Are you following this Kennesaw State thing? It’s not great. And I cannot imagine, in a BILLION years, the adviser calling the cops because a white female student insisted on sitting quietly in her waiting room. Stop calling the cops over nothing! People are getting KILLED over nonsense like this.
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Not only is Anna Holmes great on shade, it does my heart good to think about how many angry New York Times readers are probably clutching their pearls over it appearing in their august paper:
On March 6, 2014, Aretha Franklin paid a visit to the White House for a special event celebrating “women of soul.” Dressed in a brown fur coat, a sequined black dress and a large, glittery pendant, she strode through a dark red door into the East Room, waving regally at a line of well-wishers who stood to applaud her. Among them was another diva, Patti LaBelle, who reached out to grab Franklin’s hand. With a small, swooping motion, Franklin twisted her body away from LaBelle, evading her greeting, and continued walking. She hardly missed a beat.
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More on the Chicago black sites the cops are running. Not great! Some pretty horrific sexual assault, as well as just generally deeply illegal behavior:
Young OG, a black man in his 30s, was picked up by masked police, guns drawn, after he stopped at a gas station with a friend in late 2013 for cigarettes. It was mid-morning and Young OG was confused over whether he was getting robbed or stopped by police.
“It was a real-life kidnapping,” he said.
At Homan Square, police kept Young OG confined with a twist tie on his right wrist, “another twist tie through that twist tie to the bar”, he said. Young OG was kept, he said, in an office-like space – he saw a desk nearby – without furniture, causing him to sit on a dirty floor and lay on his hooded sweatshirt, his body aching. He was not fed, not booked, not permitted a lawyer and afforded one brief bathroom break.
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I am glad Rob Lowe admits to using at LEAST an under-eye serum:
How I start my mornings: I start my morning with as much caffeine as I can get into my body. If I could do it through an IV, I would. Then it’s face wash, water splash. I use my under-eye serum, which is anti-aging and depuffing. I literally carry this everywhere. If I don’t have enough time to do the full regimen, I just do this and I’m off.
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We are very pro-Yoko here at The Toast:
One evening about ten years ago, when I was working at a summer camp in Washington, D.C., I took some kids to the Hirshhorn Museum’s sculpture garden, where one of Yoko Ono’s Wish Trees was on view. Meant to evoke the Japanese prayer trees Ono saw in her youth, these installations instruct the viewer to anonymously write down a wish on a piece of paper and hang it on the tree. I can remember a hell-raising boy camper — earlier in the week he’d sneaked away from the group and blown almost all of his two-week allowance on cigars — reading the placard aloud in a sarcastic tone: “When the tree is full, Yoko will collect the wishes and bury them herself at the base of the Imagine Peace Tower on Videy Island in Iceland.” He cackled. I watched him pick up a pencil, scribble down his wish, and hang it on a branch of dogwood. It said: “I wish Yoko Ono hadn’t broken up the Beatles.”
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I agreed with Tyler, and then I saw the whiny responses he was getting on Twitter about it from people who INSIST that one can only appreciate Great Cinema in a movie theater, and now I agree with him so strongly it causes me physical discomfort.
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Bryan Batt says goodbye to Sal Romano:
Mad Men was built on camaraderie. When I filmed my first meaty scene in season one, where Paul Keeley’s Belle Jolie salesman attempts to cajole my character, Salvatore Romano, into going to his hotel room, to be honest, I was a little bit nervous… up until that episode my role sort of consisted of a quip here and an arch look there. On that shoot, Aaron Staton, Vinnie Kartheiser, Rich Sommer, and Michael Gladis all showed up on set for moral support. And then Janie Bryant, the costume designer, who I bonded with over a love for New Orleans, outfitted me in a vest with a little embroidered fleur-de-lis on it. Afterward, Matt called to tell me he thought the scene was fantastic. People don’t need to do stuff like that.
They did on this show.
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I FUCKIN LOVE TABATAAAAAS:
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I have gotten way, way more completely bananas comments, but I think it is time to put them into the Cone of Silence they deserve. Suffice it to say: they’re pretty incredible. ohhhhhkay just one:
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I haven’t read Slaughterhouse Five or any Vonnegut, nor do I intend to do so. What are the topics I am allowed to discuss or have an opinion on?
Lipstick and diets.
And possibly kittens.
…bright copper kettles, and warm woolen mittens?
I’m not sure about mittens. They might be too manly.
I’d argue gloves are manly and mittens are for women. Women don’t need manual dexterity when they have a man wearing gloves around.
That is a good point! I concede. *bows graciously*
celebrity weight-loss/gain.
Baking and the best method for body hair removal.
I finally read it last year, and had to admit: it’s pretty good. Weird, and absolutely very male (and the attitude towards the few women in the story is on the spectrum from disinterested to disdainful), but funny, too, and surprisingly moving at moments.
But I don’t own the book, so I guess I should keep my mouth shut 😉
But Montana Wildhack does get the best name in literature, so.
True.
It’s one I can’t reread – I found it massively traumatic when I did read it (I can’t remember how old I was but not very) and it really struck me. There are others of his I can happily read once a month though, but that one just upset me.
Agreed. Cat’s Cradle? Yep. Sirens of Titan? Yes please. Slaughterhouse? NOPE.
Well, I think it was meant to. The experience certainly upset Vonnegut. About how horrifying it was for him for the rest of his life. Perhaps if you read about the bombing of Dresden the book might make more sense.
I just read Bluebeard for the first time this year. Don’t know why I put it off so long, it’s amazing. I want to see the painting in the potato barn so bad! I’ve never wished for something fictional to be real so hard.
That is my main ‘will read once a month for the rest of my life’ one. Absolutely beautiful book.
Oh, thank you, I completely forgot about this book and the painting in the potato barn. Jackson Pollack?
I suppose you’ll have to confine yourself to whatever they talked about before 1969, though heaven only knows what that could be.
I was born 3 weeks before the end of 1969. I’m pretty sure that means I am the messiah of women being able to talk about politics and equality and how to wear pants without heels or pearls.
I’d do a burnt offering in your name, no problem.
Sandwiches and that site where the woman is making 300 sandwiches so her boyfriend will propose to her (only positive opinions, please).
I had forgotten about that 300 sandwiches thing. Why on earth would you want to marry a dude like that?
I dunno, the impression I get is the 300 sandwiches was a joke between the couple that inspired her to do the project and document a bunch of sandwiches, and the internet basically used it as outrage fuel. Like, “cook for me, woman, and I’ll finally give you that shiny jewelry you’ve been hounding me for” just hits so many awful-proposal-trope righteous outrage buttons, like it’s too good (bad) to be true. While her actual interviews and stuff about the project come across a lot more like “he said this offhand thing, I like cooking & designing stuff, let’s run with it.” In some alternate timeline feminist blogs were cheering her on for subverting the “make me a sammich/exchange domestic labor for big engagement prize” trope.
I mean, still, if my dude had said THAT, a YEAR into our relationship, I woulda been like “who the hell are you and where is the man I love,” but I’m still cheering on Sandwich Lady, it seemed like a real fun project.
Yeah, a pretty unfortunate casualty of sexism is that it’s ruined the good name of sandwiches.
I really hope so. I mean, I do understand how little in jokes between a couple can be weird to outsiders. I may be biased because the dude has super blond hair but doesn’t look awesome enough to be Draco Malfoy.
The impression I got from reading the original article and interviews with her was not at all like it was a fun joke inverting the trope – maybe it was her writing style, the way she discussed it, or me just not getting the joke, but her boyfriend came off as an epic douche and she seemed really caught up in needing all the social signifiers of a “good” relationship.
The only Vonnegut I have read is Harrison Bergeron, so at least we can mostly talk to one another. Possibly about housework.
I read Harrison Bergeron THREE FUCKING TIMES in school. By the third time I just said “fuck it” and went straight to the question sheet.
Breastfeeding.
But not in public! Heavens no.
But not, like, in a public discussion in mixed-gender company, because, gross.
Houseplants (non-carnivorous)
I’ve never read Slaughterhouse 5. I did write a doctoral thesis on the Iliad, though.
Can I talk about lipstick and babies and green smoothies and glorious heroes sprawling dead in the dust, the spear going in through their left eye and coming out through their lower back? With the blood staining their manly thighs as when an artisan stains ivory with delicate, exotic dyes? Can I talk about the tremendous fight in the River Xanthus, which mortals call Scamander? Or should I just stick to lipstick?
I feel like there’s a fanfiction begging to be written somewhere in there
Sometimes I feel like the rest of Greco-Roman literature is pretty much Iliad fanfic…
‘ἦ καὶ ἐμοὶ τάδε πάντα μέλει γύναι
YAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
You have no idea how pleased I am that I was able to make that comment *gleefully rubs hands together*
Looks like my Classics degree has finally paid off!
πόλεμος δὲ γυναιξὶ μελήσει, y’all!
How do you reform a police department that’s rotten all the way up, like the CPD? And obviously, the city government likes it this way, otherwise they’d make some real effort to change it. This has been going on for decades with no end in sight.
It’s good to know now, in a “Know your enemies’ weaknesses” sense, that men DRAW THE LINE on their BOOKS.
We can joke about feminist collectives, and joke about killing all men, but heaven forbid we tease them about their divine right to love Shogun.
(disclaimer: I read my FIL’s copy of Shogun as a teen and enjoyed it.)
I keep meaning to read Shogun. I mean, I enjoyed King Rat and I enjoy reading historical novels with wobbly authenticity so what’s not to love? I’m pretty sure there’s an ancient copy of it in either my father or grandfather’s bookcase.
All you have to do is go to somewhere white men congregate and loudly announce that you’ve never read it and you will have swarms of men eagerly pressing it into your hands and explaining the plot and subtext to you.
I watched the miniseries of Shogun and loved it, possibly because I found Richard Chamberlain really hot. And then I found out that he’s gay, and went, “that explains the crush.”
I can’t remember if I finished the book or not, which says something about the book.
I have neither read the book nor seen the miniseries, but my dad owns the card game (which used photos from the miniseries) and it’s actually pretty fun. It’s kind of dumbed down poker but with samaurai cards.
The only thing I remember from the book is when Mariko introduced Blackthorne to anal beads.
Knowing that Chamberlain was a deeply closeted gay man when he filmed Shogun puts an interesting spin on some of his lines. When his Japanese hosts/captors offer him various sexual partners, including a boy, Blackthorne spits, “Do you think I’m a God-cursed sodomite?” The sheer venom and horror with which Chamberlain imbues the line is impressive. The other characters onscreen visibly flinch, and I wonder if there was some genuine reaction there, not just acting.
And, of course, being revealed as “a God-cursed sodomite” was his real fear at the time.
Ah, but Young OG was being robbed… of his constitutional rights, hyuk hyuk. (What’s the saying about how in situations like this you can either laugh or scream?)
A big fucking WHATEVER to people who insist that they NEVER watch television and that cinema is the only true art form. TV is far more interesting than 90% of films right now, and even if it wasn’t, being a snob about it is the fucking worst. I only regret that the Coen brothers will never experience the true joy of watching ten hours of America’s Next Top Model in their PJs on a Saturday.
Or West Wing binges on Netflix on Friday nights. Truly these are some of life’s greatest pleasures.
If Netflix ever tries to take The West Wing off their streaming service, I will BURN THEM TO THE GROUND. They already took BSG away, they won’t be able to take my all-time fave away without a fight.
I never finished BSG and I am so. angry. If they try to take Josh and Toby and Jed and CJ away from me I will join you with pitchforks a-plenty.
If it makes you feel better, the last 2 episodes of BSG had me sobbing drunkenly into a glass of white wine and I still haven’t recovered emotionally.
Thank God my roommate was at her boyfriend’s the night that aired because I was a wreck and not fit to be seen by human eyes.
Different show, but I once started weeping openly at the TV over a character’s tragic misfortunes and our sublettor WHOM I HAD NOT YET MET came downstairs to see if I was okay. *slithers beneath couch cushions*
The last 2 episodes of BSG had me sobbing loudly into a pillow at 4am a week before my finals in 3rd year. I’m still emotionally scarred by it & can’t bring myself to rewatch season 4. (Even though I’ve rewatched season 1 at least 5 times, each time thinking “WOW they were so much HAPPIER then” lol)
This is why I still buy dvds of shows. What if I needed to watch BSG and it’s not streaming? I could die.
You guys get The West Wing on Netflix? God Damnit. UK Netflix has nothing good, it doesn’t even have Friends.
We only just got Friends at the beginning of the year. But yeah, we’ve had The West Wing for close to two years now? It was fun when all my friends started watching it for the first time and learned about my encyclopedic knowledge of basically every episode.
I recently finished watching it for the first time. I think I binged seasons 1-3 in like a month, by 5-6 I was just doing it out of curiosity, I wasn’t invested in the same way anymore. But CJ is my hero, I got into the West Wing because we had to watch an episode for my PR module at Uni. Also Rob Lowe. Cause unf.
Season 5-6 are the notorious duds, especially 5. 6 gets better at the end because it sets up the election for season 7 and I have an inordinate fondness for that season since it’s the one I have the clearest memories of watching as a kid (and rooting for Josh/Donna, my first and truest OTP).
The election was mildly interesting, but I already knew how it ended (He obviously wins.). I know its TV, but their whole election strategy was very seat of the pants and that annoyed me a lot. I started the new season of House of Cards while watching the last west wing season, I had to stop, there was just too much white house going on, I kept getting confused and being like ‘Shit Sorkin went dark at the end!’
A few things you may know already or may not care about, but maybe you don’t and will find them interesting:
Sorkin left at the end of the fourth season, and then said he didn’t even WATCH the rest of it (I think this is a lie, but, yes, this is why there’s some varying quality there!)
Also, in the original scripting/planning, Santos was NOT going to win, and then John Spencer died. Based on where they were with filming, they had to kill of the character, but they didn’t think they could pull off killing Leo AND having Santos lose, hence the way things turned out.
I remember reading about Sorkin leaving just before I started season 5, I was very disappointed. That was the same time Rob Lowe left right? (Its super weird getting really into a show that ended 10 years ago, all the gossip is just out there to be read)
I think I found out about Santo’s winning quite early because I looked up all the characters on Wikipedia some time during season 1 and Leo’s title was ‘Chief of staff/ VP to Santos’ or something, so as soon as he was introduced as a candidate I knew what was coming, but yeah, it did seem like a highly unlikely win!
I used to regularly binge on a season at a time of Slings & Arrows after finishing it for the first time.
Why Netflix keeps putting it up and expiring it for six to nine months at a time I will never understand
Agreed! This is a pretty great time for TV and a pretty mediocre time for film as far as I’m concerned.
We are in a New Golden Age of TV. It’s simultaneously amazing and awful, but the awful is mostly because there’s literally not enough time to watch all the great stuff that’s airing/streaming.
One of my college roommates acted like her lack of knowledge of popular culture was some kind of prestigious badge of honor and it drove me fucking nuts.
I did that for a while in college. If I am your former roommate I apologize profusely for being a pretentious ass.
Me too so I also apologize if that was me I didn’t mean it! I just didnt know I didn’t have to try so hard to be ~*~cool~*~
Yeah… if you don’t like something, that’s fine, but acting like your personal preference gives you the moral high ground is… what’s the word for simultaneously boring and super-irritating?
white male internet comments
you win
you notice all the dudes responding to that white guy book list with OH YEAH well I don’t even READ
people will brag about anything
DO YOU EVEN READ, BRO?
I always think of this sketch: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/crim…
I have a moment of pure glee any time I see someone pretending (still, in our year twenty fifteen) to not know “what a Kardashian is.” Like, congratulations, you say you don’t know who they are, but you know you’re not supposed to know.
It’s a shame, too, because I feel like Frances McDormand would be one of the best people to watch ten hours of ANTM with in PJs. She probably has a secret popcorn recipe that would blow your mind.
…someone please write “If Frances McDormand Was Your Binge-Watching Buddy” now
Writing it up in my google docs while I work. But if someone else wanted to scoop me on this, they should go ahead; I’m not much of a writer…
If Frances McDormand was your ANTM marathon-watching buddy
Too slow!
Quadruple whatever to people who act like they’re better than reality TV. Guess those losers never saw season 2 of Project Runway, then.
My reaction to the suggestion that we watch a movie on a weeknight is roughly the same as a toddler who doesn’t want to go to bed but I will happily watch 3 episodes of Deep Space 9 instead.
Me too, but I thought that was just me. 😀
It’s important to leave open the possibility that you might stop after less than an hour, even if you don’t take it.
This is why I love WatchTCM (many early movies were so much shorter!) and also my pet theory is that movies should be no longer than 70 minutes, with an exception for really good ones that use their time wisely and can have a whole 95 minutes.
1) most movies just don’t need more than 70 minutes otherwise they get too indulgent in their favorite movie elements and that gets boring (okay 5 explosion scenes, great, 6 or 7? ehhhhh)
2) I can handle about 80 minutes of wakefulness between work and going-to-sleep-time, and I really begrudge the fact that GYPSY (1962) is 150 minutes long and I had to split it into two parts to be able to watch it this week.
Exactly. If I’m going to go to the effort of watching something with a plot, I’d like it to be a reasonable amount of plot. My brain is tired by then.
*sniffs* Well, you know, some of us liked ANTM before it was cool, like way back in season two with Yoanna and Shandie. You’ve probably never heard of them.
SHANDIE AND THE MALE MODELS OH MY GOD I remember that season so well. That was back when Tyra actually interacted with the contestants.
I’m sad this little gem didn’t make it into the round-up… I read it, horrified, and then amused myself for the rest of the afternoon by imagining it happening to Leslie Knope and the hijinks and takedown that would ensue.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/aust…
Of course, all the Jade Helm and Benghazi truthers and the Cliven Bundy armed insurrectionists are nowhere to be found when it comes to an actual government black site actually being used to kidnap and torture American citizens.
well yeah, if they went strutting around pointing their guns at Chicago police they might actually be arrested
Yeah, I guess it’s a lot easier to pick a fight with the guys at the Bureau of Land Management.
Man, talk about the lamest branch of the Federal Government to resist. It’s like laying seige to the National Parks Service.
Fun Fact: Theyre trying to lay siege to BOTH 🙂
When the world needed heroes, someone finally dared to stand.
Good morning, I still feel like a revenant this morning due to the plant reproductive matter wreaking havoc on my nose, eyes, and throat. The claritin, it does nothing.
Yoko Ono is an interesting figure, to be sure. I would like to be pro-Yoko, but I wonder about some of her work– the Rape piece described in the article, “Woman is the N-Word of the World” with Lennon… She was abused, to be sure, and I don’t blame her for things that Lennon did, but I think she can still be held responsible for the art she puts her name on.
I’m anti-Yoko-backlash when it comes to the “she broke up the Beatles!” vitriol, but some of her work might deserve backlash, is all I’m saying.
What an odd article, too, it went between making great points– this line: “I still considered her name an insult — the woman who won’t let the boys have their fun” is brilliant, as is the quote from Ono about wanting to throw blood– and saying inscrutable things like, “She was still two years away from meeting the man with whom she would realize her dream of a completely egalitarian partnership.” Sorry, in what world do we describe abusive relationships as egalitarian?
Claritin does nothing. I’m not a doctor, just a person with severe plant (and other) allergies, and I recommend a nasal spray like nasacort or flonase. It takes a couple of days to work, but it’s SO much better. (also zyrtec if you’re not into nasal sprays)
Seconding Zyrtec (you can get a years supply of generic on Amazon for pretty cheap). I take one every day.
The Kennesaw State incident is just… that’s what engaged college students are supposed to do! If your advisor/ administration isn’t helping you, you politely insist that they tell you what to do and that they help you! People say first gen students often don’t self advocate enough, but it’s tough to self advocate when the cops are called on you cause of racist college officials. I’ve done the same at a public university in New York, and needless to say, no cops were called on me.
Argh.
Did you see where other people have posted emails from and interactions with the same adviser where she’s basically refusing to help them or to engage with their questions at all? Like this, where a student asks a follow-up question after getting one (kind of brusque and snippy! but not completely unreasonable) reply and she just replies “I will not continue to answer the same question.” There’s a clever fucking strategy to do no work: refuse to help students over email, cancel appointments when they try to schedule them, and call the cops if they show up at your office.
I did! My goodness, so frustrating.
Oh and I have 0 evidence that this student was first generation and it’s appalling no matter what. I just assume that a lot of students at Kennesaw State are first generation, so it leaped out at me.
Are you from the Atlanta area? (I ask because I want to apologize in advance if I’m telling you stuff you already know!) I did my adolescence in Cherokee County, my parents still live there, my mom’s got a MEd from KSU, I did my science requirement there one summer in undergrad, lots of folks at my high school did dual enrollment, etc. etc.
So I don’t know about the first-gen thing, but it’s still very much a commuter school trying to transform into a research university — much like Georgia State was back in the 60s (when my mom did her own undergrad there). The difference is that Georgia State is in downtown Atlanta, while KSU exists in and because of white flight out to the Atlanta suburbs. It’s hard to separate KSU — and this incident — from the demographic changes happening in the Atlanta metro area. Namely: white folks are moving back inside the 285 perimeter, and folks of color are moving to the suburbs. Having spent time on KSU’s campus (for my class, and wandering the library while my mom was in class, and also for softball camps and school projects etc.), it’s hard for me to read this incident without these changes as context. In addition to the part this is playing in national discourse about the criminalization of black bodies, there’s also the role of local discourse — places that were segregated de facto are getting less segregated. (Not integrated by a long shot.) Like Nicole says, it’s hard to imagine this playing out with a white female student, and it’s hard for me to imagine the advisor — who looks like many of the people I went to high school with, and many of my parents’ neighbors — using the same tone with someone who looks like her.
I am not from Atlanta! This provides good context to this incident, since of course these things are national but reflect and are informed by local conditions.
You know, The Good Wife has fallen from grace, but I do appreciate that the makers use their reach to draw attention to some seriously fucked up things: like the NSA transmitting info to other government agencies if they happen to overhear something, or 3D-printed guns, or, in the season six finale, the Homan Square black site and how horrifying it is, especially for family members.
I mean, of course we also need good investigative journalism like the linked piece, but I find it impressive that they manage to address some pretty serious, under-the-radar things in such a mainstream network show.
I have mentally yelled at all the white guys who’ve commented on the Books White Men Own article shared on my FB page. Every. Single. One. Then I got a group of women to laugh at them and shared the gospel of The Toast.
From the Yoko article:
I have always been drawn to the women who can arouse this kind of vitriol. The kind of hate that seems too big and billowing to be directed at just one woman, the kind that seems like a person or an entire society is vomiting out all its misogyny onto one convenient scapegoat. At some point — after successive Joan of Arc and Courtney Love phases — I started to see this position of feminine abjectness as a kind of superpower. A position from which a woman could offend far more deeply than a man.
Whoa.
WHOA.
<3
This is actually a large part of how I feel about Elisabeth Bathory.
OMG I have been unable to keep up with the Toast’s latest Barrage On Men because of traveling and spending time in hospitals with my parents (oh boy) but now that I have returned I see that THIS IS THE BEST THING. And reading it all at once is also AMAZEBALLS. And for further proof my dad is awesome, I showed him the list and he said “Yes, that is pretty white man” and told me all about how he’s been on a binge of reading books by women for a few months now, and how very disappointed he was when reading a book written by a white man that had a really lazy, stereotypical bunch of POC characters. My dad can be great.
He does sound awesome and I’m a little jealous. I’m pretty sure the last thing my dad read by a woman was the Hunger Games trilogy and even then he ended up throwing the last one across the room at the end. (#soldierdadhasThoughtsonptsd)
(To be fair, I couldn’t even get through the first few pages of the first one. I couldn’t face the thought of spending an entire book stuck inside Katniss’s head. Little did I know there’d be a trilogy one day.)
I’d be interested in hearing those thoughts, if you don’t mind!
I think most of it was that Coloneldad developed some after returning from Afghanistan, dealt with soldiers who had/have it and are in the process of working through and with it, etc, and he really dislikes the trope of the sufferer that is so shattered that they never do or feel anything ever again. I’ve never read any of the books so I’m not 100% sure what goes on with Katniss at the end, but I guess it really hit his buttons. I think I remember him saying that she became helpless? Or agency-less? (Though not in those exact words cause Coloneldad is not a wordy guy, hence his not reading a lot in general.) In any case, something really pissed him off and it wasn’t the fact that she got together with Peeta instead of Gale.
Hope your folks are doing OK.
At a party in my early 20s, while I was taking some time off from college:
Tedious random white guy: something something TROPIC OF CANCER (I remember him yelling like Andy Samberg’s character in Parks & Rec)
Me: Oh, I haven’t read that one.
TRWG: WHAT?!?!?! [goes on and on about how he literally can’t believe that I haven’t read this book. The most important book ever written. The book that all educated people have read.] AND SOMEONE GAVE YOU A COLLEGE DEGREE?!?!
Me: Actually, no, not yet.
TRWG: WELL. GOOD! [turns around, walks away, never to be seen again]
and now I have two degrees, one in English Lit, and STILL haven’t read it because I’m still mad. White guys ruin everything.
Henry Miller is overrated anyway. No big deal.
Yeaahhhh I feel like you can probably get through life without reading Henry Miller’s violent misogynist fantasies. Although it’s very helpful of this random white guy to let you know that turns his crank.
I’ve only ever heard Tropic of Cancer discussed in the context of obscenity trials (but then, my degree is in history, not English). But still, in all my conversations with book-reading types about the books they read, it’s never come up. If that guy is going to get outraged every time he meets someone who hasn’t read it, he’s got a long road ahead of him.
My partner just came into my office to ask what’s so funny. I performed a dramatic reading of your comment, and we both had a good long laugh.
For the record, I have also never read Tropic of Cancer. I mean, I tried once in college, and then I read something else instead.
just…*ragesputter*….there are seventy bazillion books in the world and he knows THE ONE literally everyone needs to read. That makes me want to get something with a hot pink shoe-adorned cover on my library run tomorrow and occasionally look up from reading it to say out loud, “I could be using this time to read Tropic of Cancer. Oh, well!”
I AUDIBLY GUAFFED (sp?) at “WELL GOOD!” because it is amazing and I saw Pete Campbell doing it
Oh my god I need to go back and read the deleted comments post in Pete Campbell’s voice. I might even need to make a gif of Pete saying some of those things.
Hey tedious random white guy, I not only managed not to read Tropic of Cancer in college, I managed to graduate having never taken one English Lit course! It’s a travesty, ain’t it?
(Tropic of Cancer? Tropic of F**king Cancer is what he was raving about? Get a better most important white guy book ever written, TRWG.)
THAT BOOK IS TERRIBLE. So terrible, I only got about a third of the way through it before I was like, “This is terrible, I quit,” and then threw it across the room.
I’ll read terrible violent disrespectful misogynist wankery any day IF IT’S WELL-WRITTEN, which that book is most certainly NOT.
In summation: that guy is an idiot, and you dodged a bullet by neither reading Tropic of Cancer nor ever being forced to share air with that dude again.
I wrote my thesis on 1930s anglophone literature, but good god do I hate Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer is an absolutely insufferable book.
Sure, you’re pro-Yoko, but are you prooooooooooo-Yoooooooko? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlfeyeMFiYA
Slaughterhouse Five is one of my favorite books and it makes me sad to be in this jackhole’s company.
Yeah same 🙁 But I’m pretty confident that, given the choice, Vonnegut would have liked to hang out with us and not that dude.
It’s okay, broken clocks et al.
All the manplainers (yes, I just coined a new word) are missing the fact that no one has yet written a list of all the CRAP books all white men own. But that’s a topic for an entirely new article.
Dan Brown, I’m looking at you.
Yeah, no.
I thought he was referring to “man+complain” rather than “man+explain” but…. it still gets a “yeah, no” reaction from me, because really???
Rob Lowe definitely said “literally” the way Chris Traeger always did, right?
Rob Lowe is LITERALLY Chris Traeger.
“True artists of shade have a smoldering quality, an assuredness that flashes in the eyes and ignites in the body.”
Anna Holmes = poetry
There’s only one rule that I know of, babies–Goddamn it, if you haven’t read Slaughterhouse V, you have no business discussing literature, or race, or gender, or anything.
Makes me wonder just how much eye-roll that comment would get from Vonnegut himself.
What about if on a winter’s night a traveler because I’m reading it right now (I’m at the feminist book club chapter) and I feel like this is a soft satire/summing up of every Work of Literature and everything I need to know to Discuss Literature.
It was my pool reading on vacation in Orlando this past weekend, actually.
Whoa, just reading the wikipedia entry about that book made my head spin. It sounds like perfect vacation reading. Added to my to-read list!
I haven’t even seen the Wikipedia page for it!
It got recommended to me via LibraryThing back when I was doing my English lit program, or something? it’s been on my “I Plan to Read This Eventually” list since about 2007 or 2008 anyway, and I completely forgot why I did that until I got to the 2nd chapter.
It’s pretty postmodern, but I’m finding it to be a lot of fun because I like that and the way it’s quietly satirizing the way people talk about literature (at least, I think it’s satire – it’s sometimes hard to tell with postmods), and also blowing a big raspberry at everyone who laughed at me for choosing it for my vacation reading, when I told them what it was. I’ll have to look it up on Wikipedia when I’m finished. 😀
I’m totally on board with vacation reading being challenging. It’s when you have enough energy to give a book your full attention, so why not stretch yourself? Plus, now all your vacation memories will have a trippy postmodern feel by association.
Petition to stop us all thinking of light-frothy books as ‘vacation reading’.
To me, holiday downtime is the PERFECT time to crack open the really big difficult books you don’t have the mental energy for during regular life.
Well, I was originally planning to take Discworld’s Jingo with me, but then it got lost somewhere between when I placed the hold request and the library staff went to pull it off the shelf for me, so If on a winter’s night a traveler was a last minute “oh crap what do I read now??” thing, and they’re not exactly the same kind of book. Well, superficially, anyway 😀
You and Fancy_Pants are right about vacation being a good time for heavier reading. I didn’t even think of that, since I tend to read whatever I want whenever, and I like things that don’t require a lot of sustained attention when I’m on vacation. But I haven’t been reading as much as I would like in recent months, so it was a great opportunity to sit down with something meaty and felt good to have to work at it. Of course, now I’ve been home for 3 days and haven’t read bit a single page while on my lunch break today… Bleh!
Oh, I’m totally the same in the reading whatever whenever category. I have to admit this is kind of theoretical, really.
But the idea of using my long, lazy days to read books that can be dipped in and out of easily (which is how my reading normally goes, a bit at breakfast, a bit at lunch, a bit on the train if I’m going that way) seems like a bad use of precious leisure time.
The last two times I’ve been sick enough to spend all day in bed, I read most of Gaudy Night, and most of To Say Nothing of the Dog. Reading looooong, delightful books has become a habit on days I have no pressing engagements.
I absolutely love To Say Nothing Of The Dog, and I’m hoping to have time soon to get more than a chapter into If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler.
Oh god it was sooooo good and I just flew through it, I loved it so much!
I did IOAWNAT for the one English class I took at uni, Postmodern Narratives. So far as that obnoxious, strange class went (of course, no women authors or directors!) I remember liking the book. Certainly better than DeLillo.
I watched the movie and threw up afterwards, does that count?
Gems from the end of the Rob Lowe article:
“I am a dad and I have a bod. So by definition, I have a dadbod.”
“I think it’s time to start objectifying men. I think it’s time.”
That Kennesaw State thing, man. I was not aware of it, but really, unless you have a previous bad relationship with that person, having them sit in the waiting room till you’re available isn’t harassment. It might be annoying, if you are trying to avoid seeing them, but you know, that’s your job, so deal with it.
I read a piece in the WaPo the other day that talked about the number of phone calls that police get that are basically “there is someone black in my neighborhood, and I assume they must be a criminal” and how the police find these phone calls annoying/frustrating. I know that we want people to feel empowered to call the police when they see suspicious behavior, but is there a way that we can punish people who equate “having black skin” with “acting suspiciously”? Fine them for nuisance calls to the police or something?
My dad was telling me this (the “Oh, he CLEARLY doesn’t belong around here, lets call the cops!”) happened to a family he knows in West Clare, Ireland. Local family’s daughter was home for a visit, with her husband, a doctor, who is Asian. Being in a very lovely area of the country, he decided to go for a walk and enjoy the view, dressed in loafers and slacks and a t-shirt, and was baffled at the (thankfully very embarrassed) Garda who came up to him and checked up who he was, because there had been phone calls about a “strange dark man” wandering around the local area.
Rob Lowe I love you but Paleo is not a food.
i think he was saying “paleo granola” and the interviewer misplaced a comma
. . .that’s somehow worse. ew paleo granola.
is it made of cauliflower? everything else paleo seems to be.
But granola is not paleo…? And neither is Greek yogurt for that matter. Rob Lowe, you’re not making any sense!
The hilarious thing is that I bet Vonnegut himself would find that guy a tool.
*whispering to tool guy* GUESS WHAT?? I just got off the ghost-phone with Kurt and he HATES you.
“someone gave him a printed version of your comments and he drew buttholes all over it”
And so it goes.
“You know nothing of my work!”
So, not to be an annoying tech-support-y person, but I am using the Tor browser, and I’m logged in to WordPress, but IntenseDebate seems not to recognize it. When I click the “log in through WordPress” button by the comments box, it takes me to my profile on IntenseDebate, but when I come back to The Toast I am not logged in at all.
Just an FYI, if you guys feel like looking into it.
shouldn’t that kind of be the point of using the Tor browser
To be the Schrodinger’s parable of logins?
That Rob Lowe interview is delightful. “I put it out there to my millions of followers: Be honest with me: Do I have a dadbod? I just need to know. Because I’m not really sure what it means yet and I need to find out.”
There was probably a point to theater snobbery when watching movies at home meant fuzzy cassette tapes and TV screens smaller than most people got on their laptops but what is even the point of pretending anymore that everyone who actually has a Netflix account in 2015 doesn’t also have a 42″ 1080p 3Dwhosis screen in their living room that probably outclasses most of the theaters in operation when Lawrence of Arabia was a new film
I don’t have a TV, just a laptop and a 23″ computer monitor I got when my boss upgraded that I watch netflix on, but some shows/movies I drive down to my mom’s house to watch in her basement with the 90″ TV and surround sound (my 19 year old brother talked her into it, he’s a gamer). We’re doing a Wolf Hall marathon on Sunday and I’m so excited! It was nice on my screen but that scenery will be gorgeous on hers.
I have Netflix but no fancy monitors (just a small, non-flatscreen TV and various laptops between me and my partner).
I guess I’ll consider Big Screen Cinema when they give me nuanced WOC characters with interesting storylines. Till then, I’ll stick to Netflix.
What kind of under-eye serum? I really need to know.
More seriously: One of the morbidly comical things about the Chicago PD claiming that abuse isn’t happening is that, looking back, there are few to no times in the past where abuse wasn’t happening that we know of now because later came to light (Burge, SOS, etc.). Are we to believe that this moment is some rare time where no abuse is happening, just because nothing has come to light yet?
Yes, until the customary 15 year waiting period has passed and everyone who could be held responsible has retired.
Well, that’s it, isn’t it?
NICOLE, I thought we weren’t going to discuss dadbod! Also, what is dadbod.
I also want to know this!
All I know is that it’s a word that is frustratingly close to being a palindrome but just not. quite. there.
It is a kind of body that men can have that is sort of big but a little soft; typically a hallmark of the slowing metabolism that men experience in our early-to-mid-thirties.
Men are very excited for it to be the new “thing”, because it turns out it’s basically the body we get when we don’t do anything.
It’s like dads saw magazine after magazine analyzing women’s “post-baby body!!!” and instead of saying “That’s fucked up,” they said “We want in on that, but with a much lower standard.”
Or they got the “be comfortable with your body message,” but like only half of it?
“People shouldn’t be ashamed by the way they look! So what if I don’t have six-pack abs! Not everyone is Brad Pitt!”
“People shouldn’t?”
“Well. We shouldn’t. Women still have to keep doing sit-ups.”
Now I’m annoyed that dadbod is basically what happens when you take a handsome movie star, put him on a diet of weed and half-and-half, and don’t have him exercise outside of a little low-effort tai-chi and bowling, and they DIDN’T CALL IT DUDEBOD.
This is the entirety of dudes in indie rock, which is pretty much the dating demographic of my whole life. Might as well call it “guitarbod.”
I think Dudebod is really the way to go with this. Or Gerard Butlerbod.
Jason Segelbod, too.
I…think I might actually have a crush on this particular bod.
Oh god. I’ve said “bod” too much. The word has lost all meaning.
There’s nothing wrong with it! And you know, principally it’s actually good — it demonstrates that our aesthetic tastes are flexible and that this rip rock abbed body is a purely artificial construct designed to sell aerobics videos and weightloss supplements.
I just wish that we weren’t reserving the relief of that pressure from the demographic that already feels it the least.
It should at least exist parallel to a celebration of “dramagirlbod.”
Oh, thankyou for ensuring that the phrase ‘dobdad’ will now be playing on quiet repeat in my head all day. THANK YOU.
(jk it’s not your fault)
I think it’s the stage before ghost dad.
Dadghost?
Dadbod is qgqpoq flipped upside down.
Hope it helps.
Also, some of you will appreciate this exchange between blunderboyfriend and I yesterday:
Me: You are a fan of Yoko Ono, yes? You might enjoy this article.
BF: Yes! I am a fan! This article is great! [1500 words on his love for Ono’s various musical and artistic endeavours.]
Me: Next time someone questions your feminist bona fides, you have permission to declare “I like all Yoko Ono’s pre-Lennon work” and then raise an eyebrow.
If I think about Rob Lowe saying “literally” I definitely can only hear it in the context of Wayne’s World when he’s trying to get Wayne and Garth to sign up and go commercial. “He literally jumped out of his seat.”
Tabata intervals make me want to die. That is all.