Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"

[Autistic Nonetheless]

I’ve skimmed through about 3-3½ of Joe’s books over the years and Please Miss is by far the most telling. There, for once, he actually attempted to pastiche various styles and genres (still absolutely filtered through postmodern hur-hur-hur-is-my-writing-bad-intentionally-guess-you’ll-never-know bs) and it didn’t turn out well. He likes words, so there were a few quality puns, but it was absolutely a mediocre clever-young-man book written by a 45 yo academic and I think he knows it. It was also (another joe pattern) really half-assed so that by the middle I was skipping a handfull of pages at a time.

These days he just does his sub Butler jargon mishmash thing, which im sure served him well during his dphil days but now feels about 20 years out of date. He has to evolve. People like Andrea Long Chu are writing provocative, openly disgusting shit calculated to offend everyone outside of his tiny bubble. Meanwhile Joe is applying the same scrap bucket of tools to whatever random crap he happened to think was clever that day and It’s not working. He has been writing a book a year (I know: lots of pictures, huge margins, large text, but still) since before this thread started.

Honestly substack would have been a good platform for him with its frequent small articles but im sure he has too much pride to ever come back there and play second fiddle to Mal.

 

[AfghanBlue]

At first glance I thought that was the Sonichu medallion and had a brief glimmer of excitement.

But no, it's just Joe's usual style of the worst possible choices from droppable names.

The thinking man's Sonichu.
Ugh. Joe... Somehow doesn't seem to realise that you have to be generally good looking and not haggard to dress in a kinda mad fashion, and in doing so you can wear any old thing.
Wearing really really expensive shit when you're not actually rich, looks incredibly gaudy and lame and like you've cycled without stopping though a clothes shop in a cartoon..
None of it makes sense.
They don't do anything to enhance his figure.
He just looks like bleeding gums Murphy spiralling demanding another fabrege egg.
Would it even be *that* hard to lose weight, when you are clearly happy enough to distract yourself all day from eating by making disgusting concoctions? How is he even managing this? How do you even get skin and jowls like that so immediately? Is it estrogen?
If nothing other than your own obvious vanity, how can you not want to spend every moment doing the bare minimum of physical upkeep it would take to look a bit better rather than just caking another few thousand dollars worth of stupid fashion over yourself like it's magic?
It happens over and over again with these narcissists and is such a headscratcher.

 

[monstrous bubo]

Wearing really really expensive shit when you're not actually rich, looks incredibly gaudy and lame and like you've cycled without stopping though a clothes shop in a cartoon..

Actual footage has been found

Joe could be Elon Musk levels of rich and he’d still be gaudy and lame because of what he chooses and how he puts it together. His outfits remind me of the old Australian saying, „All over the place like a mad woman’s shit”.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

The thinking man's Sonichu.
Ugh. Joe... Somehow doesn't seem to realise that you have to be generally good looking and not haggard to dress in a kinda mad fashion, and in doing so you can wear any old thing.
Wearing really really expensive shit when you're not actually rich, looks incredibly gaudy and lame and like you've cycled without stopping though a clothes shop in a cartoon..
None of it makes sense.
They don't do anything to enhance his figure.
He just looks like bleeding gums Murphy spiralling demanding another fabrege egg.
Would it even be *that* hard to lose weight, when you are clearly happy enough to distract yourself all day from eating by making disgusting concoctions? How is he even managing this? How do you even get skin and jowls like that so immediately? Is it estrogen?
If nothing other than your own obvious vanity, how can you not want to spend every moment doing the bare minimum of physical upkeep it would take to look a bit better rather than just caking another few thousand dollars worth of stupid fashion over yourself like it's magic?
It happens over and over again with these narcissists and is such a headscratcher.

Joe thinks of himself as an eccentric wealthy woman in her 60s, the kind who has a regular dinner order that she takes at precisely 5:30 PM every day at an unspeakably expensive, ancient restaurant on the Upper West Side.

This pretense has grown in no small part from Mallory's interests. He manages to do this drag close enough that she goes for it. I think she genuinely loves how he dresses and looks, as terrifying as that might be to those of us who aren't possessed by a sense of eternal jealousy over and unbelonging to those fancy Manhattanite circles.

This type of woman (unbeknownst to Joe, who thinks he can simply step into being one since how hard can it be??) can dress insanely because she spent decades as a beautiful young thing until the plastic surgeon couldn't fight the ravages of age any longer, and who wears clothes and accessories with the knowledge of a woman who read thousands of fashion magazines and style sections starting when she was 8 years old.

 

[Anasa Tristis]

Along with her career, her creativity is also in rude health. She has been invited to take part in Esquire’s Napkin Project: write fiction on a cocktail napkin. Esquire says



One is Chuck Palahniuk, but the others? If these are electric, I’d hate to see the non-electric. Make up your own mind here.

IMO hers is one of the better ones, mostly because the format requires terseness so her worst excesses are constrained. It tells a story clearly and unsentimentally, which gives it more emotional power. Chuck Palahnuik’s is arguably better, It made me laugh, and also its connection to Thanksgiving is more subtle. His handwriting is definitely better. Here’s her napkin if you want to form views on her penwomanship.

View attachment 6696725

Chuck's was the best because it was the most creative within the limits of the given materials and the "write a T Day story" directions. There's a "writer's process" layer goin' on there too, with his edits and additions to each napkin. Very meta and human at the same time. Well done. Apparently Esquire thoughtfully sends extra napkins for multiple drafts! Kek. I really like that he humbly kept his cocktail napkins in their naturally folded state too, and didn't open one up for more writing space.

Mal's came in second for me, but that's mostly because the other two were simply smarmy and awful. I guess she's referencing someone or something there (two families, Websters and Sullivans?) but I have no idea what's going on.

 

[monstrous bubo]

I guess she's referencing someone or something there (two families, Websters and Sullivans?) but I have no idea what's going on.

The Websters get married and have their first Thanksgiving in 1937. A daughter marries Sullivan and you get two Thanksgivings. Various tweaks / evolutions in the family traditions. The Websters die in the 1990s, or at least are so old they can no longer host, and their children and grandchildren get the napkin rings and presumably create or evolve their own traditions.

 

[Trianon]

Wave of nostalgia sweeps East Lansing:
View attachment 6688500View attachment 6688501
Because one re-re-re-airs one's attack on one's family for pay, only. The Chatner

Text of the paywalled post:

Spoiler

"Some merry at dinner and dead at supper"
Nov. 25, 2024

Edward Hall, who wrote the Tudor history Hall's Chronicle, described the plague year of 1523 when, "Suddenly there came a plague of sickness, called the Sweating sickness, that turned all [the king's] purpose. This malady was so cruel that it killed some within three hours, some within two hours, some merry at dinner and dead at supper."

It has been five years now — five years this month, possibly even this week — since I became estranged from my family. The break was precipitous, sudden, and total; I spoke to each of them in turn throughout the course of a single day, and then never again. It is a period, indeed — five years is a period.

As Anne thinks of Wentworth in Persuasion, "There could have been no hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement." I have encountered more similar tastes, and certainly more feeling-in-unison, outside of my family over the years, but their hearts and their countenances were always beloved, always dear to me. I loved seeing them, even when things were difficult between us, which they sometimes were. I loved the lightness, ease, and frequency with which we spoke to each other; any excuse would do for a conversation.

What had saddened me most, in those final two years of kinship, was the loss of this ease with my younger brother. He had not taken news of my transition well. His discomfort and unease with me were both conspicuous and subterranean, which was how I often experienced him. For well over a year he would not address me by any name, neither the old or the new, while I retreated to my own habitual position of flippancy, alternating between long periods of ignoring him and seeking to re-establish some kind of relation without language. Once I mailed him a potato, in the hopes of jostling him into being pleased with me.

Occasionally I would discuss him with my parents or my sister, since I resisted asking him outright whenever my test-balloons failed to renew our familiarity. They would sympathize with us both, suggest there may be more to the story than I could at present imagine, and encourage me to talk to him. I put it off, partly out of pique, partly out of preoccupation with my own affairs, partly out of fear.

When at least we did speak, it produced a rupture so considerable it has cut my life in half. He told me that he was a pedophile, that he had known it for decades; that he believed his extensive work with children was somehow therapeutic, that our family had known for well over a year and supported his theory, and that he expected my support in turn. I could not give it; within a week my wife and I had reported him to every institution where he volunteered with children and initiated an investigation at my family's church that eventually led to my father's reluctant resignation as senior pastor later that year. I know very little of my family's movements after that. I think they are all living, but beyond that I have done my best to hold myself apart from new information.

Everything happened so quickly, quickly, after that day my brother sat in my apartment and confessed himself to me. It was the last slow moment I could remember for some time — our conversation was epochally slow, and then as if to make up for it the next two years slid past me in a torrent.

One of the last things my brother ever said to me was "You'd be surprised how many of us are teachers." I can't precisely recall what he said next, whether it was "More of us than you'd think" or "Most of us" or even an attempt at giving a percentage like "more than half."

I do remember that I found the confidence of this assertion terrifying and baffling, as if he had conducted a formal study under scientific supervision. It has become important to me not to quote our last conversation directly, except in what I was able to write down in the days that followed and discuss with others, because my memory of that period of my life is blasted, patched, patchy. I am anxious about the risks of trying to summarize or paraphrase, particularly the further our sibling relationship recedes into history and narrative. I cannot rely on anyone's memory of that conversation but mine, and while I realize perfect recall is impossible, I want to prioritize precision where I can and honest uncertainty everywhere else.

He did say that I would be surprised to learn what he already knew, and his manner suggested long familiarity with others like him, with similar aims, techniques, strategies, formulations. Although his tone that afternoon was most often mawkish and self-pitying — he felt terribly sorry for himself and demonstrated no concern whatever about the well-being of the children in his care — in that moment he was proud of himself, proud to know something I didn't, proud to indict me into secret knowledge reserved for an elite few, proud of their quiet brotherhood of resource — sharing, and proud, too, I think, in having pulled something off for so long.

In my last letter to my brother — sent, I think, a few days after that conversation, and without any intervening contact — I told him that I was going to stop his work with children, and that on some level he must have wanted someone to stop him, that this was why he had chosen to tell me so long after he had told the rest of our immediate family, all of whom had praised, nurtured, and enabled his wicked decision.

I go back and forth on whether I still believe this to be true. I am more inclined now to think our family's vibrant and affirming support led him to believe something like stopping was impossible, that perhaps the possibility did not even exist, that as long as they continued to repeat their belief in his perpetual innocence, that they would be protected by a loving God's mighty hand.

The first six months of our estrangement produced a great flurry of events: town halls, conversations with reporters, formal investigations, meetings with lawyers, changes of profession, of residence, of names. Very little has happened in the years since. We do not speak, we do not look at one another, we do not traffic in one another's business. The story has gone quiet. My grief has ceased to be new and has entered a maturer stage. There are good and pleasant things abiding with me too, but I carry it with me all of the days of my life.

• It appears Johnny did not accept Mal's transition, and they were not on close speaking terms, which is why she was not in the loop at all about his issues. She thinks, though, that he waited because he knew she would stop him.
• She uses the term "his theory" for the belief that working with children was therapeutic and says that his family supported that idea. It's unclear if Mal is just guessing at this or if the idea actually originated with Johnny.
• She characterizes him as being "proud" of himself when he told her but also "self-pitying."
• She says his exact words were "You'd be surprised how many of us are teachers."

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

She says his exact words were "You'd be surprised how many of us are teachers."

That whole portion of the post really reads like she is poking the bear, trying to revive the accusations and thus the witch hunt.

 

[monstrous bubo]

That whole portion of the post really reads like she is poking the bear, trying to revive the accusations and thus the witch hunt.

FIFY. What a shitty and self-serving bomb to drop (again) on your family. Whenever Mal is feeling Brave and Stunning*, she can defame them as a transphobic pedophile and his wicked enablers. They wisely stay silent.

* or insecure about her stupid life and in need of self-soothing. Or attention whoreish.

 

[Bookwork]

I think they are all living, but beyond that I have done my best to hold myself apart from new information.

If only the fake lumberjack mommy blogger had the power she should have to cast her brother and her parents into oblivion while the world cheers her on.

More pain and shame! If they do not feel more pain and shame, Mallory will remain a hair clog in the drain of vengeance. So she revives her old campaign against her brother for Thanksgiving and keeps Sabaah Jauhir-Rizvi's discredited sexual assault allegations against her father at the top of her X feed.

"Embrace me, dear reader, for I am a sensitive and suffering man who yearns to wound and wound and wound."

 

[Mellorine]

Chuck's was the best. He didn't accept the challenge as simply "write a Thanksgiving story on a napkin" but used napkins to tell a Thanksgiving story.

Mal's was pretty alright, tracing the evolution of a fictitious family's tradition. It was cute. She can sometimes pull off cute. It leaves a lot of space to fill in the blanks while still being evocative, much like Chuck's, and it works because of that.

Meg Wolitzer's wasn't the worst but it wasn't particularly good either. I get the idea she's going for, an artifact of the holidays from when the kids were much younger being interpreted as a totem of those more innocent times, but it doesn't really say anything much with or about it.

Woodsen's and Wang's were putrid.

 

[Autistic Nonetheless]

Text of the paywalled post:

While the story is a bit wrong it at least comes off as reasonable. Heaven knows she is much more tolerable when not trying to be cutesy or larping as a lifestyle coach. She’s also dropped her old habit of marinading her prose with medical, therapeutic buzzwords about ‘overcoming’ and ‘minimizing’ and ‘doing better’ <insert green puke emoji>


Now compare and contrast this with Joe’s embarrassingly transparent attempt to capitalize on this mess.

 

[Bookwork]

Now compare and contrast this with Joe’s embarrassingly transparent attempt to capitalize on this mess.

"The first thing Danny did was call me. I was eating ramen in Berkeley at the time...."

Joe's the main character, doncha know.

ETA - Throuplegiving + Tard Baby's 38th Birthday

Spoiler: Text

To celebrate gratitude in general (particularly as concerns my gorgeous husband, thirty-eight today, steward of light and hope, Daniel Lavery), we all made some food today. Here is some of it!

1) green beans, stir-fried with wakame and habañero, and topped with blanched ginger, on ciabatta toast.

2) daikon radish, poached in curry leaf-infused clementine juice, with peach skin and lavender garnish.

3) peach skin, curry leaf, and lavender, lying around looking pretty.

4) a haunch of ham, cured with grey salt, brown sugar, and tonka bean, emerging from a pot of hay wherein it has steamed, with our lovely friends Shiela and Salah.

5) the ham plated, with a glaze of lacto blackberries and maple syrup, with thai basil.

6) mashed sweet potatoes, with a frizzle of barberry, crispy onion, and flaked almond.

7) poulet à l’orange: brown meat confit’d in duck fat for nigh on twenty four hours; shoyuzuke carrot and apple, made using my own shoyu and miso; basic-ass steamed buttery chicken breasts; a chapelure of tonka bean, breadcrumb, sage, orange vesicle, and parsley.

me and rocco mcgee

not pictured, because not photogenic, but nonetheless delicious: a brandade of salt tilapia with coconut water and lemongrass, served next to a sliver of said tilapia and a savory(ish) braised cranberry compote.

not pictured, because chaotically plated by yours truly, but a flawless basic-ass composotion every time: rice balled and grilled in sesame oil, served over a coulis of roast red pepper, rose kombucha, and lacto blackberries.

I LOVE TO MAKE/EAT FOOD FOR/WITH MY FAMILY @daniel_m_lavery AND @lolz4lilz !!!

Been meaning to ask: Replicants? Or is there something in the water at Berkeley causing this? Maybe it's the ramen.

If you haven't yet noticed her thread, the lolcow on the right is Berkeley-educated Sierra Weir.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

Peach skin, curry leaf, and lavender.

I cannot wait to see what toddler Rocco gets to eat in a year or so.

 

[monstrous bubo]

1) green beans, stir-fried with wakame and habañero, and topped with blanched ginger, on ciabatta toast.

Fussy but potentially ok little mouthfuls

2) daikon radish, poached in curry leaf-infused clementine juice, with peach skin and lavender garnish.

I prefer raw daikon and that looks sweet as shit and floppy to boot, but um, ok

5) the ham plated, with a glaze of lacto blackberries and maple syrup, with thai basil.

That’s ham? Seriously? Seriously? That poor pig. Imagine roast pork and crackling with some roast potatoes, a simple, generous gravy, some fresh beans bursting with flavour…

6) mashed sweet potatoes, with a frizzle of barberry, crispy onion, and flaked almond.

Cool, that is more like it. All that extra shit won’t affect the taste too much. It might even be good with it.

7) poulet à l’orange: brown meat confit’d in duck fat for nigh on twenty four hours; shoyuzuke carrot and apple, made using my own shoyu and miso; basic-ass steamed buttery chicken breasts; a chapelure of tonka bean, breadcrumb, sage, orange vesicle, and parsley.

So no roast potatoes or more beans? Or any vegetables? Just some cheap ass leaf and a few bits of a Waldorf salad tortured beyond recognition? I WANT SOME VEGETABLES GODDAMNIT.

me and rocco mcgee

A modest proposal.

 

[Potatis Salad]

lol. Thanksgiving a la Joe. Let's take a closer look at his work.

1) green beans, stir-fried with wakame and habañero, and topped with blanched ginger, on ciabatta toast.

Wakame is the chewy, meaty seaweed that is most commonly found in miso soup. A giant wad of this stuff perched on a piece of toast, with green beans precariously balanced on top, and a bunch of "blanched" ginger--does a quick blanch do anything to make fibrous gingerroot more chewable? I kinda doubt it. So you either pick this thing up and maneuver it into your mouth whole, angling it sideways at first so the green beans don't roll off, then contend with the wakame with your molars, or you attempt to separate it into two bites, gnawing through the wakame with your incisors to get it into two pieces. Joe's "...on toasts" are almost always weird but this one in particular is not an amuse bouche so much as an antagonize bouche. Also, I guarantee he cooked at least ten times more "wakame and green bean stir fry" than he needed to make these five (5) appetizers.

2) daikon radish, poached in curry leaf-infused clementine juice, with peach skin and lavender garnish.

Curry leaves are not edible. They're used to flavor Indian dishes but you pick them out or eat around them. So we've got a single slice of daikon radish floating in a pool of orange juice, with two inedible garnishes and a piece of peach skin sitting on top, SERVED AT THE BOTTOM OF A GIANT, HEAVY FUCKING CASSEROLE DISH! Peak Joe. He wants to serve his bowl of orange juice in a dramatic oversized dish, doesn't have enough dramatic oversized dishes, makes his family eat out of cookware.

3) peach skin, curry leaf, and lavender, lying around looking pretty.

Why.

4) a haunch of ham, cured with grey salt, brown sugar, and tonka bean, emerging from a pot of hay wherein it has steamed, with our lovely friends Shiela and Salah.

Ham is cured pork. With this caption, Joe is claiming that he took a whole pork leg (his "haunch", which would be more difficult than curing a smaller boneless shoulder cut), injected it down to the bone with "grey salt" brine, then cured it submerged in brine for a week or more depending on the size of the leg, then STEAMED IT IN HAY, then served? [X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X][X] This nigga bought ham that was already cured, added salt/sugar/tonka bean, then did the shit with the hay. Those poor dinner guests forced to sit there and admire Joe's stockpot full of hot hay.

5) the ham plated, with a glaze of lacto blackberries and maple syrup, with thai basil.

It's ham with IHOP blackberry syrup and soft herbs on top, fine. Probably perfectly edible.

6) mashed sweet potatoes, with a frizzle of barberry, crispy onion, and flaked almond.

What is barberry? It's this:

Of course Joe won't mash a sweet potato without dumping some "frizzled" unchewable trimmings from the landscaping into it. Just why.

7) poulet à l’orange: brown meat confit’d in duck fat for nigh on twenty four hours; shoyuzuke carrot and apple, made using my own shoyu and miso; basic-ass steamed buttery chicken breasts; a chapelure of tonka bean, breadcrumb, sage, orange vesicle, and parsley.

Knife skills unparalleled:

First of all, it's "confited". Second, this is steamed chicken breast slopped onto dry lettuce, with raw apples and carrots soaked in soy sauce. I had to look up "chapelure": it means breadcrumbs. But Joe has added tonka beans, an ingredient which is currently banned in the US because it is toxic in high doses. So we've got a pile of grey dust made out of bread, extremely bitter ground beans, herbs, and orange (by "vesicle", Joe means that he did not grind up the whole orange with pith and peel this time, thanks ever so much bro).

A Thanksgiving feast is about piling a plate with a feast and fucking feasting on it while surrounded by people you care about. And here's Joe's take: nine zillion fussy, ugly little courses that he has studded with inedible/unchewable/unpalatable pieces of flair at every opportunity. He undoubtedly spent the whole meal swanning in and out of the kitchen with his risible puddles of orange juice and boiled radish sloshing in a casserole dish, demanding commentary about every single one of his nonsensical creations. I bet the conversation around the dinner table was barely allowed to deviate from Joe and his marvelous cookery at all.

 

[Anasa Tristis]

The Websters get married and have their first Thanksgiving in 1937. A daughter marries Sullivan and you get two Thanksgivings. Various tweaks / evolutions in the family traditions. The Websters die in the 1990s, or at least are so old they can no longer host, and their children and grandchildren get the napkin rings and presumably create or evolve their own traditions.

So it was an original tale! I assumed that she was riffing off some sort of previous and well known to the literary minded Websters and Sullivans saga that was recently on the NYT Best Seller list. Or some other fanfiction-y sort o thing that went right over my head. Thanks.

 

[Paul Enwerdhoeven]

Chuck's was the best. He didn't accept the challenge as simply "write a Thanksgiving story on a napkin" but used napkins to tell a Thanksgiving story.

Mal's was pretty alright, tracing the evolution of a fictitious family's tradition. It was cute. She can sometimes pull off cute. It leaves a lot of space to fill in the blanks while still being evocative, much like Chuck's, and it works because of that.

Meg Wolitzer's wasn't the worst but it wasn't particularly good either. I get the idea she's going for, an artifact of the holidays from when the kids were much younger being interpreted as a totem of those more innocent times, but it doesn't really say anything much with or about it.

Woodsen's and Wang's were putrid.

A big reason critics love Women's Hotel is that the competition is complete dogshit. Compared to older stuff it's pretty blah but if you've been immersed in the dismal swamp of contemporary fiction it's a breath of fresh air.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

appears Johnny did not accept Mal's transition, and they were not on close speaking terms, which is why she was not in the loop at all about his issues. She thinks, though, that he waited because he knew she would stop him.

Boy this puts a new twist on Mallory’s motivations for destroying her brother’s life. I mean transphobia must be punished at all costs, the ends justify the means.

Mallory skin walks her brother in a creepy way. I think she resented him being the son, even more so her father’s son. She seems to have a mountain of resentment towards Dad and her brother tied up in her gender BS.

Years ago I might have believed more of the details Mallory is suddenly sharing on the eve of Thanksgiving. Her pinning that tweet by the schizo, who has been raped by every male that has ever breathed in her vicinity, revealed exactly who Mal is. She is angry, she is vindictive and she is willing to lie and promote lies to ensure her family is punished or publicly tarred and feathered. I think she is furious her campaign against her brother and father fizzled out without a stake burning and her giving a GLAAD acceptance speech as trans-hero of the year alongside Joe.

Now that she’s getting a modicum of positive press and attention for her new book she’s taking the opportunity to pour a little more gasoline, hoping it might stoke a few dying embers left in the ashes.

All of Mallory’s rage seems firmly focused, at least publicly, on the two men in her family. Joe must love plumbing the enormous depths of her Freudian penis envy. Her old writing hinted at resentments and difficulties with her mom, but damn if it isn’t all daddy issues to the moon.

 

[Mellorine]

...that he believed his extensive work with children was somehow therapeutic...

If the brother's problem really was "OCD is making me fixate on how horrible and wrong it would be to molest a child and even though I feel no desire to do so I can't stop obsessing over how terrible it would be", I could see spending time around kids (especially in a normal public context, such as activities at church) being an attempt at a sort of exposure therapy. "I did something I thought I couldn't do without the worst thing ever happening and the worst thing ever didn't happen" is a pretty standard approach for attempting to retrain the obsessive-compulsive psyche. I can't know if that was the case, I don't know or trust enough of the details we have, but I could see Mal twisting her brother saying something like "I sometimes struggle with these distressing intrusive thoughts but the more I help out with youth group the less space they're occupying in my head" into "he hangs out with children as treatment for his pedophilic disorder!"