Wailing and gnashing of teeth: a massive winter storm (after WEEKS of summer weather) dumped a foot of snow in my satellite dish and knocked out the signal ONE MINUTE before the SERIES finale of Justified began, followed immediately by a complete loss of power to several thousand homes, complete with “ongoing pole fires.” And then our very expensive natural gas generator did not start. BUT then my husband did nineteen canonical male things, including going outside in the dark and diagnosing that the generator’s battery was dead and hooking it up to his car and revving the engine repeatedly, until now our is the only house with power as far as the eye can see, and I feel like the mall in Dawn of the Dead and am also soft on men for the next day or so.
EARLY MORNING UPDATE: no one else has power yet, so we are serving as a changing station for neighborhood devices and I saw the finale, let’s GIF it.
Immmmmediately go vote for this sexy trans man for Men’s Health‘s Ultimate Guy.
I am not yet watching Daredevil but I bet some of you are! This is what Jeet Heer has to say:
The visibility of Caro’s book is no accident. Wilson Fisk is Robert Moses re-imagined as a super-villain. Like Moses, a dominant figure in mid-twentieth century urban planning, Fisk is an overbearing visionary whose utopian dream displaced the working poor; both Moses and Fisk embody the hubris of high-modernist urban planning. Moses’s zeal to connect the city with parkways and overpasses led to the destruction of many working-class neighborhoods, with African American and Puerto Rican communities bearing the brunt. After running roughshod over New York for decades, Moses famously met his match in the populist activist Jane Jacobs, who fought for urban policies that respected the integrity of existing communities. In “Daredevil,” the Jane Jacobs-stand in wears a mask.
your daily mountain goats aggregation service
Never tell a D.A.R.E. officer that they are lying to you about weed, or they will come search your house and bust your parents.
Yesterday was my off day, but you didn’t see last Thursday’s workout because I don’t do Friday link roundups! THE HORROR. The pull-ups were obviously the worst part, mountain climbers a close second:
I’m up to episode 8 of Daredevil and I was inordinately annoyed at one particular detail:
Why, WHY, whenever someone needs classy-ass cello music, do they use the prelude to Suite 1? Just…pick something else. The prelude has been done to death.
(I’m kind of liking the series so far. There’s a number of things that bother me, but I’m willing to wait and see where they’re going to go with them.)
I am liking Daredevil as well! Except for all the really graphic violence. Why, Netflix? Why? That and the point you made about the music.
Also, as I was watching last night, I realized that I would totally end up as the beloved girlfriend of some sort of power-hungry monster like Fisk if I lived in a comic book universe. It’s just the way I am!
I know–the violence is way too much 🙁
I don’t know whether this will be explored during the rest of the season (I haven’t finished it yet) but I’m really wondering about Vanessa’s motivations. So far she’s inhabiting that role where the woman is perfect and accepts all the man’s flaws and always says just the right thing. It’s too weird. I want her to either be a spy plant, or have a back story that explains why she’s so willing to trust the movitves of a guy who blew up part of the city.
This is purely conjecture, and is probably not right, but from the the way her dresses fit and the lipstick she chooses and how intense her eyes are, I think she’s out for revenge on someone. I think she does like Fisk, and she’s happy dating him, but deep down I feel like she’s going to use him somehow. Like you said, I hope she gets a backstory of her own! One of the best parts of the show for me so far has been that Fisk is really well fleshed-out, so I’d love to see that for the rest of the supporting characters too.
Ooooh that sounds very plausible.
Yeah, I love the direction they went with Fisk. He’s so violent and dangerous, but at the same time uncertain and vulnerable. It makes him seem more volitile while still making him human.
I’ve been viewing the relationship between Vanessa and Fisk as a sort-of modern day Macbeth/Lady Macbeth dynamic. It’s fascinating.
Yeah, it is a brutal show. I mean, the comics are too, I was just surprised at how much they decided to run with the violence. It’s definitely a shock watching it back to back with Agents of SHIELD.
While I wasn’t expecting the violence, I do like that it shows what a toll it takes. Most shows have the hero take multiple punches in the face and shake it off, but Matt gets noticeably tired in a lot of the fight sequences.
I love how you can see him (and his opponents) get tired/concussed over the course of the fight! I’m not sure I’ve seen it done before.
It is from the show creator who brought us Spartacus so some graphic violence is to be expected 🙂
I actually laughed out loud when I looked up Daredevil on wikipedia and learned it was another Steven S. DeKnight production. Yet another TV show with intense violence that I nonetheless cannot look away from because it is so well-directed and striking.
Right? So well done. And I think in both shows the violence is in service to something vs being there just for shock value. I’m excited for his scifi series.
Is that still happening?? I remember reading about Incursion and thinking “that sounds fucking awesome”, but I haven’t heard anything about it in a while.
I think so, he mentioned it on Twitter recently being in pre-production or something.
Aw yisssss!
I think the Goldberg Variations also plays at one point, which definitely has some sophisticated villainy baggage.
I'm up to episode 8 of Daredevil and I was inordinately annoyed at one particular detail:
Why, WHY, whenever someone needs classy-ass cello music, do they use the prelude to Suite 1? Just…pick something else. The prelude has been done to death.
(I'm kind of liking the series so far. There's a number of things that bother me, but I'm willing to wait and see where they're going to go with them.)
As long as no one says they need to charge their phone to call Aunt Alicia you’re probably okay.
As long as no one says they need to charge their phone to call Aunt Alicia you're probably okay.
I was hoping to see the trash food article here! Food is so marked by class in America that it’s hard to remember sometimes that it’s a way for us to keep alive–we literally need it or we’ll die. But it starts from day one when people argue over breastfeeding or bottle, make your own baby food or buy jars, eat organic or no, pick a diet or not, eat meat or don’t, with a thousand tiny permutations and every single one is marked for race and class and ethnicity and a dozen more things.
I get frantically, irrationally angry when I see people throw “white trash” themed parties. Overalls, ratty blonde wigs, camo stuff, fake crappy tattoos, and they serve Fritos and cocktail weenies and whatever else they think poor people eat. Can you really not see that what you’re doing is needlessly stupid? Do you think you’re cool or funny for “slumming” and pretending for a couple hours that you live in a trailer and don’t eat a macrobiotic diet? How did this become a thing–the needless punching down for sake of a party of cheap jokes? “WELL, nobody who’s actually white trash was there–what’s the problem?” No one can tell me that a society where people make endless white trash jokes is going to treat actual real poor white people with the same degree of dignity as wealthier whites.
Now excuse me off my soapbox, I’m going to eat the food I grew up with and if someone would like to tell me my Jello salad is white trashy, they’re cordially invited to eat shit.
Yes. It seems to me that part of this is that knowledge-about-food is replacing knowledge-about-art as a signifier of class status in the U.S. Not so clear to me how that all got started, but pretty clear to me that that’s where we are.
Marie: Restaurants are to people in the 80’s what theater was to people in the 60’s. I read that in a magazine.
Jess: I wrote that.
http://flavorwire.com/514150/smoothies-what-the-f…
“Smoothies, what the fuck.” is my new favorite everything.
I feel the need to comment here that I am acquainted with Steve Albini’s mom. She has some great stories.
I can imagine.
Hmm maybe, it depends I guess on what “knowledge about food” you are talking about. Research indicates that lower-income people aren’t ignorant of what makes a nutritious meal, how to cook, how to shop for food, etc., but may not have the means or access to obtain or prepare it. Knowledge about artisinal handcrafted organic kale chips is probably something nobody really needs, as much as I get seduced by artisinal handcrafted foodstuffs 🙂
Hi! Sorry, perhaps I was a little less than clear. I wasn’t thinking so much about meaningful knowledge of nutrition, as must as I was thinking about how people in the U.S. seem (at least to me) to talk about novel aspects of food and restaurants to attempt to appear to others to be cultured, in the same way that one might do with, say, painting or opera.
Ah, gotcha, that makes sense. I have a ….. sore spot about rich people who think poor people just don’t understand how to eat properly (JAMIE OLIVER AND MICHAEL POLLAN I AM LOOKING AT YOU).
I read an article a few years ago called “Is Food the New Sex” about “proper” eating habits being the new morality. As sexual mores change, the morality of eating “right” allows people to feel superior to those who don’t, along with proselytizing “correct” diets. I thought this was a really interesting concept, in addition to the class status thing. And it’s not just in the US. The class system is super visible in shopping habits in the UK as well, with specific status accorded to particular supermarkets.
I suppose it would be interesting to compare the Anglo-American world’s (I think) new interest in faddish food concepts like foams or what have you with the French tradition of fine dining. Tell me what you think, but my sense is that more than, say, 20 years ago, Americans would go to fancy restaurants to show they could afford to pay a large tab, but not necessarily to brag about eating weird stuff in the way we do now.
This is well outside my realm of expertise, but it occurs to me as interesting.
The focuses of recent restaurant cuisine seem to be innovation and authenticity. Innovation is prized in “fine dining” type restaurants, with fancy plating, extravagant ingredients, and sometimes molecular gastronomy, with a current focus on tasting “clean,” meaning that individual flavors are detectable, as well as the dishes being less heavy. The “authentic” food is an elitist concept, praising peasant food, but not seeing it as what it is (a way to make cheap food taste good). It’s a kind of cultural appropriation. If I want to make a masaman Thai curry with pork, it’s not less delicious, but it might be deemed less “authentic” and therefore lesser than a dish made with beef.
What “fancy” food is has also changed. The French food that was “fancy” in the 1960s-1980s is now seen as lesser, often called “cruise food,” as it is most commonly seen on cruise ships.
Food is endlessly interesting to me. Our relationships with food and how it’s shaped by the media, the Protestant morality we used to associate with sexual purity in the US being shifted to food, the ideas of food being “bad” or “sinful” and pictures of food being labeled as “food porn,” the history of food and why particular foods are eaten in certain parts of the world, the arguments for and against GMOs, the “organic” food movement, the politics of farming, and even food science. I am ready to talk about food all the time.
I am here for food science discussions!!!
I…did not know that “white trash parties” were a thing. Yikes.
I came down here to say the same thing and to reflect on how the concept seems an awful lot like frat parties with “South of the Border” or antebellum themes. They seem to scream “I’m so privileged I can’t even see that I’m privileged,” sort of ouroboros-style.
I suspect that these are the same assholes who are like “I’m just boring and white” or “I don’t have a culture.”
YEP
Remember that “hobo wedding”? http://offbeatbride.com/2011/08/hobo-wedding
Eesh.
I was just mentioning this the other day! I’m glad it’s still a cultural touchstone for a certain type of unwitting awfulness. It’s such a useful example.
yes. god, still terrible
so terrible and then you spend five minutes on a wedding website and you understand how it happened and how no one warned them not to go through with it. Like, you can just see how the best-intentioned couple could dive into Wedding World and end up at “hobo wedding.”
Themed weddings are often problematic. I made wedding cakes for a few years and ran into some horrible ideas. White couples having and Indian themed wedding, yuck. Wedding luau? Also a surprising number of “Great Gastby” themed weddings. I doubt any of them had read the book. Probably should have gone with “Roaring 20s” theme instead?
So the Gatsby-themed weddings are basically Mallory’s book summary posts in wedding form?
I think we need a Wedding Cake Stories thread in the open thread this week…I bet you have some great ones!
Ahhh our staff holiday party this year will be Gatsby-themed, and I am certain the woman planning it has never read the book. It’s … a struggle. I keep making asinine suggestions to her (“the backdrop for the photo booth should just be all black with a tiny green light”) but they go right over her head.
Maybe get one of these shirts?
WHERE DO IT GET ONE I WANT IT NOW
Oh no, oh no, oh NO……
Since I look at internet gossip, because a good part of the time it’s funny instead of aggravating, I saw stuff about “LOL GATSBY PARTY!” from celebrity instagrams around when that movie came out a little while ago.
1. I’m obviously older than these people and I shouldn’t be an old dick about “DON’T YOU KNOW??” about things, because, no, they weren’t around then, they’ll get to it, you had older internet friends twenty years ago and they weren’t dicks to you about gaps in your knowledge. But
2. Didn’t these twenty-two-year-olds have to read the book in high school or on-set tutoring too? The woman gets her chest torn open. I did NOT think this was a glamorous story in 1992…and the story hasn’t gotten any better since then.
3. Maybe if you’re a young performer and not actually going to high school no one makes you read it. But I still imagine the Baz Luhrmann film wasn’t that different from the book.
4. There’s “I don’t know that yet” and there’s “IGNORANT”.
5. I much prefer bebop so the 20s don’t appeal to me anyway. All that damn clarinet and dixieland…
I…I went to one once. It was a long time ago; I’m not happy to remember it. It wasn’t much of an event, just a theme for a weekend night of drinking in college, and I don’t think our group of liberals and leftists spent any time thinking about what exactly our bullshit meant. It was the height of the Bush administration, and it felt like strike at those who wrecked the economy and took us to war, but of course, nobody dressed up as Dick Cheney. I’m sure the anti-Obama racists feel the same way.
When I was the secretary for the College Democrats, the rest of the officers wanted to have a “pimps and hoes” party. I was like “are you fucking kidding me, no you cannot do that.” They had a white trash party instead. I did not attend.
THIIIIIIS. I grew up on On-Cor dinners, with homemade Lunchables of kielbasa from the polish deli and cheese because we couldn’t afford to throw away money on the real thing. I didn’t think this was even a “thing” until recently. Has my palate expanded as my family has become more comfortable in our money situation? Naturally! But there is so much that I can’t and won’t give back (hey, I live by myself, frozen food is a fucking godsend) that has shaped who I am today, and if somebody wants to shit on me for that, they can take a long walk off of a short pier INTO BEES.
*Mechanical bees, so as to preserve our limited reserves of the real thing 🙂
Let me just say that “homemade lunchables of kielbasa and cheese” sounds fucking delicious. But I’m a sucker for kielbasa.
Sounds SO fucking delicious. But no one wants to be the elementary school kid with homemade lunches when everyone else has name-brand Lunchables… or better yet, access to the hot-food line.
Agreed. I was just hungry when I read Elyse’s comment 🙂
The one and only time I ever got hot lunch at school was for Pizza Hut day. I begged and begged and pleaded with my mom and she finally caved and I got one stinkin’ slice of pizza. It was not enough, and I never got hot lunch ever again, which looking back was probably a great thing, but at the time it just furthered the fact that I felt really othered.
That On-Cor veal parmigiana was…..really fucking good.
Kielbasa….is also really fucking good.
It makes me happy that the big farmers market stores near me are full of people just, you know, getting remarkably affordable fresh food, as well as bougies and hipsters et al. Atlanta’s got a lot of people without much money, so it’s cool to me that there’s these, like, arthouse grocery stores, which are also a practical source of good food.
So, so many issues feel like they are not mine to comment upon, but I work in public service and I’m concerned about people and what they’re being offered.
Totally not the point of our discussion at all, but I would probably drop kick a baby if they would bring back the On-Cor turkey croquettes. They were SO GOOD, and cheap enough to feed our family of four supplemented with some frozen veggies and mashed potatoes.
What I find the most ridiculous part (not the most offensive part, oh no) is how hard certain people need to work for something which needs no excuse. Eat Frito pie because it’s fucking delicious! You don’t need a bullshit theme! I love mac and cheese with hot dogs AND fancy pants charcuterie plates.
Seriously, I don’t buy for a second that anyone at those awful parties doesn’t snack on twinkies or eat a low-budget casserole once in a while. Probably they call it “comfort food” or “little indulgences” or maybe “Ugh I was so hung over today all I could eat was a box of mac n cheese.”
“I’m so bad!!”
puke.
Seriously! I don’t personally know anybody who doesn’t like junk food. I mean maybe my perception is skewed by the fact that my social circle contains more potheads than crossfit instructors. But I have a hard time believing that there’s anyone out there who deep down, in their heart of hearts, doesn’t LIKE doritos or krispy kremes.
When I was a kid and my middle class parents wanted to reward me or get me out of their hair they would give me a couple of bucks and tell me to go to the gas station and buy some candy. Working as a cashier in a “white trash” area I saw kids of all backgrounds doing the same thing– some of them with mom’s EBT card. Hell, I saw adults of all backgrounds buying funyuns and mountain dew while explaining that it had been a long day at work. I also saw people with EBT cards and WIC lists contorting themselves to make ten fucking dollars into a decent basket of groceries. Right now that state is trying to ban people on assistance from buying junk food OR “fancy” foods like steak. What that leaves i don’t know.
Doritos is fucking engineered to be loved. Anyone who claims not to like it is lying to themselves.
Wow. I am not American, but I live here now. I LOVE me some “trash food”. I used to love going to $5 margarita nights at a bar called trailer trash. In winter I regularly make what I have called “white trash casserole” (the kind with canned soup). It’s fucking rude though, you’re right. Time to adjust.
Oh boy do I have Thoughts on this too. Particularly the way that conservative American politicians try to politicize food (“those liberals and their arugula and tofu” or whatever), while none of them would be caught dead eating hotdish or green bean casserole or beans and franks or any number of cheap, filling, and tasty ways that people without much money or access to fresh organic produce fill their tummies.
Also — “nobody who’s actually white trash was there,” what even the fuck. My spouse and I may be able to eat organic farmer’s market produce NOW but neither of us grew up that way. Fuck that asshole very much.
And that’s aside from the highly problematic phrase “white trash.”
“White trash” is a term that bothers me for a lot of reasons, but foremost is the racism it makes apparent. What is considered exceptional about the rural white poor is their whiteness, we have to call it out because the default assumption is that poverty is for brown people. They’re called out because they upset the social order with their low economic status. Even when someone uses just “trash” the “white” is implied.
So well said.
This is very insightful…thank you!
It is SO WEIRD sometimes to read these essays about class markers and such, and realize they are straight-up describing so much of my childhood, yet my parents would insist they were firmly middle class (as I learned later, it came with a lot of credit card debt).
It’s gotta be a result of living in the South and my grandparents all being firmly working class/just this side of poor, but it’s still really weird to see it pointed out. Not quite as weird as the fish-out-of-water feeling when I have to chitchat with the folks who get involved with museums, though! (offhand mentions of kids in boarding school or second homes, where I feel like I’m bragging/have a big head when I refer to spending a summer semester in France – which was heavily subsidised by the alumni foundation as part of their effort to encourage students to … wait, no, see, i’m feeling defensive again!)
Anyway, dang, that food was the every day stuff of my childhood and I had no idea it was trashy, but looking back…yeah, I can see how it was totally an indicator of class for us when I still can’t help but think of Stouffer’s Mac’n’Cheese or Hamburger Helper as fancy eating.
Yeah — growing up, we almost NEVER ate frozen meals because, well, they were too expensive and my mom thought they were a waste of money when she could make most of it from scratch. Once I was in, oh, junior high, and staying home alone more with my little sister, we did have frozen foods for after-school snacks, but that also coincided with us being more financially secure.
Right?? those pre-made meals are more expensive but here’s the thing they also tasted way better than my parents’ cooking. They definitely became a staple in my own eating habits when I had my own spending money, which combined with other unrelated disordered eating means I have a really unhealthy diet. :/
It was kind of odd the way when I got a stepfamily, our pantry upgraded to more name brands and ready-made food because that’s what my stepsiblings grew up with. The first time I had Velveeta mac’n’cheese instead of Kraft (or Big Lots brand) was like “holy crap this is fancy stuff” 😛
yeah, a lot of the time when I see “trashy food” I think “kid food.” A big reason I eat pretty well now is that I don’t have to stretch my time, money, or tastes to accommodate a child. I’m honestly not sure if mac n cheese with hot dogs was a frequent kid meal for me because of money or just “it’s easy to cook & she won’t complain.”
Oh man, that’s what I’m wondering about cokes these days. Did we not have them when I was little because it wasn’t for kids, or was it because of the expense, or both? We often had store brands (and Dad’s Root Beer when I was in middle school), but mostly we had milk or Kool-Aid to drink. Actually, I think purple soda and root beer were staples of the pantry, just like Little Debbie snacks, but we had to ask special permission to drink one, and that only really started when I was in middle school, perhaps?
Was Dad’s a low-class thing??? I remember only seeing it at one store (a drugstore, not a grocery store) and we stocked up whenever we shopped there so that kinda makes sense. But yeah, I remember that and the store brand orange/purple sodas and one day graduating to REAL COKE.
And those frozen kid meals with the little brownie, which guaranteed you got dessert. Big treat.
Mom disapproved of Twinkies and their ilk, so those were a huge treat at friends’ houses. Weird, because I remember plenty of those packaged sandwich cookies that could not possibly have been any better than Hostess/Little Debbie stuff.
I don’t know if Dad’s is low-class or what, just that it was THE BEST root beer of all time, and I have no idea where to find it. I used to get really sad when my dad would bring home Mug’s because it just wasn’t as good (Barq’s was my 2nd favorite, but something in it aggravated my little brother’s asthma, and also it has caffeine, so it wasn’t allowed in the house)
eta: also, yeah, we NEVER got Twinkies, but Little Debbie Star Clusters and Fudge Rounds and Zebra Cakes were our lunchtime treats (I think my dad had a sweet-tooth for them – he’s 60 years old this year and still regularly buys fudge Pop-Tarts to dunk in milk for breakfast, anyway)
Dad’s was great! And that’s funny about Twinkies, like they’re somehow exponentially worse than all the other sugary foods.
I grew up in a super rich part of the country and I’m trying to recall if I ever ate “better” at wealthier kids’ houses – like, there might be some fruit in addition to the crap, but we usually just ate name-brand rather than store-brand crap, because we were kids and that’s what you feed kids and no one wants to put a bunch of time into preparing a kid snack. I feel like this has changed a lot for Kids These Days.
It’s unrelated to the issue, but in the documentary “The Road To God Knows Where” about Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ 1988 North American tour the tour manager calls ahead to a venue and requests root beer “preferably Dad’s” and it amuses and pleases me that this multinational (but not American at all) band is like “fuck YEAH, Dad’s!” It’s not like they were asking for Budweiser, they just knew that they liked!
(If you happen to be near a Food City, that chain carries Dad’s root beer. Not much help outside Tennessee/Virginia/Kentucky, admittedly, because it’s a regional chain, but if you are nearby…)
Oh god, that’s something I’ve been grappling with a lot lately. I grew up in a white-collar, financially stable household in a small midwestern city where the dominant culture was working-class. I feel incredibly lucky that my parents were able to partially cover my tuition at State U and that we could take vacations and eat at nice restaurants on occasion. There’s part of me that has a weird anxiety about that, how it was unearned and I shouldn’t flaunt it lest others think I’m a snob. BUT THEN there’s the fact that I now live in a wealthy coastal city among young professionals and it seems like they all went to the same private colleges and took way fancier vacations and ate way fancier food. And sometimes something comes up that makes me look particularly Midwestern and I feel anxiety in the opposite direction, about how my family’s vacations were mostly in Branson and the restaurants we thought were nice probably wouldn’t impress any of my new peers and oh god, class and its various markers are so confusing.
AH YES. “I’m so lucky to have had the opportunities I had, my parents really worked hard for us, and I was fortunate to receive scholarships to Catholic schools and also university” but also “haha, of course my nicest clothes come from the mall and I get my hair did at Hair Cuttery, where else would I go…?”
I feel such strong cultural kindship with my redneck relatives vs. the well-to-do ones, but my situation in life is often the “unearned, lucky” of the wealthier ones. It’s an uncomfortable place to be when it’s pointed out so unmistakably, the simultaneous guilt for having landed in a good place by luck and my parents’ work, and shame for it not being as good as the people who surround me (who often bewilder me). I guess it isn’t an uncommon feeling!
I am still trying to figure out where you would go for clothes and haircuts other than the mall and Hair Cuttery, to be honest.
Yeah, so I discovered literally last autumn that wealthy people have boutiques and stuff. I honestly thought “boutique” was a word for touristy shops or tchotchke shops, but not so. I guess that’s how they get the really big designer stuff, and also by flying to major metropolises.
And then also there’s a lot of catalogue shopping, I’ve noticed. Expensive brands that don’t have stores except in major, wealthy cities. Or that sell their things through boutiques in, like, Winter Park FL or St Simons Island GA, or somewhere. (Two towns I know of that are fairly small but super wealthy. Also vacationy.)
I’m from a middle/upper-middle class family, but with one uncle who has gotten extremely wealthy with the Hamptons house and all that jazz. One time when we were staying with them my aunt asked my cousin’s also super-rich boyfriend to pick up some matches when he went out, and he said “Where do you get those. . .Williams-Sonoma?”
Yes, this.
I had a friend who, for her birthday, threw a “church basement potluck” themed party. It was supposed to have the same kinds of foods being talked about here- casseroles made with canned soup, marshmallow salad, etc. She was explicit about having grown up going to those potlucks, and many of the attendees had the same background…but. I still feel weird about it. Because I mostly didn’t have that background, and all of us, at the time, were in a very hipster-y, academic-y kind of place. So even if the person organizing this is from that food-culture, am I being a crappy tourist when I go?
I think in that specific case, you’re probably not doing any harm – “church basement potluck” has no clear indications of class or race that I can think of.
Plus casseroles and marshmallow salad are delicious, I don’t even GAF.
I think this is a good attempt at trying to make this sort of gathering sort of thoughtful, especially since she specified that she grew up with this sort of thing. It’s a celebration of something specific rather than appropriating something for amusement. So no, you’re not being a crappy tourist – you’re experiencing something your friend is offering.
I think birthdays are a time in particular when I want to be close to my roots, so I can imagine that your friend might feel a similar way and is trying to put something together that would capture something important. I’d suggest bringing something that you feel comfortable cooking and would cook for any potluck occasion, if you want to feel extra safe bring drinks or ask your friend if she needs or wants disposable plates, cups, napkins, etc. Those are safe moves in a potluck.
Oh, I think that was totally fine. Like, if your white friend was having a Quinceneara themed birthday party full of sombreros you would probably feel weird going to it, but if your Mexican friend was that would clearly be no problem. If you wanted to be extra sure not to be weird, you could ask her to suggest a recipe for you to bring (I see this already happened but I guess, in the future. . )
that article was fantastic!
and he’s a lovely writer, i’m going to seek out more of his work.
I don’t think there’s anything irrational about your anger here. It is just and righteous and we will all stand with you on that hill!
Actually, I was going to ask if you’d share. Pass the Cool Whip.
Yeah, food judgement infuriates me too. I have a friend who’s doctor and she’s always harping on about people’s unhealthy diets, obesity etc. I understand when you’re at the coalface, so to speak, you’re seeing a lot of consequences of diet and lifestyle, but I can’t seem to get it through to her that it’s actually not a moral issue. Same goes for people not exercising. Assuming that people are ignorant about food and need to be ‘educated’ really gets my goat. There are a million other factors that go into deciding what to feed your family, and class and money have a lot more to do with it than how much food knowledge you have. And the more doctors get all judgy with patients for their ‘failure’ to be thin, the more the patients will feel shitty and be, ironically, less likely to change. (To be fair, my friend doesn’t give her patients shit, she’s always kind, but she clearly has a big problem with people being fat and I wonder if the more intuitive patients pick up on that.) I have yet to meet a healthy-lifestyle guru whose chief motivation (whatever they say) isn’t avoiding the Terrible Sin of fat. It really is the ‘concupiscence’ of our day. And of course it gets tied up with class judgement and just gets really ugly. Food, the simple fuel of life, is becoming more and more fraught with judgement. There’s nothing wrong with eating greens and exercising, but it is wrong to attach moral worth to these neutral acts and use them as a basis to judge the moral worth of others.
Yes. It seems to me that part of this is that knowledge-about-food is replacing knowledge-about-art as a signifier of class status in the U.S. Not so clear to me how that all got started, but pretty clear to me that that's where we are.
Word.
Marie: Restaurants are to people in the 80's what theater was to people in the 60's. I read that in a magazine.
Jess: I wrote that.
http://flavorwire.com/514150/smoothies-what-the-f…
We watched episodes 7 and 8 last night. Currently taking bets on how long it takes for episode 7 to be integrated into a Phil 101 class discussion on ethics.
Just thought I’d link a trans person’s response to cis feminists complaining that the guy passes too well in order for it to be groundbreaking:
http://jezebel.com/didn-t-know-i-was-going-to-nee…
Thank you! I found those critiques INTENSELY IRRITATING.
nope nope too early for that rage level WOW
I wonder what the MRA-types make of this. This guy is making huge strides for a marginalized group of men! Isn’t that a men’s rights victory?
I say “I wonder” because a.) I don’t want to go look and b.) I’m being sarcastic because I already know.
That word vomit about the trans man looking too hot and manly is the reason I have this terrible little dance with Jezebel:
Step 1: See comments, blow brain gasket, run away for a few weeks
Step 2: Get sucked back in by Behind Closed Ovens or a Pictorial post about 80s fashion or Victorian roller skaters or something.
Step 3: Wander over to main site.
Step 4: Repeat step 1.
Any comments on any Gawker-owned site are all garbage unless they’re asking for stories. Then they’re fun garbage.
Now there’s a big ol’ hoo-ha in Behind Closed Ovens. Even when it’s not about women a fight STILL breaks out!
Ugh. Everything Gawker-related is tainted.
I have never particularly been a fan of Aydian (I’ve been involved to varying degrees with the FTM Youtube community for a few years now), especially in the past couple of years. He’s one of those guys who thinks he’s doing a lot more good than he actually is. Be on the cover of Men’s Health, whatever, I don’t care, but I think it is important to look at how he is embodying white male masculinity and how that doesn’t necessarily help anyone but white, conventionally attractive (‘”passable” gross word, ugh) trans men like him. A guy I follow on tumblr who always has a lot of really well thought out things to say about this sort of stuff wrote a thing about it, and I just want to sign on 1000 %: http://tofuboots.tumblr.com/post/116452345562/i-w…
That kind of dustup only serves to further lessen my caring what a person’s gender identity is. The notion of how much you look like it–but now is it too much? Is it bad if someone is transgender but no one knows it? Christ.
I don’t have these issues, I don’t have these difficulties, it’s easy for me. So I’d rather just be content with that and not give other people shit. Why encourage resentment towards myself? Why would I want to feel like I’m in Kate Beaton’s “Nasty Boys” cartoon.
“CIS!”
Anyway, people just want to be themselves and I don’t want to argue about what that is. I feel more like Piscopo Sinatra and Stevie Murphy Wonder. “You are Cis” “You are Trans” “AND WHO CARES?”
Internet Anger people wear my ass out.
Oh, I am so into Daredevil it’s not even funny. I maaaaay have written a fic where they get an office cat? And name it Aguacate?
Meeeee tooooo. Well, I haven’t written any fic. But now I really want to read yours!
If you want, here’s a link. It’s suuuper short and silly.
My favorite is that apparently the Daredevil fandom has decided to run with a silly tumblr post about Matt falling into a dumpster already occupied by Clint. There are like ten fics on that already (and yes, I wrote one…except it’s Kate Bishop in the dumpster, not Clint)
THAT WAS ADORABLE
Thank you! I find it endlessly amusing that a silly little story about a cat that I wrote in ten minutes has more kudos than any other fic I’ve written combined.
PizzaDog Aguacate road trip fic plz.
Also, that was a great, short read. Thanks 🙂
Oh man, I might have to make that happen…
you are delightful!
Do-dee-do bookmarking this for after work, thx!
“Nelson and Murdock, Avocados at Law”
Delightful!
I’m full-out, head-over-heels on the Daredevil train. I’m having a lot of very intense heart and pants-related feelings about Charlie Cox, and I would watch a feature-length special that’s just Foggy and Karen hanging out and getting trashed.
AMEN. AMEN TO ALL OF IT
My tumblr is like 90% Daredevil right now and I’m amazed that I haven’t lost like, all my followers. It’s been almost week and still all I want to do is sit around and talk about it 24/7
…this may have inspired me to go Tumblring for Daredevil stuff and there are so many GIFs of just Charlie Cox shirtless and grinning and I think this is it, this is my life now
You should totally make this your homepage
oh dear oh dear oh DEAR
I LIVE TO FEED DAREDEVIL ADDICTIONS
*bookmarks*
Yesssss Charlie Cox. I actually didn’t know he was in this until I watched the first episode and was IMMEDIATELY EXCITED. I found him adorably charming in Stardust (LOVE that movie) and he has only become better looking as he grew older.
I would also like to cosign your desire for a Foggy/Karen special.
As far as dude charisma goes, he’s got that perfect mix of Leading Man Hot and Dorky Puppy Cute. ALL OF MY SWEET SPOTS.
I want to take a moment to gush about Daredevil. I was ranting to some friends the other day about how I really love actions movies, but that I haven’t really been into recent ones*. Then I watched this and was hooked. It’s just refreshing to see actions scenes that aren’t CGI, shaky cam or confusing cuts that make it hard to know who’s who. I can actually watch and see what’s happening.
Also this is one of the few brooding male character I can stand. Matt is refreshingly human and vulnerable and needs friends! His friends are characters who exist with their own agendas!
Granted, I haven’t watched that many new movies recently so I know I probably missed out on some great newer actions movies.
WTF D.A.R.E. officer? Did that 11 year-old really hurt your feelings when he questioned your authority?
At this point, does DARE do anything besides teach children that the authorities will lie to them?
Not a bad lesson. Wish I had learned it younger. And yes, DARE does something else. It’s extra income for cops willing to lie to large batches of school kids. Not saying cops shouldn’t be paid better. But for lying? Not so much.
I’m just realizing that I always assumed they were volunteers. Here comes a little more cynicism.
dunno, it did teach me to be completely terrified of any kind of drugs or whatever, so i was afraid of actual doctors’ prescriptions when i was younger, because they were drugs and had things in the names that sounded like drug names. i’ve mellowed out a ton about it (because I grew up & got smart), but still have frissons of terror when I’m watching movies or reading books in which people are doing drugs or getting drunk.
(i had nightmares about the morphine scenes in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, which I read shortly after DARE classes ended. also spent 2 days in bed from a panic attack directly resulting from the drinking/drugs scenes in BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA when I was 21. so, A+ cops for fucking me up so thoroughly!)
Yeah, I didn’t ever run into DARE because I’m in Canada, but the anti-smoking PSAs fucked me up so thoroughly that I was convinced my dad (a heavy smoker) was going to drop dead at any minute for years. Distressingly, my attempts at dissuading him by hiding his cigarettes in the couch cushions never seemed to work.
Oh, man. I had a sobbing breakdown to my mom when I was (6? 7?) about how she was a smoker and thus ABOUT TO DIE. I was so anxious about it! To make matters worse, the ads kind of made me think that, if she just loved me more, she would stop, and so I must’ve not been enough.
Anyway, I’ve developed a more nuanced understanding of addiction now.
We have DARE in Canada! I really don’t remember much of it, though. I mostly remember the drug unit we did in Career and Personal Planning class in high school, which was fairly light on the “if you take this drug you will die” and had a pleasantly surprising amount of “how to minimize your risks if you’re going to take drugs” instruction.
DARE does actually exist in Canada; or at least it used to. Source: I did the DARE program while attending an elementary school in Ontario.
Oh, man, Bastard out of Carolina messed me up anyway. I read it right when Glenn Beck showed up on the scene, and I’ve resolved since never to trust anyone named “Glen.”
So, yeah, like all mendacious authority figures, they lie to you often but not all the time, and damage your ability to distinguish truth from lies and ruin everything.
Oh god there was so much in BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA it’s no wonder I spent 2 days in shut-down mode in bed. I don’t even remember much of the book, completely blocked it out, except for the alcoholism stuff, because that’s what triggered my panic attack which triggered the shut down. I had to drop the class because I couldn’t bear being faced with book discussion, and couldn’t even tell the professor what was wrong.
But on the other hand, Francesca Lia Block? WEETZIE BAT did the same thing to me when I was 15, so…. 😀 I think it was only one day in bed that time.
Anyway, authority figures, blech. I was definitely the trusting, sheltered kid who took things at face value, and with an authoritarian-type parent that spanked (“why are you crying? I’ll give you something to cry about” wasn’t uncommon, either), I was predisposed to completely believe all that nonsense. I had no reason not to, after all. It would have been nice if they could have not made me unable to react irrationally to images of drug use or drunkenness, though. even if I’m cool with other people doing so, provided it’s safe, I can’t watch it.
Something always bothered me about Weetzie Bat, and I can never quite put my finger on it. It seems like a lot of things I like in one place, but then it didn’t land.
Maybe I just came to it too late – I was too old, and the world had changed too much since it was published.
it had the opposite effect on me. they said drinking and smoking and doing drugs would KILL YOU. but… my parents and their friends all drank and smoked and were very much alive. i called bullshit immediately and that, along with the whole santa/easter bunny/tooth fairy not being real thing, has left me with a life long distrust of all authority figures. lies! all lies!
Oh, yeah, I didn’t have anyone around me who smoked or anything. I mean, a beer or wine here and there, but I didn’t even know my mom’s parents drank alcohol until I was a teenager! (My dad’s dad was an alcoholic and chain smoker, but my parents refused to let us kids visit if they were smoking inside the house or drinking around us.) I was really sheltered.
It’s kind of amazing that I’ve grown up to be so progressive/social justicey/atheist, come to think of it. 😛
I definitely recall a lot of DARE scare tactics, but to this day the most memorable anti-drugs campaign I ever saw was pulled off by my elementary school when I as in kindergarten. I went to a K-8 Catholic school at the time and one day a sizable portion of the 8th grade came to school dressed all in black with their faces painted like skulls. They didn’t talk all day until the last bell rang. At one point, the teachers led us younger students through a hallway where the 8th graders were lying along the wall under paper tombstones that said things like “died at 18 in a drunk driving accident”, “overdosed on drugs at age 20”, “died of lung cancer”. So yeah, no drugs for me.
Side note to the trash food piece — isn’t that the guy who was on Fresh Air talking about his father the prolific writer of pornography??
IT SURE IS
Part of me is reading these link roundup posts just to hear Nicole’s commentary on her WOD
You know what happens when you vote for Aydian? You get a notice that in FOURTEEN HOURS you can do it again! Whee!
OH TOAST. This is totes an open thread issue, but anyway…
I got a job offer! across the country? which is what I wanted… but it’s a small town in oregon, not really 100% what I wanted. but they offer relocation expenses, and pay quite well, and it would be a great opportunity as far as my career is concerned, and my job search is currently seriously fucking painful and uneventful in my current city, which is oversaturated with my profession (nursing). I’m thinking putting my time in (6mo to a year) and then transferring to Portland. but I’ve got my Boo too, who is game for anything, but I wonder if we will go insane spending 6-12 months in a small town. Not because we have had any issues in any other way, but I guess it’s just so wonderful that I worry about rocking the boat.
Anyone else dealt with this or have insight as to some questions I can ask myself to figure out what may be a good option?
Me! I am interested, because I am the potentially trailing spouse in a career relocation situation. My gut says trust your boo to know what they can or cannot handle. Has either of you lived in a small town before? Do you have a lot of indoor hobbies?
The other option might be to commute from somewhere slightly larger? Or take long weekend trips to a reasonably sized city?
I’ve lived in a small town, but he hasn’t, but he’s got a serious outdoor fitness hobby, and I think he could be quite happy doing that. I could even join him, since I’ll only be working 3 days a week. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to move, was for milder weather and greater outdoor fun times. We would be equidistant from portland and San Fran, which… it’s a bit of a distance, but definitely a viable option for things to do a few times a year. hmmmm.
I’m going to be real that sounds amazing. The pacific northwest is outdoor person paradise. Hiking! Sea kayaking! Fewer bugs and crazy snakes then we have where I am at the moment. Sounds like bliss to me.
Also, I have been reminding myself that no move is permanent. Would it be good for your career to get some experience in this place? Would that open up some possibilities down the road? Those are things worth considering.
Other things worth considering, what would the job market look like for your boo? How long of a job search for him would you both be comfortable with? What are the odds for him of finding something in his field? How would it feel to take a job outside of his field? These are totally rhetorical questions, so don’t feel any pressure to answer. As an avid budget person, I also always think about things like, how would spending look during the job search? Rent? Those are the concerns that would be at the top of my list of concerns as someone trailing to a place where finding a job might be a challenge.
he’s waiter/bartender/bassist, so he’s pretty flexible. Getting to portland would be key to his ongoing happiness re: music, which is a huge part of his life. But I think the brief interlude wouldn’t hurt, or at least he doesn’t think it will. He’s wanting to find a better job/career, and feels like he’s spinning his wheels where we are, so he’s game for anything, really.
The opportunity is really good for me. Thanks for all your feedback, it’s so great to chat this out with Toasticles.
I’m 100% of the opinion that you can live with a lot of stuff as long as you know it’s for a limited time and you have an escape plan, so that’s the perspective I’m coming from. Re: living in a small town. These are some of the questions I would ask myself, idk if they are helpful at all.
1) What is the city itself like? How small is it? How isolated is it?
2) Are you close enough to a larger/more interesting city center so that if you need to get out for a break, you can? Would you guys have the time/financial ability to take a weekend trip to Portland or another fun place? For example, I grew up in a town of ~5,000 people and there was not even a movie theater in my county, but there was a larger town nearby so we could go there when we got stir crazy.
3) Is there something that you enjoy outside of city life? What’s the outdoor recreation like in the area? Are you going to have something to fill your time so that you’re not just going from work to home? This is especially important if you’re not planning on staying long and not going to spend a lot of time building relationships with people who live there.
I grew up in a small town. And I live in a city now.
Pro about small towns: everybody knows each other and knows about each other. When my dad had a stroke, the day after he got out of the hospital, I took him to the grocery store. Multiple people stopped to say they had heard and to offer help or just support. It was wonderful. People just say “hi” to each other on the street! Awesome! Librarians will get to know you and your tastes and will automatically add your name to reserve lists for books you like. Awesome!
Con
People in small towns know everybody else and know about everybody else. The gossip can be intense.
If you do go, make sure to join some groups in town. It can be hard for an outsider to work their way in, but playing on a sports team or going to a book club can really help people see you’re committed to being a part of the community. I really, really hate the notion that small town people are culturally illiterate. You may have to look a little harder for it, that’s all.
You might like it! And you have a viable plan B if you don’t.
Take a hard look at your priorities and what give you happiness that isn’t your job. I spouse-followed to smaller town South Carolina and quickly found out what raises my quality of life: ability to walk places (especially if beer or ice cream are at those places), natural light, a reliable liquor store, a places to get away to that aren’t that far. What do you love to do now where you live? I picked up a bunch of home-bound hobbies like canning and gardening, but that was kind of a reaction to not having much to do or any friends.
But, at the same time, what the hell? Why not?! Go do something crazy and see what happens!! Good luck 😀
I think it’s worth the move, but you and your Boo know each other other best. Honestly,if you like the job, and they pay you well, you can compensate for small town life. I grew up in a small city in Texas, and it was not that exciting. But we were within easy driving distance to Dallas, Austin, and Houston, which makes up for a lot. If you would be within easy driving distance from a larger city like Portland (2-3 1/2 hours one way), you can easily make monthly day or weekend trips to satisfy your big city needs, stock up on stuff you can’t get in Small Town, see a live band or a foreign film, whatever it is that you do for fun. And you never know, Small Town may have fun stuff going on underneath the surface. It might not be as bad as you think!
I agree with secondursula – trust your partner. If they think they can handle it, then they can handle it until they tell you otherwise. It seems like you have really good perspective on this – you only HAVE to mentally commit to 6-12 months, and a move is not forever, you can always go back if it is actually The Worst.
I think one good thing to have when moving anywhere is some form of a backup plan. Whether that takes shape as a decently-sized savings account so you can leave on short notice if you need to, or lots of frequent-flyer miles for trips home, or a reliable car that you can use to drive out to the coast/mountains for semi-frequent weekends where the two of you can recharge and communicate, or whatever… have a way for you or your partner to say “oh my god I am feeling awful right now about this decision. it’s probably fleeting but let’s escape for a couple days to look at this in a new light or just forget about what a tough time I’m having currently.”
You are brave and considerate, and anyone lucky enough to be with you is probably similar, and not going to just Leave because they moved with you and ended up hating it.
Can I ask what small town? (It won’t actually inform my advice that much, I’m just nosy. Also, if your town is not too far from Portland I might have some experience of it at least from a visitor’s perspective; I lived in PDX for several years and did a lot of short driving vacations.)
When I graduated with my teaching license, I did a wide-ranging job search that included some awfully small towns. Here are some of the questions I used to rule in/out various small and remote places:
— How small is small? What can you find out about what amenities you’d have in this town, or in the immediate area? On a spectrum from “I have to drive to another town to do literally anything, including grocery shopping” to “There’s decent shopping options and a movie theater here, I rarely need to drive elsewhere,” where would this town be? Where on that spectrum do you feel like would be too small for you?
— How about on a spectrum from “I rarely run into the people I work with around town” to “The people I work with are literally the only people I ever see”? For me, a place where I couldn’t get away from my students would be too small — would it be weird or stressful or exhausting for you to run into a patient every time you went into a restaurant?
— How remote would you be? Like, could you drive into a larger city for a day and drive home that night, or would it have to be an overnight trip to justify the drive, or would it have to be an over-SEVERAL-nights trip? What can you find out about the amenities and entertainment options you’d have access to in that bigger city — does it have everything you’d want, or would it still be like, “Great, I can come here to go to a movie, but I love [the ballet/baseball/whatever] and for THAT I’d have to drive EVEN FURTHER”?
And a more specific one for you, since you’re already planning your transfer out:
How sure are you that you’d be able to transfer to Portland after a year? Since you’re applying to jobs across the country, you probably have some frame of reference for how often nursing jobs open up in Portland — is this a situation where those jobs exist and having a year of experience will open up a ton of them to you, or where taking this job will make you an internal applicant for future positions in a certain hospital system and you know from their listings that that will give you an advantage? Or are you just hoping that more positions will start to open up, or that they’ll be easier to get when you’re semi-local?
OMG! I am literally moving to a small town in Oregon NEXT WEEK for a new job! Tell me where you’re going! (Mine is in Newberg, I’ll likely be moving a little bit north so I’ll be about twenty minutes south of downtown Portland).
FYI, look at the offer as far as relocation assistance is concerned. Usually they require you to stay (in proportion to what they’re offering you) for a while, or else you have to pay it back.
I moved to a small (6,000 people), isolated town for a similar reason and it worked out GREAT. I have moved up in my career way faster than I would have if I was stuck in the city competing with thousands of other people like me, I have met some good friends (although maybe I would have met more in the city), it has definitely opened my eyes to a greater variety and diversity of people and lifestyles than I would have come into contact with if I had been able to hang out with just “people like me” in the city, and I have picked up new hobbies I wouldn’t have even dreamed of trying before. I also just bought a house when I wouldn’t have realistically ever been able to afford one in Vancouver. I say go for it, 6-12 months won’t kill you even if it sucks, and I think overall it’s good to leave your comfort zone even if it doesn’t end up working out.
ROCK ON! That is amazing.
Oh man! I am inclined to say “go for it”, especially if said small town is within a 90-minute drive of Portland, near Eugene or Corvallis, or near the Oregon Coast. It’s an intensely beautiful place & I find many parts of smaller town Oregon to be so, so friendly. Once you’ve got the local experience under your belt, and get familiar with state policies and local health care organizations, you will have options to transfer. I would, though, caution about your timeline of staying in a new place 6-12 months. I think it’ll be way more realistic to tell yourself that you’ll stay a couple of years in one spot. That way you have time enough to establish a stellar reference, plus Oregon’s overall unemployment rates are a little steeper than other parts of the country, generally speaking. A tip: if you’re conversant in a language other than English (esp. Spanish) your job prospects in Portland-area health care will improve because you’ll be better positioned to meet the needs of underserved populations. If you decide to make the move it’d be wise to dedicate time to gaining language skills.
I AM SO CURIOUS ABOUT WHICH SMALL TOWN IN OREGON
I am from a small town in Oregon. And I am not gonna lie, I would not move back to my particular small town in Oregon. (Because I’m not white!) But as many have already said, it’s GORGEOUS and the Oregon coast is perfection and if you want to ask me any questions about the area (I might know it!) feel free to email! I may also have 10,000 recommendations for you re: things to do. (Definitely get thee to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, if you go.)
6 to 12 months is not hard. Not when the Where and the When are decided. It’s living in limbo, conducting a job search, not knowing where you will be next or when you will move, that’s very, very hard.
My advice is to research your Portland move now. And thoroughly. Get real, reliable data to answer:
What will rent cost?
What is rental availability? How far in advance will I need to conduct a housing search?
Who is hiring? What, exactly, are they looking for in a new hire?
What will a Portland nursing job pay?
Then go ahead and take the 6-12 month job. I’m very happy for you, noodge!
I know what the pay would be in Oregon, based on friend’s and colleague’s information, so that is fine in regards to cost of living. I’m an expert at popping into cities and diggin in, finding a place to live, etc. so yeah. I feel really good about all those quesitons, and once I have a year of experience in nursing, the world is (almost) my oyster. So we will see…
Saturday night I am taking my self to the sold-out Mountain Goats show at the Vic and I can’t wait. “Beat the Champ” is growing on me. I’ve been listening to “Animal Mask” with my kiddo because I love that it’s about JD meeting his son in the delivery room. So now when we say goodbye at daycare we sing the refrain to each other and it makes me burst with happiness to share this band with her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3bV40rEfko
I was at the Philly show on Monday with my sister, and it was wonderful. Some things you will remember, indeed…
My interactions with my school’s D.A.R.E. officer were my first indication that cops were not my friends/pretty much assholes. Somehow I don’t think this was the way they planned it.
I AM HERE FOR JUSTIFIED
“We dug coal together” *weeps*
Oh my god, RIGHT? I was so sure they were going to kill off Boyd, but that was somehow even more heartbreaking!
I thought they were all gonna die (no one leaves Harlan alive) but they all lived! Raylan continues to be Raylan! Ava is hiding out in California so they don’t have to pretend California is Kentucky for once!
Yes! I was so anxious the whole time, and then happy and relieved when it was over. I’ll miss them all.
My heart stopped beating during Raylan’s stand off with Boon. And I yelped and started telling myself that Boon couldn’t be the one to kill Raylan off. There’s no justice in that. And then he just killed the hat, which was still sad, but appropriately symbolic on every level.
Same! I think it’s a testament to what a well-written and complex show it is that I was willing to believe for even a second that Raylan might be dead. Most shows I’d be like “lol nope they wouldn’t go there it’s fine,” but Justified would TOTALLY go there.
On a mostly unrelated note, I was a lot sadder than I expected to be about Carl. Poor Carl, he deserved better!
Ohhhh yeah the article about trash food.
Reminds me of this, which knocks me down whenever I read it: http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/08/the-percentag…
I have so many food hangups, and so much of them are the fear of making unconscious decisions that will be the “wrong” ones, like the one time I brought lite mayo to a class picnic because I didn’t realize that there were other kinds.
Orthorexia is an excellent term. Fear is usually a reliable indicator that something is awry.
Yeah that term was super helpful to me when dealing with my most recent batch of disordered eating issues. I do ok most days but I still get that fear that I’m doing something bad for me, for the planet, for farm workers, etc. Thankfully therapy has given me some ways to get out of that thought spiral.
I was CONVINCED that the Men’s health guy had a tattoo of a pyramidal neuron on his side (right side as you’re looking at the picture). I then spent way longer than was necessary yesterday trying to figure this out (the fact that I was preparing lab meeting had absolutely nothing to do with my procrastination of course) and he made a youtube video of all of his tattoos and it turns out it’s just a tree. I am irrationally saddened by this.
But seriously, look at these neurons and then look at the little bits of tattoo peeking out from his side and tell me they don’t look very similar:
what do you mean neurons, aren’t those baby trees?????
those are totally baby trees.
mmsees, please tell us more! what does a pyramidal neuron do? why are there 5 of them? why do they have layers? do all neurons look like tiny tress? what do you do that you know so much about neurons???
*chin in hands*
Many neurons look like tiny trees! They even have branches and everything! Pyramidal cells are usually the output cells of brain areas – they are excitatory, which means they turn on other neurons. They can communicate with other brain regions (versus interneurons, another big type, which turn off other neurons and rarely leave their particular neurons).
There are way more than 5 of them, but those are a random 5 that I pulled off google images. Layer III and layer V refer to pyramidal neurons in the cortex (front of your brain, important for complex thought and processing). The cortex has layers in it for nice organizational purposes and the neurons in those layers are different because they play different information processing roles (for example, layer III receives lots of information while layer V sends lots of information). CA3, CA1, and subiculum are all related to the hippocampus (key for memory!).
The branches let them connect with lots of other neurons. Most of the branches are dendrites (receiving information) – having so many branches not only makes them look like little trees, it lets them get information from tons of different neurons so they can do fancy stuff like integrate information. This is why neurons can accomplish complicated things, rather than just being a simple on/off transfer of info. One cell can receive inputs from over 30,000 other neurons! Crazy! The brain is so cool!
I’m a neuroscience PhD student, hence the extreme excitement when talking about brains (and the tendency to believe random people’s tattoos are neuron tattoos). I study the briefly mentioned interneurons and look at how they regulate activity in circuits.
fascinating! thank you 😀
My pleasure! Talking about neurons is a delight.
Assuming the “please tell me everything you know” pose!
Neurons don’t look like baby trees, baby trees look like neurons.
Seriously though when I started working in lab in undergrad the grad student I was working with was like “yeah, eventually everything will look like a neuron to you” and I sort of ignored her at the time but it’s SO TRUE. When I watched the last Harry Potter movie all I could focus on in the big battle scene is how much the shield looked like it was covered in neurons:
Nicole, can you tell me more about this St. Leg and where I can buy his/her icon and what kind of candle or food offering he/she likes?
Tonight I get to see Neko Case in Olympia at a much smaller venue than usual (for me), and I’m super excited!! NEKO.
When I was in 7th grade I won a D.A.R.E. essay contest with some giant pile of BS about how D.A.R.E. was like the rope that pioneers stretched from their homes to their barns to find their way during blizzards (blizzards of drug dealing middle schoolers, obvs.) and my best friend and I got to go white water rafting with our local police officers and sing oldies at them and stick gum wrappers on their heads from the back seat of the van. It’s a good thing my dad kept the whole stoner thing under wraps.
Hugs not Drugs
We get Justified a week later here in the north, and it’s driving me CRAZY to wait until next Tuesday to see how it ends!!! I can’t even google to figure out if there’s a way I can download it because I’m so afraid of coming across a spoiler.
That On-Cor veal parmigiana was…..really fucking good.
Kielbasa….is also really fucking good.
It makes me happy that the big farmers market stores near me are full of people just, you know, getting remarkably affordable fresh food, as well as bougies and hipsters et al. Atlanta's got a lot of people without much money, so it's cool to me that there's these, like, arthouse grocery stores, which are also a practical source of good food.
So, so many issues feel like they are not mine to comment upon, but I work in public service and I'm concerned about people and what they're being offered.
I get all of my moody cello music through the floor from my upstairs neighbor (who teaches cello). It's like my own personal soundtrack most evenings. We've been here more than a year and I'm still really into it. (And deeply thankful that we're not dealing with drums or bagpipes or something). Sadly, I don't know the names of the pieces, but there's some good stuff out there!
Oh no, oh no, oh NO……
Since I look at internet gossip, because a good part of the time it's funny instead of aggravating, I saw stuff about "LOL GATSBY PARTY!" from celebrity instagrams around when that movie came out a little while ago.
1. I'm obviously older than these people and I shouldn't be an old dick about "DON'T YOU KNOW??" about things, because, no, they weren't around then, they'll get to it, you had older internet friends twenty years ago and they weren't dicks to you about gaps in your knowledge. But
2. Didn't these twenty-two-year-olds have to read the book in high school or on-set tutoring too? The woman gets her chest torn open. I did NOT think this was a glamorous story in 1992…and the story hasn't gotten any better since then.
3. Maybe if you're a young performer and not actually going to high school no one makes you read it. But I still imagine the Baz Luhrmann film wasn't that different from the book.
4. There's "I don't know that yet" and there's "IGNORANT".
5. I much prefer bebop so the 20s don't appeal to me anyway. All that damn clarinet and dixieland…
It's unrelated to the issue, but in the documentary "The Road To God Knows Where" about Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' 1988 North American tour the tour manager calls ahead to a venue and requests root beer "preferably Dad's" and it amuses and pleases me that this multinational (but not American at all) band is like "fuck YEAH, Dad's!" It's not like they were asking for Budweiser, they just knew that they liked!
Yes, this.
Totally not the point of our discussion at all, but I would probably drop kick a baby if they would bring back the On-Cor turkey croquettes. They were SO GOOD, and cheap enough to feed our family of four supplemented with some frozen veggies and mashed potatoes.