“So important to wear proper hiking shoes,” the National Book Award winner tweeted, sharing a graphic close-up of her foot. “Never/ever walk in the woods in sandals. the instep of my left foot this morning--poison ivy? poison oak? must’ve stepped in something...”Bonus JCO tweet at that link:
So barbaric that this should still be allowed... No conservation laws in effect wherever this is? https://t.co/hgavm9IBaM
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) June 9, 2015
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49 comments:
Is that a selfie witih triceratops? Where did he hunt it? What rifle did he use? I want one!
Yup it's barbaric to pose in cront of a concrete dinosaur. There are a couple of them out on I-10 near Palm Springs.
At least she didn't squat in the hogweed.
We live in an absurdly unserious age facing civilization-ending problems that elites like this have encouraged. Ignorance and arrogance (“is there no laws against slaying triceratops!”) combined with wealth that would have made the kings of old blush, and yet they have the sense of infants, endlessly looking for mommy and daddy to explain things even as there days on earth expire. Did she used to deserve that blue check?
Calamine lotion, or zinc oxide. I get bug bites that blister while scything the yard unless I boot and sweatpants up, in July and later.
Strange... Natives went barefoot for, oh, thousands of years, and people wore sandals for .. thousands of years.
I guess today people don't know how to walk and be careful anymore.
The Democrats’ refrain: There ought to be a law! ... That the right people get to ignore.
I’ve been clomping all over California in Reef flip flops.
Yeah, but I'll bet her closet is full of Adeopapposaurus skin shoes. And that she eats Sinosauropteryx with stuffing at Thanksgiving, like everyone else.
So did he have it stuffed & mounted, or just hang the head on the wall. I suppose if it was the latter, then he might still have a coupla’ freezers full of meat. He could tell dinner guests they were getting “tri-tip”.
What happened to the dragons when GOT ended was a tragedy.
Is she a werewolf?
Looks like there's hair on the sole of her foot.
“Defenceless animals”? Which is worse, imagining that an animal with horns like that is “defenceless” or that a noted American author uses the British spelling?
I don't agree with her politics, and she strikes me as one of these sorts who has one highly-developed talent but walks cluelessly through life in every other respect; what my wife calls "book smart". I do enjoy her writing, especially her short stories.
The way women take a leak in the woods, it could have been worse.
Is that Steven Spielberg?
I went down that rabbit hole. I don't get the attraction or interest of any of it. A few cheap shots at Trump were the only things that were even identifiable as thoughts.
If it takes octogenarian Joyce Carol Oates until now to realize that it's not a good idea to wear sandals in the woods, she is sorely lacking in woods sense- better said common sense or horse sense. I knew by age 10 that one should be very careful about poison ivy or poison sumac in the woods- and have the photos to show why I learned that.
I used to follow her because I loved "Black Water." I also tried to read Them but never finished. It goes on and on. But she reveals a lot about the Detroit race riots circa 1968 I think? Rather like Ralph Ellison did in Invisible Man re Harlem.
She's funny in that her art reads like conservative critique. But her tweets are do boringly liberal.
Like imagine Tom Wolfe saying a bunch of progressive pap after what he'd written.
Is it the left brain denying what the right brain knows?
More trailcraft advice for Joyce Carol Oates
"Big Mike said...
The way women take a leak in the woods, it could have been worse."
Happened to my younger sister when we camping as kids.
Gore Vidal identified the three saddest words in literature: Joyce Carol Oates.
I've learned over the years that the talent to express oneself does not go hand-in-hand with the quality of one's thoughts. That's how you can have excellent composers who sing the most banal lyrics, wonderful writers who can convince you of the most stupid ideas, and filmmakers whose movies are essentially propaganda (or in the case of Leni R., total propaganda).
Althouse, please put a trigger warning at the top of the blog for the day when you post anything written by JCO. Thanks in advance.
As I was snipping and saving the tweet, I came across another I had tucked away:
"All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive?" (22 Nov. 2015)
Time to cancel Spielberg.
Sounds like this JCO character is the matron saint of the Karen movement.
"Althouse, please put a trigger warning at the top of the blog for the day when..."
I'm not writing for babies.
I love that response to Steven Spielberg sitting with a movie prop dinosaur so much I want to marry it.
I am greatly amused by the photo.
Stepping in Triceratops scat is usually associated with good luck.
Scroll down to see that Titania McGrath's twittering account was shut down.
She has to be joking about the safari shooting of a backlot creature.
Of course, she may be serious.
As Scott Adams would say, "what do you expect from writers and artists."
I was allowed to run barefoot in the woods all summer, every summer, as a child. I did get a worming pill as part of my annual preschool checkup. My mom knew what was what, and I knew very young what poison ivy was.
Please tell me that tweet/retweet is sarcasm; even if it isn't.
I remember an old Joyce carol oates tale, children of darkness, I believe, where the protagonists were wannabe terrorists, because their father had been asassinated for investigating chile or some such, so she's very much in the black bloc viewpoint,
Ann Althouse said...
Sebastian>>"Althouse, please put a trigger warning at the top of the blog for the day when you post anything written by JCO"<<
>>'Althouse">>I'm not writing for babies."
Hmm, wondering if Joyce Carol Oates is sitting in for Althouse today...
I thought JCO was joking?
Stepping in Triceratops scat is usually associated with good luck.
Also death by asphyxiation.
"Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"Althouse, please put a trigger warning at the top of the blog for the day when..."
I'm not writing for babies."
Since not doing so would raise the ominous possibility that this was written in schoolmarm mode, I will instead smile and take it as an instance of women doing humor.
But still! JCO! Writing that's worse on the eyes than the woods were on her feet!
"Big Mike said...
The way women take a leak in the woods, it could have been worse."
My partner did a lot of camping growing up. They lived in Las Vegas, which is like Phoenix heat wise in the summer, but with wind. Her mother would throw her five kids in her station wagon, and set off to explore the SW, esp the 4 Corners area, to get them out of the Vegas heat. Her father would then join them for the weekend. Her mother was raised by a cowboy as his son, because her brother had asthma. They called her Annie Oakley, which is to say that she traveled well armed, and all five learned to shoot well at an early age.
The kids mostly loved it, except for her middle kid, the prissy one. My partner. She never really liked to squat to pee. And never quite got the concept of Indian TP. “What about the bugs on the leaves?” she would ask. “Could something crawl up inside her?” “What about snakes?” Needless to say, she started carrying her own TP at a very young age. Still does.
Dinolicious. That said, those plants are getting squished and their life extinguished. Where's the empathy? This is a mass salad. #SaveTheLettuce
roadgeek said...
Is that Steven Spielberg?
Yes it is. It's a gag photo that was made on the set of Jurassic Park.
roadgeek said...
Is that Steven Spielberg?
Yes it is. It's a gag photo that was made on the set of Jurassic Park.
I thought JCO was joking?
The linked article says that was her claim.
I got poison ivy on my foot while wearing high, open-topped Wellies in my backyard. It was black and very painful to move my foot or stand on it. Finally went to a doc-in-the-box after it got infected.
Roughcoat, 11:55:
"I thought JCO was joking?"
Well, she says so. I suspect think she knee-jerked, posted before thinking, and then tried to play it off as a joke. If it was a joke it was a pretty good one.
Some guy Chris Tilly had a response that is now well suited to our entire public discourse:
"I now no longer know if I'm being trolled, if people are in on the joke, if it's causing genuine anger, or if society is simply doomed."
In a follow up tweet this morning, JCO wrote "always proper footwear for hiking! steep trails, slippery rocks, mud & vicissitudes of fate".
Vicissitudes needs to be put in the cage with garner. I can't find the link, but I recall reading an article complaining that Catholic bishops constantly used the word.
Paul @ 10:10am,
And...?
Third-world folks do get serious foot and leg injuries doing that barefoot walk; I've treated a few of them.
Don't hike in the woods wearing sandals.
WWJD?
@Kirk Parker
People get injuries wearing boots to. So?
It was called angel of light.
I put this down as a “pro tip:...” comment that follows when somebody does something embarrassing, foolish or unwise, that can be easily corrected with 20-20 hindsight.
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