The Pretentious Illiterate

kapi: This is perfect. I can gather from the framing that this...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:47:00 -0400

This is perfect.

I can gather from the framing that this is meant to illustrate a tense standoff between two people in which Don Draper gets off an epic burn, but from the standpoint of someone who has not seen the relevant episode of Mad Men, really it just seems like the man at the top is being thoughtful and Don Draper is being very, very rude.

So maybe it’s just because I’m still a little woozy from my cold medicine (summer colds,...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:16:21 -0400

So maybe it’s just because I’m still a little woozy from my cold medicine (summer colds, bah!) but this morning I was reading a thread where someone asked how to help their twelve year old cousin who was feeling bad about the way she looked, and somebody posted this poem in response and I legit teared up a little bit.

“when your little girl
asks you if she’s pretty
your heart will drop like a wineglass
on the hardwood floor
part of you will want to say
of course you are, don’t ever question it
and the other part
the part that is clawing at
you
will want to grab her by her shoulders
look straight into the wells of
her eyes until they echo back to you
and say
you do not have to be if you don’t want to
it is not your job
both will feel right
one will feel better
she will only understand the first
when she wants to cut her hair off
or wear her brother’s clothes
you will feel the words in your
mouth like marbles
you do not have to be pretty if you don’t want to
it is not your job”

— it is not your job | Caitlyn Siehl

Even rereading it now, I’m not feeling it in quite the same punch-in-the-gut way I did when I first read it. For a second, though, it really sent me back to the way it felt to be twelve, when Being Pretty was this exhausting, all-consuming grind of a thing, a responsibility I had been assigned and was failing at, every single second of every day. That’s mostly what I remember from that age - this insane sense of incompetence and shame and failure. I didn’t know what the hell to do with my hair, with my clothes, with my skin, with my stupid face. The only reassurance you found anywhere - not even from other people, but from TV and magazines and movies - was that you would eventually stop being bad at your job and get good at it. Either you were already pretty now, and didn’t realize it, or you would get pretty later, or someone would come along who would think you were pretty even if no one else did. Sometimes, there was a glimmer of the suggestion that if you were really deep and smart and soulful, you might not care that much about being pretty, but there was always the suggestion that 1.) being pretty was still fabulous and wonderful, even if you were doing your best not to care about it (like not eating chocolate cake when you were on a diet, or something) and 2.) Pretending not to care about being pretty would actually make you pretty, and the moment you truly Did Not Care was the moment that somebody would sweep in and recognize your unaffected, natural Prettiness. The idea that prettiness was actually a real fucking tiresome grind, and that caring about it was a burden you could just put down and then walk away and do something else - I don’t know if such a concept could have penetrated my brain at that age, but if it had, it would have been such an incredible, incomprehensible relief.

theclearlydope: Be on the look out for a pretty swell guy. via...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:32:56 -0400

theclearlydope:

Be on the look out for a pretty swell guy.

via pi4nobl4ck

Can it even be considered robbery if someone is just so charming you hand over your wallet because he smiled and asked so politely?

lesleygee: thisisthinprivilege: Thin Privilege is not having...

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 23:00:06 -0400

lesleygee:

thisisthinprivilege:

Thin Privilege is not having to worry that your body size could factor into your grad school application.

Mod Note: I just went through the process of applying for grad schools last fall and this was a real fear of mine when applying to programs. -FBP

fuck this

Oh look, an update. It’s so weird, when I’m feeling impulsive and lacking in willpower, sometimes I eat too many Cheez-its. When Geoffrey Miller is feeling impulsive, he blurts out hateful, unsubstantiated speculation that set the Twitterverse aflame and brings shame on his entire university. It’s really a wonder either of us ever gets anything done.

Geoffrey Miller ‏@matingmind2h

Obviously my previous tweet does not represent the selection policies of any university, or my own selection criteria.

Details
Geoffrey Miller ‏@matingmind3h

My sincere apologies to all for that idiotic, impulsive, and badly judged tweet. It does not reflect my true views, values, or standards.

Details

It’s 12:30 on a Saturday night and Schuyler’s in New York so what else would I be doing...

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 00:36:00 -0400

It’s 12:30 on a Saturday night and Schuyler’s in New York so what else would I be doing but reading years-old Metafilter threads about the way people in other cultures express the sentiment that’s the way the cookie crumbles?

And this one made me laugh out loud:

In a recent speech, Iran’s president Ahmadinejad used an (apparently slightly vulgar) phrase that translates to “the bogeyman snatched the boob.” According to a piece I heard on NPR, the phrase is used by mothers weaning their children, and has come to have the general meaning that while something good was lost or stolen, one should just suck it up and deal with it.

I honestly cannot tell you how much it pleases me to imagine an Iranian mother snatching her breast away from her nursing child and shouting grumpily,”No! The bogeyman has snatched the boob!” Or maybe she says it sort of fake-sympathetically, like “Ohhh, honey, I’m so sorry, I know you are hungry, but the bogeyman has snatched the boob.” And then when the child tearfully confronts her about this transparent but disturbing lie (I’m imagining the kid is like 3 in this scenario) she takes him on her knee, clears her throat, looks him in the eye, and dispenses this age old wisdom: “My son, I see you are upset, but when something good is lost or stolen, one must just suck it up and deal with it.”

It’s the ‘You get what you get, and you don’t get upset,’ of terrifying Iranian mothers. Definitely filing this expression away in case I ever have children.

John Green's tumblr: Why Has The Fault in Our Stars Been So Successful?

Wed, 29 May 2013 13:14:00 -0400

John Green's tumblr: Why Has The Fault in Our Stars Been So Successful?:

This is frustrating. I wish he had just left out the part about “My book is not successful because I am male” rather than make such a shallow jab at explaining it away, especially to an audience of mostly teenagers who are mostly just figuring out how privilege works. Because parts of this are really misguided.

First off, “I was also male when I wrote my other novels, which were not as successful,” is a flat-out bad and borderline disingenuous argument. Are you kidding? Most men are not successful at becoming President, and many run several times before they get elected, but that doesn’t mean that being a man isn’t a big advantage when it comes to becoming the President. So why even point this out?

More importantly, he writes (still in the paragraph about how his maleness isn’t the reason his book is so successful):

“The other breakout non-series, realistic children’s titles of 2012 were Wonder and Out of My Mind, both written by women…

The truth is, no YA novel has ever been chosen as the best fiction book of the year by TIME Magazine**, or appeared on so many adult-oriented best-of-the-year lists (Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, etc.). Did this happen because TFiOS is the best YA book ever? No. It means that someone got a bunch of adult literary critics to read a YA novel that those adult literary critics really liked.This someone is named Elyse Marshall.

Right. Exactly. And so, if you want to talk about sexism and publishing (Which you don’t have to! This was your choice! You brought it up!) the question to ask is: why was it The Fault in Our Stars and not Wonder or Out of my Mind — or any of the other books that Elyse Marshall publicizes (some of which, surely, are written by women) that was sent out to literary critics (who many people suspect are biased towards reviewing serious books by men), and in turn read and enjoyed and promoted by those critics, resulting in the book’s appearance on a million top ten lists and unprecedented crossover success?

YA is a historically female-dominated industry that has long had trouble being taken seriously by mainstream literary critics. Is it just a coincidence that one of its first truly extraordinary breakout literary successes (not about wizards) was written by a man? Or might that fact have something to do with the inherent biases and assumptions of the (well-meaning, hard-working) people involved at every stage of the process?

I honestly do not know the answers to those questions! Obviously, The Fault in Our Stars has merit. I’m not denying that. I loved it! It was a great book! But the question is, “Why that book and not another?” And if you’re going to admit, reasonably, that The Fault in Our Stars is not the greatest YA book ever written, then shrugging your shoulders and saying, “Well, I dunno, a bunch of really incredible people just conspired to promote and help my book along its way, and at all the key moments, everyone came together to move it further and further up to ladder to mind-blowing success, but this obviously has nothing to do with my gender…” is just - argh! Don’t do that! Don’t raise the subject of sexism just to dismiss it! That’s so stupid and unnecessary!

I know it must be frustrating, as a male author, to always feel like people are side-eying your success, and surely some of the critiques he gets are rooted in envy more than anything else. But how hard would it have been for him to include his maleness (and his whiteness and his cis-ness and his status as a native English speaker, all of which he rightly and thoughtfully points out) in the second section rather than the first? That is, to say, ‘Yes, The Fault in Our Stars was massively successful for all these good reasons, but also - maybe, possibly -a little bit more successful because I have these structural advantages, which is not to denigrate my work but simply to acknowledge this as a factor which may have eased it along its path.’

I don’t know; maybe I’m overthinking this. But I always find it disheartening when people who are sharp enough to acknowledge their privilege feel the need to follow up by immediately explaining it all away.

fishingboatproceeds:

The Fault in Our Stars is my fourth (4.5th?) novel, and it has found a very wide readership. I often get questions asking what my secret is, or why the book has been successful, and then of course there are also lots of people out there speculating about the reasons for the book’s success.

So…

Paula Abdul vs. MC Skat Kat: A Comparative Analysis of "Opposites Attract"

Tue, 28 May 2013 12:06:37 -0400

Paula Abdul vs. MC Skat Kat: A Comparative Analysis of "Opposites Attract":

Attention, everyone: my groundbreaking scholarly analysis of Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” is up over at the Hairpin.

leasthelpful: Sheeeeee-it I don’t imagine this reviewer...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:45:33 -0400

leasthelpful:

Sheeeeee-it

I don’t imagine this reviewer has made it very far into Breaking Bad.

Rejection Section: Prairie Schooner

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:43:00 -0400

Re: [Prairie Schooner] Submission: The Dim Shapes Get Clearer Every Day.

Although we have decided against using “The Dim Shapes Get Clearer Every Day,” we were interested in it and would be glad to see more of your work between Sept. 1 and May 1.

Before this one came in, I also got two other flat rejections via old-school SASE’s, one from Noon and one from Agni, so I don’t want you to think I only post the ‘good’ rejections. So far, I have never followed up one of these encouraging let-downs with more work, which I know is unprofessional, but it’s mostly because the story I sent them is the only one I have like it. What am I going to do, follow up my gothic imitation-Gilman ghost story with my YA-targeted humorous essay about phone sex? That just seems confusing.

I know I’ve made jokes about the intern reading the slush pile before, but having received a fair number of these nicer rejections (check out that humblebrag) and having also followed up with a handful, I am pretty confident they indicate that the submission made it past the first (intern-y) round of readers and was then sent up to an editor, who spent four or five months not reading it before passing on it via a nicer note that’s mostly meant to make up for the extra time you spent waiting to hear back.

That said, I will never stop imagining the staff at these magazines sitting around the table and passionately discussing my story every week for months on end, loudly arguing its merits and flaws as they pit it against the only other contender, a lost Hemingway short story that was recently unearthed from the archives. In the end, it’s 3 am; they’re exhausted and the deadline is the next day. In the dim and smoky room, they put it to a vote, and the Hemingway story wins by one tentatively raised hand. The idealistic young editor who championed my story from the beginning bursts into tears and runs out of the room. She is followed into the hallway by the experienced editor-in-chief, who lays his hand heavily on her shoulder. You made a good case in there, Millie, he tells her. But it’s a rigged game, always has been. Still, good work gets read eventually. It may take months, it may take years, but someday, this story will find the audience it deserves. You have to believe that. Otherwise, what’s the point in any of it? She sniffs and nods, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. I do believe it, she says, I do. Then she bravely walks back to her office, opens up her email, and begins typing, wincing a little at the understatement: Dear Kristen, Although we have decided against using The Dim Shapes Get Clearer Every Day…

The Tangential: “Star Trek: Into Darkness” Is Fine, But It’s Still No “Galaxy Quest”

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:25:53 -0400

The Tangential: “Star Trek: Into Darkness” Is Fine, But It’s Still No “Galaxy Quest”:

One of the top ten alternate histories I like to imagine for myself is: “What if I had known fan fiction existed when I was thirteen?”

Everything would have been different.

thetangential:

Recently Kumail Nanjiani tweeted that the best Star Trek film was Galaxy Quest. I laughed at that because it’s a funny joke, but after having seen Star Trek: Into Darkness I enthusiastically agree with Kumail.

I don’t want to give you nightmares, but I feel like there’s something really…

Hope for the Future: Are you Kidding Me?

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:50:29 -0400

Hope for the Future: Are you Kidding Me?:

theworldoffostering:

The following is part of an email I received from a student today:

“I wish for my grade to be raised 8 points at the minimum for this assignment. Anything less I will not be happy with. Of course, this is all at your digression and, with all regret if it were to not change, will abide to your…

Whoa.

Ugh, whenever this is posted, it’s a lie. A photoshopped...

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:35:39 -0400

Ugh, whenever this is posted, it’s a lie. A photoshopped lie. A LIEEEEEEE. Marty goes back in 2015 - 30 years into the future - a nice, round number. Why on earth would he launch himself a needlessly complicated 28 years, six months, and four days into the future? Even with a time machine, ain’t nobody got time for that.

Happy Tuesday, y’all.

Thanks, Kate

The Impossible Decision

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:55:10 -0400

newyorker:

Joshua Rothman on “the impossible decision” of whether or not to go to graduate school, and tough decisions in general: “There are too many unknowns…It’s too unclear what happiness is…These bigger mysteries make the grad-school decision harder.” http://nyr.kr/10x9uqf

portraitsofboston: “As a kid growing up in India, I always...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:13:10 -0400

portraitsofboston:

“As a kid growing up in India, I always wanted to study in the US. When I turned 18, everything was ready—school paid for, all the preparations finished. But I must have looked worried, because my father asked me, ‘You always wanted to go to America. Why the long face?’ I was 18 and didn’t want to admit any weakness.

‘Listen, do people live there?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean? I said. ‘Of course they do.’

‘Well, then 70% of your worries are over. They most likely eat, sleep, and walk just like you do. Now, your job is twofold:

First, don’t let the 30% differences overshadow the 70% similarities.

Second, if you have a problem—tell someone, ask for help. If that doesn’t work—tell a second person, and a third.’

Those two pieces of advice helped me then and have guided me throughout my life.”

love.

newyorker: Cartoon by Paul Noth. For more:...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:07:42 -0400

newyorker:

Cartoon by Paul Noth. For more: http://nyr.kr/17JCdIz

"If I’m lucky, I know that during every unfolding tragedy in the future, I’ll probably be identified..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:59:00 -0400

“If I’m lucky, I know that during every unfolding tragedy in the future, I’ll probably be identified more with the journalists than the victims. But I’ll still think of the woman who’s shaking and sweating 3,000 miles away from her sister and parents, who were almost certainly close enough to see and hear the violence but haven’t texted back yet. And I’ll probably hold my tweets.”

- The other side of reporting a tragedy - CJR.org (via annfriedman)

On the flip side of this - I heard about the Marathon bombings minutes after they happened, when my sister, a CNN producer in New York, posted to social media asking me - and the rest of my Boston-based family - if we were ok. My phone wasn’t on because I was in the library, but I saw her Facebook post immediately. I told my friend, who was sitting next to me in the library and whose brother was running the marathon (he had already finished, and was safe.) Both of us got through to our families and checked in with them before any of the mainstream media producers had gotten a story out, and before the phones were clogged up by people calling back and forth. My parents both knew I was ok before they’d even heard about the attacks. In other words, for us, social media meant that we got the news that was relevant to us (that our friends and family were safe) before we heard anything else.

In contrast, when my sister and I were in New York on September 11, I was in class and heard about it on the radio, of all things. It took almost an hour to get through to my parents - and through them, to get news about my sister. That hour was a nightmare, and it was made worse by the fact that our only source of information was the unidirectional flow of terrifying information from the TV in the common room. My memory might be wrong about this, but I swear in those first few hours, the TV news was full of as much misinformation as Twitter was after the Marathon, but there was no way to verify it or to check competing sources. I have a particular memory of being briefly under the impression that bombs were falling on Washington DC- (I think the result of some confusion about rumors that flight 93 had been shot down over Pennsylvania by fighter jets, the news about the Pentagon, and repeated use of the phrase “America is under attack.”) Once I got the news from my family, I turned the TV off and never really turned it back on again to get news about the events, because just that one hour had been so overwhelming.

In other words, I’m not disputing anything that was written here, but for me, the ability to have some control of the firehose of information via social media and alternative news outlets was well worth the (possibly) larger amount of speculation that took place on those platforms.

inbroadwayvalley: thesummeroflike: aegisaglow: thesummeroflike: peewentz: are oranges named...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:39:49 -0400

inbroadwayvalley:

thesummeroflike:

aegisaglow:

thesummeroflike:

peewentz:

are oranges named orange because they’re orange or is orange called orange because oranges are orange

which came first: the orange or orange

Orange was first used to refer to the fruit around 1300 but not used as a color word until around 1540.

then what was the colour called before then

there was no colour everything was in black and white

Not as ridiculous as you might think: listen to this mind-blowing episode of Radiolab about the the “discovery” of the color blue.

Last night I had a dream that I was working on my dissertation....

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:49:00 -0400

Last night I had a dream that I was working on my dissertation. My dissertation involved searching for treasure in my yard. Every time I found a new clue to the treasure, I wrote it up in chapter form, and turned it into my advisors. At the end of the dream, I discovered the place where the treasure was hidden kind of by accident, and it turned out that it was empty and full of rot and disgustingness and skeletons, but I didn’t care because it meant I was done with my dissertation.* It was the happiest dream I’ve had in months, so nice I turned off my alarm in my sleep just so I could keep having it.

Now I wake up and I see this article where a person is boasting about writing a dissertation about zombies. In all the articles about the deep, bone-crushing regret graduate students in the humanities feel about having made terrible life choices, they never talk about how it feels to sit on your couch in the morning wondering if you’d be less deeply, deeply bored at the prospect of going back to your chapters if, back in the day, you’d chosen a subject with slightly more intrinsic interest, like treasure hunts, or zombies.**

*If there’s any more on-the-nose representation my subconscious could have offered about my deep desire just to get to the finish line and turn this thing in regardless of its merit, I can’t think of one.

**The answer is no. Dissertations make everything boring. The real brag in this post is “This…was the focus of my dissertation and I find it absolutely fascinating.”Lies!

Edit: Except that now, I’m seeing that this person is British, and I believe they call their undergraduate senior thesis “dissertations.” I learned this after a fight on the internet when some guy claimed to have written two dissertations, and I was all, “Bullshit, you liar!” but then it turned out to be all just a charming cultural misunderstanding. Fun times.

I should really go write my dissertation now.

criminalwisdom:

Clairvius Narcisse: Dead Man Walking

When I was at Uni this kind of thing was the focus of my dissertation and I find it absolutely fascinating:

In April, 1962, [Clairvius Narcisse] checked himself into hospital in the town of Deschapelle in Haiti. [He] had been sick for some time, complaining of fever, body aches, and general malaise, but recently had begun coughing up blood. His condition deteriorated rapidly. Physicians noted that Narcisse suffered from digestive disorders, pulmonary edema, hypothermia, respiratory difficulties, and hypotension … his lips turned blue [and] he reported tingling sensations all over his body. Two days later his two attending physicians, one of whom was American and the other American-trained, pronounced Narcisse dead and he was buried the next day.

Eighteen years later, [his sister] was walking through the village marketplace when she was approached by someone claiming to be Clairvius Narcisse. The man identified himself by a boyhood nickname which which was known only to members of the immediate family, and he had a bizarre tale to tell…

He said that as he was pronounced dead he felt as if his skin was on fire, with insects crawling beneath it. He heard his sister Angelina weeping and felt the sheet being pulled up over his face. Although he was unable to move or speak, he remained lucid and aware the entire time, even as his coffin was nailed shut and buried. He even had a scar which he claimed was sustained as one of the coffin nails was driven through his face. There he remained, for how long he did not know, until the coffin as opened by the bokor (sorcerer) and his henchmen. He was beaten into submission, bound, gagged, and spirited away to a sugar plantation that was to be his home for the next two years.

On the plantation, Narcisse and other zombies labored from sunup to sunset, pausing for only one meal a day. He would later report that he passed his time there in a dream-like state, devoid of will or volition, with events unfolding before him as if in slow motion. They were given a paste made from datura which at certain doses has a hallucinogenic effect and can cause memory loss. When the boker was killed, and the regular doses of the hallucinogen stopped, the slaves were able to regain their senses and escape.

Two scientists investigating Narcisse’s claims have concluded that Narcisse was initially poisoned by a dose of a chemical mixture containing tetrodotoxin (pufferfish venom) and bufotoxin (toad venom) to induce a coma which mimicked the appearance of death. The instigator of the poisoning was thought to be Narcisse’s brother, with whom he had quarrelled over land. Upon returning to his village after the death of his brother Narcisse was immediately recognised. When he told the story of how he was dug up from his grave and enslaved, the villagers were surprised, but accepted his story because they believed that his experience was a result of voodoo magic.

[Sources: Much more detailed article here : Wikipedia]

(Source: theoddmentemporium)

Xander being all pissy about the bad things Angel did when he was Angelus is just as dumb as someone...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:51:31 -0400

Xander being all pissy about the bad things Angel did when he was Angelus is just as dumb as someone blaming Xander for the people he ate when he was a hyena.

help I’ve fallen and am perfectly capable of getting up but refuse to

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:10:44 -0400

help I’ve fallen and am perfectly capable of getting up but refuse to