From "How Candace Bushnell, Writer, Spends Her Sundays" (NYT). Bushnell is the author of "Sex and the City," which was published in 1997. I like the photo at the link — her in bed with 2 big poodles.
By the way, is it politically correct to say "I’ll order in Chinese or Indian"? Seems like you should have to add "food." I think I'm taking a pretty moderate position here. An extreme position would be to say it's cultural appropriation to eat the food of an ethnic group that is not your own. And isn't there something dismissive about grouping "Chinese or Indian" with "The Real Housewives" or "Below Deck"? It's like I'm doing a junk night with the lower foods and the lower TV shows. In that light, it seems anti-feminist to go low quality when the boyfriend isn't there.
The other thing that interests me about the part I've excerpted is the voice inside her head. Is it "screaming" or "settled"? That idea that your reaction to the world is screaming and you've got to process it to get along in life reminded me of that article we were just talking about, "The Decline of Yelling."
Hey, remember when Trump haters did that protest of screaming at the sky?
Do I have a tag for screaming? I see I have "scream," but maybe that was a commenter I frontpaged. (I do a tag for every commenter I frontpage.) I see I have a tag for "The Scream." (How many individual paintings have their own tag? That must be the only one.)
Posts
72 comments:
"Inside I’m screaming. You can’t walk around screaming, you have to find a way to process all this information and go on with your day."
That is cognitive dissonance catching up with a lefty.
Every time they look in the mirror they know they are the enemies of freedom.
This is directly related to Ann trying to paper over "Authoritarian."
Ann has been seeking the favor of the Beautiful People for so long and she is now noticing they are terrible people. The intellectual class in our country is rotten to the core.
And at some point she will have to consider why she has been looking down at the deplorables all her life.
We all seek the approval of our peers.
Or more actually the people we wish were are peers.
The superimposed Bernie face would have been better.
I do believe the response to her was “Get a life.”
Or I’m glad you’re “getting a life.”
Typical NYC liberal nut. She’s very skinny but I’d jump her bones. I might buy her book if it is racy.
And what’s up with the two big dogs in a tiny apartment? Weird.
All for the want of a comma.
"By the way, is it politically correct to say 'I’ll order in Chinese or Indian'?"
"I’ll order in, Chinese or Indian" makes it understandable without triggering some.
The comma can work magic.
"Lets eat Grandma"
or
"Lets eat, Grandma"
New book released August 6. From Amazon, “the “Mona Lisa” Treatment―a vaginal restorative surgery often recommended to middle aged women, and what it’s really like to go on Tinder dates as a fifty-something divorcee....”
"An extreme position would be to say it's cultural appropriation to eat the food of an ethnic group that is not your own."
It's not extreme, it's just very stupid. You don't own the recipes of your ethnic group any more than I own mine.
The other thing that interests me about the part I've excerpted is the voice inside her head. Is it "screaming" or "settled"?
Telling us "Inside I'm screaming" is just the requisite virtue signalling. On the other hand, the voice inside her head may not be settled either. Maybe it's muttering to itself, other times it's rambling incoherently or sounding like her mother. When it comes to selecting TV shows and food, it just says, "Fuck it."
Complacencies of the peignoir
“When I got divorced and I was in my 50s, I started to see the impact of not having children and of truly being alone. I do see that people with children have an anchor in a way that people who have no kids don’t,”
The dogs are bad substitutes for the kids she didn’t have. Sad.
Being truly alone is a major theme of “Frankenstein in Love.”
Why is Below Deck lower? Is it the word below that defines it so?
In what way is it lower than MSNBC? Or a show that dramatizes the mob? Or lawyers? Or doctors? Or cops? Or criminals?
I see it as no worse than 90% of TV shows.
This childless lady is begging for a Leftist Collectivist in the Bunker parody.
The voice is screaming, of course. She's a feminist.
I think quibbling with her phrasing on ordering food is silly and adds to the growing irritation some of us (I) have with hyper-vigilance and language policing. We all know what we mean when we say “order Chinese.” It is a metonym. And food metonyms are used by everyone—including the ethnic groups whose good is represented. My Chinese girlfriend will say, “Let’s get Thai for lunch.” Or “Let’s do Korean.” (She never indicates a preference for Chinese, probably because American “Chinese” is so horrible.)
For those of us in the Bay Area, Asian food is never a lesser choice—it is delicious! Every time I have a great, spicy Thai meal, or Korean BBQ I think of what the Hmong woman said to Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino (paraphrasing): Your food is bland and has no flavor.
You'd think she would be able to afford an apartment with central air and wouldn't need a window unit
Mona Lisa Touch is a laser treatment licensed to docs by HOLX. I learned something today.
Bushnell probably got paid off. Product placement in a book.
I called it stupid, but I want to change that to malevolent. There is no legitimate basis for this cultural appropriation bullshit. It's a vehicle people use to pick fights with people of heritage other than your own. It is hateful.
Original Mike said...
"An extreme position would be to say it's cultural appropriation to eat the food of an ethnic group that is not your own."
It's not extreme, it's just very stupid. You don't own the recipes of your ethnic group any more than I own mine.
&&&&&&&&&&
agreed.
If I say "I like food", I'm not conveying much information.
But if I say "I like Chinese and Indian food," I am specifying what I like.
If many Americans were to eat only their forebears' food, they would be having shepherd's pie and haggis. Or Italian.
Or the Irishman's seven-course meal:
A boiled potato and a six-pack.
My inner Baker Mayfield wants to come out and attack...oh never mind.
Let's eat British.
She should put her thoughts on climate change to paper.
Then I can set them alight.
I thought cultural appropriation was cooking the food of a culture different from your own and selling it to people.
But, then, what do I know? I'm just an Old White Guy.
Someone should license that painting for a frozen desert that feminists could eat buckets of when they are screaming inside.
"An extreme position would be to say it's cultural appropriation to eat the food of an ethnic group that is not your own."
It's cultural appropriation when you cook it better than they do.
I have everything I want except Hillary as my blue-Mother.
Has Candace found a nice husband or boyfriend yet?
Because if you're 60, but dress, think and act like you're still 20, well, that's a problem.
“The dogs are bad substitutes for the kids she didn’t have. Sad.”
Or cats. I have the only kid in the family, plus my partner has two of her own and another four she did some of the raising of. The daughter is a delight. I have been harassing my family for years singing Happy Birthday, and then celebrating some other holidays with the same song. So, no surprise then, that she called up to sing Happy Father’s Day. Yesterday, we were enjoying the pictures she took after shaving off her husband’s eye brows. Stupid stuff, but sweet.
I need to call a couple of my brothers - they have money and cats, but no one else really. Maybe they aren’t as lonely as I think that I would be. But I think that it is going to get worse.
Still, I feel maybe sorrier for the women who divorce their husbands, expecting to trade up. Then it is too late. My partner is always assuring me that she could replace me in a heartbeat. 20 years ago, she literally had guys standing in line to mow her lawn. I am not convinced. That would require her to be getting out a lot more than she does anymore. Which I don’t think she would, or could, do. What a lot of women didn’t realize when they were younger, was that the sexual demographics were on their side. As they enter their sixties, that is no longer the case. There are many more women needing husbands, than the other way around. By the time my father died, in his mid 90s, there were 5 or 6 women in the church his age, and no other men.
The Mona Lisa Touch involves a laser treatment of the vagina. That sounds very risky to me. And what’s the benefit to the woman?
Wat I like about you is your my age - forget about it - think about it when the dust is settled it's not why people do things, it's they did things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a2s0iMkGt0&list=RDvlvA0sMvnqo
The cost of such immense insecurity (as seen in "Sex and the City") is exactly this. The poor woman was ruined by this fantasy life that was made up to cover over her fears. This is much more clearly spelled out in Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffanys". The book rather more than the movie, but its there too.
The US has been awash in Holly Golightlys for many decades now. You see them coming into San Francisco every day, the poor doomed things. And these aren't just those who are here for the "sex" part, that is just ancillary. Those pursuing "professions" are vastly more common. And then they grow old, obsessed with what doesn't matter, until one day, probably too late, they figure it out.
This big city of mine is an evil trap, and NY is a bigger evil trap. They are human fly-paper.
As for Truman Capote, I think he got it. Homosexuality is a terrible thing, a similar removal from the proper course of human life, and the voids this makes must be filled, in the main with vanities. They are natural victims for this fly-paper.
I think I'm taking a pretty moderate position here.
Only if being moderate means that you are being sensitive to the neurotic, perpetually offended hordes of woke Baby Boomers.
I suspect you know that. What you are really doing is employing stealth sarcasm.
Good job.
Heard she bought an AK47.
“My partner is always assuring me that she could replace me in a heartbeat.”
Bruce: Tell her to sign up for Match, Tinder, Zoosk or eHarmony and see how that works out. Many of the Zoosk women in Omaha look like the mug shots from the Lincoln Journal Star.
Her constantly threatening to cut you loose can’t be good for you. I feel sorry for you. That’s a tough deal.
RBG said it best about partnerships: it’s a skim milk deal; not like whole milk.
a vaginal restorative surgery often recommended to middle aged women
Putting the Genie back in the bottle??
If Hillary were POTUS she would be humming a paean to her rather than screaming inside.
The only way to get rid of these voices in her head is to Impeach Trump
Rh
Now you've given ne a craving for a plate of bubble and squeak.
But it looks like rice and beans are on the menu tonight.
I am fine with rice and beans every day. Just that now I feel like a side of b&s
John Henry
Is she screaming inside cause she's cray cray cray cray or the usual reason cray cray?
No one is hunting for 60 year old females.
THEOLDMAN
Marcus:
I am.
She is screaming inside because she was too afraid to break out of her sterile environment to find a decent normal man and settle for a normal life.
American men are berated by women because they won't "commit"; but that is a crock I think. The real problem is womens choices, womens neuroses, womens fears. To a great degree this isn't their fault, as they have thrown themselves into a situation where they are alone and unmoored, in a way that nature did not intend, and all they have to fall back on are, at best, ad hoc networks of other women, strangers, who are just as lost.
And this is exactly what "Sex and the City" is about, beneath it all. And for that matter "Tales of the City". And "Breakfast at Tiffany's". All are overlays of glibness over a tragic foundation.
Another unexpected benefit one gets when
Reaching one’s 70s comes from your grown children’s attaining wisdom and strength. They are coming into their prime when you are slowing down.
"In that light, it seems anti-feminist to go low quality when the boyfriend isn't there."
When my wife takes the kids to see their grandmother, I microwave frozen TV dinners. When they get back, I marinate a flatiron and grill it over mesquite. There's dining, and there's feeding yourself.
You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking.
"Inside I’m screaming . . . I feel more settled."
Cuz she used to go around actually screaming? Cuz she settled for screaming? Cuz she's a crazy prog so who knows?
I believe that some people are in fact screaming inside. I also believe that a lot of people who say they are screaming inside... aren't, but that they feel it makes them sound "deep" to claim to be that tortured. Obviously I have no way of knowing if THIS woman is the former or the latter. But I think it seems a testament to the state of modern society that I immediately doubt her.
Sorry about all the "I" there; just trying not to imply that *my* feelings and perceptions should carry any more weight than anyone else's.
Drudge has link to article on procedure to delay menopause 20yrs...
Please, someone, I beg you, tell me that Althouse is trolling in that third paragraph.
Well, I would say she has aged better than Sarah Jessica Parker, but less so than Kristen Thomas.
And how do you know she meant food? The boyfriend isn't there.
"Please, someone, I beg you, tell me that Althouse is trolling in that third paragraph."
I don't think so.
@dave Begley I'm looking for more of a May-December thing, like about 55. Too many older women around Portland don't really like men.
Imagine the poor guy who had to listen to her from 1978 to 2012.
Is the fucking your a getting
worth
the fucking you are getting?
She's feeling settled because her estrogen supply has dried up like her barren womb. That and the endorphins from regular exercise.
I [Althouse] do a tag for every commenter I frontpage.
Not so! A counterexample, from a week shy of 10 years ago.
Now, the fact that you have never been moved to frontpage any other comments of mine over the last decade indicates that your instinct was probably right in this regard (why create a tag for what will never be more than a single instance?).
However, all it takes to demolish that absolutist every enunciated above is a single counterexample. Here it is.
Graydon Carter’s new email newsletter has a profile in the current issue of CB. She seems to have the ubiquity of the I-have-a-new-book-out-this-week celebrity. The article contains this sentence: “Could be you know all too well who she is and don’t want to know any more.”
Yes.
Candace Bushnell in Graydon Carter’s Air Mail
from a week shy of 10 years ago.
Give her a break, she was on her honeymoon. They may be old but they're not dead.
If I had a dollar for every regret a feminist internalizes, I could’ve retired 10 years before I did.
@Michael McNeil
Sorry. It is my policy but I’m capable of forgetting sometimes. I’ll add it.
How can they validly on one hand complain that it is cultural appropriation to eat foreign cuisine while on the other they extol as a chief virtue of rampant unlimited immigration from the third world the food?
Think about when Jo Biden said...
"You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent."
Ignore the Blatant Racism (for now), and just look at what the Moron said.
He DIDN'T say,
You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts without HEARING an accent
He DIDN'T say,
You cannot OWN (or Work at) a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent
He SAID: YOU (YES YOU cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless...
This isn't just Obviously untrue, it's Stupendously STUPID
What, the Indian Mafia won't let you INTO their stores unless you sound like them?
The Man's Brain Damage* is showing.
Brain Damage* Yes; i, gilbar, the person with a traumatic brain injury, am calling the
Takes One, to Know One card.
I feel bad for her, but she doesn’t understand what men actually want from a woman her age. Sexuality is great at any age, but as men get older, it’s not hard to find that, especially from the hordes of divorced women who are losing hope. What we really want is someone who is emotionally healthy who we can share our life with. The 21-29 year old female playbook works great when women have the leverage. But at Bushnells age, post-menopause, sexuality isn’t the most important criterion. Unfortunately, she and millions of other older feminists are looking to have their choices validated and celebrated, not align with another person and share their triumphs and failures. It’s all about her brilliant life, not being on a team.
Like most things about the sexes, a lot of this is supply and demand. Her no strings attached attitude to sexuality was great when she was younger and chasing men. When they’re young and pretty we can overlook the narcissism. But as we get older and our requirements change, she’s remarkably ill-matched to the men she wants to attract. Men almost always care about sexuality, but over time we end up caring just as much about warmth.
"read the Times, The Daily Mail, the Post, and Slate or Salon online. I go through Twitter to see what the latest terrible headline is. ... Everything is so disturbing and frustrating ... Inside I’m screaming. ... I don’t eat until 4."
It's like visiting your geek nephew (back when there were geeks) and observing the candy wrappers, pizza boxes and soda cans and the wearing of pajamas at 1 pm. Too much media on an empty stomach. Nothing but mental junk food till 4 pm. Imagine if you were this woman's old friend and you were staying with her and looking about for something, even just one thing, that was real. But maybe she's audience-testing a new show - Sex and the City - 30 Years After. Maybe always being "on", that's the reality.
Give her a break, she was on her honeymoon. They may be old but they're not dead.
Ha ha. I believe I thought something like that at the time. Certainly I didn't speak up about it.
But it's amazing how being ever so slightly irked can persist way below the surface — almost nonexistent — until suddenly, at her comment in this regard, there it still is. And then, when she said, “Sorry. I forgot. I'll add it.” — suddenly it's lanced, and I'm smiling.
Thanks, Althouse. (Though I still think it's a bit silly to make a tag that probably never will have more than a single referent….) (smile)
Unwise women don't realize their beauty and sexual charms are literally a wasting asset that needs to be converted to lifetime income before their asset base shrinks too much to support them.
Unwise men don't realize their increasing income and power improve their chances with women as they get older.
There's a supply/demand curve here somewhere for economists. I think it intersects at half your age plus seven for men.
Michael McNeil,
I just earned a tag after roughly 15 years coming around.
So we're coming at this from very different perspectives.
Either way, great job.
By the way, is it politically correct to say "I’ll order in Chinese or Indian"? Seems like you should have to add "food." I think I'm taking a pretty moderate position here. An extreme position would be to say it's cultural appropriation to eat the food of an ethnic group that is not your own. And isn't there something dismissive about grouping "Chinese or Indian" with "The Real Housewives" or "Below Deck"?
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
"For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"
While y'all are stuck in the why phase, I have moved comfortably into the where phase. Hope to see you here some day.
You were the best love I ever had
You hit me high, you hit me low
Time doesn't slow down for those who dream
I wake only to hear this scream
I had to click "I'm not a robot" in order to post this Ima Robot reference. Ironic.
wholelottasplainin' said...
.....
If many Americans were to eat only their forebears' food, they would be having shepherd's pie and haggis. Or Italian.
In the USA- most Italian food isn't.
Same with Chinese- most Chinese food isn't.
Does remind me of a comment I saw once by a Welsh person. He said Welsh food was just like English food- but without the taste.
Also reminds me that the best French roll with butter I ever had- and the menu in English called it a French roll- was in Pusan. My buddy and I wandered into the bakery, picked it out for a quick snack, and left with a roll in hand. A half block away I turned to him and said "Want to go back for another?" He did an about face without saying anything, and we had another.
I don’t see it as her going low quality when the boyfriend is around. It seems it’s more likely they go out, instead of her just staying home and ordering in. J.G. Melon isn’t exactly going high...it’s a burger place that’s been there forever, thus not too different from staying home.
I admit to never adding the modifier “food” when describing what I’m having delivered or when discussing where to go.
Don't "admit" to not using the modifier "food". Sounds like you're confessing. We don't use the modifier because everyone KNOWS what we are talking about. And ascribing any reason to it is more stupid left wing shit.
THEOLDMAN
A maternal aunt used the phrase "let's order Chink's" for Chinese. Guess she should have said "Chink food" instead.
May have sounded like confessing to you. It wasn’t. I could have added that I don’t know anyone who does.
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