via The Apiary
This picture makes me laugh. Also, that plaid is at least 95% the same as my high school uniform.
They captured the infamous Whines SmirkTM.
This is the only thing i have ever liked
I made it a mere 56 seconds before laughing so hard I was crying.
(via capucha)
What does your Tumblr username mean?
Doctor’s Protege means I am the protege of the Doctor [Who] so you betta watch out because I will be picking my companion soon.
Kirsten Teasdale is at the top of that list, probably because I have traveled with her the most out of anyone who is not in my family. And we still like each other, and can still do cool things like write a book and run a blog together.
I think that would translate well to navigating the whole of timeandspace.
PS - my selection of a female as my companion does not indicate an overall gender preference for my life. Just a top travel gender preference. FACTS!
I would be useless against aliens, but would travel with the Doctor in a hot second anyway.
I was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz as a kid, and my favorite kind of shoes are red ones. I am really picky about what sneakers I wear though, so I currently have no ruby sneakers, thus making me a liar.
Ayla Bear
at yesterday’s mom’s group we got a little frisky with cuteness
My head exploded from all the cute and now my cat is covered in glitter and tiny unicorns.
When the Stupak anti-choice amendment passed, and so entered the health reform bill, no congressional representative stood up on the floor of the House to recount how access to abortion had saved her life or her family’s well-being. And where were the tea-baggers when we needed them? If anything represents the true danger of “government involvement” in healthcare, it’s a health reform bill that — if the Senate enacts something similar — will snatch away all but the wealthiest women’s right to choose.
It’s not just that abortion is deemed a morally trickier issue than mammography. To some extent, pink-ribbon culture has replaced feminism as a focus of female identity and solidarity. When a corporation wants to signal that it’s “woman friendly,” what does it do? It stamps a pink ribbon on its widget and proclaims that some miniscule portion of the profits will go to breast cancer research. I’ve even seen a bottle of Shiraz called “Hope” with a pink ribbon on its label, but no information, alas, on how much you have to drink to achieve the promised effect. When Laura Bush traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2007, what grave issue did she take up with the locals? Not women’s rights (to drive, to go outside without a man, etc.), but “breast cancer awareness.” In the post-feminist United States, issues like rape, domestic violence, and unwanted pregnancy seem to be too edgy for much public discussion, but breast cancer is all apple pie.
So welcome to the Women’s Movement 2.0: Instead of the proud female symbol — a circle on top of a cross — we have a droopy ribbon. Instead of embracing the full spectrum of human colors — black, brown, red, yellow, and white — we stick to princess pink. While we used to march in protest against sexist laws and practices, now we race or walk “for the cure.” And while we once sought full “consciousness” of all that oppresses us, now we’re content to achieve “awareness.”
—
Barbara Ehrenreich, Salon (via thepoliticalpartygirl)
Today in writers we love.
(via newsweek)
(via mzchief)
(via ackb)
Goddess bless Barbara Ehrenreich.
(via apatosaurus)
(via bmckinney)
(via kelsium)
There are those hearts that never mend again once they are broke. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman.
—
Kaite CaMillo, The Tale of Despereaux (via quotewhore) (via libraryland) (via chrysilla)
This is a very sweet little book.
Eight Dollars
Not unless you make $ as a performer, in some capacity, and it’s your profession to the IRS. At least that’s my understanding of it.
binu:
Actually you can get your improv & sketch classes written off.
If the IRS allowed us to declare ourselves ‘budding or amateur comedians’ there would be a way to allow all ‘bit’ items and props and costumes to be non-taxable.
Classes too. And drinks for open mics, but not for post-show drinks.
And therapy would be provided free of charge!
Anyway, I’ve gotten off topic. I bought salad cream for my show yesterday. Salad cream is a UK version of mayonnaise. It was $8, and that was the cheapest one I found (it’s $10 at Gristedes). I tried it at the begining of my spank and it tastes like limey-fermented Miracle Whip. I almost gagged. It manages to remove all the things I love about mayonnaise and replace them with nightmares.
Worth it though.
Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater: A Return To Redemption"
I just went to a movie theater and sat through the simulcast of Glenn Beck’s one-man show. I’m going to try to organize my thoughts. It’s not going to be easy. It was crazy.
I went with my hilarious friend Brendan McLoughlin, who bought the crucial pre-show drinks. That put me in charge of the tickets, which I purchased like a teenager buying porn. “Two for the Glenn Beck thing,” I whispered into the microphone. We were a minute or two late, so in the dark I couldn’t tell who was there for real and who for fun. But out of courtesy to both parties, there really should have been an open mockery section.
Glenn Beck starts crying almost immediately. Like, in his introductory comments. Like, very early in his introductory comments. Like, literally fifteen seconds into the show. And his tears are the tears of someone who’s trying very, very hard to produce tears. Is there anything more uncomfortable than being in the presence of someone who’s trying to make himself cry? As it happens, yes: being in a movie theater full of people who are eating it the fuck up. The open mockery section, we learned right away, held exactly two people.
“This is my story,” he tells us, “This is YOUR story.” And thus begins “The Christmas Sweater,” which I will do my best to summarize: [Spoiler alert, just in case.]
Glenn, who calls himself “Eddie,” is the son of a poor but proud baker who dies of cancer when Eddie is 10, leaving Eddie and his poor but proud mother alone and poor but proud. For Christmas two years later, Eddie wants a bike, and his mother is working extra jobs to make his Christmas dreams come true. But under the tree, Eddie finds nothing for himself but a sweater, a sweater his mother knitted for him, a sweater that she promises “is just like the ones at Sears that cost $40, and you know there’s no money for that.”
(If she’s right, and Eddie does know there’s no money for that, you have to wonder why Eddie thought there would be money for a much more expensive item like a bike, or why she didn’t level with the kid- who at 12 is certainly old enough to handle it- before Christmas. Anyway:)
Oh, he HATES that itchy old Christmas sweater! He throws it on the floor when he gets back to his room! And then his mom comes in and sees it all in a heap, and she’s heartbroken. And that’s when he realizes that the sweater was LOVE, and love is what’s important. But he hates that sweater and he angrily puts it on for the drive to his grandparents’ house for Christmas dinner, but then he sees his mother’s face and realizes that the sweater is made of human kindness. Stupid sweater! Seriously, it goes back and forth like this approximately 827 times.
Eddie and his mother and grandparents eat poverty and pride, and then Eddie says he wants to go home and play with his friends’ gifts, because they probably got great toys. So they make the drive home, whereupon his mother falls asleep at the wheel and dies. We have not yet reached the point in the story when Glenn Beck lies onstage in the fetal position.
(Oh, also, at key moments, an obese black woman comes out and sings. She’s some kind of one-woman gospel-choir Greek chorus, and I’m not sure she didn’t wander in from another show entirely. ANYWAY:)
Eddie goes to live with his grandparents, and meets their neighbor Russell, who is, and this is a direct quote, “covered with every speck of dirt from every farm in the world.” Russell talks like a homeless Pepperidge Farm guy who owns one self-help book. “You know, this horse is kind of like you.” “You know, this old house here is kind of like you.” “You know, my pleurisy is kind of like you.” Everything is kind of like Glenn Beck.
So Eddie and his grandpa, who you have correctly guessed is cantankerous, have trouble getting along, because they both blame themselves for Mom falling asleep at the wheel. Eddie learns that that bike he wanted was in his grandpa’s shed all along, and if he hadn’t been such a dick, he would have gotten it. So he gets furious and runs away for some reason.
He rides his bike into some cornfield and hits a rock and falls down, and he’s too far away from home to walk back, and phones don’t exist, so he’s stuck. And then A STORM APPROACHES! A violent storm that’s whipping cornstalks right out of the ground! Where can young Eddie go? This is the part where he gets into the fetal position. Mo’Nique sings him back out of it.
That’s when Russell approaches, and tells him he needs to walk through the storm. (If we’re this far away from where he lives, you have to assume Russell came by car, so another option would be to drive into or around it, thereby staying dry. Don’t think too hard about it or we’ll send the black lady out.) “You need to walk through it to get to the other side, Eddie! This CORNFIELD is the dangerous place! You know, this storm,” I swear to God, you guys, “is kind of like YOU.” So Russell takes Eddie by the hand and they make the really poor decision to walk through a cornfield in a tornado. They make it to the other side where it’s peaceful and dry, and then EDDIE WAKES UP AND HIS MOM WALKS IN.
It was all a dream. (Or, not ALL of it, just the part after he was a dick at his grandparents’ house. Mom’s alive, Dad is still poor and proud and dead.) So now Glenn Beck believes in God and his heart grows three sizes and he carves the roast beast. Jennifer Religious Holiday comes out and sings a song about how dreams can come true if you believe. (Even though this particular dream was about our hero’s mother dying in a car wreck.)
So that’s how 12-year-old Glenn Beck learned to love himself and God and family. And then later he became a cokehead morning-zoo DJ and now he’s a dick on TV thank you and goodnight!
AND THEN THE CAMERA PULLS BACK FROM A MOVIE SCREEN, and we realize that we’ve been watching Glenn Beck watch last year’s “Christmas Sweater” performance. “This is the first time I’ve seen it since I performed it,” he tells us. (Really? You didn’t take a look, just to give yourself some notes? Your director didn’t play some things back for you? Really, Glenn?)
He then cries.
Glenn reveals that Simon & Schuster urged him to give his story the happy ending we just saw, and that in reality, Mom didn’t come back. In reality reality, Glenn Beck’s dad didn’t die at all, his parents divorced when he was 13, and his mother actually died a few years later, in what he says was a suicide. So this whole thing turns out to be a dream within a memoir, which he’s turned into a work of fiction, which he altered on his publishers’ advice, which he’s broadcasting himself live watching himself perform a year ago. And actually on a three-hour delay for us here on the West Coast. Jesus, now I’m starting to cry.
He then cuts to taped packages profiling folks whose lives have been changed by his powerful story that isn’t true. (One of them is a heroin addict who makes a point of revealing that his heavy use started on 9/11.) Their stories are intercut with pull-quotes, not from their own words, but from Glenn’s. “Walk through your storm,” etc. At this point, we had had all we could stand.
The moral, which he helpfully spelled out for us just before we split was “Don’t be a victim,” which is a solid message. Too bad he put it across by pretending to cry for 90 minutes.
Anyway, I feel like I get him now. He is plainly a frustrated, self-desctructive, angry guy, and what he’s trying to do in saying untenable, indefensible things on TV is what other people accomplish by getting punched in the nuts by a dominatrix. He wants to be punished. He may prove to have some worthwhile things to say in the future, but right now he’s playing out some weird childhood drama in front of all of us. Let’s do him and ourselves a favor and start ignoring him.
After all: you know, Glenn Beck is kind of like you.
I hate reblogging super long commentary, but really, this was too hilarious not to share.
Glenn Beck is both amusing and scary. More amusing than scary, though, and this is full of win.
Would it be too much to get this book for my Glenn Beck loving father, as a lesson to him about why loving Glenn Beck is incredibly stupid?
Straight up, too good not to reblog, even though I want desperately to ignore this bastard!
Howie Day, She Says. Apparently it’s 2001 up in this bitch today.
Eight Dollars
Oh man, thank you so much! I am glad you enjoyed the show but OMG I hate seafood so much - that sounds awful! Seriously almost gagged reading that, haha. Oh man, I love everything else about England, but not the damn condiments!
Salad cream is currently in my fridge waiting for me to think of more jokes to do about it so I didn’t spend $8 on one bit.
I just want to publicly say that I loved your Spank! So much fun! I hope you get a run, because mama loves the quiz shows!
PS I love salad cream. Take it from this half limey; go and get yourself some little shrimp (or “Prawns” as half of my family calls them). Mix in some salad cream, and stuff this into half an avocado. You’ll be a happy Rubysneakers!
xx
If the IRS allowed us to declare ourselves ‘budding or amateur comedians’ there would be a way to allow all ‘bit’ items and props and costumes to be non-taxable.
Classes too. And drinks for open mics, but not for post-show drinks.
And therapy would be provided free of charge!
Anyway, I’ve gotten off topic. I bought salad cream for my show yesterday. Salad cream is a UK version of mayonnaise. It was $8, and that was the cheapest one I found (it’s $10 at Gristedes). I tried it at the begining of my spank and it tastes like limey-fermented Miracle Whip. I almost gagged. It manages to remove all the things I love about mayonnaise and replace them with nightmares.
Worth it though.
Eight Dollars
If the IRS allowed us to declare ourselves ‘budding or amateur comedians’ there would be a way to allow all ‘bit’ items and props and costumes to be non-taxable.
Classes too. And drinks for open mics, but not for post-show drinks.
And therapy would be provided free of charge!
Anyway, I’ve gotten off topic. I bought salad cream for my show yesterday. Salad cream is a UK version of mayonnaise. It was $8, and that was the cheapest one I found (it’s $10 at Gristedes). I tried it at the beginning of my spank and it tastes like limey-fermented Miracle Whip. I almost gagged. It manages to remove all the things I love about mayonnaise and replace them with nightmares.
Worth it though.
I was fairly certain that when you exclaimed onstage, “it’s like a limey Miracle Whip,” you were thinking of the citrus-fruit-as-an-adjective. But I and probably at least the Brit in the audience also heard the word in it’s other sense. Intentional or not, it was a brilliant double-entendre.
P.S. You can claim that bottle of salad creme as a deduction, but only against income made as a comedian. So, if you plan to make at least $8 by doing comedy in the next few years, fill out a Schedule C.
Entendre intentional.
