are we really being mean to melania?

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it’s funny- not ha, ha funny, but, like, oh the whims of life funny (which is, maybe, really just an optimistic spin on super depressing)- how you can study culture for ages and then still be surprised by it.

still be like, oh look at this gross thing i’ve seen! yay cultural analysis and phd-level thinking! huzzah! and not realize that, in seeing that gross thing that one time, you will now be seeing that gross thing EVERYWHERE ALL OF THE TIME. because that is how culture works and this gross thing is now something you’ve trained your eyes to see.

remember those magic eye posters in the 90s? where if you squinted hard enough at a mosaic of 1000 pictures of al gore or marilyn monroe, a dolphin would emerge.

i could never see the dolphin.

i’ve always resented that so i tend to lean heavily on this metaphor to boast about the things i can see.

it’s small consolation. honestly, sometimes i’d rather have just seen the dolphin.

that is all a wind up to the buffet at which we find ourselves, in the neighborhood to which i never wanted to go. we have been here before. and before. and a few times after that as well. (if you are like, oline, wtf are you talking about, go forth, catch up, come back. i do not have the energy to recap.)

lest this give you the impression that i love this party, let me be clear: i do not. i am tired of these leftovers. i would like to go home.

alas.

Continue reading →

a change is gonna come… we hope… maybe? (emotions via britney)

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ok, ya’ll, let’s do this. and to do this we (obviously) need my emotionally incontinent face twin, ms britney.

a lot has happened since we last spoke.

for example, the new york times published this piece on harvey weinstein.

the new yorker published this substantially less well written piece on harvey weinstein.

the new yorker published a follow-up story on harvey weinstein.

the new york times published a follow-up story on harvey weinstein.

many, many women posted on social media about their own experiences of sexual assault and sexual harassment.

there was some exceedingly valuable writing on the matter from all over the internet which i will not even attempt to condense here.

buzzfeed published this piece on kevin spacey.

assorted other venues posted articles on kevin spacey.

to say nothing of brett ratner, mark halperin, leon weiseltier, george hw bush, ben affleck, dustin hoffman, etc.

or russia.

so, like an amazingly enormous amount of stuff happened. but we’re not here to talk about that. Continue reading →

caroline kennedy at the met ball

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so this was the year that i realized my interest in the met ball has entirely to do with sarah jessica parker’s presence at the met ball (i literally just wrote “at the mall” just then). i realized this when i realized that, this year, sarah jessica parker wasn’t present and my level of care promptly plummeted.

you know who was there though? caroline kennedy.

and you know what? she kind of brought it SJP-style. which is a fact, my feelings about which remain uncertain.

i’m a little wary of being arrested for copyright infringement, so let’s play a game.

i’mma recreate her look based upon the description provided by our (wo?)man on the street: MR/MS DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER. Continue reading →

“the original queen of derrieres”: a daily mail deep reading of beyoncé’s selfies

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so this first caught my eye because of the horrible HTML error.

(via the daily mail)

which i briefly believed to be an accurate portrayal of a company’s brand name.

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on jackie, letters, love, and the english lord

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holy moses, it’s been awhile.

mostly because the hubbub over this english lord nonsense was so nonsensical that it was exhausting, so i just did a big eye-roll and lived my life. a sloooooow big eye-roll mind you because the story of these letters has been like a dripping faucet, where you know it’s dripping and there’s nothing you can do about it but people keep coming into the room to say, OMG, IT’S DRIPPING!!! as though this is a revelation.

while the existence of letters is exciting and the existence of actual words is indeed a legit news story, the enthusiasm with which these particular letters and these actual words have been met- in particular, the GUSH of ink- seems a bit out of proportion with the letters and words themselves.

but then mayhaps you are like, OLINE, WHAT IS THIS OF WHICH YOU SPEAK??! let’s take this double-quick… Continue reading →