Now, talk amongst yourselves and share your day’s interesting finds!
It’s time to turn the tables. Come up with your best hipsterism about Gawker.
Whether you want to talk about when the commenters there all kept it real or when it was all gritty and cutting edge, now’s your chance to show how you got that Star.
Unless, of course, you realized way back that commenting is about Stars, man.
You may have noticed that there is now a PayPal donation button on the sidebar of every post. Yes, we’re now accepting donations to help keep the site up and running. I don’t really enjoy begging for money, but we’re going to need some sort of operating fund to keep the site going strong and I made the decision that, for now at least, this is preferable to putting ads on the site.
We’re currently using a hosting company’s very basic “unlimited bandwidth” account. The problem is that “unlimited bandwidth” is more like “bandwidth is unlimited until you start using too much of our server resources and we force you to move to a dedicated server.”
The site has not had any downtime yet but I think the writing on the wall is that we will have to go with a dedicated server at some point. That’ll cost us in the range of $50 to $150 per month.
We need a plan for the future. With that in mind, I’m going to set aside all donated money for site improvements only. The first priority for the fund would be to pay for server/hosting upgrades. After that, we’ll consider using any extra money for paying a developer to design a custom theme for us or possibly to develop a custom commenting system.
Donate a few bucks. We’re not asking for a lot of money. Even if it’s only $5, we can use the money to directly improve the Crasstalk experience. Your donation is extremely safe and secure and your personal information will be kept 100% private.
Thanks,
The Management
P.S. If you own a web server and would be willing to donate bandwidth to Crasstalk, let me know via jfurfari-at-gmail. If you’re a professional web designer, we could also use your help!
I’ve popped over to Gawker a few times today. A quiet resignation is filling Crosstalk. The comment system is in ruins. Replies either can’t be seen or don’t get threaded. Inane and offensive remarks get pushed to the top. And it looks like someone at Gawker HQ is devoted to gaming the frontpage so the Chris Lee story gets maximum exposure.
I’d say it’s a clusterfuck but that connotes a mishap. It is now veering towards sabotage. We are in territory we’ve never been in before – where the new changes can’t be made to jibe with the old format. From all indications, it appears that the old ship is indeed sinking.
Because Crosstalk cannot be relied upon, please use this post as a central repository for FB profile info. The lifeboats are being lowered from the davits and we are being scattered to the seas.
Those wishing to find me on FB may find me at matthew dot c dot baron.
It has been a privilege commenting with you.
As Valentine’s Day looms, I thought a post sharing bad break-up stories was in order. Please feel free to reply with your own horror stories, though, I’m fresh out of lamps to giveaway. Here is my story:
A few years ago, I dated a British gal who attended a local culinary school. We were introduced through a mutual friend and sparks were flew within a matter of minutes as we bantered and flirted. I could tell she was a hot commodity in the scene as during our conversation multiple girls interrupted us and shot me dirty looks (the lesbian community is small around here, so everyone knows each other and knows who’s fresh meat).
After a few weeks of dates, I noticed she was the kind of girl who liked to be chased and play games. I am not the type to do either. Furthermore, I had recently broken up with someone whom I loved dearly, so my attention was split – this did not please the Brit. She began to test me, which I never respond well too; actually, I usually don’t respond at all. This is when things took a turn for the worse.
To understand “the break up,” you should know we had an inside joke about Peter Pan – one day, she asked me to draw her a picture, so I drew her as Peter Pan as that was her favourite book as a child.
Now for the good stuff: One night we were joking around (or so I thought) via text messaging…
Cookies: How’s Peter Pan doing today? 🙂
Brit: Just hanging out with the lost boys [her friends].
Cookies: If you and your friends are the lost boys, what does that make me?
Brit: A pirate with no soul!
Cookies: Argh! What if this pirate were to become an ex-pat and join the lost boys? I want my soul back!
Brit: The lost boys don’t feel good about us hanging out. They think you have a lot to make up for and don’t think pirates can change.
Cookies: Um, are you being serious?
Brit: Yes.
Cookies: So, you’re telling me we shouldn’t hang out anymore?
Brit: I think it’s for the best. Pirates with no souls and Lost Boys don’t mix.
Oh, and that’s not all, we had swapped ipods to listen to each other’s music and when I got mine back she had completely wiped it clean. Then she slept with 3 of my friends.
Need I remind you that we were both 24 at the time? Or, at least, I was.
Now’s your turn to share a break-up story! Don’t make this pirate suffer alone.
On a bitterly cold day there are few things that are better than lighting a wood fire (not those horrible gas logs), making a fabulous beef stew and sitting down with a fish bowl of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Continue reading
We’ve played this before (on the other site we’ve all since forgotten), but let’s play here, in this new and more fun place.
What is the origin of your screen name?
Please tell us the story here.
(Thanks to T.S. Garp for reminding me.)
A pheromone released by female squid has been found to send male squid into a rage, increasing their willingness to fight for the opportunity to mate. This levels the playing field for young, small, or shy males who, in other species, may just leave the females to the larger, more aggressive males.
Dear Barbie Q:
1) How do you get a boy to sleep with you on the first date?
2) How do you make frosting from scratch?
Regards,
Tuna Melt
Dear Tuna Melt,
I could make so, so many disgusting tuna melt sex jokes here, but instead I will contribute the one piece of frosting knowledge that I have. To access it, we must return to a simpler time, a time when the first Mildred of my family’s Mildred trilogy reigned. That would be my tiny blue-haired grandmother who voraciously read Harlequin romances and always wore white gloves when she left the house. She managed to convince nearly everyone around her that she was sickly and on the verge of death although she was healthy as a horse until she was 98 and a half.
She made a frosting from cocoa powder and cool whip and it was delicious. It is the only thing I ever saw her cook.
Here’s the recipe:
¼ cup Hershey’s Cocoa powder
3 Tbs. confectioners’ sugar
1 tub o’Cool Whip
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Adjust amount of cocoa to your personal preference. Frost anything. Mildred the First always used it on yellow cake.
If you’re looking for nooky, I suggest inviting your suitor to your house for dessert after the movie, dinner or whatever. Frost yourself. Decorate with strawberries and/or blueberries for an added intriguing touch.
Deliciously yours,
Barbie Q
My favorite version of the Valentine’s Day story is the one where poor jailed Val picked heart-shaped violet leaves and poked holes in them to send love notes to the jailer’s blind daughter, who was then able to see.
Well, as most of you know, I’m gay married to a cop and we’ve been together almost 8 years. And after 8 years, I’ve washed enough underwear, listened to enough dirty jokes and moved enough coffee cups to the (goddam) dishwasher from the (f’n) sink to fill a warehouse. Like most enduring relationships, it becomes stronger when you see your beloved for who he really is. It’s hard to picture a knight in shining armor using a nose hair trimmer, but they all do. Imagine if they didn’t! So I’m stuck with Cap’n, nose hair removal and all, and he’s a wonderful man who would do anything for me… except pick up after his own damn self. He tries, but the gerbil on the wheel in his head gets distracted by shiny things on the way to the laundry hamper. We fight about the socks on the floor, then he wraps two big arms around me and I realize that nothing bad can happen to me, ever again, and what was I thinking about and why is my shirt now on the floor with the socks?
Things like this ratchet up the difficulty of selecting a Valentine’s Day gift. Cliches won’t work.
Cap’n Crocker is a man of particular tastes and not all of them are refined, which should make it easy, right? No. He loves tulips, so last year I got him 100 of them. His allergic reaction was truly amazing. His poor nose was like Victoria Falls. Lovely! They graced the desk in our condo’s lobby for 10 days.
The prior year I threw a Valentine’s Day cocktail party for just us. I forgot that what I was using as a mixer for the Aphrodisia-tinis already had vodka in it. We woke up at 3 AM, cotton-mouthed and fully clothed in the living room. There was one candle still lit, and Edmund Pevensie (one of our cats) had indulged in the gravlax left on my plate and puked in my shoe. Lucy Pevensie (Edmund’s sister) was looking at us with feline pity. Romance – and cat barf – was in the air.
What to do? Well, after wracking my brain, I came up with an idea. Cap’n is a social butterfly at his precinct, and while he does go on patrol from time to time, he’s mostly in an open office with about a dozen other cops. They just completed a huge project today, and cops love to eat together, so I sent a Valentine’s treat basket of cheeses, salami, fruit and crackers to Cap’n at the precinct to be delivered tomorrow. The card?
Dear Mike, I hope you think this isn’t cheesy. You can share with your friends or hide the salami. They say you are what you eat, but don’t turn into a cracker. You are a big fruit. Love, Me.
He will be teased and pretend to be irked when his Commanding Officer grabs the card and reads it out loud in a Brooklyn accent, which could make a fortune cookie hilarious. But he will be all happy that I thought of his friends. And we’ll still go out for dinner on Sunday and make lurve.
But 8 years in, you have to get creative.