March 2012
19 posts
The Value of Cat Photos: A Discussion (that we did...
Choire: Emily Gould! I am online for 15 minutes, here in the middle of my Official Week Off Work. Thank you very much for pinch-hitting on The Awl this week. How is it… going?
Emily: I didn't really factor in that your being on vacation would mean... that you are on vacation. So that's one thing. I was somehow like "Oh it will be so much fun filling in for Choire, I'll get to IM with Choire all day just like old tymes."
Choire: Oh right. Surprise! Have you actually been to our office??
Emily: I HAVE.
Choire: How do you like our office?
Emily: So, your office is located in sort of a large windowed closet, in the back room of a production company of some nature, in sort of a best-case-scenario smack dab in the middle of Manhattan location.
Choire: I call it "Penn Station adjacent."
Emily: And the other businesses on your floor could not be more comical if they tried?
Choire: OH YES.
Emily: Can we say this, that there's a Private Investigator? Edith was marveling that the door of his office just comes right out and says "Private Investigator." She thinks it should be like... "Carrot Salesman" or something.
Choire: It does seem like a missed opportunity. There's a very handsome tattooed boy who works there who is very shady.
Emily: So no fedora or anything. Ok, that's disappointing. Also a few oddball fake-seeming publications. Like Irish Times Magazine. Home and Away Newspaper. Basically your office is on a soundstage in a made-up world? I dunno, I liked it.
Choire: The Irish Times is, in my mind, a bustling global enterprise. Not just a door to a small room that Irish people sometimes come out of.
Emily: It was reassuring to hear Alex's noises again. Like being in a barn with a familiar horse (not a metaphor).
Choire: He's like one of those pretty horses in a beer commercial. How does actual "blogging" feel?
Emily: It kind of sucks and is kind of fun. I am filled with horrible remorse about everything I've posted, basically?
Choire: EVEN THE CAT SIGN LANGUAGE VIDEO?
Emily: When I write a long thing quickly, especially if it's about A Stance That Will Endear Me To Absolutely No One (aka, "my beat"), I am so afraid I've gotten something crucially wrong. You know, you see that one comment that's like "You're just a terrible writer, these are all garbage sentences." And I'm kind of a perfection ..ist ... ish. Or just, like, a Libra. Sorry, I haven't been to therapy in a while!
Choire: Maybe you're like one of those horses too, like the ones that love to jump but sometimes they look down at the thing they're jumping over and they're like "nnaaaaaay." (OMG SORRY, THIS IS WHAT FREE THERAPY IS LIKE.) Also I spotted in the comments on your first day that someone was like "Are there going to be commenter executions now that you're here?" and you were like "let's hope!" I was LOLing and LOLing.
Emily: Can there be?
Choire: My general practice here is that if I think someone is being a jerk or whatever, I just like, email them.
Emily: In my experience of, er, teaching teenagers yoga... there is always a class clown/bad kid who disrupts the class and almost makes it impossible for the thing to continue. And if he's not there someone else (the mild-mannered girl who you would never have suspected!) steps up to take his place.
Choire: I cannot imagine teaching teenagers ANYTHING, much less yoga. But actually, I think that the kind of regret that you experience on publication, everyone sort of does as well? So when people get called out nicely, the sort of shame or whatever comes out, and they're like "Oh I hate this feeling, I won't put myself in this position again." (Except the real trolls, who are just trolls, nbd.)
Emily: Well, grand scheme of things, it's interesting to think of all the people we've known who've sort of graduated from being trolls to being productive members of blog society.
Choire: The thing I like about blogs is that they're not over-worked. I say dumb stuff, I get stuff wrong, I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, I highlight things that aren't actually interesting… I dunno, I guess I'm extremely self-forgiving or maybe perhaps not very conscientious. So I'm glad you have a high bar!
Emily: It's crippling and I think I censor myself too much. For a while I was so paranoid about offending anyone ever that I couldn't write anything.
Choire: That sounds terrible!
Emily: And then I guess kind of recently I started to loosen up. That book The Buddhist had a lot to do with it anyway. And then, you know, I swing to the other end of the spectrum and check myself. Well, the thing about Working Out Your Stuff in Public is that you have to be careful not to Work Out Anyone Else's stuff.
Choire: But like… isn't it good when viewpoints inspire a reaction? Or was it like, too distracting. (What do you think Katie Roiphe thinks!)
Emily: In the larger world, yes, sure -- I want to provoke people to reexamine their prejudices and reject received ideas. Even if they disagree with me, if they do that I'm happy. With people I know and love, though, if I write something that hurts them, it's impossible to feel happy about that. Or like it was "worth it." Even people I just kind of like, or admire, that thing of walking into a party and worrying half the people there are mad at you... and, like, they are!
Choire: Oh, that's too much burden to take on though!
Emily: Probably the Roiphes of the world love that feeling. It's never been my drug.
Choire: This is why I rarely write anything actually personal! Okay, so, what have we learned in all these years and days of blogging? Oh that's right: NOTHING.
Emily: It's incredibly hard to take away a lesson besides "it's complicated." Um but luckily I am just here to post cat photos, mostly, this week.
Choire: "It's not right but it's okay," as the poet said.
Emily: Which, I guess I should ... get back to that?
Choire: Honestly the website could use way more cat photos. Too many bear videos, not enough Cats Doing Improbable Things.
February 2012
36 posts
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Grantland Oscar Analysis: How Many People Had to... →
yoisthisracist:
Anonymous asked: SON MY CAT THINKS HE CAN LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY FOR FREE AND NOT EVEN TRY TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE AND HE STILL COMPLAINING ALL DAY AND STEALING MY BED (NOT MY JOB THO) WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT
Haha, this is my new favorite anonymous person.
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“But sometimes he likes to describe himself as part of ‘the...”
– Party Crasher: Ron Paul’s unique brand of libertarianism - Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker
[Related: never forget this gem.]
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This thing looks like this thing.
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“They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist...”
– E.J. Dionne
“So the best possible technique, we figured, to get rid of the flying gnat menace...”
– And This is Why You Should Be Subscribed to the Awl Newsletter
Lost in Transcription
I don’t know why this had me in stitches this morning, but it did:
Debbie the Secretary’s vote is in the bag, but Joe the Plumber is running for Congress as a Republican in Ohio’s Ninth District. “Americans deserve all kinds of people representing them,” he said, “not just an élite ruling class.”
That’s Joe the Plumber. Saying “élite.” With an é.
“I took a great piece by an excellent reporter and created a version of it that...”
– ~ ~ ~ ~ L O L ~ ~ ~ ~
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“There are amusing moments, among them when Senator Carl Levin, the grandfatherly...”
– In New Book, Ex-Senator Says Fear Clouded Judgment After 9/11
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The Daily What the Fuck Are You Kidding Me
Um, idk, seems to me like maybe scolding a victim for not coping the way you think she ought to be coping is the real All Kinds of Wrong of the Day here? Just a thought.
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How Forbes Stole A New York Times Article And Got... →
nostrich:
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a title worth? If the story that proceeds is any indicator, a title is worth over 6700 words and months of research. It all began Friday when the New York Times published an article “How Companies Learn Your Secrets“. It was an extremely long article which discussed how large companies like WalMart and Target collect data...
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"I believe in the transformative power of... →
It is a truth universally acknowledged that apparently a lot of people read the first page of Pride and Prejudice before promptly switching over to Hunger Games.
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langer_: if i gave even a fraction of a fuck i would reblog [REDACTED] and just 100.times.each {puts 'LOL'}
langer_: god why did i bother reading this
inky: old langer would have done print '\n'.join('LOL' for _ in range(100))
inky: what happened :(((
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“[Contraception is] not okay because it’s a license to do things in the...”
– Rick Santorum
Bypass surgery is not okay because it’s a license to do things in the medical realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be.
Human flight is not okay because it’s a license to do things in the mechanical realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be.
...
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rachelfershleiser:
inothernews:
Tumblr makes the front page of today’s New York Post!!!
Inside, we’re described as an irresponsible liberal slut who had it coming…
^^^^^ +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1
An open apology to the Pinterest team →
spiegelman:
Judging by some of the links to pop up on my Internet the past hour or so, this fake Mitt Romney thing is starting to be about Pinterest changing the name of my parody account, and not about the fact that the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President asked them to dilute…
Man-goes-out-of-his-way-to-be-a-decent-person-on-the-internet insta-reblog.
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Top Ten Google Results for...
10) “Full disclosure: When I was a teenager, I saw Rilo Kiley perform three times.”
9) “Full disclosure: I like The Sun Also Rises and Farewell to Arms a lot.”
8) “Full disclosure: My tummy is a temperamental diva.”
7) “Full disclosure: I have several Soulja Boy songs on [my iPod].”
6) “Full disclosure: All these 20something straight girls...
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zachklein:
100 million pairs of eyes will be on Indiana tomorrow. Stay cool, bros.
Yup—and there will be protests! So here are a few relevant pre-game primers:
Indiana’s new “right-to-work” law is the legislative equivalent of Michele Bachmann saying hey you know maybe if we just got rid of the minimum wage entirely and let employers pay whatever they wished then everybody...
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WONKETTE EXCLUSIVE: The Gifzette is Dead! →
Noted New York daily broadsheet to fold after acquisition talks collapsed early this morning with Sam Zell.