Toasties! Why oh why is there no In N Out on the east coast? It’s tragic. Anyone watching Wimbledon? The Bartender has a cold and is watching all of it. Except doubles. No interest in doubles. What’s your record for staying indoors without even stepping outside? It’s been five days so far and I foresee many more… Open thread!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender is in
Y’all. I finished my wedding shoes. BEHOLD!
WHOA NELLY, those are amazing!!!!! The detailing is super impressive!
Those are AMAZING! I admire both your sequin skills and your patience – I feel like I would probably have done the heel part and then thrown my hands up and yelled, “SCREW IT, I’M GOING TO NINE WEST” at the sky.
SHIIIIIIT.
Beautiful!
HOLY CRAP
Do you mind sharing how you did this? I kind of want some of my own now.
I can tell you! But honestly, I’m not sure I’d do it again. The color theme of our wedding is rainbow, so I wanted rainbow shoes, which I couldn’t find anywhere. My fiance showed me this post, which inspired me. I bought the shoes from DSW, and an assortment of Swarovski crystals in 3 and 4 mm sizes (12 and 16 ss). I got some assortments for transition colors, and then several gross of one color for each color. Between the shoes and stones, I spent a solid $250 on materials alone.
I started by going around the edge, alternating 3 and 4 mm stones, and then filled in. I attached the stones using jewel glue, by using tweezers to pick them up, dip in glue, and place on the shoes. I would say it took me about an hour and a half per color, per shoe.
I also used this kind of technique to glitter the soles (which were an ugly beige rubber). So… yeah! It was a lot of work! But I’m really pleased with the result.
This looks intense but also like the kind of thing I would maybe do? Thanks!
Sure thing! I did enjoy it, to be honest. All you really need is confidence, time, and mayyyyyybe some slightly obsessive tendencies? Within each color, I had to divide the crystals in quarters, so I evenly distributed them on the inside and outside of each shoe. The hardest part was making the second shoe match the first one.
But I got some good sessions in while fiancé and I binge-watched Legend of Korra, so that worked out nicely. Right now, we’re doing Parks and Rec while I work on my veil (reworking a portion of my mother’s veil, and adding beading).
I’ve been married almost four years now, and my favourite planning memories are the slow-burn crafting (made paper bouquets for me and the bridesmaids) while hanging out with family for my last summer living in the states and staying at the Shore.
RAINBOW COLOR THEME. Oh my gosh. Please post pics after it happens.
I will! Although for now, I will also be happy to share a picture of our cake toppers, which are actually custom-made to match a pair of teddy bears we gave each other.
Ahhhh this is an amazing strass job! What did you use to adhere the stones?
This. I used it on skating costumes, back in the day, so figured it would work just as well here.
WOW!!
OMG. That shoe is a total work of art and completely beautiful. Had I a pair of shoes such as this when I got married I would have considered wearing heels.
aaaaaaah gorgeous!
Amazing
AMAZING
Ugh I totally want to do some DIY stuff for my wedding but it’ll be coming on the heels of my first year of grad school so basically we’re going to pay other people to do all the things (though I think I’ll be making my own sash, at least?).
these are FANTASTIC oh my god
I assume that after the wedding you’ll ascend in a luminous cloud of rose-scented fog surrounded by cherubs rocking out? Because those are apotheosis shoes. Gorgeous. So very beautiful!
This actually got an audible “whooaaaa!” out of me IRL! This is fucking awesome!
I hope you also invested in a display case to make these shoes the focal point of your new home together. Because this is a work of art.
Those are amazing! Also rainbow themed wedding ftw! I did the same theme and had these shoes painted and bejeweled for me:
For anyone else thinking of doing this, I recommend not putting paint between your glue and your shoe, especially if it’s paint not intended for that type of material; this paint (4 years later) has now flaked off a fair amount where the toe bends, and several of the rhinestones have fallen off.
Those are SPECTACULAR!
I hope you feel better, Bartender! I haven’t been on an open thread in months. Months! Between work and forgetting and vacation and forgetting, it just kept not happening.
But I’m back and my only question is SO HOW ABOUT LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE OF HANNIBAL?
(Spoilers in the thread below)
UGGGHHH REFRESHING THE PAGE UNTIL COMMENTS COLLAPSE CMON PEOPLE BE CHATTIER
SPOILERS FOR “DOLCE”:
Times when all my dreams came true:
-Margot and Alana’s sex scene
-The first scene when Hannibal and Will reunite, I’ve never seen anything so romantic.
Times when all my nightmares came true:
-Pretty much everything else????
Tell me your thoughts. What do you think of this season overall? It’s gorgeous, but it’s also kind of abandoned any sort of structure or coherent narrative. I’m devastated that NBC canceled it, but on the other hand I was watching last night and kind of thinking “No wonder this got canceled, it’s super inaccessible.” But I love it! But it’s gotten even weirder! Idk. You couldn’t pay me to stop watching.
MY THOUGHTS CAN BE SUMMED UP THUSLY
Ah, unexpectedly huge images, a cherished Toast commenting tradition.
My husband has had a crush on her since the Wonderfalls days. I can’t really blame him, especially after last night’s episode and that tweet.
she is my #1 lady crush right now! I wish I could find somewhere to watch Wonderfalls, but it looks like I might have to (gasp) actually pay money for it.
I feel like this season is the most amazing yet. I do miss the case-of-the-week format a little, but I love what they did with the narrative this season. It’s not completely linear so it’s harder to watch one every week as opposed to binging (which is what I did with season 1 and 2, even though I had to take periodic brain breaks).
it is the best for sure because of SCULLY and her GLAMOROUS DRUG USE
She was freebasing her alibi!
Love that turn of phrase from Jack.
I literally had my jaw drop at the end. It was insanity! I was like, high on it or something after watching this morning. I always read Cindy Davis’ recap at Pajiba after and then rewatch, to make sure I didn’t miss anything, but I did rewatch the last few minutes a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t imagining it.
I feel like I could say something critical about the hyperaestheticization of the Margot/Alana sex scene, so pretty and abstracted as to be completely uncoupled from any bodily tether, which is only the opposite cliche to the sexy sexy notion of lesbian sex that is the one commonly understood as driven by the male gaze, even though women as swirly flowers is just as bad
however, I am not going to, because I liked it a lot and I laughed and I laughed.
I understand your point, but it may also have been the best way (only way?) to get a lesbian sex-scene aired on NBC. Plus it was a visual echo of the themes of blurring together and losing boundaries that Hannibal and Will were discussing. (And delightfully weird.)
Things I have overheard various coworkers saying in the past week:
– On how all dentists are money-grubbing liars: “They say I need a cleaning every six months because of my gum disease, but really it’s because they just want to get paid!”
– On her children’s summer camp: “They’re just having fun, they’re not learning anything. I thought they’d be learning the piano or fractions or something.”
– “Do you know spoken language predates written language?”
– Same person: “You know what I find really fascinating? Why did people start speaking different languages instead of everyone speaking the same language? Like who was the first person to start talking French? Why do Chinese people speak Chinese?”
– “It’s one of the oldest artefacts in the world. It predates Jesus by years and years and years.”
– “You just can’t get drip coffee in Europe. I went to all these cafés and they just had, like, lattes and café au lait.”
– One coworker, out of the blue, started telling her boss all about how she was initially her husband’s mistress, and she assumed they would eventually end their affair “because I was 30 and blond and he was 50” but then one day someone saw the guy sneaking into her house in the middle of the day and that caused a big scandal because he was an elected official, and it got back to the guy’s wife, so he left his wife for my coworker. “Believe it or not, I love him more now than I did then!” she said, before adding, “I’m not proud of this story.” Which is why you are discussing it, loudly, in the middle of your office (which has an open floor plan!) at the job you started barely a month ago.
– I heard that same coworker referring to herself and another coworker as their boss’ “work wives” and saying that she had marked her boss’ wedding anniversary (to his actual wife) in her calendar so she could remind him to get his wife a nice gift, and I threw up in my mouth a bit.
Please share with me your own tales of Inane and/or Oversharing Coworkers.
Was that person speaking about languages high? Because that’s seriously the only excuse.
My co-workers don’t say anything that far-out, just general mild sexism and racism. While glancing in my direction, because I’ll regularly glare in response.
I mean, I definitely agree that linguistics and the development of languages is really fascinating! I just think that someone in their mid-40s shouldn’t be so astonished that people in different geographical regions/ethnic groups speak different languages.
I’m willing to bet that person is monolingual. Monolinguals say the darnedest things.
These are amazing. Here’s one I had earlier this week while emailing with a coworker I loathe:
Me: Could you close out of that document and let me know when you do? I need to make a few edits.
Him: Sure. But…how do I “close out”?
I overheard this recently: “We were trying to figure out the chat thing on the internet website.”
I work for an IT company.
I had to spend a ridiculously long amount of time recently instructing a library user how to save and print a Word document. It is a library for barristers, who I expect to be reasonably intelligent.
Can you imagine the level of all-out revolution that would be brought on by “hey kids, camp’s been pretty fun so far, right? We’re gonna change gears here a little and do some fractions.”
It’d be like Reverse Hunger Games, the campers as the Capital and the adult Unit staff as tributes.
I don’t get why she was so surprised by the lack of piano lessons because unless you send your kids to a music camp, why would you expect them to do any music? Or is that actually a common thing? I don’t know, I only ever went to day camp in a working-class neighbourhood where our activities were 90% dodgeball, 10% the counselors yelling “IS EVERYONE HAVING FUN? I CAN’T HEEEAAAAR YOUUUUUUUUU” at us.
Someone in a city a couple hours away from me was killed on the 4th by a mortar firework that he was lighting. The coworkers on the other side of the cubicle wall from me discussed this with the takeaway message that “they’re probably going to just ban all fireworks now because of one stupid guy”
My internal response after having been kept up for several nights in a row by neighborhood fireworks was “Oh please whatever deity might care let them ban fireworks and then actually enforce it”
My mom texted me a clip from the local paper about a guy who died from lighting a firework on his head. ON HIS HEAD.
That’s some Darwin award material in action.
I saw that one! And another guy died from lighting one on his chest.
That was “trending” for me on FB when it happened and I was like UGH NO THANK YOU.
I’m just sorry for the other people at the shindig or whatever who had to see that happen. D:
When I was a kid, the town I lived in banned fireworks for regular folks, but starting at the same time we got better town fireworks shows, with the kind of huge fireworks you can’t get for your backyard. Those who enjoyed watching fireworks got better fireworks, and anyone who wanted to avoid them could at least know in advance when and where they’d be, and that they would be over not too long after they started.
Fireworks bans can be good for everyone!
I would be completely in favor of a ban like that! or even just enforcing the ban on huge mortar fireworks and letting people set off smaller fountains and sparklers and stuff. You know, quieter stuff that is slightly less likely to set other things on fire.
That’s been the law in Ireland for years. Fireworks a illegal to sell retail. People still get them, you just have to go up north because they’re totally legal in the UK, but it helps prevent kids getting a hold of them
oh god, the absolute worst was a few weeks ago my coworker who said about her new walk to work since we switched offices:
“well it wasn’t the best neighborhood i’ve ever walked through but i was never the only white or sane person on the street so it was okay”
One time I overheard a classmate in my MLIS program saying, “We live in a good neighbourhood, there aren’t a lot of renters.”
As a person who bought a house between two rental houses, I kind of sort of agree with your classmate…
Granted, we have some very nice people on one side right now, but it’s kind of a crapshoot every year when the lease comes up.
It would be just as much of a crapshoot if one of those houses were sold instead of rented, except then you’d be stuck with those neighbours for a much longer time.
That is definitely true. I think what bothers me most is that (at least where I am living), having a lot of renters makes it harder to build a sense of community because a large portion of the residents are short term and don’t connect as much.
However, that is more an issue of screwed up housing economics and all kinds of other stuff.
Yeah, I agree with the community building aspect. The house nextdoor is a rental, and in the 3 years we’ve lived here, there have been 3 different residents/families. We got to know the first two families, but after that, it’s kind of like, why bother? They’re just going to leave too.
I should also state that my feelings on this are no doubt currently colored by the fact that we have a couple houses of really inconsiderate renters nearby right now. I like my sleep lots and become the worst version of myself when people play “I’m in Love With the Coco” loud enough to make their windows buzz at 11 on a week night.
I rent, and I’m a delightful neighbor.
You should come and live next to me! In the house where people were lighting fireworks on the deck. It’s a lovely neighborhood and there is a public park that runs behind the houses.
And, clearly, a nice deck. For the moment….
It should remain a nice deck. There weren’t any fireworks set off last night, so they may have exhausted their supply (crosses fingers)
As someone currently doing a library degree, I cannot imagine the idea of renting not being the accepted norm. (We are poor students living in and around London, owning property is an impossible dream.)
We rent because while we could theoretically afford to buy, we would be paying several hundred dollars more per month for a mortgage on a comparable condo than we are paying in rent right now, with no guarantee that there would be a return on our investment when we decided to sell. There are much better uses for that money.
I don’t understand the mentality that owning is always better than renting. I see a lot of douchebags in comment sections going UR JUST WASTIN UR MONEY AND MAKIN UR LANDLORD RICH U IDIOT but…we’d just be wasting our money and making the bank rich if we bought
The coworker that was pestering me about the fact that I have not made much progress in wedding planning (it’s eleven months away! I already have the venue!) and has a lot of Opinions on How Things Are Done was yesterday talking to other coworkers about how much she didn’t want to have a second kid but her husband did so they had one. “That’s what you do in a marriage!” she kept saying.
She also sent me an unsolicited email about 10 financial things you and your fiance must do!
One of my coworkers randomly wandered into my cubicle yesterday and said, “Just so you know, if you and your husband ever get divorced, you can make a claim on his pension for the period you were married at any time. Even decades after you get divorced. Just so you know.”
… thanks?
Nothing holds a marriage together like unwanted children. It’s SCIENCE.
Overheard walking in the arboretum: “And this is the arboretum…where the trees are…”
I miiight be in the minority but I would enjoy that languages conversation. I love talking about the evolution of different languages. *hangs head in shame*
I would for sure probably say something like that. But then people normally tell me my conversation sounds like a stoners, sometimes. 😛 (I’ve never smoked weed. I guess I’ve never needed to? 😛 )
Maybe this is a good place to ask– what do you guys consider the standard for “safe for work”? My workplace is really collegial for a white-collar office, people swear quite a bit and I’ve heard some fairly racy stories and commentary. I’m not bothered by it; I like most of these people and some of them I drink with regularly. I just wonder how far outside the norm it is.
In theory, we have a swear jar. In practice, [shrug emoji] because our boss is pretty lax and also out of the office a lot.
I haven’t worked in a real office for a solid decade now (grad school chased by a string of small independent retail establishments populated predominately by opinionated feminist ladies). Our last staff meeting devolved into period and porn talk. Am pretty sure this is not the norm.
When I interviewed for my first career-type job, my future boss asked me if I was bothered by profanity. I knew, in that moment, THAT was the job for me.
I work in a lab and there is a lot of swearing, oversharing, that’s-what-she-said type innuendo (can’t help it, engineering talk is very suggestive), and general inappropriate behavior. We are not very professional.
Swearing yes (I’m the second-worst offender in my office after my boss’ boss); racy stories I feel like usually no.
My horrifying example of oversharing coworkers: I overheard a coworker telling a student employee how she discouraged her ~tween child, who is on the autism spectrum, from talking about cunnilingus by telling him (the kid, not the employee) that it was like licking a cat’s butt. I was so shocked at the overall inappropriateness of EVERYTHING THERE that I couldn’t even say anything.
But here’s one that I think is funny enough to be appropriate for my workplace, though: a different coworker was on vacation, posted on facebook (we’re all fb friends) a day-drunk picture of the lake or whatever with his beer or whatever and captioned it “drunk ass fuck.” He meant “drunk as fuck” but I think he didn’t realize what he’d done until he was back, and telling us in a casual meeting how his wife was like “omg you can’t put that on facebook!!!” He seemed to be baffled by her objection until he realized *in that meeting* what he’d actually typed.
“Do you know spoken language predates written language?”
I mean… I just…
I am thinking of writing a historical fantasy novel about an ancient civilization who can read and write but do not speak, even though they could in theory, they just haven’t developed oral language yet.
I am a recovering linguist, and I can assure you that I would read that book.
I would also read this book.
Wait, it just hit me, you mean they communicate only in passive-aggressive little notes?
Uuuuuugh. Open office plans are the worst. Mostly people are just having their inane chats and I ignore them, but there is one HORRIBLE woman here who I reached bitch-eating-crackers with like day 2 of this job and she NEVER SHUTS UP and is a nasty, nosy busy-body who is always telling people how they should live their lives. It goes without saying that she is an ignorant anti-vaxxer shitshow.
The other tooth-grinder is this woman who sits near me but we’ve never met. She works with a guy who is hearing impaired, and she just SCREAMS at him all the time. And sometimes she turns around so he can’t see her lips and insults him. It makes me sick to my stomach, but she basically runs her agency and is beloved by the muckety-mucks so there’s nothing anyone can do.
On the plus side, I had a lovely chat with a coworker who has been to the Iceland witchcraft museum and SEEN THE NECROPANTS. He has not yet agreed to be my necropants in the event of his untimely death, but give me time.
Monday lunch conversation:
“What did you do this weekend, Manager I Am Friends With?”
“Oh, my husband and I went biking. You?”
“I went to the archery range. What about you, New Manager Who Everyone Already Thinks Is A Little Odd?”
“Some woman offered to be my mistress!”
what the HELL. oh please tell us all the other reasons why everyone already thinks he’s odd .
Well, he does wear a fedora and calls everyone ma’am. And there’s been a distressingly high turnover of young women in his department since he was hired.
…odd is possibly not the word. Except we’re all very Midwestern and middle-class around here, so it’s the only one we’re using.
Oh noooooooo
Document everything.
If not for the lawsuit, then for the “MRAs in the wild” documentary.
I just have a gleeful climate change denier. She’s extra fun.
My coworker wears Depends. No, we are not close or even particularly friendly but I know all about her bladder leakage.
D :
I have a theory that some people are just so into hierarchy that they assume that EVERYTHING exists because of a decision from The Man. They can’t really picture something developing by itself or by communal effort with no one to rule how it’s supposed to go. So, obviously languages are invented when the people in charge decide that it’s time to start speaking another language and say “we shall now speak Chinese”. They think everything is done by rules. They think written language is “more proper” because it has rules. These people assume that words should be pronounced like they’re spelled, and that words that aren’t in the dictionary aren’t “real”.
Of course they believe that written language must have been there from the beginning in any civilised language. After all, it’s only young people today who speak so badly with all kinds of unreal words, bad grammar and wrong pronunciation. In proper times, people used to talk exactly like books!
I think you may be on to something there…
I thought this when I was a child! I didn’t get how individual words developed and so the only scenario my little rule-loving mind could wrap itself around was a bunch of elders sitting around a fire, one guy in charge, methodically holding up or describing objects/feelings and then asking the rest what they thought it should be called.
….as I said, when I was a child.
I see you’ve met my mother. Did she also share her views on dress codes and who should be allowed to have children?
In the last few weeks I have had to explain to a coworker that airline prices and flight times are set by the airline (he was complaining that the town wanted to encourage tourists, but then why did they make the flight prices so inconvenient?), what a URL is, and what kale is. And once, when he insisted on horrifically oversharing about the time he found out his girlfriend was cheating on him because she made out with the other guy in the middle of the bar he always went to after work on Fridays, that this was not because she was “too stupid” to realize he might be at the bar on Friday that he always went to on Friday, but because she obviously wanted him to see. I only succeeded in getting him to understand half of those things, the other half I gave up on.
The stupid! It burns! Hose me off! Wipe me down! Do something!
IDK but I would stop drinking water from the common cooler right now if I worked in your office.
My co-workers are all pretty chill, but since we work in a fairly relaxed cafe, there are no impediments to just jib-jabbing all day long. Sometimes I do things like pretend I haven’t seen or read Dune, so that I may have Dune described to me rather than discussing it.
On the subject of why Chinese tourists on public transport are so loud (no, me neither): “It’s because the same syllable can mean different things depending on the volume, so they have to say some things loudly”. That is not how tonal languages work. (Horrifyingly, this person had lived in Hong Kong for several years.)
In this person’s defense (no not really), this is certainly true in English. “Fuck” for example. “Shit” is also wildly expressive depending on volume and inflection.
Toasts! MrChouffe and I celebrated the fourth anniversary of our first date, I mean one-night stand, last night. It was so nice. We had some fizzy wine and realized that we’ve had fizzy wine from the same place on every anniversary thus far. And now we both work there. 🙂
It is GLORIOUS weather here in Northern Michigan, so after my 10K tomorrow we’re going to spend two days on the beach, eating sandwiches and drinking hydration beers. What are your favorite things to do when it isn’t too hot or too windy or too cold but just, just right?
that sounds amazing!! I grew up in Michigan and miss summers on the Great Lakes beaches.
I’m very excited to be driving up to Charlevoix for work on Monday, even if it will only be for a few hours.
When the weather is just right, I like a drink on the deck with a good book. Exactly what I’ll be doing for the next two days!
I just got back from Northern Michigan and it was spectacular weather! When it’s absolutely perfect weather I live outside- hikes, exploring downtown, picnics, eating on patios only. Long drives on country roads. Eating tons of whatever local fruit is in season.
Wait, did you get JOB and I missed it?!?! If so, CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Our raspberries are starting to come on like gazongas, so I like to go out into the raspberry patch and graze like a bear. That’s one of the best parts about July, at least in good raspberry years.
The other is just sitting on the porch with a cup of tea, looking out at the trees and meadow (we live in the county), pretending I am dead and this is heaven.
No, not yet. They have to do more interviews next week and then second interviews. SIGH. (Thank you in advance, though!)
Totally absolutely 100% know the dead/heaven feel around here. My mom’s back porch faces Big Blue in Empire, with a nice meadow between her and it, and it is just. I don’t know how to describe it. Incredible.
Hey, do you read the local weekly rag or do you avoid like most left-leaning residents?
OK. Fingers crossed. Sending good mojo to you!
I read the “Express,” is that the one you mean? I have mixed feelings about it but the events listings are useful.
The Enterprise.
What areyou guys reading? I finally got China Rich Girlfriend from the library and it is a delight. FAR more enjoyable than the shitty book I’m reviewing this week.
I’ve been chugging through Madeline L’Engle’s Austins books and they are really making me happy.
Ngaio Marsh’s Death of a Fool, after yesterday’s terrifying thread. Other than that it’s been Alison Weir’s Wars of the Roses and some Agatha Christie, after I needed a break from Eleanor of Aquitaine.
it’s all short stories and novellas for me. I’m about halfway through Side Jobs, the collection of Harry Dresden short stories. When I needed a break last night, I realized that Bujold’s new novella, Penric’s Demon was available for purchase, so I downloaded that and made it about halfway through before bed. I’m enjoying the shorter stories, especially since I have a few 700-800 page books hanging out on my to-read list that I’m picking up next.
Wait wait wait I did not know about a new Bujold novellaaaaa
I know what I’m doing when I get home from work today!
DOWNLOADING
Is the Bujold novella set in one of her existing universes?
It’s in the same world as Chalion, but not the same country or with any known characters. Deals with the Bastard
I just started Tana French’s In the Woods! I’m only a few chapters in but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Before that was Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, which I kind of had mixed feelings about. The atmosphere and total sense of unease and dread was A+, but by the end something felt… lacking. I dunno. Like, part of the appeal was how there were no concrete answers to what was going on, but at the same time I! WANTED! ANSWERS! and the narrator got a little trying by the end. ah well. 😛 Maybe I have to read the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy to find out, haha.
I LOVE TANA FRENCH. I adored In The Woods and The Likeness. The others not so much, but the newest one, the Secret Place, was great. My dad reports that the audio books are also great.
Oh man, you don’t really get answers by the end. A little, maybe, but nothing concrete. Also, if you do decide to continue, know that the first half or so the second book is really trying (at least, I found it so). The atmosphere was more bullshit bureaucracy…until a legit creepy scene partway through, after which all the bureaucratic obfuscation began to fall apart.
boooo. well, that’s good to know at least!
I talked it up on a round-up earlier this week, but I am reading “Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir” by Bryan Burrough and it is amazing. I am shocked that no one died. The station was a death trap, NASA and the Russian space program consistently hid important information from each other, the NASA astronauts were miserable on the station and all sounded like real pieces of work in general (except Shannon Lucid), the cosmonauts were working on a bonus system and so did not want to report problems or evacuate when they should have, etc. It’s a far cry from the glory days of Apollo, that’s for sure, but it is so fascinating. And terrifying.
I also read Seveneves (very good, although I wish the last part had either been shorter or longer), Nimona, and the 4th Expanse Series book.
The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. It’s pretty good, but I kinda feel like she just went “Remember Left Hand of Darkness? That but more so.” Still better than 99% of sci-fi though, imho. On deck: Adventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae and Mislaid by Nell Zink.
I didn’t love Left Hand of Darkness as much as I’d hoped to. Possibly because I as so blown away by Lathe of Heaven that I just wanted all LeGuin to be like that. All I’ve read from her so far.
YES! I had a similar experience – I read Lathe of Heaven and was just blown away. Left Hand of Darkness felt like kinda no big whoop? I wonder whether I would have had a different opinion of LHoD if I had read it 20 years ago. SciFi has come a long way.
I LOVE the Dispossessed, but I do like the whole collectivist/individualist society genres of sci fi and one that comes down more on the side of the collectivism one was really interesting for me – most of them are Cold War paint-by-numbers themes they can get a bit dull.
Wow, I find them so different!
I am re-reading Miranda July’s The Last Bad Man for a book clubby thing (that is, if 1-2 other ladies and some beer counts as a “club”). I love this book, but whoa is it giving me weird dreams that I would blush to recount. I wake up and wonder if I talked in my sleep as I often do… Mr. Ada would have gotten quite the evening radio programming…
I am #55 in line to get China Rich Girlfriend from my library and I am chomping at the bit.
I have TOO MANY BOOKS right now and I’m starting to panic because I’m going on my summer trip in 2 weeks and I feel pressure to finish all of them before then, which is never going to happen. Especially because I deal with panic by… going to the library and getting more books. I’m also strangely loath to give up on crappy books, and instead hate-read them to the end out of pure spite.
I’m currently reading “Yugoslavia: A Concise History” but the writing is not the most compelling so I’m having trouble focusing on it. It’s also a bit too concise and I often find myself wishing there were more details. I also have a book called “Revolt and Crisis in Greece” because I am trying to understand what the heck is going on over there. My husband is an economist and talks about Greece a lot and I’m like “Yes Greece that is where Sophocles lived, also other ancient famous people” and I want to broaden my knowledge.
On the recommendation of a Toastie in last week’s open thread, I’m reading Bee Wilson’s Consider The Fork. Only a few chapters in but enjoying it thoroughly so far. Utensil development FTW!
Also just finished the new Liaden novel (Dragon In Exile) and am forcibly restraining myself from starting a complete series re-read.
Ooh how is the new Liaden novel? I kind of quit the series after Ghost Ship because it felt like there were too many plotlines crammed in and nothing was getting resolved. I have been having intermittant re-read cravings, though….
I really enjoyed it, but my adoration of the Liaden universe knows no bounds. That said, it is definitely a series that no longer involves stand-alone books and the various storylines don’t really resolve at the end of this one either.
However, Lee & Miller seem to have a pretty solid relationship with their new publishing house so new books are coming out on a much more regular basis, so I’m putting it into the perspective of them now having the freedom to tell much larger stories.
Oh good! I know they were having some trouble there, for a while. Mmmmm maybe I’ll give in to my re-read cravings.
I just discovered these books! I have been doing nothing else for the past week. My poor child has had to subsist on crackers.
I’m reading Great Plains by Ian Frazier, and I just got to this gem of an excerpt from a North Dakotan county history (section titled “Others who were Here”):
He’s great– I haven’t read any of his full-length novels, but I always loved his New Yorker humor pieces and Coyote v. Acme .
I just finished Station Eleven and loved it! Now I’m reading The Social Sex, which is about the history of female friendship, and it’s really interesting so far.
Just finishing up Summer of the Bear which I’ve enjoyed, next I’ll probably read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Signal to Noise as it’s been sitting on my shelf a while. Also excited to read Charlie Stross’ latest Laundry files book.
oooh I really liked Signal to Noise. I love when a book about awkward loser teenagers actually portrays awkward loser teenagers. Check its goodreads page before you start, some noble soul made a youtube playlist of all the songs mentioned in the book.
Awesome! Will do so.
Seconding the Signal to Noise love. I wish I’d known there was a playlist. As it was, I just kept putting the book down to pull up songs on youtube, so I could have them as background for this or that scene.
The new Laundry book is also on my list for this weekend! I’m really excited that it’s from Mo’s perspective.
I did not know that! I’ve been reading Stross’ blog and I’m really curious about the shift the series is undergoing. I’ve only read the first two books but ooh, maybe I should pick it back up…
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others In America, by Kiese Laymon. I tried to read it when it first came out, but it made me cry on the train too much. Now it is making me cry on the train an acceptable amount, and I’m really glad I’m finally reading it.
A seriously challenging read, but one that deserved much broader attention than it seems to have gotten.
I just started The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett. In the past two weeks I’ve also read three books by Kate Atkinson, who I’d never read before and now obviously quite enjoy, an Agatha Christie, Eleanor & Park, The Girl on the Train, The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons, and All the Light We Cannot See. That last one is probably the one I enjoyed the least. I didn’t dislike it, but it just felt like yet another WWII novel. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done research on which topics have had the most books written about them, but if that study exists I have to assume WWII comes in at number one. At this point I think a book (or movie) about the war has to be really good or unique to set itself apart and “blind French girl who maybe has a diamond” doesn’t really make the cut.
I fucking adored All The Light We Cannot See, the number of stories and beautiful writing was beautiful to me.
Kate Atkinson is my go-to book recommendation/author I press on people. I really like her short story collection (It’s Not the End of the World) if that wasn’t one of the three!
I LOVE It’s Not the End of the World. I’m well overdue for a reread.
Outlander, Magic for Beginners and we’re finally doing some Alice Munro in my book group (which I’ve been pushing for), starting with “Passions.”
I just finished re-reading The Long Earth for my book club and I got so sniffly at the end, guys, I miss living in Madison so much.
But! The last time I posted in the reading thread I was in the middle of The Sparrow, and I am HERE to talk about it.
I just finished The Long Utopia (best of the sequels)! I love all the meandering through big ideas.
That is my favorite part! I really like well-written idea fiction, and Pratchett is (was) just great for that.
Oh, man. The Sparrow. That is an intense book. What are your thoughts?
I honestly kind of feel that everyone telling me how intense it was made it…a little less intense? I was so ready for awful shit to start going down from page 1 that by the time it really did, at the end, I was already worn out.
That said, it was fantastically well written, I got very attached to some of the characters, and yeah, it was pretty damn brutal. And the Law of Unintended Consequences is pretty much my favorite plot device, so yeah.
I had NO IDEA. I just picked it up off my mom’s bookshelf, so I think I was under-prepared. I also read the sequel, which is less disturbing but more sad. It’s such a great book though, with all the different themes of learning and culture and spirituality. I read it like a decade ago and it still haunts me.
Oh yeah, if you came at it that way it’d be incredibly brutal.
I picked it up this year after it being mentioned in every “religion & science fiction” panel I’ve ever attended, and from that perspective, it was really fascinating. I mean, Jesuits have been doing science for centuries! Jesuits love science! So of course they’d be on top of this whole first contact business (despite a great deal of evidence that they’re not always great at it). And it was delightful to see a future in which someone other than the military or a giant corporation has the actual ability to do things.
Gut-punch. Man, oh man.
I did have terrible book-hangover for about a day and a half.
I’m reading NK Jemisin’s “The Killing Moon” and it’s really rich and deep and awesome and I’m having so much trouble remembering names and who they go with. I might have to make myself a cheat sheet.
Splitting time between Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy (as recommended by The Toast) and In The Woods by Tana French. I’ve already read The Likeness and Faithful Place from that series, so now I’m catching up. It’s really good so far! Planning on some weekend snuggle-in-a-chair-with-coffee mystery devouring.
I’ve been reading Maureen Johnson’s Shades of London series, and enjoying it so far. I didn’t love the first book, but I think each book in the series has gotten increasingly better. I’m also listening to Girl on a Wire by Gwenda Bond during my commute, it’s basically Romeo and Juliette set in a circus with a mystery thrown in? I’m liking it way more than I expected to. I was listening to A Discovery of Witches, but I quit after about 5 discs because I could see where it was going with the vampire romance and I was not into it. I wanted to like that one more than I did!
I gave up on reading Discovery of Witches for the same reason! Also very disappointed.
The basic plot of it is such an interesting concept, it just got so bogged down in unnecessary details and romance! I hate not finishing books, but I just could not keep forcing my way through that one. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one. General consensus on Goodreads/the blog-o-sphere seems pretty split, either you absolutely love the entire series or you couldn’t even get through the first one!
Yes, I read a few rave reviews of it, started out really enjoying it and then boooooooooring…
Same! But I have kept it guiltily on my bookshelf for years, because Mom heard the author speak and bought the second one and got it signed for me. So I feel like I have to read it! And read book two! But there are always so many books I’d rather be reading…
Oh no, family dilemma!
I couldn’t get over the writing! Especially after attending a panel that the author sat on (she was not an endearing personality and some of the things she said made it hard not to see the main character as anything but a Mary Sue afterwards), I just grew to hate the style and all the unnecessary crap she stuffed in.
I listened to Willie Nelson’s autobiography this week, and The Long Utopia, and today I started on The Martian. Also queued up: Deep Down Dark, the story of the trapped Chilean miners, and Judy Blume’s new adult novel.
I think I read an excerpt of that Chilean miners book in the New Yorker, and it was incredibly vivid and well-written. I think I might be too claustrophobic to read the whole thing, though!
In The Unlikely Event? I’m listening to it now as an audiobook! I keep engineering reasons to spend more time preparing meals and washing dishes since those are the activities I’m most likely to pair at home with audiobook consumption. (Walking the dog and taking the bus are typically reserved for listening to albums I’ve downloaded from the library onto my phone).
Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods: does this get better after the first section? The first section was very much the literary-author-reinvents-hackneyed-SF-tropes kind of thing, tedious for any reader who has read more than three SF books ever. Does this book repay forcing one’s way onward?
Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki, This One Summer: just turned up at the library, so I grabbed it. Intense. Many feelings! Had to set it down to process feelings about 20 pages in. It’s great! (I think I’ll look for Tove Jansson’s Summer Book next?)
Naomi Novik, Uprooted: This has such great word of mouth, queued after This One Summer.
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: I have bounced off a couple other Mitchell books. I hope not to bounce off this one. Last in line.
David Mitchell! Did you bounce off Black Swan Green? Cause I loved that one, but I “read” it as an audiobook and that made all the difference. I cannot even image trying to read it, read it. Something would be lost, I think.
No, it was Number9Dream, his first. I have a long drive coming up, maybe I should try an audiobook. I usually jump around in podcasts and LOUD MUSIC. At least when driving alone.
It’s beautifully done as an audiobook, isn’t it. Jacob de Zoet is much closer to that than the weird ones.
Kushiel’s Avatar. It’s good so far, though I’m not sure I like it as much as the first two. It keeps threatening to become orientalist, but then mostly pulls out of that particular tailspin. Now we’re in Drujan, however, and it’s going to some dark fucking places. (Um, that wording is a bit more appropriate than I intended.)
I’m glad it’s still good (and still has Phedre hightailing it off to random countries)! I just finished the second book this week, and I am always wary about series going downhill. But seriously, I’ve lost count of how many times in these two books she’s said, as narrator, “How little I knew of [random country we just heard of] back then!” and you just know that you’re about to spend several hundred pages in a completely different part of the map. These books are delightful.
Haha, yeah, the third definitely does that as well. The third goes mostly to Africa and Asia Minor. I do love the fact that the books tackle areas of the world which don’t usually show up in fantasy fiction. Like, hey, let’s go off to Hellenistic Egypt for a few hundred pages! Or the coast of Croatia! Why not! It fits in well with the idea that the series is about Terre D’Ange’s turn from isolationism to internationalism, with Phedre as an ambassador who solves problems via intelligence (um, and sex) rather than conquest or violence.
Yes! Honestly, now that you’ve put it that way, I can suddenly see all the parallels between these books and Guy Gavriel Kay’s books, which I love with all my heart. Historical locations not usually covered by fantasy, less of a focus on the conquest and violence and more on the intrigue and individual personalities, a number of unconventional sex scenes…
*Makes a note to herself to finally get around to reading Guy Gavriel Kay!*
Yes yes yes! My highest recommendations are Tigana, Sailing to Sarantium/Lord of Emperors (a duology), and Under Heaven. I picked up Tigana at 15 or 16 and fell in love, so it has a special place in my heart, but it’s the most traditional fantasy of the three. The Sarantium books are my Dad’s favorites, and they’re set in fantasy Constantinople during the reign of fantasy Justinian and Theodora. Under Heaven is set in fantasy Tang Dynasty China.
Just finished Murder Is Bad Manners: A Wells & Wong Mystery by Robin Stevens–very definitely YA but absolutely delightful at any age. Takes place in a girls’ boarding school in 1934, is actually a good mystery well-solved, but the best part is the narration from the pov of Hazel Wong, new girl from Hong Kong, and her perspective on her friendship with Daisy Wells, a perfect English rose type of girl with all the self-confidence, verging on arrogance, that comes from being the daughter of a lord. The insider-outsider dynamic is perfect. Quick read, lots of fun, especially if you like Christie, Marsh, et al.
That sounds fantastic!
That sounds interesting!!
Just bought the first one!
I’m 150 pages into Anna Karenina
Good luck! I’ve been 150 pages into Anna Karenina for about 2 years now
Just finished The Girl With All The Gifts, it’s…kind of a thriller? More sci-fi than Gone Girl but really tense. I could not allow myself to read it at bed time because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Highly recommend it, even just for the character study of some very different people and how they see each other and react with each other.
Yesssssss. I read that in ARC, blogged about it, and then completely forgot about it by the time it came out, but every time I see someone reading it I have this little mental fist-pump reaction. So, so good.
Yes! Just finished that one last week, I thought it was a great twist on the genre.
I’m back to slogging through Jill Lapore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman again, after like 6 weeks of reading a bunch of really fantastic books. I figured I’m back in the reading (books) habit so now is a good time to try and plow through a book I’ve been “in the middle of” since November.
It’s not working as well as I’d hoped.
I’m reading the third Elena Ferrante book which is depressing and also mesmerizing.
oh god, in n out. something is definitely wrong with my digestive system (and has been for about a month) and i’ve been living on plain oatmeal, rice cereal, almonds, carrots, and greek yogurt for the past week plus and i still feel like hell all the time and i’m hungry. i have a doctor’s appointment on wednesday, and i’m a vegetarian! i don’t even eat meat! but i’m hungry and i want to devour that burger with my eyes right now. the cheese. the fries.
I am sorry your innards are in a state of rebellion. That’s utterly miserable stuff.
I went vegetarian a couple of months ago, and I swear, the only meat-ish thing that haunts my cravings and dreams is a freakin’ cheeseburger. I may have made little whimpering noises when I saw that picture. So yeah, devouring with the eyes.
Remember that guy from yesterday who tried to charge his phone on a theater stage? He now has a name and a face. Which looks exactly like you imagined. http://www.playbill.com/news/article/exclusive-me…
Ugh, lacrosse player.
oh man sometimes it is so satisfying when a person fulfills expectations you didn’t even know you had, so precisely.
Hey, you know, I’m glad at least that kid is patronizing the arts. We should all strive to emula….okay yeah I can’t get that out.
In retrospect, what would he say to the cast? “Hey, I’m sorry if I delayed your show five minutes. But you got a lot of attention from this, so maybe I made your show a little better [better known].”
Perfection. I see a promising career in public relations for this young chappie
Can we PLEASE talk about last night’s Hannibal because I MAY NEVER RECOVER.
(more flailing in comments so that people avoiding spoilers can collapse the thread)
Can we talk about Jack asking Will if he would “slip away” with Hannibal and Will gazing moodily into the middle distance and saying that part of him would always want to run off with Hannibal and be well-dressed cannibal lovers together!!!!
Can we talk about Bedelia motherfucking Du Maurier basically telling Hannibal “BYE FELICIA” and then calculatingly drugging herself so as to have plausible deniability when the police inevitable came for her!!!!
Can we talk about that kaleidoscopic lesbian sex scene and how Margot is doing her hair to look more like Alana’s!!!
Can we talk about Hannibal at the Uffizi lovingly drawing Will’s face into his sketch of the Birth of Venus!!!!
Can we talk about Will showing up at the Uffizi and Hannibal said, “If I saw you every day, forever, I would still remember this moment.” !!!!
LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT THE LAST SCENE THOUGH OKAY OR ANYTHING INVOLVING MASON VERGER NONE OF THAT NEVER HAPPENED AND EVERYTHING IS OKAY
OH HECK YOU BEAT ME TO IT I STARTED A THREAD A FEW COMMENTS DOWN
Thank you for explaining why Bedelia was shooting up; I honestly didn’t understand bc I am pretty clueless.
How real was Hannigram last night? It was so real. The realest. That was the most romantic reunion scene I’ve ever witnessed right up until the KNIFE and the GUNSHOT and WHY IS THIS HAPPENING, EVERYTHING HAPPENS SO MUCH,
Do we think that Chiyoh was going rogue (as suggested by the unceremonious tossing of Will off the train) or were they working together to lure Hannibal into a trap so she could go all sniper on him?
WHY CAN’T THEY STOP TRYING TO KILL EACH OTHER AND INSTEAD BE HAPPY TOGETHER IN LOVE LIKE WE KNOW THEY REALLY WANT TO
At first I thought she was committing suicide to beat Hannibal to the punch, but then the acid trip started, and I realized she was pretending Hannibal had brainwashed her.
I enjoy the theory that this is the first time they showed it to us but that she has been drugging it up the whole season. or possibly just since the fateful Metaphor Bathtub in the first episode, it seemed to me she got a lot more relaxed after that
I CAN BARELY EVEN SPEAK ABOUT THIS EPISODE I JUST SAW IT THIS MORNING AND
Things I will never be over:
1. That kaleidoscopic sex scene that got so much vagina imagery that STANDARDS AND PRACTICES SENT BRYAN FULLEY A CONGRATULATORY LETTER ON IT
2. Bedelia being so fucking amazing and brilliant and PLEASE DON’T EAT HER
3. THE HANNIGRAM. OH THE HANNIGRAM.
4. that last scene i can’t believe he went there but he did and next week’s promo makes 50 Shades look like a children’s book how is this on network television again
I am ashamed to say this but I stupidly looked away from the TV at the last second and I think I missed something because the promo showed Hannibal and Will being delivered to Mason, but the last thing I remember seeing is THE SAW and then I averted my gaze so I could pretend it wasn’t happening.
The saw happened and Will was watching the blood drops float up into the air and transform into the morning sky against trees. And then we see him and Hannibal hanging upside down and Mason welcoming them to the farm.
END EPISODE, BECAUSE BRYAN IS A TERRIBLE HUMAN PERSON.
And then the promo with all its bondage and pain-type things.
Overheard on twitter: “oh thank god they’re hanging upside-down in a meat locker. …wait.”
And we knew that the bone saw was going to happen, but then it looked like we’d been faked out and there was no bone saw, but then that was a double bluff, and then I actually screamed and scared my cat.
NOTHING IS OKAY NOR WILL EVER BE AGAIN.
I loved so much about this episode. So much happened and yet so much left me going whaaaaat.
I can say that I live for every scene involving Bedelia, Chiyoh, Alana, Margot or any combination of the above. This show has some amazingly fierce ladies on it.
Can we talk about Margot wanting to harvest her brother’s sperm? (Post-lesbian sex scene so technically I am still abiding by your last rule)
The fact that she wants to get some of it before he is locked away mystifies me. Come on, Margot, anyone on the planet would have better sperm than that asshole.
Man, that episode was amazing. I was pulling for a Mexican standoff situation when Chiyoh got in the elevator at the end.
“How is Chiyoh?”
“She pushed me off a train.”
“Attagirl.”
There’s a reason for the sperm-harvesting! Their father’s will specified that only a male Verger could inherit the family fortune (hence why Margot had to put up with Mason as an adult – she hadn’t gotten anything when their father died). Margot herself was subjected to an involuntary hysterectomy by Mason in season 2. So her plan is to produce a baby boy using Mason’s sperm and then killing Mason and living it up with the baby and the money she would inherit as the baby’s legal guardian.
I had forgotten about the male heir stipulation for the inheritance. D’oh! That makes much more sense then, thanks!
Still very creepy and unsettling as all get out, as is just about everything relating to the Vergers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl2T-Itb7WQ
This is a video from a Bollywood film featuring Amitabh Bachhan as a British dandy.I thought this would be appreciated here.
http://www.hindilyrics.net/translation-Amar-Akbar…
Translation of the lyrics ^
Oh man, Amar Akbar Anthony! One of the best! This song, too: https://youtu.be/3GhGq7db9v0
FALLEN LONDON THREAD! What is everyone up to? I’ve been working on increasing Notability, which is a grind. Still trying to figure out which item conversions are most efficient in terms of actions spent/other benefits.
I am debating what to spend my Fate on: getting the key to Flute Street from the Deformed Glim-Sculptor or starting the storyline that might help me recover my soul? I’m not 100% sure what the benefits of having a soul are, beyond the fact that not having one locks a few interactions with Somerset (SNOBS) so idk if it would be worth paying real-life money for it.
I’m in Polythreme and I hate it. That is all.
I hate Polythreme too. And then you stick around too long to make the voyage worth it and ugh.
I came here as I finally put my map together, and also to finish the Jack of Smiles story, (which I’ve done) but yeah want to stick around to make my visit worth it but it is terrible.
I found and bred a plated seal and then gave the hound of heaven to the bishop. I then went directly back to Zee and got myself another plated seal which I am currently taming for breeding.
I keep meaning to get another plated seal! Thanks for the reminder.
Who has two thumbs up and finally made it to Correspondent? This Neather!
“Within the month, your searing exposé on the inconstancy of gravity provokes – in order – accolades, censure, a conference, death threats, three visits from the Ministry for Public Decency, one from God’s Editors, a modest riot and the foundation of a new science.”
*sigh* It’s all I’ve ever wanted from life.
I’m trying to decide whether to sell my soul and working on my Shadowy.
Flute Street gives you a lot of hints about the pre-history of the Neath. If you want more story, for now, that’s the one I’d take.
Once again, I’ve spent a week or two steadily advancing a bunch of semi-connected storylines (Affair of the Box! Newspaper! Ambition! Mahogany Hall!) and then all of them at the same time hit a point where I have to spend a million years grinding or waiting for just the right combination of cards or whatever. Oh well — at least I’m at a point where my Shadowy grinding can be lucrative.
I really screwed up the exceptional story this month. (Spoilers) I sold Julie out to the Masters, and now I wish I’d joined the revolutionary cause. Beyond that, I put together my screaming map and got all my expedition supplies for the cave of nadir. Does anyone have an eyeless skull? I’m Briarwoods.
Dang, I had one earlier but sold it D: if I get another one while grinding in the Forbidden Quarter I’ll send you a message to see if you still need it.
I just found one! Thanks for the offer, though! I’m off to excavate a nadir or two.
Toasties! Due in great part due to the enthusiasm here, I’ve finally started watching Hannibal. I’m 8 episodes in and so far I really like it, especially
1. How sly and understated Mads Mikkelsen is – he has a talent for the sneaky lip curl.
2. How adorably rumpled Will Graham is
3. How beautifully shot it all it.
4. The relative diversity of the cast (I want more Gina Torres!).
I avoided it for a long time because I had reached my serial killer limit, but to my surprise, the gore doesn’t bother me at all. I also recently watched Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the first time after avoiding it for ages, and while it was highly unpleasant, the gore didn’t bother me there, either.
It’s weird, since I tend to be a big wuss, and easily upset/nauseated by things I see on screen. I think it’s partly that Hannibal (and TCSM) don’t have a lot of “stalking shots” where you’re looking through the eyes of the killer at unsuspecting victims, just waiting for the terrible thing to happen. But I think it’s also me, that somehow I’ve hardened or disconnected or just become less sensitive to these things, and that I’m now developing a kind of morbid fascination (I’m also, incidentally, loving Karina Longworth doing so many Charles Manson episodes on the You Must Remember This podcast). I’m not sure whether that’s a bad sign or a good one, though.
How do you deal with gore? Can you handle it, do you seek it out? Or does it also vary according to the season/your mood/something else?
Gore doesn’t bother me or my wife at all (she studied forensics in college). It is definitely something else in Hannibal though, it is actually a thing of beauty somehow.
I’m also not usually a fan of gore, but Hannibal is straight up my favorite show. There are shots that disturb me and that I have watched through my hands, but the violence is done so beautifully and almost allegorically that it doesn’t bother me as much?
SO HAPPY YOU’RE WATCHING THE SHOW WELCOME TO THE FANNIBAL FAMILY.
When I’m up to speed I may actually go back through old open threads to find all the Toastie discussions 🙂
I can handle gore when I’m expecting to see it. Shows like Hannibal, I know it’s going to be there, I know there will be a lot of it, so it doesn’t upset me too much (though I still can’t snack and watch it at the same time).
Any time there’s blood in an unexpected context (I can’t think of any examples right now), I’ll get woozy and upset.
I’ve also started watching horror movies with my friend/object of my unrequited affection. She’s a big horror buff and I’m a big weenie. But we saw It Follows together and on the 4th of July we watched The Awakening and an Argentinean movie called The House At The End of Time. I’m really fascinated/terrified by ghosts. The one thing I cannot handle and that will make me scream and cry is any kind of distorted human face. Go figure.
I have the same face issue! I also have terrible face recognition and I sometimes wonder if they’re connected?
I love the show, and there’s at least one scene every episode where I cover my eyes while my husband yells “OH GOD OH GOD THERE’S SO MUCH BLOOD.” Not my thing, but I don’t let it take away from what I love about it otherwise.
I’m okay? It depends. I could NOT deal with an episode involving live skin. Could not. I don’t remember which part of the series that is, so I won’t go further. But I’ve had to stop for a while. I really want to pick it up again, but I need a break 🙁
I’m slowly realizing that I’m kind of really into horror as a genre, but in a way where a lot of things can still be insanely effective for me when done, er, effectively. I’m still really susceptible to getting unsettled and creeped out and jumpy by certain things, but I’ve realized I’m more vulnerable to atmosphere and suggestion and tension than I am to outright gore.
I mean, outright gore can gross me out, but it’s not a lingering emotional sensation. (Was it Stephen King who wrote something about how disgust is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to horror? At any rate, I think it’s true; disturbing me with something violent and bloody and gross is only effective at maybe making me cringe and wince, but its effect is transient.)
That’s just for, like, unsubtle gore, though. Gore for gore’s sake, I guess. Cinematic gore, beautifully and effectively shot, can be remarkably effective. Or carefully placed gore, used with intent and consideration for the narrative. But that’s gore that understands its role in creating the atmosphere/tension/emotional effectiveness of storytelling.
I recently (in the last year) got around to watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre*, having thought it was probably a gory, bloody proto-slasher. I thought it was exactly what it said on the tin, and I went in expecting exactly that.
And I realized I was wrong.
I realized that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre does not, in fact, contain a chainsaw massacre.
And I fell a little in love with it for what it turned out to be instead.
(It’s a beautiful little movie. I collected some of the best non-terrifying screencaps once because I developed such a soft spot for its cinematography: http://theo-winterwood.tumblr.com/post/1015311451… )
* Why did they think chainsaw should be two words? Why?
(I could write forever on my feelings about horror films now, so I’ll stop. I will say that I started Hannibal–alone, late at night–and only got to the people garden in the second episode before I had to stop, take a deep breath, and decide I needed to come back to it when I was a little more prepared. I really do need to start watching it, though . . .)
Have you read the story of how they made the film? It’s long, but it’s absolutely bananas! http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/they-came-the…
They didn’t have a fridge to put the meat in, so they just left it out in the 110-degree heat and threw up between takes. The entire cast accidentally ate pot brownies. One of the actors liked to go to screenings and tap people on the shoulder right at the moments when his character was doing something creepy.
There should be more Gina Torres in all the things. Clearly.
I’m not *into* gore as such, but if the story’s good I can definitely appreciate it when done artfully. Hannibal does it well, and so does the DS game 9 Persons 9 Hours 9 Doors, which I have been trying to get the friend who got me watching Hannibal into.
I think the gore in Hannibal is so OTT and outlandish that I’m able to disconnect it from reality. No one would actually do those things, the mushrooms, the totem pole. It’s so bizarre. I only have a hard time with it when the victim is alive and I can see a moving person. In real life blood makes me dizzy, but I’m ok with TV
Plain old blood I can handle just fine. Like in a movie if someone has been shot in a limb/torso or stabbed somewhere, I’m good, even if that person is bleeding out everywhere. I don’t get squeamish around blood irl either, but then again the most blood I’ve ever seen come out of a human being was the time my friend tripped during a theater game and broke her tooth (there was a surprisingly large amount of blood, but I didn’t care so much about that, I was more worried about friend being hurt).
As soon as you throw some guts/body horror in there though, I have to leave the room asap. Which is why I can never watch Hannibal, which is sad because I’ve seen some gifsets/pics on Tumblr and the cinematography looks sweet! There was a scene I remember in Looper, where a character starts losing body parts because his past self is getting them cut off (its a time travel movie, stuff gets weird). You only see the older character, not his past self so there’s no blood, but holy balls did that scene freak me out.
Beer!
I can handle gore much better if I am very slightly drunk. And I do mean very slightly. When I was still watching True Blood, I would sometimes nurse one beer while watching two episodes. Sometimes I would have beer left at the end.
But I don’t watch gory stuff that often, in part because I don’t always feel like drinking when I want to watch TV.
Or maybe I have also become less sensitive and just haven’t noticed because the timing coincided with my having a beer while watching gory TV one time, so I credited the beer. I dunno.
it is funny but one of the many reasons I enjoy Hannibal while having bottomless contempt for most murder shows is because Hannibal is spectacularly unconcerned with the feelings or the backstories of the many murder victims — and so are those other shows, but they pretend that they are concerned, sometimes, and it’s insulting. Hannibal isn’t at all hypocritical; it has layers but the pleasures of the murder tableau are kind of what the show’s all about, there’s no facade of social concern – the way death looks and the way it makes you feel is straight up what the show is about. it has a certain innocence in its brutality when you contrast it with the grimy prurience of a Criminal Minds or an SVU, even as it goes on and on about aesthetic sophistication.
I generally consider myself pretty squeamish, but I’m constantly in awe of how beautifully constructed the aesthetics of Hannibal are.
I do have kind of erratic/unpredictable reactions to gore, though–blood in and of itself doesn’t necessarily bother me, but certain things–like injuries to hands/fingers–will make me incredibly nauseated and generally freaked out.
Hello! I am back from my travels. I actually got back a couple of weeks ago but have missed the last two open threads. We had a great trip to Scotland. I ate haggis and learned how scotch is made. Here is a picture of me in Edinburgh holding an owl as part of a fundraiser for one of the museums.
We also met some goats.
RONBLEGOAT
And my children found a wounded hedgehog in my mother-in-law’s garden. My mother-in-law nursed it back to health and then released it back into the wild. They named it Charlie. Here is a picture of her pulling all the ticks off of Charlie.
so many delightful creatures!
that owl looks untrustworthy for sure, though.
So noble!!!
I am jealous that you get to have a photo of yourself holding a dignified owl. These photos are awesome!
Fanfic thread!!!
I’m reading the Mad Max coffeeshop AU that was linked in the Fourth of July Open Thread and OMG SO GOOD. I’ll probably finish it and the sequel in line for the Pannibal tomorrow morning.
What are y’all reading/writing?
Just started in on a Spideypool kick. Some people can’t write Deadpool in a convincing way (JUST LIKE IN REAL COMICS) but they’re always more fun from Peter’s perspective of “What? Why is this happening? Eh, guess I’ll give it a try.”
Here, have an extremely adorable fic about Peter figuring out his gender identity and Wade helping him along the way: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3732919
I can’t link to it right now, but there was one where Deadpool decided he wanted to be friends with Hawkeye – the romantic relationship is Clint/Coulson, but it focuses on Deadpool thinking he’s Clint’s bro, and then eventually Clint & Phil think so too – and it was pretty adorable.
Well, Clint/Coulson is my FAVE, so I’ve probably either read it already or will read it at some point!
Okay I….can’t quite picture how a Mad Max coffeeshop AU would work and I need some serious convincing.
I don’t read a ton of fic, except everything that emungere writes for the Hannibal fandom. We’re two chapters away from the end of Taken For Rubies and I don’t want it to end. I also want the last two chapters to be NOTHING BUT SMUT.
I’m only a few chapters in but it is working like GANGBUSTERS somehow.
Agreed!
He’s the barista; Nux is his boss; Furiosa was raised by a lesbian separatist biker gang and is now a small-town mechanic and landlord for what is secretly part of a distributed network of safehouses for abused women (run by the aforementioned biker gang).
Someone who’s not at work should dig up the link.
Every time I think of Furiosa and her lesbian separatist biker gang family I am overwhelmed by feelings.
It’s surprisingly awesome. I generally don’t like AUs that much but really liked this one.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/4025509 (It’s very nsfw).
It works so well, surprisingly.
The coffeeshop AU has a sequel from Max’s POV!
I know, it’s on my iPad waiting for me when I finish the first one!
The first one was so intense and I finished it in like a day and a half, so I had to take a break & read some Marvel universe fluff first. But it was SO GOOD!
MAD MAX MAD MAX. I love that story and am so glad that it was linked here!
I’m actually working on a Mad Max AU because I’m still addicted to this movie. I have the first chapter done, but I want to have at least a draft of chapter 2 before I start posting anywhere. I haven’t been doing regular writing in so long, but Mad Max has been so damn inspiring.
lmk if you want a beta reader.
Yes absolutely! I really appreciate the offer! I’ve been writing fanfic for years, but primarily for myself – so I could definitely use a second set of eyes. This one is Nux/Capable, AU, everyone’s alive, probably a PG13ish rating, based on language more than anything else. If that sounds like your bag, then I’d love to have you beta it. What’s the best way to get it to you?
message me on Tumblr and I’ll send you my email? Or I’ll message you first if I get there first. 🙂
There’s another chapter of Orbit up – http://archiveofourown.org/works/4002001/chapters… (nsfw)
I think it’s my favourite Mad Max fic so far.
I’m running out of Fury Road fanfic. I might have to actually find something else to read.
Orbit is great! I really love this one, too: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4044727/chapters…
I’ve been mainlining Daredevil fic even though I didn’t finish the season. Also reading every fluffy Capable/Nux fic I can get my hands on.
Ooooh, let me know if there are any Daredevil fics you particularly like! I wrote a few little fluff pieces after I finished the show, but I haven’t been in the tag in a while.
CuckooVoodoo (sp? at work, can’t check) has been churning out great stuff (I pretty much only read Matt/Foggy for the record), especially if you like sweet stuff. They wrote a great coffeeshop au and I’m not generally into coffeeshop aus.
Oh my god. There’s a MAD MAX COFFEE SHOP AU??? *late to everything*
http://archiveofourown.org/series/268138 SO GOOD.
I initially thought, “oh, a coffeeshop AU, I’m not sure I’m really into that” and then read it and it was AMAZING. I want to live in it. My other favourite Fury Road fic (I linked to it last week) also updated yesterday, to my delight.
LOVED that Mad Max coffeeshop story.
Just a big old FUCK CANCER, Toasties. My dad was diagnosed with colon cancer this past week. We are waiting for the biopsy results, and it’s horrible. The doctor expects to hear something this weekend and said he’d call even if it comes in before Monday. So that’s where we are right now, just waiting waiting and trying not to freak out too badly.
The thing that really scares me is that he’s just not in good health anyway (he has been on dialysis for years, and has diabetes), and I’m honestly afraid even a relatively straightforward battle with cancer, if there is ever such a thing, will be too much for him.
i’m so sorry. wishing you, your dad, and the rest of your family all the best, and only smooth roads ahead!
This is terrible news. I’m sorry. Fuck cancer forever and ever and ever.
I’m sorry and I agree FUCK CANCER. My mom had cancer and my favorite aunt and it just sucks. Sending good thoughts and internet hugs.
Fuck cancer! So sorry to hear about your dad. Wishing you and your family luck with the prognosis.
I’m so, so sorry to hear that Nikki. Thinking of you and your family.
I am so sorry. I am sending you positive thoughts and warm Toastie hugs from afar. 🙁
I’m so sorry Nikki. Lots of good thoughts headed your way (and your Dad’s way!). <3
I am so sorry. My dad is battling esophageal cancer right now and it’s horrid and terrifying and awful. Let me know if you want to talk.
I’m so sorry, Nikki. That’s awful.
oh no, Nikki, I’m so sorry.
I’m sorry, that must be really hard. Wishing you and your family the best of luck.
Nikki, I’m so sorry to hear this. Sending lots of positive thoughts to you and your family.
I am so sorry. I hope it goes as well as possible.
Ugh, the waiting is the worst. There is nothing not scary about a cancer diagnosis, fuck cancer indeed. Hugs.
I am going to Scotland in September and I am 100% excited because I’ve never been out of the US before. We’ll be doing time in both Edinburgh and Islay so if anyone has suggestions for places to eat, things to see, and what to do I would love to hear them. I know I’m going to the dungeon and climbing Arthur’s Seat and that’s about it.
If you are into Harry Potter at all, you may want to check out The Elephant House, the pub wherein J.K. Rowling wrote the majority of the first two books!
That being said, I didn’t find much in the way of good food in Edinburgh when I was there last, but that was probably because I was traveling with some picky eaters!
Good suggestion! I’m also probably going to hit the cemetery where she found a bunch of the character names. I cannot wait to geek out when I find Tom Riddle’s grave.
The Real Mary King’s Close is really touristy, but fun. There’s also Parliament. I don’t know that there is any must-eat place, but there are plenty of pubs, restaurants, and take away places all around the Royal Mile. The university is also really close if you want to check it out.
We did a GREAT food tour in Edinburgh a few years ago – there’s a lot of walking which was great because we saw parts of the city we might not normally have found. If this is something you’re interested in, I recommend doing it early in your trip. This is the one we did – tour guide’s name is Alan:
http://www.eatwalkedinburgh.co.uk/oldnew.html
It’s a ton of food, so don’t make our mistake and eat first.
I just looked at the tour and it looks amazing. I just send the link to the husband to whom I’ll simply chant “WHISKY TASTINGS” to if he balks at the price (which I think it quite reasonable, given the reviews I’ve seen). Thank you for sharing! (Also your username is brilliant.)
Yeah, I was initially hesitant too bc the price is a significant chunk of cash, but I did think it was worth it – it’s several hours, covers a LOT of distance, and is a ton of food. Easily two meals’ worth. And getting exposure to several areas of town was a really nice benefit. We ended up going back to some of the neighborhoods later in the trip (which is why I recommend doing this early on.) The tour guide knows EVERYTHING about the city and you get some good history along the way.
If you’re into beer, there’s a Brew Dogs location in Old Town, and we also had some amazing Indian food in Old Town although I cannot find the name of the place (we actually used Yelp to find it.)
You’re going to have a great time – we fell in love with Edinburgh! Looking at all the other recommendations in this thread is making me long to go back!
(username courtesy of a toast my husband made once… I can’t remember all of it but it was “May your something be something and your hangovers be light.”)
I just visited Edinburgh last month! You’ll love it.
You’ll have to do the Castle for sure, if you’re interested in history. I enjoyed it way more than the Tower of London, actually, because THE STONE OF SCONE. The National Gallery is also nice – and free! You’ll be doing some hiking at Arthur’s Seat, but if you’d like to spend more time outdoors, try the Pentlands, which is outside the city. Lots of different trails for walking and hiking, at varying difficulties. Sometimes you end up right in the middle of sheep pastures, which is fun!
Not sure how much time you have, but if you don’t have your own vehicle and don’t mind doing bus tours, I’d recommend taking a tour up through the Highlands. It was incredible.
For a place to eat in Edinburgh, I’d recommend The Dogs! I had rabbit stew and my sister had what she claims is the best steak she’s ever eaten – and she really, really likes steak. It’s not that pricey either even though it feels fancy. I also enjoyed the sandwich and dessert I had at The Elephant House; I went there just because of the J.K. Rowling connection, but I still dream about the delicious salted caramel brownie I had.
Have a blast on your trip!
For whatever reason my husband is obsessed with the history of the Stone of Scone (which thanks to Terry Pratchett I think of as the Scone of Stone) so we’ll have to see it in person. I’m hoping weather will be nice to do more hiking than just Arthur’s Seat, but who knows. If it’s nice I’ll see if we can find a way to hike the Pentlands.
I will definitely write down your food recommendation–especially at the mention of the salted caramel brownie–that sounds absolutely divine.
It’s been about 10 years since I lived in Edinburgh, but there are a ton of beautiful places off the tourist track.
I would suggest stopping by Duddingston Village while you’re visiting Arthur’s Seat and going to the Sheep Heid Inn:
http://www.thesheepheidedinburgh.co.uk/
I’d also suggest going to Dean Village and following the walking path along the water of Leith, which is lovely:
That looks absolutely lovely and I’ve heard great things already about the Sheep Heid Inn so I’ll move it to my Maybe to my You Really Ought to Go list.
oh, man, I live here, hope you have a fun trip: here is a completely subjective list of my favourite restaurants:
Hanams is up near the castle and does kurdish/middle eastern food.
La favourita is my favourite pizza – it’s near the top of leith walk
The Dogs is pretty good – scottish/british food.
My favourite fish and chips is l’alba d’oro in stockbridge
Madeleine’s, also in stockbridge (worth a visit if you’re heading to dean village – there’s a little market on sundays) is fantastic for pastries and patisserie and macarons.
Mimi’s bakery at the shore for cake slices too big to finish.
You’ll wait forever to get served at the elephant house, but their boozy hot chocolates are great when it’s cold.
Also for whiskey tasting I -think- you can get into the whiskey society without a member these days – they have everything.
Oh, and for buying whiskey go to Cadenhead on canongate – they do 250ml bottles so you can get a variety and they’re really helpful.
If you want to see Actual Hogwarts it’s (apparently? maybe?) based on Fettes College which is a mega expensive (£30000 a year omg) private school which…well – it looks like hogwarts, and I always see coaches stopping outside and people taking pictures.
Islay! I studied abroad in Glasgow and spent a week in Islay. It is beautiful in a remote way, but there isn’t a lot for tourists. I liked it because of that. If you have time to spend a day or two in Glasgow, I’d recommend it. It has a more industrial feel than Edinburgh but is really lovely.
CAT THREAD
No pics or stories from me this week. They’ve been very boring and sleeping mostly.
Go wild.
Here’s Calvin being cute and sleepy (hope this isn’t huge)
Garrus being booped by husband.
Wow, Garrus REALLY looks like, well, Garrus.
We too have an orange cat named Garrus!
I’m not sure how this was a comfortable position, but she stayed like this for quite a long time.
Also looking very dignified on my windowsill last night.
Captain hangs out in that kind of position quite a lot.
My experience as owner of an almost identical Maine Coon is that they spend a lot of the summer lying on their backs, airing out their tums through the belly floof. https://goo.gl/photos/s3cf7ujwV7uTkSgYA
That is a great catbelly.
And she is not shy about showing it off.
Looks almost exactly like our old cat! (She looked deceptively adorable, with the same kind of squirrel tail, but was actually evil and hated the human race apart from my mom).
Nellie, too, looks very sweet, and she luuuuurrrrrrvvvves me (“WE WILL SNUGGLE NOW AND NO YOU HAVE NO SAY IN THE ISSUE PET ME PET ME PET ME”), but I have heard from the friend who feeds my two when I’m out of town that she does not, um, play well with others. Fortunately, my other cat, Florrie, is less apt to whack visitors with all claws out when they try to pet her.
What’s weird to me about Maine Coons is how all of the khaki-and-black tabbies look IDENTICAL. I’ve never, in more than 50 years of cats, had a specific breed (and this one was by accident–she was a rescue), and it freaks me out whenever I see other pictures of cats who look exactly like Nell but aren’t.
The super weird thing about Dolly is that she’s actually quite little – she’s not my cat, she’s my roommate’s, and she was a rescue so we don’t know what her background is. She looks identical to a lot of Maine Coons, plus she does this weird chirpy thing that apparently is typical of Maine Coons? (video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCrgku899ck This looks and sounds exactly like her). I guess she wasn’t in great shape when she was a kitten pre-adoption, so maybe she just didn’t grow as big as normal Maine Coons? Or she’s a really excellent doppelganger. This has been an ongoing mystery.
I have a friend whose cat Germoe is similarly mini-Coon-ish. Again, looks just like Nellie but half the size. I suspect this is more common than people might think. I’m just surprised how common they are in Southern California, when they’re so obviously built for cold-weather action. But then, that’s why they spend the whole summer letting off heat through their bellies.
Yes! Ours used to chirp like that, too. I guess they can’t meow like regular cats.
Our cat was fairly teeny as cats go, but a lot of Maine Coons are truly enormous. Like a small fox terrier.
Saffron also does that when she is watching birds out of the window! Does yours not do any other noises? I think for most non-Maine Coon cats that is their ‘there is prey and it’s too far away for me’ noise.
They do look super similar! The sun bathing belly fluff combo really is excellent. Here’s another of Dolly, because there’s never enough fluff.
The noble Langdom:
I had to check Saffron was still breathing before taking this pic.
#goals
I don’t have time to upload pics before I have to run to a meeting, but my little guy finally likes my apartment! I moved into the upstairs half of my parents’ duplex about a month ago, which is a pretty sweet deal. They have 3 cats and they’ll probably still all “live” down there, but I bring my youngest cat (Ari) up for visits. The first time he was terrified and sat by the door crying til I let him out. The second time, he paced every square inch of the place and hid under every furniture. Third time, he did his rounds and sniffed everything and then came up to snuggle with me and my friend, who was a stranger to him! What a brave boy.
Atticus got very interested in the hex keys I needed to fix a stool:
Just making sure you were going to use the right one! Supervisory cat is supervisory.
Hex keys! I always called them Alan keys (possible US/UK thing?), but hex keys is a much better name. More logical and also has pleasingly witchy undertones.
Hey, Delly, how’s tricks?
Don’t even ask, human. I am filled with shame about horking on your new bedspread. JK, this is my happy move.
Ughhh aren’t tuxedos just the best? Dem paws. Dat face.
That first pic tho!
My Siamese, who is terrified of thunderstorms and acts like gravity increases proportionally to drops in barometric pressue, gave not a single fuck about fireworks. My orange dude, who does not care about thunderstorms, was scared of the fireworks.
A photo of the Diesel-cat in which his markings are visible. He’s a purebred Bengal with melanism (see below re: gorgeous owl), so in most lighting he looks like a normal black cat, but when the light’s right at a certain angle you can see his spots.
This is what working from home looks like:
Indeed it is!
Here’s Berry, surveying his kingdom from the backyard last night!
We are moving next month, and I have been hoping to get at least one cat into a Thundershirt to see if it makes any anxiety-relieving difference in the SHEER TERROR involved of encountering people who are not me let alone a new place. It’s. . .a process.
You guys,this happened in Toronto, and it is my favourite thing. It just feels so representative of Toronto as a city.
This is amazing!
OMG. That’s brilliant. Reminds me of this: http://untappedcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2013…
Whereas this entirely sincere memorial for an elk is hilariously representative of Boulder (my birthplace).
My favourite part was the framed B&W photo. It took it to another level.
Yay, I’m going to Pride for the first time tomorrow! So excited 😀
What does everyone else have planned for the weekend?
I have relatives visiting from out of state, it should be An Experience to say the least!
I’m going shopping for a reading chair! I finally decided, fuck it, I am a grown-ass adult and I can spend some of my savings on furniture that costs more than $100, and I want a huge comfy chair that I can curl up in with a book. And maybe a side table for my tea, too.
(Recommendations welcome. I live in Chicagoland, so I can get to basically every chain furniture store in the world.)
I randomly found The Chair of My Dreams at a Burlington Coat Factory (in the baby section)– a brown velvet glider with a matching gliding ottoman. Dunno if you have those there…?
I have a cozy chair + fake fireplace + library set-up now in my bedroom, and it’s everything I ever wanted from adult life.
I live in a teeny bachelor apartment and consequently had to choose between a full-size expandable dining table OR a couch, not both. I host a lot of dinner parties and I already owned the table so my only pieces of upholstered furniture are an armchair and footstool. I spend a lot of time there and I’m always happier reading in chair rather than couches because I like to recline sideways, with my legs over one arm of the chair and the book propped up on my thighs.
Gaming Toasties! My partner Alex has been working on his first game for the last year, and it’s almost ready to be released. I am writing for it! I think it’s pretty cool, and I’m super proud of Alex. I’d love to hear what you all think. Have you developed/wrote for a game? Do you have questions/advice to share?
Check it out on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails…
Wow… it’s Galagod!
I am not on steam, but I have two teenage boys so I’ll put them right on that review for you!! (as soon as they wake up, which may be 1 pm, it’s summer and saturday…but I’ll get them to check it out!)
That’s so kind of you! Thanks to you and your boys, we appreciate it!
So he says he would totally buy it, and he’s going to give you more feedback. He likes how it is arcade-gamey, and he says it’s challenging.He’ll tell his steam friends.
New England Toasties!! I need travel advice! My birthday this year falls on Labor Day, so my dude and I are hoping to take that Tuesday off as well to have a FOUR DAY WEEKEND OF TRAVEL EXCELLENCE. However, the place I had my heart set on–Portland, Maine–is all booked up in re: B+Bs and Airbnbs already! And what isn’t booked appears to be hideously expensive.
So, the question is… where would you recommend two people who can drive anywhere from Somerville, MA go for three or four days? We enjoy hiking, shopping, eating, relaxing, and doing history/nature things. We do not enjoy sports, and we have already been to Burlington, VT and Portsmouth, NH.
Maybe we should get a lakeside cabin in VT? Or a cute lil’ airbnb in NH somewhere? Or to the Hudson Valley? Give me your best recommendations!!! Thank you!!!
Oh, sad sad sad on Portland! Have you checked the surrounding areas? With a car, you could really easily stay in South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Westbrook, Falmouth, etc… or, though it would be a long shot to find something, out on Peaks Island or Long Island.
I would go further up the coast- Damariscotta, Belfast, Camden, Bar Harbor- generally following Route 1 and poking around all the insanely quaint coastal villages and getting on the water.
Good idea! I like the look of Belfast, from what I can see on the internet…
I will always argue for Vermont. If you could get a place near Woodstock, I’d highly recommend the area. The river is great, there are state parks with lakes, lots of hiking nearby, and the food is excellent.
The Berkshires are lovely! Tons of great hiking around Williamstown, MA. There are some great art museums in the area, too, if that’s your thing, and a summer-long theater festival. Lenox, about half an hour away, is a slightly larger town with lots of shopping/cute restaurants.
Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is in Lenox and it’s super beautiful. I’m not sure if they’ll still be there Labor Day weekend (probably?), but it’s definitely worth a trip if you haven’t been. More generally, I have done day trips to Tanglewood from Cambridge before, so even if you don’t go out there for Labor Day I would highly recommend checking it out sometime!
+1 to Tanglewood. It’s definitely worth a visit, even if you don’t consider yourself a classical-music person.
Ah! Tanglewood! I would definitely like to get out there!
Meredith, NH is a lovely little town in the Lakes Region, where there are good restaurants in addition to a handful of shops. It’s also a short drive to several great hikes, and a bit longer to the White Mountains and Kancamangus scenic highway, so there’s plenty to do for a weekend. But my family spends summers there, so I’m definitely biased!
That sounds great! I’ll look into that for sure! Thanks!
Qgunquit area is great- with a car you can easily get to Portland in about 30min to spend a day there, there are gorgeous nature trails in the Rachel Carson Preserve and other hikes, great beaches with a long walkway along the ocean. And the surrounding towns have a lot of little museums/history things. It’s a great weekend spot.
Sounds perfect! Thank you!
North Adams, Mass., is very cool, in the Berkshires but not at the fancy end. I love staying at Porches in particular.
So I’m going to sound biased here, but Providence, RI is the best city in New England. It’s got amazing dining options, unique shopping, incredible history, and while the city itself is not too nature-y, you can day-trip to Newport for the Cliff Walk or anywhere else for beaches or hiking. (If you choose to go to Providence WHICH YOU SHOULD let me know and I will provide exhaustive recommendations.)
oh, hang on, I’m in the market for Providence recommendations! I’ve been down there three times in the past year and somehow ended up eating at the same brew-pubby type place twice. (it wasn’t bad, but I think I’ve already exhausted vegetarian options just from those two visits)
Oh my friend, you have come to the right place. I’m a vegetarian dating another vegetarian, so if you want good vegetarian options in Providence, you shall have them.
– Abyssinia (Fox Point) – Ethiopian food. Get the legume combo with a side of collards and you will leave happy and way too full. (BYOB)
– Duck and Bunny (Fox Point) – gonna be honest here, this one is more for the experience than the food. It does have a lot of vegetarian options, but the point is that it is a “snuggery” and you can get cupcakes and champagne cocktails.
– Flan y Ajo (Downcity) – tapas. Pretty inexpensive if you’re vegetarian, actually. But it only has six seats, so plan to get there 20 minutes before it’s open, pop into the wine store next door for a nice Spanish red (BYOB!) and arrive immediately upon opening.
– Sawaddee (College Hill) – generally considered the best Thai in town, although newly-opened Bee’s has been giving it some stiff competition. (BYOB)
– Bagel Gourmet Ole (College Hill) – this is kind of a hole in the wall but their Mexican food and their bagels are both fantastic. Veggie nachos are my go-to order if I have someone to split them with. The salsa is great.
– Seven Stars Bakery (Mount Hope) – great coffee and pastries
– Cafe La France (literally in the train station) – if you are taking the train in… stop here. Really. It looks suspect, but it is really, really good. Get a pizza strip if they have them in stock. Otherwise, anything on a pretzel baguette. Or just a pretzel baguette with butter.
People might also mention The Grange, a vegetarian-only place in Federal Hill. It’s pretty ok, but as with many veg-only places, I think it overcharges for kind of cliched food.
(Sorry for the essay! I hope this helps.)
ETA: Can’t believe I forgot my favorite bar: The Eddy! There’s enough veggie snacks on the menu to make a lightish meal, and their drinks are great. Especially the way-too-cheap house punch. Stuff is dangerous.
ahh great, thank you so much! saving this comment forever for future reference. I’m sure I’ll be down in the future for a P-Bruins game, if nothing else, but now I have many more reasons to hang around!
I like The Grange! But the real draw for me there is their drink list.
And their French Fries. Mmm.
Kabob N Curry on Thayer St. in Prov and their sister restaurant Rasoi on the Providence/Pawtucket line have great Indian food with vegetarian and vegan options. There’s also the Garden Grille (right next to Rasoi), but they can be kinda meh.
Also if you can make it before the rush crowd, I highly recommend Julian’s (on Broadway) for breakfast. It can get loud and crowded so I try to go around 9 am, but they have lots of vegetarian and vegan options like tofu scramble and a vegan benedict, as well as killer Bloody Marys. The mimosas are great too, but it’s hard to screw that up.
I think I actually like the food better at garden grille than the grange. this might be mostly because they give you more of it. oh and also in that strip mall is wildflour, which is a tasty vegan bakery.
julians is pretty good for dinner too, not just brunch.
yay providence!
East Side Pockets. The falafel…. oh, the felafel.
East Side Pockets! I always get: “a falafel pocket with everything.”
And should the person working the line raise their eyebrow and ask, “everything?” You double down.
Everything.
My order in high school was alwaysalwaysalways “beefsteak kabob no peppers no pickles no yogurt sauce”
I’ve branched out a little, and I’m usually getting a combo plate these days.
I have not lived in RI full time since 2004 (and 2006 was my last summer there) and they *still* know that I never ever get dairy, because they are fabulous and amazing.
Maybe 6 months ago Mr.Table got the “hot sauce” on the side, and that was the first time I’d ever tasted it straight up and oh, my friends, I’ve always known the the hot sauce was not actually hot, but discovering its major component parts were shockingly obvious from tasting/observing it on its own took a little bit of the magic away.
Good call! I’ve been to Providence once before via the commuter rail, but didn’t get to stay very long to see anything. I’d love to take another crack at it!
So many good choices, and so many good ideas already noted, but here are a few other ideas-
I spent the 4th of July weekend in Mystic Connecticut- Mystic Seaport has a two-day thing, where if you get your receipt validated before you leave, you can come back the next day, and we had enough to do that we spent both days there. There’s also the aquarium, the Olde Shoppes or whatever near the highway, and downtown Mystic is also nifty. I enjoyed myself more than I expected to, honestly.
If you head west for the Berkshires, there’s also the Pioneer Valley area (Northampton/Amherst/etc), and there are some good finds there- The Eric Carle museum, Emily Dickinson’s house, the Smith College Art Museum, and plenty of great places to eat. The Yankee Candle Flagship store is also in the area, and if you like yarn, Webs is AMAZING.
On the cape, there’s Provincetown, which is probably also booked solid for the weekend, but you could stay a bit farther out and do a bunch of different things on the cape, including p-town.
Closer to you, Concord MA might be more of a day trip type thing, but Walden Pond and Verrill Farm and the Concord Cheese Shop and the dozen different historic graveyards are fun.
All of those places have state park type hiking/walk type things around them as well.
all I have to add on to this is that there are some delightful bookstores near these places, and if bookstores are your thing, you should definitely visit.
if you go to mystic, go a little further into connecticut to niantic to visit the book barn. it is this old barn plus other out buildings all filled with books. There are charming little jokey signs and landscape elements with literary references, and also there are cats and also the books are really inexpensive. it is a wonderful place. http://www.bookbarnniantic.com/
Alternatively, if you end up in western mass, the montague bookmill is an hour past the pioneer valley, but worth a visit. it is an old mill converted to a bookstore and it is beautiful and cozy and charming. it’s really spacious and light indoors, with lots of comfy old couches and chairs scattered around to curl up for a few hours, and it’s situated on a river, in the middle of the countryside. also, there’s a cafe, a used record store, and an art/craft gallery right next door. http://www.montaguebookmill.com/
Toast-ees, Toast-ees! Where my movers at? Where my hustlers? Where my boosters at? You ain’t got to argue about who can rap … just someone please distract me from how overwhelming this whole visa process is. How is everybody else’s move going? Rainbows and kittens all around, I hope.
Also, apologies to Jay-Z, and if people did want to argue about who can rap, that would be fine.
Ugh, visa commiseration commencing!
My partner is on a temporary visa at the moment. We applied in DECEMBER for a residence visa for him and. heard nothing for 6 months. In the last month we have had two “you need to get this to us yesterday” requests. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. And not even for necessary things, just dumb things!
I’m not holding my breath
Arggghh!! The just sheer incomprehensibility of the bureaucratic process is driving me bonkers. At this point, if someone sent me an email that said, “Please bring a blank piece of paper and a strand of unicorn hair to the crossroads at midnight,” I’d probably just go ahead and do it. Assuming I could find the unicorn hair.
Best of luck though! Sometimes it’s weird bizarre frantic emails … and then magically “oh look we did have that in triplicate and no wait we did not really need that” so fingers crossed it will all be smooth from here on out.
And if it’s anything like our immigration agent guy, you’d have to email and call and call again to find out which crossroads, what colour the unicorn hair should be, and which certificate of authenticity you should provide for the hair.
Fingers crossed for you too!
Absolutely! And then a follow up of, “Oh dear, it looks like you were at the crossroads at 00:00 GMT, but we needed you to be there at 00:00 BST. Please feel free to try again next harvest moon.”
I can totally understand why it’s so complicated, but that does not make less frustrating to navigate.
Dee Dee update! Last week she started on 30 days of professional training with a lovely horsewoman and Dee Dee is doing really, really, really well! So well, in fact, her rider has to keep reminding herself she doesn’t need another horse.
Don’t you love being right about something or someone needing a second chance because you know an honest heart when you see it? Warm fuzzies for everyone, bartender, it’s on me!
Hi Toasties! I’m delurking to introduce myself and ask a question! I’m Ashley!
This year I’ve been doing a slow trickle of freelance writing (including here, at the Toast, which was a lovely experience that I highly recommend)! I don’t really have a lot of direction with it, which is fine, but I also don’t really have any fellow writer friends, which is increasingly not fine. I’m getting lonely!
Like for example, I recently wrote this piece (for free) which got kind of popular and brought a lot more traffic to the site I wrote for than any of their recent-ish pieces, and it’s like, I guess I should feel good about it, but I kind of don’t know what to do with it? Like it doesn’t have any immediate affect on my writing or my ability to do work in the future, but I feel like I should somehow be leveraging it? I really don’t know, and I also don’t know who to talk to about it!
I know there are lots of cool writerly people on the Toast, and I’d maybe like to make friends and maybe just like chat and whatever on the open thread? Idk. Hi!
are you publishing semi frequently? start a newsletter for your growing fanbase! believe it or not, people will sign up for it, and it helps you and the site and everybody’s happy
Hmm, okay. I don’t publish that frequently, but I do have a regularly updating podcast, too. Do you use a newsletter just to share things you’ve published, or do you also write a thing for it (like some folks that I know who use tinyletter to write little essays and stuff)?
Are you on Twitter? I freelance and have found lots of writer friends on Twitter! It’s also a good place to share your work without being too obnoxious – you can even pin a piece to your profile.
I am on twitter! @womyn_ebooks. But I’m also pretty shy on the internet, so I haven’t met a great many people that I don’t know irl that way.
just followed you! 🙂 @erikawynn
ahahahaha you are a real person and you have an _ebooks-named account, I love you already.
I thought we had a Toastie Writers’ Club of some kind! Hrmm, maybe not.
Umm it’s pretty important that you collect stats on how much traffic your writing draws to websites. When you pitch yourself in the future you may have to either 1) prove you can garner a certain number of hits, or 2) promise to do so in the future (so gettin conversant in the language would be helpful). Susannah Breslin wrote about this a bit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susannahbreslin/2014/…
I can’t find the precise blog post where she talks about pitching herself with web traffic stats, but you might enjoy reading most of what she wrote in the 2012-2013 range.
I’m in a similar boat: have published a few things here and there, including the Toast, but don’t have any real arc to my writer career. I’d definitely love to talk with you and others about it!
Hello, Toasties! I am back after many Toast-less Fridays. I finally got back from Colorado after being stuck in Albuquerque for an extra two days with no ID. However, I did see Jamie Lannister at the Albuquerque airport. I also turned 30 on Wednesday and went to a water park for my birthday. I love my birthday, but I did get struck with the birthday sads. How is everyone?
TOASTIES
I met a BLACK BARN OWL
He has a rare mutatation called melanism! Most owls with this are killed by their mothers, so it is very unusual to see one indeed.
he’s stunning.
In other news my fallout 4 obsession as started to scare some people. And several internet dudes have tried to mansplian fallout backstory, lore and gameplay to me and lol NO
There are so many owls in this open thread and I love all of them.
He is lovely. Where was this?
A little place called The Owl Barn in Happisburgh, on th Norfolk Coast.
Pretty baby!
His name is Dusk, because of course.
I love that his entire face disappears.
That freaked me out for a sec, tbqh. Spooky and beautiful owl!
Oh he’s beautiful!! And I love the symmetry in the second pic with your tattoo. 🙂
That second pic! You are looking into his soul. With such kindness and understanding. You are a lovely person.
I like to be kind to animals wherever possible. Kind and gentle. And he really was very nice and very lovely.
Melanism is really interesting! My Diesel-cat is melanistic and probably the prettiest cat in the world.
Post a pic in the cat thread!
Done!
I saw a melanistic squirrel the other day and I was like, “awww, who’s melanistic? are YOU melanistic? yes you are so very melanistic!” and then I made sure no one had seen me, and fortunately no one had except the squirrel, who chittered at me and ran up a tree.
we have black squirrels in our county…the story is that some professor brought them over in the 20s’ and let them loose on the Kent State campus, and they’ve made their way up to us (40 miles away, straight north). I had only ever seen red squirrels until I went to college–and then at Ohio State they have grey, red, and an albino? colony?
So now in Northeast Ohio we have calico squirrels. Sometimes the mixtures are quite pretty. We had one black one with a red “highlight” down his back, and there’s one with a black body and really flamboyant red tail.
This is not helping with my jealousy of turanga_leela’s owl-portrait above. I must go get a portrait taken whilst holding an owl.
Also, *tiny Fallout 4 fistbump…* No woman should have to apologize for massive, frightening amounts of videogame lore obsession. *Proudly displays her massive Dragon Age lore books!*
and guys trying to mansplain it to me and GETTING IT WRONG.
Like, I’m pretty sure I don’t know everything about Fallout, but I’m also pretty sure that 90%of the people who know more have worked on the games.
Ummm yeah he’s pretty but he also looks like a Dementor….
Well, he certainly didn’t act like a dementor. Instead of sucking out all my joy he filled my heart with nothing but.
Toastadas, I am going to see Mexican wrestling in London tomorrow and I am SO EXCITED! Honestly, I have no idea how I grew up in LA without seeing Lucha Libre, yet am managing to see it here, but whatever. IT’S GONNA BE NUTS.
Have we talked about Hayley Kiyoko’s new music video yet? I feel like we should: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0MT8SwNa_U
(Trigger warning for homophobic violence starting at about 3:20)
Major life changes: I’ve been in the city I always wanted to live in for the last seven years. I made my career goals! Now I’m moving on, to live somewhere a little easier / closer to family / with better benefits and more sustainable work hours. But it feels HARD to leave, my loves.
Tell me three things you would do if you knew you were leaving where you live right now. What would you eat? What adventures have you been putting off? How would you say goodbye to your home?
I am in fact moving! Soon. Scary soon, now. So here are my three things: 1) eating my weight in bagels; 2) gosh, I don’t know but will start thinking about that; 3) inefficiently and in a state of semi-denial. But also, visiting all my favorite places and taking lots of pictures.
1. I have a little list of my own “Best of” for my fav foods (e.g. “Best Tacos,” “Best Iced Coffee,” “Best Old Fashioned,” etc.) that I would try to re-sample before leaving
2. I would go to a baseball game because the Red Sox are like the Municipal Religion of Boston and you have to visit Church before departing on a journey
3. There are a few iconic historical sites I still haven’t visited, so I would do that.
I would do all my favorite low-key things, like get an iced coffee at the bookstore near my gym and drink it while walking home slowly. Or go to my favorite local beach, go for runs on my favorite paths. I’m not huge into “the top 10 things you have to do in this city” kinds of things so I’d focus on doing the things that make my city feel like home to me.
Was there an online dating thread last week? SORRY I had just gotten back from Detroit (stories in another post!).
Wow. Um. I stopped seeing Guy I Wanted as a Friend because I just couldn’t keep working at it. It went way far downhill very fast when he invited me to watch some UFC at a bar and when he relayed a trash-talking joke from one of the fighters about his opponent’s gynecologist clearing him to fight, I lightly but firmly said that if you had ever been to the gynecologist, you’d know that it can take a certain kind of courage.
He assumed this defensive and puzzled position that I think was disingenuous, saying that yes, of course, the joke was sexist, but he didn’t think it hurt anyone for him to repeat it to me, and it’s just part of what men do as trash-talk. I was ready to let shit go until he said I was being “feminist sensitive” (THESE WORDS) and even though I had told him before I identified as feminist, he had “never really gotten that” from me. Like, I dunno, feminists act and talk a certain way about things, I guess.
So, that was upsetting. He had seemed intelligent, was doing his grad studies in journalism with a focus on human rights, and had even brought up his privilege as a tall white guy on one of our early dates. I will miss some things and am sad about it but overall, for the best.
I’m having drinks with random OKC guy tonight, idk. I sent two messages to two men whose profiles I really liked yesterday and I’m writhing in agony. I also accidentally passed a guy in Quickmatch on my phone and couldn’t find him again, so I’m probably going to die alone.
My Regular Date Dude and I are going to a burlesque/drag show tomorrow in my hood and I’m excited for that.
Share your stories, Toasties!
PS I Continue to Love Toastie Twitter
What is your twitter handle? Toastie Twitter saves my life on the regular, but Guy I Am Kinda Seeing And Maybe Involved With At This Point (mentioned above) follows me on twitter so I can’t talk about him there, gah!
I’m pretty sure we’re already following each other! (I had leftover spaghetti bolognese for breakfast AGAIN today.)
@gyip
oh thank goodness, yes, we are. I am so bad at associating twitter handles with intensedebate names!
No worries! You make the memory association easier with your amaaaaaaazing hair.
Ah no, I’m sorry things didn’t go well with the guy. Hope you’re doing ok.
No interesting stories here, though having not tried online dating before I’m thinking of signing up to OKC in a couple of weeks when I get back to the UK. Kind of nervous (What if all the men are terrible? What if I become bitter and cynical about the whole thing?), but I figure the worst case scenario is I just get some stories to tell, so we’ll see.
P.S. Toastie Twitter? That sounds amazing. I’ll give you a follow, if that’s ok.
Yes, please follow me, and it’s super okay! I follow a bunch of Toasties and there are a few lists out there too.
Re: OKC, I’ve been at it for about 9-10 months now, and the way I’m looking at it is:
1) I’m so bad at getting out and meeting people in person that I get to meet more people than I usually do anyway.
2) 90% of everything is terrible/crap, including men. Sometimes especially men.
3) We’re all allowed to be bitter and cynical.
4) Stories are sooooo great.
5) You are always, always allowed to take breaks, decide to stop it completely (and yet end up coming back later, or not), everything!
Thank you, that’s really helpful, especially the bits about meeting more people and taking breaks. It’s definitely calmed some of my nerves, so thanks again.
(Also, sorry, I realized I put “men” down reflexively and that’s a bit narrowly speaking when it comes to people’s preferences!)
I reopened my OKC a few weeks ago and the only messages I get are from guys either WAY outside my stated age range or with something like 20% compatibility. I know I have a lot of “deal-breakers” but my “you should message me if” is pretty specific. I’ve only blocked and deleted messages, none have been worth replying to.
BLERGH
I feel like it’s up and down … sometimes, I’m like, y’all are gross, and leave it, and yesterday, I got back into it for a day or so and found a few profiles I like. Messaging — same deal. I remember for a couple of months, it was nothing or meh, and then I got a really nice message (from the Guy I Ended Up Cutting Off, but it was still good when it was).
My dude, who I found on OKC, and I spent the fourth of July weekend in Portland OR to celebrate me being done with quals. I was SUPER nervous (3.5 days of non-stop togetherness!) but it went shockingly well. This continues the trend of everything being super easy and then me being suspicious of the ease of everything. Hopefully he keeps being lovely and the ease continues.
I was on vacation for 2 weeks with no time to open okc and that was nice. My sister and I did a day trip to the small town where we grew up and tried to find people we used to know on tinder. We didn’t find anyone, but it was a weird look into what the potential dating pool would be had we stayed there.
Things are going well with the woman I’m dating. We’re both very busy but we just seem to make it work to see each other about once a week, and it’s nice. It is nice to have someone who is willing to make it work, and nice to be in a place where I don’t feel resentful about having to make extra effort to coordinate. I am putting all other dating activities on the backburner until the end of July when my schedule will get slightly better.
Awesome! Yes, one of the nice things with my Regular Date Dude is that he, as I understand, has a fairly dense/hectic schedule, so I like that we have regular time together (though once in a while shorter than I like). It also made me realize how important it is to make time for another person, which I hope I do on instinct with somebody I really like. When I don’t seem to care as much, I realize it might be a sign (not necessarily, but often) that I don’t care as much.
Yes! I think that’s what’s nice about it. I’ve dated a few people recently who I enjoyed spending time with but wasn’t necessarily excited about, and when scheduling I’d say, okay, I am free [time that easily fit into my schedule with no effort] only, but not bother to try harder if things didn’t work out. And I realize it’s because seeing them was taking up a lot of mental energy, which is fine but not compatible with a busy schedule. Things with this woman are just easy, it’s not a lot of mental energy and so having to make a bit more of an effort is no problem. It’s a good sign!
Sometimes I feel weird having to analyze myself from a distance in order to figure out how I feel about something or someone. “Well you’re willing to make an effort for her so clearly you like her.” “Your stomach is fluttering and your heart is pounding so you must be nervous, which means you care about making a good impression on your second date!” “You’re smiling goofily when you remember kissing her so maybe you are smitten!” Like, what is this block in between me and my feelings that I have to deduce them from evidence about my behaviour? This is normal right? (Or is it?) Okay sorry, this comment got away from me.
No! I have the same feelings! So much “soooo do I like this person?” or “sooo, is this okay?” I’m so glad I’m not weird!
I matched with a super cute guy on tinder and we’ve had a silly exchange; I cannot emphesise enough how cute this guy is, and I really don’t want him to disappear into the tinder eather, what do I do?
Keep talking to him! Ask him out!
“Hey, I enjoyed our silly exchange; would you like to have a drink/coffee/walk?”
Ask him out! My personal rule about online dating is always to set up a date within the first week. If he seems like he might be a decent person, it’s better to just get going on the first date to see if you actually have chemistry in real life. You can have great conversations and witty banter for weeks online and then things fall flat in person, so better to find out sooner rather than later.
Or just keep talking with him if you feel like it’s too soon to go out! Clearly he thought you were super cute too.
Boo to that guy. I really need to get on toast twitter, but I’m afraid it will be an even bigger time suck (in a good way) than the toast already is…
I’ve been out of town so no dating action this week. I’m going to see the okc guy I’ve been on a half dozen dates with early next week. The problem is the timing with him just sucks. I would have liked another month or two to process the breakup/abusive ex and I’m a giant ball of anxiety trying to buy a house and work is ooc. But he’s been super understanding and seems like a really good match for me. If anyone one has advice for dating while stressed and/or keeping non-related stress from causing stress in a new relationship I’m all ears.
Thanks for all the Ann Arbor recs last week! We had an amazing time, and by the end of 3 days, I was awash with much deliciousness and relaxation. We went to Lena and I lost my mind over how good it all was, and when we went to Frita Baditos the next day where I had yet another meal with plantains in it, and I lost my mind all over again. We kayaked, we played disc golf, we went down a slide in the middle of town, and then one night I bought Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at Literatii and just went back to our bed and breakfast to read in the bathtub. ALL WAS SO WONDERFUL. So thanks for Toast-curated weekend! And should anyone want someplace to stay there, I heartily recommend the Burnt Toast Inn which is by downtown, very cute, wonderful breakfasts, and our favorite room has a giant soaking tub.
So glad you had a great time! You hit a bunch of my favorites!
I’m arguing with myself about pulling up WatchESPN and watching this Federer-Murray match while at work. Haven’t given in yet, but following it via liveblog just isn’t the same D:
update: Dammit, Andy :(((
AUSTIN, WE CAN’T ESCAPE THE BURGER CULT 🙁
I take no responsibility for people going out and eating burgers for lunch like I did for two separate people this week on Toastie Twitter.
Uh…I’m not supposed to be here right now, but I wanted to pop my head in and say hi to everyone and maybe start the online dating thread by saying that the guy I’ve been seeing not only accompanied me to my bff’s 4th of July picnic, but he also FINALLY MADE A DANG MOVE and it was a good move and now I have even better memories of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, just sayin’.
Personally I will not rest until the entirety of Toastie Twitter is eating cheeseburgers on a daily basis. If we’re gonna go down, let’s take this whole dang ship of nerdy, feminist librarians and weird dudes with us.
They’re gonna have to put up a sign in Five Guys around here. “DO NOT SERVE THIS TOASTIE.”
Really can’t emphasize enough that this is all Mindy’s fault.
How did we forget to rope her into this nonsense???
Because bees.
Mindy, if you see this: you are on watch, and the bees and burger demons will be coming for you next time.
I’m willing to eat a burger every day until our goals are met.
We will all go down together. *salutes*
Liberté, égalité, charcuterie
YES DANG GOOD MOVES
Also, that sounds like an amazing story.
Ooh! I’m another Austinite. Has there ever been an Austin toastie gathering? Surely there are enough of us, right?
Oh no! I am unfortunately from New Jersey, and addressing a fellow Toastie by the name of Austin 😡
Oh. Oops. 🙂
I think she means me, a man named Austin, and not the city in Texas. Unless there are numerous microscopic Toasties currently living inside my organs, which, I’m not gonna lie, would make me feel a little weird.
Oh, sorry, I’ll pack my things then.
what was even IN that teriyaki burger
Well FINE, if you’re going to be like that about it. (starts throwing socks into a suitcase)
Look, I didn’t wanna have to do this, but if you won’t get out I’m gonna have to shut off the heat ::moves to Antarctica::
Pregnancy thread! I am 40 weeks tomorrow and SO DONE. Labor started with my first at 40 + 4, but I was really counting on going a few days earlier this time. Last night (after seeing Magic Mike XXL!!!!!!!!!) I woke up with a painful contraction and thought that I was going to have a baby, but then I didn’t 🙁
My parents are here now to look after #1 and help out in various ways, and I don’t want to make them wait around too long. Ha.
You’re so close! Congratulations and good luck!!!
14 weeks here and doing ok, waiting on that famous 2nd-trimester energy to kick in so that I can stop going to bed before it’s dark out. Not feeling sick as often these days…in fact, that In n’ Out picture is Doing Things to me right now.
The best part of this week was finding out from HR that 10 weeks of my 12-week maternity leave will be covered by short-term disability. I am so, so, so relieved and lucky. And, turns out, my office has a lactation room.
Any advice on having family come to stay after the baby is born? Is it helpful to have people right away, or later?
I think it depends on your family? I thought I wouldn’t want my parents right away–that I’d want a few weeks to bond as a family or three or whatever–but as it turned out, I wanted my parents IMMEDIATELY and practically called them on the way home from the hospital begging them to fly out and then cried when they left.
It’s not just the practical things like food and cleaning, too; there are SO many hormones doing bizarre things to your body and mind that, if you have a good relationship with your family, it’s just really nice to have people around. (Or at least it was for me.)
My family came out a couple days after first baby was born and I was really happy to see them. They thought we would want more space, but we were just happy to have other people around who knew something about infants and could hold a baby for an hour so we could nap. My family came out the day after baby 2 was born, and I was delighted! I felt a lot less out of control and terrified of being responsible for an infant on baby 2, and it was an easy labor and delivery, as those go, but I just really missed my parents and was overwhelmingly grateful to see them and get hugs and congrats and love. They were actually here a few hours before baby 3 was born, and I was again really happy to have them here.
That said, I expect it really does depend on your family. I’m close to my parents and they are easy guests to have, super helpful, not at all passive-aggressive, not offended by requests for help or space or anything. In my experience, having a new baby is exhausting and exciting and you are a mass of hormones and the last thing you need is an extra source of stress. So family who aren’t stressful = awesome! Family who are stressful? Not so much.
I go back and forth on my family….they are excellent house guests, and I think they will really respect us as parents. And I feel like I might very well really want and need support from my parents after childbirth! I have a feeling that my husband will want to be much more independent, but hopefully my vote counts for more as the…birther. I do feel a little self conscious about people watching me parent when I don’t know what I’m doing AT ALL, though.
There’s also the issue of balancing visits between his family and mine. He’ll have a very limited time off of work and I’d really rather his family visit when he is around. However, I’d also really rather not have them around RIGHT after I give birth, as I imagine I’ll be in a…less-than-fresh condition.
I guess there’s plenty of time for me to figure this out, but there’s nothing I love more than obsessing.
Well, personally, as the birther in my family, I think the birther’s vote should count for more! I mean, at the stage of the baby just having been born, you’ve done the vast majority of the work, as well as taken the vast majority of the risk. You should get some perks from that!
I can sympathize with feeling self-conscious about parenting in front of others – I hate doing something new in front of other people, and parenting was no exception. I think it helps a lot if the people in question respect you as parents and can back off if you need them to. I am sure I felt self-conscious on baby 1, but I barely remember how it felt now, so those feelings didn’t stick around much.
Also the time off and in-laws visiting is a difficult one. My in-laws weren’t able to visit til a couple weeks or even a month later all three times (they have not actually been here yet to meet my new baby – they come next week, when she will be a month old!) for various reasons and I appreciated having my family around instead of them for the really new parts when I felt the most vulnerable. And I actually get along well with my in-laws, especially my mother-in-law. It’s just different! Is there any flexibility to your partner’s time off? Like could he save some of it for when his folks come later? I know that isn’t always the case. My spouse got 3 days that he had to take immediately, and then could use his vacation. So he was home when my folks were, but we have saved some of his vacation so he could take a few days off when his folks came. His work is pretty flexible about how he uses his vacation, though, so I don’t know what kind of solution would work for you. And I expect he will want to be home with the baby at least some over the first few days, so he may not necessarily want to save his days off for later. My spouse certainly would not have wanted to go straight back to work. Good luck finding a solution that works for you!
I thought 19+ weeks was TOO DANG PREGNANT to randomly barf in a grocery store parking lot but it turns out I was wrong!
I had been feeling pretty decent before then, but today I feel like sludge, so. I also can’t tell if I’m showing or still look ambiguously chubby. But we started registering for stuff, which feels very real! And the big anatomy ultrasound is next week, so fingers crossed all is well then.
I’ll be thinking of you this week! Maybe a second viewing of MMXXL will push you over into active labor.
Hope the ultrasound goes well!! Are you going to find out the sex?
We did that fancy pants genetic blood screening for abnormality risk so we already know we’re having a boy! I appreciate there are people out there who like the delivery room surprise, but that is the opposite of my style.
That’s awesome! My insurance didn’t cover the fancy blood screening for me so I had to wait until 20 weeks. Even that seemed like a long time, I think people who wait until delivery are just a lot more patient than me.
Yeah we considered waiting–my husband wanted to–but in the end I’m really glad we found out at the ultrasound!
Aw, sorry about the puking! I sympathize – I was still routinely throwing up at 20 weeks for all of my pregnancies. By that time practically everyone else is over it and enjoying their 2nd trimester and it’s just SO UNFAIR. Good luck with the ultrasound! I considered not finding out sex til delivery…for about 2 min before I realized the suspense would kill me!
I think it might!!
Good luck on the ultrasound–we’re having a boy, too 🙂
I feel you! My new baby is 3 weeks old today and she was 12 -15 days late, depending on how you calculated my due date. And she was my third! I mean, ok, my other babies were late too (6 days and 11 days), so I expected late, but not THAT late! And I was in labor, sort of, for 30+ hours, most of which was “ooh, a few hours of painful contractions, we’re getting this baby out!…oh wait, they stopped. Ooh, more hours of painful contractions, for realsies this time!…ok, nevermind, I guess not…?”
Uh, I don’t actually mean to be that person, you know, the one who hears you are frustrated with pregnancy and immediately trots out all the horror stories. I am sure it will be fine and you will pop that baby out in no time! Just, you know, feeling solidarity with your frustration and doneness! On the plus side, my folks showed up after about 30 hours of “will I or won’t I” labor and that was when it kicked up and baby was born 4 hours later! Best of luck for a quick and easy labor, and SOON!
Nooo that is soooooo late! My mom’s third was the latest of all, too. But congratulation on your little one! Three weeks is SO tiny.
Emily Oster says that 70% of babies are born before their due date. Why not meeeee?
Thanks! Also, 70% before their due dates?!? No way! How did I get so unlucky?!? Ok, ok, not really unlucky – they’ve all been healthy and delightful, after all, just…indeed, why not meeeeee?
I think that statistic must be skewed slightly by inductions? But even without inductions, the due date is the top of the bell curve, meaning that it’s just as likely to have your baby before your due date as it is after. Or something like that.
I don’t understand statistics, but I do understand that 42 weeks is TOO DAMN LONG to be pregnant.
“but I do understand that 42 weeks is TOO DAMN LONG to be pregnant. ”
WORD
I’m 33 weeks and feeling so ready to be done. To be fair, I already wanted to get the pregnancy over with by about 6 weeks. But now I feel as ready as I’ll every be to actually have this baby and be a mom, on top of being really sick of pregnancy symptoms. I can’t imagine how antsy I’ll be by 40 weeks.
Also I can no longer bend over effectively and last night I made my husband clean up some stuff I’d dropped on the floor. I was sitting right next to it and I was just like you know what… nope. You’re going to have to field this one. I’m really looking forward to having my torso back.
lol, not cleaning up stuff I dropped, that’s me the entire pregnancy! For the first half I’m too sick, and then for the second half, I’m too…pregnant. I did a lot of dropping stuff and then just standing there sadly staring at it til Spouse came to get it for me. Luckily he is very understanding and didn’t mind being my liaison to the floor! I gave birth 3 weeks ago and it is delightful to have my torso back! Good luck on getting there!
My husband has a bad back, so when something falls on the floor we have a stare off to see who will crack first. And then we ask the 5-yr old to get it.
Oh no! So unfair to have 2 people with no ability to retrieve things from the floor! 5 year olds can be pretty useful though. There was definitely a lot of asking my 5 year old to get things off the floor this time around!
Let’s talk marginalia, Toasts.
This is the best thing I have ever found in any of my books, ever. And it is actually written in two places in the book, because when you have a good recipe for opium lard you don’t want to lose it.
This is incredible!
I got someone’s horoscope for 1980 inside of a used copy of Life Before Man. It was going to be a good, if romantically complicated year.
I love that book! The horoscope seems fitting somehow.
My copy of Irigaray’s This Sex Which is Not One came with little question marks wherever its previous owner didn’t understand. So there’s just columns and columns lining every page. About three-quarters of the way through it stops. At which point is scribbled: “What?!?! I can’t do this.”
Nowhere near as good as opium lard, and not strictly marginalia, but my second-hand copy of David Sedaris’ Barrel Fever has the inscription:
“Jade,
I bought you this book for a couple of reasons.
1) Because it is one of the funniest books I have read and I make all my friends read it.
2) Because whenever you read the last few lines in the last story you will hopefully remember me!
Lots of love,
Gord”
The last few lines are:
“Don’t tell the store president I called you a bitch. Tell him I called you a fucking bitch, because that’s exactly what you are. Now get out of my sight before I do something we both regret.”
I would also like to point out that “spirits of hartshorn” is ammonia. Is this like, olde tymey Vicks?
I always thought it would be fun to have a space online that collect these sorts of things. Maybe a tublr or something. Maybe this already exists?
I don’t have the exact quote on me, but I have a copy of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” that was clearly gifted from one teenage girl to another.
I once got an old encyclopedia set containing a newspaper clipping of when the ships (merchant marine) came to port, with a *pin* pinned to the clipping. (like a real , “Did she really get pinned?” pin!)
y’all my four year old has been sneaking into my bed at night and while it’s adorable it’s also leaving me tired. Thoughts? Advice?
I bought one of those baby-cry-activated crib lights/music boxes. I taught the kid that if he woke up at night, he could sing-song “music turn on”, and the lights and music would play. If he still wanted to come get me after the music was over, then he could, but he should try to listen to all the music first. I didn’t care if he played or anything during the music, just that he stayed in his room. Then I set the music box to play for 15 minutes. Worked with 2 out of 3 kids.
Oh hi yes my 2 year old is doing the same thing. What we did (and it’s worked so far) is made her a “nest” in our room. So, when she comes in, she still wakes me up (because she’s 2, she can’t help herself), but instead of letting her sleep/ninja kick me in my bed, I take her over to the little nest, let her know I’m right there on the bed, and she sleeps there. Its very cozy w/blankets and pillows and stuffted things, so she feels safe. You might try something similar, and let the 4 year old help you make it so they feel some ownership of it. Anyhoo, that’s about the only thought I have! I wish I had a better suggestion that didn’t involve a tiny person sneaking into your room at night, but I’m in the same boat!
I gave up and let our five-year-old sleep in a futon on the floor of our room. She’ll outgrow it eventually (right???), and in the meantime she no longer wakes us up every night to either sleep in our bed (and yell at us about snoring) or make us lie down with her in her room until she falls back asleep.
Sweet Pea loves corn season!
BIRB
Have any of y’all ever gotten an MFA in Creative Writing? Are you happy you did or do you regret it?
I’m halfway there to believing it’s something I really want to do, but I’m notoriously hesitant about making big life decisions.
So any thoughts from anyone who might have been there, done that would be really great–Especially anyone who studied fiction.
I did! I have an MFA in poetry. … and I am currently a librarian. Do I regret it? No. It helped shape my thinking and writing. But it was also a weird time in my life. Would I make the same choice again? Probably not. Everybody will tell you (rightly) to do it for the right reasons, not just because you aren’t sure about what’s next for yourself (TBH, I did it for mixed reasons. Yes, I thought I wanted to be a writer/editor, but I also wanted more school and NYC)
You’ve probably already seen these articles but I’ll rec them anyway: http://flavorwire.com/476264/27-writers-on-whethe…
and Maureen Johnson’s advice (not sure if this link is working, but google her and her MFA stuff): http://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/2010/05/08/ask…
Thank you so much!
I graduated from college about, oh, six years ago, and I’ve been working a defense contractor office job for the past four years or so. But the whole time, I’ve been writing on the side and thinking about how I wanted to really study writing/work on my writing/work on other people’s writing. I know I don’t want to keep doing what I’m doing for the rest of my life, and I know that when I think about what I *do* want to do with my life, my knee-jerk reaction is, “I want to be a writer. Or–”
And then I never have an “or.”
I have some “and”s. I could say, “I want to be a writer and a teacher/professor.” I could say, “I want to be a writer and an editor/publisher.” If I’m being honest with myself, though, there’s never an option for something I would want to do entirely *instead*.
So many dog photos this week, where to start?
How about this guy:
Corgi kisses:
Corgi sprawl:
Bonus corgi baby picture:
BABY CORGI!!!! squeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Also dog kisses are the best, I don’t care what anyone says about hygiene, haters to the left etc
I love puppy kisses so much! But I have apparently developed a slight allergy to them, cause they’ve started to give me a rash 🙁 Now I have to spend all my time dodging the tongue, like a particularly awful first date. I feel so bad! I love the pup! I want the kisses! I’M SORRY DOG I STILL LOVE YOOOOOOOU 🙁
Fry and Ruby and the hideous couch.
Aw, such pretty dogs 🙂
I moved the corner chair. That spot of rug immediately had to be tested to see if it was superior to other parts of the rug (face says no).
Aw, greyhounds! I love themmmm
A friend calls them noodle dogs and it is so true. They are basically made of cooked spaghetti legs and love. I sometimes feel guilty for not letting them on the furniture when they are such good snugglepuppies.
no pictures of my own pup this week, but here’s a creeper pic of the local dog walker and his EIGHT!!! DOGS!!! who always stops by my lunch spot at around 2pm. Highlight of my day, every day. just a swarm of happy doggies. alas, my office is moving downtown at the end of next week so I will only be able to ogle his dogs for a few more days 🙁
A few weeks ago there was a discussion in the open thread about gentrification and what we can do if we’re newcomers to a neighbourhood that is being gentrified. I came across this article the other day, and thought it was useful: 9 Ways Privileged People can Reduce the Impact of Gentrification: http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/10/9-ways-privil…
This is good! I like the part about socially conscious purchasing decisions. Where I live in gentrifying Bed-Stuy, 2 new coffeeshops have opened in the past 2 years — one is run by a local nonprofit and employs young people from the neighborhood, many in their first job; the other was built by a fancy design firm and is much more expensive. (Also just googled the 2nd one and found a profile on it with someone saying, “We really needed a coffeeshop in the neighborhood”; uhhh the other one opened a year earlier and is TWO BLOCKS AWAY).
I’ve also read and liked this piece. http://www.alternet.org/culture/20-ways-not-be-ge…
I’ve bought a small home in a gentrifying neighborhood, because it’s what we could afford. I’ve really tried to take this to heart and get to know our neighbors little by little. We’re also hoping to get more active in neighborhood town halls in order to meet folks and to learn the priorities of long-term residents.
There was also recently an incident where on the neighborhood internet bulletin thingy someone complained about a car club meeting in a park in really coded racist language. It all kind of happened too fast for me to dive in, but many of the long-time residents (extremely tactfully) called him out, and tried to start a dialogue where folks could come to a better understanding of each other. I don’t know yet what that particular situation will come to, but any opportunity you have to back up the long-term residents, especially to our fellow privileged gentrifiers, seems like a good practice to me.
Thanks for sharing this – it was great. I recently moved from a majority-black neighborhood to a majority-Hispanic neighborhood – the former rapidly gentrifying, the latter not gentrifying at all (I’m white). It’s been a very interesting experience, and this article made me realize that I’ve neglected meeting more of my new neighbors because I *wasn’t* working against a tide of gentrification. I didn’t have the need. I mean, I just moved, so I’m sure I will in time, but I need to get out there and make some connections!
Saved, thank you! My neighborhood is on the verge of…something…and we really want to buy a house here because we love this place and also it might be the only place on earth where we could afford to buy an actual house. I really, really don’t want it to turn into the neighborhood across town where I went to an event yesterday. I was at a bar where people were gushing about the “East Village vibe” and the artisanal infused cocktails. We were a block away from the lynching memorial (really) while guys from the homeless shelter/food shelf down the street were passing by, just looking inside with a “what is going on, seriously” expression on their faces.
This was a SUSTAINABILITY MIXER.
THIS IS NOT HOW YOU DO IT.
I have just a few weeks left at my current job in DC before I pick up and drive my little car all the way across the country to California (with a stop in my Midwestern hometown for a few weeks in the middle.) My project for the weekend is to start thinking about a route for the trip! I’m hoping to stop and see some national parks along with way, particularly once I hit the Rockies.
I’m very excited, but also a little nervous, as I’ve never done this big of a drive before. Does anyone have any suggestions for making the time pass quickly on a cross-country road-trip? Hot tips on cool stops in Iowa/Nebraska/other states that are not as outwardly scenic as, say, Colorado or Utah?
The Loess hills on the border between IA and NE are a mildly interesting geographic oddity and you can go hiking around there. Okay, I’m trying to recall everything I’ve ever done while driving across my home state. If you’re on I-80, you can see the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the World’s Largest Truck Stop, get something to eat in Iowa city, check out an architecturally significant bank in Grinnell, visit the bridges of Madison County. If you stop in Des Moines, may I suggest that you go to the art center (free, and better than most museums of its size) and then get dinner at Hessen Haus or El Bait Shop. And if you’re doing this in August, there’s a good chance you can go to the state fair, which is worth it if only for the food.
I forgot to mention the Amana Colonies, which was the nation’s longest-functioning commune/ utopian society and is now a touristy place where you can see people making furniture and shit. And Pella is a town with a bunch of Dutch heritage stuff, windmills and tulips and all that. The big draw is the pastries at Jaarsma bakery.
Ah, roadtripping across the Midwest. I grew up in the Midwest, too, and spent many hours in cars staring out at the endless fields of corn.
Depending on where your hometown is, I’d suggest staying as far north as possible. You do not want to drive through southern Illinois or Indiana. Decorah, IA is cute. Madison, WI is a nice place to stop and hang out for a while. Driving through Chicago can be trafficky, but you can time it so it’s not. Have never driven west of Indiana, though, so I can’t help you with those bits.
My husband and I recently had a long car drive, and we listed to Cabin Pressure from beginning to end and it made the time fly by. Highly recommend.
Thank you for the suggestions! I’m from the upper Midwest and am more used to forests and lakes than endless cornfields. I suspect they will make up a large part of the scenery on this trip no matter how I plan it, but it’s good to know there are some diversions in between.
We play the license plate game (collectively, not competitively), and start over with every state line- so you get to see which states have the most variety/ don’t just get stuck trying to find Hawaii by the end of your trip. (Also, it’s totally kosher in our version to drive slowly/ count the plates you walk past in national parks, which are license plate game gold mines).
Radiolab, Snap Judgement, or whatever podcasts you enjoy are a nice addition/ alternative to audio books (audio books make my husband too sleepy when he’s driving)
DETROIT!
What a lovely city. Everyone was SO friendly. So friendly. My stoic Torontonian facade was broken down. It’s back up now, though I wish it wasn’t. Also, my AirBnB host had the sweetest three-legged cat who purred like nobody’s business.
So many beautiful venues! The Diego/Frida exhibit was fabulous, and please go if you’re in the area and haven’t but mean to; it closes July 12. The main Detroit Public Library is gorg. There was an old-timey light-up map in the lobby! You pressed a button next to the subject you wanted — like HERALDRY — and the section would light up. WHAT. I saw community ads for saxophone lessons and a Star Wars reading book club.
I ate well, including fried chicken at the Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. A gentleman named Fernando drove me there and he seemed bent on finding me another venue, listing off all kinds of places — laid-back atmosphere, drinking hole, gay bar. He gave me his personal cell number in case I wanted a different party later. Thanks, Fernando!
A guy totally tried to chat me up at Cliff Bell’s (where I was having a delicious drink with smoked lemon peel)! Sorry, dude, I have no game. I think I dribbled water down my chin while talking to him. He was really cute though. Thanks for trying!
I walked everywhere, and it was a little sad in places where it was clear just not enough people lived in the city anymore and there are hard times going on. It was interesting to absorb and reflect on (Toronto is thriving, mostly, but has its problems, even rot) and I felt like it wasn’t respectful to take pictures of things in ruins, so I did not. It was much more fulfilling to keep memories of things I enjoyed and were obviously something the city was proud of.
Thank you, Detroit!
Yay!!! I was there a few weeks ago. The Diego/Frida exhibit was cool but I wanted more Frida!!
Thank you so, so much for not contributing to the Ruin Porn Detroit Project. There is so much amazing stuff! So much else to focus on!
This morning I remembered that the Frida/Diego exhibit closes this weekend and now I have missed it, so: jealous of youuuu
Seconded! I grew up in the Rust Belt (though not in Detroit), and that kind of thing pisses me off so much.
I was there for work for a while last year and went to the most amazing used bookstore I have ever seen (I don’t remember what it’s called?). A bunch of my friends were like “lol what can you do in Detroit” but I actually had a really good time.
Kings!
Yes! My suitcase was like 8 pounds heavier on the way home thanks to that place.
Hi guys! Last week Dear Businesslady responded to my letter and I thought I should give an update, as I think the situation has been well resolved (although not by me!).
So a few things happened since I submitted the letter. First of all, I went on vacation! I was actually on vacation when the letter ran, and boy is it a lot easier to get perspective on work problems when you are not in the thick of them. Secondly, I got a raise! And thirdly, they assigned a junior associate to help out the partner Julie, so now I am no longer working directly with her.
I have to admit that the comments on the advice freaked me the heck out. I spent a while after the letter ran wondering if I was totally out of line to be upset with the situation. After sitting with myself for a while, I decided, no, I wasn’t. We’re not a law firm and we really do take an all hands on deck approach. But, at the same time, a big part of the problem was institutional/situational. It’s true that Julie was doing dramatically less work than she was when I first started here, but it’s also true that my responsibilities changed during the same time period. When I first started, I was free and happy to do as much of the work assigned to Julie as possible. But in the last year, I’ve been given more elements to manage on my own. So the head boss would say “Letter writer, do x, y and z; Julie, do a, b and c” and then Julie would want help with a, b and c while I was focused on x y and z. So she was left feeling unsupported, and I was stuck feeling overwhelmed.
Anyway, I think the situation has been resolved as well as can be expected! Thanks to everyone for their advice. I really appreciate everyone’s input!
Hey Letter Writer!
I feel like you got piled on a bit (by me included) so I just want to say 1) sorry and 2) I’m so glad that things are better! A new junior associate sounds like a pretty good solution.
Hope you had a great vacation!
Also, this week at work, a complete stranger who I had never communicated with before, signed a professional, work-related email to me with “Love, Ben”. And I thought it was so strange and hilarious.
That is my wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat nightmare! My fingers have a mind of their own, so when I am switching back and forth between work and personal emails, well, it could happen. I don’t think it has, but it could.
I live in fear of the day I will do this. Or, worse, sign off a conference call with “bye, love you.”
Omg, this week I was writing to the event manager for our engagement party venue and signed my email xoxo and IMMEDIATELY wrote back with a total panicked apology.
It felt even worse because she’s a young, inexperienced woman, and here I was XOXOing her! GAH
A friend of mine wrote a work email a few months ago that was supposed to start with “hello Brian” but ended up reading ‘Hell Brian” and she sent it before realizing.
I have come DANGEROUSLY close to sending emails that start with “Good moroning” instead of “Good morning” . . .
hahaha my worst nightmare :’)
Today I got rebuffed in my attempt to switch to first names with someone I have been emailing on a work matter. I started an email off “Hello FirstName!” and ended with my first name. I got back “Hello Ms. Lastname”. Oops.
That is an even worse feeling when the email exchange is between you and your mother-in-law. Sigh…
! Your mother-in-law addresses you by last name?
Other way around! She signs her emails “mrs. Lastname.” I’ve been dating her son for 5 years, engaged for 2. Pretty sure she likes me, just not first-name basis enough?
One of my best friends once sent a work e-mail intending to say “I’ve been running around all day putting out fires!”
She left out “fires” by mistake.
As someone who picks up a lot of shifts for work, sometimes in a hurry, I also live in fear of the day that I leave out the all important F in “shift”…
The president of the university I work at sent an email to the entire campus with the subject “Proposal for Bear/Wine at venues on a trial basis”.
I would go to those venues.
BOOK CONTRIBUTION REQUEST Y’ALL:
I’m putting together an essay collection with NYT religion writer Mark Oppenheimer on spiritual coming-of-age stories. It’s called Smells Like Teen Spirituality: Adolescent Encounters with the Ineffable. Had a major breakthrough this week in getting some noteworthy (and Toastworthy) contributors on board, but still on the lookout for more! Info:
Coming-of-age stories are everywhere you look, but what about spiritually coming-of-age; wrestling for the first time with the major questions of why we are here, and what we can do with our time on this Earth? Smells Like Teen Spirituality: Adolescent Encounters with the Ineffable will be an honest, deep, funny, human exploration of spiritual seeking as a teen/young adult, whether that means finding or losing organized or not-so-organized religion. We’re approaching adult and teen writers, personalities, and leaders from all over the spectrum of faith and experience. If we succeed in selling the book to a publisher, all contributors will be paid.
If you’re down, hit me up! djkomisar at gmail dot com.
I love the topic! I’m not really a writer, so I can’t say I’ll necessarily follow through and pitch to you, but I’ll be thinking about possible essay topics this week for sure. And in any case, buy a copy when it gets published!
So, does anyone know who to network for jobs? Online sources aren’t really telling me anything.
For example, I want to get into jobs that deal with research and I have a little bit of experience in that (non-science). I haven’t been in school for a while and there’s a city I want to move to that has a lot of those jobs. Do I just try to find people who work in those organizations I’m applying to and just ask about their work?
I just have no clue.
Even if you haven’t been in school for a while, your alumni network is probably a decent place to start. They might host events in the area, or even just have people who are willing to talk to you. I’d try to leverage that.
As cait0716 said, alumni networks are a great place to start. There are also plenty of industry-focused networking Meetup groups in most major cities– if you can travel to those at all, check it out and see what’s available. I am also a firm believer in the power of a good recruiter, so if there’s a recruiting agency that specializes in your field, it might be worthwhile to call them up and ask if they have contacts at those organizations.
Good luck!
I am assuming you mean academic research with these suggestions, but two basic tactics: networking emails, and honestly showing up to people’s offices. That seems like an outdated tactic, but it guarantees a sit-down get-to-know-you conversation if you can find out when someone’s office hours are and just show up. With regard to the emails, send them out to a couple people you already know, sell your skills (maybe your location has a good research environment, maybe you have X professional skill that other researchers don’t have), and invite them to forward your information to anyone who may be in need of these skills.
If you’re looking for jobs outside academia, I’ll be looking at this thread for tips myself. Best of luck!! 🙂
So straight up emailing a director or someone with the position I could qualify for is okay?
For example, one place I’ve applied to is part of a university. I have a MLIS degree but I’ve leveraged it for data management and research through an internship I was lucky enough to find. I was thinking of emailing one of them and saying, “Hi, I want to continue in this career path. Do you have any advice how to get there?” – Only I’ll word it better than that.
I find emailing as a gentler alternative to cold calling really effective in this type of networking, yes. Not sure about the director of an org but for sure someone in a job comparable to one you would want — hopefully they know the struggles of getting into the field and will chat with you a bit with tips and maybe a forward to someone higher up who may have a job available. 🙂
Thanks for your advice!
I’ll give it a shot this weekend.
OH OH ALSO can we talk about books? Because I just finished Tess Sharpe’s Far From You, and I need people to cry with.
My husband and I just booked flights for our cruise later this year. I’m super excited because VACATION! and CRUISE! But I’m also excited because this is the last thing on the baby bucket list, so when we get home we’re going to officially start trying to get pregnant. Things are looking up for the whole back half of this year.
!!!!!!!!! THIS IS SO EXCITING !!!!!!!!
Very exciting! Your comment though reminds of a coworker who, in response to my news that I was going on the Disney cruise, replies “oh! Those are a lot of fun! My youngest daughter was conceived on one!” first thought: “Dude!” second: “see they are fun!” (they’re great, even without any conceptions)
Feminist SF friends, I need recommendations. I ran into a colleague at the coffee shop this week (while I was meeting octopoda to hand off comic books) who mentioned that he’s been re-reading Heinlein. I said “man, I just can’t, there’s too much good non-white-straight-male stuff out now.” and he lit up and said “ooh, you’ll have to tell me, because I’m in a SF book club and white straight men is all we’re reading!”
So … what is a good place to start for a bunch of dudes (Seattle dudes, so, probably relatively clued in)? I often give people Parable of the Sower but that might be a stretch as SF for them. I just finished Brightness Falls from the Air by Tiptree but it feels dated in a weird way. Maybe Ancillary Justice?
Ancillary Justice rocks. Tiptree’s “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” is a wonderful collection. I also recommend “Passing for Human” by Jody Scott and “The Female Man” by the late, great Joanna Russ.
“Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” kicked my ass. I mean I love it, but dang, it’s brutal. Maybe I can track down a couple of stories from it; the whole thing might be too much. “Love is the plan the plan is death” and “Screwfly” and “The Women Men Don’t See” maybe.
Definitely “The Screwfly Solution”.
I second the Tiptree collection. And LeGuin’s an obvious recommendation, right? But I LOVE The Lathe of Heaven.
What about some Ursula K LeGuin?
I agree – “The Left Hand of Darkness” and “Lathe of Heaven” are favorites of mine.
Some people don’t care for them, but I enjoyed Doris Lessing’s “Shikasta” series.
My scifi loving husband is reading The Left Hand of Darkness at the moment, and he seems to be good and well hooked on it. From the wikipedia entry it looks promising, but I cannot give my personal stamp of approval because I myself haven’t read it. Still, perhaps a toastie could corroborate?
I love Left Hand of Darkness. The pronoun usage is problematic, but it’s an incredibly moving book.
Ooo what’s problematic about the pronouns? You can go ahead and provide spoilers, if you care to answer or if there’s a link to a post that sums it up.
The Gethenians are almost always described using “he” pronouns, despite being genderless. It makes sense when Genly is narrating, because Genly has bad gender politics and probably does see most Gethenians as male. But it doesn’t make sense that Estraven does the same thing.
I vaguely remember reading something by Le Guin that suggested she’d use different pronouns if she were writing it now (it was published in the 70s).
Thanks! I’m also always interested when writers reflect about the changes they would make to their works, because that must be one of the scary things about publishing in the first place: putting out something necessarily imperfect, because of limitations of the time or whatever. It’s an interesting conundrum.
She’s a very reflective writer about her own and others’ work: http://www.ursulakleguin.com
I adore the woman!
Ancillary Justice could definitely get some good discussion going.
I really really want to recommend Jo Walton, but if they’re reading hard sci-fi it might be a bit of a stretch. But every time I’ve finished one of her books I’ve been all like “omg omg everyone let me talk to you about this book,” so, I kinda wish I’d had a book club around for it!
There’s also a lot of interesting African and Caribbean SF lately, though I can’t put my finger on anything in particular. Would love recs for that if anyone’s got any.
Are they interested in short stories at all? I’ve liked a lot of Mothership, which is a collection of Afrofuturist short stories.
You could also recommend Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, which I found absolutely devastating.
OH GOD The Sparrow
/me dies, is dead
Seriously, I may never be able to re-read that book.
Nnedi Okorafor, Nisi Shawl, Karen Lord, Nalo Hopkinson, Tobias Buckell, Lauren Beukes, Long Hidden, The Girl in the Road.
Thanks, I have had most of these authors on my radar but haven’t read any but Beukes and Okorafor (Who Fears Death is probably not this group’s cup of tea though).
I really liked Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds, which is both a travelogue of a large planet that’s been colonized by a wide range of cultures AND (secretly) a Vulcan romance story, which is pretty great. I have not actually read any of Nisi Shawl’s fiction, but she’s such an awesome person, and I know she incorporates her religion (Afro-Caribbean, I can’t remember which variety) into her work a lot.
The Three-Body Problem is written by a Chinese author (Cixin Liu) and is excellent. Going to be a series I think too.
I’m going to read soon Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia based on a recommendation by Weird Fiction Magazine for her as an author. The book is more magic than scifi though.
Looking forward to reading Ody-C this weekend! Thanks again!
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh, wide variety of characters and settings so I feel like it has wide appeal. Tho, I guess it might not be SF-enough for some.
And I vote yes on Ancillary Justice.
I love China Mountain Zhang so much! It’s true there’s very little in the way of sci-fi trappings (it’s mostly an alternate history where communist China gains economic and political control over the US) but I think it’d be a good book club book. The main character is a Chinese-Mexican American who is ga (but there are many other main characters as well.) . It’s such a beautiful book about figuring out what you want out of life and being brave enough to take the first steps toward it.
I read this so long ago I hardly remember it, but I do remember that is was very good.
I shall continue to recommend the Tiptree Award shortlist to everyone, because it always pulls up tons of stuff that flew under my radar and is always fascinating stuff. But holy shit, this year’s winners were OUTSTANDING. Jo Walton’s My Real Children is more women’s fiction alternate history than sf, so people reading spaceships-and-rayguns might not be too into that, but Monica Byrne’s The Girl in the Road was fucking outstanding, I cannot emphasize enough how great it was.
In the same vein, N.K. Jemisin’s new fantasy series debuts in August, everyone should read it, no it’s not strictly science fiction but they do science in it? (IT’S A FANTASY UNIVERSE WHERE PEOPLE DO SCIENCE, I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for that.) Whatever, it’s amazing.
I didn’t know N. K. Jemisin had a new series coming out!! This has made my day.
Maybe Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books? Falling Free and Ethan of Athos both stand alone very well, not having the usual characters.
Tanya Huff’s Valor books are good solid military SF, and they’re often mentioned as getting the feel of the military right in a way that is lacking in some milSF.
Feed by Mira Grant was really excellent. It involves bloggers and the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse. It’s much more science-y and tech filled than most zombie books.
All the above have some social justice themes, but I think they’re gentle enough about it to not explode the heads of dude Heinlein readers in Seattle.
The Vorkosigan Series is a bit of an undertaking, but you could probably do Barrayar or The Warrior’s Apprentice as a one-off for a book club
Julie E. Czerneda writes great science fiction that’s more focused on biology than space travel – Beholder’s Eye is a good place to start. And Nalo Hopkinson – my favorite is Midnight Robber but Brown Girl in the Ring might be a little more traditionally SF.
I love Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman series. In the very beginning it feels like you’re reading straight fantasy (wizards and all) but…oh man, I don’t want to spoil anything. The protagonist travels around collecting information and looking into mysteries (like–where did these shards of mysterious material come from) with scientific rigour.
There’s also The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter. It’s, like, lesbian USSR cyberpunk. I liked it a lot, and I generally don’t like cyberpunk.
(Yes, those are both links to Jo Walton’s reviews.)
I always forget how much I loved The Fortunate Fall, and then someone brings it up again. Lesbian cyberpunk with telepathic whales! It’s so 90s and so, so great.
Lesbian cyberpunk with telepathic whales sounds awesome!
Dawn by Octavia Butler.
Actually, just about any book by Butler will do. She’s one of the greats when it comes to SF.
I got new socks. Perfect socks.
I HAVE THESE TOO I call them my misandry socks. I love them.
Where can I buy these?!
http://www.blueq.com/socks/ !
These are the best foot-garments in creation.
My scooter finally works! After about 5 emails and two voicemails, I hit upon a customer service email/phone number that actually responded. They’re sending me the correct title, my helmet should ship out on Wednesday or so (apparently the EPA sometimes does surprise inspections of shipping containers, which is cool, but nobody called to tell me it was held up), and the tech guy said the hose hanging down wasn’t a problem, it’s the air intake, it’s supposed to be like that. This last bit is crap, as the hose is too small for that and has a clamp on the end. But I got it working well enough to get to work, at which point one of my coworkers got the side fender off and found the correct nipple for that hose (which is, in fact, an O2 sensor). He also got the front tire pumped up with a bicycle pump, and now it runs like a dream. It still has a max speed of about 25, though. The online description said the max speed was 40 mph, but I now realize they mean kph. So I have to drive to the extreme right of the lane so that people can pass me, which is annoying. But still, I can drive places now, and I’ll soon be able to do that legally, once I get the correct paperwork.
I also got hit on in a bar by a super-hot chick with amazing rockabilly lipstick and a pixie cut. She looked quite a bit like Ruby Rose, actually. She told me I smelled like cinnamon. And I’m going to a church retreat this weekend, so I can sit around on the porch and do nothing whatsoever. Hooray!
Tell me about your body mods!
I recently got a tattoo and I completely 100% love it — I got maple seeds tattooed above my ankle. Not to get too overwrought, but I thought it was going to be an entirely neutral thing, and it ended up being a really good, positive experience.
Also, I know I can tough it out for the bigger custom tattoos I want to get, haha.
I’ve also sized up my ears to 10g — I’m giving them a break for a little while, then I’ll probably stretch them more later this month.
A friend of mine recently had scarification done, and the aftercare is INTENSE — I wanted to possibly get scarification done, but now that I’ve read the phrase “exfoliate with a toothbrush, sesame oil, and salt” HAHA NO THANK YOU I am not metal enough for sure!
Be careful, one tattoo inevitably leads to more…I have three now and plan to get others.
heh, I have plans for at LEAST two more, and my mom and I might be getting tattoos the next time I’m home (which is hilarious to me, since prior to me getting a tattoo she once told me she wouldn’t get a tattoo even if she were paid a million bucks, and now she’s been seriously chatting with me about tattoo placement options).
I have quite a lot of tattoos and 8 holes in my ears – normal size ones though! I really want to find spiral earrings I can thread through all of them but I can only find big fat ones.
I keep thinking about dermal implants because I think they are lovely, but I have hypermobility syndrome and one of the associated things is that I scar very easily, so I’ve decided against it on the basis that it would be a giant mess if I wanted to take it out.
I’ve got a celtic knot on my upper back. Kind of cliche, but I did draw it myself! I got it shortly after moving out of my parent’s house and into my first apartment.
I’ve also got plans for a mountain range on my wrist. I’ve been wanting something on my wrist – specifically a tattoo I can actually see and enjoy – for a while. Then I settled on mountains of some sort. Then my youngest cousin turned 18 and she and her sister went and got these awesome matching mountains&sunset tattoos. So I asked and received permission to get the same mountain range tattooed on my body. I’m really excited. I just need to find a place to get it done and make an appointment. I’m thinking of doing it for my birthday next week.
I have 7 tattoos, and I always want more! My ears are gauged to 0, but I’ve lost most of my plugs–I need to buy more. I used to have more piercings. My favorites were 4 microdermals I had below my collarbone. I loved them, but they aren’t made to last really. I may get them done again some day though.
Aw, I have a dermal on my sternum that I loooooooooove. I keep putting different pretty opals in it, if my piercer didn’t become my friend she’d probably be sick of me by now!
Have you ever had problems with it coming out? Mine seemed to have issues because I sometimes sleep on my belly, and because I would hit them in the shower. I just always seemed to be accidentally pulling them on things. Are you just super careful? Maybe I just have weird skin!
I have snagged it on my seatbelt once, but no trauma to it! I sleep on my tummy as well, and healing it was hard, but it’s been pretty cooperative since then. It’s been over a year!
Wow! I want to see your maple seed tattoo!
Related–a tattoo care question. My tattoo is nine years old. Kinda like how it looks faded. But should I be getting it redone every five years?
Every five? Not so much, depending on how cared for it is, but a touchup certainly wouldn’t hurt if it is faded – and you don’t want it to remain that way!
okay let’s see if this works
I have five tattoos–three big, two small–but I have joined ye here today to talk about a far tamer mod, the cartilage piercing. I got my upper left ear cartilage pierced with a piercing gun (I know! I know!) many years ago. About ten years ago I started getting keloids so I had it widened from 18 to 16 and started wearing a hoop with a ball closure. About five years ago the hoop became uncomfortable (couldn’t sleep on that side) so I switched to a plain stud. Last week I lost the front end of the stud–I’m a nervous fiddler, so it’s totally my fault–and I have my old hoop in, but again, I can’t sleep on it. I figured I’ll go get another stud but if anyone has any other ideas to either make a stud fiddle-proof or a hoop sleep-able, let me know. Should I get a special back? Go up to 14 gauge?
When my hoops started getting too uncomfortable to sleep in, I found that if I nestled the ball right up against the front of my ear, that helped for a while. But now I just wear regular studs and take them out at night.
Could you put an infinity ring on it? You’d probably have to get someone to actually put it in, but there wouldn’t be a ball on it
Question! How did you widen it to 16? My cartilage is pierced at 18 gauge and it drives me nuts that I can never find earrings that size. If I’d known more (as a dumb college freshman), I would’ve asked for 16.
Also, I’ve slept in my captive ball hoop for so long that my ear has a permanent dent where the ball fits. Sort of ridiculous, but it’s entirely non-noticeable and it works!
Any place that does piercings should be able to do that for you. There’s a little tool, I think it’s called a taper, and they just poke it through your hole and then put in the larger earring. Fairly painless and the place I went didn’t even charge me for the procedure, just for the earring. It definitely helped prevent keloids and it also expanded my earring possibilities. 18 is the same gauge as regular ear lobe earrings, but those tend to have backs or closures that irritate a cartilage piercing. But 16 gauge is still pretty fine; for example, if you want the kind of hoop that has screw-on tips because they are easier to manage than ball closures, you CAN find them in 16 but they are a bit rarer than 14 gauge hoops with screw threads.
If you go to a professional piercer, they may be able to change the stud back to a labret back – I have those in my newest cartilage piercings, and they are SO comfortable. If you felt like crossing the river, I could recommend someone, but I doubt you feel like going that far :p
It’s more a question of transportation–no car!–and there’s an accessible place near South St I like a lot. Just wanted to gather a little anecdata before I head up there.
Is a labret back flat or ball shaped? My stud had a ball-shaped back with a hollow post and was very comfortable indeed–hardly ever felt it–but it’s the front post with the gemstone that fell off, so I got nothin to stick into the hollow back. In fact I have two empty backs in my jewelry box, which makes me think I’ve done this before, but I don’t remember losing another post or even what gemstone it would have been. #AgingHipsterProblems
Late reply D: The labret back is the flat back! Do you know what gauge your piercing is? I have a few 14ga opal fronts that I could possibly send over that I’m not using if you’d want, but they probably should be autoclaved.
I have 16s, alas. Although I love the idea of a (sanitized) Toast body jewelry exchange. I took out my navel piercing a few months ago and consequently disposed of all my belly rings, but there were some spectacularly nerdy ones in there (a lizard, Arwen’s evenstar, a Janet-Jackson-circa-1992-style belly chain and I was sad that I didn’t know anyone at the time who could use them.
Oh gee. Um I’m up to 15 (? I’m pretty sure I’m up to 15, yeah) tattoos, with another scheduled for this day next week – and uh, hang on, gotta count, 11 piercings? My “main” lobe piercings are at 1/2″ and have been for quite some time, and I’ve amassed a lot of jewelry in this size so I plan on staying here. Make sure to wait at least a month between stretching, otherwise you may blow out and that’s No Good!
They are very much like pringles, and once you pop you can’t stop and then you lose track and do a weird hokey-pokey to count where they all are, hah.
Oh, I’ve been carefully waiting a month between each stretch! I’m just waiting longer because friends of mine decided to regale me with horror stories of horrible ear things and I sort of panicked a little, haha.
That’s definitely true re: getting more stuff done — I also got a tragus piercing a few months ago, and basically the only thing between me and sticking infinite holes into my ears and face is that I do martial arts and the idea of getting a piercing yanked out of my face is more unappealing than more piercings are appealing.
(I failed one thing on my most recent belt test, and that’s because I practiced it the day before the test and grabbed my piercing and it hurt a truly astonishing amount, and I punked out when it came time to do it on the test, heh)
Y’all are giving me a serious craving for more tattoos. I got my 5th a couple months ago (an adorable cartoon godzilla rampaging across my belly…when I’m sad I make him stomp and roar, it is the best) and immediately wanted to get a million more. Stupid not having infinite money!
What the heck, that is the best thing I have ever heard.
Awww, thankee! It has brought me a lot of delight. My belly flab has so much more personality now! 10/10, would recommend anyone who wants one to get an adorable critter on their flab. Flab critters 4 lyfe!
I am in love with this as I have a Godzilla tattoo planned as well, omg.
I’ve just got a nose ring– used to have an industrial, but it got jostled loose and closed up before I could replace the end ball. I used to wear a glass spacer to work, but that fell out in the shower and disappeared, so I just went to work the next day with the ring in. A few people commented but it’s really fine, which is great, since I love my nose ring.
I’m starting to plan my first tattoo– my dog of 14 years died last month. My mom took her paw print for me, so I’m thinking of getting it outlined onto my own foot, with ex pede herculem written on or near it– that was her middle name. But I don’t know a whole lot about getting tattoos! Do you bring in a rough design to the shop? How do you “shop around?” How long does the whole process of designing take?
Ask people you know with tattoos you like! You can also check out local tattoo artist portfolios on their studio’s website to see which artists have done work similar to what you want.
You can certainly bring in a design (or a pawprint) and ask to have it transferred to your skin as is, although an artist may suggest some minor alterations to size or placement or color for best results. Some places really like to have a consult before the inking session, and the space between them depends mostly on the artist’s schedule (good artists tend to book up a few weeks in advance!). Also, not all tattoo artists will tattoo feet so you should ask about that.
Thanks for the advice! I’m a little nervous about the foot thing– not because I’m worried it will hurt, I typically have pretty good pain tolerance– but because I feel like a lot of artists look down on “tattoo virgins” getting anything in such a tricky spot for their first. But the tattoo place near me has two female artists, so I’m hoping I can get one of them and they’ll be a little less judgmental.
I’m not sure it’s always about being judgemental – more perhaps wanting to make sure it’s not a hideous experience for you (the generic you-the-client, not you specifically), not knowing how you’ll react to it, and not wanting to leave you with a bad experience, or a tattoo that looks rubbish because you’ve twitched, or didn’t look after it and your shoe rubbed it, and them getting a bad name from something that may not have been their fault. My feeling is that they’re professionals, they know their jobs and if they are willing to turn away business on a principle then it’s probably worth at least listening and considering their viewpoint.
My second one was on my ribcage and he did ask me several times how sure I was, made sure he had told me it would hurt a lot more than my first, and even did a bit without any ink in the machine so I could feel what I was getting myself into before committing. It didn’t come across as judgemental, just wanting me to be sure I could cope with it. The other side of my ribcage was one he said he would only have been prepared to do on a few of his clients as it was intricate and very detailed, but apparently I have a freakish pain threshold.
For choosing an artist, I picked my most-tattooed friends, peered at theirs and then went where they did. I designed my own, with input from the artist, he’s told me when it’s needed to be bigger, lines thicker, placement a bit different, etc – we do a bit of ‘consulting’ via facebook as well when I show him pictures of my potential designs sellotaped on where I want them, and when I have a finished design I will cut it out and go in, then we can tweak it if needed. For my first couple it was more formal, I made appointments for consultations and so on – now I can ring up and ask when is a good time to pop in for 5 minutes.
I am getting another tattoo ASAP. I currently have 3, most recent one done in April. It’s the first one I can actually see most of the time and I LOVE IT.
The struggle is that I can’t seem to find a tattoo artist locally whom I really like. I loved the artist for my third tattoo, but I got it done in another country and it seems silly to travel when I live in NYC and should damn well be able to find someone here. If anyone has recs for NYC-or-environs tattoo artists (especially those good with fine lines and/or text), I would appreciate tips!
i have a bunch of shitty tatts that i collected in my teens & early 20s. i plan to get most of them covered/fixed up in the next few years. i’ve got 3 across my upper back that are gonna be obliterated but i wanna salvage the castle on my upper left arm. it’s got 2 towers that everyone says look like penises and i OWN THAT FACT and always will. there’s a terribly done ivy tramp stamp that will be reworked into bad-ass ivy with tendrils that wrap around to the front of one hip and a wee bit up the ribs (eek!) on the other side. the NIN on my wrist is forever.
i’ve got two solid captive steel rings in each earlobe. 10g in the lower, 12g above. i had a million holes in each ear from back in the piercing-gun-at-the-mall days and kept these 4 and stretched them over time.
i’ve got a VCH. i’m not sure what the gauge is. it’s what the piercer recommended. i’ts a basic steel curved barbell with bead caps. getting this piercing was the single most painful and horrifying thing i’ve ever done. i am *terrified* of needles. now it’s my litmus test for surviving shitty situations. it’s been over 3 years and i haven’t found anything worth being afraid of yet.
i’ve got a 14g solid captive steel ring trough my septum. i am so in love with my face now. it was simply meant to be. having survived the VCH, i jumped at the chance to get my nose done when i won a free piercing at a costume contest.
i want to get a brand/scar on the back of my neck. i’m not sure what design, though.
and i would LOVE LOVE LOVE to get my ears pointed.
Last Open Thread I was debating the merits of leaving my adjuncting gig. Welllll I did it! I pulled the plug and have therefore finally and fully retired from academia! I shall now just save my random bits of art historical knowledge for Toast Western Art History posts and torturing friends and family members at museums.
This fall may very well be the first time in my entire life that I will not be on an academic schedule. Strange and exhilarating all at once!
I have friends who are adjuncts, and they complain about it even more than they did about writing their dissertations.
on the adjuncting note, I currently am one and for some reason just interviewed for keeping the position for another year. I have no idea why i did that and also no idea if i will take the job if they offer it (and also no idea if they will offer it) AND no idea what i will do if they don’t offer it. Yaaaaaay. Advice welcome!
Congratulations! Art historians are the best people to go to museums with, I wish you many happy museum trips where you don’t have your syllabus in the back of your mind.
Congrats!! Adjuncting is the worst!
Congrats!!
My dilemma every week: I get home from work around 7 on Fridays, which is about when Open Thread goes up in my time zone. I’m always so torn between eating and reading/commenting here. As I type this the microwave is beeping periodically to remind me that my chicken and rice is still in there.
I feel your pain. I understand the problem.
I’m moving apartments tomorrow! Technically, my boyfriend and I have been moving boxes and stuff for a week, but tomorrow the movers come and actually transport our furniture. I’m extremely excited about this apartment–there will finally be enough space for two people’s stuff, the complex is right on a park, it has a washer/dryer. But I also have a question that I have managed to avoid answering in my past four apartments. What exactly is the criteria for using contact paper? When does a kitchen shelf/drawer need contact paper? None of the drawers or shelves have contact paper on them right now, and I don’t know if I need to cover all of them, some of them, none…
For me, it’s about how clean it seems, how clean I can easily render it, how clean it needs to *seem* for me to feel good about it. Example: I helped a woman move into an old log cabin. The pantry is just bare wood shelves that were sanded only cursorily. I gave those shelves a cursory scrubbing and pronounced them “improved but not clean”. Nor will they ever be clean, I told her. Every time you wipe at them, your rag will come up with more dirt. Even after 100 times. Just put contact paper down and be done with it, I advised.
Thanks! So I *don’t* have to cut out contact paper for the dozens of relatively nice wooden cabinets/shelves? That’s a relief. I’m definitely putting some down in the pantry, though. It’s probably fine, but just doesn’t *seem* clean. I’m glad that’s an allowable metric of judgment.
Tell me of Berlin toasties!
Just booked a 4 day trip at the end of July, its my first real trip abroad (for non emigration reasons) alone! Will be seeing \staying with a friend from home one night, but other than that I’m free!
What’s good to see? Any cheap and quiet accommodation? What’s there to do at night?
I’m very excited but also shitting it and hoping I don’t get bored
Oh my goddddd Berlin is the best you will have an amazing time!
Cheap accommodation? YES. The hostels are wondrously cheap. Take a look: http://www.travellerspoint.com/accommodation/germ…
I stayed at the Three Little Pigs Hostel, which was super cheap and also very quiet because it’s an old stone building with really thick walls. Skip the breakfast though, it’s not worth it. Have breakfast at a café (they have breakfast specials even in the afternoon for late risers), or buy food at Lidl or Netto nextdoors, but stock up before Sunday because everything (EVERYTHING) is closed on Sundays.
To get around, you can get a 3 day pass that covers everything – buses, U-bahn (metro), S-bahn (train).
What do you like to do? What type of neighbourhood do you enjoy? For dirty hippie punk artists or seedy gay bars, explore around Warschauer Strasse. To get your hipster fix, get to Kreuzberg. They have a market every weekend for local artists selling trendy t-shirts, fun and cheap printed fabrics, homemade postcards, random weird stuff and amazing street food. Go to Kreuzberg at night to barcrawl, you will have fun.
hank you so much! I’m checking out that hostel now!
I have no idea what I want to do, probably just explore mostly! Although I have an image of myself sitting in a hipster cafe drinking coffee and attracting boys like flies 😉
Exciting! I may also be visiting Berlin (and Prague) for a few days in August, depending on whether or not a visit to a friend in another country will pan out. So I’m potentially also very interested in hearing about Berlin!
Do you like history? There’s plenty of it, especially around the government buildings downtown (Berlin has had a few… interesting governments). Take a history walk!
Suggestion: Start at the intersection of Anhalterstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse. Walk along Wilhelmstrasse from South to North to see the Nazi government rise and fall, there are signs explaining like every other building on this street. You’ll pass, for example, the old Gestapo headquarters (in ruins, now a free museum) and the Luftwaffe building that now houses the Finance Department. Then comes the Berlin Wall and a few remains of the DDR, and then you step out on the beautiful Unter Der Linden almost at the Brandenburger Tor.
Now you can stroll happily from West to East . After checking out the Brandenburger Tor, you head east on Unter Der Linden. You’ll pass the DDR museum, the Lustgarten with a huge church and a lot of expensive souvenir shops. Stop to buy books from the tables outside the university, they have a few books in English. Now, the environment will change again (you’ve gone from Nazi era to modern steel and glass, and now you’re heading into what used to be the heart of DDR Berlin), and after some very pompous old buildings and hero statues, you will at last end up at the Alexanderplatz square, where the amazingly Soviet TV Tower, uh, towers over the capitalist chain stores and the beautiful World Clock.
This walk took me and my friends a few hours, and we were very hungry afterwards, but the street food and takeaway is cheap and well made (at least in my opinion, but my country is kind of backwards on street food).
Wow, that is definitely a detailed description.
And yes, the street food is quite good – I recommend trying different kebaps.
I am clueless about history but I love big buildings! And now I have a whole day planned out 😀 thank you!
If you want to see the Holocaust monument, it’s very close to the Brandenburger Tor. It’s really something. You look straight ahead between huge stone blocks, but if you take one step to the side, you disappear from view. Haunting.
I definitely think I’ll try and get that in too. What I end up doing sort of depends on my friend, but I’ll definitely be taking at least a day to myself to go exploring!
I’m there Friday to Monday so I’m thinking Sunday would be a good day for walking around/sight-seeing, since everything is closed. I’ll just have to remember to bring a packed lunch like a real tourist!
Ah, you won’t get bored in Berlin, trust me.
If you’re interested in (German) History, you should definitely visit the Deutsches Historisches Museum: https://www.dhm.de/en/. They have a permanent exhibition and several non-permanent exhibitions, at the moment including one called “Homosexuality_ies”.
If you do speak any German at all, I’d recommend going to the theatre, there are a lot of famous theatres in Berlin.
Then there is the East Side Gallery which consists of remaining parts of the Berlin Wall that were painted by various artists. Wikipedia says it’s “the largest and longest-lasting open air gallery in the world”.
You can also visit the dome of the Reichstag building. You have to register beforehand, though. I can’t open the page right now but just google “Visit the Bundestag”.
It’s also always fun to just walk around the quarters Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg, there are a lot of little independent shops and nice cafés and restaurant.
As for accommodation, I can’t recommend anything since both my brothers live in Berlin and I’m always staying at their places.
Have fun, and be sure to report back :)!
As far as food goes, the big street foods of Berlin are doner, which is in the same vein as gyros or shawarma, and currywurst. Which is basically sausage with curry ketchup and is amazing. For things to do, there’s the Museensinsel in Mitte, which is an island with five different museums on it; I recommend the Pergamon. Friedrichsein has a lot of bars and clubs close to each other. If it’s a nice day and you want to do something quiet then there’s Tempelhofer feld, an old airport that’s been converted into a public park, or the Tiergarten, which is in Mitte and close to the holocaust memorial. There’s also a lot of flea markets on the weekends that you can probably find online.
Ugh, my wee girl cat was sick this week. She is at last on the mend, and is eating without me hovering over her and handing her chunks of cat food with my fingers. I am an anxious hobbit and had trouble getting enough food into my human body for the first two days, and it totally messed with what had been a week straight (A WEEK, PEOPLE!!) of waking up in the morning and not feeling and/or actively being sick, thanks to the chronic GERD and Friends. I had actually been getting enough food into me (I’ve finally come to terms with the texture of smoothies) without dire consequences. I changed the timing of my meds and that was super helpful! The world suddenly felt bigger and I even worked out! And then my fatty tuxedo lady stopped eating and developed a high fever and I got derailed.
Her temperature is way down (we are closer than ever before, and now I have two digital thermometers), she’s eating more with every meal, every blood test has come back negative and now we’re just waiting on the urine culture to grow or not grow bugs. So I stopped panicking at least. I’m pretty sure I can get those normal-ish feelings back, because they happened before and I did not imagine them. But man. Man. Seriously uncool, universe. It’s such a goddamn tease. “Hey, isn’t this neat? Don’t you feel good right now? You like it? You like waking up and not throwing up? You like eating enough food to actually fuel your body? Like taking your dogs for walks and getting to dance again? You like thinking that maybe you can do something new? You like feeling optimistic for the first time in years? That’s nice. It’s all over now, but I bet you liked it.”
Aaah, that sounds like an awful awful week. Glad you’re feeling better, and I hope your wee girly continues to feel better as well!
AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH I WENT TO THE WORLD CUP FINAL AND IT WAS SO FUCKING AMAZING AND VANCOUVER IS SO LOVELY AND WHEN THE FIFA OFFICIALS CAME OUT EVERYONE BOOED IT WAS GREAT.
Also we went to the Biodiversity Museum at UBC on our last day in town and because it is actually a functioning specimens collection (most museums are but not in the sense of literally, the museum is their entire collection in cabinets), and they apparently got a grant to spend this summer separating specimens out into their own individual vials – I know this because I ran into some students and a member of faculty or staff (I sadly do not remember her name) who were getting some insect specimens out (I think fleas and lice) to put into their own vials. So I asked if they had any ticks (my lab does vector-borne disease ecology, specifically ticks as vectors), and this wonderful lady *opened up the cabinet and got out some specimens for me*. I got to look at a species we never get (not in our range), a species we’ve so far never caught as a questing adult (which, interestingly, was much larger than the very similar species we do catch regularly), and an unknown tropical species. It was super cool and now I am questioning what my life has become because why am I so excited about ticks??
I was at the final too! It was awesome! Did you notice that when FIFA came out and everyone booed, the camera put Hope and Abby up on the jumbotron as Hope was saying “we probably shouldn’t laugh” and Abby was covering her face? Amazing.
I want know who was hanging on to Sarah’s ankles during that kiss, because she was basically vertical.
(Also, yes, ahahahaha, also Rapinoe picking up Klingenberg and, like, spinning her around on her shoulder and aaaaaaaaaahhhh everything was glorious.)
Sent from my iPad
I want to know who Pinoe climbed up to see! She climbed the wall twice and there are zero photos or mentions of it! A billion photos of Abby and Sarah (as there should be), many of Syd and Dom, some of Hope and Jerramy…but who was Pinoe visiting??
Oof I just got back to work from the NYC parade and key ceremony and I can’t focus on anything but soccer players.
I went to Bosnia! and Croatia! and Slovenia! And it was all amazing, and now I am home in Alaska where we have millions of acres burning with wildfires and air that is hazardous to be outside in. My throat is burning and my dogs are sad.
Also, a bunch of ladies and I went to see Magic Mike XXL last night and it was EVERY BIT AS GOOD AS ROXANNE PROMISED.
So what part of the trip was your favorite?!
It is so hard to pick! I think Mostar, in Bosnia- the town was so beautiful, even with some tourist crowding, and quite small and lived-in feeling, and while there was still a lot of damage from the war the place itself felt peaceful and friendly- and we met some really great people there.
Dubrovnik was like a mini-vacation inside the vacation- we spent all day each day out on Lokrum Island swimming and hanging out with peacocks, and being in/on the ocean is definitely my natural habitat.
And the train ride through Slovenia was some major fuel for future travel plans- we definitely want to go there for a longer trip soon!
So jealous! I’m half Slovenian and have always wanted to go.
My husband and I had a big talk about what we wanted from life, and he is very supportive of my many-years-long dream to become a Zen Buddhist nun (you can stay married in Zen Buddhism even if you become a monk or priest). So now we’re talking about what cities in the USA have residential temples where you can train seriously, and how to move to one. And he understands that until we do I’ll have to travel to retreats. I’m just very relieved that he’s understanding and willing to move to potentially a small town with me so I can realize my dreams, especially when said dreams are considered weird by many people. I’d never told any of my family or friends about my dream before, because I didn’t think they’d understand. It’s a load off my mind that my husband does!
My friend lives at a Buddhist abbey! It was weird at first but now it seems pretty normal. The rest of our social group* is pretty non-religious, and it took a little while to adjust but I hope you discover the rest of your friends and family turn out to be understanding like your husband! I don’t get to see her as much when I go home because she lives somewhere that is understandably pretty isolated, but from pictures on facebook and through the occasional online chats it seems like she’s very happy about the decision she made.
*well, except our other friend, who is now a Catholic nun. I don’t know what it says about me that two members of my high school social group are now nuns.
This is so great, and I’m so happy for you.
I made a thread a couple of weeks ago about being a moderator on internet forums/message boards/facebook groups, but I got here too late! So let’s talk again. Strategies? Grievances? Anyone who tries to keep a “safe space” forum?
I’m one of the mods in a facebook group for a certain hobby, aimed at progressive people who want their own space. It’s supposed to BASICALLY be a pretty safe space, i.e. no sexism, racism or other types of hate, but – crucially! – not an actual support group. It’s grown too huge too fast and now it’s full of PAINFULLY earnest, easily panicked people who fall to pieces (or post passive-aggressive mod hate) when you try to get people to stick to the topic or to not be assholes (which the group actually wants, because many members also go to pieces if anyone’s mean or slightly unenlightened on the internet).
And then there’s the judging, both the emotionally loaded lashing out and the more-reasonable-than-thou types who post smug, wordy lectures at each other. We keep begging people to just stop posting and tell a mod if someone’s breaking the rules, just please stop turning every thread into backseat driving and/or reviews of other members’ personalities…
TELL ME STORIES. What is YOUR forum like?
Does your group have any sort of open thread or general chatter thread where people can have freewheeling conversation about their day? Or threads with extremely innocuous topics like, “So what song is stuck in your head today”? In theory, it seems like a general chatter thread would let people get to know each other more naturally and without the pressure of forming an opinion on anything. You can get different problems that way, of course, but it seems like it might be a good place to start if a bunch of new people have just joined and don’t think of each other, right now, as anything more than words on a screen.
I don’t know how relevant this will be to you, but I used to be a mod for some fandom rp communities. I think the toughest thing is to make rules then stick to them, especially regarding asking people to leave the group. I’ve found that there always difficult people, who also tend to be the highest volume posters. Being annoying isn’t necessarily against the law of the land though! So decide ahead of time how you’ll deal with someone that will cause complaints without technically breaking any rules.
Oh man, I wish I’d been around for that last week! I was a mod for four or five years on a forum that I had been a part of since 2004. I don’t know how everyone did it, setting up the forum, but it’s one of the kindest, friendliest places I’ve ever seen on the internet. It was an amazing community to be a part of when I was a teenager and starting college. It’s been slowly dying for a few years, which makes me extremely sad, but I’m connected with a lot of my friends through other mediums, thankfully (Skype, tumblr, facebook, phone numbers). To vent–and here I am glad that I am anonymous–there are a few people who just never seem to learn. They all hang out together, and they are all somewhere on the scale from passive aggressive to aggressive, are all ridiculously sensitive, and either never admit they’re wrong or are suddenly overwhelmed with despair at their sins and need ridiculous amounts of reassurance. So my main grievance as a mod was repeatedly having to caution or reprimand the same people.
Neko Atsume!!! I started playing recently and I love it, but I’m baffled by the cut scenes where my cats acquire mysterious objects. For instance, here is a screen cap, possibly of Plumpy being awarded a wood chip?
What is even going on here? Am I supposed to do something besides be proud of her accomplishments (in eating)?
They’re just giving you gifts! You can’t do anything with the gifts, just touch the cat when it happens. You can see the different gifts you’ve gotten in the log book.
Thanks! Those are some polite stray cats! I really like that the goal of Neko Atsume seems to just be enjoying adorable cartoon cats.
I just started playing too. Haven’t gotten any gifts yet. But man that cat is a hog.
So (related story, just wait for it) my cousin when very tiny picked out a goldfish. She wanted the biggest, fattest goldfish in the tank. When asked what its name was, she immediately replied “Fat Stuff.” When her parents explained that Fat Stuff was not necessarily the best name for the fish and what would she like to name her fish instead, she immediately responded “Dorothy.”
Which is all to say that as soon as I get that cat, I’m calling it either Fat Stuff or possibly Dorothy.
I think Fat Stuff is an excellent name for a goldfish!
I am straight up choking on my breakfast over this it’s too funny
He’s named Tubby in my game.
YES. I haven’t seen her do anything but scarf down all the food and then pass out in a self-satisfied manner. I am in love.
I call him El Gordo.
It says it’s “katsuo-bushi,” meaning a slice of dried fish. At the bottom it says, “Received a treasure from Plumpy.”
Thanks!
That is my favorite cat too! (Although I named it Fatso.)
I named all my cats after (ancient or not so ancient) cities and this one is Knossos! I like the idea of associating him with big bulls.
Video Game thread!
My refurbished PS4 crapped out about two weeks after I got it with the blue light syndrome. I was in the process of emailing with Newegg for a replacement when GameStop announced their “turn in your last generation console for $150 towards a PS4 or XBone” deal so I ended up with a NEW PS4 for less than I paid for the refurb. I am trying to catch back up to where I was in The Last of Us (SLC) before the first PS4 died, but I’m only at the horseback part. I’m playing it on easy this time because I just want to get back to where I was.
After telling myself I wasn’t going to do it, especially considering the cost of the base game plus PS Plus plus subscription fee, I caved and got Final Fantasy XIV. It’s pretty great! I am working towards a Dragoon character because I still love Kain Highwind. I was briefly annoyed by the teeny battle bikini I was awarded as a quest that had better stats than the robe I had been wearing previously. But overall, I’m really enjoying it!
Oh Kain you glorious moody bastard!!! I still remember that on my first playthrough of FF4, the only way I stayed alive and beat the final boss was through his jump command. I’ve loved him unreasonably ever since.
And UGH the bikini with high stats vs anything else internal debate. I’ve been pissed off at that since:
My indignation at having to put my girl character in a damn bikini while the other characters got to wear a real outfit might have been one of my first feminist thoughts.
I thought of the Tiger Bikini too and tried to convince myself that it was a shoutout, but it wasn’t. It looked like the bottom of a Women’s Beach Volleyball uniform. Plus, my character has a tail so it just looked super inappropriate.
Oh Secret of Mana, such a good game. That is ridiculous though.
I’m replaying it with one sister who is 4 years younger than me and another sister who is 13 years younger than me. God bless her, she comes from a different generation. I think the 16 bit graphics sometimes makes her eyes burn.
Ahh the hedonic treadmill! I tried to replay Suikoden, one of my all time favorite games, and it was painfully slow. Granted I was playing on a kind of glitchy emulator, but it still did take some of the wind from my gaming sails for a bit.
Aw, it’s so pretty though.
I just bought a used ps2 on ebay so I can replay Kingdom Hearts! (Yes, I’m cheap.) Of course it didn’t come with cables, so this weekend is driving around to every GameStop in the area to find a ps2 video cable. But.
Woohoo, cheap new PS4! Nice!
Still on the Dragon (Age) Wagon here. Cullen won in the race between him and Bull to romance my character. Which is probably just as well, since I let the Chargers die this time around (whyyyyy). Dude is far too awkward and sweet for this world, and he makes the cutest little angry face. Also, the Armor Tinting Table they added in a patch a while back has made it MUCH easier to make my characters utterly fabulous. *Vivienne Greatly Approves* Gotta finish this before I get unemployed in a few weeks and start playing The Witcher 3, which I’m sure will make me alternately utterly entranced and pissed off, much like TW2.
Also, gaming-related. My Borderlands 2 eyeshadow just arrived. So that’s a thing I spent money on. Off to go experiment! http://store.2k.com/store/Tk22k/en_US/pd/ThemeID….
BORDERLANDS EYESHADOW WHAT.
My eyelids now look like sparkly intergalactic space!
I finished Dishonored! I love Dishonoured! I want to play it again! I can’t wait for the sequel! AAahhhhh!
FFXIV! Which server are you on? I madly decided to level my character on ALL the classes because… completionism?
Cactuar! My character’s name is Talir Rowan.
It’s been a while, but big decisions/changes coming up! Over the weekend I decided it was time to take my after-hours self-education in web dev all the way. In TEN WEEKS, I’ll be leaving my current career for a 12 week bootcamp to prep for a new career. It’s mainly to polish up my rough edges, add to my portfolio and give me a leg up on getting work. It’s super exciting/scary and I’m bursting because I can’t tell any work friends about it for another month or so.
I have a Very Specific Question regarding photo credits and I could use y’all’s input. A project I work on has been getting major publicity recently. It’s a big project and there are several people working on it from 2 different companies. When the project started blowing up I spent a day taking tons of pictures, I gave them to both companies allowing them to use them freely as long as the gave me and the company I work for photo credit. That day, someone from the other company handed me his phone and asked me to take some pictures of him working on the project. At the time I didn’t think to make sure he would grant me photo credit. Of course that’s the photo that’s gotten plastered up everywhere. With no mention of me or the company I work for. The dude and his company are often named. It was his phone and him in the picture but I’m pretty sure it still belongs to me, right?? I’m not a photographer, having my name on the photo may not benefit me directly. But I’m newer in the industry and having my name attached to the project can only be good, right? Should I try to get the other company to start giving me photo credit when they continue to widely distribute this photo or let it go?
You pressed the shutter (or phone button in this case) you own the copyright, I’m pretty sure is how it works.
HI Toast Friends,
I know I don’t post much but…this week I had to speak with a police officer. Seven years ago an older man I attended church with and worked with grabbed me in a stairwell in a very unwelcome way. I was 22 and had no idea what to do so I never said anything and it never happened to me again. We even became friendly…as strange as that sounds now. Two years ago some other accusations about him came forward and I finally told my story to a few people (pastor, boss) in order to support another young woman…nothing changed. Then last week I received a call from that pastor wanting to share my info with an officer as there appear to be new accusations apparently from his step-daughter (who is 17!!!!). I shared what I could but now I’m in such a funk and emotionally just drained.
I’m angry and sad and feeling guilty for not speaking up sooner. All the feelings really. A friend said “this man is a predator” and she was right. He’s a freaking predator that gets away with this shit because he seems so friendly. I mean people love him.
Anyway just sharing here because I know our collective gentle misandry and “ban men” stance is helpful for me in this moment.
Thanks for letting me vent!
I’m sorry you were assaulted. And so young. But please try to shed the guilt. You had no obligation to do anything then or now. But you did something brave, talking to police and supporting the teen stepdaughter. You are strong.
Thank you. Finding the word for what happened to me has also been difficult because I always feel I have to convey “well he didn’t grope me” and “we didn’t struggle because I didn’t fight him” and “it only lasted a few seconds and then he let me go.” So is assault the right word? I don’t know?
But my friend also said “Isn’t it interesting how everyone who has had these experiences with him walks away saying ‘it wasn’t that bad’.” That really hit me in realizing his intentionality…like he pushes just far enough but not so far that’s it’s overt.
Yes, assault is the right word. Don’t doubt it. Your friend is correct. This predator wants you to feel doubt. He is wrong. It was assault. Invading your space is assault. Unwanted touch is assault. Threatening to do either is assault, even if the threat is not carried out.
Don’t feel guilty- you’re doing something important and brave and helpful. Your contributions to the investigation are helping to thwart the predatory dude’s power. Be gentle with 22 year old you, just as you would with someone who’s not you who struggled with saying/not saying something.
Ditto what everyone else has said. You did the right thing speaking up, and you’re helping someone else by doing it. The Toast is proud of you!
Hey, you can always vent here!
And please please don’t beat yourself up about not speaking out sooner! Society conditions us to stay quiet by acting like predatory men are good men who have made mistakes, that it would be “wrong” to ruin their lives because they “slipped up.” That’s not true, but it’s not your fault for being hesitant or scared or anything. You’re a good person, he is not. Don’t blame yourself for his transgressions.
Please remember to take care of yourself during this time– and I hope we can help with taking care of you, too, even if all we can do is lend an ear and give internet hugs.
Yes exactly to that “good men who made mistakes”. It’s still hard for me to get out of that headspace since I’ve known him for so long now and know his family.
The officer left me a message after out talk to remind me that it was confidential and “we don’t want to start any rumors”. Oh is it a rumor that this man is being investigated for something that involves his 17 year old step-daughter!?! Is it a rumor if I share with other people what happened to me!?!
Although in reality I will be careful about what I share because I don’t want to endanger this young woman if he doesn’t already know there is an investigation.
I’m sorry that happened to you, that sounds really difficult. It’s absolutely understandable that you didn’t tell anyone sooner given the way survivors of misogynist violence are so frequently disbelieved by this society, and it’s very brave of you to do so now.
Everything would be simpler if all assaulters were assholes 24/7. Nobody really makes a point to give women the tools in how to deal with situations like this, especially when they involve someone that might otherwise be a part of our lives in a positive way. I think we, as a society, are maybe starting to get better at it (which might explain why later victims did choose to come forward right away), but your handling it the way you did makes perfect sense in the context.
What she said. And to follow up on that, GIVE your friends/sisters/mothers/daughters those tools. If you don’t have them, go take a good self defense class and learn some. I thought my good-catholic mom was too obedient to the rules of the church, but then I met people who had been raised to be “nice girls”. They were like candy to abusers. My mom taught me how to speak up and keep myself safe. I wish more people my age had had that.
Taking karate/self defense and being outspoken isn’t a vaccine against abuse ( i may be the poster child for that statement), but it can help you recognize the behaviors and get out.
Just want to add to the pile-on of support, to say you are an awesome and strong person and it is ABSOLUTELY not your fault. I think blame gets put on survivors for not coming forward and “protecting others” so that blame doesn’t get put where it BELONGS, which is on the perpetrator.
LET US BE CLEAR. ASSAULT IS THE FAULT OF ONE PERSON ONLY, AND THAT PERSON IS THE ASSAULTER. IT IS NOT THE FAULT OF VICTIMS FOR NOT VICTIMING WELL ENOUGH.
I don’t at all blame your for the guilt though. I never did anything about my sexual assault for a lot of reasons (shame, guilt, it wasn’t “rape-rape”, it was virtually impossible to prosecute, etc) and I still occasionally struggle with the knowledge that he has almost certainly done it since. I wasn’t the first, no reason to think I was the last. But I did not MAKE him assault those other hypothetical people. It is a choice he is making all the time, and it’s not on me to be the bigger person and rein him in, it is on him to STOP FREAKING ATTACKING PEOPLE.
All of this is so true. Thank you. I hope you too find some way through the guilt. My friend (she is obviously very wise/a great therapist) also reminded me that guilt has something to teach us but that instead of beating myself up that I could be proud of the ways I have learned to speak up since then. So I hope that thought is helpful to others as well.
I will also chime in to say that you are AWESOME and super brave for speaking up about what he did.
Thank you all for your support and kind words.
It is really appreciated
TOASTIES I WENT TO THE TICKER TAPE PARADE FOR THE US WOMEN’S NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM AND IT WAS GREAT. So many excited little girls in soccer jerseys. It was great. I’ll upload some photos in a moment and share them here.
However, getting home took FOREVER due to subway problems, and I’m annoyed by that, because I should have been on the open thread with pictures for you folks like half an hour ago at least.
Just a few photos…
More on Tumblr here and here.
I posted in last week’s Open Thread probably too much information about a meeting I had with a rather horrid psychiatrist. I got many responses, and I had to think for a few days, but I agreed with everything everyone had to say. Finding a new pdoc is not easy, and even though I want it to be easy, I have to get some resolve and just find a new psychiatrist who I can trust, who will work with me, and will not make me go to the ER whenever I have problems. Thank you sincerely to the wise Toasties who responded, and gave me words to talk to myself, to talk myself *through* the next step.
In the meantime, then, I’ve tried to fill my days with lots of busy work, but finally settled on decorating my new apartment, which has tall white walls and window seats, all in need of some wall art and vases and whatever.
Here’s what I’ve bought so far:
Both the vase and the flowers.
http://www.pier1.com/Blue-Tonal-Mosaic-Vase/29110…
A French-candlestick lamp, because my apartment has no lighting in the living room and bedroom, so this may be a travelling lamp:
http://www.lampsplus.com/products/couture-etienne…
Although I got it for about $100 …
And I’m looking at this print, The Goatherd by Corot, but size 42” by 56”, although you know, ooooof on the price:
http://www.art.com/products/p22112310617-sa-i7622…
I also bought some Emile Henry pie plates on sale, “artisan ruffled” in red, because my daughter loves the apple strudel pie I make, and she requests that I make it whenever she is here, which is sometimes every week. Lots of peeling, lots of slicing, lots of cinnamon, nutmeg and oatmeal crunchy deliciousness, now served in this:
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/5906941/?…
And of course, for the rest of the month, I shall be eating tuna fish and peanut butter sandwiches, but mentally, I feel refreshed, having new things to gaze at … ooof. Maybe not healthy but I feel like … these are beautiful pieces and will help me out during my daily depressions.
What new things have you’all bought? Because the July sales going on are incredibly hard to pass up!
What a beautiful vase! I’ve been buying prints and frames lately to decorate my own white-walled apartment. My favorite is a painting from Renae Schoeffel.
Oooooh! Her work is mesmerizing! I was looking for an abstract that I could lose myself in.
You do what you need to, to make your daily life brighter. Even if that means tuna sandwiches.
I am sending you “good pdoc” vibes. Please keep checking in!
What you said last week about how having a bad psychiatrist is worse than having no psychiatrist hit home. I was in the process of talking myself into tolerating a bad situation, but that would have led to frustration and hostile silences. Thank you for saying that.
I know some might disagree with that statement, and if you were having an emergency, maybe? But I have found that a bad therapist can just add more stress and trouble, and make me feel like I’m failing at another thing, which is not very helpful.
When I had postpartum depression, it wasn’t diagnosed until late, and it plus PMDD was misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder. After months of meds and psych visits where I dragged an unruly 2 year old child to a city neighborhood, hunted for parking, kept him busy in the office, and then had to drive home in rush hour, I told the psych that I’d get more help out of the $70 an hour if I hired a maid and took a relaxing walk. She was shocked, but it was true!!
I think making the place you spend your time into a place you like to be is actually a really healthy thing to do. My big project for the summer is to come up with some kind of reading space with approximately a thousand lamps, so that when winter comes and it gets dark at 4:30 and the yellowish-beige walls of my apartment start closing in, I can have somewhere to go. I’m hoping that will keep this coming winter not as terrible as the last one.
That’s a good idea; the space where I write is incredibly dark in winter and that needs to change. Are you using different lights or light bulbs … I was thinking one lamp for my desk and then two lamps overhead on bookshelves. But maybe indirect lighting? It needs to be a golden glow type thing. Anyway, I fight against winter doldrums as well (or full on SAD, no lying here), hence the landscape to put in one window so I’m not looking at a grey and black parking lot all winter. Uff dah.
I’m not sure what exactly I’m going to do for lighting – right now I’m working on getting the space set up so there’s a comfy seating area that doesn’t feel too cramped (which is tricky, because they’re raising my rent, so I have to get a roommate, so I have less space than I did when I started this project). I’m definitely going for that golden glow look, and I know I can get part of it from Christmas lights, but I don’t know if it’s possible to get enough of them to make it as bright as I want without it being (a) a tangled mess or (b) a fire hazard. So maybe some of those for a glow effect, and then some warm-hued full-spectrum type lamps to up the brightness (I’m thinking maybe the ones they sell for crafters that are supposed to be easy on the eyes).
In the winter I love my Ottlite bulbs (I have one of the lamps, but the bulbs are fine in other lamps too.) They’re really similar to daylight through a window. I replaced the bulbs in my reading lamp with them last year and love them!
Ooh, thanks for the recommendation! I’ve got a spare lamp or two floating around that I can probably put the bulbs in.
Just found them on Amazon! Gonna use them in my new lamp!
If you’re up for dropping a silly amount of money on what are basically really fancy lightbulbs, the Phillips Hue system & bulbs are awesome. You can control the color with your smartphone, so you can have blue/ daylight light in the morning and warm fireplace light in the evening. I’ve had mine for a few years and love them (plus there are apps to make them act like lava lamps and respond to music and all other sorts of unnecessary, silly things).
I think there are some competitive alternatives out there at this point- Osram Lightify looks promising too.
You guys — my job in the summer has flexible hours and I am not in the mood to work but I have forgotten what I can do that is free/cheap when I want to take a break. Any suggestions as to how to enjoy summer on one’s own?
Do you have a public pool? I went to the one by my house for the very first time and it was super cheap and extremely fun. I just went by myself and splashed around and cooled down and it was glorious fun.
I’m in an apartment and I don’t have a backyard, so I always think of it as a summer treat to go and take a book and sit in a park somewhere. It’s usually good people-watching too.
We’re super broke right now, so I’ve been doing a lot of beach/park/library trips to keep the kids occupied. Do you maybe have any museums that have free or cheap nights? Every so often our astronomy center has a free night and we take our kids every time.
A lot of private museums have free community days if you live in the city/county/state. I love taking advantage of those. They can be a bit crowded on those days, but that’s not always a bad thing. And I personally think museums are best visited alone.
Also, garage sales/flea markets!
I’m in a mid-size university town surrounded by mostly rural area for about sixty miles in any direction. My first few months here I mostly thought all my nearby entertainment would be in town but I’ve since discovered some really amazing and free outdoor stuff within 20 miles – public parks out in the middle of the country, state fishing reserves and lakes with little beaches and hiking trails. It’s a nice break from my other favorite free things in town, which are mostly walking to the library, to a university event, or to enjoy the downtown park. In my experience the rural places to go and enjoy are not very well marked or marketed so ask around, maybe call around to local towns for recommendations on hidden gems. Good luck!
I like to go gawp at things at Wegmans, but I guess that only works if you’re in the northeast…
Queer band names — go!!
My friend and I are forming a loose creative collaboration. So far, we have written a queer parody of “Part of Your World” from the Little Mermaid, complete with a gay as hell music video (which will hopefully blow up the queer internet next week!). But we are talking about expanding beyond that, with some original music, and we desperately need a name!
Thus far, the aesthetic of the band is very lighthearted, spontaneous, politically radical, and super super queer. Do any Toasties have good band name recommendations?
‘Kara Thrace & Her Special Destiny’
My vote is “Little Quermaids”.
Not specifically queer, but someone I know (also queer) tweeted about having “Sand In My Panties” and we agreed it would be a good band name.
We’ve Got Hoohahs And What’s-Its Galore
Darling It’s Better (Down Where It’s Wetter)
Hah — in our parody its “I’ve got strap-ons and paddles galore.” We kept the reference to thing-a-ma-bobs as is though.
Hi Toasts, I need weird sex etiquette advice, and I think you are the people who may be able to help?
My boyfriend of three years is a beautiful human in all ways and I love him very much. We have a generous and loving and sometimes exciting and generally satisfying sex life, and I hope we stay together for a long long time.
Here’s the catch: I’d say his cock is medium or maybe a little smaller than average. Not a big deal, since we fit together very nicely, and it always feels great. But sometimes I just want something BIG. I don’t think we’re ready at this stage to open up our relationship, so I was imagining maybe just a big dildo. And I think that either him fucking me with it, or me using it myself, would satisfy this fantasy. So the question is, how can I bring this very big dildo into our house and maybe into our sex life without irreparably hurting his sex confidence? I love his confidence. Am I mistaken in thinking that man ego is very connected to their dicks? And to be clear, I love his dick, I just want a bigger one sometimes.
One hint: we have shopped for sex toys before together, but end up with the kind of vibrator that has zero phallic resemblance.
Any thoughts?
I guess the answer depends on your boyfriend and how sensitive he is. I would frame it as not being about him at all, just about it being different, fun, and something you enjoy doing. My husband is pretty big, and we’ve still used big toys, just as an additional fun activity, and he really enjoys using them on me. So I’d maybe go to your favorite toy website, find one you like, send him a photo, and tell him that you want him to use it on you (or whatever hot fantasy you have).
Thanks! Yeah, the way you phrase it, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. I might just be imagining he’s sensitive. Any toy (or site) you recommend?
Babeland is great, as is Extreme Restraints. I’m not sure what you’re looking for, but I have a lot of friends who really love their glass and metal toys. Cyber skin seems to be really popular too, if you want a more realistic feel.
idk, maybe try telling him what you just said, including “I love [your] dick, I just want a bigger one sometimes”? (Maybe leave out the part where you judge the size of his cock to be average or below. Not that you’re wrong to think that, just that it might be hurtful to hear it said.)
Have you considered having him use his hand? Hands are different than penises, so it wouldn’t have to necessarily be about size, just variety. Plus, assuming he’s physically typical, it would be free! Bonus!
Good call! I’m going to try that.
I don’t think you need to necessarily mention that it’s about size. If he’s up for new things and cares about you enjoying yourself, then I think bringing it up during sexy conversation and saying something along the lines of “I think this would be fun” or “this would really turn me on” will probably be enough for him to be into it.
When shopping for sex toys, you could pick up one that looks like a penis but is ridiculously huge. Hand it to him and try for a laugh together over how absurd its size is. Then shift to something about wouldn’t it be fun, though? See if he’ll buy it for you.
I am impressed with how careful you are of his feelings. And I envy you such a great sex life. Rock on.
You’re getting great advice!
I would frame it all in the “this would turn me on” and not mention his penis at all. Like “I have this fantasy of you using a really huge dildo on me”. See how he reacts. It’s more about the whole scenario than the size, which would be easier to handle. I like talking about my fiance having sex with ladies with different-looking bodies than me when I’m part of the scenario… you know? It’s not about getting something better than me, just a whole scene that’s different. I don’t know if I’m making sense.
Everyone here has really good advice! Here’s my two cents:
If you go to the website for Bad Dragon sex toys, they make an item called a cocksheath that may be exactly what you’re looking for, if your dude is willing to be adventurous! I am on my work computer so I can’t link to it, but you’ll know it when you see it.
Good luck!
if you’re wanting to reinforce the idea that you’re looking for “different” as opposed to “better”, your choice could skew heavily towards the fantastical. fleshlight has a whole series of fantasy dildos. vampire, zombie, that sort of thing. there are tons of other decidedly not-human-male-dick dildos out there.
or choose an unlife-like material. someone else mentioned glass and steel. i, personally, love steel. the sensation is so completely different from flesh and that’s why i love about it.
i also second the suggestion for a sheath if you think he’d take the idea well. it allows for far greater intimacy than a dildo.
Toasters, I have to do my self-evaluation for my job today and they’re asking all these questions about what my goals are and how they can help me achieve them, and I appreciate that but I also…don’t have any right now? There’s not really anywhere I can go in my job (I have a full workload, and there’s not a position that I would logically “move up” to), and I don’t mind that. What I want is for my job to basically stay the same, so I can deal with personal shit and hobbies and whatever, but I feel like I can’t say that because then I seem like I’m not invested. Which I am! I’m just invested in doing exactly the job I have now, and then going home and doing something else.
Is there anything you’ve already listed as something you can improve, that you can just repeat in the goals section? “Get better at x, do a more efficient job with y,” can fill in some space. Alternatively, you could list things that sound reasonable but you know they’ll never follow through on. (For the past three years I’ve listed ‘learn Spanish’ in my goals, which would be very useful to my employer, but I know they’re too cheap to send me to language classes, so it languishes and my boss comes up with ‘goals’ that are actually just…normal parts of my job description. Everyone’s happy.)
Those are excellent ideas! (except not Spanish, specifically, because we’ve already got a situation I’m not comfortable with where we’re using people in the office who are native/fluent Spanish speakers but not certified translators translate legal documents, and I don’t want to get caught up in that)
This is a tough one. I have actually basically said just that, but I’m at the university where things are more relaxed in general.
I’ve used phrasing like “Continue to provide …” and something about staying up to date with changes in the field and whatnot, so it doesn’t sound like I am happy to stagnate. Also “maintain work-life balance” blah blah.
I do like “continue to provide” and staying up to date – one of my worries was that I’d be like “develop [skill]” and then that would just get dumped on top of my current workload, which I do not want.
Ugh, so tough! I spent the past 6 months pretending to care about a job that I only had in order to concentrate on other, non-work stuff. The office is almost entirely people who want to make a career and move up and get paid more and I have a hard time relating. I just want a job so I can make money. BUT, I did figure out that I am learning about all kinds of things, such as particular office dynamics and politics and other specific and interesting tid-bits that may make me a better person in the long run.
So my goals are to learn as much as I can about what everyone is doing in order to expand my general good-at-life skills. I wonder if you’re allowed to say something like that on your evaluation? Not necessarily big career goals, but more like, humble, finding ways to make the day-to-day more gratifying?
P.S. I gave my notice yesterday so I can go to grad school! What a relief to not have to pretend to want to “develop” in the current situation.
Don’t be afraid to write fiction if you want to. You owe your employer good effort, good work, good attitude. You are not obligated to share your thoughts, desires, goals. When asked for personal info at work, fiction is your friend.
I have to deploy for a month for work. My parents are going to watch my cat. It’s professionally really good for me and I know they take excellent care of her… but I’m already really sad about how much I’m going to miss her. At the end of 14-hour days, I just want a furball around, you know? I knew I could whine here and yall would understand.
Aww.. So hard to miss a cat. Can’t even talk to it on the phone. When I was a kid, I had to be away allll summer the year I got my kittens. My mom put them in a big cooking pot every week and mailed me a photo so I could see how much they grew. Somewhere, I still have those photos of the kitties… first hardly able to see over the edge, and by the end, unable to squeeze in together!
<3 I miss my cat so much when I’m away! She’ll be so happy to see you when you get back though.
Right there with you. I travel about 2 weeks out of every month for work right now, sometimes more, and I feel so bad for my poor codependent kitty. She’s so happy when I’m home! And hotel beds are so big and empty with no cats sleeping on my feet.
You guys are the best <3
Hi Toasties,
so. Abortion update: I take my first pill tomorrow. I am in a psych ward. This is probably the best thing for me, but I feel weak and small and just very… sad about it, and any good vibes are much appreciated.
Good vibes, friend.
It is okay to be sad.
Thanks. It’s strange how much hearing that matters.
Hey, sending good vibes as hard as I can. I hope the feeling of smallness doesn’t get overwhelming. You’re important to me. Let us know if you need dog gifs or weird Wikipedia links.
Dog gifs… that would actually be amazing. ALL gifs of happy/cute/funny are welcome.
Here is a lovely little bulldog struggling with a life vest.
Hey, I just got home and so have… more dog gifs for you!
Dog-to-go
Preposterous tongue
THE BAG IS HIS LITTLE HOUSE I AM DEAD
I’m sorry you’re sad, upsofloating. But it’s good you have proper medical care. I commend you for getting help, not that you need my opinion. Yes, abortion can be the best choice sometimes. You are the only one who can decide when that’s true. I’ll keep thinking about you, sending good vibes, wishing you better health, more strength, some cheerful moments. Please let us Toastfriends know how you’re doing in the coming days. Pop into a link roundup or next week’s open thread. ::jedi hugs::
I am so overwhelmed with how kind everyone is being. I mean, I’m a crier at the best of times, but holy geez…
Sending you peace, and calm, and resoluteness … and also, centered-ness and whole-ness.
Thank you. I’m holing a mug of tea at the moment, and I’m trying to imagine all the vibes and kindness and strength sent from the internet into it. Basically I’m trying to make the toast into soul caffine.
Knowing what you need to do and doing it despite…everything–that takes strength. You have that strength; you’re not weak. And you’ll come out the other side and things will get better.
Sending you the best vibes. Hope that helps maybe a little. Hang tight.
It helps. It helps so much.
Thinking of you, all good vibes.
I’m seriously weeping with gratitude at the responses. Kindness from internet strangers is an amazing thing.
You’re in our thoughts. Please keep us posted, hm? You’re a person, and you matter.
So much good vibes! Remember that you are wonderful! I am sending you big internet love and jedi hugs.
I am trying to respond to everyone, and the nurses on the ward are a bit concerned at my crying. I’m trying to explain that a group of bookish strangers on the internet are being kind, and they look very confused.
Sending all the good vibes your way! Taking care of yourself IS strength. Sad is okay, as long as you partner it with a belief that things will get better.
Hey, I’ve been thinking of you. Will continue to do so. Take care of yourself. Jedi hugs for you!
Thank you so much for your thoughts. The fact that people are thinking about me is making such a difference in this.
<3
All the good vibes to you. Well done for getting medical care when you need it. And it is okay to be weak sometimes. You have people to be strong for you, and you will build yourself back up when you can.
Thank you. It means so much to have the kind words of the toasties.
you have truly been in my thoughts ever since you first posted about all of this and i will keep thinking of you and rooting for you and wishing you all the best.
I am so moved by the warmth and kindness I’ve gotten here. It’s made a bigger difference than you could ever know.
Sending my most positive thoughts. If you’d like to talk to some toasties between fridays, toastie twitter is quite active. Many hugs.
Thanks! I’m not a twittery person, should I be?
Today is tomorrow. Just wanted to join this whole heap of toasties (and dogs) to send you some good thoughts and to virtually sit next to you.
New York area Toasties, give me advice! I work for a small entertainment/fashion website and was invited to cover 3 fancy parties in the Hamptons as press. I’m unlikely to get much of a stipend from work — I MIGHTTTTT get my bus/train tickets partially covered but definitely no hotel or cab stipend. I’m willing to put a bit of my own money in though because it sounds fun and I’ve never been to the Hamptons before — I want to make it to at least one event, hopefully two; there’s one I’ll probably skip unless work covers it 100%.
What’s the cheapest way to get to the Hamptons? Can I get around without a car? Are there cheap places to stay? Is it possible to do it as a day trip or will I definitely need a place to stay overnight? Advise meeee.
Hi! I replied earlier, but maybe it didn’t go through. hopefully one of these does!
Day trips are definitely possible. take the LIRR, which costs about 20$ each way. You will probably need a car or cab to get around, unless you can get away with biking in your fancy party clothes. It’s flat terrain out there, but be careful of drunk drivers.
There are also all sorts of shuttles and “designated driver services” out there now, so you might be able to google hamptons ride services and find something affordable.
As far as staying, there’s not much that’s cheap unfortunately. If you can possibly swing spending some time out there, do it!! Especially do it when it’s not a crazy holiday weekend, because it’s beautiful, but gets oddly manhattan-like when it’s too crowded.
Thanks!! That’s super helpful.
I’m making a misandry/women power playlist for when work is too much, and I need suggestions! So far I have Neko Case’s “Man,” a lot of Salt-N-Pepa, some Loretta Lynn, and I’m probably going to add some Destiny’s Child, but that’s all I can think of off the top of my head…
Salute by Little Mix! (I always talk about this song but that’s because it’s totally underrated)
Missy Elliot. I recently bought Under Construction and there’s definitely a feminist focus.
“Ridin’ Round” by Kali Uchis contains the line “don’t you understand, I don’t need a man/fuck me over, I’ll fuck you worse and take off to Japan” which I enjoy. Also Brandy Clark’s “Crazy Women” is basically about that guy who is a total asshole with no self-awareness and is perpetually surprised by how all his exes are “crazy.”
Any amount of Sleater-Kinney, though I used to listen to One Beat quite a bit before work collaboration meetings with lots of dudes.
L7 and Skunk Anansie?
How has no one mentioned Janelle Monae??
Dessa’s “Warsaw” has been my anthem for a the past few weeks.
Lorena Bobbitt, by Aaradhna. It is SO CATCHY.
BBHMM duh
Heather Dale’s Joan: “I go where I’m sent/ To mow down the men who refuse to repent/ I’m a scythe in a field full of briars”
I like Sidewalk Safari by Chairlift. I don’t know if it’s specifically misandrist, but a woman singing about running (probably male) pedestrians down would seem to fit the bill.
Ok I lied: I do know how to drive a car/faster than a man can run
Cat Power, PJ Harvey…?
Most of my fave music is post-punk from the late ’70s, early ’80s. Kick-ass women and women-led bands from then include
The Slits
Grace Jones (especially the song “Bullshit” which got me through high school)
Au Pairs
Pylon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOSARRZiC2g
The Pretenders
The Selecter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpF3LGgDoUE
Bikini Kill
Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do by Robyn
I don’t need a man by miss A (Korean pop group)
Never Gonna Happen or Fuck You (Very Much) by Lily Allen
U.N.I.T.Y. by Queen Latifah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8cHxydDb7o
Not sure if a Toast job board ever actually manifested, but I thought I’d throw this limited term posting for an archivist up just in case any of the very many library science Toasties may be able to relocate to Vancouver for this opportunity: http://www.lib.sfu.ca/sites/default/files/11265/S…
I was gonna write a comment under yesterday’s Aspergers piece about the intern in my office but she ended up spending most of the day hovering over my shoulder and I couldn’t focus. I’ve never had such a strong ping on my austistdar as I have with this girl. She told me all about how she was feared and considered strange in high school, how she doesn’t really understand people, and she vacillates between silence and extreme verbosity. It’s been noticeable for awhile.
It is very strange to understand someone, because I don’t understand anyone but I understand this intern. It’s like my 18-year-old self was shunted forward in time and turned into a WoC. She is very direct with observations and criticisms and questions. She’s scripting in a way that makes sense to her but doesn’t really work – her primary mode of interaction is criticism, in this way she thinks is light and playful and frivolous but she is incessant about it. She’ll notice something about me – that I don’t make eye contact very often, or that I fidget with my hair when I’m stressed out (she does notice that I’m stressed, only that I fidget) – and point it out whenever she sees it, which is every time she sees me, and ask about the why of it. When she’s not satisfied with an answer she’ll keep asking, and when she is she’ll still point it out and repeat the answer to demonstrate that she remembers. She leans on catchphrases – whenever she leaves the room I’m in she makes me promise to eat chocolate. And she likes me, so when she doesn’t have anything to do she’ll sit next to me and ask me stock questions (what’s your favorite color, what do you like to do, why do you like to do it), or play with my hair, until I find some reason to get up and go somewhere else.
The thing is that I’m frustrated by these things but I get them, they’re all things that I did when I was her age (I still hover). They’re all things that I, with nothing else to go on, figured would endear me to people. It’s what happens when you let television show you how people relate to one another. Telling people to remember to eat chocolate whenever we leave a room is something Kramer would do (and we’re the weird ones so Kramer, beloved for weirdness, is our template). Occasionally she does sense, as I did, that her behavior is not having the effect she desires, and she becomes anxious and confused, as I did, asking me if she’s doing anything weird or if I bother her. I tell her no and yes, because I get it and because if I tell her that she does there’s nothing she’ll be able to do but obsess about it.
I dithered over talking to her about being autistic for awhile and eventually I just said fuck it and brought it up. The possibility had never been brought up to her (hinted at by friends apparently, but never seriously or directly) and she seemed… I don’t know, a bit floored? I only really brought it up because she seemed pretty upset about the way she was in high school and pretty fatalistic about things being any different for her going into college. She hangs out at work after she’s hit her hours limit because she doesn’t want to go home, and seems to have a pretty dim view of herself. She just turned 18 and covered by insurance so I told her that she’s free to investigate therapy (she’d never been, and while a doctor has to make a diagnosis, I’m right about this one). I might refer her to my therapist, but it’s out of my hands I suppose. I’m not really cut out to be a mentor. I hope I didn’t make things any worse for anyone.
You are being very kind to her. You are engaging high levels of consideration. What you have done for her so far cannot hurt her and, I believe, will eventually be a help to her. You are a blessing.
If she is autistic, knowing about it might make life easier. She can find a community, knowledge, tips and tricks, and possibly legal support for getting accommodations in the workplace if she needs it.
If she isn’t autistic but just heavily undersocialised or something, she might feel weird about the suggestion. But since you only told her and nobody else (I assume), the possibility of weirdness stays between the two of you and doesn’t impact her life further. And if you’re on the spectrum yourself, the two of you are on a more equal footing than if a neurotypical workmate had suggested to her that her brain is different.
So, I think it was helpful to have the conversation. You’ve opened up a new option she didn’t know about before, and you were respectful and helpful.
Also, some random thoughts about making observations in conversation…
I wonder if this: “her primary mode of interaction is criticism, in this way she thinks is light and playful and frivolous but she is incessant about it. She’ll notice something about me – that I don’t make eye contact very often, or that I fidget with my hair when I’m stressed out (she does notice that I’m stressed, only that I fidget) – and point it out whenever she sees it, which is every time she sees me, and ask about the why of it.”
could be common in smart and weird kids who grew up being criticised and/or having their differences pointed out by others? I mean, I feel like I see that a lot?
Maybe these kids get other people, kids and adults, “observing” their idiosyncracies and then get told “don’t be so sensitive, I was just saying it because it’s true”, and they believe it and conclude that this really must be polite, fun conversation. Also, children often get positive feedback from adults when they’re observant (laughter, etc). Of course, you’re supposed to drop the habit when you grow up, but an autistic person or a teenager who doesn’t hang out with peers a lot might not notice that it’s not cute anymore.
Then again, it might be more than just a residual “please like me” hook from childhood. I read a few very insightful blog posts by an amazing autistic blogger about autistic people’s conversation patterns, which said that observations and echolalia actually often is a way to try to communicate a specific thing, but that instead of using words and questions as building blocks (my interpretation!), you use stock phrases and situational observations.
Conversation patterns: http://realsocialskills.org/post/88381898083/list…
How to understand what someone means when they keep repeating themselves: http://realsocialskills.org/post/32526314325/soci…
You did a good thing even if you’re wrong about her specific issue. This is the first time in her life that she gets to renegotiate her public identity, so kind interest is always good.
Personally I find that disclosing something comparable about myself builds trust in similar situations, but that’s by no means required.
I had a heartbreaking call at work today and I need to talk about it here because I know you guys are all good folks. Background: I work in tech support, in a call centre.
This was a novel, no rest of the comment is a reply to this one
Warning, abuse and gaslighting.
I get a call from this lady whose iphone is acting possessed. As we are troubleshooting, it becomes clear from offhand comments she’s making that her husband is controlling and gaslights her, and I have a real strong suspicion that he’d fucked with her phone. He doesn’t let her have a computer and she doesn’t have an email address. I could tell that she knew it wasn’t ok, and she said her daughter has been telling her to leave, and I think she was making those not-really-offhand comments because she wanted someone else to confirm that things are fucked up for her. Because of [boring technical details] I couldn’t eveeven really DO anything at the time to fix her phone, but her daughter comes and helps her so she wrote down some steps that her daughter will help her with to get an email address, back up her phone, wipe it so whatever he did to it is fixed, and put a lock code on it so she at least has control over her own phone.
I had to ask her, “do you think you could jot these instructions down on paper” and she said “Yes, I have a lot of hiding places”. So she was picking up what I was putting down, we both knew the score, and it sounds like when she’s ready to leave her daughter will support her, but OH MY GOD it just breaks my heart.
I have to keep the conversation tech-oriented, but at the end I asked if she’d ever heard of the term gaslighting, and suggested that once she can trust her phone again she might want to look it up. I’m hoping that learning there’s a word for it, and that it’s not just her, will help, but at the end of the day I’m never gonna know what happens to her. I did my best to give her choices and suggestions and give get as much control as possible in the conversation, because I know that it’s important for people being abused to not have their control taken away by anyone else, but the whole thing just broke my heart.
The conversation was all coded, like, “to fix the phone, it’s important for you to have an email address (need icloud to back up, need an email address to get cloud). Now I can make an email address for you, but it will be under your husband’s control because he’s the account holder. If you make a free email address (Hotmail, gmail etc) it will be totally under your control but my department can’t help you I’d you have trouble with it, what do you prefer?” (Subtext: we both know your husband’s will read your email if he can, please don’t get an email address from my company, it will only make you more vulnerable.)
Oh it was so tough and I had to go cry in the bathroom afterwards and I don’t think I’m going to be over it for a long time.
That is all so very tough. You went above and beyond, especially in explaining the upsides to a gmail/hotmail account in terms of privacy. You cannot change everything, but you have given her some good tools as she moves forward and let’s hope out/beyond/past this place.
oh man that sounds harrowing and I’m totally awed that you were able to get so much advice to her while keeping it coded. I bet that conversation helped restore some of her faith in other humans.
Yikes, that is tough. I am impressed with your ability to think of subtle ways to help her on the fly! You did more than a lot of people would be able to, and you were sensitive and thoughtful about how you did it. <3
That is so tough but you did so well. I’m so glad that when she called she got to talk to you and I bet she is too.
Wow, you were GREAT at thinking on your feet here. You just started to basically talk in code? Giving her the info she needed without having it sound suspicious, yet confirming that you both knew what you were talking about? You truly have some spy skills, she was lucky she got you on the phone and not a clueless person!
I think you made a difference for her. She now knows that people can tell that this isn’t a good situation. She has proof that other people think he’s treating her wrong. She’s armed with knowledge about how to protect her information better. An iPhone is a great tool, and thanks to you, it’s soon going to work again. You also tipped her off about the word “gaslighting”, which is really important, because now she has a starting point to learn about psychological abuse. People usually don’t know how mental abuse works, so if he hasn’t been hitting her she might be unable to put words on what’s happening to her.
Getting an iPhone, an email adress and new knowledge about psychological abuse might not be a complete solution to everything, but when you’re climbing out of a hole, every new rung on the long ladder up is useful.
Thanks for all of the replies, you guys. It helps to hear other people say I did the best I can. I mean, I know that I did, but it’s hard to KNOW that for real.
it was somebody who was a COMPLETE stranger to me, a friend of a friend’s mother in law, who was FINALLY able to break through to me to see the abuse. Not my best friends, not my parents (I had hidden it too well for too long), not people at work. Somebody totally out of the situation was the one who got me to call the shelter. And that word, gaslighting…it saved my life. Thank you for being that person for her.
(edited to add–my ex had a keylogger on my MAC, which stunned the apple store guys, he had been in my emails, etc for who knows how long, he could even remote into the house network after I kicked him out. Secure internet is a HUGE thing for safety in these situations. you fixing her phone is a big deal)
Oh, Toasties. I don’t comment here hardly at all, but I’ve been reading forever. I had a horrible medical procedure yesterday and I could just use a few hugs and reassurance.
Content Note for infertility, medical procedures and discussion, pain
I had to have a saline infused sonohysterogram which is where they thread a catheter through your cervix into your uterus and pump it full of saline while taking a transvaginal ultrasound, the kind with the wand they stick up your vagina. I’ve had one about a year ago, as part of my ongoing infertility treatments, but my doc wanted another just to check, I guess, since I start a new frozen embryo transfer cycle soon. It was horrible. There were four people in the room, the doctor, the ultrasound tech and two randos, all women. The doctor was inexperienced and she struggled to even see my cervix, not something anyone has had a problem with before. She had trouble getting the catheter through then threaded like the whole fucking thing into my uterus until it bottomed out and then the fucker kinked so she couldn’t push the saline through. They use a little balloon to open your cervix which hurts like a motherfucker and the catheter gives you the worst cramps. So, she had to pull the whole thing out and start over. The second time hurt even worse, though she got the catheter through easier. Then she couldn’t get the speculum out without tugging on the catheter and the ultrasound wand also pushed against it. Then she started pushing in the saline and it hurt so much. I’m not a wuss about pain, but I was crying. One of the randos snapped at me not to hold my breath, but I just couldn’t breathe for the pain. Then the catheter pulled out and all the saline rushed out. The doctor was going to start again, but thank god the tech said she got enough. They were all nice enough about it, but I just felt so violated and raw. I cried the whole way home. I’ve had more than my fair share of medical procedures with all this and other health issues and I’ve been in awful pain before, but something about this was so, so bad. I can’t stop thinking about it, but I know here I would have a sympathetic ear. Thank you.
:(((( I’m so so sorry. There’s something about hospitals and the cold routine-ness of it all and the lack of accommodation for emotional distress that is incredibly upsetting.
I’ve never had to go through anything even remotely as painful as your procedure, but I have so much sympathy for you. Nurses that are kind and observant and take their time are few and far between, but they make a huge difference. I hope you can find a medical environment that looks after your emotional well-being, as well as your physical health.
oh my gosh this sounds so terrible I’m sorry you had to go through this. Take care of yourself, maybe treat yourself to something nice!
Oh I’m so so sorry.
I think there’s something intense that happens to your parasympathetic system when your cervix is opened. It’s painful, but it’s something else too. Violated and raw are very apt words. Like… devastated. Violated. Raw.
When I got my first IUD my whole body was screaming NO. I also had an inexperienced doc (resident) who bottomed out in my uterus with the sound and kept pushing until doc was like “oh haha I think you’re at the back” and I wanted to SCREAM. I will never let a resident touch me again for anything like that, not even sorry, I love teaching and believe in participating, but NO.
I’m so so sorry. Your experiences sound awful. Like I can’t imagine awful. I hope you got some good TLC afterwards. Weep away, I would.
That sounds awful. I hope it ends up being worth it–that is, I hope they learned something important from it so that all that pain and stress was not for nothing, and your infertility treatments end up being successful. *all the hugs*
That sounds awful, so awful. Ugh. *hugs* It sounds to me like they weren’t that nice enough about it, but that’s just me. I find a lot of (routine) medical stuff to do with my reproductive system has been scary or uncomfortable or painful too — there’s just something about it that can pluck a certain nerve.
Think about doing something for yourself. Cry. Hug a pillow, stay in bed. Ignore it all while watching a movie you love. You’re okay. You’re through that now and whatever you felt at the time or now, you made it. All of us who let other people, doctors, get into places that make us feel vulnerable, places that are sources of intimacy, have courage.
Thank you all so much for the kind words. They are so, so helpful.
I’m so sorry to hear this – what a terrible experience!! Cervix/uterus procedures are always so, so weird and terrible. Your body knows it’s not right!! Please curl up in bed and treat yourself kindly because you deserve it. I hope the feeling of violation will fade as time goes on and you come to own yourself again.
so. (sigh)
No word on the job application. No other jobs in the pipeline at the moment.
I am DYING not texting/talking to the 18 year old. Bawling my eyes out two days ago over it. I am SO WORRIED he’s screwing up his best chance at college. I’ve always been totally honest about how hard it was for me to get back into school after losing funding the first few years. It’s breaking my heart.
My current job is teethgrindingly boring/backwards/frustrating, losing my mind, tearing my hair out. The stress of being broke is climbing up again, since I can’t afford to take my kids even camping for a few days.
The 14 year old proudly squad-led during the 4th parade. Everyone knew which one he was due to the hair over his face as he marched. My boys always need haircuts!
12 year old is learning how to crochet with me.
massage was super expensive and upsetting, actually. 90 minutes were scheduled, but it was a “yoga techniques instead of physical therapy/life coaching/30 minutes of shoulder work” session, that cost me almost a week’s worth of saved pay. I wanted 90 minutes of massotherapy. The woman was effective, she did help me with 2 excercises for my long-term injuries, but, but, but….it cost a lot of money, and it was a letdown. PLUS…fuck life coaches. Instead of a massage I got a bunch of secret-based “words are magic and you have to watch how you speak to yourself” mumbo jumbo and “I can’t just shove your body back into place, it will take a few sessions” (which I totally believe that part, but I don’t have the money, and I might even be willing to do that anyway, if I wasn’t going to get woo-filled lectures).
Now I’m on her email list and getting things like “go to this website and learn why you aren’t attracting money to your life”. UGH. So anyway, a week of disappointment…no job, adult kid hiding from me and making bad college mistakes, and non-massage. We are on our 6th straight week of rain, which isn’t helping. Floods are getting old and my basement is stinky.
So I guess this is a vent. Sorry! (but glad toasties are around to speak to)
Toasties! I embark tomorrow on a 24-hr Amtrak ride, Vancouver to San Jose, where I’ll be spending the week for a conference. Recommendations for 1) enjoyable train travel and 2) things to do in San Jose? Many thanks!!
Spend as much time in the observation car as possible! The joy of a train is you can move around, so take advantage of that fact. If there’s a screaming child, go to a different car. (Although screaming children seem much less common in trains than on airplanes, thank goodness.) Also, I’ve met some cool people in the dining car, which makes the mediocre, overpriced food totally worth it.
Hm. How many conferences are going on in San Jose next week, I wonder? I will be there this weekend, performing at a conference on Sunday. Are we attending the same thing?
If WASBE, then yes!
Weird! Well, weird to me considering I’d never heard of WASBE before last year. In what capacity are you attending? My group is playing on Sunday afternoon – if you were planning to see us you could find me after and say hi (I am very easy to find.) Is this where we switch to a more private method of communication? How does this work? I am not very active on twitter but I am there @richstar and you could DM me.
I’m assuming your conference is near SJSU, so for sure go to La Victoria for burritos and their Lava Sauce. I used to live near San Jose (just over into a smaller suburb) and miss Lava sauce all the time. The Tech museum is pretty nice, the Rosacrucian Egyptian museum is interesting (it was terrifying when I was little, not sure why) There’s a textile art musem, and the Winchester Mystery house is popular, but I’ve never been. A little further out, Mission Santa Clara is beautiful (it’s attached to Santa Clara University)
http://www.egyptianmuseum.org/
http://www.sjquiltmuseum.org/
Give me your mosquito bite remedies! I spent the week working outside in a super mosquito-y place but wearing the correct gear so I got almost no bites. As I go to leave at the end of the week, dressed in street clothes, the property manager (a man, obvi) stops me and proceeds to talk at me for a solid half an hour while I’m visibly distressed by the mosquito attacks. Unfortunately the property manager controls access to the sites I need to visit so there was no way for me to cut him off. I’m equally mad and itchy and nothing is working for the itch!
Pepermint Oil! It’s great for soothing post-sting.
Scotch tape over the bites. It’s something to do with depriving them of oxygen, I guess? But it helps stop the itching and swelling, somehow.
Sounds promising!
get some hard-core-camping afterbite, in the stick. It’s straight up rollon ammonia, but if you get that on in the first few hours the itch is greatly diminished or gone. If you can’t find that, alcohol (even the gel hand stuff) will work in a pinch. Of course the best defense is bug spray, but if you get bit, try to get the alcohol or afterbite on it right away. (if nothing else, I have used high-alcohol face toner in a pinch).
ice cubes on ones that are driving you nuts.
Or super hot water, it will itch like crazy but fire all the histamines at once and then there won’t be any more for a while. (my friend does that for poison ivy)
Many childhood summers in the Deep South taught me how to Just Not Scratch. Scratching increases itchiness. But Not Scratching is seldom possible. My grandma taught me to slap an itchy spot. Making your skin sting gives your nerve endings an overload and your awareness of the itchiness disappears for a while. Wishing you swift healing and a pox on that property manager.
I love Mario Badescu drying lotion for bug bites! It helps take away the itch and get the swelling to go down.
After living in Borneo for 3 months I learned that if you use those preparations like Tiger Balm or White FLower Oil which work by setting up a counter-irritation, you will end up with little dark round marks on your skin where the bites were. I got really Zen and ended up learning NOT TO SCRATCH. I can’t tell you how I did it but I just took my mind off the itch every time I felt it. I’m not a practitioner of meditation, though have done T’ai chi and a few other things – also as an actor I was used to holding uncomfortable positions on and off stage, so maybe that helped. I used cortisone cream sparingly and all my bites healed. Everyone I was with who used counter-irritants or scratched (or both!) ended up with marks.
This may not help…
Putting ice on it is the only thing that works for me.
Caladryl. It’s a clear gel that comes in a huge bottle. Keep it in the fridge and it will feel extra nice when you put it on, with the cooling and all.
I keep a tube of cortisone cream in my bag all the time, because even one mosquito bite and I start to LOSE MY MIND. But if you don’t have any, you can make a paste with a little bit of baking soda and water.
Oh oh oh just remembered something else: I was advised when going to South Africa (which actually isn’t too mozzified in the part I visited): take a one-a-day anti-histamine to prevent the itching, ie stop the reaction before it starts. The idea is that then you avoid possibly nasty infections when you DO scratch. This is good for me as any bite lasts at least a week on my skin (I have met people upon whom the bites fade within a coupla hours, jealous, me?). I was going into some difficult situations on NGO projects so there were GERMS.
Oh, I meant to post this earlier, but Nicola Griffith (author of Hild) wrote a letter to Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.): The Women You Didn’t See: A Letter to Alice Sheldon.
Oh my GOD.
Thank you for sharing this, it’s incredible.
Just a note to say that 3/4 of my team is out today so it is… busy. BUT ALSO a new Jamaican food truck started serving in SF’s FiDi so I’m eating curry goat, rice and peas, plantains and some kind of delicious vegetable mix and life is pretty good.
Jamaican food truck? That sounds amazing!
Photographic evidence of deliciousness: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJk68YVVEAAieg-.jpg
Hi toasties!
I commented on the last open thread on Sunday and a lovely person suggested I post it on the next Friday.
Here goes:
This Fourth of July I found myself on a group of academic men who all were very strident feminists, social justice advocates, what have you. They dominated the conversation to the exclusion of everyone else, they were all graduate students or immediately post graduate without jobs, and they all did not really speak to or entertain at any length the conversation of any of the women there. Also, everyone was a couple so they basically didn’t talk to anyone’s significant other, so it wasn’t like they didn’t know them or there wasn’t a connection. All of these women were successful, accomplished, and had very interesting jobs in a variety of fields such as publishing, nonprofit work, law, etc.
None of these men shut up for a minute. They were all intent on talking talking talking- at one point, discussing a type of theory all of them admitted they had not read and did not understand, but would try to puzzle out through Google definitions!
I love my boyfriend, but frankly he was part of the problem.
Anyone have any experience with this type of thing?
Yes, that’s difficult. I have had that experience, less with a crowd and more with one person who will not stop talking over women. I stopped inviting him to gatherings that I host, and it’s mostly cleared up my annoyance there.
If it were something that someone near and dear to me had done, I’d probably invest some effort in bringing it to their attention in a private conversation between the two of us. Perhaps as follows: “Do you remember X gathering? Well there was a troubling pattern to the conversation that I noticed, and which you may not have noticed or not have been aware of. Did it strike you as odd that no one engaged any of the women in conversations about their own thoughts or accomplishments or careers? This struck me because it was so imbalanced and that imbalance seems systemic rather than coincidental. Did you notice that too? Would you be up for paying attention to this phenomenon with me, the next time we go to a gathering with Y group? It’s something that I would really like to see corrected.”
If the person was willing to help get this sorted out, say by developing a system whereby one or both of you spoke out on occasions where a woman was being converationally sidelined and the other supported, then that sets up one path forward. If they’re resistant to even awknowledging the problem, then that’s a whole other issue and would have to be dealt with however you see fit.
A lot of priviledged people are just really, really oblivious. It’s one of the perks. But good allies will be up for being vigilent in future and also supportive of efforts to correct an issue, even if they create in group tension. I think Captain Awkward has some good advice about this particular aspect? That could be a source to start investigating.
Great response!
After the party I did have a conversation with my significant other, and he did get where I was coming from. I will talk to him again about tying more direct intervention, though.
It was the sort of stunning hypocrisy of these guys- who are actually studying things involving feminism, and most especially race, and it was also vaguely uncomfortable for me, as the only (visibly, at least) nonwhite person present as they held forth on various racial issues.
I also want to say that I’m not slamming graduate students or immediately post graduate students at all. I was a graduate student as well and now I’m happily working. This was just a particular type of academic male jargon stuff in action.
It is because they are all so PLEASED with themselves.
I do think that academia as it’s structured in the US today breeds a certain kind of unconsidered … smugness? I don’t know, but I have noticed something that kind of grates. Ostensibly progressive people doing/saying regressive things, and feeling empowered to do so by the authority they gain from being in in academia. It’s not always very pleasant and certainly was one of the factors for me in choosing to step out of that world. Yeah, as I remember lot of people talked the talk, but couldn’t walk the walk. It was frustrating. But also, kind of sad, because I do think that some of it comes from being too sheltered from other peoples’ experiences and opinions (I mean, perhaps out of a stubborn refusal to listen to and respect other people) and that seems pretty bleak and lonely to me.
But yeah, I’d say throw down and call them out as much as you feel willing to do. They would be lucky to have someone blow their straw houses down, because then perhaps they’d think about how they really should engage in the world. That said, especially in mostly white, mostly male groups, I have a tendency to zone out because I’ve not had a lot of luck being heard in those kinds of circles, so I try not to run in them much and tuck into my shelf when I do have to.
I’m glad your significant other was receptive though; that’s a great place to start from.
I take it back!
Tried to have a conversation about how his friends are so invested in social justice and racial issues, but have no friends of color and also literally never speak to his wife. She does the same work they do but is more successful.
He asked if I was trying to get the upper hand on some minor argument about food (slurping!) we’d been having earlier. Then he said that his friend had friends of color! He had met them! I had just never seen them in the last few years, that’s all! Then he was offended that I said that was racist, and also because I said that it was messed up to have your ‘work’ be with people of color and issues of inequality and to never interact with them in your free time (How?)
I feel sick.
Oh shit, that sucks. I am trying to think of advice, but I don’t know that I have any really, just commiseration. Because that’s something big, right. I totally agree that it’s really skeevy to profess to care about issues like inequality, but not to be able to maintain a diverse social network. That’s a big freaking hint that those guys have some problematic attitudes, perhaps subconsciously, although that’s being generous because it seems clear that they straight up respect the opinions of women less than those of men.
I think this article might be a good place to start, since it’s backed up by data, which is popular with the academic set (not that that should be necessary, I mean on its face the hypocrisy of having a segregated social life and sidelining women despite being a ‘feminist’ should be pretty obvious, but sometimes plain talk doesn’t ring the bell): http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2…
Sorry though, I know how disappointing that is.
Was my dad there? Cause this sounds like my dad. (we don’t talk much, cause he likes to make me feel stupid)
Oh man, I’m sorry you had to grow up with this kind of rain cloud of a person: I’m glad you’ve made some distance for yourself. Good call.
secondursula’s advice is sound!
And to answer your question, aw dude SO MUCH EXPERIENCE WITH THIS TYPE OF THING. So, so much. The struggle against brogressives is real.
Aww thanks!
I work in left-wing politics and every time I mention this to some dude at a party he will start telling me about all of the Adorno he’s reading in his grad program or how he has some grand theory about how we can truly solve society’s problems. It’s always bullshit and wrong and he’ll always say it with the air of an expert who suspects I’m not qualified to do my job. My favorite thing in the whole world is describing the real-world political process, in all its bureaucratic and feel-bad glory, as I watch some dude slowly realize that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
You’re a nicer person than I am, I think, although I have bitten holes in my tongue on the occasions when I want to say, out loud, “I know much, much more about this than you do.” Are you in DC? There’s a certain flavor of this sort of bullshit in DC.
I am in DC, but I feel like it’s just as bad when I’m out of town– the condescending dude knows no bounds. But yeah, here it’s definitely less “let me impress you with how many books I have read” and more “this conversation will be a competition in which I must prove that I am more important than you.”
Absolutely I do, Actually, I don’t think I have any experience with men in groups that ISN’T like that. The best is when someone with more experience on something tries to contribute and they shut them down because they genuinely believe they know better.
This is a bit late in the open thread game but — any recommendations from NYC Toasties for a tasty, not super expensive Italian restaurant that wouldn’t need reservations on a Saturday night? (Is this an impossible request?) Will be coming from Bryant Park-ish so somewhere that’s easy to get to from that area would be ideal. Thank you thank you from a non-local!
Anyone else wanna talk about Go Set A Watchman? The first chapter is out and reviews are coming in.
It sounds strange, not so much the book itself but the chronology of it. It’s being marketed as a sequel but it was by most accounts what TKAM was originally supposed to be, before Lee regrouped and took a different tack. And the way events are referenced it does seem to be in an alternate reality from the classic, it’s not a straightforward sequel. And all the shifting accounts of how it was found and brought to be published are kind of discomfiting. You know what it feels like? Like when a rock star dies and a label releases a bunch of his early demos as an album. It feels like they’re dressing up something that was never intended to be consumed in the way it’s packaged.
I’ll hold off final judgment until I read it but my questions would be – considering the weird chronology / versioning, how solid is the connection between this book and TKAM, and is that connection strong enough that we can view the former as a true child of the latter, such that one might be examined differently in light of the other, and vice versa? Did Lee intend them to be regarded together (if she indeed intended GSAW to be seen at all))? Does that matter? If the connection’s not there, it seems almost cynical, like <o>The Wind Done Gone or something. If the characters didn’t have those names, would it feel so important?
This was the first book she wrote, and she brought it to the editor and he recommended she rewrite it focusing on Jean Louise’s childhood, so she did. So it’s really a prequel! When they announced they were publishing it I wondered if it was a reworked version to be a sequel to the book Lee DID publish or just the original draft. It sounds like it’s the latter. As you say, it doesn’t sound like they’re meant to be regarded together, and I’m wondering more than ever if she ever meant for GSAW to be published at all.
I could see this book as an actual sequel; it would break my heart, given what happens to some of the characters, but could make sense and be a powerful story. But (just going off the first chapter and the reviews I’ve read) it sounds like a different version of the original.
Being in the third person rather than the first gives it a very different feel to To Kill a Mockingbird, I think – it seems flatter andless alive. (Also, Jem is dead? Not on board with that.)
That bowled me over too!!! And what a stupid way to write him out! There was no mention of Miss Maudie, Calpurnia or Dill in the first chapter but I hope they’re in there. I also agree that the switch from first to third person changes the feel a lot.
I posted last week to say that I was potentially being offered a job but was worried about how it would work with my dissertation. I asked about a part-time start and they have agreed to working three days a week initially, and they are closed for the second half of August. This means only six days of work before my deadline, which is totally doable. Thanks for the advice and support!
Very happy for you! : )
My boyfriend says he does not find Charlize Theron as Furiosa remotely attractive. (He has not seen the film, just all of the images I keep shoving in his face.) I have spent the day shouting in disbelief and rage. Tell me I’m not the weird one here.
Well, I think she is deadly gorgeous, but the movie spends SO MUCH time and effort not sexualizing her that I could see how someone could see her as neutral or … unappealing? that’s not the right word, but maybe you know what I mean.
I was very torn over how to respond, because while her level of attraction is not and should not be the most important thing about her, I genuinely cannot understand how he doesn’t see it.
I occasionally have this with my boyfriend. Sometimes I find a woman on TV or even IRL deadly attractive and he just…doesn't. I don't think it's anything to do with his perception of women in general, just that he and I have different tastes in physical attractiveness. (Which would make sense cos he appears to find me hot and I am pleased and puzzled by that.)
But I remember the first few times it happened just thinking, "but… but… HOW?!? Are you blind?! And for the record, Charlize Theron is a goddess and just, wow.
He claims to find her attractive when not as Furiosa, but Furiosa does nothing for him. I cannot get my head around it at all.
(I suspect part of it is down to only realising I was not-straight relatively recently; years of confusing bisexuality for heterosexuality apparently means I find his actual-heterosexuality difficult to understand. E.g. "She doesn't look very feminine." "…why is that a problem?") (Not that being attracted only to feminine-looking people is the same thing as heterosexuality, obviously, but the overlap is possibily contributing to the confusion.)
Late reply D: The labret back is the flat back! Do you know what gauge your piercing is? I have a few 14ga opal fronts that I could possibly send over that I'm not using if you'd want, but they probably should be autoclaved.
I have 16s, alas. Although I love the idea of a (sanitized) Toast body jewelry exchange. I took out my navel piercing a few months ago and consequently disposed of all my belly rings, but there were some spectacularly nerdy ones in there (a lizard, Arwen's evenstar, a Janet-Jackson-circa-1992-style belly chain and I was sad that I didn't know anyone at the time who could use them.