gdp's Comments

The Toast : Dirtbag Winston Churchill

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 16:56:12 +0000

I was just going to say that I was imaging Stephen Fry as Churchill the entire time and I love it. :D

The Toast : "Gentle On My Mind": Thanks For Letting Me Leave My Stuff Here

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:51:48 +0000

Are we doing this!? My all time favorite total dirtbag 1960's folk song is We'll Sing in the Sunshine by Gale Garnett https://youtu.be/VhIbR9CRjUs Look at her eyes my friends. Look at her eyes. (Seriously I do love this song ... but total dirtbag status. Upfront dirtbag which is something I suppose.)

The Toast : Reactions I've Had To People Describing Pregnancy In The Last Week

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:13:25 +0000

I feel certain she was joking/over awed by the physical commitment of the thing. *shout out to my fellow sufferers from haunting by ghosts of Mormonism past! The struggle is real. +20 points to anyone else who told their seminary classmates that they'd rather be a mere ministering angel than end up in some posthumous polygamous eternity marriage endlessly producing "spirit babies". :D Ahhh.

The Toast : Cocktail Hour: Open Thread

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 20:30:45 +0000

Hopefully, there can be strength in persistent numbers. :< It's super disheartening when something you thought was going to be fulfilling turns into something you can't stand. It sounds like these meetings are actually harming the org more than anything. What about your boss? I would want to know if my org were driving itself and my employees off a cliff because of easily fixed process stuff. Once the back biting and mistrust starts it take a long time and lots of intentional team building to regain it. Anywho, *hugs*. If it doesn't get better maybe tactfully excuse yourself from future meetings ala : I'm really invested in the outcomes of these meetings but I have crucial mission oriented activities I need to attend to and am leaving conversation in your "capable" hands let me know if you need my input?

The Toast : Cocktail Hour: Open Thread

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 20:00:44 +0000

Not cool. The only way these sorts of processes ever work is if people stick to rules about time and pacing. Ultimately that's unproductive and not respectful of all of your time. It sounds like you're doing all the right things and that other people need to step up and press for more humane and thoughtful (and ultimately successful) meeting practices. Is there anyone else you can enlist in the cause of better meeting organization/practices? <3 Don't give up!

The Toast : Cocktail Hour: Open Thread

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 19:49:36 +0000

Please please please tell me some of my fellow toasties are watching Beowulf Return to the Shieldlands. ALL I want is to talk about how great the show actually is once you get past the awful first episode. Beowulf himself is mostly uninteresting but all the other characters are well developed, multi-dimensional, and have surprising motivations and character arcs. The politics of trade unions and terrible fathers and mob justice and over ambitious innovations in governance is to die for. Also and finally there are SOOO many great female characters and they are all TERRIFYING in the best ways. AHHHH. The only play the show is getting online is about how it's not game of thrones/is a knockoff, is not Beowulf (which obviously - the epic poem is Beowulf the show needed space to tread new ground) and how boring the first episode was. Yes it was terrible.

The Toast : Cocktail Hour: Open Thread

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 19:41:18 +0000

Oof. Been there. I'm not sure I can say anything super helpful (all day meetings are a terrible idea and rarely productive - but then I'm sure you know that at this point). Mostly you have my deep sympathies. Where do you feel your strongest talents lay? Is there anyway you can employ those to help push the meeting in a more: empathetic? well organized? better listening? more structured? less tense and more humorous etc etc direction? Facilitating is hard and I'm sure your person knows they don't have a good handle on the room. Ultimately though what I would do is 1) Try to listen for the underlying reasons people are talking about the issues/taking stances the way they are and trying to understand and speak to those as a way to stay engaged and move forward without going totally insane and/or 2) Be the person who calls out emotional fatigue/need to take a break and regroup/people not being listened/needing to break into smaller working groups to etc. You shouldn't have to be the one to do any/all of those things but it sounds like you've got a leadership vacuum that will only get better if someone steps into it.

The Toast : Orpheus Rescuing Eurydice From The Underworld, In Order of Rescuing

Wed, 9 Mar 2016 20:19:00 +0000

Now I know why my life felt incomplete. It's because I was unaware of Hadestown. Thank you friend. :-)

The Toast : Negative Space: On Asexuality and Atheism

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 00:19:14 +0000

Ahhhh .... ahhhh... ahh ... ah. *sob* Whoooo! Ok, I'm good now ... I think. As both someone who identifies as both things the eerie sense of familiarity with what you were saying and how you expressed it was momentarily overwhelming. That constant sense of uncertainty and how weird it is to try and define yourself as something you're not/don't think you've ever experienced can be crushing. You put that into words impeccably. I think I've transitioned to a phase in my asexuality where I feel more like claiming it, not necessarily more certain, but more willing to go beyond the uncertainty and embrace this thing. It's scary and I don't really know how to talk about it in person yet. I've made some slightly disastrous attempts but so it goes. :-) Anyway, thanks for writing this piece. <3

The Toast : Eight Classic Female Bildungsromane You Should Know About If You Don't Already

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 17:02:35 +0000

Ah, sigh and sigh again! I am in grad school and working three jobs and have like 3 D&D campaigns going right now. I literally do not have time to suddenly have a long and enticing new list of books to read... Why would you do this to me??!! Sigh, sob, smile.

The Toast : A Guide To Flirting With Plausible Deniability

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 20:56:34 +0000

You'll tell your fellow Toasties about it and some of us will be able to totally empathize. Then though we don't know each other we'll both laugh wistfully about the cosmic joke of our lives and how lucky the world is to have access to our unique perspectives. :-) (?)

The Toast : How To Decorate Your Dream Library

Thu, 7 Jan 2016 00:31:32 +0000

My life long dream of being a hermit living in this exact composite library and some how just getting paid to read and talk about books is in constant conflict with my other life long dreams of living on a small boat or in a van as I wander national parks collecting songs and stories from the local communities I pass through on my anthropological ramblings... Minimalism + Bibliophilia = constant crisis.