dans-le-sin-bin

What if I just… had a card I could hand to women that said, “I’m queer and I’m flirting with you.”

pseudodesigner

They’re $8.50+tax from VistaPrint.

Please supply a direct link to facilitate my frantic tossing of money at you?

Gay culture is your girlfriend giving you a 16oz claw hammer as a present because she’s seen the crappy 10oz hammer you use at home and thinks you deserve tools with decent heft and shock absorption.

IT IS AN ESTWING. BECAUSE I'M SURE ONE IF YOU IS WONDERING.

theniftycat

wtf are bathroom passes

alex51324

In American schools, if students move from one classroom to another during the day, which is the norm in middle and high schools (roughly age 11 to completion of school), the whole school does so at the same set times during the day. Being in the hallways at these times is Passing Classes, which is fine; being in the hallways at any other time is Roaming the Halls. A student who is Roaming the Halls is presumed to be Up To Something, and may be stopped and interrogated by any member of staff who witnesses said Roaming.

Of course, it does occasionally happen that a student has a legitimate reason to be in the hallways outside of designated passing times. In those situations, the student carries a pass (”hall pass”) which can be presented to any member of staff who stops and interrogates said student. Usually, the pass is written on a form that is signed by the teacher who authorized the student’s presence in the halls: at my school, the form had spaces for student’s name, date, time, where the student is going, and from whence the student is leaving.

Filling out the entire form every time a student wants to go to the toilet is a pain in the ass, so some teachers use some other form of pass. In my day, it was either just a regular pass that was pre-filled and laminated, or a block of wood with the classroom number and “Bathroom” written on it. Apparently nowadays, using some cumbersome and humorous object as the bathroom pass is A Thing.

This is all regarded as completely normal, so much so that I have explained it in what may be a tedious amount of detail, because I’m unsure what part of it strikes you as unusual. How is this situation handled where you went to school?

floranna2

By raising your hand, saying you need to use the bathroom, teacher saying okay and you going. Nothing else.

alex51324

So if another teacher sees you on your way there, they just…mind their own business?

That would never work here.

fthgurdy

Would it never work there because of actual logistical issues, or do you mean people would not accept it as a safe solution?

Over here if a teacher sees you (they’re all in class anyway too so it’s unlikely anyone would be in the hallway during class unless they have a reason) they mind their own business, unless you’re dicking around or actually doing something troublesome or loud, or if they know you and know you’re supposed to be somewhere else, and you’re clearly not going to the bathroom. Or if they’re in a shitty mood and wanna yell at you for sitting on the windowsill which was forbidden in my school but nobody cared anyway.

Otherwise, no, no one’s gonna care. Not in high school, anyway- but in lower grades yeah because the kids are younger, but elementary schools will usually have a custodian walking around the halls. They’re still not gonna question kids going to the loo.

alex51324

Would it never work there because of actual logistical issues, or do you mean people would not accept it as a safe solution?

Short answer is, the second one. Long answer is, the American school system is permeated with a sense that teenagers are this chaotic force that must be contained at all costs. (I’m right now having this very clear sense-memory of a hall monitor * saying “You can’t just roam the halls any time you feel like it!”** in the same sort of tone in which one might say, “You can’t just stab people any time you feel like it!”) It’s not even so much a matter of what you might do while out in the halls unsupervised; the very idea of teenagers Roaming the Halls (of a school, which is full of both teenagers and halls) is understood as being inherently contradictory to the purpose of a school. It isn’t even that you might go somewhere you’re not supposed to be; it’s that at any given time, there is only one place any given student is supposed to be. A hall pass creates a temporary change in your prescribed location, without undercutting the fundamental principle that your location should always be prescribed.

(*My school had professional hall monitors–grown adults who were paid a salary to keep order in the halls.)

(**At one point one teacher issued me a Permanent Hall Pass, for Reasons, essentially licensing me to roam the halls whenever I felt like it. I forget how long that lasted, but eventually a hall monitor stopped me with it and was, naturally, convinced it was fake. They hauled me to the office and were like, “We’re going to call down TeacherName and show her this,” and I was like, “Please do.” So finally they did, and she was like yes, that’s my signature, yes, I wrote that; what are we doing here?” I ended up getting detention anyway, “because the policy is that if a hall monitor brings you to the office, you get detention.” The teacher was also instructed to never issue an open-ended hall pass again.)

theniftycat

Today’s question: is the USA actually a giant prison?

??????????????????????????????????????????????

WHAT THE HELL????????? What if you have no class in the middle of the day? We’d just hang out in the halls. Not everybody went to the library or sth. I probably spent a year of my life in the halls. It was actually kind of a way to socialise with people.

tartapplesauce

Yeah, there’s even a stock phrase as Gaeilige which is about the first thing you learn in school (my dad taught it to me before I started Big School, i.e. age of five) asking for permission to go to the bathroom.

If a teacher sees a kid hanging around the corridors instead of being in class, they may ask them what they’re doing and wait to see if they head off to where they say they’re going (the usual dodge is “Miss/Sir, I have to get my books out of my locker”) but there’s no Hall Pass or any of the rest of this.

Dear America, why is your education system so strange?

arcadiasilver-blog

Well for one, there’s never supposed to be a period where kids aren’t in class. There’s no study hall period, no free period, and you’re carefully monitored when you go to and from class as well as to and from lunch period. The idea is that, if kids are free-roaming, they’re going To Do Something like leave school (truancy) or cause some sort of problem.

But really, its more about training children for future jobs where their employers will treat them exactly the same way. If you are not in class/working, then you are doing something wrong.

randomoranges-deactivated201712

Which is ironic, because it’s NOT training kids for jobs where they have to manage their own workload and use their time wisely. So it backfires. You end up with people who, without someone to strictly order their time, have no idea what to do and just goof off.

(In Canada, we got “spare” periods in high school that gave us a gap in our day. We were allowed to go wherever we wanted–up the hill to a pizza place was popular–but not allowed to make noise in the hallways where we’d disturb classes in session. If we weren’t in class when we were supposed to be, an automated dialler would call our parents and robotically inform them that “Your son or daughter was absent from one or more class periods today”, and if we missed too much we had to come into school on the weekend for an “extended learning opportunity”.)

re: canada - depends of the schools. so far every school i’ve been in (high school wise) the kids DO NOT have any spare periods. this is from a quebec-montreal region stand point.

the school i was teaching in last yr (high school) had a lot of cases of truancy and kids disrupting other classes so we had to sign a hall pass for them. and i had a few students who would ask to go to the washroom, i would sign a pass and then they wouldn’t come back for the rest of the period :1

#I will now stop being serious again

SW Ontario, 1980s: not only did we have spare periods and no hall passes, once we were 16 and therfore not legally obligated to attend school at all we were expected to write and sign our own notes for absences.

On the one hand I don't want to join the pile-on about US schools, on the other hand: this is actually important, not just weird. This is part of what people mean when they talk about a “school-to-prison pipeline” in the US. This level of monitoring, control and surveillance plus a willingness to get the actual police involved and blur the distinction between breaking school rules and criminal behaviour is what pushes vulnerable kids out of schools and into prisons. It actually does start with a hall pass, however hilariously shaped, and end with manacles.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

That feel when you’re 99% Oh my God What A Delightful Piece Of Work and 1% One Does Not Simply Walk Into The Vancouver Real Estate Market And Purchase A House.

#far too canadian

*me, tapping a glass very gently with one fingernail*

Hey, everyone. Hi. How you doin’? So, look: maybe drink some water, okay? It really does help. Okay, thanks, hope I didn’t make you late.

stultiloquentia

GRUMPY SHIPPER MANIFESTO

Write whatever ship you want. Write healthy relationships. Write unhealthy relationships. Write implausible AUs, ecstatic melodramas, unlikely redemption arcs. Squick people out. Bring others great joy. Tag your shit.

Ignore the Can We Not brigade. What is this “we” they speak of? “We as a fandom?” As in, if you enjoy the wrong sort of story, you don’t belong here/you should shut up and fall in line until you retrain your brain to want “healthier” things? I put up my middle finger at them.

Write woobie villains and age gaps and OFCs and dubcon and gay people having het sex; I don’t care. It’s okay. You did your research, you have nuance and compassion. I trust you. If you fuck up, step back, learn about the issue, and try something else next time. Don’t stop writing.

Write nerve-wracking secret idfic. Write dumbass jokes. (Punch up.) Write complex liminal spaces. Intend to write one thing and accidentally imply another, because you don’t have the skills yet. Get called out. Find a beta. Keep writing.

I have my personal kinks and squicks and stances and preferences, hell yeah, but I will never tell you not to test an idea. Your weird self is welcome on this blog.

Ja?

Okay, scram, go play.

gaydva-deactivated20180104

I love you so much for being able to still engage with this whole topic with grace and good sense.

I keep getting stuck at “so I just checked my records and IT TURNS OUT I DON’T WORK FOR YOU PEOPLE.”

I think maybe I learned the lesson about “you don’t owe anyone an argument” a little too well.

#write what you want

omgcompliments-please

hearing women say “my wife” and men say “my husband” is therapeutic tbh

My wives and I endorse this wholesome and good message.

would-you-just-leave-me-alone

Trigger warnings inhibit free speech the way hard hats and steel-toed boots inhibit construction.

people in this fandom: i LOVE hockey!

TRANSLATION:

A) i just started watching hockey because of ngozi and it’s super fun and i’m still deciding what team i want to support

B) i’m really invested in individual players and i’ve watched the entire back catalogue of behind the scenes videos for every team they’ve ever played for

C) i played/worked in the industry and i’m scary passionate/opinionated

D) rpf

bonus answer:

E) i’m canadian

go-topshelf-on-chowder

# NOORAH THAT’S YOU AND ME IN THE C SLOT- @bad-jokes-420

OK BUT GILBERT YOU LITERALLY JUST THREATENED TO MOVE ME FROM C TO B AND THEN TO D I NEED YOU TO MAKE UP YOUR MIND MY DUDE

would-you-just-leave-me-alone

YOU CAN STAY IN C JUST CUT IT OUT WITH THAT SIDNEY CROSBY SHIT ALREADY MY GUY

zebrafiinches

hahahahaha I am firmly in B and E what’s up

would-you-just-leave-me-alone

b&e is breaking and entering, david.

you’re going to JAIL.

CANADIAN JAIL.

I think you mean:

Eh) I'm Canadian.

#sorry

thegoldenmisfits

this just in: the patater ship has hit an iceburg and is currently sinking at a rapid pace

Eh. Honestly, the average hockey player's been called a myopic coprophagic barnyard animal with Oedipal tendencies in at least two languages by the time they get out of PeeWee. You could totally make the case that that was merely a healthy and open exchange of opposing views on a matter of some importance, such as any relationship needs from time to time.

Lunchtime thoughts

The Samwell Hockey Team is banned from every All You Can Eat Sushi restaurant within 20 miles of Samwell. They're terribly polite and well-behaved. It's just that the rice-paper thin profit margins on AYCE sushi aren't equipped to cope with what those boys can do to a steady, unlimited stream of lean protein. The Providence Falcons, being on NHL salaries, either go to a-la-carte places or tip the full amount of the bill.

Eh, why not.

WESTWARD FROM THE DAVIS STRAIT 'TIS THERE WAS SAID TO LIE ... @dans-le-sin-bin @stultioquentia @fairestcat

OH the year was 1778

lark-in-ink

HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW

A letter of marque came from the king For the scummiest vessel I’d ever seen

wagnetic

God damn them all!

krakenartificer

I was told

lindsayribar

We’d cruise the seas for American gold

wagnetic

We’d fire no guns! Shed no tears!

lindsayribar

Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier :(

sophrosynic

The last of Barrett’s privateers…😭

Oh Elcid Barrett cried the town

ooksaidthelibrarian

HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW!

thisisteal-deactivated20181208

For twenty brave men all fishermen who Would make for him the Antelope’s crew

wagnetic

God damn them all!

I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold 💰

frytha

We’d fire no guns! Shed no tears!

afrogeekgoddess

Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier…

roane72

The last of Barrett’s privateers

shelikestowakeupandjustfakeit

The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight

fairestcat

HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW!

She’d a list to the port and and her sails in rags

#Pounds fist on table rhythmically

AND THE COOK IN THE SCUPPERS WITH THE STAGGERS AND JAGS

stultiloquentia

Un ciel aussi rose

Zimbits, Bob, Alicia. PG-13? @damnpene gave this a once-over and remarked, “I am amused that you look at the universe as a chance to write people boating in Canada.” That’s it, that’s all there is. People paddling around in boats. No American beer, even. Thoroughly useless story. The line about Alicia’s dekes belongs to @dans-le-sin-bin. * They fly into Ottawa, collect the keys to a rental SUV, and shoot straight north without stopping for lunch. Jack is apologetic. “We should take a day, sometime,” he says. “Ottawa’s a great city.” “That sounds nice,” Bitty says agreeably, even though he’s never thought about vacationing in Ottawa in his life. He leans back in the passenger’s seat, watches the scenery trundle by, and listens to Jack describe his favourite exhibits in the war museum, and the Voice of Fire, and the rug shop Alicia wants them to visit so they can pick out something for the apartment. The car climbs up into the Gatineaus, and the deep spruce and maple woods nuzzle up against the highway. “Want some music?” Bitty asks, when Jack’s been silent for a while. “Driver’s pick.” Jack selects a playlist Bitty made for him—an old one, from their first summer together. It’s got some Neko Case and Shania Twain, and a song called “Mieux qu'ici bas” that Bitty stumbled upon while hunting for French Canadian artists. He’s not sure how poetic the lyrics are when not mangled by Google Translate, and the instrumentals are a little overwrought, but he found the melody haunting, and Jack’s reaction to the first lines of Isabelle Boulay’s husky French was so startled and sweet, Bitty flushes at the memory even now.

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