Previously by Jasmine Guillory: If Lupita Nyong'o Were Your Girlfriend If Nigella Lawson were your girlfriend, all of your books will be food-stained. If Nigella Lawson were your girlfriend, whenever you said you were too full to eat any more, she would playfully poke your belly and say “But darling! You look like you’re losing weight! You need to keep your strength up!” She’d wink, you’ll sigh, and eat another lemon curd-laden…
You have been going on monthlong cruises with your least favorite friend every fall for the last eighteen years – but this is the year your mother has decided to stop paying for it. Which of her cousins should you disinvite to your wedding?
The first Republican Presidential debate for the 2016 presidential campaign aired while Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, a musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton, celebrated its opening night on Broadway. While Bobby Jindal declared that “immigration without assimilation is invasion,” an opening night audience watched a musical about the Founding Fathers that rests on an ideal explicitly stated in the first act: "Immigrants / We get the job done." Hamilton opens with the same lines that…
hello there Miss Davis, is it allow me to tell you – please do not speak to me like that, sir I can see your wedding ring oh, this? no, no, no you've got the wrong idea I mean, yes, I'm married but I've already written four books about how the Church should let me leave my wife I see one of them is called THE ROD OF PUNISHMENT so you know this ring doesn't…
I usually devote the first two spots in the link roundup to Important Things In The World, but today I have to give the primo spot to Choire's profile of Ina Garten, every word of which is a feast for the senses: Shopkeeper Ina, TV Ina, and cookbook Ina are and are not about domesticity. Ina-ness is about coziness, but it's not ever about the woman's place being the kitchen. It's less sexist, and…
Dear Aunt Acid and Businesslady, I'm writing to both of you as my question is both professional and deeply personal. One of my coworkers is my age, but she has a much more senior role. She is sort-of-not-really my boss but she is also clearly interested in finding a work friend. To this end, she asks me numerous personal questions that are not entirely appropriate for our relationship. While I have no problem not answering many…
I had got as far as this in thinking the thing out when that "Types of Ethical Theory" caught my eye. I opened it, and I give you my honest word this was what hit me:
Of the two antithetic terms in the Greek philosophy one only was real and self-subsisting; and that one was Ideal Thought as opposed to that which it has to penetrate and mould. The other, corresponding to our Nature, was
…
Our resident linguist's previous work for The Toast can be found here. Let's talk about shipping. No, not the transportation of goods over the water, but that feeling when you want a couple fictional characters to smush their faces against each other and never let go. The word
ship
itself has an interesting enough grammar, not to mention its variants…
Genesis 14:17-21 And the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (which is the King’s Dale) after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and of the kings who were with him. And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven…
"We often think of intercountry adoption as this personal, private thing between an adoptee and their adoptive parents and birth parents. But adoption and intercountry adoption are also extremely public acts. They are influenced by large forces like national laws; ideas about race, gender, family; geopolitics, etc. In turn, adoption is used in the public sphere to signify certain things -- like America’s goodness or antiracism. A more complex view of intercountry adoption should lead…
When I learned about the goat who refused to leave a Tim Hortons in Martensville, Saskatchewan, I cried real tears. At the time, I was sitting in a café. It wasn’t a Tim Hortons café, unfortunately, because I decided to go to grad school in America. It’s a decision I question every day of my life. Because: aren’t we all the goat who just can’t seem to quit Tim Hortons?
How NYC's Chinatown has stayed Chinatown: Here are portraits of what could be called the Chinatown Establishment: a collection of people with deep roots in the neighborhood and unusual influence in shaping its future. Some wield familiar levers of power, like political position and real-estate portfolios. Others are included for reasons more particular to the neighborhood: pastors to the devout, third-generation herbalists, restaurateurs, labor activists (who have more muscle in Chinatown than just about…
Though I vaguely recall scribbling in the lines of Lion King and A Bug’s Life illustrations in elementary school, it was not until high school that I returned to coloring. I took a class on neuroscience for which one of the required texts was a book called The Human Brain Coloring Book. It’s a massive tome, and I still have it — I’ll probably never get through its hundreds of pages. It would…
