoking. It might be cool to hold a discussion group or something to compare our answers…
At any rate, in my experience (from reading How Should a Person Be?) Sheila Heti’s whole schtick is writing about being self-involved, and through that, making genuine realizations that she is connected to other humans and life is not just being navel-gazey and isolated and self-preserving…so that’s part of what makes me disappointed that she would write from such a “cool girl” perspective.
Oooh, what is this survey? Can you share?
http://www.womeninclothes.com/survey/ Enjoy!
Thank you!!
Just need to find my sunglasses and reflective panel so I can kick back, smile, and bask in the light of The Toast’s awesomemess and misogyny. Anyone have a margarita? This is gonna get hot…
I’m pretty sure you meant misandry, but I’m having a great time imagining misogyny being so forcefully expelled that it all went hurtling to the sun where it exploded in a glorious solar flare. (I’ll be on the lookout for the resulting rainbow of Northern Lights in Michigan tomorrow. with a margarita.)
shit. shit shit shit.
Well, I’ll chalk this up to my feeble feminine brain, right? hehe. :-/
haha, no, you just didn’t have your sunglasses on yet and so got temporarily blinded by the light in which you were basking. 🙂
Personally, I blame the Patriarchy.
Things I am not interested in: having a “robust debate”, playing devil’s advocate, appeals to logic instead of emotion, criticism from random online men, and the “spirit” of free speech (which is really the right of the first speaker.)
ok but how do you feel about people who are Just Asking Questions?
“playing devil’s advocate”
a common hobby! http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/201…
#notallmarinemammals
#yesallpinipeds
One of the people that OKC tried to match me with listed “playing devil’s advocate” as their #1 Thing They Like To Do Most and I was like LOL CHECK PLEASE
Gahhhh oh my god my eyes just rolled so hard I sprained something.
Similar: Guy stated that he thinks of argument as foreplay. Hahaha, no.
Does anyone want to be fitbit friends?
ETA: since I started playing Ingress (thanks, whichever Toastie mentioned it!), my daily steps doubled.
Could you tell me a bit more about Ingress? I’ve also heard good things about it, but I took a look at the wiki article just now and it seems so very complicated.
It is a bit? But it’s pretty easy to pick up, and I’m not a gamer, at all.
There are two teams, Enlightened and Resistance. You pick one, and there’s a back story about why they are fighting that I don’t think you need to pay attention to. They’re fighting over control of “portals,” which are linked to physical things in real life. Like, in my town, portals are linked to historical plaques, the post office, memorials, statues, etc.
Portals can be unclaimed (unclaimed portals show up as white on the Ingress map), or controlled by either the Enlightened (green) or Resistance (blue). You activate a portal by deploying a resonator on it. You can attack portals that are controlled by the other side by firing an “XMP Burster” on the resonators that are attached to the portal.
The stuff you do (like deploying resonators, keeping resonators recharged, attacking enemy portals) takes energy, and you get energy by walking around in areas with the Ingress app open in areas where there are portals, or by using “power cubes.”
You get stuff by “hacking” portals (you need to be within I think 40 meters of the portal in real life in order to hack or deploy a resonator). The stuff you get by hacking includes resonators, XMP Bursters, power cubes, keys to portals (which allow you to recharge the resonators to those portals remotely and to link portals to other portals) and defenses you can use to protect your side’s portals.
Does this help? The game includes pretty good training programs, too, so it’s not hard to figure it out.
Holy craaaaap this sounds fun and also like something my dude would love. We are both just starting the Fitbit thing, though I walk more than 10K steps in a day anyway due to living in NYC without a car. Thanks for the tip!
There are also really clear and helpful tutorials included in the game.
Careful, though: it’s really, really addictive. I’ve finally reached level 8, so I intend to rest on my laurels for awhile..
The very short explanation: There are some glow-y things called portals that secretly exist near you. You join a team and then you travel to portals and take control of them to make them glow in your team’s colour. Other activities include making the portals give you the things that let you take and keep control of portals, linking two of your team’s portals together, and linking three portals in a triangle to turn the whole triangle your team’s colour.
There’s a bunch of levelling up stuff and achievement badges and stuff.
It’s fun. And involves a lot of walking.
As a man (sorry, can’t help it), the only opinion I have about women’s lived experience of misogyny is that I’d like to hear more from them about it. So, thanks, The Toast, keep doing you.
Apology grudgingly accepted.
“hello miss ladies,
excuse me *tips hat* *drinks scotch* *scotch misses face* *cleans up puddle of scotch with dog-eared copy of “On the Road*
I couldn’t help but notice that you do not value My Opinion on the subject of Your Life. I just wanted to point out that My Opinion is a Very Good Opinion, and one that you should want to hear, because I am a good man who is interested in Discourse™, most particularly as it pertains to Your Life, which is up for debate. My Opinion is very important and it should be heard, and I should be heard, and you should be forced to hear me. I have brought with me here these leather straps, and this chair, and if you would be so kind, ladies, I think you will indeed find yourselves inclined to sit your posteriors (this word means butt. I’m sorry, I am eloquently verbose, mayhaps, a loquacious Ser indeed) down in the chair and listen to My Opinion. I have a right to be heard, you see, and you would greatly benefit from listening, and if you were Good Ladies and True, you would listen to me, stop worrying about your fragile feelings and listen to me, a Man, one with an Opinion. The straps are for securing you to the chair, for the safety of your fragile frames, should they tremble and seize at the power of my arguments, which are Logical and Important based upon Important Logic ™.
Every man has a right to be free speech. Every man has a right to free speak everywhere. Every man has a right to an audience, too, it’s on one of the amendments, I think the third one, or maybe the tenth. Every man has a right to make people listen to what he has to say on the internet.
Yours Truly,
The Guy Who Is a Good Man With a Good Opinion You Should All Be Forced to Listen To, On Your Own Website, Which You Pay to Operate”
The hat being tipped is a fedora for sure.
“It’s not a fedora it’s a trilby, they’re very diff–”
*quite possibly wearing Vibrams*
quite possibly
*sleeps in his Vibrams*
sleeps WITH his Vibrams, for they are his love
Thumbs’ed up by the time I got to “*scotch misses face*”. The rest confirmed my decision.
“mayhaps, a loquacious Ser indeed” This is when I died. High five with my dead hand.
oh god i lost it at Ser
Does anyone want to talk about the Scottish independence vote last night? Did any North American stay up late watching the results?
I am disappointed, since I was all set to relocated from the US to Scotland once they’d detached themselves.
Also, I saw a breakdown of the votes that showed the No’s by those age 65+ as 73%, by far the highest concentration, and this caused my perennial hatred of the elderly to rekindle.
It was really strongly split along age groups; I saw someone (and I can’t remember now — excellent sourcing on my part) attributing the difference people who came of age before Thatcher’s Britain, and people who came of age afterwards.
One of the things I’ve found really interesting to observe from a North American is a strong difference between American and Canadian commentators — so many Americans I’ve read/follow spoke strongly in favour of independence … while English Canadians have had federalism=good/separatism=bad beaten into their heads so much of their lives that they were much more tepid in their support.
I think that’s interesting, since as Americans all our history, civics, and social studies text books sing out about how great federalism is and how it was a wonderful American invention (in spite of the many terrible things federalism has made easier in US history, like Jim Crow, keeping black people from accessing welfare programs, basically everything Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about).
Well, federalism was a poor word choice on my part. . . I meant to say that English Canadians have absorbed a lot of pro-unity messages.
What I noticed in some American comments was a tendency to compare the independence vote to the American War of Independence. The Mel Gibson effect, if you will.
As a Canadian, I was kind of on the side of no merely because it seemed like a lot of things hadn’t been sorted out yet. Like, did you see what Scotland’s national debt would be if they were an independent country? Also they weren’t going to be allowed to use the pound, which seems like it would be detrimental to their economy.
Yeah, I wonder if as Canadians we are more familiar with the shitload of plans and decisions and things that need to be worked out to separate from a country and were more skeptical of Scotland being in a place where it could do it successfully. From what I’ve seen, American narratives of their fight for independence focus almost entirely on the fight to become a country without going into the boring “how do we set up a currency?” stuff, so were more open to the idea of a glorious immediate independence.
That’s funny, because as an American I can’t wrap my head around the secession thing. I mean, I know next to nothing about UK politics so I’m firmly in the No Comment camp on last night’s vote, but it’s funny to me that Americans would embrace that idea. Yo, didn’t we fight a big war about that?
I have lived in some states that definitely would have collapsed into a burning pit in the earth if the federal government wasn’t keeping an eye out, so maybe it’s just me.
Yeah, as an American with no dogs in the fight, I found myself not particularly supportive of it as it existed. It just didn’t seem like there was much of an actual plan for what an Independent Scotland would look like/how it would operate etc. If they had a more sound economic plan beyond “there’s totes oil in the north sea guys!” (pretty much all I saw) I could very easily be swayed to rooting for a less United Kingdom.
(Not that my opinion actually matters)
That was my plan, too! (I know it is not ALL ABOUT ME, but maybe some of the no votes were driven by a fear of being overrun by idealistic American Caledoniaphiles).
As a Britisher (born in Northern Ireland and living in London), I am just profoundly pleased that they are not taking James McAvoy away from us. Or, come to that, Tilda Swinton.
Or Sir Ian
As a Scot living in England, my father was very relieved. Mum tells me he spent the night shouting in his sleep “Vote no! Please don’t vote yes! Vote no!”
HEAVEN’S GATE STORY TIME: Many many years ago, I was in love with a gentleman who deeply believed in the existence of aliens. Not only their existence (which c’mon has to be real, the universe is a really big place) but as active players in the geopolitical scene. (It was Northern California and this viewpoint is not unique.) Before we were dating, from the back of a magazine, he ordered a VHS tape which swore to offer Incontrovertible Proof of alien life. Got it, and it turned out to be a spooky-eyed guy talking about castration, which was a bridge too far for my gentleman friend. Well, after all the shit went down, he remembered he still had the VHS tape and shopped it around to various news outlets who would not believe he wasn’t a former cult member. He swore that a lot of the footage of Marshall Applewhite that was used in reports around that time was from his tape.
I also knew someone who was in the Manson family for reals. Northern California: what a place to grow up!
EDITED BECAUSE I JUST REMEMBERED: Just found out this weekend my grandma met Jim Jones! She said he was very charismatic. SO MANY CULTS. I mean for reals. So many.
With a track record like that, either you need to form your own cult, or create some sort of anti-cult takedown squad.
Ha, mostly I just make lists of cults I’ve had tangential experiences with and organizations I think are potential cults and then read about them obsessively on the internet.
(Current fixation: Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. I mean, c’mon.)
omg. Totally a cult. I’m only a couple pages into their website. So intense.
Right?!!! I have relatives who were/are involved with them, and it’s not something we can even talk about anymore because they get so weird about it. But for reals: the church has bought up huge chunks of land in the hometown, and have set up houses where young people live together separated by gender, sworn to celibacy until marriage, and they “help” each other to pursue godliness and expand the ministry. They also perform “miracles” and are super predatory in how they go about recruiting new members. It is creepy as fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Deleted commentor, review the above comments and please note that, were it not for our dear editor’s good sense, you would be trapped in here with us. Now deploy some of that nicencess you pride yourself upon and thank her.
“Welcome to The Toast’s comment section, gentleman caller. You have been king for 364 days, and now the bacchae are here to discuss how you can continue to enrich our community’s growth prospects.”
Right? Like, I’m sure you haven’t been reading the site very thoroughly, sir, or else you wouldn’t have risked making yourself a target for the gleeful ire and scathing sarcasm of Toastwitches.
I’m not sure that “gleeful” is a word he can understand. He sounded like the sort of person who spends all his time being serious and who thinks that he is misunderstood when he is wrong. A commedia dell’arte Dottore.
TOASTWITCHES
Space Toastwitches. (Toast Spacewitches?)
MMMMMMMMM, TOASTWITCHES
Man, I could go for a damn toastwitch right now.
Weirdly, the internet doesn’t seem to have a scan from the “stuck in here with me” panel of Watchmen, so please enjoy this instead:
I am pretty sure that the internet itself is a scan of the “stuck in here with me” panel of Watchmen.
Actually pertinent to that deleted comment is this Wondermark comic about a terrible sea-lion.
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
(I do not know the secret codes to embed an image, sorry)
I found the (a?) secret code by trial and error. (I mean there’s probably a better one somewhere.) Just put the two lines next to each other, without gaps, plus a
<a href=”WRITE THE URL IN HERE” target=”_blank”
>WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE
Also, SEA-LION, omg
Edit: aaaah formatting really doesn’t like this. Just ignore my failed attempts. There’s supposed to be a backslash-a in pointy brackets at the end, but it is not showing up
*img src=”IMAGE URL HERE”*
but instead of * and * put < and >!
Oh, wait, it’s just regular HTML?
I….I don’t know why I assumed it was something fancy.
Because we’re fancy-ass people up in here, that’s why.
Let me try, using Ye Olde HTML:
<img src=”URL OF IMAGE YOU ARE EMBEDDING HERE”>
Linking to the original source looks a bit more like this:
<a href=”URL OF SOURCE HERE”><img src=”URL OF IMAGE YOU ARE EMBEDDING HERE”></a>
AW PEAS IT DIDN’T WORK EITHER. < is < and > is >.
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
I want to dance like Misty Copeland. Such strength and grace simultaneously. Plus – I remember her being on Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me – and she was awesome. So – yes. Yes always.
Misty Copeland is amazing, and this article was really interesting. But I kept rolling my eyes at all the bullshit people spouted at her (and the article author) about their (totally off-base) pre-conceptions about ballet.
Case in point: Copeland said to me, with obvious frustration, “In social situations, people so often ask me, ‘So what do you do when you’re not performing—what is your job?’ I’m, like, ‘I have a job, I work every day, I’m in a union, we get overtime.’ ” I mean, Misty had a great answer – I’d be incinerating them with my laser eyeballs.
Ugh, this reminds me of how this guy I knew in college has been silent on Facebook for the two years since I’ve added him, and now all of a sudden is posting things like “WHY DON’T GIRLS WANT GOOD GUYS” and “WHY IS IT CALLED ‘WOMEN’S RIGHTS’ IT SHOULD JUST BE CALLED ‘RIGHTS’, UGH”
(I had a different lady-riding-a-nopetopus gif up but it was making me seasick, so I switched it.)
Yes, that other gif is amazin’/nauseatin’
A little too spider-y for my tastes.
Stick with the classics, I say!
“WHY IS IT CALLED ‘WOMEN’S RIGHTS’ IT SHOULD JUST BE CALLED ‘RIGHTS’, UGH”
You’re friends with Joss Whedon on Facebook? That’s kinda cool.
noooooooooooo tell me this is not true
it’s just a joke I don’t get, right? Joss Whedon hasn’t…turned?
Not really, but he did give that bone-headed speech where he objected to the word “feminist” because it’s an ideology and we should all just accept gender equality as a natural human state. Which… his heart was in the right place, but the content of the argument was perilously close to the quote above.
I mean, it should just be “rights,” but we’re clearly nowhere near the point, as a collection of human cultures, where we no longer need to make the distinction.
Jesus does that guy not have a job?
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD was that in reference to my thing? Because a) I hope so, and b) HAHAAHAHAHAHHAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHA.
HA.
HA.
ETA: Actual literal GPOY self portrait of me probably for the rest of my life
*gazes raptly upon your face*
Tesoro, you are a queen among us.
Help! I need book recommendations… preferably memoirs or fantasy although I’ll take pretty much anything. I am going back to my hometown for my best friend’s baby shower (about which I have mixed feelings) and her little sister’s bachelorette party (feelings are even more mixed) so I need some plane reads, and also something to do when I spend a night at my mother’s house and need to escape 🙂
It’s neither memoir or fantasy, but if you also enjoy mysteries, the Flavia de Luce series is perfectly delightful (1950s England, smartmouthed 11-year-old narrator who loves troublemaking and poison) and a decent size for reading on planes or escaping into for short or long stretches of time, whichever is more available to you.
Oh, those are so good!
Have you read Hild yet? It is A-MAZING. It’s not quite fantasy or memoir; it’s historical fiction, but Oh my God it’s so good. It’s one of those books you finish and wish you had never read it so that you could have the pleasure of reading it for the first time all over again. HILD!
I was just rushing down to reply to type that because HILD! Oh Hild, what a joy it was to read you! I have been slightly book-depressed ever since I finished it because I only wanted to read Hild forever. HILD!
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud! Starts with The Amulet of Samarkand. All three are pure joy to read, with the most delightfully snarky narrator I have ever come across.
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear! Lovely book and a refreshing departure from Vaguely European fantasy.
I’ll cut my recommendations off there.
Memoirs: The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure (about the writer traveling around seeing all the Laura Ingalls Wilder landmarks) and A Secret Gift by Ted Gup, about how the author’s grandfather anonymously sent out money to families who were struggling in the Great Depression.
I don’t do fantasy, but I do read memoirs!
When All the World was Young by Barbara Holland
The Girl I Left Behind by Judith Nies (heavier reading)
Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Campbell (good but heartbreaking)
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen (easy reading)
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell (fun and informative!)
Through the Narrow Gate by Karen Armstrong
Oh man, there is no better feeling than deleting a long and inovlved comment that A Man clearly spent a lot of time on, is there?
Although I do *kind of* want to know what all is on the list, but purely to make fun of him.
I DESPERATELY WANT TO KNOW but the glee I feel in knowing that it just went into the void is the purest thing I’ve ever felt
Any frustration we could possibly feel about not knowing is vastly overshadowed by his frustration about our not knowing, so our ignorance serves a righteous cause.
Oh my god listen I know this is completely unnecessary here but I can’t help it it makes me twitchy every time: the constitution guarantees freedoms from GOVERNMENT CONTROL. Private places (like this blog, or, say, your place of employment) are perfectly within their rights to control your speech, at least in light of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, because the constitution literally does not apply to them. There may be other legislation or rules of law that are engaged in private spheres (human rights legislation, for example), but not the constitution. So STOP FUCKING TALKING ABOUT FREE SPEECH WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT INVOLVED IT MAKES ME WANT TO MUZZLE YOU.
ETA: In some circumstances, we will want to have debates about the way we speak and free debate in private spheres. Fine! And if you want to invoke values, and refer to the constitution as an example of those values, fine! But if you say something that implies that you have the right to say whatever you want, wherever you want, and anyone who tries to stop you is doing something illegal, then you sound really stupid and I will not listen to you.
ETA 2: I am Canadian, but this applies in the US too.
*slow clap*
he typed out his entire 600 word comment a second time
Poor man, so confident His Opinion would be quickly ushered through moderation that he didn’t even think to save the text. Obviously not a reader of this site, let alone a man worth sparing in the revolution!
He probably thought it was accidentally deleted by the commenting platform. Like, I bet it didn’t even cross his mind that a moderator might review it and find it lacking.
From the Daily Mail article on Heaven’s Gate: March 26, 1997 brought the grizzly discovery that 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult had committed mass suicide.
Based on the wording, I must assume it was suicide by bear.
Or a bear was the first to discover the scene and subsequently get the word out.
“Hey, guys? You okay over there? Guys?”
The scene was just unbearable!
I think my brother may be one of those “nature not misogyny ” types and I don’t know what to do about it. UGHHH.
Also, I keep getting pretty sexist pop up ads here, which seem very poorly targeted — “What Men Actually Want in Women” & ” CAUGHT– Celebs Checking Out Racks”
Yeah, that’s part of a new popup ad for mobile that’s making us a lot of $$ so we love it; Nick warned us that it would take about a week to sort through the content so it should just be another few days before we’ve weeded out all the weird stuff. We’re on it!
*types from phone*
It might be making a lot of money in part because I think it is actually impossible to close the pop-up on mobile? Maybe I don’t have graceful thumbs. But hitting the x just opens the ad, always. It would be nice if that were easier. (No objection to you monetizing, obviously, and I purposefully don’t use ad blocking for the toast. But trying to repeatedly close a pop up is like the worst game.)
If you are having the same problem, I have found that zooming in a little gets rid of the popup.
Today a friend posted this story about a bunch of Ayn Rand fans who wanted to start their own Galt Gulch in Chile on Facebook. (Spoiler alert: they did not wind up with the libertarian utopia of their dreams.) Between that story and the the saga of the hapless Man and his deleted comments, I’m full of mean-spirited laughter right now.
Oh man I AM SO EXCITED TO READ THIS ARTICLE, I’m going to save it for later, and think about it all day, and chuckle meanly every time I do. What a TREAT. Thank you for sharing it!
Part of me feels guilty for my schadenfreude, because a bunch of people got scammed, and the workers for the first phase of the project might not ever get paid. But the “individualist anarchist” writer who invested in the project and then described it as “an unexpectedly wild ride since then”? You don’t say.
Really, though, who could have guessed that the developer of the community for people who hate regulations wasn’t following regulations?
It’s almost like they mistook bullshit sci if for reality! Loving this almost too much.
Those people clearly should have made wiser choices, and not relied so heavily on an external actor to determine their destinies.
GWAR has a new vocalist and she is a woman and her stage name is Vulvatron! Vulvatron! http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/vulvatron-g…
She is my new hero.
I can hear that guy, probably singing to himself in the shower: “I’m gonna re-post my comment, re-post it anyway, re-post my comment/no matter what you say,” then whinging (not actual whinging but whine-singing) “Why you gotta be so rude/I has thots and feeling tooooo.” Which makes me want to barf even harder. May God bless and keep the lot of em.
So, let me be very clear: we will never be interested in the thoughts of A Man about a woman’s lived experience of misogyny, even when helpfully stated in the form of a numbered list. That will literally never happen. I am so happy to have had the opportunity to clarify our views on this point.
*wraps up in this paragraph like a soft, comforting blanket*
MEANWHILE my youngest brother was ranting on Facebook today about “What the fuck is wrong with men? Don’t they ever think about what women go through? Or transgender people? I am disgusted and embarrassed!” I am so proud of baby.