Cary

ghettablasta:

✊🏾😂

This week, America got a glimpse at the depths of the Trump family’s depravity. In summary: Donald Trump Jr. tried to collude with the Russians, failed, and then failed to cover his tracks. His father (our president) tweeted that it’s “the greatest Witch Hunt [sic] in political history.” Meanwhile, Ivanka has her own problems to contend with but is headed out of town with her husband, and sister Tiffany is living it up abroad.

It’s all so laughably awful, but for the fact that, you know, the actual fate of our Republic is at risk. As we wait for this latest crisis-slash-scandal to shake out, here is a list of great books about terrible families.

***

The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong by Leland Cheuk
A laugh-out-loud black comedy about a dysfunctional family that has endured almost every major injustice in Asian-American history, but can’t endure each other

 

The Middlesteins by Jamie Attenberg
An epic story of marriage, family, and obsession that explores the hopes and heartbreaks of new and old love, the yearnings of Midwestern America, and our devastating, fascinating preoccupation with food.

 

Everything is Flammable by Gabrielle Bell
Bell revisits her childhood home in remote Northern California after her mother’s home, car, and belongings are suddenly swallowed up by a fire. Acknowledging her issues with anxiety, financial hardships, memories of a semi-feral childhood, and a tenuous relationship with her mother, she helps her mother put together a new home on top of the ashes.

 

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Rose Edelstein bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions. To her horror, she finds that her cheerful mother tastes of despair. Soon, she’s privy to the secret knowledge that most families keep hidden: her father’s detachment, her mother’s transgression, her brother’s increasing retreat from the world. But there are some family secrets that even her cursed taste buds can’t discern.

 

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old-world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the US.

 

Salvage the Bones Jesmyn Ward
As the twelve days that make up the novel’s framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family—motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce—pulls itself up to face another day.

 

The Blue Hour by Jennifer Whitaker
Fairy tales both familiar and obscure create a threshold, and The Blue Hour pulls us over it. With precise language and rich detail, these poems unflinchingly create an eerie world marked by abuse, asking readers not just to bear witness but to try to understand how we make meaning in the face of the meaningless violence.

 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez
The story of the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo, told through the history of the Buendia family. If you somehow haven’t read this yet, now is a good time.

 

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Lamberts are a troubled family living in a troubled age. Stretching from the Midwest in the mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of globalised greed, The Corrections brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty into wild collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and New Economy millionaires.

 

The Bible
Is any book filled with more examples of crazy families? We think not.

 

If We Were Birds by Erin Shields
Erin Shields’s award-winning play is a shocking, uncompromising examination of the horrors of war, giving voice to a woman long ago forced into silence, and placing a spotlight on millions of female victims who have been silenced through violence, delivered through the lens of Greek tragedy.

 

Omeros by Derek Walcott
A poem in five books, of circular narrative design, titled with the Greek name for Homer, which simultaneously charts two currents of history: the visible history charted in events—the tribal losses of the American Indian, the tragedy of African enslavement—and the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile.

 

King Lear by William Shakespeare
King Lear depicts the gradual descent into madness of its title character, after he disposes of his kingdom giving bequests to two of his three daughters based on their flattery of him, bringing tragic consequences for all.

 

On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political.

 

The Ice Storm by Rick Moody
As a freak winter storm bears down on an affluent suburb in Connecticut, cars skid out of control, men and women swap partners, and their children experiment with sex, drugs, and even suicide. Here two families, the Hoods and the Williamses, come face-to-face with the seething emotions behind the well-clipped lawns of their lives.

Related Posts:

• What to Read When You Want to Understand Middle America
• What to Read When the World Is Unreliable
• What to Read When You Are Stuck on an Island
• What to Read When You Really Need a First Lady to Show Up
• What to Read When You Are a Girl in This Garbage-Fire World

adulthoodisokay:

Honestly, Canada, now you’re just rubbing it in our faces.

ltsuitsyou:

[1/?] (insp.)

american-auror-story:

catsbeaversandducks:

OH MY HEART

“I’m not ready for kids” LOL

notmusa:

i expect ill be able to solve a lot of my problems once my baby brain falls out & my adult brain grows in

cakeandrevolution:

queeranarchism:

60 year old historian Martin Bühler (who identified himself to the press, I do not identify activists without consent) appears to ‘photobomb’ a lot of media images of the G20 in Hamburg. In reality he is a long time observer documenting police brutality. In Hamburg he chose to cultivate the most non-activist ‘white bystander in a suit with a bike’ look he could manage and casually walked in front of police. As police slowed down or interrupted attacks and waited for the ‘bystander’ to get out of the way (being caught on camera trashing what look like bystanders is bad press after all), activists had time to regroup or retreat.

oh my god, what a fucking badass

Rachel Maddow said it best last night. She's no longer confused. Now she sees how the pieces fit together. Me too.

• Trump, pre-bankruptcies, financed his ventures the old-fashioned way, with bank loans. Then he defaulted, returned pennies on the dollar, and could no longer raise legit capital.
• At the same time, Putin and his cronies were ascending in Russia, and needed places to park their gains outside Russia. People like Trump were perfect. And they didn't have to worry about him defaulting because they had good enforcers that weren't available to legal banks.
• It's a win-win. Trump is the perfect front for money-laundering. A loudmouth self-promoting con-man. Decides to run for president. His mob friends suggest Paul Manafort would make a good campaign manager. Trump doesn't like to micro-manage, so he says sure, why not.
• Now it's time for the next-level management program for Trump. He has graduated from one of many western money-launderers to the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. The Russians had hacked the systems of both parties, now they knew what they would use the mail archives for. For the Democrats, they'd release the emails when they needed to change the focus away from some Trump misdeed, and for the Repubs they'd use the emails to keep them from "getting any ideas" about who was in charge.
• They contact Junior through Goldstone. He says Russia loves your dad, wants to see him elected, can we meet to discuss? Junior loves it. They get together. Seal the deal. The Russian rep doesn't talk much, asks what Junior and Kushner want. Manafort is sitting on both sides of the table (possibly unbeknownst to Junior and Kushner) but mostly on the Russian side, of course. BTW, you can be sure the Russians have a recording of what was said at this meeting.
• Follow-up meetings take place. They introduce people in both organizations to each other. There are lots of connections at all levels through the campaign. The tracks are not well covered. And of course Russians have copies of all the emails (as they had copies of the ones that just leaked). When Flynn was fired because he could be blackmailed that must have been a good laugh for Trump et al, because that was the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

Anyway, this seems to be "the arc" of the relationship between Trump and Russia. Both countries are now controlled by the mob. They don't care if we know. It's all pretty much out in the open and all that the Russians care about is that their money-laundering flows are turned back on. They don't care about the other things we thought they might care about. The US can do whatever they want. They just want to be able to continue to use American real estate as their piggybank.

PS: Looking forward, either the Russians get their way and can start laundering again, or they're going to make our lives ever-more-hellish.

“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. (…) 

There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments.”

- Ruth Hubbard, The Political Nature of “Human Nature”  (via kuanios)

megurashka:

this is so funny

parskis:

ngl this has probably been my favorite headline of today

That $20 Tylenol is profits, not care.

owlsofstarlight:

owlsofstarlight:

In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.

There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.

I realized what happened after about two seconds.

The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.

For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.

I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.

This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.

daily-showerthoughts:

Yawning is like the body’s “20% battery remaining” warning.

empress-theonora:

alyesque:

Fucking iconic

i love chelsea manning

deedeedelfuego:

Believe it or not, three years ago Dee Dee was that cat on the left. Most of you already know her origin story, and those who don’t, I encourage to read it. 

Having Dee Dee in our life has been an immensely positive experience, and on this day, which we consider her birthday (or adoptiversary,) I like to remind people that there’s a Dee Dee in every abandoned, troubled animal out there and I can’t recommend enough that if you can, then you should go find that animal and adopt it. It’ll pay off for everyone involved.  

To many more, Deeds. We all love you very much and we’re glad you made it. 

As always, thank you for following along. 

carriefish:

“When I go to sleep at night, there’s never a day so far where I don’t think of her. And when I think of her, and I hope you can appreciate this mental image, she’s looking down from the celestial stratosphere with those big brown eyes and that sly smile on her face as she lovingly extends me the middle finger.” – Mark Hamill

Is it Frida yet?

alaskanvetstudent:

We call him Wee-Beast!

backseats-serenades-hurricanes:

mysharona1987:

goodvibesgoodfriends:

mysharona1987:

The Donald Trump School of Parenting™.   

He really is a supervillian

Like, I want to hate Trump’s kids.  

But, my God, they grew up with a sociopathic father.

You couldn’t even let your 10 year old son beat you in a skiing race or, at the very least,  look mildly competitive? You pushed him over? What the f*** is wrong with you?”

No don’t censor that. Say it louder. What THE FUCK is wrong with you?

Ok but lol FUCK his kids. They’re garbage. You can grow up with abusive, narcissistic parents and not turn out to be satan’s children. No sympathy.

anti-sjw-rosequartz:

If you scratch my cat in the right spot, he’ll flick his tongue out and lick whatever is close by

Republicans gutted Christianity.

A post shared by Trench (@acoustictrench) on Aug 3, 2016 at 1:50pm PDT

shay-gnar:

weedweirdo:

this is a very very good video

omfg this video made me the happiest i have been in a while

the-real-eye-to-see:

Without a shadow of doubt

weavemama:

STOP 👏🏾 TRYING 👏🏾 TO 👏🏾 CONTROL 👏🏾 WOMEN’S 👏🏾 BODIES

brainstatic:

I just want to remind everyone that we once had presidents who talked like this and we still can again.

nobodyiswatchingus:

Waterfall amidst a mountain covered in ash after a volcano eruption.

Taken in Iceland. One of the most unique landscape photos I’ve ever seen.

dicknurse:

straight-off-the-deep-end:

WAFER!!! ❤

Not For Sale