Oh, man. The guy who says "have I just been polled?" Cracked me up.
According to his follow-up post, he did get some late responses which narrowed the margin and reduced his predictive accuracy. I think that was after the election itself, though, so in terms of predicting in advance he was still right on.
And the varying levels of articulateness are awesome too. The contrast between text-speak and the ones who snap right out of sex-chat-app mode and into discussing politics in complete sentences is really entertaining.
This somehow reminds me of Kieran Healy going on Omegle and demanding that people show him their books.
Ok, if this has come up here before, you'll all let me know, but it's kind of priceless, so just in case it hasn't...
I don't know why you guys are assuming we talk about Tumblrs about Grindr all the time. I'm not sure we ever have before today.
That said, the link in 11 is really something.
Wait are those real non-photoshopped photos where I think they are? Or is there some other joke?
I guess that's actually a Blogspot site rather than a Tumblr. Retro!
14: From the sidebar:
Found another amazing profile pic taken at the Berlin Holocaust memorial? let us know so we can add it to our ever expanding hall of righteous fame
So yeah, just the one joke I think.
Yeah, just one joke. And I actually bristle a bit at stuff like that and the old blog that showed (Manhunt? Craigslist? Something?) photos taken in hideous apartments, because in my mind there should be a self-enforced sanctity to those spaces, but the Holocaust memorial thing is just so weird.
I'll just charitably assume these guys belong to the heebie's-brother-in-law demographic of historical ignorance. That's admittedly a stretch, especially for the ones who are German themselves.
Or, possibly, are taking the principled position that arranging gay sex is one of the most profoundly anti-Nazi acts possible? I'm not saying it's immediately convincing, but there's an argument to be made.
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I'm helping to set up a cookout this afternoon, organized by three different student political groups. The groups span from the center-left the to pretty-far-left, so I'm wondering: what are the chances this event will self-destruct in a circular firing squad?
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I don't know why you guys are assuming we talk about Tumblrs about Grindr all the time. I'm not sure we ever have before today.
Admit that the links in the post are the sort of thing that is apt to already have been brought up. Admit it!
An equally good question is, is there alcohol?
Meat and non-meat and booze provided.
Then I guess it just comes down to your skills of a host.
19: they could have taken pictures at the memorial to gay victims of the holocaust that is directly across the street, if that was what they were aiming for.
If they wanted to be obvious about it. Have you no respect for subtlety?
I always assumed Nazi fetishes were a straight-male thing. This is on the basis of Max Mosley and things like this.
I always assumed Nazi fetishes were a straight-male thing.
arranging gay sex is one of the most profoundly anti-Nazi acts possible
NICHT!
31: I thought everyone in Finland just looked and dressed that way.
I always assumed Nazi fetishes were a straight-male thing.
I think the common ground between Nazis and gay men is probably a shared love of musical theatre. (The link between the far right and the West End is well-documented; most famously, of course, "Evita" was written because Andrew Lloyd Webber was trying to make the case that a military dictatorship might be rather a good thing for Britain.)
And then he followed it with Cats in hopes that Argentina could hold the Falklands merely by broadcasting "Memory" over loudspeakers.
But Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, that one really was just a dude and a coat.
Anyway, I hope it is true that Nazis loved musical theater because that would let me feet better about being annoyed by it.
I was really annoyed by Gypsy. A whole musical about strippers and no nudity.
The post about John Crawford has fallen off the front page, so I have to say here that I had a 102 fever last night, though it's down with medication, and my doctor wants me to wear a mask if I'm out in public and stay in bed as much as possible. That makes me think a 12-mile march tomorrow is not a great idea and I'm really sad about that, also super upset about other things. I have to be extra nice to Lee, the kids, and my whole extended family tonight when what I want is to yell at just about everyone and curl up and cry or something. Ugh. But at least the strep test was negative, so I'm probably not immediately getting the kids sick after solo-parenting all day yesterday and now I still have to tonight. Blech.
Aw, sorry to hear that, Thorn. Feel better soon!
Admit that the links in the post are the sort of thing that is apt to already have been brought up. Admit it!
Never!
Why do you have to do anything or be nice to anybody when you have a fever? What kind of nightmare world do you live in?
Being gay isn't all just casual sex and posing at Holocaust memorials, Walt. Sometimes you need to be nice to people when you have a fever.
Here's some music that makes for good fever listening:
Tony Conrad & Faust - Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive
Alvin Lucier - Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra
Robert Ashley - In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women
Anthony Moore - Reeds, Whistle, and Sticks
Note that despite the title the Lucier is actually for solo triangle, so don't be confused if you look on YouTube.
Marriage has ruined being gay, just as queer activists predicted.
43, 47: children make it worse. I'd told the girls I'd take them to my parents' for my dad's birthday and Lee won't go because she's offended they told her she needs to be a more active parent and that it hurts their feelings that when she does go to their house she ignores them and hangs out with their neighbor, though I'm not sure why not going at all makes any of that better. So she's home watching football and I'm sitting on my parents' deck and making the girls stay close so I can keep track of them all without having to get up. This sucks, but I'm being as festive as I can manage and suspect Lee would have stuck me with the kids for dinner anyway because she's mad I'm sick and blames me for not resting enough. Again, it's not clear why the obvious response is to make me do more, but whatever.
Feel better soon, Thorn. I hope the extended family tells you to sit and rest while they wrangle the girls. I hope they come home just tired enough to make bedtime easy.
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Watching topless dom ladies kicking a fellow soundly in the balls over and over at Folsom. Because we're feminists.
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So, no liveblogging from New Yorkers about today's climate march? I'm kind of wishing I had gone although I had a bunch of other stuff to catch up on today. I'm also feeling surprisingly angry at one usually reasonable physicist I know who linked today's WSJ article about climate change by Steven Koonin.
Kids went, as did various packs of their friends. I didn't, in favor of laundry and grocery shopping.
Two of Zardoz's grandparents went and carried a banner that said they were marching for her, which was very poignant.
And you got ran things through the dryer twice and asked for double plastic bags?
Although "WE MARCH FOR ZARDOZ" must have been a confusing message for most people who saw it.
"The gun is good, the penis is evil" bespeaks a fairly hardcore flavor of environmentalism, admittedly.
Signs from the march that have shown up in my feed:
A fried Earth is no yolk
Stewardship or sinking ship
(on a cow) I am full of greenhouse gas, do you have a steak in it?
There is no planet B
Save the Earth. My mom lives there.
A grim reaper/gas mask guy going around holding a sign above random people that says, "Endangered species"
I sort of went to the march. I mean, I went, but we ended up having to leave before the part we were in started actually marching. It took two hours to get from 86th to 83rd, and I needed to eat sit down and then get on a train. Which I am now on, and which seems to be mostly full of other marchers.
66: Yay! Too bad all the rest of us on the blog are such lazy bums.
Ugh, I'm back home 4 hours after leaving with the girls and Lee has gone out to a bar and isn't answering her phone. I'm so over this.
My super cute nephew went. I gotta schelp Φ out to a picket line soon. I decided that the Die In for Gaza wasn't the right place for her protest debut.
54: Essear, can you say what you thought was wrong with that editorial? I would be interested to hear.
Eleanor Roosevelt is the best Roosevelt. I've been visiting grandma all weekend and have a backlog of things to post, which will resume tomorrow.
Eleanor Roosevelt is the best Roosevelt.
Damn straight.
E Roosevelt's sex appeal was strongly attested to in the first volume of Anita Loos' autobiography, of all places. I'll try and track down the passage, but no index as I recall.
I think Roosevelt Franklin is the best Roosevelt.
72: No, it's horrible. Lee finally came home after I'd gotten Selah to sleep and woke her up, which I hate and think is totally inappropriate, but then let me go to bed. But then woke me again by yelling and because Selah wanted me during Bedtime 2.0 and proceeded to lecture me about how the reason I'm sick is that I'm trying to be all things to all people and I need to quit what I do for the school and focus on taking care of my family. So I tried to stay calm while rocking the baby and told her the biggest strain and biggest situation where someone's taking advantage of me is this relationship. She just lectured me again about all the things she does to tidy the house and the things she pays for and that I'm an ingrate because I was annoyed she didn't feed the girls or give them medicine when she let me sleep in yesterday because I was sick. I kept trying to ask her to listen to me and she just mocked me, and finally she wanted to know what she could do and I said she needed to listen or if she wasn't ever going to listen or take me seriously to figure out a way we can break up ethically. And so she went downstairs and yelled to the older girls that I want to break up and she doesn't even know what's wrong with me. This is after Mara has been in crying hysterics twice this weekend because she claims not to think I love her, so I expect all sorts of repercussions to that, but she got them snacks and treats and is manipulating them into saying that her steaks are better than the ones my dad makes. I am sick and horrified and upset and at the end of my rope. Supposedly we'll talk after the girls are in bed, but she's been livid all weekend and I'm not going to have a good enough filter when I feel this awful. I am really disappointed and upset.
"Sometimes we [AL, Norma and Constance Talmadge] all took lunch at Dinty Moore's, which resembled a vast yet cozy kitchen and was even further warmed by the sex appeal of its patrons, many of whom belonged to the sporting fraternity. But we went to Dinty's without Peg [Talmadge mère], who was uneasy among such stark virility. She may have been thinking of Mr. Talmadge when she'd proclaim, 'Those crumb-bums never hand a girl anything but grief!' Just the same, we seldom had to pay a lunch tab at Dinty'; some Broadway gallant would always waylay it before it reached our table.
Dinty's was convenient to Tin Pan Alley, the stronghold of the song writers. One of them, John Golden, was a regular at Dinty's, and in addition to composing the popular song 'Poor Butterfly,' he was equally successful as a producer of Broadway shows. Johnny also pretended an interest in public affairs, which may only have been an excuse for his attentions to the neglected young wife of the rising politico Franklin D. Roosevelt.
There are those who pity Eleanor Roosevelt for having had no sex appeal, but I, for one, feel otherwise. It seems to me that the compose of 'Poor Butterfly' was a much finer conquest than any gullible member of the Yalta Conference. People will forever be turned on by that torch song of Johnny's, and it was Eleanor Roosevelt who turned him [add ital. to 'him'] on."
From the book re: the Talmadge sisters. The passage continues with a backhanded compliment to E Roosevelt's "ladylike charm" by way of casting aspersions on her gustatory judgment, but you get the drift. Loos often quite in solidarity with other bi women/lesbians,* but her political leanings (waaaaay rightward) and general bitchiness got the better of her here.
I was going to add something peaceable along the lines of the if Burns dude worked this into his documentary I might feel slightly inclined to some repentance re: the egregious hairdo, but truth be told - no. It's just inexcusable, that haircut.
*The best argument for Loos' lesbianism being not her 30-yr devoted relationship with Gladys de Kalb, but how she goes on and on and on about her unrequited physical attraction to HL Mencken. She could very well have just stuck with the intellectual infatuation, but goes out of her way to praise his physical attraction for her. Clincher? She includes a photo of the man in the book.
Ugh, Thorn, I'm so sorry. That sounds utterly wretched.
Wow, Thorn, mega-apologies for posting possibly the most frivolous and inconsequential thing ever, your post wasn't there when I rattled all that in.
If there is any way you can avoid hashing things out whilst fevered/ill/sleep deprived that seems like it might be sensible. May not be possible, though.
There is a dark, dark place reserved by fate for those who wake sleeping babies.
It's certainly been this bad and gotten better before, but there's no one I can reach out to who'd have any impact on her and I really just have to wait and see if she calms down and regrets anything once whatever this fury is passes, if she even remembers, which she often doesn't.
Last night was the couples communication class we've been taking at the church and she supposedly slept through the first two hours and then refused to talk because she was still mad at me from the day before once she did get there, so she just sat and wouldn't participate or anything. The pastor offered to watch our children so we could talk through what made her mad in the first place and she said she has no interest in talking. It's not like her to stay angry all weekend and I don't think I even did anything to upset her when she suddenly exploded about how she shouldn't have to empty the dishwasher and fold laundry, though she clearly remembers things differently. I wish I knew what was going on and I wish I could just hide and make it go away, but it doesn't work that way.
And so she went downstairs and yelled to the older girls that I want to break up and she doesn't even know what's wrong with me.
Thorn, that is well and truly awful. Please take care of yourself. And do what you need t do for yourself as well as the girls. Even if that means that you *do* break up. (Not saying you should, just that you need to make sure that your own needs are met.)
You're in my thoughts.
Oh shit, Thorn. I'm really really sorry to hear things are so bad. Have you two done counseling/therapy? Is Lee unwilling? What does she want to happen if not make things better?
82 crossed with 80. Couples communication sounds like a step that could lead in the right direction, but right now it's hard to see it going that way.
Oh Thorn. How miserable. FWIW, I think you're a fucking saint, and you deserve all the best.
Oh, dairy queen, no worries. It was sort of nice to think about hanging out with young ER and the girls. And I'm okay right now.
Lee is going to put the older girls to bed and I said that I would talk because she mocked me for always wanting to put that off (and again, that makes no sense because her other complaint is that I always want to talk and it's stupid) and then she got mad at me for both telling her she can't control the conversation because she thinks I should only answer anything she says as yes/no or with at most one sentence so I don't get boring and then asking her to stop making front of me in front of the girls and being passive-aggressive, which is trying to control the conversation. It's just stupid and nonsensical and she says it's making her miserable to have to live with me too, so maybe that's the problem but I think it's something deeper. Maybe we'll get to that or maybe I can just let her rant and then plead illness and go to bed.
Lee comes across as reincarnated 1960 husband/dad.
Whatever you do, Thorn, don't contemplate Mencken's body! Don't want to send you to the ER!
Thorn, I'm sorry you're totally without either help or at least some sympathy. I hope you get some rest. Everything is worse when you're sick and tired, too. That's an inexcusable thing to say to the girls, and I hope they aren't too upset. Take care.
Yeah, Lee quit couples counseling again a few months ago. She did a round of therapy herself (CBT) and graduated from that and thinks I'm the only one who needs to go to counseling because I'm a mess and unhappy, whereas she's got the life she wants.
I do like the couples communication class. I'm planning to teach the technique to the girls once I have it down. There are two floor mats, one with an awareness wheel that lets the speaker delineate the issue she's concerned with and one for the listener. It's a four-week class and next week we'll learn how to cycle through it multiple times toward resolution.
I'm actually not as viscerally upset now that I've ranted about all of this. I do think that whatever's going on doesn't have a ton to do with me. Probably this is about the new job and it's definitely about biochemical stuff going on, but it's awful. I guess it probably feels pretty bad from her perspective too.
I'm hoping the girls didn't get it. I did go down and check on them once Selah was asleep and I think if they were horrified or upset they'd have gotten up to hold me or something. I don't know. I anticipate them needing me a lot in the night, but maybe they'll be fine. I probably won't bring it up directly because I don't want to have to talk about it, but there should be other ways to make sure they are feeling okay. They get upset anyway when I'm sick, which I think is what has been getting to Mara all weekend anyway.
I do think that whatever's going on doesn't have a ton to do with me.
Yeah, the sheer incoherence and logical inconsistency of the stuff she says in these fights makes it sounds like she's reacting on an emotional level to something she can't or won't articulate, which probably has nothing to do with you or anything specific to the situation.
(PS: Seasonal depression? Irritability is one of those depression symptoms I usually put together too late for it to be useful.)
82.last: I'm guessing for me to quit doing things that take me out of the house and also spend more time cleaning the house and letting her go out more. She also complained we don't spend much time together, but I think she's gone out every night this week and so that seems like more of a timesuck than my one 2-hour meeting, especially because I had the girls with me for the first hour of it. She kept saying that my first priority has to be myself, which is what pushed me into saying that I don't think she wants that because she's the one who takes advantage of me most. She wants me to stop doing things just because no one else will do them (outside the home) and focus on our family and making them the most important people in my life. I'm not sure what gives her the idea they aren't, because that's not how I feel or what I'd expect it to look like from the outside!
I do think she loves me to the extent she's able to. I've tried to keep realistically low expectations for the relationship, to the point where basically none of what normal people consider relationship needs are being met at all for me, because I really don't think a breakup would be good for the girls after they've been through instability so many other times. I don't think I'm a saint, but I know I've been doing a lot or maybe too much because I've been trying not to make my uncrossable lines too easy to cross. I just don't understand being in a relationship with someone and not caring whether that person is happy. I know she's right to some degree that I'm responsible for my own happiness, but it would be a lot easier if she'd listen to me and do the things I'm asking her to do for me.
93: Ooh, maybe an equinox thing? Is that something that happens? It definitely was about this time last year that things went off the rails and not long after the year before. She's also mixing medication-type things that she shouldn't, and I know that's explicitly an issue right now and that at some point she'll also realize it is. She went off her medication for a while in the summer without telling me and that was bad.
Lots of love and invisible support to you, Thorn.
And I'm really sorry all of you have to hear this. It must be incredibly frustrating to see me having the same complaints and same struggles for years and years and years. I had a fever dream this morning that we had an emergency call about Val and Alex, who are indeed back in care and probably headed for adoption this time, and for some reason we took them and it was so nice in the dream to be able to hug them again. But it reminded me that we've been in cycles where Lee completely checks out for at least the last three years and even the year before that, when Mara joined the family, she wasn't doing what she'd promised she would and was putting too much on me.
The girls are laughing delightedly as she tucks them in, so I don't think there are any hard feelings on their part now. I may sign off here soon so we can either talk or not. I'm grateful that I've written most of my fury out. I'm still very sad, but I can live with that.
She went off her medication for a while in the summer without telling me and that was bad.
Uh, yeah.
I used to have really bad SAD. A dawn simulator helps me a lot, and I don't need a light box. Therapy too, but different meds made it much more bearable.
I'm responsible for my own happiness
Fair warning. Spend enough time here and, if the therapist says that during couples counseling, it becomes almost impossible not to follow with a masturbation joke. This represent half of what I learned in couples counseling.
Spend enough time here and, if the therapist says that during couples counseling, it becomes almost impossible not to follow with a masturbation joke.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Sympathy from me too, Thorn. This all sounds super rough.
Ok, how did I manage to write my name as "fake access"? I guess I will take consolation in the fact that I spelled those words correctly.
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Reporting back from the lefty picnic: the event went off well. We had just enough food and too much booze. Several groups successfully organized among the crowd, including: (1) some 3Ls from a student group that advocates for reproductive rights, who recruited some 1Ls to keep the group alive; and (2) a Mark Warner campaign volunteer, recruiting for observing the polls and GOTV. There were also jello shots.
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I'm with 84. This all sounds much worse than anything I could handle.
End of the story is that she finished her beer and tv show, came upstairs, was baffled that I'd stayed up to talk to her, said that she had no interest in talking, put her arm around me (which is very unusual) and said she loved me, at which point I immediately started to cry. So she said I had no reason to cry, which I hate but didn't respond to, and then she fell asleep and I came downstairs to get more Gatorade and get myself together. She may already have forgotten a lot of the disagreement, which is part of the reason I seem to carry around a lot more hard feelings than she does.
And yay for Stanley's party! Sounds like fun, and throwing a successful party is sort of its own reward but definitely something to be proud of!
51: that sounds way more interesting than anything I saw.
Erm, also, Thorn, I sincerely hope things improve!
We had just enough food and too much booze.
Scarcity was always going to be your biggest threat.
Take care, Thorn, i hope things get better.
Eek! Thorn that sounds terrible (and it seems very weird to me that she can be so hurtful and not have a reason -- have it just be an emotional outburst).
Be well, Thorn; I hope it gets better.
I'm not sure what gives her the idea they aren't, because that's not how I feel or what I'd expect it to look like from the outside!
Just in case you were actually wondering, it's not at all how it looks from the outside.
Hope you sleep/slept last night and are feeling healthier this morning. It's horrible to be someone else's emotional punchbag - they get rid of their frustrations, you feel completely battered. Why does she not remember things? That sounds kind of odd.
Why does she not remember things? That sounds kind of odd.
Yeah, agreed. Maybe all the drinking has something to do with it?
Why does she not remember things? That sounds kind of odd.
Actually, I do that. Or at least, if I'm stressed and an argument has gone on for a while I can sometimes find myself struggling to remember the details later. Although it'd be rare to entirely misremember, or forget everything.
Just in case you were actually wondering, it's not at all how it looks from the outside.
Seconding this. I know it's not the done thing to rag on other people's partners, but Lee does sound like she is completely out of order. IDP is right in 86.
Not remembering inconvenient facts is a pretty common way that my family "resolves" disputes and gives the claimant a way to maintain that they were acting in good faith, and is super maddening to the person who is upset.
115: or the "mixing medication-type things".
It also keeps behaviors and arguments from being a pattern and leaves them as isolated incidents, so even when someone behaves badly, it's easier to write off.
I did sleep and do feel somewhat better, will be much better after I sleep all day.
The memory thing is complicated. It's what ttaM says, that it shuts down when she's upset. teo's also right that drinking isn't going to help. She did fail a memory test for long-term care insurance in her mid-40s but then followed up with her doctor and did badly but not in the dangerous range on the ones she's taken since. Her job thing had nothing to do with her memory, and she's very careful about writing everything students tell her or ask for in her planner, and at this job and the last one she's been better than usual at remembering students' names and backstories. (Though now that I've written this I see that she left a textbook and stack of tests at home and she's not answering her phone so I can tell her that. I think my answer will be that I'm not driving 45 minutes each way to bring her the stuff she needs if she did in fact forget.)
She just has no interest in paying attention when I'm talking. Partly it's little things, like that I've only worked with 15 people in the whole time we've been a couple and yet she's only bothered to learn three of my coworkers' names despite meeting all of them many times, whereas I know all the secretaries' kids and her coworkers' interests and histories at the four jobs she's had. It's one of the things I was trying to get resolved when she quit couples counseling, that it's not fair that she gets upset with me when I remind her of things she remembers but also holds me responsible if she doesn't remember something and often accuses me of making up conversations she doesn't remember, which is maybe my number one hate.
She also thinks of commitments to me as contingent, so if she tells some drunk person in a bar that they'll meet again Tuesday at 8, she thinks it's the right thing to do to blow me off if we have Tuesday plans because she always keeps her promises. I don't know why promises to me don't count, but near-strangers will always be a bigger priority than intimates and what she
And yes, IDP is right in 86. But she actually thinks she's an involved parent or something, or at least that she fits neighborhood norms, which she does not. She says she prioritizes selfishness as a moral code, but I don't know how that works as a parent or how it's supposed to scale and honestly don't think she knows either. I'm trying to get her to ground rules, but she may or may not agree since agreeing to do anything regularly limits the freedom she wants and she may end up disregarding it anyway.
She says she prioritizes selfishness as a moral code
(boggle)
At least it's an ethos, dude.
She says she prioritizes selfishness as a moral code...
I know someone [a relative, not someone I've been in a romantic relationship with] who says almost exactly the same thing. And then complaints that he is being a dick get turned into complaints (by him) that the other person is too much of a wimp to be a selfish dick on their own behalf.
'I'm honest! It's not my fault you can't bring yourself to a dick, too.'*
* I now have the dicks/pussies/assholes speech from 'Team America: ...' in my head.
bring yourself to _BE_ a dick
There is a kernel of good sense in the be-a-dick ethos, insofar as you are ultimately your own advocate, and another person cannot truly be expected to know what you need at a given moment and it is your responsibility to take care of yourself. And one common pitfall for relationships is when people lose track of this and truly expect the other person to know what is wrong and how to fix it, without being told. This is just a digression, having been told I was super selfish in a long ago relationship for not being able to read his mind.
Lee is being a dick, though. I personally boggle at "She just has no interest in paying attention when I'm talking" - how fucking rude!
124.1: oh, agreed (been in the same situation myself). But that's not so much "be selfish" and more "be explicit and honest".
Grrrr. Among the many things that ticked me off was her negging you about crying. She doesn't get to approve the validity of how you feel. Or why.
122 is dead on. 126 drives me up the wall (and she's started doing it to Selah, too, which I am intervening about) but she really doesn't get it. Because she can't handle it when I cry, she thinks it's reasonable to ask me not to cry or something. At least she didn't jump out of the bed and run away or say anything worse this time. She meant it to be comforting, but it's not.
And it turns out she meant to leave the tests at home, forgot her book but will figure something out, and has been acting like nothing negative happened all weekend. Now I get to hang out in bed and rest all day and try not to be overly mopey.
oh Thorn, have some more real sympathy from an imaginary friend.
My dad pretty much does what he wants, but is also incredibly generous time-wise to anyone who is interested in doing whatever he's doing, and incredibly randomly generous gift-wise because it makes him happy to think that he has made someone else happy. Plus he's fucking hilarious. And has no interest in portraying himself as socially normal, so gets away with murder because he's "so eccentric ha ha ha".
I wouldn't want to be married to him though, and it definitely wasn't all plain sailing for him and my mum when us kids were young though (erm, understatement - they got divorced when I was 16/17 and then got remarried to each other again two and a half years later).
I feel awkward now because I also want to express belated appreciation of the OP and Smearcase's bizarre and hilarious link in 11 but I don't want to derail the thread from sympathy with the fevered Thorn. Who is, I hope, at least feeling a bit less fevered today, which will be something.
Would it help if I made an Oedipal joke based on 129?
I don't know what it says about me that I've genuinely spent some time trying to figure out the psychological motivation behind the Grindr holocaust memorial photos. Here's what I've come up with, and I assign about a 50% probability of correctness to Option 1 and 10% to Option 2. Option 1: It's pure unthinking vanity, the concrete monoliths are good settings for photos, so it just happens that people have some relatively hott photos from there and Grindr is a competitive marketplace so you've got to use your best pics no matter what. Option 2: It's a symptom of subconscious still-existing self-loathing; the theory is "if I'm going to be abandoning myself to a world of anonymous gay sex, might as well burn all the psychological bridges keeping me from transgression and pose in front of the holocaust memorial."
I've only worked with 15 people in the whole time we've been a couple and yet she's only bothered to learn three of my coworkers' names despite meeting all of them many times, whereas I know all the secretaries' kids and her coworkers' interests and histories at the four jobs she's had.
Just curious, I wonder if she knows all the secretaries' kids and her coworkers' interests and histories at the four jobs she's had. Some people's brains just aren't set up to remember things like that. Me, for instance. There are people who I've worked in the same office with for years, people whose names I've learned on multiple occasions, but unless I personally interact with them on a regular basis I have trouble remembering their names, let alone the names of their kids.
I'm pretty confident, having been to that memorial, that what's going on is that it's a popular hookup location. It's a powerful and striking memorial but it also has a lot of private space where no one is ever going to find you.
I think it has to be mostly be Option 1. That place is such an amazing, cool piece of public art. Its function as a memorial really takes second place when you're there. There are signs with rules all around the edges (no climbing on the steles, no sunbathing, no hide and seek or other such games), and every single time I've been there, people were doing several of those very things. As are many of the people in those photos on the tumblr.
but it also has a lot of private space where no one is ever going to find you
Wait, what? I don't understand this. It's all straight lines. It could definitely be hard to find a particular person you were looking for in the thing, but where can you go that is out of sight of everyone?
Lots of kids running around the memorial when I was there. Somewhat predictable! It almost looks like it's made for playing on.
Isn't it more ever-so-slightly-not-straight lines? Or maybe I'm thinking of the undulating bottom. So to speak.
It's really big, the ground goes up and down blocking sight lines, and in the dark visibility is going to be poor.
I guess what it is is that the stelae themselves are somewhat twisted/irregular, but the lines between them are straight.
The ground doesn't go up and down THAT much.
Also you know what? I wish people would refer to it, not as the Holocaust memorial, but by a more literal translation of its name in German, viz., "memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe". I would also accept "monument to the murdered Jews of Europe".
142: exactly. And you can't get in there after dark.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that is what I tend to call it!
I haven't been to Berlin since the memorial was built, so what do I know. My sense is that if it's really a public park/hook-up zone it's kind of failed in its purpose as public art, particularly in Berlin, and responsibility for that may lie as much with the artist as with the users. Also according to Wikipedia there was an extremely German controversy because the manufacturer of the anti-graffiti spray used on the stelae was also the parent company of the manufacturer of Zyklon B.
maybe I'm thinking of the undulating bottom
I think this might belong in the other thread.
143 is correct. 136 and 138 are also correct. I actually think ti's a really interesting and sort of potent aspect of that memorial that it makes not remembering so available as an option.
They should have put a gigantic hole with no visible bottom and no guard railing in the middle of Berlin. "Here's your past, Germans, threatening to swallow you up unless you're careful. Don't forget."
It's definitely not a hook-up zone. Strict "respect" isn't enforced, but there's a security presence 24/7. (As there is at any Jewish-related building in Germany.)
151: That would be convincing, except 134 sounds like it may be based on personal experience.
The claim that it has a lot of private space where no one will ever find you in the second sentence of 134 makes me doubt the claim that upetgi has been there in the first sentence.
Huh, Wikipedia also tells me that when the link in 11 originally made the rounds, it provoked enough comment for some examining articles, in Salon and HP, but not much explanation.
Could it also be just the slight phallicism of the blocks? Although there are also people posing in the area where they're much shorter.
150: In the design competition for the memorial, there were things along those lines. Like, put a bus stop in the middle of Berlin that has buses leaving to all of the best known concentration camps. So you'd look up at the departure board and see Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz-Birkenau, etc. Lots of conceptual stuff. No bottomless holes that I remember, though.
Although there are also people posing in the area where they're much shorter.
Honesty?
133: Yes. I learn this from having to listen to her stories every evening. But the Grindr conversation is a lot more interesting. I'm feeling better, sitting around cutting out fabric and decidedly not doing any chores but also not sulking too much.
I just looked up the book where I read about the entries. There was another one that suggested blowing up the Brandenburg Gate and covering the rubble with pieces of granite. ''How better to remember a destroyed people than by a destroyed monument?''
Or the Reichstag. They seem to have gotten along just fine without it for a long time.
I kind of like my giant apparently bottomless hole idea. Maybe I could pitch it to other cities and become the Christo of holes.
The fortress-like, incredibly high security, terrifyingly unwelcoming and fascistic US embassy is, charmingly, right next to the memorial.
Thorn, sorry you're going through this. Speaking from experience, if Thorn is on psych meds and drinking on the heavy side, she may effectively stopping her meds from working. I was drinking a lot this spring in an attempt to self-medicate against depression and only wound up making things worse. I've stopped drinking for now, and while it hasn't been a panacea, it's definitely helped with the depression and with getting my head out of my own ass--which it sounds like Lee could definitely use. Not that I expect she'll hear it from you. (It took my wife threatening to leave me that got me to put the drinking on hold, and it sounds like Lee is even more resistant to hearing things she doesn't want to hear.) Sending you hugs.
For some reason when I see the phrase "Brandenburg Gate" my mind always first jumps to Blade Runner before I realize that was some other German-sounding gate and the Brandenburg Gate is a real thing.
Did anybody make the obvious suggestion of piles of rotting corpses? It's not like they'd have to kill people or anythng -- as Mao Tse-Tung said, people die all the time.
166: that was the Tannhäuser gate which would maybe not make the best holocaust memorial, either.
It's not my fault you can't bring yourself to a dick, too.
Is this another one of those threads about whether or not it's easier for women to find dates?
I'm horrified to hear all this Thorn, although I'm relieved that she apparently A. did not get shitty with the kid, and B. made a genuine gesture* of affection. The way things were headed seemed incredibly ugly.
*I mean, who knows, but you say she doesn't often put her arm around you, so I'm reading that as a conscious effort to reach out (metaphorically)
I kind of like my giant apparently bottomless hole idea. Maybe I could pitch it to other cities and become the Christo of holes.
Maybe you could just re-purpose Walter De Maria's Vertical Earth Kilometer by making the top look like Hanukkah gelt.
I never heard of that before. I think it is great on the grounds of fucking with future archeologists.
God damn it, there goes my career shift. Oh well, guess I better go back to bankrupting nerds for stealing Game of Thrones episodes [nb - this is not actually what I do].
I am in love with the vertical earth kilometer.
Adding my voice to the chorus, Thorn, to say I'm sorry you're having to put up with all of that.
I'm pretty sure 144 is just wrong. I wasn't there at night, but according to their website: "Opening Times: The memorial is accessible 24 hours a day."
Okay, so Lee called me while driving to the class she adjuncts to say that she wants to do more around the house (meaning the chores she was supposed to be doing already, basically, but that's something, and she's also willing to get the girls ready for school one day a week maybe) but also saying that she realizes it was a drug-alcohol interaction and that she needs to make sure that doesn't happen again. Oh, and she wants a schedule so she knows what days I'm doing various things. No actual apology, but she claims she wants to do better and we'll see.
Nia's first question when I picked them up this afternoon was whether Lee and I are really breaking up and if not why Lee would say that. I said it must have been a misunderstanding or a bad joke, and she decided on the latter since (luckily) Lee was otherwise pleasant to them last night.
I think I'm going to bed soon and may stay home tomorrow for more rest, though I'm not sure whether I want to be here on a day Lee's home too. Maybe not a bad idea, really.
The apparently bottomless hole is at the core of the two WTC footprint memorials.
I never replied to Tia's 70 and I don't really have the energy to write something thoughtful at the moment. So I'll be lazy and link someone else's response. It's not all exactly what I would have said, but I have more overlap with it than with the WSJ piece. The WSJ thing is the sort of thing I hear a lot, where people jump from "there are uncertainties in climate impact" to "doing something is costly" and paying less attention to the costs of not doing something and to the massive inequities involved.
176: You're right, it's "24h zugänglich." Still, there's a lot of security. It's not a hookup spot. It's just not.
178: sounds maybe promising, hope it pans out.
Thanks, emir and everyone. The update is that I'm back at work after sleeping all day yesterday and today I don't feel wretched or unable to move. Lee has been pleasant and relatively helpful, did her chores yesterday and went to the store to buy food for me to cook so I wouldn't have to. We had dinner as a family for a change, which was really nice. She's been making an effort for the last week to not have the tv on in the next room if she's not going to join us for dinner so that the girls are not distracted. (Tonight she's away again and tomorrow I will be, but at least that evening was good.) She hasn't mentioned what if anything she remembers from Sunday and I don't know whether to push. Typically letting her know my feelings were hurt makes her defensive enough she won't listen, so it may not be important. So now we're back to the regular normal, which isn't a ton better than the weekend but at least isn't that bad.