Wednesday, March 11, 2015

What's the price of a dream?

According to one innkeeper in western Maine, $125, no more than 200 words and a postage stamp will do.

More than two decades after a Maine couple gave away the Center Lovell Inn and Restaurant to the winner of an essay contest, the woman who won the quaint year-round inn with views of the White Mountains will once again offer up the 12-acre property to a hopeful, persuasive entrant in the same unorthodox way.

Via pressherald.com

Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

"There's a lot of very talented people in the restaurant business who would like to have their own place but can't afford it," said Janice Sage, who took possession of the business in 1993 after dashing off a few handwritten paragraphs that would change her life. "This is a way for them to have the opportunity to try."

She hopes to receive 7,500 responses, or about $900,000, about what local real estate agents suggested as a listing price for the 210-year-old inn and two outbuildings overlooking Kezar Lake in Lovell. It is also an amount that would allow Sage to transition smoothly into retirement, her ultimate goal.

She also hopes the novel approach will ensure that the inn will land in worthy hands.

Via pressherald.com

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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Caitlin Moran on Taboos, Feminism, and Writing Honestly

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The author of How to Be a Woman and How to Build a Girl shares her opinion on everything from contemporary feminism to the Internet.

caitlinmoran.co.uk

Caitlin Moran is a columnist for The Times of London and the author of two acclaimed books: the memoir-cum-manifesto How to Be a Woman, and the novel How to Build a Girl, which was recently optioned for a film adaptation. Moran writes about everything from obscure D-list British celebrities to the challenges of contemporary feminism with equal panache and vigor, and with an eye for the absurdities of life. Moran is a fount of opinions (her riff in How to Be a Woman about how to determine whether or not you are a feminist is priceless), comic routines, and embarrassing anecdotes. She is a comedian with the soul of an activist, or possibly an activist with a terrific comic repertoire: "I'll talk about anything, honestly. Seriously. It's shutting me up that you'll have a problem with."

How do you juggle writing honestly about yourself with any lingering sense of embarrassment about your past?

Caitlin Moran: Bill Hicks said you're born with a certain amount of drinks you can drink and drugs that you can take. You can either do them in one big go or eke them out slowly over your life. With drugs, I did them all in one fucking bunch by the time I was 24. And certainly with embarrassment, I was so perpetually mortified that whatever gland it is that makes mortification just burned out by the time I was 23. It just got overused, and then it died.

What are you proudest of?

CM: You're supposed to say give birth to your children, aren't you, but one of them was just brought out by a doctor and the other one just kinda fell out.

I haven't complained. I've tried to be jolly. I could have written a misery memoir and instead I tried to make it funny. I never complained. Turning those tears into a chuckle. That, and finally learning how to back-comb my hair. Because I either thought you had hair that grew vertically out of your head, like the cast of Dynasty or Dallas, or that was it.

Those are two very impressive accomplishments.

CM: Thank you.

Do friendships become more or less important with age?

CM: I've got more friends than I've ever had in my life at the age of 39 — although given that I didn't have any friends until the age of 27, it doesn't say much — because I found the internet. For me, and I suspect a lot of socially awkward people, dealing with people face-to-face seems really traumatic. Particularly if you have massive sweating issues, and particularly if on top of that you have quite smelly sweat that smells like onion soup.

Does the internet have a problem with politeness?

CM: I read something once that when you're online, your inhibitions are lowered to the state where you've had three drinks. Once you basically know that the entire internet is slightly drunk, it all makes a lot more sense, and you deport yourself accordingly.

Do you have a place or time that belongs to you?

CM: I can only work between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30, because that's when the kids are at school. So I get to do all my work and have all of my fun in that time, which means just sitting on a chair, typing, alternately clicking between writing a column and being on Twitter, and smoking as many cigarettes as I can before my lungs give out.

Are there subjects that are off-limits, either in your writing or at a dinner party?

CM: Whenever I see a taboo, I just think that's something we need to drag screaming out into the light and discuss. Because taboos are where our fears live, and taboos are the things that keep us tiny. Particularly for women. All the things that are taboo are the things that are not normal, and all the things that are not normal are the things that are exclusively about physically being a woman. So once you've got a big feminist and political justification for talking about how you went round to Benedict Cumberbatch's house and did period all over his sofa, then there's no reason not to tell that anecdote in the middle of a dinner party.

Is there anything that can disqualify you from being a feminist?

CM: No. When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34. The problem that we have is thinking there's only one kind of feminist, and that she's politically correct and right on at all times, wears flat shoes, doesn't wear makeup, probably doesn't have sex, is very angry, wears dungarees, is a vegetarian.

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Poll: Which "Game Of Thrones" Character Is The Most Dateable?

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, March 10, 2015

When you play the game of love, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.

Pick who you think is the most dateable*, then tell us why in the comments below!

*regardless of death in the books or show

Jarry Lee / BuzzFeed / HBO

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Real Talk: Hobbits Are Sexier Than Elves

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, March 10, 2015

I’m hobbitsexual and proud.

Listen, nerds. If you've seen The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies and you think that elves are the sexiest residents of Middle Earth, you're fucking wrong.

New Line Cinema / Via lotr.wikia.com

Yes, OK. Elves have long, shiny hair and carry themselves with the wisdom only thousands of years of introspection and study can bring. Big whoop.

New Line Cinema / Via lotr.wikia.com

They are also notoriously snobby, emotionally unavailable, and have been known to monologue extensively while glowing from within.

They are also all vegans, which don't even get me started on.

New Line Cinema / Via sodahead.com

All in all I’d rate the sex appeal of your average Tolkenian elf somewhere between sitting pantsless on an iceberg and chipping a molar.

New Line Cinema / Via it.lotr.wikia.com

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31 Quotes From Children's Books That Will Inspire You At Any Age

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, March 10, 2015

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Submitted by Annalise Joanne Settefrati via Facebook

pexels.com

2. "You must never feel badly about making mistakes ... as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons."

–The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

—Submitted by Elizabeth Danielle via Facebook

3. "I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be."

―A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Submitted by amandak4a7974022