Annabel had not been herself recently, that was for sure. After graduation, she had finally been more interested in Paul's hobbies: watching him play Grand Theft Auto, listening to him talk about Chuck Palahniuk, making pizza bagels when his friends came over. During college, she'd been kind of a drag, honestly; devoted to her work, Annabel spent most of her time at the library or cruising JSTOR. This new, less-focused Annabel had been music to…
On Monday, we kicked off our glorious My Life in Middlemarch book club and started with the pecan pie. Tuesday, we listened to two female authors talk about sexism and self-promotion. Also, I food-trolled you.
T.H. White was writing Gary Stus long before the term was coined, and he wasn't content with just one authorial insert. His most obvious projection in The Once and Future King, Merlyn, is also the most benign: an elderly tutor, fond of nature and hopeful of shaping young minds, an English professor in a wizard's cape. More interesting are the key male characters of The Once and Future King, Arthur himself and his most…
Previous entries in the series can be found here. Most recently: Kaylee/Inara on Firefly. This is a big one. I'm a little afraid to touch it, to be honest, she said about two fictional television characters who never kissed even once. But there it is -- as you know, every woman over the age of menarche is required by law to watch Law & Order: SVU whenever reruns air on USA. SVU has been on the air…
Dearest Toasties, the holiday season is officially about to begin. The Bartender's birthday is in a few days and things are feeling festive. Note the beautiful dessert and port in the picture to the left. Gorgeous. But you know what The Bartender won't have on his/her birthday? THAT. I'm about to get very polarizing and say that vegan desserts are not great. I felt tricked. Soy butter is not an adequate substitute for anything.
It wasn't his coming back that surprised everyone, since people had been more or less expecting it for the last two-thousand-some-odd years; it was the fact that he was only interested in coming back as a carpenter. He was just there one day, in a way that he hadn't been before, and everyone knew without being told who he was. He looked just like he was supposed to, from the dark hair to the dark skin…
Last month (so long ago! we were but pale young curates then) I instructed you to acquire for yourself a copy of Alaya Dawn Johnson's The Summer Prince. Did you do it? You marvelous kittens; you may have some pie. As for the rest of you, you are cast out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Go watch the Divergent trailer, or something. Let us admit this together: how long…
As The Toast searches for its one true Gal Scientist, we will be running a ton of wonderful one-off pieces by female scientists of all shapes and sizes and fields and education levels, which we are sure you will enjoy. They’ll live here, so you can always find them. Most recently: Mansplaining Physics. Today's column is sponsored by the lovely Sarah Redmond, so blame her for your nightmares. Parasites make for great…
It’s a really weird story. I was beaten. Not like—well yes, like beaten. With a tire iron. I KNOW, RIGHT. I knew him, the guy who beat me. It wasn’t just some random person who ran in and smacked me around at 4 am. I live on the eighth floor. No, I was just noodling on my essay, and this guy comes in—I know him, kind of, not biblically, he’s this small boy who comes…
It’s a late summer night in Tokyo. On the streets of the Roppongi entertainment district, a man named Lucky is stopping groups of businessmen on the street and trying to hustle them into a strip club called Glamour. A tiny club the size of someone’s bedroom located on the penultimate floor of a building just off Roppongi’s main drag, you would only know about Glamour if you happened to work there or had been coaxed…
I. A note on the title Many of you are probably familiar with the idea spearheaded by Gail Simone of “women in refrigerators” in the comics industry. Simone and several others noticed that it really seemed like all the female characters in comics were coming to violent and often degrading ends. The name comes from Alex DeWitt, girlfriend of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, who is murdered and stuffed into his refrigerator by a crime syndicate.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, while shutting downnnn Richard Cohen, linked back to an old post about a friend of his (Prince Jones) who was killed (murdered, to be more accurate) by the police, and it's really powerful: I can't tell you how angry that made me. And anger breeds hate and blindness. And so for a good year, after 9/11 I was blind. I couldn't feel what this city was feeling. My son was…
Dave Grohl enters an empty classroom, his jacket hanging off a forefinger draped over one shoulder. He places one leg on a chair and leans in real close.
"Hi, I'm Dave Grohl. Here at the Foo Fighters, we like to joke around a lot. But today I'd like to talk about something that isn't a joke: why I look so much like Tim Curry."
