The Toast will be running a few pieces on Canada's missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW) this summer; this is the first.
My seven siblings and I grew up in a Christian household, which was strict in some sense. We didn’t own a television, and we sat around the table to read The Bible every night and recited scripture. My sisters and I couldn’t wear pants or cut our hair. It might
The following wild flurry of rhetoric is not meant to subtweet anyone's else's pieces about The Jinx, as I object far too strongly to any criticism of said show to read it.
"After all, Watson," said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
What exactly do you ingrates want? Is it not enough for The Jinx to…
1. Who the fuck is Trevor? 2. What is Trevor’s last name and current address? 3. Did you know your buddy Trevor has a gun and mugs people on Tuesday nights? 4. How experienced is Trevor as a mugger? Given his professional, no-nonsense demeanor and efficiency on Tuesday night, I would have assumed he was an old hand at this. But the fact that he was apparently using my old phone for personal business immediately…
In Krav Maga, you learn the correct fighting stance first. It is imperative to have a strong base. Tuck your chin, space out your hands in front of your face, close but not too close to your cheeks or to each other, your wrists and fingers loose, relaxed but prepared to clench at any moment. Place your feet on the ground about shoulder-width apart, gently but firmly, one foot forward and one back;
The first thing I have to do is find out X.’s full name. I know his first and last name, but I want to have his middle name. Being able to say all three names has power. Like when I get mad at my kids and say all three names, they know they’re in deep shit.
I don’t even know how to spell X.’s first name properly—it’s
Crime: Overcooked pasta There are instructions on the package. They are not complicated, if you are a literate person. Honestly, you can just set a timer and walk away if you want to. Salt the water and set the timer, that’s all you have to do. I mean, stir occasionally, but only very occasionally. If I wanted flavorless mush of an indeterminate origin, I’d be in a Dickens novel right now. If found guilty of…
My father molested me. He wasn’t the worst molester in the world, or even a particularly dedicated one (his other interests - choir, hiking, his compost heap – got in the way), but he did it and two years ago I told the police. I learned a lot that year. For example, did you know that a sex offender isn’t necessarily charged according to the most current Sexual Offences Act? They’re charged according to the…
Kathryn Funkhouser's previous work for The Toast can be found here. I almost pushed a friend of mine into traffic once. We were walking in midtown Manhattan and I had been hiccuping ungracefully for the past twenty minutes. My friend tried to scare my hiccups away with an unsuccessful series of tiny exorcisms, faking the tragic cancellation of TV shows and threatening to date jerks we knew. The hiccups persisted and I was getting…
Sometimes I don’t know what’s true, and what I’ve made up to fill in the gaps. What I picked up from movies or books or TV and used to create a history. What I’m lying about. What the truth is. I know this: Six months after I was born my parents divorced. They had been married for ten years. I was the fourth and last child they had together. They had both been married before;…
Previously: Cook County Schools, Cook County Jails. B0124. Until last year, Illinois operated a $20-million-a-year super maximum security prison (“Supermax”) in the remote southern city of Tamms. There were only two hundred inmates, making it one of the most expensive prisons per capita of any in the country. It was also among the few prisons to practice complete, utter social isolation. Inmates were kept in miniscule chambers with thick metal doors and plexiglass windows…
Mollie “The Lost Chicken” Wisner was one of the most well-known musical performers in Gold Rush-era San Francisco, but she only knew one song. In 1849, nearly forty thousand fortune-seeking men flooded the streets of San Francisco, up from 1,000 the year before. Given the transitory, perilous nature of boomtowns, women were scarce; some historians estimate a 50:1 male-to-female ratio at the time. The lonely miners, sailors, trappers, and pioneers who frequented the nine-block-long red-light…
Growing up in the suburbs of a medium-sized town in the middle of England, I spent a lot of time wishing something exciting would happen. In 1993, when I was 14, it finally did. First, I formed an intense best friendship with Holly, who lived a couple of streets away and was in my class at school. We both had long brown hair (hers wavy, mine straight) and dressed alike, so from a distance people…
