years ago in days of old when magic filled the air

Ellen. 30s. Bi. In denial about being an adult. This blog is just Stuff That Pleases Me. Not spoiler free.

[blanketforcas]

do you hear that dean

[afurioushawk]

[afurioushawk]

[filmnoirsbian]

I love getting unaccompanied minors (kids flying alone) who so clearly just. Don't want to be here lol. Sometimes I get to know a little of their story, like their parents are divorced, or a family member died and they're heading to the funeral, but usually they just don't want to talk about it and that's fine. But I always treat the flight like it's a challenge to make them smile. I offer them snacks and soda but that's never enough, that's whatever, they could get those from an airport vending machine. Chump change. So then I tell the worst jokes. Just the most embarrassing, kindergarten teacher, annoying dad jokes you can think of. And those always get a groan, or a "Seriously??" And that's my in! Now I can say "Why, what's your idea of a good joke? No, come on hotshot, make your best joke, let's see it." And they hem and they haw but of course they eventually tell me their very best joke because kids are little competitive comedy goldmines. And it's always super funny, so I laugh, and that's where they slip up. Because you know what you almost always do when your joke successfully makes someone laugh? You smile. And I'm like. Gotcha. Rookie move. Now you're going to end up having a good time in spite of yourself. I win.

[filmnoirsbian]

Did this with an 11yo u.m. today and he said "What did the ghost say to the other ghost?" And I said "What?" "Nothing. Ghosts aren't real."

[filmnoirsbian]

I'm literally a flight attendant, offering snacks and drinks is my job

[this-is-a-name-dont-worry]

gshsjb

[have-you-been-here]

A country where the only place you've been is an airport on a layover, Earth

Have you been here?

I have been here

I have not been here

Remaining time: 4 days 2 hours

[haletostilinski]

Best MM Ship Ever: GROUP 1 - Round 5

Immortal Husbands (Nicolo "Nicky" di Genova/Yusuf "Joe" Al-Kaysani) vs. Wincest (Sam/Dean Winchester)

The Old Guard - Immortal Husbands (Nicky/Joe)

Supernatural - Wincest (Sam/Dean)

Remaining time: 3 days 8 hours

[seabeck]

I met a friendly ball of lint today

[n3bulas-and-satelites]

@pangur-and-grim found your ideal dog

[part-timeslayer]

thinking about how Buffy didn't find out about the high school rumors about her being gay until college probably because the students at sunnydale were just so used to her weird shit that the lesbian thing was likely the least interesting part to talk about

like who gives a shit who she's sleeping with when you've seen her stab people with a pool stick in the middle of the club during her first week in town

[herinsectreflection]

That moment in Conversations is so hilarious to me because Buffy is like "What the hell?! Gay? I dated Scott Hope! How could they believe such a rumour?!" Meanwhile the Sunnydale students are probably watching her - about a week after splitting up with Scott she starts hanging out with some strange girl who doesn't go to your school and wears leather jackets and combat boots constantly, and is weirdly touchy with her. At one point this girl turns up during an exam, draws a heart on the window, and Buffy just like jumps out the window after her. Like... sure Buffy, it's a complete mystery why anyone would have believed that rumour. Total mystery.

[shutyourmoustache]

“There’s simply no room for me to park my hellcat” wins best in show for me.

[atalethatcantbetold]

.

[foxglovedforest]

[olderthannetfic]

Reading is in the trenches because why did my 9 yr old nephew look at the word "jealous" and said "jewish"? And when asked why he mistaken it as such he said they both started with a "J". It's like his brain is doing autofill. No matter how many time I try to tell him slow down and sound out the words he just won't.

--

TRAP CARD ACTIVATED

No, but seriously, anon, you need to look into what's going on in his classroom because he's probably being taught this trash method instead of phonics. He does not know how to slow down and sound things out because his school has never taught him that. When you tell him to do this, he has no context for what you're even talking about.

This has come up repeatedly here, and I don't have time to froth at the mouth today, but look up "whole language".

This podcast made waves a few years ago when all the lockdown parents discovered, to their horror, that their kiddos weren't being taught to read in the NORMAL FUCKING WAY WE'VE USED FOR LITERALLY CENTURIES and were instead being taught a fake-ass method backed by vibes and antivax-levels of pseudoscience.

Intervene now, anon, or he's never going to read well.

[kittenwriter]

I remember one of my grade school teachers discussing with my mother the differences between me and my sister at learning to read, and he described me as a "sight reader from the start"... which is to say, an acknowledgement that most people do not do that and it's not reasonable to expect that of the majority of kids, who really do need the phonics and the "sound things out."

Generally speaking if a kid has arrived at school not knowing how to read already, they're not going to do well with sight reading and need phonics. The few kids who develop The Reading in the way the whole language people think they should do it before they hit school.

[olderthannetfic]

So true. I know a retired teacher who bawwws and tries to contradict me when I rant about whole language at our knitting meetup. She's all "different kids need different approaches!" and "I saw it work!"...

But of course it feels intuitively sensible to her. She taught herself to read at age 2. That's the exact kind of experience that does make this method sound reasonable. But like you say, if it's going to happen, it happens very early and without the school curriculum.

As for me, I've said it before, but I assume anon wasn't around: I could not learn to read.

I was in second grade. (First grade? I can't remember. Around then.) Most of my classmates were reading at least a little. Me: nothing. I could not learn.

It was even a god damn private school, but I had to have a fucking tutor. I got dragged over to that lady's office a few days a week for... two months? Four months? It really wasn't that long, as far as I know. I was more than ready to learn. I just needed an actual fucking method that wasn't lying trash. Almost at once I jumped from nothing to reading well above grade level. For the rest of my childhood, I continued to diverge from my classmates in how many words I knew, how well I could read, the works. Every year of grade school makes that gap widen. I was on the desirable side of that gap. I was lucky.

It's obvious how verbal I am from reading my tl;dr on this blog.

But I could not learn to read.

I was a couple years younger than this nephew, but not that much younger. It's not too late. Now is the perfect time for some tutoring. If you can afford it, get a pro. If you can't, do your best. But you've got to do something.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The four cueing systems if whole language reading education are a band-aid method used by severely dyslexic people. When people's dyslexia is so bad that they simply cannot learn to read effectively, tricks like cueing allow them to function well enough in society to get by. They do NOT teach proper literacy.

This system was popularised by a guy who is obviously dyslexic, refuses to acknowledge that when asked, and essentially decided that everyone else must be like him and therefore the system that helped him get by was a substitute for real literacy since it was so much faster and more achievable for him to learn to "read" this way than phonically. It's kind of like if somebody without hands was learning to sew, found it incredibly frustrating to do without hands, so they started putting their creations together entirely with fabric glue which they found easier to apply... and told everyone how much easier it was so all the schools got rid of needles and thread and sewing machines and everyone was taught to "sew" using fabric glue only and then wondered why their clothing kept falling apart on their bodies.

[afurioushawk]

His regular six month visit to Walter Reed every two months.

[ryebreadgf]

favorite series of tweets

[00000066]

[disgustinggf]

[alessandriana]

[teaboot]

Hey Boot you should tell tumblr what you think about project hail mary, not for me, for tumblr

I liked it

Eva Stratt is a FANTASTIC character, I hated her choice and I understood it perfectly and I'd have done it too. 10000/10 nuance

I was terrified they'd make her and Grace kiss and I'm so so glad they didn't

I too would die for Rocky

About 3/4s through the movie I said out loud in front of my entire family "Rocky and Adrian seeking third, question" and at least two of my siblings snorted

As a huge fan of "queerplatonic soulmates bonded through the fires of hell; not lovers or brothers but something deeper" phenotype, I am actively chewing on the drywall

Nice to have a movie with a genuinely hopeful and positive air to it while still leaving the future open to speculation. Feels like everything is either grimdark or saccharine or teasing at a sequel. This one ended where it was supposed to and I like that