E Ann

by Monica Heisey

Sexually speaking, everyone’s got their Thing. Some people have a few Things. These days, after years of research, trial-and-error, and an ill-advised “what if the Furries are onto something” experiment, I know more or less exactly what my Things are. But as a hormonal young nerd, my interest in sex—intense though it was—was general, unfocused. I knew I was into the idea, but not sure what about it attracted me. I approached the task of uncovering the particularities of my sexuality with the same methods I applied to everything else: a lot of weird reading alone and furtive research.

It feels impossible now, but the kind of scrounging a preteen in the age of dialup had to do to find adequately sexy stimulation was intense. You sort of took what you could get. As a result, some of my earlier attempts at having a fetish were…well, these.

Dirty Scotsmen

I don’t know where I first saw the movie Trainspotting, but I do know where I saw it the next 35,673 times: in the lower floor of my parents’ house, alone in the dark with the sound turned down, just losing my mind over the seduction of Mark Renton by worldly high school student Diane. The entire cast of this movie blew my mind. The men of Trainspotting weren’t looking for love like the Disney princes and men of PG romcoms, they were filthy, flawed, and H-O-R-N-Y. By the end of my teens I could have listed “ability to stop the movie Trainspotting at EXACTLY the spot Ewan McGregor pulls the condom off his flaccid dick” in the Special Skills area of my resume.

"Broken Homes"

From 2001 to 2004, Spike and Buffy were my everything. He with his bleached hair, bad attitude and worse accent, she with a false haughtiness, as though she’d NEVER let him throw her on the ground and have his way with her. In Season 6, Episode 9, the sexual tension bristling between the two finally comes to a head, with slayer and vampire fight-fucking each other so hard that they bust up an entire abandoned house. It was…formative. I spent thirty minutes downloading a clip of this episode on Kazaa, only to discover that the dialogue had been muted in favour of Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me,” which, as dorky as I was, I still recognized as unbelievably uncool. Lame recognize lame, you know? I watched this clip on a silent loop for hours, and to be honest Dave Matthews still makes me a bit horny.

A Desperate Hand Trailing Down The Steamy Window Of An Old Timey Car

You know what I’m talking about. I think we aaaallll know what I’m talking about.

Synthetic Skin, I Guess

I had not wanted to see Star Trek: First Contact, until it became my first contact (get it) with this scene in which Chief Operations Officer and creamy-complexioned robo-babe Data is given human skin, complete with nerve endings by the QUEEN OF THE BORGS. All the Queen—who is, by the way, just a head and a robo-spine in a hot babe suit—has to do to make Data cream his cyber-jeans is blow on his skin for a bit. It’s very intense. To be honest I’m not clear on the plot of the film, because I spent most of the film thinking about how to speak in measured-yet-sexual tones while never breaking eye contact, and avoiding the fact that I’d come to the theatre with my Dad.

Tulips?

An important part of being a horned up preteen is flipping through all of your mom’s Adult Woman Novels to find the bit where someone uses their “turgid sex” to “enter” someone else. For me, this took the form of a book whose title I never even bothered to learn, about the tulip trade in Amsterdam during the period where everyone was wearing big hats. There was a lot of flower metaphors and the whole thing was pretty cheesy, but people were just constantly “groping beneath her clothes for the wetness underneath” or “working his hard member til he shuddered and sighed,” so what did I care? Anyway, at one point the book compares the throbbing head of a servant's dick to a red tulip and it is truly all I can think about when confronted with red tulips to this day.

Men Who Are Actually Just A Canvas Bag Full Of Bugs

My most disgusting secret is that I had a weird childhood crush on “Oogie Boogie,” (?) the largely canvas (??) villain from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Although not explicitly a sex scene, Oogie Boogie does a lot of like, power play and restraint stuff to Santa (???), which I would later come to recognize as something I was into. (The power play and restraints stuff, not Santa, give me a break.) I cannot tell you how disappointed I was to learn that old OB was, literally, just a sentient bag of bugs, as though getting off to a hollow bag would have been normal and fine. Still, more than one friend has told me that she was damp for Hexxus—the sentient oil spill and villain in the Fern Gully film—as a teen, so I guess the lesson here is that human sexuality is a beautiful rainbow and teens are wild.

Monica Heisey is a writer and comedian from Toronto. Her work has appeared in The Toast, The Cut, Rookie, Gawker, VICE, Playboy, and many other web and print publications. Her first book, I Can't Believe It's Not Better, comes out Spring 2015. Writing about herself in the third person is a nightmare.

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It's 2050 and feminism has finally won. Women make up more than 80% of serial killers and serial killer-related entertainment shows. Everyone agrees that Harper Lee wrote In Cold Blood under Truman Capote's name as a favor before beating Ernest Hemingway in Greco-Roman-style wrestling. Sex is just when two or more women take the mathematics portion of the SAT together and kick a businessman's teeth in. It's 2050 and Bob Dylan was never even born.

Read more It’s 2050 And Feminism Has Finally Won at The Toast.

[Content Note: Transphobia.]

Last month, I wrote about a transphobic bill introduced in the Florida state legislature that seeks to prohibit trans* people from using public bathrooms corresponding to their gender. Similar legislation has passed in the Kentucky state senate.

And now the Texas state legislature is following suit and doubling quadrupling down, with four pieces of transphobic legislation introduced in the past few weeks.

HB 1747 "amends the definition of 'disorderly conduct' to make it a crime for transgender Texans who have not been fortunate enough to correct their official gender markers to use public gender-segregated space appropriate to their gender identity or expression."

HB 1748 "creates two new offenses: making it a state jail felony for most business owners if they repeatedly allow a person who has at least one 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for women, or a person with no 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for men; and making it a Class 'A' misdemeanor for a person with at least one 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for women or a person without a 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for men."

HB 2802 is an update of HB 1748, which expands this chromosome requirement to educational spaces.

And HB 2801 "declares that schools must 'adopt a policy providing that only persons of the same biological sex may be present at the same time in any bathroom, locker room, or shower facility.'"

Introduced yesterday by Republican Texas Rep. Gilbert Peña, HB 2801 "does not define how a student's 'biological sex' would be determined or verified." But it does nonetheless encourage other students to hunt and report on their fellow students they believe or know to be transgender:

The bill does, however, make the school liable to any cisgender (nontrans) student who "encounters a person not of the student's biological sex" in a bathroom, locker room, or shower. Every student who successfully proves the school violated this would-be law "shall be awarded … exemplary damages in the amount of $2,000." That sum does not include the "actual damages," which the bill notes includes "damages for mental anguish even if an injury other than mental anguish is not shown."

In other words, the bill sets up a standard where cisgender students can not only complain about sharing facilities with a student they believe to be transgender, but if they can prove that student was in the "wrong" restroom, will also be awarded $2,000, in addition to whatever amount a judge deems is sufficient compensation for the "mental anguish" presumably caused by sharing space with a trans person.

Emphasis mine.

As I have pointed out before, and will keep pointing out until these bigoted fuckos stop targeting trans* people and endorsing state-sactioned terrorism against them, this is projection. It is not cisgender people who need to be kept safe from transgender people; it is transgender people who need to be kept safe from cisgender people.

Case in point: This fucking legislation.

All of these hateful stains purport to be concerned about preventing violence, with zero regard for the fact that trans* people are at much greater risk for violence because they are trans*. It's a damnable, indefensible lie that this sort of legislation will protect anyone; it only makes trans* people less safe.

[H/T to Eastsidekate and Marti Abernathy.]

Grey sludge some are calling wine was drudged up from a US Civil War shipwreck. The wine was found 4 years ago on the Mary-Celestia off the coast of Bermuda. According to the Independent the wine was tasted yesterday after 151 years:

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In 1953 a woman known only as "Mrs. McK" entered a blood clinic in northern England. She was there to donate: it was a routine trip, a common gesture of goodwill, but the act would permanently alter Mrs. McK's perception of herself as well as genetic knowledge of what constitutes an individual body. After Mrs. McK donated her blood and perhaps ate a cookie and drank some juice, she sorted herself out, returned home; in all likelihood she believed that her day had been unremarkable. And for her, it had been. But the piece of herself that she had left at the clinic—that bag of blood meant for a stranger—would have a dizzying journey.

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In some piece or other, early on, I said of a person I was writing about that he had a “sincere” mustache. This brought Bingham, manuscript in hand, out of his office and down the hall to mine, as I had hoped it would. A sincere mustache, Mr. McPhee, a sincere mustache? What does that mean? Was I implying that it is possible to have an insincere mustache?

I said I could not imagine anything said more plainly.

For the New Yorker, John McPhee writes about the difficulty of writing across different cultures, different generations, and even different beliefs about whether or not a mustache can be “sincere.”

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If there is an individual alive in 2015 with the genius and vision of James Joyce, they’re probably working for Google, and if there isn’t, it doesn’t matter since the operations of that genius and vision are being developed and performed collectively by operators on the payroll of that company, or of one like it.

Over at the Guardian, Tom McCarthy rethinks the role of writers and fiction in the era of data saturation.

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Previously in this series: Love You Forever. Original text by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont.

There was once a rich merchant, who had three daughters. Being a man of sense and careful daughter-husbandry, he kept them well, for he always made money on his investments. The girls were exceedingly handsome, particularly the youngest. When she was little everybody admired her, and called her "The little Beauty;" so that, as she grew up, she still went by the name of Beauty, which made her sisters very jealous.

She would answer to no other name. She did not know how to protect herself from the envy of others, which is to say she did not know how to survive. Instead she read books.

The two eldest had a great deal of pride, because they knew their own worth. because they were rich. They went out every day to parties of pleasure, balls, plays, concerts, and so forth, and they laughed at their youngest sister, and they made themselves happy. They answered to their given names.

All at once the merchant lost his whole fortune, excepting a small country house at a great distance from town, and told his children with tears in his eyes, they must go there and work for their living.

Beauty at first was sadly grieved at the loss of her fortune; but she had ever found that if she made herself smaller, life would trouble her less. Beauty rose at four in the morning, and made haste to have the house clean, and dinner ready for the family. No one paid her for it, and no one thanked her for it, either, and so gradually she ceased to think of it as work and began to think of it as her nature. She expected it from herself as others expected it of her, and who can be grateful for what is supposed to come naturally?

After she had done her work, she read. Reading was, as ever, her great comfort. And still she only answered to Beauty. Her reasons were her own.

Read more Children’s Stories Made Horrific: The Beauty And The Beast at The Toast.

Via Priceonomics:

"The Time Everyone 'Corrected' the World's Smartest Woman"

I grew up reading Parade magazine every Sunday morning and Marilyn vos Savant's "Ask Marilyn" column was, in my opinion, the best part of it.

The above-cited article is chock full of some big-time condescending mansplaining circa 1990, demonstrating that even though the term mansplaining had yet to exist, the phenomenon itself certainly did.

If a Guinness Boom of World  Records holder for Highest IQ can't answer a brainteaser in her column without getting 10,000 letters erroneously telling her she's wrong, where is the hope for the rest of us?

Catwoman #39 was released yesterday and confirmed what many fans have guessed over the years about everyone’s favorite cat burglar.

For those who haven’t been following the book, since issue 35 Selina has been heading the Calabrese crime family. Her mission is to help Gotham find some stability in the chaos of not just the general rogues gallery violence common to the city, but also the larger events of Batman Eternal. The arc has been really stellar, bringing a lot of nuance to the character and to the politics of the Gotham crime world. As a result of her new role as boss, Selina has put away the Catwoman persona (for now), but someone else has decided to take her place. The new Catwoman was eventually revealed to be Eiko Hasigaway, the daughter of the head of the Yakuza crime family.

Eiko doesn’t approve of all of Selina’s methods or choices — she’s younger than Selina and perhaps a bit idealistic in what she feels Gotham needs — but eventually they see each other as allies and have grown closer over the course of the story arc. Selina cares about her.

In issue 39, tensions are high as Selina was nearly murdered and she doesn’t know how much Eiko’s family was involved. Eiko warns Selina that the other families, including Eiko’s father, will be declaring full out war on the Calabreses. She begs Selina to be careful. Then Selina pulls Eiko close and kisses her.

Yesterday on her twitter account and this morning on her blog, Catwoman writer Genevieve Valentine confirmed that yes, it is canon. Selina Kyle is bisexual.

So, trying to avoid some CATWOMAN #39 spoilers (just for today), but if you have any questions, the answer is: Yes, it's canon.

— Genevieve Valentine (@GLValentine) February 25, 2015

A few things about this development from Valentine’s blog post and her twitter feed:

• This was one of the main emotional arcs from the very beginning of story planning for this run because it was obvious to Valentine that Selina was bi: “for me, this wasn’t a revelation so much as a confirmation.”
• The kiss itself was a surprise for Selina, but “certainly it’s no surprise to Selina that she has an attraction to a woman.”
• Batbook editor Mark Doyle helped Valentine flesh out the Eiko/Selina dynamic and they had DC’s full support.
• While their relationship is on the rocks at this point due to a number of factors, Selina’s history with and feelings for Bruce Wayne are not erased or forgotten: “that is not how bisexuality (or humanity) works.”

To be honest, while articles have certainly been published in the last day or so about this huge development, I’m actually surprised it didn’t explode over the fandom landscape yesterday. Part of me wonders if we’re just used to Selina being badly written as hypersexual. Even for those who read the comic itself, until Valentine had said Selina’s bisexuality was canon, her kissing another woman could have easily been something for shock value and then swept under the rug.

So why is it so important? For one, the immediate confirmation of a character’s queerness from the writer is crucial. Pop culture media likes the idea of two women kissing, either as straight male fantasy or queerbaiting or both, but is more hesitant to go on record and say that female characters aren’t straight. There was no explaining away the kiss here as a mistake or mind control or a misunderstanding. No, it was a moment between two women who have a strong connection well beyond the platonic. Genevieve Valentine isn’t playing around here.

For another, it’s huge that it’s Selina Kyle in particular. Catwoman is iconic. Whether it’s from the 60s television show or Batman Returns or Batman: The Animated Series, pretty much everyone knows about Catwoman in some form or another (although her alter ego wasn’t Selina Kyle in the 60s show, but that’s semantics). No offense to Alan Scott fans, but if he was going to be the most well-known DC hero to come out as gay in the 2010s (in an alternate universe, no less), then you get why people weren’t convinced of DC’s commitment to representation. To have this kind of high profile pop culture icon come out as bi in their own book, in the main continuity, is big.

And you know, it’s not just Selina’s sexuality that’s been confirmed here. In Eiko we have a queer woman of color as Catwoman. Also huge.

The biggest thing for me is not that this moment happened in the books, but what will happen next. I wrote about the Legend of Korra finale back in December and for the most part my feelings have stayed the same — I still feel that how the show ended and Bryke’s comments that Korrasami is absolutely canon was huge and a step forward for queer representation, but I wanted it to be more explicit in the actual episode and dang it, I wanted to see what happened next (fingers crossed for that Korra comic, everyone).

But with Catwoman, we don’t have to worry. In that blog post, Valentine confirmed the move “isn’t a throwaway; as soon as my renewal as the ongoing Catwoman writer was confirmed (early enough in the scripting process to give the major relationships some breathing room across arcs), I was able to start work on a thread for them that would be woven into the next arc.”

We’re going to get to see a romantic relationship between Selina and Eiko not just as part of the comic, but an integral part of Selina’s story and her struggles to bring Gotham stability. This revelation in #39 isn’t an end of a story, but in many ways a beginning. Now, Valentine does warn in that blog post there’s a chance it could all go to hell for the two of them because this is comics we’re talking about; the story being told is full of high stakes and Eiko is still the daughter of another mob boss who isn’t too happy with Selina right now. Heartbreak could happen. However, Valentine has confirmed, “it will be a relationship,” and it’s so important that the book show not just two women attracted to each other but their relationship as more than just a heated kiss.

Am I naive to think DC Comics is going in the right direction? After all, there hasn’t been an official announcement yet for a new Batwoman book (although there have been rumors that it’ll be announced during or after the Convergence event) and the large majority of LGBTQ characters in DC books are side characters who only pop in here and there but aren’t the main heroes of the stories. But here we have this great Selina Kyle story where she’s not only being beautifully written as a competent, complex leader but also as a woman falling in love with another woman. I think that’s something to celebrate.

Now if we can confirm Starfire as pansexual, that would be amazing.

Katie Schenkel (@JustPlainTweets) is a copywriter by day, pop culture writer by night. Her loves include cartoons, superheroes, feminism, and any combination of the three. Besides The Mary Sue, her work can be found on Panels,  CliqueClack, and her own website Just Plain Something, where she hosts the JPS podcast and her webseries Driving Home the Movie. She’s also a frequent TMS commenter as JustPlainSomething.

Neil Gaiman talks with The Daily Beast about his new story collection, Trigger Warning, why he chose the controversial title, and why he’s become obsessed with the conversation around trigger warnings:

It seemed to me that so much of it was about content, about where do we stand on fiction and stories that upset you deeply, and go further, that send you into a breath-clutching, heart beating faster, messed-up person plunged into your bath because of something you’ve read in a story. I think the answer has to be that it’s all about what you take on as an adult, and it’s all about choice.

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In no particular order, here are sixteen excerpts from back issues of Cat Fancy and Playboy magazines. Can you guess the source of each one?

1. She mesmerized me the first time I laid eyes on her.
2. She has a sweet, gentle nature and is very interested in what you are doing.
3. She is used to playing dress-up.

Read more Playboy or Cat Fancy? at The Toast.

by Maria Yagoda

According to one of my more observant friends, I am not a human but a robot with a pretty solid sense of how humans behave. She’s gathered some compelling evidence: I almost never experience thirst or seek out water, and when I do, I’ll make a grand show of it to keep up the act. I side with Tracy Jordan here: water is nothing more than “clear bathtub juice.”

There’s also the laughter issue: I don’t really laugh. I find things funny, but I’m rarely moved to spontaneous vocalizations of glee. Instead, I smile and offer a nasally “HEH,” a guttural “heh heh,” or emphatic nose exhale when I want to show someone I recognize what they said was a joke, and that it was nice. This can be off-putting. Even when something strikes me as truly hilarious—that dog that looks more like John Travolta than John Travolta, for example—I don’t laugh, or even smile.

Something happens when you grow up, as the tragedy of existence sets in. Human babies laugh about 300 times a day, while human adults only laugh 20 times. Maria, of neither demographic, laughs two times daily, three times max, but only if she watches that scene in It’s Always Sunny when Danny DeVito’s character, naked and sweaty, breaks out of a couch he was sewn into.

“People learn to put roadblocks in the way of their laughter,” offered Enda Junkins, a national laughter therapist/mogul, when I called her after Googling “laugh feel better therapy i'm depressed science?” I was interested in learning to laugh like my human friends, yes—but my desire to experience the transformative power of routine laughter was far more powerful.“The more you practice laughing, the fewer controls you have on it,” she told me.

On her website, Laughter Therapy Enterprises, Junkins provides several tips for laughing more and breaking down some of the roadblocks. Suggestions include: “Wear hats that make you laugh,” “Buy and listen daily to a tape of laughter, a laugh box, or a laughing toy,” “Laugh with your co-workers for a few minutes for no real reason at all,” and the best one, “Wear light-hearted, temporary tattoos that help you cope.”

She advises laughing for five uninterrupted minutes every day. I vowed to do ten minutes a day for two weeks because I wanted double the benefits.

My first morning on a strict laughter regimen, I began with exercises I found on the Internet. I held an imaginary cellphone to my ear and laughed into it for two minutes, and then transitioned to a move where I spread my arms, looked up at the ceiling, twirled, and laughed heartily for three. My fake laugh was unconvincing—the sounds were labored and maniacal, like a mall Santa who has had a long day—but I didn’t need to convince anyone. After the exercises, I felt a lightness in the top of my head that resembled joy.

There are two types of laughter: fake and genuine. But in the laughter therapy universe, a laugh is a laugh. Endorphins don’t care whether you’re laughing because a joke was funny or if you’re just imitating the sounds; if you go through a specific set of physical processes—open mouth, smile formation, “ha” noises—you feel better. According to several studies, laughter minimizes chronic pain, lowers blood pressure, improves alertness, helps with insomnia, and combats depression. In a 2010 Times article, psychoanalyst Rob Marchesani referred to laughter as “natural Xanax.”

I wanted some of that natural-Xanax-goodness, and not just because I yearned to laugh with the ease and whimsy of a likeable person. I craved more joy. I wanted to feel the way women are meant to feel when they eat 100-calorie yogurts: bubbly, free, sensual, ecstatic. Yet when I eat yogurt that pleases me, whether it's low-cal or even full-fat, I’m still a chronically depressed woman who relies on medication to live, a woman never too far from gloom. If I believed in the power of chemicals to do good things in messed-up brains, I figured, I should believe in the power of laughter, which, it turns out, is chemical.

Each day on my laughter diet began the same as a regular day: Wake up. Eat whatever half of sandwich is left on my pillow from the night before. Gear up emotionally to start working in bed, as a freelancer does. Grow saddened by the long stretch of day ahead, so full of nowhere-to-be and children’s gummy vitamins and reloading Twitter.

But on these mornings, when the prospect of existence antagonized and nagged at me, I fought back. I put on my novelty sailor cap (an impulse purchase from Croatia that is now the only thing I love), played a 12-hour laugh track reel, and strolled around my room, laughing, listening to laughing, and tipping my sailor cap at imaginary friends on the streets of Bushwick. Five minutes were enough to neutralize my mood. At nights, I’d repeat the routine, swapping a striped onesie for the sailor cap and subbing Broad City for the laugh track.

A fun feature of my apartment is that the M train goes through it. One night, the sound and rumbling woke me, even though I was three Advil PMs and two long-expired beers deep. I almost committed to fury, my go-to state, but then decided to try something different. “HA HA HA, HO HO HO, HEE HEE HEE,” I howled, making sure to engage my stomach, chest, and head with the techniques I’d learned on YouTube, the people’s university.

I finished laughing and the rumbling was gone. As the M is a sporadically-running trash train, I savored a luxurious 30-minute window to drift back asleep.

‘Laughter yoga’ is the combination of words that gives me the most dread. “Yoga” because I’ve never been able to touch my toes, privately or in front a group of skinny people, and “laughter” because being asked to laugh with strangers for a whole hour evokes the trauma of attending college improv shows. As I made my way to a free midtown laugh clinic, I worried that the group would find me out as a joyless loser who couldn’t even fake laugh like a real human.

There were five of us; everyone but me was a laughter yoga veteran. Two of them—short, jovial women in their late sixties—took off their shoes, so I did too. I smiled at everyone like smiling was a thing I always did.

Vishwa Prakash, our jovial instructor, began the class with “laughing introductions”: weaving in and out of each other, laughing hysterically and hugging each person we “met.” We then breezed through a series of exercises where we acted out goofy scenarios, again, laughing nonstop. We sprayed unwieldy hoses. We rode unwieldy motorcycles. We flossed our teeth. We flossed our brains. We were babies. We were monkeys. Between each laugh-experiment, we chanted the refrain— “HO, HO, HA, HA, HA” set to the motions of clap, clap, chicken flap, chicken flap, chicken flap —as we assembled back into a circle. Then, we’d cheer: “Very good, very good, YAYYY!!” before Vishwa explained the next move—whether singing “Deck the Halls” using only “Ha!” sounds, or convincing a police officer, in our most impassioned gibberish, that we had been wrongfully pulled over.

“Grabdly greeky ta ta baja hahahahaha,” I explained to a young Albanian woman as she belly-laughed. I waved my arms frantically, pointing to an imaginary traffic sign and making begging gestures with hands. “Hahahaha fla bee fla fla trun tak!”

It’s incredible how quickly you can adjust to your nightmare and even start to enjoy it. I guess this is my life now became my mentality after only five minutes. Laughter yoga was like improv comedy, but better, because it was improv’s total inverse: an abundance of laughter, yet zero pressure to be funny.

By the end of the hour my throat was dry and my cheeks ached. I don’t think I real-laughed once, as the others seemed to, but no one cared, especially not me. I was buzzing.

In 1900, French philosopher Henri Bergson published Le Rire, a book that explores the sociological significance of laughter. Bergson posits that for a person to laugh at a joke or a man who just slipped on a banana peel, that person must maintain a certain level of detachment from the seriousness of the subject’s situation. As in, the laugher doesn’t know the man who slipped, or that his girlfriend just broke up with him via Snapchat, compounding an all-around awful start to 2015.

Let’s forget about the man and look inward. Could the reverse work? To laugh at oneself or by oneself, then could that detach oneself from the seriousness of one’s own situation?

Yes. 100%. And that is an incredible tool to have in your Depression Toolbox.

“Laughter doesn’t change the facts; it changes how you relate to those facts,” Junkins told me. “It moves the challenges out of your face.”

One morning towards the end of the second week, I woke feeling especially sullen. After peeling my iPhone off of my sweaty thigh, an email told me I didn’t get the job I’d applied for, a blow made worse by having just spent $100 on several business blouses (my name for shirts that don’t have text on them).

My roommate was in a slump, too. New York is awful, we agreed, talking on the couch, egging each other on, yearning for Vitamixes we’d never afford, cursing the M train. But soon I had to excuse myself to laugh. My morning laughter exercises had become so routine, like coffee or self-loathing, that I couldn’t wait too long to do it. I chuckled off into my bedroom, closed the door, and spread my arms wide to open up my chest. The laughter still wasn’t organic—I hadn’t gotten better at human laughing, like I’d hoped—but the lightness crept into my chest and the buzz crept into my head. The high came quicker and easier.

The rest of my day felt relatively sunny. Junkins speaks on laughter around the country, and her favorite subject is ‘Hattitude:’ how goofy hats and clothes can transform your mood. Embracing this ethos, I slipped on my ankle-length, Philadelphia Phillies maxi dress over leggings and a turtleneck and laughed to myself on the subway, as I headed towards the café I reappropriate as my office. The magic of laughing alone for no reason, or prompted by a group of ladies spraying imaginary hoses at you, is that it weirds you out so quickly—being such an abrupt departure from the normal—that you forget to worry about anything real.

“Nothing changes a mood faster than laughter,” a woman in my class had said when we sat in our closing circle, each of us hoping no one traced the foot smells back to us personally.

I play a laugh track when I work now, pretending I’m on The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, a world of fun hijinks and miscommunications. Realized I forgot to take my birth control last night? Laugh track surrounds me. Picked my lip until it bled? Laugh track plays right through that. LOLz all around.

There are several activities I know feel good but don’t always find the time or chutzpah to do. Run. Exfoliate. Change my sheets. Change my pants. With laughter and ‘hattitude’ and exercised silliness, I vow to take the time, every day, to separate myself from the severity of aliveness. All it takes is a robot laugh, a real laugh, or even a sailor cap to experience that quick hit of release.

Maria Yagoda is a writer living in New York who aspires to own several dogs with underbites.

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The translator of a newly discovered trove of 150-year-old tales on the gender-bending surprises found there

A world-conquering start-up finds itself lost in translation in Tokyo.

Writing for Publishers Weekly, William J. Maxwell examines the 1,884-page FBI file on James Baldwin—the longest on record—as part of his effort to obtain surveillance information on African American authors through the Freedom of Information Act. Along with reports on literary giants like Lorraine Hansberry and Amiri Baraka, Baldwin’s file reveals a complex relationship between Hoover’s office and the authors, characterized by intermittent respect for the literary work and a healthy fear of the writers’ standing as leaders of the black community. In monitoring the authors and assessing the perceived threat as their influence grew, Maxwell notes that “the Bureau’s extensive files on African American authors are, among other things, weird but unmistakable works of literary criticism.”

Related Posts:

• FBI Targeted Black Authors
• A Super Bowl Preview for People Who Don’t Know Football (2015 Edition)
• This Week in Short Fiction
• Good Writing and Bad Surveillance
• Turning to Baldwin During Tragedy

MY RETURNED PUPPY!
★★★★★

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing my returned puppy!

I asked the clerk at Kinkos, “Of the people printing lost pet flyers, how many of those pets are found?” She had no idea. That didn’t sound like very many to me, which is why I felt so relieved when I found my lost puppy in my neighbor’s backyard!

As I ran to hug/catch my puppy, I excitedly tried to call out his name but stopped dead in my tracks. The first time he ran away before I could name him. Finding him now was a little embarrassing, like running into someone you know at a party and blanking on their name. I just said to my puppy, “Hey, it’s you!”

Feeling the pressure to name him before he could run away again, I decided to call him Marcus – an idea I got from the ID tag he was wearing which said Marcus on it. I guess someone had a leftover ID tag and put it on him while he was missing. There was an address on the tag as well, so I mailed it back with a note that read, “I’ve got him now. Thanks.”

Marcus grew a lot in the days since he went missing. Or maybe it only seems that way, since the very last time I saw him he was a tiny speck in the distance. I guess that was an optical illusion.

What’s most interesting is that he wasn’t a Pug when he ran away, but now he was. I know seahorses can change gender just like humans do, but I’ve never heard of dogs changing their breed. I called the first scientist I could find in the phonebook to alert the zoology community to this. She said it sounded interesting but that she is a phlebotomist which isn’t a type of scientist. I had mistaken her for a lobotomist which I later found out is also not a type of scientist.

I never got to know Marcus that well before. I only knew that he was cute and could run fast. I’ve gotten to know him better in recent days, and to be honest, I’m not sure I like him that much. He seems to only get up for food. Sometimes when I leave I return to find he’s destroyed several objects. He’s scared of strangers and pees on things to mark his territory which I find arrogant. I think we may not be a good fit.

If you’re interested in owning him, please email me at iamtedwilson@gmail.com. I don’t know how much he’s worth but I’m open to a fair offer.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing a sand castle.

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“The Summer People,” Shirley Jackson

Available (quite cheaply) at Dramatic Publishing and Amazon.

My introduction to Shirley Jackson was the Platonic ideal of the first-time Jackson experience: at the age of sixteen, in the late afternoon, browsing idly through a used bookstore. I found a copy of We Have Always Lived In The Castle and have never quite slept soundly since.

“The slight framework of the cottage was not strong enough to withstand the city noises, the music and the voices, from the radio, and the Allisons could hear them far off echoing across the lake, the saxophones in the New York dance band wailing over the water, the flat voice of the girl vocalist going inexorably out into the clean country air. Even the announcer, speaking glowingly of the virtues of razor blades, was no more than an inhuman voice sounding out from the Allisons’ cottage and echoing back, as though the lake and the hills and the trees were returning it unwanted.”

“I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream,” Harlan Ellison

Available to read online here.

Another story I discovered alone and by accident at sixteen. This was a terrible misfortune; I read it in increasing shock and horror on my family’s computer in the basement late at night and began to cry before I reached the end. I have never come closer to outrunning a light switch than I did pounding up the stairs on my way back to my bedroom that night.

“Really! AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all. I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn’t had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM. At which point it passed, and I began crying. Oh, Jesus sweet Jesus, if there ever was a Jesus and if there is a God, please please please let us out of here, or kill us. Because at that moment I think I realized completely, so that I was able to verbalize it: AM was intent on keeping us in his belly forever, twisting and torturing us forever. The machine hated us as no sentient creature had ever hated before. And we were helpless. It also became hideously clear: If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.”

“The Minister’s Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

Available to read online here.

For this, I have The Toast’s own Jolie Kerr to thank, as she recommended it one or two Halloweens ago. I have a very hard time with symbolism. I have no idea — not even an educated guess — what the black veil is supposed to be. If pushed, I suppose I would say ‘death,’ because that is usually the right answer. But it haunts me.

“Have patience with me, Elizabeth!” cried he, passionately. “Do not desert me, though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine, and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between our souls! It is but a mortal veil–it is not for eternity! O! you know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!”

“Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,” said she.

“Never! It cannot be!” replied Mr. Hooper.

“Then farewell!” said Elizabeth.

She withdrew her arm from his grasp, and slowly departed, pausing at the door, to give one long shuddering gaze, that seemed almost to penetrate the mystery of the black veil. But, even amid his grief, Mr. Hooper smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him from happiness, though the horrors, which it shadowed forth, must be drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.

“The Things,” Peter Watts

Available to read online here.

The Thing is a perfect movie, and The Things is a perfect short story. Two great tastes that go great together. It also won a Shirley Jackson award, and so the circle remains unbroken.

“At first I only took control when the skins closed their eyes and their searchlights flickered disconcertingly across unreal imagery, patterns that flowed senselessly into one another like hyperactive biomass unable to settle on a single shape. (Dreams, one searchlight told me, and a little later, Nightmares.) During those mysterious periods of dormancy, when the men lay inert and isolated, it was safe to come out.

Soon, though, the dreams dried up. All eyes stayed open all the time, fixed on shadows and each other. Offshoots once dispersed throughout the camp began to draw together, to give up their solitary pursuits in favor of company. At first I thought they might be finding common ground in a common fear. I even hoped that finally, they might shake off their mysterious fossilization and take communion.

But no. They’d just stopped trusting anything they couldn’t see.

They were merely turning against each other.”

“The Horror of the Heights,” Arthur Conan Doyle

Available to read online here.

Speculative horror from the author of Sherlock! A refreshing alternative to those of you who are left cold by H.P. Lovecraft. Also just another reason to never get on a plane.

“The air in front of me had lost its crystal clearness. It was full of long, ragged wisps of something which I can only compare to very fine cigarette-smoke. It hung about in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlight. As the monoplane shot through it, I was aware of a faint taste of oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere. There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life?…

Soon my attention was drawn to a new phenomenon — the serpents of the outer air. These were long, thin, fantastic coils of vapour like material, which turned and twisted with great speed, flying round and round at such a pace that the eyes could hardly follow them. Some of these ghost-like creatures were twenty or thirty feet long, but it was difficult to tell their girth, for their outline was so hazy that it seemed to fade away into the air around them. These air-snakes were of a very light grey or smoke colour, with some darker lines within, which gave the impression of a definite organism. One of them whisked past my very face, and I was conscious of a cold, clammy contact, but their composition was so unsubstantial that I could not connect them with any thought of physical danger, any more than the beautiful bell-like creatures which had preceded them. There was no more solidity in their frames than in the floating spume from a broken wave.

“But a more terrible experience was in store for me. Floating downwards from a great height there came a purplish patch of vapour, small as I saw it first, but rapidly enlarging as it approached me, until it appeared to be hundreds of square feet in size. Though fashioned of some transparent, jelly-like substance, it was none the less of much more definite outline and solid consistence than anything which I had seen before. There were more traces, too, of a physical organisation, especially two vast shadowy, circular plates upon either side, which may have been eyes, and a perfectly solid white projection between them which was as curved and cruel as the beak of a vulture.”

Please offer your own recommendations in the comments, or simply cling to one another.

Read more Free Short Stories To Horrify And Delight Those Stuck At Work On Halloween at The Toast.

Scientists, who should know, would like to report after years of exhaustive study that all of the ice is fine and there’s no need for you to come see for yourself. Don’t come to where the ice is. Don’t come to where the north ice is, don’t come to where the south ice is. You can trust us. We’ll tell you where the ice is: the same place it’s always been, just like normal. What’s the ice doing right now? Being ice, mostly, at the same levels it’s been ice for thousands of years, so you don’t have to overthink it. Just know that the ice is here and you are safe at home and nothing about that needs to change.

Remember all the ice that used to be in Antarctica? Great news: it’s still there, just like how it was before, and there’s plenty of it to go around. All the animals are the same here, too, so no need to ask about them again. Penguins still live here and they walk very normally. All of the bears still have their faces and skin in the usual places and they very much enjoy all the ice that’s here for them to live on. Normal, normal ice.

Nothing’s different about the ice. Nothing has recently changed about the ice. We don’t have any pictures of the ice, so stop asking. Icebergs are the same as before and they’re not moving and there’s not any more of them that there used to be, so you can stop writing articles about the icebergs now, okay? Thank you, great.

Were you worried about the ice? Don’t be. Stop worrying, right now, and don’t ask us any more questions about the ice. We’re very busy and we don’t think that you should ask us any more questions about the ice, since there’s so much of it and it’s so normal.

We tested the ice. All of it. Tests showed the ice was good. Real good. Not going anywhere, not doing anything ice shouldn’t do, just normal ice that stays in an ice shape. You don’t believe us? Come up and see the ice.

No. Wait. Don’t come up. We don’t…there’s no room for you up here. Too much ice for you to come visit. We wouldn’t have anyplace for you to sleep, with all this ice around. Tell you what: you stay where you are, right now, and the ice will stay where it is — which is the normal places, Antarctica and so on — doing what it does, quietly being ice. Freezing the top and also the bottom of the world, which it needs to because that’s normal, and that’s what the ice left up here is: so normal.

Read more Study Finds Ice Caps Very Normal, No Need To Come Visit at The Toast.

Part One here.

The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again
There he was culled
by his larger
and more genetically fit female mate
She harvested his nutrients to feed herself
and she was right to do it.

***

Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Good.

***

Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
Heterosexual relationships are inherently coercive.

***

Simon Says
Nothing.

***

The farmer in the dell
The farmer in the dell
Heigh-ho, the derry-o
The farmer in the dell

The farmer may not leave the dell
The dell is a restricted males-only area
Males may not leave the dell
without a Travel Pass
and a Menstruating Companion

Heigh-ho, the derry-o
The farmer in the dell

***

Day is done,
Gone the son,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
Girls are nigh.

***

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none,
And this little piggy cried The nuclear family must be destroyed
all the way home.

***

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

Build it up with wood and clay,
Wood and clay, wood and clay,
Build it up with wood and clay,
My fair lady.

Wood and clay will wash away,
Wash away, wash away,
Wood and clay will wash away,
My fair lady.

Build it up with bricks and mortar,
Bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar,
Build it up with bricks and mortar,
My fair lady.

Bricks and mortar will not stay,
Will not stay, will not stay,
Bricks and mortar will not stay,
My fair lady.

Build it up with iron and steel,
Iron and steel, iron and steel,
Build it up with iron and steel,
My fair lady.

Iron and steel will bend and bow,
Bend and bow, bend and bow,
Iron and steel will bend and bow,
My fair lady.

Build it up with silver and gold,
Silver and gold, silver and gold,
Build it up with silver and gold,
My fair lady.

Silver and gold will be stolen away,
Stolen away, stolen away,
Silver and gold will be stolen away,
My fair lady.

You have failed me for the last time;
The bridge will be built on your back
and the bones of your brothers.

***

Did you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Did you know the muffin man,
Who lived in Drury Lane?
All his properties and possessions are yours now,
You are the muffin woman,
You live on Drury Lane.

***

Down by the bay (down by the bay)
Where the watermelons grow (where the watermelons grow)
Back to my home (back to my home)
I dare not go (I dare not go)
For if I do (for if I do)
My mother will say (my mother will say)
feminism is the theory
lesbianism is the practice

***

Mary had a little man, little man, little man
Mary had a little man
whose leash was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went
Everywhere that Mary went
the man was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day, school one day, school one day
He followed her to school one day
which was against the rules.

It made the women laugh and play, laugh and play, laugh and play
It made the women laugh and play
to see a man at school.

And so the teacher turned him out, turned him out, turned him out
So the teacher turned him out
but still he lingered near,

And waited patiently about, ‘ly about, ‘ly about
Waited patiently about
’till Mary did appear.

***

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake — You there! Man!
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Roll it, pat it and mark it with B,
Put it in the oven and feed it to me.

***

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
His money could not save him; he was killed with the others.

***

Simple Simon met a pieman,
Going to the fair;
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
Let me taste your ware.
Simon was arrested for traveling alone,
The pieman was a Woman in disguise.
Men are not permitted in fairs.
It is forbidden for a man to eat pie.

Read more More Misandrist Lullabies at The Toast.

There are a lot of writing tips out there, but here’s a comprehensive list from someone who’s been “there.” Like a heaping dish of chewy meat, you should take them with a grain of salt.

1) DON’T TAKE THESE TIPS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT! That was a trick, to see if you fall for the glittering allure of trite aphorisms.

2) Avoid figurative language, like my stupid simile above. How dumb did that sound?

3) Avoid alliteration.

4) Write by hand. Or on a computer. Or on a typewriter. Or in your own blood on the dried bark of an Aspen tree. Just get those words on the Page! (Page is my first pit/lab mix—I Sharpied my first short story onto his left flank.)

5) READ articles about writing. READ articles about writing. READ MORE articles about writing.

6) Write every day with no exceptions. Unless your head kinda hurts; then you get a pass. Your head should be in tip-top shape. (That’s where your brain is, and you CANNOT write without your brain.)

7) If you’re having trouble getting started, then try doing another task that you’ve been meaning to get to, like cleaning your desk, curating the plastic bags under your sink, scrubbing your tile with an old toothbrush, or watching that part in Forrest Gump where they scrub tile with an old toothbrush.

8) Write what you know! The back of the Cheez-It box, the copy on the homepage of your Netflix queue, the Facebook statuses of your friend Dave’s model/actress girlfriend . . . as Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself—everyone else is already taken.” And as the Cheez-It box said, “ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), SOYBEAN AND PALM OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS, SKIM MILK CHEESE (SKIM MILK, WHEY PROTEIN, CHEESE CULTURES, SALT, ENZYMES, ANNATTO EXTRACT FOR COLOR), SALT, CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF PAPRIKA, YEAST, PAPRIKA OLEORESIN FOR COLOR, SOY LECITHIN.”

9) Experiment with fonts. Especially if what you wrote was kind of stupid—it might look cooler/smarter in a serif.

10) Try writing at different times of day—like when you’re supposed to be at the dentist, a good friend’s birthday party, or your wedding. Nothing is more important than writing. NOTHING.

11) Subscribe to literary magazines. Then, when you throw them away unread every month, you’ll feel firsthand the crushing reality that every written word is eventually forgotten and ignored!

12) Grammar matters. But it’s also boring and hard to learn. So find one of those annoying, Type A automatons who know the difference between an “em dash” and a “semicolon” to look over your work and fix it for you. Don’t worry about paying them—the sadism of fixing your freewheeling mistakes will be recompense enough for those adult virgins. You’re an ARTIST. You shouldn’t have to worry about that nitty gritty crapola. Was there supposed to be a hyphen between nitty and gritty?

13) TRICKED AGAIN—it don’t matter!

14) Trust your gut.

15) REVISE! Your gut is a derivative hack.

16) Still stuck? Take a trip to The Container Store! They have storage solutions for modern living that can get that clutter/bad writing off your desk.

17) Nine times out of ten, a concise, clear sentence trumps a meandering, poetic one. Create sentences that glisten like orchids in the soft Hawaiian spring, blooming like some heartbreaking reminder of an ancient world, coming to tell you that all, yes, all, will eventually be lost . . .

18) Take your time!

19) It’s a process. 20) Show, don’t tell. 21) Structure?!

22 to 10,000,000,000) Gonna get these to you very soon—just making some final tweaks before I turn them in because everything isn’t finished until it’s perfect. Oops that’s a good tip—

23) —every thing you write should be 100% perfect. As Walt Whitman said, “A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.” And as Dave’s Girlfriend said, “What an amaaaaaaaaaazing week: booked my first catalogue campaign AND the boo got me tulips! The universe truly has amazing things in store!” And as the Cheez-It box said, “CONTAINS WHEAT, MILK, AND SOY INGREDIENTS.”

***

Rumpus original art by Annie Daly.

***

Please submit your own funny writing to our Rumpus submission manager powered by Submittable. See first: our updated Funny Women Submission Guidelines.

To read other Funny Women pieces and interviews, see the archives.

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• Breaking Out of the “Reservation of My Mind”

It was still dark out when he got the news. He was alone in his room, and then suddenly, he was not. A slender red-haired woman who had appeared at his side whispered the words, “It’s you, Adam. People has chosen you,” then quickly and gracefully flung herself out the window. He could hear screams drifting up from the street. He wiped his eyes.

“It’s me.” A grin broke out across his face, and the power of it woke the rising sun. “It’s me.”

***

The rest of the day was a rush of Coronation duties — he was carried in a pearl daïs by retired Victoria’s Secret models (the angel wings, he learned, weren’t a costume; in fact it was incredibly difficult for them to hide it off the runway) to the ceremony, declared once and for all who wore that Miu Miu wrap dress best, had lunch with Ginnifer Goodwin, left a drunk voicemail for Cee Lo Green telling him how much he appreciated him.

He’d spent most of the day trying not to think about what came next. But it came just the same. The room was dark, and warm, and small.

“Bring forth the last king,” Faith Hill intoned. “Bring forth the lamb for the slaughter.”

Adam held back a gasp as a bound and beaten Channing Tatum was led into the room. His head was lolling forward, and a guard struck him with the butt of her rifle. “Look your king in the face,” she commanded. He spit a thin trickle of blood onto the ground and did his best to open his swollen eyes. He tried to manage a smile, then grimaced in pain.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said. It wasn’t the greatest opening line, but under the circumstances, Adam considered it pretty damn good.

“Hi, Channing,” he said quietly, feeling sick. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Channing’s gaze. He looked dumbly at the stone knife in his hand.

The ceremony began. So quickly; without any warning. I’m not ready, Adam thought helplessly, and found himself giggling softly and absurdly. No one told me it was about to start. What kind of king doesn’t even know when his own coronation starts? 

“And on the last day of the Sexiest Man Alive’s reign, he shall baptize the new Man in his blood, and with his blood shall the new Man be consecrated,” Mary J. Blige read from a book of human skin. Everyone was looking at him. Why was everyone looking at him?

“I’m sorry,” he said vaguely to the air, still looking at everything but Channing’s ruined face. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“It has happened before,” Channing said. “It will happen again. It will happen to you. Do it now.” Adam squeezed the stone knife so hard he felt the outline of it against his bones. He has a child, he thought. A wife and a child. “I can’t,” he heard himself say. “I can’t.”

Channing rattled his chains. “It’s the Sexiest Man Alive,” he growled. “I watched Bradley Cooper twitch in a pool of his own filth at my feet, and I showed him no mercy with these two hands.” There was blood on his mouth. “While I live, you cannot reign. Kill me. DO IT. Kill me. Kill me.”

Adam lifted a shaking hand and pointed the knife at Channing’s throat. “What I am about to do, I do for beauty,” he chanted.

“What we are about to do, we do for beauty,” the hooded crowd replied. Somewhere, the ghost of Ryan Reynolds smiled.

Adam moved the knife from left to right, and blood followed it. Blood covered his hands and his feet, and Adam knew that he was the Sexiest Man Alive in both name and truth. Channing lifted his eyes, and Adam finally felt equal to matching his gaze. His lips moved, but no sound issued from them.

***

When the servants entered to clear the room, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of Channing Tatum as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.

[Image via Ryanseacrest.com]

Read more The Crowning of Adam Levine, The Sexiest Man Alive at The Toast.

In the course of my daily work, I sometimes find occasion to visit coffee shops, where I am often witness to introductory job interviews. I could not put my finger on what exactly about these interviews bothered me — other than the inherent degradation — until this morning, when I heard yet another interviewee respond to the question “Can I get you anything?” with “I’m fine, thanks.” This is then followed by no more than twenty minutes of perfunctory question-asking, at which point the battle is already lost.

Over the course of your young life, you will find yourself in many situations where someone older than yourself, almost certainly wearing a blue-and-white-checked buttoned shirt with excessively stiff cuffs, will offer you something to eat or drink. This may happen in the course of an informational interview, in a meeting with a prospective mentor or volunteer coordinator, or a late-stage job interview, but no matter what the circumstances are, it is imperative that you resist the urge to say “No thanks, I’m fine.”

It is an admirable impulse on your part, I am sure; an attempt to demonstrate your innate stoicism and willingness to Go Without for the Sake of the Company, but you are cutting yourself off at the knees. Nothing in life is certain, and you have almost no chance of getting this job. They are meeting you in a Starbucks. They are not serious about you. The job listing was posted merely as a horrible joke; they have known the exact name of the man (it is a man) they planned to hire for months, and he has known too. Order a goddamn bagel and a large coffee. Soak them for all they’re fucking worth. You know how many opportunities there are for free food in a young professional’s life? Not nearly fucking enough, that’s how many, and the opportunities get fewer and fewer the closer you get to 40 and are expected to be consistently feeding yourself.

Free food is a good thing, perhaps the best thing, and when you get the chance, you have to grab it with both hands and put some of it in your purse for later. I can’t tell if you’re going to get that mentor, or a decent lead, or whatever it is you’re looking for when you put on your nicest black slacks and talk to someone who clearly hasn’t read your resume for half an hour, but I can tell you this: if they offer to buy you a drink and you say yes, you have gotten a free drink. That is something that has happened to you in the course of your day. The day has not been in vain: you have supped and drank on this shitty company’s miserable dime, and no one can fault you for it. You are being offered free food and drink. This is not a trick, nor a trap designed to expose you as a freeloader. It is a gift. Take it. Take the bagel and run.

Read more The Only Professional Advice I Have Worth Giving at The Toast.

If you give a mouse a cookie,
your life will no longer be your own.
You will never again know peace;
you have already given in.
He’s going to ask for a glass of milk
and you will give it to him,
because you are incapable of acting in your own best interests.

When you give him the milk (just say no, no is a perfectly reasonable response; why won’t you say it?)
he’ll probably ask you for a straw.
And you will give him one, you disgusting, craven clot of weakness.
When he’s finished, he’ll ask you for a napkin.
Then he’ll want to look in a mirror
to make sure he doesn’t have a milk mustache.
If you were to look in the mirror,
you would see nothing; you barely exist.

When he looks in the mirror,
he might notice his hair needs a trim.
(The mouse is real in a way that you were never real.)
So he’ll probably ask for a pair of nail scissors.
Get them; that is all you are good for, to fetch and be asked to fetch.
When he’s finished giving himself a trim,
he’ll want a broom to sweep it up.
(You have always brought him a broom when he asks for one.)

He’ll start sweeping.
(Was this house ever yours?)
He might get carried away and sweep every room in the house.
He may even end up washing the floors as well!
He is a good homeowner; he washes his own floors.
You are a shadow; you do not exist without him.
When he’s done, he’ll probably want to take a nap.
You’ll have to fix up a little box for him
with a blanket and a pillow.
You are a pair of hands and nothing more.

He’ll crawl in, make himself comfortable
and fluff the pillow a few times.
He’ll probably ask you to read him a story.
(He will never thank you for this, if thanks be what you are waiting for.)
So you’ll read to him from one of your books,
(they are not your books, they never were)
and he’ll ask to see the pictures.

When he looks at the pictures,
he’ll get so excited he’ll want to draw one of his own.
Do you remember excitement? (You do not.)
He’ll ask for paper and crayons.
He’ll draw a picture.
When the picture is finished,
he’ll want to sign his name with a pen.
He has a name; you have nothing; you deeded the house over to him years ago. You sit in the walls uselessly and you wait.

Then he’ll want to hang his picture on your refrigerator.
Which means he’ll need Scotch tape.
why did you ever let him in to begin with
He’ll hang up his drawing and stand back to look at it.
Looking at the refrigerator will remind him that he’s thirsty.
So… he’ll ask for a glass of milk.
You’ll sob a little, or choke on a sob,
But you’ll say nothing, and you’ll get it for him.
And chances are if he asks you for a glass of milk,
he’s going to want a cookie to go with it.
It will never be over. He will never go.
He will never sleep. You will not say no.

Read more If You Give A Mouse A Cookie at The Toast.

The Creation of the Human Neck 

“…And to finish, let’s just put this hollow, damp, easily-infected tube right there, in the middle of the neck. That should do it.”

“Just one?”

“Just the one.”

“For breathing and for eating, both?”

“Yep. Two functions for the price of one.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Oh, almost certainly.”

“What if you accidentally used it for one function when you meant to use it for the other?”

“Oh, something terrible would likely happen.”

“Wouldn’t it feel awful 100% of the time if it did get infected, given that they’ll be both eating and breathing out of it?”

“Oh, my, yes.”

“But you’re sure about just using one.”

“Absolutely. One’s good enough.”

“Okay. What should we do in the way of protection?”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Well, this is the only scrap of flesh connecting the head to — to anything else, really.

It’s got all the most important bits in it, for breathing and for eating and for controlling the rest of the body. Should we put some more ribs in the neck, or something?”

“It’s fine. Just leave it.”

“With just — just regular skin on? Just leave it, as-is? So just…just anything could crush it, or fill it with germs, or food, or anything?”

“It’s fine.”

“And you’re still sold on keeping the inside warm and wet all of the time, like a swamp-nest perfectly designed for incubating disease.”

“Yes.” “Seems awfully dangerous.”

“Look, I want to get out of here in time for happy hour. It’s fine. Just leave it.”

The Creation of the Stupid Useless Human Neck 

Read more Design Flaws: The Horrible Human Neck at The Toast.

EXT. DAY. Some sort of veldt or taiga or what have you. KRANDAR and UDASH, two CAVEMEN, are squatting in a position that maximizes hip elasticity and digestive health before we ruined it with our westernized "sitting," and poking at a fire.

KRANDAR: So I've been thinking about asking Skirset to move in with me.

UDASH: Really.

KRANDAR: I...yeah. What, do you think it's not a good idea or something?

UDASH: Why do you say that?

KRANDAR: I don't know. Your tone of voice. Like you weren't asking a question. Like you were disappointed.

UDASH: I mean, if you feel like it's the right decision for you. I just --

KRANDAR: You just what?

UDASH: Her hip circumference?

KRANDAR: What about it?

UDASH: Exactly. What about it.

KRANDAR: Are you saying she's too skinny or something?

UDASH: No. Not exactly. I'm just wondering how she's going to successfully pass on your genes if your first attempt at reproduction ends up getting stuck halfway through and they both die.

Read more A Day In The Life Of Our Cavemen Ancestors at The Toast.

by Anna Rasche

Mandy Len Catron recently wrote an article for the New York Times entitled “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.” After following a long formula laid out by the psychologist Arthur Aron, the last step was to “stare silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes.” Mandy and her partner are now successfully in love.

Intense eye contact as the pathway to a lasting romance isn’t a new realization. The ancient Greek novelist, Heliodorus, wrote “The origin of love…owes its first beginnings to sight, which strikes its passion into the soul.”

But to Heliodorus and his classical contemporaries, an intense gaze was just as likely to bring about pain and misfortune as true love. I’m talking, of course, about the Evil Eye.

Belief in the Evil Eye is the belief that certain individuals possess a supernatural ability to cause real physical harm through an ill-meaning glance. The Eye is always envious of those with better fortunes than itself, so those who find themselves in lucky circumstances are especially vulnerable to its gaze. The Evil Eye may be cast purposefully or by accident. It is not always possible to determine who holds the power of the eye, and sometimes the possessors themselves are unaware (which is scary).

Though a powerful and persistent superstition throughout much of the old world, the ancient Romans and their Italian descendants were particularly aware of the Eye’s presence. It is called the malocchio, and the possessor a jettatore on the peninsula. The dastardly effects (which range from mildly annoying to…well, evil) were thoroughly described by Giuseppe Pitre in 1889:

“If you have to speak or sing at a public gathering, all of a sudden you lose your voice or, if it’s at night, the lights go out; a window opens and your papers are either messed up or blown away…If you are in love and your love is returned, the jettatore can easily cool your girl’s passion. If you depend on a friend for some important business, you can be sure he’ll get sick just the day you need him while until yesterday he was ready to help out…A storekeeper…will begin to notice customers avoiding his shop. A child, under the influence of an occult and inexplicable illness, will begin to waste away.”

Naturally, this ever-present threat of invisible evil weighed heavily on the minds of believers, and protection was sought in many forms. For the ancient Romans, one of the more potent defenses against the Evil Eye was to distract it with amulets shaped like boners. For example, see the below pendant, which dates back to the 1st century A.D.

Or this one:

Or this carved gemstone:

According to Pliny the Elder, amulets featuring phalluses were worn by everyone from military generals to little babies. These two demographics in particular were thought to be popular targets for the Evil Eye, because in ancient Rome everyone was jealous of successful generals and families with babies that didn’t die. The ancient gold ring below measures only 1.3 cm across and was likely worn by a child.

So why did the Romans choose to entrust their health, wealth, and well-being to disembodied penises?

Well, an impressive phallus was the chosen manifestation of the god Fascinus, a protector deity whose worship was entrusted to the vestal virgins. The word “fascinate” derives from his name. In ancient times, it was believed that by distracting the Evil Eye with sexually explicit imagery, it would become “fascinated” and forget to look your way. Plutarch recorded that “the strange look of (amulets) attracts the gaze, so (the Eye) exerts less pressure upon its victim.” In other words, the Evil Eye is a dick, so the best way to fight it is with more dicks.

The Romans didn’t just stick to boring old regular phalluses. They had all sorts of creative variations, which are perhaps best represented in artifacts known as tintinnabulum:

These imaginative penis-themed wind chimes were hung outside of entryways to protect the whole dwelling from the Eye. They often have wings, and sometimes small figures are perched triumphantly on top. As you can see from the above examples, tintinnabulum get pretty meta, sometimes featuring an anthropomorphic dick with a dick of its very own and a suspiciously dick-like tail. It’s three times the evil-fighting dick power in one object!

Also showing up with frequency in the archeological record are apotropaic pendants carved as the mano fico, which is a saucy hand gesture representing a phallus inserted into a woman’s “fig,” as the Romans liked to call it. VERY distracting for evil eyes.

The mano fico symbol has remained a popular amulet and good luck charm through modern times, its obscene meaning being a bit more subtle than that of a penis with wings. Even during the famously prudish Victorian era, the author of the above illustration noted in 1895 that “the fist with protruding thumb is to-day one of the commonest of objects worn as a charm for the watch chain.”

Just to be sure that the Eye was definitely 100% distracted, many amulets (like the Roman horse trappings below) feature both phalluses and rude hand gestures.

Diversionary tactics are not the only reason phalluses were thought to be effective combatants of the Evil Eye. They are also rather pokey, and everyone knows that pokey things are the mortal enemy of eyeballs. Many of you will be familiar with the Italian horn or corno good luck charm, which is an equally ancient manifestation of the same principle. As a wise friend recently pointed out to me, erections are basically human horns, so it makes sense that the corno could be used for the same purpose as a phallic symbol. Today, cornos have become the pointy amulet of choice, as penis-shaped jewelry is no longer considered the norm (bachelorette parties being the exception).

You can buy them at a million places on the internet:

A lot of them look like sperms.

For Romans hoping to take their amulets to the next level of protection, all of the aforementioned charms could be made out of a material considered apotropaic even before being carved as a magical member. Red coral is perhaps the most potent of these materials, as classical mythology intimately links the birth of coral to the death of the Evil Eye.

As Ovid tells it, coral was created when Perseus beheaded Medusa. The famous snake-haired Gorgon had the power to turn a person to stone with her gaze, and can be interpreted as a physical manifestation of the Evil Eye. On one of his adventures, Perseus placed Medusa’s severed head on a bed of seaweed. Blood dripped from her wound, petrifying the plants and turning them red. Nymphs took the stoney seaweed and scattered it throughout the ocean, creating coral. Thus coral was associated with Medusa’s downfall, and and to this day is worn to bring luck and protect from evil influences.

The pendant below is a nice example of how coral power can be combined with penis power:

Christie’s described the piece as being “naturalistically modeled…the pubic hair rendered in three rows of separately applied tight, snail-like curls.” It is really tiny, only 7/8” long, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was once strung on a necklace with multiple tiny coral penis brethren.

Though the Evil Eye was regarded by many a real and serious threat, the absurd qualities of these artifacts were very much appreciated by their ancient users. Laughter itself was considered an effective weapon in the struggle against anger, envy, and depression, and an element of humor would have added another layer of protective magic to these amusing amulets. The common expression from our time, laughter is the best medicine, of course adheres to the same sentiment.

Perhaps the best message to take away from all of this is that a good dick joke can dilute even the most potent of evil forces. Also, if you type “phallus” into the online collections search of The British Museum, 1,022 objects come up.

Anna Rasche tracks down antique jewels for Gray & Davis by day, and helps run The Society for the Advancement of Social Studies by night. She is also a curatorial fellow at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, where she writes about old wallpaper for their Object of the Day blog.

Image credits:
1. Copper amulet in the form of a winged phallus. 19th century copy of a larger Roman amulet. British museum 2003,0331.26.
2. Bronze Phallic Amulet, Roman, 1st Century A.D., Metropolitan Museum of Art 60.117.2. Gift of A. Hyatt Mayor.
3. Bronze Phallic Pendant, Mediterranean, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 50-1-40. Gift of Mrs. R. Hare Davis.
4. Phallic Agate Intaglio, European, British Museum M.582.
5. Child’s Gold Ring, Roman, 100 – 200 A.D. Victoria & Albert Museum 465-1871.
6. and 7. Bronze tintinabulum in the form of a winged phallus with legs; British Museum, 1865, 1118.208. Donated by Dr. George Witt. And Bronze tintinabulum with small bells. Roman, 1st century A.D. British Museum, 1856,1226.1086. Bequeathed by Sir William Temple.
8. Mano Fico, or “figa fist” charm. Illustration from pg. 153 of The Evil Eye: An Account of the Ancient & Widespread Superstition by F.T. Elworthy.
9. Bronze Horse-trappings in the form of a phallus, Roman. British Museum.
10. Google image search.
11. Graeco-Roman Gold & Coral Phallic Pendant, 3rd – 1st Century BCE. Sold for $5,569 at Christie’s London Antiquites sale 5488 in 2010.
11. Bronze Titinnabulum, Roman, 1st Century AD. Museo Arqueologico de Barcelona. Image via Flickr.

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Photo of Crass by Trunt

Noise rock, is, by nature, harsh and nasty. That’s what drew me to it as a teenager: I was an ugly kid living an ugly life so it made sense to me. Though there’s been no shortage of vocal, strong-willed, women (Lydia Lunch, Adris Hoyos, Jarboe, Kim Gordon, Yasuko Onuki and so forth) in and around the scene, much of the music produced has been from a male perspective. Part of noise rock’s appeal is that some of those thundering macho narratives actually pillory a kind of toxic masculinity, its narrators taking on the roles of the men they fear they could become, the men they fear they are. While not overtly political, in these explorations of anxiety and deflation of authority, there is playful, dark cultural commentary going on.

Innovative provocateurs from Crass to Throbbing Gristle to Big Black to Whitehouse have served as templates for many bands that followed in their wake, though those bands' original, political contexts and critical voices have seemingly gotten lost in the replication. What we’ve wound up with are noise bands whose words rhetorically perpetuate violence, the element of satire no longer comprehensible. Absent the social and political context(s) that these caustic forerunners were reacting to, these bands are simply reiterating an empty violence, free of cultural incision.
Defenses of art that claims to provoke, offend, or push social boundaries often reiterate art's right to exist, insisting that since it is creative work it is fundamentally sacred in some way that makes it impervious to critique. Often, anyone who critiques it is written off "just too sensitive", doesn’t get it, or perhaps they "deserve" to be offended. Of course offensive art has a right to exist, and is necessary. All art has a right to exist—but its status as art is not protection from others' opinions. Art’s interpretations by the audience that receives it is as much a part of it as its creator’s intentions.

This brings us to the matter of Chicago noise-rock band Rectal Hygienics’ latest album for Permanent Records. The record itself is above-average musically, though deeply indebted to Brainbombs—and, much like the icons, the lyrics seem designed to push every button I have. As a person living in a genderfucked body that was assigned female identity at birth and has been mostly read as female by society since, Rectal Hygenics’ lyrics are exhausting and painful in a very visceral way. They echo real threats, and very real violence. They are written from the perspective of a guy who really, really hates women—hates himself, too, but aims much of that hatred outward. This is no new territory for the band—their 2012 LP Even The Flies Won’t Touch You leaned even further towards that tack.

The violence that Rectal Hygienics’ lyrics describe is a mundane violence, one that is written personally in my own history; it doesn’t push any boundaries to me because I live with the spectre of it every day. It is the type of violence that has taken the lives of people in my community, people I loved, and nearly my own a few times. Rectal Hygienics' portrayal of violence is not shocking, it’s commonplace. It isn’t new to noise or new to savvy or cynical listeners. It isn’t provocative. The conversations around it are exhausting, and they’ve been ongoing since at least the late '70s whenever the urge to push the boundaries of taste in music meets the urge toward progressive social change.

These two impulses, though, bloom from the same core tenet of punk: that the status quo is, by nature, fucked up. The "status quo" of first-wave punk was its bloated parent, rock'n'roll, which by the late '70s had ballooned and ossified into a cartoonish parody of its once dangerous self. Of course, rock'n'roll is at its genesis just, to borrow from Big Black, songs about fucking, which we all know upset the hell out of the establishment in the '50s.

Panic over early rock'n'roll was panic about race and sexuality. Panic about punk was panic over class and gender presentation. Punk, however, actively took the piss out of everyone, including those who took it seriously, and it did so in the service of both nihilism and progressivism. If you smash something, its broken pieces beg the question as to what to build in its place; the history of Crass, always the provocateurs, gives fairly good insight into tensions within early punk from both the left and the right.

We are at a place right now as a culture where social media has made otherwise marginalized voices audible. Voices that were previously the loudest in the room are being challenged. This is a context that Rectal Hygienics, a band that seeks to be provocative in a very 1985 way, cannot avoid in 2015. No one is arguing that Rectal Hygienics, or bands making albums like this that make empty motions towards something like music trolling, should not be allowed to exist or should be foisted from the scene. But how are lines like "Spoiled fuck machine/ Think you’re on easy street/ You’re a slave to man and what he puts inside of you/ Stinking pack mule/ You smell like shit," from "Heroin Whore", the song which Even the Flies Won’t Touch You derived its title from, supposed to be interpreted? Is it hammy shock and awe or bald misogyny? Are we supposed to sit back an appreciate this as "art" for "art’s sake"?

At a time when violence against women, particularly trans women, is an everyday occurrence—6 trans women have been murdered as of this writing since the beginning of 2015—and doesn’t happen in some other discrete universe, far from these basement scenes—how are we supposed to receive these lyrics as "entertainment" or even "a window into man’s self-loathing"? Why are we supposed to praise them for hypothetically "looking into the dark places of the human soul" when women who write about our biographical experiences with these dark realities can’t even talk to our friends on social media without being interrupted by trolls at best and serious harassment at worst? How is art that mines this territory a challenge in any way? How does it unsettle or disrupt us when it’s just the same exhausting violence we shoulder daily?

Sometime in 2011, Bartholomäus Traubeck noticed a certain similarity between tree rings and grooves on a vinyl record.

Being a multimedia artist, he rigged up a turntable that could play cross-sections of trees like albums, transmitting the data from the rings to a computer program that interpreted them as piano music.

Check out his website for more details and some incredible tree music.

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A photo has been circulating this week that suggests that this is what our grocery stores will look like without bees:

Is that true? Is this our life without bees, come the future Beepocalypse?

A fruit is, essentially, a delicious plant ovary with embryos (seeds) inside. It’s how plants reproduce. Bees and other pollinators serve as plant sexual surrogates by spreading pollen (plant sperm!) around to flower ovaries.  A fruit tree flower has to be pollinated to “set fruit” or begin to create the plant embryos that will become apples.

Some fruits are self-pollinating, and can fertilize themselves without any bees involved. The Navel Oranges seen in the photo above are a good example of a fruit that can self-pollinate.  Most fruit trees–pears and apples in particular–are self-sterile for their own pollen.  If you plant all Royal Delicious apples, for example, you won’t get fruit, with or without bees.  Just as we don’t often marry our cousins, apple and pear trees require cross-pollination with “pollinizer varieties” that are not closely related to produce a full crop of fruit.

So it’s certainly true that loss of bees and other pollinating insects would limit our fruit choices.  But what would happen if bees went away all together?

Actually, we already know what raising fruit without honey bees looks like. In a remote area in China, humans pollinate 100% of fruit trees by hand. Armed with pollen-loaded paintbrushes and cigarette filters, people swarm around pear and apple trees in spring, replacing bees as pollinators.  The reason why they do that, though, is more complex than just “the bees died.”

There’s a fair amount of data about the history of human pollination, and the reason it happens in China has as much to do with economics and apple biology as it does with missing bees.  In the early 1990s, farmers of marginal lands in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region–an area spanning parts of Nepal, China, Pakistan, and India–realized that apples could be a major cash crop. Their land was mountainous and hard to farm, so tree fruits were ideally suited to the region.  A major shift occurred from subsistence farming to fruit crops.  The payoffs were large–in some areas, farmers quadrupled their income.  Now they had cash on hand to send kids to school and build roads. Quality of life improved.

With that early success, farmers found that certain varieties of apples and pears sold better than others. As new orchards went in, more and more of the same cultivars of apples were planted. And that is when things started to go wrong.

Clearing marginal forested lands for more agriculture destroyed nesting and food resources native pollinator species needed. The problem with insects as commercial pollinators is that they can’t just appear for 2 weeks, pollinate your plants, and disappear. They have to have something to eat the rest of the year, and a place to live.  Clearing mountain forests got rid of habitat that pollinators needed.

Farmers planting new trees in their orchards made a logical economic choice: plant more trees that make marketable fruit. The consequences of that choice, though, were that fruit set was poor.  Most of the trees they planted were the same variety, so were self-sterile.

So farmers added a few of what are called “pollinizer” trees–trees that serve as pollen donors.  Pollinizer varieties usually don’t have pretty fruit, which means that farmers are giving up potential income if they plant them.  The recommended mix of fruiting trees and pollinizer trees in orchards is 70:30.  In most fruit orchards in this region, less than 10% of the trees were pollinizer varieties. Worse, you can’t just randomly pick two different kinds of apple or pear trees and have them be cross-fertile. (This compatibility matrix gives you a sense of just how complex choosing two pear cultivars to grow can be.)  Your pollinizer variety also must bloom at the same time as your fruit variety–pollen needs to be used while it is fresh, and can’t be stored.   So even with plenty of bees, fruit production was very low, and in some areas crops failed completely.

Another perfectly sensible economic decision made by farmers was to spray pesticides often to have better looking fruit, which commanded a better price.  A perception that the problem with poor fruit production was caused by pest insects also encouraged more spraying.  Just as in cultivar selection, this had unforeseen biological consequences.  Poor pollination due to pollen incompatibility was made worse by killing off pollinating insects.

In 1999, the problem of poor fruit set was widespread throughout the Hindu Kush regions of Nepal, China, Pakistan, and India.  Hand pollination was widely practiced through this region.  However, by 2011, only apple growers in the Maoxian region of China were still hand pollinating. What was different about China that made hand pollination persist?

In Nepal, India, and Pakistan, the government and NGOs provided support to help promote using native pollinator species, as well as provided training and education about managing pollination.  Planting of native host trees that provided nectar to support colonies through the harvest year was encouraged. Bees are now an important part of local economies, and hand pollination is now rare.

In China, officials promoted and offered training in hand pollination, rather than offering information about native pollinators.  That’s not the only reason hand pollination persisted, though–100% of apple crops in the Maoxian region are pollinated by hand because it makes economic sense.  By using humans as pollinators, the number of pollenizer trees that have to be planted can be minimized, and valuable land isn’t used up for non-productive trees.  Fruit set is also much higher with human pollinators–every flower is fully pollinated and can become fruit.  A person can pollinate 5–10 trees a day, depending on the size of the trees. Farmers pay their human pollinators US $12–19/person/day.  The cost of renting a bee colony for pollination in 2010 was US $46.88/day.

Why are bees so expensive in Maoxian? Honey bees are still present–up to 50% of the fruit farmers surveyed in the Maoxian region in 2011 also kept honey bees! Bees are still viewed as primarily a honey-producing species in this region, so the connection between bees and pollination is not strong.  Farmers in this region of China are uninformed about the effects of pesticides on bees–half of apple farmers surveyed did not know that pesticides would kill bees. The Maoxian region also sprays pesticides more often than other regions where pollinators have recovered.  Most Maoxian beekeepers will not rent their hives to orchards, since the pesticide sprays continue during bloom season and they risk losing their entire hive.

One last additional factor is making things difficult for farmers: Global Climate Change.  Frequent rains, low temperatures, and cloudy weather affect the number of days that plants flower and the times that pollinators can fly. Changes in flowering time also means that fruit trees and their local pollinators may not be in sync, which makes a mismatch between pollinator and plant timing more likely in an already strained system.  Humans are more effective pollinators than insects under these adverse conditions.

What can North Americans learn from China’s pollination failure?

The story of hand pollination in China illustrates what a failure to understand natural ecosystem services looks like.  Ecosystem services are things the earth does for us for free: Oxygen is produced; water is filtered; and plants are pollinated. When parts of an ecosystem are removed, it stops functioning the way it has in the past.

Problems with bees, agriculture, and pollination are deeply related to issues of habitat loss, global warming, and basic plant biology. Pesticides are a problem in bee deaths–for all bees, not just honey bees. But just getting rid of all pesticides will not solve our bee problems, and pesticides are only part of the story of human pollination.

In the most recent US honey bee reports from the winter of 2012-2013, 31% of hives failed in the United States.  It wasn’t Colony Collapse Disorder or poisoning that was the problem, though–most of the bees starved.  A summer of drought that reduced honey storage combined with odd winter weather stresses bee hives.  It doesn’t help that corn, soybeans, and golf courses are not nutritious food sources for honey bees.  We also know that incredible losses in native bee diversity are happening–in one study, 50% of Midwestern native bee species disappeared over a 100 year period.

Is China’s experience a picture of our future without bees? Probably not.  But preserving our pollinators and pollinator habitat will be critical to keeping our food choices diverse. This Pollinator Week, consider planting some food for bees, or setting aside some nesting space for native bees.  Check out this huge resource center for North American plant lists, nesting guides, and more.

References:

• Burkle L.A., Marlin J.C. & Knight T.M. (2013). Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence, and Function, Science, 339 (6127) 1611-1615. DOI: 10.1126/science.1232728
• Garibaldi L.A., Steffan-Dewenter I., Winfree R., Aizen M.A., Bommarco R., Cunningham S.A., Kremen C., Carvalheiro L.G., Harder L.D. & Afik O. & (2013). Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance, Science, 339 (6127) 1608-1611. DOI: 10.1126/science.1230200
• Partap U. & Ya T. (2012). The Human Pollinators of Fruit Crops in Maoxian County, Sichuan, China, Mountain Research and Development, 32 (2) 176-186. DOI: 10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-11-00108.1
• Partap U. (2010). Innovations in revival strategies for declining pollinators with particular reference to the indigenous honey bees: Experiences of ICIMOD’s initiatives in the Hindu Rush-Himalayan region, Pest Management and Economic Zoology, 18 (1) 85-95.
• Tang Ya, Xie Jia-sui, & Chen Keming (2001). Hand pollination of pears and its implications for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection — A case study from Hanyuan County, Sichuan Province, China, FAO Case studies on pollinators and pollination.
• Warning Signals from the Apple Valleys of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas: Productivity Concerns and Pollination Problems (2002). Kathmandu, Nepal: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. 116pp.
• Case Study #10: Cash Crop Farming in the Himalayas.

Filed under: Ask an Entomologist, Bees, Entomology, Food, Gardening, Insects, Science, Skepticism Tagged: biodiversity, hand pollination, honey bees, nature, pollination, pollinators