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wholeheartedsuggestions

i’m proud of you for facing the days you really don’t want to face

fleetadmiralsengoku234

I don’t do it willingly

wholeheartedsuggestions

i’m still proud of you for doing it

thelibrarina

Okay, buckle up buckaroos, because today I met an honest-to-goodness cryptid.

I was out running errands and I made a stop at Intimate Books (…for a friend), and on my way out I realized that the bookshop next door was open.

This bookshop has existed for more than a hundred years, and in all my life it has NEVER BEEN OPEN. I mean, I assume it has to be open sometimes, but never at any normal, reasonable hour. Everyone says it’s a front for the mob or something.

So what do you do when the weird mafia bookshop is open? You go the fuck inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. You know that smell when you accidentally leave your towel on the bathroom floor all day and you come back to that mildew funk? The shop smelled like that times a thousand. I expected to see stuff growing on the walls, but the books were pristine. We’re talking first editions, rare editions, weird Bibles and books inscribed to really famous dead people. Librarians would weep for the chance to accession this place. In the first two minutes I found a signed copy of The Crucible and what I think was a first edition of Blake’s Book of Thel.

Then a clerk showed up out of nowhere—honestly nowhere. He looked EXACTLY like a bookseller should look, kind of fluffy and bewildered and really, really gay.

“Are you lost?” was the first thing he said to me.

“Nope. Just browsing, thanks.”

“Browsing, I see. Erm. How do you feel about snakes?” he asked. And without waiting for me to answer, he just walked away and vanished around a shelf.

I figured it was a metaphor, or a code phrase for the mafia. Until I turned a corner like ten minutes later and found a little reading nook. It was really pretty, although I feel like that particular window should have been on an interior wall? Anyway, curled up in an armchair in a patch of sunlight was the biggest fuck-off black snake I have ever seen.

Like, I don’t mind snakes in general. But in their normal context, right? Outside. On the ground. Not six feet long and sitting on a threadbare velvet armchair like it owns the place.

I was about to turn around and leave, but I saw a gorgeous first-edition copy of Leaves of Grass on a shelf, a little too close to the snake for comfort. But I had never needed anything so badly in my life.

So I went back to the counter to buy it, but the clerk was nowhere to be found.

While I was waiting, I noticed a collection of pictures hanging on the wall behind the counter, dating back to the very dawn of photography. A couple were of this rock-star looking guy from the 70s that I should probably have recognized, but there were authors and landscapes and stuff, too. There was even an old tintype portrait of Oscar freaking Wilde, sitting in this very shop with a guy that I would ACTUALLY SWEAR was the clerk from before. Like, I know my family all has the same nose, but this guy had the same everything.

After approximately one year of waiting, the clerk came back out to the desk. By now I’ve realized that he’s too bad at his job to be anything but the owner of the shop.

“I saw your snake,” I told him.

“Did you? Was he behaving himself?”

“He was sleeping.”

“Yes, he enjoys that.”

“Does he just stay out in the open like that? What if he gets out?”

He shrugged and smiled. “He always comes home again, the dear boy.”

Right, a homing snake. That’s totally normal.

Then he cleared his throat and asked, in a weirdly reluctant voice, if I was going to buy the Whitman.

“Yes, please,” I told him. “I saw it on a shelf by the snake, and it was just too tempting.”

He sighed. “Oh, yes, I expect it was.”

When I started to hand him my card, he went all fluttery and said that they didn’t take cards.

All right, fine. I had some cash on me, but I told him that he’d sell a lot more books if he got a Square or something.

He got this scandalized look on his face and went, “Why would I want to do that?”

Oookay. I handed over the cash and he popped open the ancient till and started making change.

In shillings. Shillings! I swear to god I saw Queen Anne’s face on one of them. The silver value of the coins was probably as much as I paid for the book.

But I had to have proof that this happened—at that point, all I had was a book in a plain brown wrapper, not appreciably different from what I bought next door. So I asked him for a receipt.

He looked delighted and wrote one up for me.

By hand.

With a fountain pen.

And that’s the story of how I met a bookseller cryptid and his pet snake.

zetabrarian

Hey, OP, I love you.

alsolucimorningstar812

This is the best thing I have ever read

arrakeennightgaunts

@aziraphalesbian @bettergroomedwings

bettergroomedwings

Oh, APPLAUSE.

mf-dude

nattididwrong

When you detect a truffle or perhaps fresh meat

triskeleaficionado

UC or ER?

drpathetique

HONESTLY THOUGH

THIS IS BOTH ACCURATE AND EFFECTIVE

whos-this-lisa-person

Urgent Care is for your "Oh no!" accidents.

Emergency Care is for your "Oh fuck!" accidents.

shitpostinguniverse

no-longer-another-bondi-blonde

A family of cheetahs sleep with the forest guard every night. When the Forest Dept. heard about it, they decided to check the veracity of the claim by installing a CCTV camera. This is what the camera recorded! Just amazing.

Kitties will be kitties 🐈‍⬛

belle-ofthebrawl-deactivated202

prettylucifherr

Fuck all my years of study, I want this job

wordsmith-storyweaver

I love how he is basically the big spoon for the entire pride.

matchingvnecks

teachingwithcoffee

It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol

bigbutterandeggman-deactivated2

Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s.

So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem.

BUT! Let’s look closer!

“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.

See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.

Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.

So it’s not actually a song about rape - in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.

aphnxrising

xtrapockets-deactivated20171024

remember loves: context is everything. and personal opinion matters. If you still find this song to be a problem, that’s fine. But please don’t make it into something it’s not because it’s been stripped of cultural context.

vorked

This is actually really interesting. I’ve never known a lot of the background to this song.

fandomsandfeminism

Lots of Christmas songs have drifted out of their original context.

Originally penned as a racy romance about an unchaperoned sleigh ride, ‘Jingle Bells’ is now one of the most popular Christmas songs ever.

Jingle Bells, for example, was originally a very risqué Thanksgiving song. Taking a pretty girl on an UNCHAPERONED ride through the hills ALONE? *gasp* Can you imagine the scandal?

fandomsandfeminism

So, I want to add another thought to this, because I see many many many people in the replies saying some variation of “well, in OUR cultural context, most people find the song is off putting and rapey”, especially the “whats in this drink?” Line.

And…I don’t think most people DO. And I think it’s because this is a *song*. If you just read the lyrics, yes. The exchange between speakers can raise many red flags in a modern reader with no historical context.

BUT- it’s a song. And the singers performance also provides context and tone. And with any analysis of that performance, the female singer is clearly having a good time. It’s a flirty, romantic song performed in a flirty, romantic way. It’s teasing and tongue in cheek. Whether it’s Ella Fitzgerald or Doris Day, the way the lyrics are sung gives just as much information as the words themselves.

No one is obligated to like any song. If the song rubs you the wrong way for any reason, that’s fine. Really!

But the backlash against this song feels like a pretty emblematic example of 2010s social justice discourse that is overly focused on analyzing pop culture to articulate societal problems rather than, say, a focus on legislative or systemic sources. Pop culture, especially well worn tropes or common themes in pop culture can be useful to analyze and look at critically. And I even think there’s an interesting conversation to be had about social norms and the way they obfuscated consent and intent within the song.

But calling BICO a rape anthem or wanting it banned from the radio because the lyrics, devoid of historical and musical context sound skeevy, is…not thoughtful or nuanced or helpful.

anxious-and-in-pain

it’s okay to do things that make your symptoms worse (as long as you’ll stay safe)

every once in a while you need to eat something yummy. or go on a walk. or a trip to the zoo. take a hot shower. cry your eyes out. dance. listen to music. draw for way to long. write. laugh. sit in a cafe with a friend. paint your nails. dye your hair. go on a run. pet a cat

sometimes you need to do things that are cathartic or make yourself feel alive. sometimes you need the reminder of why you’re fighting so hard to stay alive

this is your reminder that just because it makes your symptoms worse, it isn’t always the wrong thing to do. there can be value in these actions

lifewithchronicpain

If you think about it too, abled people do it all the time. Deciding to drink to excess at a party knowing they'll have a hangover. Going to a theme park knowing walking all day is going to hurt their feet by the end. We have the right to make those same decisions.

ghostly-light

This is called Dignity of Risk, and it's an important concept in disability justice.

Everyone weighs their physical and mental/emotional health against one another in constantly shifting balance; inevitably, there are times when we choose to accept consequences to one for the sake of the other.

Infantilsing us by undermining our agency in the name of "protection" or "care" is yet another way that we are disabled by society.

expressions-of-nature

by Maria Babintseva

fandomsandfeminism

Hey, if you're wanting to make some changes to how you eat, remember- it's much easier, healthier, and more sustainable to ADD foods that make you feel good than it is to REMOVE foods.

If you feel like you don't drink enough non-sugary fluids, it makes more sense to try drinking more tea and sparkling water than it does to just avoid soda. You gotta add in the good (and remember, that the only value food has is how it makes YOU feel. Food is morally nuetral and should be enjoyed.)

Try:

Adding a handful of easy produce to lunch and dinner- baby carrots or cherry tomatoes, something 0 prep. And yes, you are allowed to dip it in dressing! (The fats can make it easier for your body to absorb the vitamins in the veggies)

Adding a cheese stick or yogurt to breakfast. The protein is good and can help you wake up faster.

Adding some roasted nuts to your afternoon snack. (ADD, not replace.) That variety and little protein boost will do you good!

Have a glass of tea, sparkling water, or juice each time you have food. Let's be honest- you aren't hydrated enough. Go buy yourself some Kool Aide mix if that'll make you drink more water! Really!

If you struggle with binge eating sugary foods and it makes you feel yuck when the sugar crash comes- eat 1 or 2 pieces of chocolate with lunch and dinner. Every day. Really. Make it not a big deal. Make it not special. Make it something you can expect, instead of crave. Let yourself enjoy it without guilt.

Remember- food is a gift. It should bring you joy, not stress. Trust your body. Enjoy the cookie. Drink something tasty.