Today’s Featured Pet is a very very good girl named Penny.
Courtesy of her human companion, Laura: “She is a year-and-a-half old golden retriever, and she is the goofiest sweetheart. She befriends everyone, enthusiastically. She likes to hold paws when we're sitting on the couch watching TV.
“Awaiting permission to eat her birthday treat, with bonus hat.”
“Excited to be on the bus!”
“Unsure what to do now that she's caught her own tail.”
“And, of course, a puppy picture.”
Today’s Featured Horror Novel is The Lottery and Other Short Stories, by the actual goddess of death, Shirley Jackson. We’ve all (most of us) read the titular tale in school, but it’s the gloriously off other stories in this collection that will build under your skin. Not all are frightening, but the ones that are, you’ll think about every day for the rest of your life.
Via the publisher:
“One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, a story remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane.
The Lottery and Other Stories, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four equally unusual short stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range -- from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous -- and her power as a storyteller.”
The oral history of Four Loko is a gift:
Freeman: There are a couple different things we changed. We made the package size bigger because most consumers were drinking the tallboy, 24-ounce cans. We raised the alcohol level, and the flavors we came out with tasted better — relatively speaking. No one would ever say “We love the taste of Four Loko,” but these were better tasting relative to what we had.
Wright: The camo-print can was a way to stand out on shelves, sitting next to cans that were silver or white.
Freeman: One thing that most people don’t realize is every alcohol product is so highly regulated. First you have to get a federal approval, and then you got to get each state to approve it. We had gone through every single thing, and everyone was like, “Yeah, this is fine.” The government actually had a limit on the amount of caffeine you could have in the product. They gave us the red line. So we’re like, “Alright, so we’re good.”
A friend of mine has just started a newsletter to introduce people who love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and would LIKE to get into the comics, but doesn’t know where to start and feels completely overwhelmed (like me!) Check ‘er out.
At the time this profile was written, André De Shields had not yet won his (unbelievably well-deserved) Tony for best featured actor in a musical. But every word out of his mouth is magic:
“It is my contribution to the revolution: beauty,” he’d been saying earlier in his dressing room, a compact but lushly serene space filled with roses and calla lilies and painted, at his direction, a shade of red called rapture. “I want to be beautiful,” he’d said, in that meticulously cultured voice, “and I don’t want it to be perceived as strange. Beauty is part of living a long, happy life.”
AND
“Finally there is a place,” he began, then paused for a deep breath, his voice wobbly with emotion, “in the public forum for a man who speaks beautifully, who dresses beautifully, and who uses beauty as a tool for inclusion.”
“Fifty years of being a professional artist,” he added, composed again, “and I’ve always played the Other. Always. Which is why it’s so important that Hermes is being embraced by everyone.”
LAST QUOTE
“Hell could be something as complex as a white-supremacist complex,” he said. “Hell could be living a life of denial, which is what many of us have to do if we are not allowed to authentically express who we identify as, as opposed to what the heteronormative identification is.”
He is a fervent advocate of living authentically. For those like him who fall outside the cookie-cutter norm, that “takes courage, it takes perseverance, it takes tenacity, it takes confidence, it takes epic empathy for oneself,” he said. “And that’s where the learning curve begins.”
Teach me, Andre!
you gotta let this go (doesn’t mean you’re wrong)
The person/people who do this also have a nasty habit of leaving massive piles of unwashed dishes in our kitchen sink. It is not the responsibility of our coworkers or our janitorial service to clean these dishes after us and we are expected to clean after ourselves. There is even a giant sign posted over the sink requesting all employees to wash their own dishes.
I’m not the only person who is bothered by this, and several other coworkers and I have voiced our concerns to our office manager about it. Our office manager has been sympathetic and has organized numerous all-staff meetings where we went over these problems, asking everyone to be more mindful and to follow the directions posted in the kitchen.
Despite this, the people who do this continue doing it anyway. They don’t seem to care at all about the rules and they do pretty much whatever they please in our kitchen, leaving a big mess for others to clean up after them.
For the past two years, I’ve been voluntarily digging this person’s compostables and recyclables out of our trash bin and putting them in the recycling and compost. It’s pretty gross. I don’t enjoy doing it, but since no one else will do it, I do — for the sake of our planet. This issue is far bigger than the company and it has a lasting impact on the earth that will be felt by future generations long after we’re gone. It’s also against our city ordinance, and is just frankly a colossal jerk move.
I have no doubt that the person doing this is well aware of the nuisance they’re causing me and the other staff who actually care about this issue. They just don’t care.
About a year and a half ago, I decided that instead of putting their compost and recyclables into the compost or recycling bins where they probably wouldn’t even see it anyway, I’d leave them sitting on top of the bins so that the next time they step in the kitchen, they’ll be able to recognize their own trash and realize which bins it actually should have gone in. Unfortunately, they didn’t respond to that well. The very next morning after I did it the first time, I saw that this person threw all the recyclables and compostables I took out of the trash the previous day back into the trash bin, as if to say “F you.”
Well, I kept doing it anyway. A year and a half went by, we had several more all-staff meetings about the recycling and compost situation, and the problem persisted.
Then, just the other day, I was called into my manager’s office. He had our HR person on the phone, and she told me that she’d been getting complaints every day for a while now that I’d been taking recyclables and compostables out of the trash. She told me that the anonymous complainant claimed that they felt “offended” by my actions, and that they were now “scared” to use the kitchen because of me. I was astounded that anyone could be “offended” by someone trying to reduce unnecessary waste or feel “scared” because of some recyclables sitting on top of a bin. The HR person was totally unsympathetic to my situation even after i explained to her that this had gone on for almost two years, and ordered me to not touch the bins anymore.
This whole situation feels extremely bizarre to me. I never imagined that anyone would ever actually complain to HR about recyclables being taken out of a trash can and claim to feel “offended” and “scared” by it. I don’t see anything offensive or scary about what I did. I’m also pretty annoyed that someone actually went behind my back to whine to HR about what seems to me completely inoffensive and non-hostile behavior to get me in trouble instead of just confronting me directly like an adult. I find what they did to be incredibly petty and childish. I mean, really, over some garbage? If anyone should be offended, I think it should be me and all the other employees who have had to clean up after this person.
It’s also especially annoying considering I’ve done some really novel work for this company in the two years i’ve worked here. I’ve powered through an insane amount of projects that I don’t think any other developer here could have powered through at the speed that I did, while delivering on every requirement flawlessly. I haven’t been offered a single raise and am still being paid just slightly over minimum wage. I did a salary report online recently and it told me that I’m making less than 99% of the people in my field.
Am I wrong for feeling astounded and enraged by this incident? Am I really wrong for trying to protect our environment, clean up a huge mess left by some jerk who can’t follow simple directions every day, and keep our company compliant with our city ordinance?
you need to cool your jets:
This happened yesterday. I was on my way to the mall with my husband and toddler. There was this woman standing near us on the train that kept looking at my husband. It seemed to me like she was checking him out. Our entire ride lasted about 20-25 minutes and she was looking at him almost the entire time. My husband didn’t seem to notice but he’s oblivious when it comes to things like that.
The woman got off at the same stop that we did. At this stop you have to walk up to the top platform to exit. And by this time I’m watching the woman as well. And she still keeps looking! At this point I’m convinced she’s trying to make eye contact.
When we all got up the stairs I decided to say something. My husband had my daughter in his arms and I asked him if he could go refill our metro card. While he was occupied, I walked up to the woman and asked why she kept staring at my husband. She goes “Oh I wasn’t. I was just zoned out”. I can’t remember my exact phrasing but I basically said “Well you should probably watch how you stare at men when they’re out with their families.” After that I just walked off.
I have this bad tendency to replay situations over and over so I’ve been thinking about that incident again this morning. Some opinions on whether I was in the wrong would be much appreciated.
you are not the asshole:
So my best friend and I got our cats at the same time (from her MIL) about a year ago. A few months later she decided she was done dealing with the litter box and made him an outdoor cat.
For the most part this was okay, but her and her hisband are both very busy with work and two children so occassionally the cat would get let in but not let out for a while. This lead to the cat pooping in the baby’s crib.
My friend thinks hes doing this out of jealousy 🤷♀️ Either way, she texted me last week saying that she no longer wants the cat and that her SIL told her to leave him on the side of the road somewhere. I don’t know if my friend would ever have left him like that, but I also wasn’t going to find out.
The next day I went to her house to get the kitty. While I was there she told me that her and her husband have decided to get another kitten because her MIL’s new cat had kittens.
I haven’t talked to her since and have no plans to talk to her. I mostly feel justified in this decision, but I also feel like throwing away 23 years of friendship over a cat is an over reaction.
Music videos?
tom petty, RIP
sweet city woman
common people
into the woods
cake
I love each of you so much. Extra much today. With muchness.
xoxoxoxooxx
n
Here simply to say Pulp!! And Tom Petty!! two of my favorites. What a lovely way to start the week. Happy Monday friends...