Chris’ Commonplace Book

[lankybrunettepartdeux]

I never guessed that in my adulthood, I’d be relating to Calvin’s parents as much as I do in this comic.

Because damn … Calvin’s dad was so right.

[rawshaide-deactivated20220128]

This is part of an arc where their house got broken into and they have to deal with the ensuing fallout.

Calvin and Hobbes was some real shit, my dude.

[slavetomyheadcanon]

Reading Calvin and Hobbes as an adult is a VERY different experience than reading it as a kid.

[randomslasher]

I always liked this arc because they were out of town when the house was robbed (I think at a wedding?) but Calvin forgot Hobbes. So when they get home and realize they’ve been robbed, Calvin is super scared Hobbes might’ve been stolen. For some reason the last panel when the parents are happy that Calvin has his buddy again just always moved me. 

[randomslasher]

Also this part: 

[girls4losers]

i gotta remember this

[lucy8675309]

OK Tumblr Geriatric Ward, let’s talk about your posture-

there are things you should be doing now to prevent yourself from starting to look like 🥀

Why does it matter? Future you would like to avoid the pain, limited motion, and fall risk that goes along with worsening posture.

What’s the focus?

1. Keep the flexibility in your spine

2. Stretch the muscles in the front

3. Strengthen the muscle in the back

Here are some simple things you can do daily while sitting and when you get up to go into the bathroom or the kitchen

Keep the flexibility by doing these repeated movements: 10 repetitions several times a day

The goal is to give yourself a double or triple chin. Keep your nose pointing forward, don’t let it tip up or down

Thoracic extension- use a chair with a seat back that comes up to the level of your shoulder blades. Try to bend back over the top of the chair without arching away from the seat back and without extending your neck. If the pressure from the top of the chair is uncomfortable you can place a towel there

Stretch the muscles in the front by using a door frame. This one will feel good afterwards

If this isn’t enough of a stretch you can do one side at a time. If you have the right arm up step forward with the right foot and turn slightly to the left. Then do it on the other side.

Strengthen the muscles in the back by squeezing your shoulder blades together for a count of 10 and then repeating 10 times. You can do this several times a day Hint: Don’t lift your shoulder blades up

There are lots more exercises for strengthening your back muscles but this is a good starting point and easy to do. I like doing it while driving

Tips:

Do the best you can

If it hurts stop

Envision future you saying thank you each time you do one of the exercises

[brightlotusmoon]

NOTE: I can do most of these with the cerebral palsy. In fact, a lot of these little exercises are automatically part of my physical therapy. My problem is I already have hyperlordosis, spine arthritis, and cervicogenic headache. These have helped me at least try to have a posture.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW GOOD THIS ADVICE IS

[rustandruin]

the ghost of one specific homosexual cowboy regularly possesses Tumblr gays

[owarim]

[ambris]

Please, never let this meme die.

[silkirose]

This is the best one I’ve seen so far

[wizardshark]

What kind of quantum fucking memeing from 2056 are you people beaming to us

[warblyzombie]

It’s fucking back

[onyx-was-here]

shooting star. i can’t believe i’m hearing shooting star again in the year 2020

[mightyinvincible]

The fates have ordained that this cross my timeline again and you better fucking believe i’m reblogging it.

This is the only good meme, don’t @ me

[mdintraining]

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has trouble remembering developmental milestones. I put these together, but can’t take credit for any of the photography. Hope someone finds them helpful!

[thelastpilot]

This is very useful to me i have absolutely no gauge for how old children are and what they can typically do at what ages

[johncribati]

I’ve been on Tumblr too long I was definitely expecting this to turn into some existentialist meme

[bogleech]

Every writer needs to see this because I’m really tired of otherwise competent novels in which a two year old is like “mother dearest I do believe I am quite frightened” or conversely they’re supposed to be five and going “me hungie!!!”

[musicalhell]

Writers should also bear in mind these are average benchmarks. Some children will do these things a little earlier, some later, and they’re not necessarily markers of unusual mental aptitude or deficiency. Sure, a four-year-old who’s reading independently would be very precocious, and a six-year-old who can’t use the bathroom on their own would be concerning (though it’s not unheard of to wet the bed at that age), but an 18-month-old may not talk all that much and otherwise be fine. (My oldest was speech delayed until he was almost three. He understood us perfectly well–you could say things like “Bring me your jacket” or “Point to the kitty” and he’d do it–he just didn’t feel much like talking until he started doing early education. At which point he began to talk at great length, and still does.)

Above all, you have to remember that children are people, and like all people they have individual personalities–and those personalities are distinguishable a lot sooner than you expect. (Any parent who’s raised more than one baby can tell you at length about how different the experience for each one was.) Are they shy? Curious? Demanding? Affectionate? Neglected? Knowing the answers to those questions tends to make the difference between kids who act like kids and kids who act like they’re written by adults who haven’t been around children in years.

[eldritchbauble]

Hard pill to swallow, maybe, but sometimes you are the problem. You may not have been initially, but people around you can only have so much endurance for understanding why you're "like that" and how you got to where you are now. Even if you were the one who was victimized, hurt, or abused to begin with, your behavior affects those around you. There's a point at which personal responsibility needs to kick in, or you will become toxic. You can become toxic even if you never become an abuser yourself. If other people are constantly having to help dig you out of the holes you made but you keep slapping their hands away, you cannot expect them to have an indefinite amount of patience and energy to keep trying. If you're not putting in the work to recover from what damaged you; if everyone else in your life is consistently the only one making a real effort to effect change for you--you're the problem.

[eldritchbauble]

People can give you love, but can't make you treat yourself like someone you care about.

People can offer you resources, but can't make you reach out and use them.

People can lay down stepping stones, but can't make you put the work in to make progress.

If you're expecting everyone around you to keep making the decisions and making things ok for you, you need to take a step back and some serious time for deep introspection. This doesn't mean that others shouldn't have compassion for you, but as difficult as things are and as tired as you are--others get tired too and can't be expected to carry it all.

[eldritchbauble]

And if you blame everyone else in your life because they "gave up on you" when they reach a limit, you have a victim complex. Having been a victim does not mean you should accept perpetual victimhood.

People are allowed to say "I love you, and my love for you does not make me willing to sacrifice myself." There's a point at which people have to let go because they do not ultimately hold responsibility for whether you live, die, or thrive--only you do.

[eldritchbauble]

I mean, this describes my whole life from birth to mid-20s as well as many people I know.

You decide that you want better for yourself and others around you, that it's no longer acceptable, and you start chipping away at unpacking your trauma and changing how you do things.

It's obviously easier said than done, so I don't really appreciate the folks tagging this as "go to therapy," either. Yes go to therapy (if it's available to you, if you can find a decent provider in your area, if you have insurance or the money to pay out of pocket, if you can get around the dozen other roadblocks). Therapy isn't the only way to work on recovery though, and it's avoidant and irresponsible to act like not being able to access therapy means there's nothing you can do. Both of these concepts are true.

[eldritchbauble]

You have to be fed up. You have to be sick of your own problems and negative behaviors enough to not find them acceptable anymore. Then instead of feeling sorry for yourself you do something.

Ok, things I've done to work on myself that don't require seeing a therapist:

- Educating myself by extensively researching the problems and symptoms I live with to better understand how and why I do things.

- Reading about trauma.

The Body Keeps the Score

- Self-help workbooks.

The C-PTSD Workbook

The DBT Workbook

The Addiction Recovery Skills Workbook

- Seeking peer support by participating in Discord server(s) related to trauma and mental illness. I couldn't find one specific to my diagnoses that I was comfortable in, so I created one, and 3 years on it's grown and is going great overall.

- Learning to take feedback about my behavior from people I generally trust, and to not take feedback/constructive criticism as an attack, but as a tool.

- Working at communicating my feelings and needs as statements, not out of anger or as demands.

- Reminding myself that other people's experiences and feelings matter, and should be considered. Even people with the best intentions can be self-centered, especially under stress. You have to work at it.

- Learning to recognize my triggers, patterns, and reactivity, and to de-escalate myself. Treating emotions as visitors and not drowning in them; recognizing that nothing is permanent.

- Setting rules with myself as to how I handle things when I'm upset; for example, I will only raise my voice to others as a last resort, and I will not physically act out my anger in an uncontrolled way. Breaking dollar store dishes in a specified area is relatively safe, controlled, and thus non-harmful.

- Asking myself, literally, if I'm being the problem. Is my behavior the actual reason things suck right now. It's too easy to have a tendency to blame others or situations outside of your control so you have to ask. Sometimes it really is someone else's fault or nobody's, but you have to ask.

Obviously I'm not perfect at any of these skills, by any means. It's about consistently putting in the effort until you get better at them.

[nickyandmikey]

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

[nickyandmikey]

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

[irrelevantlyvalid]

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

[chokolattejedi]

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

[executeness]

I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

God I’m not okay about it

[ramshacklefey]

Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.

[jbbartram-illu]

I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3

[eregyrn-falls]

Just to add to the pile: this was the cover of Springsteen’s break-through album Born to Run, in 1975:

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

There’s a lot more online if you search. They’re all pretty amazing. But the photographer is right, the one chosen for the album cover just pops.

[macklesufficient]

i have too much joie de vivre for this

[macklesufficient]

i’m so serious when i say excessive fear of being annoying/creepy/taking up people’s energy etc holds us back. it seems like it’s just little things but they add up. over the past month i’ve ordered food and drinks almost exclusively by asking “do you have a favorite?” and i know if i said that on twitter or wherever ppl would dogpile me for demanding emotional labor of servers or w/e but every single person i’ve asked has seemed genuinely psyched to answer! i don’t ask if it’s busy obvi, and use a phrasing that gives them the easy out of “i don’t have one”— but no one has taken it! the girl at the cafe confessed to me with something like conspiracy in her voice how everybody raves about the gluten free chocolate chip cookies and sure, they’re great, but the delicious, fluffy homemade waffles are RIGHT THERE. the barbera the bartender recommended was actually kind of awful but it broke the ice and we ended up talking for like 45 minutes. the bodega guy declared that he usually makes himself a burger but tonight was “a breakfast sandwich night” and tbh he was totally right. it WAS a breakfast sandwich night

[hypokeimena]

#it's so hard to convey this to people who aren't in this mindset with me #i explained something similar to ivory the other day as ''i have stopped taking things personally and i have started trusting other people m#ore. when combined that means that i trust other people to not take things as personally'' #i trust other people to say no when they want to. to back out when they want to. i trust that my cheerfulness or curiosity or playfulness or #weirdness will be taken well #because i honor the agency of others as i have learned to honor my own. i trust myself to know where the boundaries are #between reaching out for connection with full understanding and full acceptance of the potential for rejection -- and intruding #you can say no to me dude. i won't mind. you can decline to participate we can go our separate ways #i'm not going to anticipate you wanting that though because that denies your agency too (via @saw5)

[yeehawpim]

keep going

[the2headedcalf-movedagain]

having a tumblr blog is for those of us who could never manage to keep a diary for more than two weeks when we were twelve

[atomic-two-sheds]

I think it's better than that. A Tumblr blog isn't just a journal or diary; it's more of what was known as a commonplace book.

Commonplace books aren't just for recording your thoughts and personal histories. They include quotes, stories, drawings, ephemera, and other pieces of things that catch your attention or that you find significant. If one heard a poem they wanted to keep, or saw a field they wanted to sketch, or had an insightful thought about a play, they would collect all that in the commonplace book.

Isn't that what we do here? We collect and create art, and jokes, and commentary, and political thought, and a lot of us cram it all onto the same blog and throw it at our followers who can then choose to keep it for themselves or let it pass by. We're basically in a salon passing our commonplace books to one another and occasionally copying a passage (reblogging), making an addition (reblogging with commentary), or making an aside to our companions (commenting in the tags/replying).

And I like that a lot.

[cowgirlpolyamory]

at 23 I have become old. I hate new technology. I hate apps. I hate facial recognition. what happened to emails? just send me emails. I don't want to download your app, make and account, add you to my password manager, enable two factor authentication, and verify my identity through sending a photo of my id and recording a video of my face just so I can access information that could just be emailed to me

all of that for what? so you can spy on me a little bit more? so you can sell me as a product? there is no benefit to me of any of this bullshit. I hate the future

[merinnan]

[absolutebl]

Advance Bravely 

Guardian 

My Esport Genius Brother

Color Rush 

Mr Heart

Ocean Likes Me 

Semantic Error 

Tasty Florida 

To My Star (the ultimate grumpy/sunshine pair) 

HIStory 3 the BL that shall not be named

HIStory 3: Trapped 

We Best Love

Gen Y 

Puppy Honey 

Secret Crush On You 

SOTUS 

Triage (at lease in one timeline) 

Until We Meet Again

I also like the reverse of this, when Character A bubbly sunshine sweetheart is frolicking along thorough life, and Character B the grumpy arse takes one look at the adorable and is like, unfortunately, that is my jam. Now what do I do?

and handles it badly, of course  

2gether 

Oxygen 

Nitman 

Make it Right 

Love Mechanics 

Cherry Blossoms After Winter

Love O2O 

Untamed 

Minato’s Laundromat 

Old Fashion Cupcake 

Silhouette of Your Voice

(source) 

[thelonelyweavergirl]

This is my New Watchlist.

I have already watched some from here and I KNOW it in my soul that this is my favourite kind of love.

[kaapstadgirly-deactivated202503]

1998, Edward Said.

"Israel was constructed on the ruins of another society."

via conflictechoes on insta

[vanillacherie]

kitty artist 🌈🖍️

[lo-andbehold]

I’m so emotional about dinosaur stuffed animals,,, there are these creatures, extinct long before any of us were alive, but we found their bones and their eggs and their footprints. And we made drawings and models of what they could’ve looked like. And we made them into stuffed animals so we could hold them. We made them soft so we could love them. I’m sobbing

[pratchettquotes]

It was a cottage of questioning witches, research witches. Eye of what newt? What species of ravined salt-sea shark? It's all very well a potion calling for Love-in-idleness, but which of the thirty-seven common plants called by that name in various parts of the continent was actually meant?

The reason that Granny Weatherwax was a better witch than Magrat was that she knew that in witchcraft it didn't matter a damn which one it was, or even if it was a piece of grass.

The reason Magrat was a better doctor than Granny was that she thought it did.

Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies