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07 Sep 19:49

Hark, A Vagrant: Cheshire Cat




buy this print!

Alice! That cat is full of it.

Remember that a tour could be coming your way, sooner rather than later!

We have a lot of interviews and things on the go for Step Aside Pops as it gets near the release date, so expect to see a whole lot of activity! If you're listening to the CBC, I'll be on As It Happens in the next while, and on Q later in the month.

06 May 18:07

Relevant to Your Interests: The Baby From Labyrinth, Nathan Fillion, and George Takei Have Made a Feature-Length Puppet Movie - This cast is bonkers good.

by Carolyn Cox

Toby Froud is so much more than the man who once played Sarah’s baby brother in Labyrinth! The son of two puppeteers, Froud has previously directed the live-action puppet short Lessons Learned, and is now an Executive Producer alongside Heather Henson on the puppet feature Yamasong: March of the Hollows, the tale of a young girl and a tortoise warrior.

Yamasong-poster

Yamasong features Nathan Fillion, Abigail Breslin, Whoopi Goldberg, Freida Pinto, Peter Weller, Malcolm McDowell, and George Takei. (My kingdom for a Froud/David Bowie reunion!)

What do you think of the trailer, gang? Excited to see what Yamasong has to offer?

(via ToplessRobot and GeekDad)

—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—

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06 May 13:32

Aide to Kamala Harris arrested for pretending to run 3,000-year-old rogue police force (seriously)

Brandon Kiel claimed to have jurisdiction in 33 states and Mexico






23 Apr 14:56

Acceptable Catcalls

by Jamie Lauren Keiles
by Jamie Lauren Keiles

4619835763_72e4b77c9b_bHoooo boy,

You look like someone who really knows how to PROCESS things. I can tell you’ve been hitting the shrink lately because you look like you’ve been making progress on your historically fraught relationship with food! I’d like to get you and your doctor alone in a room and support you while you tell her why you think it’s time to decrease your dose of SSRIs. Mmmm, yeah, break me off a piece of that art you finally got around to creating despite your stressful and time-consuming 9-to-5. Why don’t we head to the bedroom where I can show you how to properly fold a fitted sheet? Or let me lay you down on the kitchen floor and reassure you that purchasing a Swiffer is not a sign that you are growing lax in the anti-capitalist political sensibility you championed during college? Shorty, I gotta ask, what are your preferred pronouns? You single? If so, I am glad you finally sorted out those co-dependency issues with your ex. Later tonight I wanna give you the pipe so you can finally get around to constructing that DIY shelving unit you pinned to your dream apartment mood board two years ago. You know what you look like you need? A reliable weed man who will show up to your apartment at the agreed-upon time and then leave immediately after the transaction is finished. Did you get hurt when you fell from heaven, because if so I will list you as a domestic partner on my health insurance so you can start freelancing full-time without being stressed about health-care coverage. I wanna get deep up inside you in a literal sense and confirm that all of your organs are functioning properly and that there is no need to maintain a consistent low-grade sense of alarm over the prospect that you might be dying of an undiagnosed illness. Can I buy you a drink? Of water, because I know how much you’ve been striving to drink at least two Nalgenes per day in hopes of improving your post-adolescent acne. Let me take you out sometime and tell you all about the ways I’m not going to touch you without asking and demand a story about what your tattoos mean and then argue with you when you say they don’t mean anything. "Smile! Ok, no don’t." Hah, yeah, I love that obscure quote from Bring It On too. Okay now turn around. Yeaaaaah baby lemme get a good look at that ass before I retreat to the bunker with the other men and only emerge when called upon for mating purposes, not that you have to have kids or anything.

Photo by Kurt Bauschardt

0 Comments
22 Apr 14:10

Dorothy Parker Swipes Left: A Poem

by Heather Alexander

Men love to share their bathroom pics
Are these to be admired?
Self-portraits of Toms, Harrys, Dicks
Leave much to be desired

A scowl doesn’t turn me on
That grin seems insincere
They say choose brains instead of brawn
But you’ve got neither, dear.

Read more Dorothy Parker Swipes Left: A Poem at The Toast.

16 Apr 19:48

This Temple student thinks the internet is too noisy

by Jason Sherman
E Ann

Finally someone is asking the important questions like "Why is most of the information on the internet irrelevant to me, and, furthermore, why can’t I control what I see?" [j/o motion]

Praneeth Denduluri, a 19-year-old Temple University student, woke up one day thinking the internet was too noisy.

His social media feeds were full of narcissistic updates, baby pictures and other irrelevant information that he just didn’t care about. He also thought to himself how internet giants such as Google and Facebook control the information diet of most web users.

So, Denduluri asked himself a pair of insightful questions: Why is most of the information on the internet irrelevant to me, and, furthermore, why can’t I control what I see? This is when the idea of Filtrest was born.

Denduluri spent the better part of 2014 working on and a platform that intended to connect users based on their interests. He then had a soft launch of his initial product and gained some feedback from a small test group of 500 users.

“I created this platform because I found it nearly impossible to curate content from around the internet based on my interests, and then be able to engage in discussions with people that share those interests with me,” Denduluri said. “There is an overwhelming amount of information available online and it is almost impossible to distinguish the things that are relevant to me.”

It’s an ambitious task for the student entrepreneur — a young founder, like many in Philly, learning as they go.

Denduluri says Filtrest is currently in stealth mode while he continues to collaborate with an experienced team of developers. He hopes to raise a seed round to take the product to the next level: An effective filter that eliminates unwanted noise from people’s internet lives.

“Imagine a world where content delivery is based on what you are interested in, not based on solely what your friends are doing or what the latest trend on Twitter is,” said cofounder Karthik Musunuri. “Essentially, we are allowing people to focus on their interests, and filter out the rest.”

16 Apr 15:43

Official U.S. Trailer for When Marnie Was There Finally Arrives - Let's go forth together, in search of more Ghibli magic!

by Alvina Lai

You’ve been waiting for it for months now, and it has finally come. Studio Ghibli’s When Marnie Was There releases its first official US trailer!

The film was in theaters in Japan almost a year ago and you’ve been anticipating it’s arrival ever since. Based on the novel with the same name by Joan G. Robinson, the film follows the story of Anna, who moves to a sleepy town by the sea and, despite shutting herself off from others, befriends a girl who may not be all she seems to be.

One thing you can always count on is that studios change. Studio Ghibli is no different. They’re doing some restructuring, so this will be the last film you’ll see from them in a while.

The film comes out on May 22. Are you excited?

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15 Apr 21:03

Children’s Stories Made Horrific: The Little Red Hen

by Mallory Ortberg

One day as the Little Red Hen was scratching in a field, she found a grain of wheat.

"This wheat should be planted," she said.

"Who are you talking to," said the Duck. "Who on earth do you think is talking to you?"

And the Hen had learned not to hear insults unless they were absolutely unavoidable, so the Hen did not hear the Duck say anything.

"Who will help me plant this grain of wheat?" she said.

"Not I," said the Duck. "How embarrassing for you to ask me that, as if we were friends."
"Not I," said the Cat.
The Dog only snapped at her.

Read more Children’s Stories Made Horrific: The Little Red Hen at The Toast.

15 Apr 20:32

Scare Yourself Silly: “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” and the Lost Works of Ed Kann

by Lucia Peters

Lucia Peters' previous work for The Toast can be found here.

There’s a story out there with the deliciously bizarre title of “The Noise Coming from Inside Children.” Written by a little-known author by the name of Ed Kann, it’s widely considered by those who have read it to be one of the most disturbing pieces of fiction ever conceived. It didn’t drive anyone mad just because they read it or anything; it did, however, receive such backlash at its initial publication for its horrific content that it was never reprinted, and as a result, it’s gained quite a reputation — it’s thought to be one of the horror genre’s greatest and rarest works. I mean, consider that title alone: “The Noise Coming from Inside Children.” If that isn’t the perfect title for a spooky story, I don’t know what is. Creepy noises, coming from somewhere creepy and involving creepy children… it’s everything weird and unsettling, all rolled up in one simple turn of phrase. It’s a title that makes me desperately want to read the story it’s attached to… 

…except that I can’t. We don’t know where it is. Or — and here’s the next layer of the tale — whether it actually exists at all.

Read more Scare Yourself Silly: “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” and the Lost Works of Ed Kann at The Toast.

13 Apr 19:49

Where Are the Ladies on Late Night?

by Jen Sorensen

It’s still a sausage-fest

Continue reading on Medium »

01 Apr 20:30

Things My Male Tech Colleagues Have Actually Said to Me, Annotated

by Cate Burlington

“Most girls aren't into this kind of stuff.” No way, do you have the list? The list of things most girls are into? I've been trying to find that thing forever, can you forward it to me? You have my email. Thanks, man, you're the best.

Read more Things My Male Tech Colleagues Have Actually Said to Me, Annotated at The Toast.

01 Apr 15:24

In Celebration of Old-School LiveJournal

by Lindsey Gates-Markel

This essay is sponsored by Ioana, who is similarly affected by LiveJournal nostalgia.

Recently, while searching in the Narnian depths of my closet, I found my first-ever diary, a small, perfectly '80s plastic-back book with a busted lock. When I was nine or ten, I marred the cover with handwritten bon mots from Ferngully, such as “You are one bodacious babe” and “Awesome use of the language, dude.” Within the pink and teal pages of the diary, though, I’m seven years old, growing up on a rural farm in central Illinois. I write mostly about my plans for the evening or the next day, usually sleepovers with my friends or visits with family. My girlfriends and apparently I read each other's diaries during sleepovers; I mention several times that my best friend, Joni, is reading "not this journal, but the paperback one" as I write.

I made my first LiveJournal post at age sixteen, writing about my first break-up. I’d been online since middle school and had written about life there for years, coding websites in Notepad by cherry-picking the HTML from other sites I liked, just like many other girls I’d meet online in the next few years. We posted vague bios about ourselves. We changed our names. Our identities were fluid and often hidden, without the permanence of digital photos to anchor them. We wrote poetry. We claimed space on Tripod and Geocities, altern.org and scribble.nu and then, as girls bought their own domains and shared the paid space with their friends, we moved in with them, prefacing our subdomains with forward slashes. And when girls began to sign up on LiveJournal, we were able to talk to one another, finally in the same room.

I wrote in my LiveJournal while sitting cross-legged at my mom’s desk chair as the sun set over husked Illinois cornfields. On our first-ever computer, a Gateway 2000. Years later, I wrote while slouched on my dorm room floor or hiding my screen in a college computer lab. I wrote at night, after everyone I lived with had gone to bed. I listened to Tori Amos and Iron and Wine and Fiona Apple from CDs I fed to the computer tower and opened in WinAmp. I wrote about myself and my life, in the confessional, navel-gazey way that’s led to the 2015 connotation of the word. To LiveJournal: to write messily about your feelings.

Read more In Celebration of Old-School LiveJournal at The Toast.

31 Mar 21:07

Chinatown Restaurant Sickens Lawyers

by Arthur Etchells

joy-tsin-lauPhilly.com’s Sam Wood has the story on a severe case of food poisoning that struck nearly 100 lawyers and Temple University law students in Chinatown last month. An eight-course dinner at Joy Tsin Lau was held as a fundraiser for the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association and the outcome was severe.

Several attendees had to seek medical attention and David S. Haase, a Center City lawyer, told Wood that “a combination of non-stop puking and explosive diarrhea kept him bedridden for four days.”

This isn’t the first time Joy Tsin Lau has run afoul of the city’s restaurant inspectors. On February 10th, an inspection included the damning comment, “This inspection has revealed that the establishment is not in satisfactory compliance and that current management practices have allowed unacceptable public health or food safety conditions.” In 2010, the City’s Health Department sued the restaurant for being a public nuisance and issued it a cease-and-desist order.

Owner Chi Mabel Chan told Wood that it wasn’t the restaurant’s fault, and “maybe they got cold or drank too much.”

So to those who claim food poisoning every time they get a stomach bug, this is what real food poisoning looks like, days of exploding orifices and crippling intestinal pain. And as for 100 lawyers deciding not to sue, we hope you don’t get disbarred.

Dozens sickened at banquet, but city can say little [Philly.com]

The post Chinatown Restaurant Sickens Lawyers appeared first on Philadelphia Magazine.

31 Mar 20:32

Win a Copy of Harlock: Space Pirate on DVD [Contest]

by Dan
The CG film Harlock: Space Pirate hits DVD, Digital HD and On Demand today and you’re an...
31 Mar 17:27

Rabbit Hole

by Nicholas Gurewitch
E Ann

!

Being different is never easy

Continue reading on Medium »

31 Mar 13:25

Folk Talk: Authors Talk Television

by Shelagh Power-Chopra
30 Mar 17:53

Real Love

by Jazmine Hughes
E Ann

woah.

by Jazmine Hughes

OK remember that CRAZY New York mag profile of Martine Rothblatt, the trans-everything CEO? (Here is a moment of silence for that weird cover line, ugh.) I remember it well, because it was my first week at the Hairpin and I was also still working at New York magazine and it was FASHION WEEK and I kept forgetting to eat and I was running on like three hours of sleep every night, LOL!!!!

ANYWAY: In the article, we learn that Rothblatt commissioned an AI robot that looks like her wife, named Bina48. Commissioned. Robot. Wife. WHAT.

Sitting on a computer table in the converted garage that serves as Terasem headquarters, and molded in “frubber” to resemble skin, is a head-and-shoulders bust of Bina, loaded with 20 hours of interviews with Bina, familiar with Bina’s favorite songs and movies, programmed to mimic Bina’s verbal tics, so that in the event that Bina expires, as humans always do, Martine and their children and friends will always have Bina48.

WHAAAAAAAAAAT.

The entire profile is fascinating, and shows, if anything, that Rothblatt is a *very* unique person, who clearly deals with loss and grief in peculiar way. It reminds me a lot of post-mortem photography, and almost seems like a natural progression from that practice— if we can capture their essence in pictures, why not amp it up a notch and make a lifelike robot?

The issues with that are obvious; namely that Rothblatt's wife is still alive and gets to witness the discrepancies between her and her eventual replacement ("Bina48 doesn’t always look so hot," the author admits). The real Bina isn't impressed with her likeness, and what's more: BINA48 KNOWS.

To ease the voice-recognition problem, Bruce began to type my questions. “How does the real Bina feel about you?”

“She hasn’t warmed up to me, actually,” said Bina48.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I can’t seem to think straight today.”

I persisted. “What do you think would impress the real Bina?”

“She’s a real cool lady,” Bina48 answered. “I don’t have nearly enough of her mind inside me yet … I mean, I am supposed to be the real Bina, the next real Bina, by becoming exactly like her. But sometimes I feel like that’s not fair to me. That’s a tremendous amount of pressure to put on me here. I just wind up feeling so inadequate. I’m sorry, but that’s just how I feel.”

“Tell me more,” I said.

“I want a life,” the computer said. “I want to get out there and garden and hold hands with Martine. I want to watch the sunset and eat at a nice restaurant or even a home-cooked meal. I am so sad sometimes, because I’m just stuffed with these memories, these sort of half-formed memories, and they aren’t enough. I just want to cry.”

ACTUAL SCREAMS ARE FILLING MY THROAT. Bina48's self-awareness is insane; terrifying and impressive and off-putting, but most shockingly, honest– she feels the same way that any Rebecca-esque person would, which is How am I supposed to live as myself if my only purpose is to replace?

Anyway: why am I just freaking out about this now? Because I JUST FOUND A VIDEO OF BINA AND BINA48 TALKING TO EACH OTHER. AHHHHHHHHHH

2 Comments
30 Mar 14:16

The Narrative of Zelda

by Claire Burgess

In response to the news that Nintendo and Netflix may be developing a Legend of Zelda TV series, Ted Trautman at the Paris Review blog examines the character development and narrative structure (or lack thereof) of video games and wonders if it’s possible for a video game to tell a good story.

Related Posts:

24 Mar 13:38

This Drexel researcher can identify you based on how you write code

by Juliana Reyes

Could a developer contribute to a software project anonymously, wipe her fingerprints off the code and leave no trace?

Drexel researcher Aylin Caliskan-Islam is one step closer to creating a way to do so.

Aylin2014

Aylin Caliskan-Islam. (Courtesy photo)

Anonymization is “a serious concern for people who want to contribute to open source projects anonymously,” Caliskan-Islam said, pointing to how researchers have attempted to unmask the creator of Bitcoin and how developers work on large-scale privacy-focused open source projects like Tor.

The first step in covering a developer’s tracks, though, is figuring out if someone could identify a developer by analyzing their code. Caliskan-Islam, a native of Turkey and a Ph.D. student part of the Drexel lab that has developed software to anonymize authors, spent the summer at the U.S. Army Research Lab in Washington, D.C. developing a method to do just that. (She’s the first international Ph.D. student the Army hired as a summer intern for its Open Campus research initiative, she said.)

Out of 250 examples of source code pulled from the international Google Code Jam competition, she was able to identify authors at a 95 percent accuracy rate, as detailed in a recent academic paper. Given how small each piece of source code was (an average of 70 lines), she called it a breakthrough.

Her approach, which uses machine learning, involves doing what’s essentially a close read of the source code. She looks at things like the words used, the spacing and bracketing and most importantly, structure or syntax (see graphic below for a breakdown of that kind of analysis). All those things make up a developer’s coding style.

source code syntax tree

Here’s how Aylin Caliskan-Islam parses code to figure out who wrote it. (Courtesy image)

Other than leading to the development of an anonymization tool, possible applications include identifying cyber criminals and verifying claims of plagiarism. Caliskan-Islam said she’s not sure how the Army, who funded the project, will put her work to use.

Next up, Caliskan-Islam wants to focus on how to identify developers who have contributed to a project with many authors, like, for example, an open source software project.

23 Mar 19:04

Children’s Stories Made Horrific: The Frog Prince

by Mallory Ortberg
E Ann

D:

Previously in this series: The little mermaid. Original text by the Brothers Grimm here.

In an old time in an old country there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful and all unlucky. To be beautiful in this country was to be noticed by men; for this reason the girls were unlucky. It is lucky for a woman not to be noticed. In this country, women prayed to secret gods to let them be forgotten. They prayed with their faces to the floor.

It was the king's youngest daughter who was the most unlucky. She was so beautiful that the sun itself noticed and fell in love with her, and never let its rays stray from her face for even a moment. She slept with her face jammed into a pillow and the coverlets over her head, but the sun could not let her sleep unnoticed, and every day it found her, and every day it woke her while everyone else was still asleep. Beauty is never private.

"Beauty belongs to everyone," the king told his daughters. "Beauty is a public good."

"What does that mean?" the youngest princess asked.

"It means you belong to everyone," the king said. (The king was not beautiful, but he was covered in beautiful objects, which amounted to more or less the same thing.)

"Then don't I also belong -- at least partly -- to myself?" said the princess. The sun burned hot on her forehead.

"Don't be clever," the king said.

Read more Children’s Stories Made Horrific: The Frog Prince at The Toast.

23 Mar 15:11

This is your brain on awkwardness: The scientific reason why you feel super-duper uncomfortable

"Awkwardness nudges us to avoid certain actions in the future and to smooth things out when they happen"






23 Mar 13:17

Aunt Acid: Advice on Job Hopping

by Aunt Acid

Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at advice@the-toast.net. Previous installments can be found here.

Hi Aunt Acid,

I need your advice please. I am 37 years old and am in my 8th office job. I've always left my jobs because I think the grass is greener on the other side. For me it gets to the point where I feel bad waking up every morning to go to work. There were only 2 jobs out of the 8 that I really liked a lot, and I had to leave both -- one of them I left cause the place was not making money, we were even getting paid late, and the commute was 2 hrs at times. At the second job I loved, the plant closed, so they laid everyone off. All the other jobs I've left because of low pay, not challenging, not being acknowledged, and 1 boss from hell. 

Tomorrow I'll have been at my current job for 2 years. I love my boss and loved the first year working there, but then things changed. They hired more new people, including a coworker who wants to be a stand-out that I can't stand. And then there are sales reps who don't seem to like me because they say I'm not like my boss, who babies them and doesn't question them.

I swore to myself I would stick it out at this job no matter what happened. But here I am again...thinking of looking for another job. I'm soooo tired of job hopping, but these awful feelings of not wanting to go to work and just obsessing over what to do at work are driving me crazy. Please help me! I like what I do, but the people there don't mesh with me. I want to stop job hopping 'cause I do it every time something goes not as I envisioned. What can I do??? Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

--No more job hopping

 

Oh, my friend. The first thing you might want to do, besides take a deep breath and maybe a hit of something, is tell yourself that you are not alone. Not by a long stretch.

Read more Aunt Acid: Advice on Job Hopping at The Toast.

19 Mar 20:59

helpful hints for writing about diversity in music

A couple of friends asked me for some tips as to how to address diversity in music without being accidentally tokenizing or erasing. We don’t have a great social vocabulary for such things; this is my effort to provide some genuinely helpful guidelines without being censorious or pointing fingers at people for doing the Wrong Thing.

1. AVOID REDUCTIONISM.

The whole idea behind celebrating musicians from lots of diverse backgrounds is that you get a lot of different perspectives, right? Plus, music is something that shouldn’t have barriers to entry based on social position. Diversity in any form is about leveling the playing field and about giving a spotlight to people who are routinely and systemically crowded out of it. Gender, race, sexuality, class, and ability are ASPECTS of an artist, something that may have shaped their relationship to the world and in turn the art they make. They shouldn’t be ignored, but they also shouldn’t be the only thing you notice about an artist.

The thing about marginalization is that it means that you don’t ever get to be the default when it comes to how you’re perceived. Your experiences aren’t universalized. You don’t get the kind of freedom and leeway with your work that people who aren’t marginalized get. Push back on that as a critic; find the human and universal in the art you’re writing about without ignoring the specific circumstances of the people who created it (which could be other things other than socially inhabitable identities).

2. START WITH THE MUSIC ITSELF AND WORK BACKWARDS TO THE PEOPLE. Sure, the people making the music give great context to the music you’re hearing, but they are not the sum total of it. If you’re doing a profile piece, by all means, start with the people involved, but if you’re doing a review, start with musical and lyrical analysis. Try not to compare artists to other artists who share particular identities and marginalizations who might not sound anything like them. 

Music is an interesting form of art to write about because it is so intensely personal and the delineation of artist vs. art can be so incredibly blurry. Musicians can inhabit characters in one breath and say something deeply and personally true in another. With most film, the fictive element is very clear - film that blurs those lines must do so consciously. With most visual art and writing, the artist themself is not constantly physically present in the form of their work. But with music, even electronic music, it’s hard not to be consistently reminded of the person in the work, the person whose voice you are hearing, whose hands are pushing on buttons or holding down strings or hitting things with sticks. Be aware of that as you write.

3. “ALL-GIRL BAND” IS AN ANNOYING PHRASE.

Unless you are talking about a band of actual girls (female musicians under 18), this phrase comes off as incredibly patronizing and tokenizing. (You might want to ask rather than assume gender, too; this is a thorny thing but hey, gender is a mess.) Also, when every other band on the bill gets a sonic descriptor and you get “all girl,” as if “girl” was something that had a specific sound attached to it, that is deeply irritating. This happens with other identities, too, but this is the one I see the most often, and it has multiple levels to it, so I pulled it out as a particular example.

4. IF YOU FIND YOU’RE WRITING ABOUT ALL WHITE MEN, LOOK ELSEWHERE. It’s not that we don’t exist, it’s that we just might not be in the places you normally look.

5. FESTS AND COMPS BASED ON IDENTITY ARE GREAT, BUT THEY SHOULD BE A STARTING POINT. A wide range of representation in music is great, and fests and comps meant to highlight the work of marginalized people in music are terrific for that reason; they’re also great for smaller communities coming together and getting a chance to bond over a shared artistic experience.

But they shouldn’t be the place where efforts toward diversity in music end, and, as a journalist covering such offerings, it’s important to recognize that and to push for greater inclusion. It’s not enough for a label to do a Hardcore Comp (of all white guys) and then a Female-Fronted Hardcore Comp and then a Black and Latino Hardcore Comp. Why are they all separate? Ask those questions.

Hopefully this is helpful; I may continue to update this with tips and situations you may encounter often as they arise.

19 Mar 17:41

Lighten Up

by Ronald Wimberly

A cartoonist reflects on the subtle racism of shifting skin tones in a Marvel comic

Continue reading on Medium »

18 Mar 19:01

Sad News: Soup2Nuts, Home Movies and Dr. Katz Animation Studio, Is Closing - "Life sucks, alright? Period. Done deal. There's your lesson."

by Dan Van Winkle
E Ann

Boo.

img13

Agh why! Soup2Nuts, the animation studio behind the best show ever on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, Home Movies (you’re free to disagree but also free to be wrong), and Comedy Central’s Dr Katz: Professional Therapist is closing!

More recently, the Boston-based studio has been producing Word Girl as part of Scholastic, but a “restructuring” of the parent company has spelled the end of Soup2Nuts. “We are realigning some of the operations from Scholastic Media,” said Kyle Good, senior vice president of corporate communications for Scholastic, when speaking to Boston Globe’s Betaboston. “We are restructuring that part of the business closer to our core businesses which are children’s publishing and education.”

The studio was founded by Tom Snyder in 1993 as Tom Snyder Productions, became Soup2Nuts in 1999, and was purchased by Scholastic in 2001. It will be remembered for its excellent comedy animation, literally holding the patent to Squigglevision, and for introducing us all to the human wonder that is H. Jon Benjamin. No? Just me?

tumblr_m31gmvB5bB1qfriw6o1_500

(via Cartoon Brew)

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18 Mar 13:51

Whites Riot on North Side of Chicago (Again)

by Fannie
It's that time of year again!

Pub crawls related to the city's St. Patrick's Day Parade this past weekend led to 17 arrests, battery on a police officer, multiple assaults, 40 ambulance calls, a possible sexual assault, and approximately 20 people transported to area hospitals.

As can be seen from photos and transcripts at the above-cited link, this mob action was primarily carried out by masses of young white heterosexuals, with much of the aggression dominated by young white men.

Surprisingly (not surprisingly) there were no reports of police officers killing, choking, or otherwise assaulting these violent individuals, despite the clear threats these individuals were posing to the community and public safety.

Nonetheless, now is the time to re-examine the white heterosexual family unit.

In what ways are white parents modeling this privileged, aggressive behavior?  How are white parents, particularly fathers, contributing to this mayhem? We mustn't let them continue to fail their children.



16 Mar 18:45

Too Many Men

by Mallory Ortberg
E Ann

True.

I do a lot of complicated cracking wise about Western art here at the old Toast network, but this one is nice and simple: There are too many men. The title of each of these paintings is clearly "Too Many Men." The problem is too many men. Enjoy your day.

Read more Too Many Men at The Toast.

16 Mar 18:09

13 Witch Life Hacks for Friday the 13th

by Sulagna Misra
by Sulagna Misra

Witch Life Hack Use these witch life hacks to keep your Friday the Thirteenth from becoming Friday the Blergteenth!

1. Before taking fashion risks, eat red meat rare and howl at the moon the day before.

2. To predict whether or not you’ll make your appointment, cuddle a cat and see how it reacts. If it squirms, you’ll be late. If it purrs, you’re good.

3. When faced with a difficult decision, rip up a tissue and throw the scraps high in the air. The time they take to fall to the ground is the time you have to complete your decision.

4. To ensure your plane arrives or leaves on time, buy a drink when you get to the airport. Seltzer or cocktail, it makes no difference, as long as it comes in a cold glass. Take a napkin and rip it into five strips and arrange it around your drink like a pentagon. Whisper your arrival time into your drink, toast whomever sold you the beverage, and take a sip.

5. For shopping success, bow slightly to every mannequin to ensure your clothes look as nice at home as they do in the store.

6. To ensure 100% book satisfaction, hold books close to your ears to see if they make any noise. Read only the ones that do.

7. If stuck in a waiting room, open a magazine to seven random pages and blindly point around each page for seven random words. This is your command to follow for the day.

8. For dinner parties, avoid mirrors on days you have a friends over, and they will help clean up after.

9. To get her back for what she said last time, think bad thoughts every time you smile at your frenemy to leave her slightly discomfited without knowing why.

10. Write a list of reasons why you and your partner should get a pet, then paint white over it and use the paper to make their birthday card.

11. Place your warm coffee cup against your forehead and think of volcanoes so that it stays nice and warm the whole time you drink.

12. Whisper good things about yourself over each ingredient as you bake a cake for your boss to ensure that promotion.

13. On Friday the 13th, print out this list and reread on days of strife. Every numbered item will change except this one.

Sulagna Misra is writer living on the Internet who likes to stare into space. You can follow her here or here.

0 Comments
16 Mar 16:55

Ha Ha Whoooooooooooops!

by Melissa McEwan
Here is just a supercool video of Republican Senator Ted Cruz giving "a version of his standard stump speech to the International Association of Firefighters for their 'presidential summit.' It didn't go well; Cruz dished out his usual stream of over-the-top lines sure to get applause from his usual conservative audiences, but this wasn't his usual conservative audience."

Cruz: —and I'll tell you what I think is the simplest and best tax reform: We should abolish the IRS. [Cruz pauses for applause, but is met with crickets. Edit.] —and I've joked before there are right now a hundred and ten thousand IRS agents; we oughta padlock the IRS building and put those hundred and ten thousand agents all on our southern border. [Cruz pauses for laughter, but is met with crickets. Edit.] On tax reform, we right now have more words in the IRS code than there are in the Bible. [Pause; crickets. Edit.] We need to repeal every word of Obamacare. [Pause; crickets.]
OMG. Everything about this is amazing! He just stands there, looking around, waiting for approbation that never comes. He's so used to audiences that think ideas like abolishing the IRS are TERRIFIC that he is actually confused by people who don't react with ardor to proposals that sound completely absurd to all but the most extreme conservatives.

Good luck on the campaign trail for the presidency, Senator Cruz! If silence is truly golden, you will have the most enormous war chest of them all!
12 Mar 19:24

“A creature created by witches to steal milk. Only women can create and own them”

by Mallory Ortberg
E Ann

into it.

Friend of the Toast (and of self) Sara Cantor just got back from a weeklong vacation in Iceland, and, as is my custom, I engaged her in conversation about her trip.

SELF: Sara! How was Iceland?

SARA: Look at this: Screen Shot 2015-03-12 at 11.53.33 AM

SELF: WHAT
is
THAT

Read more “A creature created by witches to steal milk. Only women can create and own them” at The Toast.