Jackgreenall

Anne Thériault’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

If you’re anything like me (and if you aren’t, MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE – THINK ABOUT IT), you’ve definitely spent a lot of your time objectively ranking Henry VIII’s wives. This can be done by carefully employing the scientific method that you learned for the science fair in sixth grade. After that you need to square your answer and find the hypotenuse and then employ the quadratic formula. Because this isn’t just conjecture, ok? This is English Monarchy Science.

The ranking of Henry VII’s wives is so obvious that I shouldn’t even have to tell you who comes first and who comes last. Like, do you even Tudor, bro? But just in case you’re in any danger of coming to the wrong conclusions, let me condescendingly lay it out for you here:

FROM BEST TO SUCKIEST:

1. Anne Boleyn
2. Catherine of Aragon
3. Catherine Howard
4. Anne of Cleves
5. Catherine Parr
6. Sucky old Jane Seymour, with her stupid ability to give birth to princes who survive past infancy and her stupid boring face. GOOD RIDDANCE, JANE SEYMOUR. WAY TO DIE IN CHILDBIRTH LIKE A CHUMP. DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOUR ASS ON THE WAY OUT.

Far from being the slutty home-wrecker and raging bitch that both historical texts and popular media make her out to be, Anne was actually a super rad lady (although it should be noted that sluttiness is a social construct, and also that sleeping around and being a raging bitch are not mutually exclusive with the concept of radness.) Anne was a smart woman who knew what she wanted (to be queen) and what she didn’t want (to be the king’s mistress/anything other than queen.) She held out for seven years while Henry tried to get her into his bed. SEVEN YEARS. That is so fucking ballsy. Like, it’s both ballsy not to give the King of England what he wants and also ballsy to assume that you can keep him and his roving boner interested in you for seven years. 

Speaking of ballsy, let’s talk about the death grudge that Anne held against Cardinal Wolsey. Some background: Anne had a secret betrothal to Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, but when Wolsey found out he forced them to break it off. Anne was fucking pissed, mostly because she was pretty sure no one as high ranking as an earl’s son would ever offer to marry her again (hang in there Anne, there are better things coming – but, spoiler alert, also way worse things.) Did Anne choose to forgive Cardinal Wolsey, one of Henry VIII’s closest friends and advisors, once she and the king were finally boning? NO SHE DID NOT. She had way too much self-respect for that. Instead, she convinced Henry that Wolsey was deliberately cock-blocking him by failing to get him an annulment for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. And if there was one thing that Henry VIII hated, it was cock-blocking. 

Wolsey was stripped of all his titles and sent to Yorkshire. The next year he was accused of treason, and on his way back to stand trial London he died.

ANNE BOLEYN – 1

CARDINAL WOLSEY – 0

Anne was great at a lot of things, for example pretending to be French. She helped solidify England’s alliance with France, which she probably accomplished by taking every important French dude aside and being like, “Listen, just tell him that Catherine of Aragon’s a bitch and that you hate Spain and I promise he’ll love you forever. Also, feel free to keep that shit hole Calais.” She spent her spare time skateboarding around and flipping off the pope. Like, she would lean over Henry’s desk with an anti-Catholic pamphlet in her cleavage and be like, “HEY, CHECK OUT THIS HERETICAL WRITING THAT JUST FELL INTO MY MELON BASKET.” And then Henry would be like, “HMMM YOU SAUCY LITTLE MINX, SOUNDS LIKE SOME GOOD READING MATERIAL FOR WHEN I VISIT THE ROYAL SHIT HOUSE*.” Then he would go to stick his hand down her dress and she’d be all, “NO BUT I AM A VIRTUOUS MAIDEN AND ONLY MY HUSBAND SHALL TOUCH ME THERE. I WISH THOU WERT MY HUSBAND BUT SADLY, THOU ART ALREADY WEDDED” and he’d be like, “WHOA LIGHTBULB MOMENT WHAT IF I MADE A NEW CHURCH THAT LET ME DIVORCE CATHERINE???”

Which is pretty much how the Reformation played out.

For her coronation ceremony, Anne totally wore a dude’s crown. She was like, “Fuck your lady crowns, I want that big gold fucker over there.” And everyone else was like, “BUT MISTRESS FAIR, THAT IS ST. EDWARD’S CROWN. IT HAS ONLY EVER HISTORICALLY BEEN USED TO CROWN A KING. ART THOU NOT A QUEEN?” And Anne was like, “Fuck your gender binary of crowns.” 

And then she invented gender theory and burned down the patriarchy and was like, “Fuck all of you motherfuckers.”

Things got a little shaky for Anne after her marriage and subsequent inability to produce a baby with a penis (which, having taken grade eleven biology, I know was actually Henry’s fault, but I guess they didn’t really Science much back then.) Three years after her coronation she was accused of sleeping around with pretty much the entire court, including her brother. Which, I mean, Henry. Come on. That’s fucking gross and you have a gross imagination and what are you, sixteen? Writing out his fake accusation probably involved Henry writing out a bunch of fanfic about Anne and all your friends and being like, HMMM WHICH PAIRING DOES THE ROYAL DICK LIKE BEST? And there is nothing wrong with writing fanfic about your wife, but no one else wants to know about your incest fantasies. 

Anne was, of course, beheaded. Henry brought in a special fancy swordsman from France to do the job, like, OH MY LITTLE SWEETMEAT, NOTHING BUT THE BEST BEHEADING FOR YOU. But Anne faced death just like she faced everything else, by which I mean she looked death in the face and made a jerk-off motion. She even went around saying that her execution would be easy because she had such a little neck. The Constable of the Tower said that she laughed “heartily” over that joke. HEARTILY, I TELL YOU. Then she went to the window and flipped off Jane Seymour forever.

Anne lived in a time when women were shit on (figuratively and maybe even literally, depending on people’s kinks) for their entire lives. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she refused to be meek and nice and instead went balls-to-the-wall for what she wanted. And anyone who stood in her way would end up a sad old dead cardinal. You might not like what she did, and you might not like her methods, but man have you ever got to respect the fact that she did not give up on her dream. 

Also, she gave birth to Elizabeth I, so I guess you can just go ahead and thank Anne Boleyn for stuff like Shakespeare and Sir Francis Drake and those giant Elizabethan neck ruffs. Would you want to live in a world without giant Elizabethan neck ruffs? I didn’t think so. Anne Boleyn is the best, CASE CLOSED.

*Please note that Henry VIII actually had one of his dude friends employed as his “Groom of the Stool,” which meant that they had to wipe his ass whenever he took a shit. Just throwing that out there.

Read more Anne Boleyn: Your Hero and Mine at The Toast.

Previously: You can’t make a pork chop without losing a part of yourself.

Each issue of Cook’s Illustrated begins with a folksy letter with news from down on the old Vermont farm by founder and editor-in-chief Chris Kimball. These charming, old-timey updates remind us all of a slower, simpler way of life, where neighbors stop to swap plowing tips out by the trading post and run when they see Old Henry coming. Who’s Old Henry? Why, what a question, stranger. Old Henry knows who you are. That much is certain. Old Henry knows who you are just fine.

The Toast has received an advance copy of Mr. Kimball’s most recent letter, which we are proud to publish in full here.

It’s a hard world for little things. I’ve seen the first of things, and I’ve seen the last of things. I’ve seen the last of Marie Briggs, the baker at the Yellow Farmhouse, the first farmhouse on the left as you drive into town. No one saw Marie after me.

Funny how you can chop and chop and chop away at something, but it never quite disappears.

I’ve seen the last of Marie, but that don’t mean she isn’t a-moving and a-bustling around in my barn right this very minute. Can’t you hear her? Something’s in there, moving between the walls and above the floor and below the roof. Something’s in there, children, and it isn’t me and it isn’t you.

Ah, children, you’re staring at my choppin’ fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of Right-Hand, Left-Hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I’ll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one against the other. Now watch ‘em! Old brother left hand, left hand he’s a-fighting, and it looks like love’s a goner. But wait a minute! Hot dog, love’s a winning! Yessirree! It’s love that’s won, and old left hand hate is down for the count!

No, no! Don’t you touch that, little lamb. Don’t touch my dicing knife, that makes me mad. That makes me very, very mad.

If you’re a curious child — and I don’t recommend curiosity, children; it makes your biscuit dough tough — you might wonder what could disappear next. Why, anything. A man sitting on his porch, watching his potatoes grow. Tom and Nate and Joe and the boys grilling venison over a wood fire, thinkin’ they’re alone in the dark. Why, children, a body’s never really alone in the dark, because the dark’s with him. Remember that, now.

A town’s only as real as its oldest stories. If you take the stories, the town is yours. Who’s takin’ ours? Who’s takin’ ours, and dancing under a moonless sky at the crossroads, and always running a little bit faster than me when I try to see his face? Why do I hear him laughing low and soft under my bed a-nights when it’s too cold and too troublesome for me to lift the covers?

There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.

Anyone can kill a woman, but it takes a special kind of man to cook an artichoke right.

People ask me sometimes: What religion do you profess, preacher? And I tell them: The religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us. And they don’t ask me again.

I hope I haven’t seen the last of the bachelor farmers who work their fields without mouths and without eyes. I hope I haven’t seen the last cunning woman run out of town after interferin’ with a birthin’-woman. I hope I haven’t seen the last gravestone wedding. I don’t like the look of single headstones. It’s messy, and I won’t go to my final rest in a messy churchyard.

If they let me rest. Would you let me rest, children?

The stars will start movin’ again soon, and then the world will change without me. I know that. Once the stars change, nothing a man can do but watch the new people move into his house and set his clocks wrong and walk right through him, as if he weren’t even there. Nothing to do but wait for them to drown in the creek, if ever they drown at all.

I have a black and white photograph from the 1920s of a school outing at the Haunted Chimney. The girls are well-turned out in white frocks, the boys in pressed pants and collared shirts. The chimney is still there, at the end of Chambers Road past two dairy farms. It’s just into the tree line on the left—the foundation intact and the chimney standing tall. Someday, I’ll be the last person to look for a woman on a white horse. That’s the day that the old foundation turns to ruin and we are all lost. You keep this photograph, now, and I’ll always come a-running when you need me.

I can hear you whisperin’ children, so I know you’re down there. I can feel myself gettin’ awful mad. I’m out of patience, children. I’m coming to find you now.

Hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hung hang hing. See the robber swing. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hing hang. Hing hang hung. Now my song is done. Hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hung hang hing. See the robber swing. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hing hang. Hing hang hung.

Read more A Letter From Chris Kimball at The Toast.

Why teachers drink -

On January 13, 1874, thousands of unemployed New Yorkers met in Tompkins Square Park to protest their unemployment and poverty. There, the police would beat them in the first large-scale state crackdown of the American white poor in the nation’s history.

The Panic of 1873 was the first of the post-Civil War economic collapses to throw the working class into desperation. Caused primarily by corrupt railroad financing, especially thanks to the notorious Jay Cooke, the Panic led to high unemployment throughout the 1870s and created the first explicitly class-based political actions in American history. By November 1873, 55 railroads had gone bankrupt, wages were slashed, unemployment jumped, and the American working class began realizing the impact of the unregulated capitalism suddenly transforming their country. Most Americans at this time lacked what we might consider a “class consciousness” or any real doubt that the growing economic system wouldn’t serve their interests as independent operators manfully thriving. But the Panic began to lead to the first meaningful questioning of how this system affected workers and while substantial and well-organized radical resistance would take some time to develop, the first stirrings of resistance are clear in the mid 1870s.

Political cartoon of the effects of the Panic of 1873 on New York. Frank Bellew, New York Daily Graphic, September 29, 1873

Some urban workers responded to the Panic by organizing into one of the first unemployed workers movements in American history (probably we can trace the very first stirrings of these types of movement to the economic problems of 1857). In New York, the Committee of Safety was formed, demanding public works projects to employ those who needed work and the mayor to meet with them about it. In the first days of 1874, a series of protests became increasingly larger. By January 8, over 1000 workers were meeting in Tompkins Square Park and the demands were growing, including for the 8-hour day.

Tompkins Square as a site of recreation for the poor, 1873

Already though, the nascent labor movement in New York was divided between “radicals” and “conservatives.” Some of the leaders of the Committee of Safety were socialists and other labor leaders in New York denounced them as “communists,” a term with a much less defined threat than the post-1917 period, but one that already meant un-American. A bricklayer named Patrick Dunn led a counter movement that denounced the Committee of Safety and launched his own movement with many of the same demands, culminating in a January 5 march to City Hall. The Iron Molders International Union also tarred the Committee of Safety with a similar brush, using the term “anarchist.” What this really meant to Americans in 1874 was “immigrant that questioned the fundamentals of American capitalism.” The leader of the Committee of Safety was Peter J. McGuire, later famous for being the founding figure and long-time president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, which later became the most powerful union in the American Federation of Labor. McGuire called for a mass demonstration on January 13, urging the city to quit evicting unemployed tenants and instead to provide public aid. Many of the unemployed workers were immigrants and McGuire urged sympathy with their plight, a stance many native-born unionists were not willing to follow.

The forces of order across New York freaked out. Calling this the American version of the Paris Commune, newspaper editors and business owners called for the crushing of these workers. The mayor refused to meet, the police refused to allow them to march to City Hall, the governor refused to get involved. On January 13, over 8000 workers met at Tompkins Square. This was the largest political demonstration in New York history to that point. The protestors permit to meet had been revoked but no one told the protestors. Meanwhile, 1600 police officers gathered near the park.

At about 10 a.m., the police moved in and began savagely beating the protestors with clubs, while horse-mounted police cleared the streets. Samuel Gompers, still over a decade away from his ascension as a major American labor leader, remembered, “mounted police charged the crowd on Eighth Street, riding them down and attacking men, women, and children without discrimination. It was an orgy of brutality. I was caught in the crowd on the street and barely saved my head from being cracked by jumping down a cellarway.” 46 workers were arrested. Two men were charged with assault, one, a German named Christian Mayer, for hitting a policemen with a hammer. Most of the arrested workers were unemployed immigrants who could not afford bail. One, Justus Schwab, later became a leader of American anarchism.

The police clearing Tompkins Square

The suppression of the Tompkins Square protests undermined the unemployed workers movement in the city. Most of the city’s and nation’s newspapers lauded the police for purging the United States of its own version of the Paris Commune, beginning a long history of police and big newspaper editors joining to suppress the rights of workers. For much of the 19th century, the police response to Tompkins Square became a model. Pennsylvania law enforcement looking to suppress the Molly Maguires took lessons from it, while Chicago developed militias with the aim of cracking workers’ heads if need be; several of these were engaged in the violence of 1886 that culminated at Haymarket.

The Committee of Safety soon dissolved, attempting to form a political party which soon disappeared on its own. A socialist newspaper campaign convinced the governor of New York to pardon Mayer later in the year, but otherwise there was little public sympathy for the victims of Tompkins Square. In coming years, more class-based social movements would develop as the American working class tried to understand and fight back against this new world of big capitalism. Most notably, in 1877, the Great Railroad Strike would announce to the nation’s leaders that American workers would engage in mass organizing. But it would take over six more decades of economic boom and bust, the growth of class consciousness, and a series of left-leaning movements for working-class dignity before the government would finally become even minimally responsive to the needs of unemployed Americans.

This would not be the last time Tompkins Square found itself the point of police violence, as in 1988, the people who hung out in the park, now a space for punks, youth cultures, and the homeless were angry about gentrification and a 1 a.m. curfew battled police.

This is the 89th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.

Yes, there is a petition to name it Gallifrey.

This can be reason two hundred thousand or so for why space is awesome: Astronomers have discovered a planet the existence of which flies in the face of all theories about how planets are formed. Specifically, what’s so weird about HD 106906 b is that it’s huge (11 times the size of Jupiter), but it’s also really, really far from its host sun. About 20 times farther out than Neptune is from our sun, to be more precise. It’s generally believed that planets are formed out of debris that passes close to stars, but that process is way too slow to have been the cause of HD 106906 b’s creation. Basically, up until its discovery astronomers didn’t think a planet like it could exist.

“This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see,” says Vanessa Bailey, the fifth-year University of Arizona graduate student who led the team that discovered the planet.

Still, there is a logical explanation, even if we don’t know it yet. Bailey says the planet might have formed in a similar way to how binary stars do. That doesn’t fully explain it, since the planet is exponentially denser than binary stars tend to be. But the planet’s in an area of space that’s been observed before, meaning a lot of data has already been collected that could help astronomers figure out how HD 106906 b came to be. Says co-investigator Tiffany Meshkat: “Every new directly detected planet pushes our understanding of how and where planets can form.”

Even if the explanation isn’t “All 13 Doctors sealed it into a time bubble to keep the Daleks and the Time Lords from raining destruction on the universe,”—I’m at least 95% sure it’s not that—this is still amazingly cool. We think we know something that seems like it should be fairly basic, like how planets form, but then HD 106906 b comes along all “Not this time. Try again.” Space is vast and complicated, and there’s so much we don’t know.

*happy sigh*

(via: IBT)

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You are correct, this is not a screencap from The Princess Bride. No, it’s from another piece of modern source material that parodied a very specific period in European writing and then was converted into a stage musical.

It’s just that no one spontaneously bursts into song in The Princess Bride like they do in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, but that might very well change.

The Princess Bride has been dipping in and out of the status of “definitely getting a stage production at some point” for the past few years, but the most recent development is pretty encouraging. Disney has entered into a new deal with William Goldman, the author of The Princess Bride in the first place, to craft a stage version of the novel. Says Alan Horn, who shepherded the agreement:

My involvement in The Princess Bride goes back to 1987 and it has always been close to my heart. For all those years and a few more, I’ve been friends with the brilliant Bill Goldman, and to now have a stage production of this film in development at Disney is honestly a dream come true. It couldn’t be in better hands than those of the experienced Disney Theatrical team led by Tom Schumacher.

At this point there’s no deadline, no cast, and not even any word on whether it’ll be a play or a musical. But I know which of the last two I am pulling for. In fact the more I think about it the more I want a complete operetto like The Nightmare Before Christmas where 90% of the story is told in musical numbers, with leitmotifs for all the themes and repeated lines of the story. One way to sing “inconceivable,” a specific tune for “my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die,” one familiar tune for kissing, and of course, one for “as you wish.”

Much of the score of a TPB musical was completed in 2007, when the production was halted over “a financial dispute.” Disney maintains that no material from that version of the show will be used.

(via The Hollywood Reporter.)

It’s Shark Week, and even the cats are celebrating! Max-Arthur, the cat dressed in a shark costume who rode a Roomba chasing after a duckling, is back! This time he is taking his steed around the kitchen floor. You’d think after thousands of cat videos we’d start getting immune to the silly-adorable charms of our felines. Yet here we are, still guffawing at a shark-cat on a Roomba.

How does this never get old? Only the internet knows.

(via Laughing Squid)

Previously in Cats

• Nerdy Love Song + Adorable Kitten + Ukelele = Watch This Video
• Scientists Might Have Figured Out A Cure For Cat Allergies
• Wouldn’t You Want To Play Street Fighter… With Cats? [VIDEO]

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And that was the last we ever saw of Sheila.

(via Jezebel.)

Previously in Monday Cute

• Baby Meerkats
• Wolf Puppies
• Cat Watches YouTube

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