Posts tagged “magic”

  1. Jilly Gagnon's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves: A teenage runaway, broken by years of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her stepmother, moves in with seven middle-aged men, becoming their domestic slave. After several months hiding out in their filthy hovel (it’s so rundown that dozens of varieties of vermin infest it), Snow White’s stepmother finds her and, enraged, escalates her abuse…

    28 comments
  2. im sherlock holmes lets solve crimes but definitely not have feelings oh im learning what friendship is and also solving crime at the same time what a surprising turn of events

    i prefer scarves to people, make a GIF of me

    i don't have time for social niceties OR the authority of the Pope

    john shave off your mustache while you are

    120 comments
  3. I’ve been reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the last novel Shirley Jackson wrote before her death in 1965, and thought I had remembered someone saying her agoraphobia was the thing that inspired her to write so much about creepy houses. (Have you read The Haunting of Hill House? Go read it if you haven’t, preferably late at night and under the covers, with a flashlight.) So I toddled on over to…

    19 comments
  4. Last March I joined two thousand strangers to see Brian Weiss speak at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. We'd all come for the same reason, to view a past life, and this alignment of intention made us a very friendly community, with diversity in age and ethnicity you rarely see outside the subway. To summarize Brian Weiss' ideas I'd start with the concept that we have lived before and will live again. We travel…

    24 comments
  5. I do not often find myself swarming with conflicted emotions; like Tinkerbell I feel things so intensely I am capable of holding no more than one emotion at a time. One and a half puts me at capacity, and I am liable to begin leaking transmission fluid.

    65 comments
  6. "Ron, our loyal Knight, will become a time traveler. He will be sent back in time to some point in the 19th century to live out the rest of his days at Albus Dumbledore, our venerable King. The exact mechanics of his journey in time are unclear, though we do believe it is unavoidable, and that it will in fact be the very move that enables Harry’s eventual defeat of Voldemort (the checkmate) and that…

    38 comments
  7. May your Sperrys give you blisters, may your son be uninterested in inheriting your Patek Phillipe. May your housekeeper be an American citizen; may she have an up-to-date OSHA regulations handbook in her purse at all times. May you forget to update your summer residence information in time to make it into the Social Register's Dilatory Domiciles this year. May you develop carpal tunnel your first year of Princeton crew; may you be invited only…

    156 comments
  8. Excerpts from Figueroa’s Findings on the Habits of Everyday Monsters

    The Earworm (Halicocephalus strepitus) is a microscopic parasite most commonly found in the inner ear of human beings.

    27 comments
  9. If you’ve ever seen people complain about singular “they” or so-called generic “he” (for the record, I am 100% for singular they and 100% against “he” as a default pronoun), or if you’re just really not so keen on gender binaries, you may have wondered what life and language would be like without gender pronouns. If you haven’t, well, you’re about to find out anyway. So put your linguist slippers on and

    110 comments
  10. “Undead. There’s a word I really hate,” I sighed. “It’s phony. I could puke every time I hear it. And furthermore, what’s with all these vampires?” “I like them,” said Phoebe. “Vampires are alright, I guess — but they don’t appeal to me,” I said. “I mean they’re alright if they go around flying off with lonely girls all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a…

    13 comments
  11. See also: The AP History of "The Mermaid's War" Good morning all. Given the state of my inbox, I understand that a number of you have issues with the marks you received on your term papers. I would ask that you book time to speak with me during office hours – I am, myself, in the process of completing a monograph on the catastrophic inflation and economic disruption that occurred in the Middle Eastern…

    20 comments
  12. Letty Matapang. Sigh. I wanted to write her name all over the covers of my notebooks like I did in first grade about Consuela Lopez (Consuela + Marisela 4ever), but I don’t have notebooks anymore, so I wrote it a couple of times in the back of a library book instead. Slowly, smoothly, with my eyes closed. Letty, Letty, Letty. Names are magic, you know. Usually knowing someone’s name gives you power over them,

    56 comments
  13. Cut off their hair and sell it to a wizard or something Designate a single door in your house Forbidden. If they open it, lock them in the attic for seven years. Turn some, but not all, of your children into swans. Build them a tree house, only instead of a tree it's a hundred-foot high nest of thorns, and also they have to live in there, and also they're never allowed out and no…

    25 comments
  14. 1. Don't kill Hitler 2. Don't kill Mark 3. Kill Mark 4. Fuck you Derek 5. Derek doesn't exist 6. Don't go back in time and stop Derek's parents from meeting each other 7. Don't go back in time and have sex with Derek's mom so it turns out you're his actual dad 8. Nobody tell Derek who his real father is 9. Don't go back in time just to draw a dick on Mark's…

    45 comments