Nonsense

Less for serious thought, more for personal interests and fanish fun. I mostly follow or reblog here. Generally you will find: photography, ballet, a few fandoms (S7, ST, SW, Highlander, LotR, FFX, HP, Firefly, and various anime mostly), anything Shakespeare related, books and book porn, feminist issues, Disney and Miyazaki animation, cosplay, figure skating, couture fashion, costumes and costume porn, cats, awesome science, and lots of Doctor Who (no, srsly, lots of 8 and Paul McGann). My writing is archived at AO3. My long-form blog is at Dreamwidth. I'm friendly. The ask me anything option will get a response.

[literary-sparks]

“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid

[banchie]

i've been phasing the phrase 'google it' out of my vocabulary and going back to 'look it up'. fuck you youve lost your generic trademark privileges

[reckless-glitch]

[ramblingandpie]

[Video description: Gritty is turning the crank on a flagpole to raise the Progress Pride Flag. He gesticulates angrily that the flag is not blowing in the wind, then gestures offscreen. The flag begins blowing. As Gritty begins raising the flag more, the camera pans out to show a man in a suit and sunglasses, looking like a stern Secret Service agent, is holding a leafblower that points at the flag. End description.]

[groovysarity]

I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue

[mrshamill]

everything about this is gold. Er, platinum.

[lgbt-tiktoks]

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]

[nattousan]

i felt like these tags really added to the experience, thanks @cynderxdustypaws for your knowledge

[naamahdarling]

This is one of the most powerful images I have ever seen, and I will reblog it every single time because every single time it brings tears to my eyes.

[departmentq]

[animentality]

[amberleewriter]

I reconstructed a 20+ page paper with more than a dozen references in MLA format on an IBM Selectric typewriter and no correction fluid in 10 hours after my computer fried itself and the 5 1/4 floppy with my finished work right before I sent the print command. I did it 80% from memory and 20% from the quotes I copied by hand on index cards from the library books still sitting on my dorm room floor.

I got the A and my degree.

If you can’t write 10 pages using cut and paste in a computer program no amount of AI is gonna help you my sweet summer child.

[spookyceeblathers]

my brother is sitting in the chair in my room studying a practice test thing for his final test before he becomes a fully certified EMT tomorrow and he’s mumbling some of the questions out loud and he just went “a child has fallen from a monkey at school…” and he just got dead quiet and stared at the wall for like a solid minute with the most stricken look on his face before he whispered “there’s no protocol for monkeys”

bro

bro it means monkey bars 

[spookyceeblathers]

now he’s googling “child falls from monkey” and apparently the only thing that pops up is Fall Out Boy’s “Thnks Fr th Mmrs”

[spookyceeblathers]

 I M  L AHUGNI N G SO H ARD  HE WENT INTO THE KITCHEN LIKE 5 MINUTES AGO AND STARTED A CONVERSATION WITH MY MOM AND I HEARD HIM JUST STOP MID SENTENCE AND THEN SHOUT “FUCKING MONKEY BARS” 

[spookyceeblathers]

this was a post meant for like 6 people who actually know my brother and now this is the only image he has on this site he’s the “monkey protocol” guy for almost 100,000 people I give up

[depsidase]

[skystormfly]

@localairport

[localairport]

Sigh.

[raina-at]

Why does nobody tell women what an absolute bitch perimenopause can be? I feel like nobody told me anything about it, save for hot flashes. I also feel that doctors don't know enough about it as well. I basically had to diagnose myself.

Like, seriously, women should be educated about their own bodies.

So if you're on the other side of 45 and suddenly everything is twice as difficult, you get more migraines, your blood pressure goes funny, you can't sleep and you feel like your entire psyche is unstable, you might be experiencing perimenopause. My gyn was like,oh, like think of it like reverse puberty, your entire body rearranges itself. I was like, Great, nobody ever told me it can be this bad. My GP didn't even ask me about my period or hormone levels or anything. He just told me I was probably depressed and sent me to a psychiatrist, who also didn't ask about my period or my hormones. If I hadn't experienced something akin to postpartum depression and therefore know what my body does when its hormones are out of whack, I would have had no idea.

Seriously, nobody tells you how much hormones fuck you up as a woman. Nobody prepares you for this.

I've been trying to talk openly about what's fucking me up right now, and I've discovered that it's a lot more common than I thought it was. I feel like every phase of life finds another way to fuck women over. Puberty: have fun with your period as it adjusts itself. Childbirth: prepare for a hormonal rollercoaster. PMS: oh, it can get BAD. Like, BAD. After birth: hormones out of whack for months, maybe longer. Perimenopause: can fuck up everything. Like literally everything. Osteoporosis is also hormonal. Post menopause: supposedly things get better, but they don't have to.

And I feel like we're left pretty alone dealing with all of it. And we know so little about it that we're left wondering why suddenly nothing works anymore. So we flail about and feel terrible about our sudden inability to cope with life, when it's in fact our bodies screwing with us. Again.

So. Let's talk about it, let's be open to each other and learn from each other. Thank you especially to anyone who shared experiences with me. It helps to feel like you're not alone.

[amberleewriter]

OP is right. We fems do not discuss enough the impact of our hormones, life changes, and body changes have on us. From acne, hair loss, torn vaginal tissues, how your body physically changes during and after pregnancy, hormonal shifts, and more we simply do not talk enough about this stuff. Our bodies do a lot of extreme things during our lives in honor of gestation and we are just in this thing for the ride. Groin pulls? Ladies get those, get scar tissue, and then having sex is "complicated" if not outright horrible. If you ask your doctor about it you might get the brush off and told to use lube, but you can do actual PT for that stuff. Honest it helps. HRT use is great for a majority of women. PCOS/PMOS has major implications for more than just your ovaries and making babies. It is a whole condition that impacts your whole body and your whole life.

And then you get to what you think will be a relief - menopause. No more tampons, no more pads, I can wear white pants and skirts again! I can't get pregnant and can stop taking pills! (Heaven forbid a man wear a rubber or better yet get a vasectomy.)

But no. Just when you think it is over, the estrogen that has been running the show for so long and making you a high performing, give 2 fucks about anything, have patience with idiots person is TOAST.

I am here to say that "gets better" really means your body gives you permission to be the forever you. It's the you that you likely would have been without that baby-making blip in the middle. Not everyone, including you, will necessarily be copacetic with the changes/regression/life choice that will come along with the hormonal shift.

After you have ping-pong ball hormones for up to 10+ years of peri it finally goes NOPE and leaves you with zero coping skills. (Please be advised, my mom went full meno early at 42 and was done with peri in 2 years so there are some lucky people who get the very short version and you should pray to whichever god works for you to get this version.) There is a reason Dowager Lady Grantham was the most sarcastic, cunt serving, made of awesome in five counties. Some side effects of being in menopause include:

That fuck field you had for almost anything but your "special interests" has been salted and is now dead.

Suffering fools and patience are also now dead.

Multi-tasking? WTF was that? You do not do that anymore. You go from room to room going, "I had a reason I came in here what was it?" only to be distracted by some mess created by the other humans in your life and two hours later you go, "I had a plan at some point. What was it?"

Now you can't find your glasses when they are on your dang face. Good luck finding your shoes, keys, that outfit you purchased, or even the knife you wanted to use in the kitchen. You are about to buy a label maker and use it EVERYWHERE so you can FIND ANYTHING EVER AGAIN. Of course this implies that you will put that thing back where it belongs (or that the other people with whom you cohabitate will do so) but you will try this method with varying degrees of success at some point. You will become obsessed with organization shows during this portion of your life until you succumb to despair and just buy five of everything or go full Marie Kondo.

BTW, you are going to hurt everywhere now. And I mean there too. I hate to say that the pain of menstrual cramps, ovarian cysts, and fibroids can pale in comparison to the charley-horse your pelvic floor can contort into instead of giving you a fun orgasm. Oh, and stock up on lube because everything down there drying up includes all the other tissues so unless you want raspy sandpaper action (or give up the whole thing all together) you are gonna want to buy stock in KY (and/or estrogen cream producers). Thanks big pharma for making men a little blue pill instead of allowing them to dry up too and stop asking for the Kama Sutra at the same time of life when our parts decide to go on permanent vacay.

Your pelvic floor is more than just kegel exercises. You are going to need a full routine from now till the end of your time on earth to keep from leaking out of those holes down there. You should start this during peri and keep at it because it is a lot harder to recover muscle tone down there when that estrogen takes a mickey. See your OB, your GP, or ask for a referral to a urologist to get this kind of PT depending on your medical system.

Doctors are going to chalk everything in your life up to "age" going forward and offer you zero real solutions. For us fems this has always been the case but instead of calling us hysterical for having hormone swings now they will blame everything on age/no hormone swings.

Do not think that hormone replacement will be the one great solution to your issues. Some of you will, like me, have an "irregular" response to hormone replacement therapy. First off - see an endocrinologist and do so early. Second - try to find one that is not all about babies. Most of the time you will find things out about your hormones from your OB/GYN in context of fertility. Now, you need someone who knows and understands female hormones in context of aging so a fem presenting, geriatric AND endo specialist is your friend. Every male OB/GYN or Endo I have ever had still dismissed early signs of problems or hand waived at my pains or complaints. Ladyfolk generally do not do this because they are in that trench with you.

Your marriage may implode. Because of all the previous stuff (in particular your disinterest or pain during sex and your lack of ability to suffer fools) your partner may find that they can't deal with the situation. For that matter, YOU may find you can't deal with the situation. The I can't put laundry in a hamper instead of on the floor (much less do a load myself); the why isn't dinner ready; the what do you mean I need to pick up the kid that is your job; etc will either get sorted out with discussion/therapy or one of you will decide that living alone is preferable to being the only half of the "team" who takes care of the actual living of life. I got lucky. Mine got "woke" pretty early and has always known how to grill a steak and mix a bag salad for dinner (but how you can do physics and be unable to put a dish in a dishwasher I will never understand). But know this: if you have been raising a man-child who wants you to be a combo of his mom, maid, and cook that the years of "service" given are not gonna stop him from buying a sports car and finding a younger version with gravity defying tits who doesn't have issues with "putting out" in the bedroom. This is why your great grandmother kept arsenic around to put in coffee back before feminism got us our own bank accounts.

You may find out via therapy that you are ADHD, Autistic Spectrum, other form of Neurodivergent at age 45+. Much of what you learn about yourself when this happens will be a combo of mind blowing and mind altering. You are going to find out that lots of the skills you built to cope no longer work without estrogen behind them. You will "skill regress" while you learn new coping mechanisms. Being kind to yourself and giving yourself grace during this period is going to be critical for you, your workmates, your partner, and for any kids/grandkids you interact with on the daily. If you are still working while trying to sort all of it out I wish you much luck. The frustration, anxiety, and depression can kick your ass. Do not try to raw dog this thing. Tell people what you are going through. We are all out here living this stuff. You are not alone.

Remember that everyone is probably still going to turn to you to fix EVERYTHING. If you do not /say you cannot, you will likely be guilted by being told you are selfish, mean, cruel, or letting everyone down. This is largely said in context of your aging parents and/or grandparents. It may also be played on you if you live close to grandchildren and your family members want you to watch the kids. If you have siblings and you are the oldest you are going to be told it is your responsibility to take care of all of the elder care. If you married into a family they will say the same. After 40 our social structure throws everything on the shoulders of women to fix while no one else is expected to help. You need to know that it is both NOT OK to put all this on a single person, and NOT OK to be done as unpaid labor. It is only going to get harder the older you get when you and your spouse (if you have one) are going to be attempting to negotiate aging gracefully on your own. If you did not make time for yourself and for boundaries and valid self care beyond a massage and facial prior to menopause, your body will force you to learn. The things it will do to you will not be pretty. So do yourself a favor and start saying NO early and often as a complete sentence.

My fellow identifiers of the she/her/hers persuasion I encourage you to help out our sistahs and start talking about the trials and tribulations of the body and mind that is our lot. We need to stop hiding what is happening to us and start sharing - LOUDLY. For all that I've said here, being a fem can be a wonderful thing. Being an older/elder fem even more so. The freedom that comes with no longer caring what others think of your body, hair, manners, etc can be a revelation. But, we all need to be honest about what really happens to us physically and hormonally so we can get assistance when it is needed. What we do now is kind of a form of gaslighting. We focus on all the joy of motherhood and the babies and the this and the that and the superwoman can do it all. Anything that doesn't fit into that narrative tends to get swept under a rug.

Open your heart and your mind and your experience to everyone. Tell the reality. It's not being negative. It validates the experiences of all of us gals.

[whyactlikeahuman]

[quasikool]

#i literally crack up everytime #at least ten of the notes are from me

[depsidase]

[memeuplift]

[robertreich]

The Comedy Comedown https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-comedy-comedown

[nitashinori]

That post about death note being "everyone's first anime" (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science

Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?

[haunteddollsgeorg]

As a society we have benefited so much from successful public health measures that we now have the privilege of declaring that we must not need them anymore

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history

You might say “oh well today we all have access to vitamins and toothpastes and dentists so we don’t need those things in our food supplies” and boy do white people on social media loooove to fucking say that. But here’s the thing: no, people don’t all have easy access to those things. That’s privilege talking yet again

[dduane]