[thepigeongazette]

‘murica!!!!    Happy (early) 4th of July :)

P.S.: I know Gordon Ramsay’s Scottish, it’s just that he’s so ubiquitous now in American cooking competitions. Also not trying to downplay his international culinary achievements!

[debbie-sketch]

Hogwarts Houses common rooms in Halloween season 

[poorquentyn]

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

[sophiamcdougall]

+1 You know how Frodo leaves Sam with the legacy of the quest - the job of bearing witness to what happened - and the duty to finish and protect his writings? Tolkien lost all but one of his friends in WW1. He was founder member of a literary club at school - the TCBS. There was a larger group and a core of four. They all stayed friends, they kept writing and sharing their work with each other. And they were almost all killed. One of them, Geoffrey Smith, wrote this to Tolkien in 1916. My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight – I am off on duty in a few minutes – there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon.  […] May God bless you my dear John Ronald and may you say things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them if such be my lot. And that was his last letter. There’s something eerie about the way he seems to have pegged Tolkien as an eventual survivor.  Sam’s survival (and his emergence as the true hero of the book) are beautiful because they’re suffused with loss, because they’re not the grand conquering heroic narrative that on some level was “supposed” to happen.

[toomucherin]

(Samwise is and has always been the real hero of the books)

[gifsboom]

[culturenlifestyle]

Tale of The Artist Who Photographs Beauties in Gowns Against Idyllic Backgrounds

Cappadocia, Turkey, Finolhu, Maldives, Poppies Field, Crimea, Louvre, Paris, France are few of the many scenic places where artist Kristina Makeeva has travelled to juxtapose elegant fashion against phenomenal architecture for her photographic compositions.

Keep reading

[staypozitive]

Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

Rick Warren (via staypozitive)

[hashtagparksandrec]

[did-you-know]

The oldest living tree ever found was a pine named “Prometheus.” It had been alive since before the Egyptian pyramids were built. Some guy cut it down in 1964. Source

[aclockworknick]

he was actually a forestry graduate student who was doing research on bristlecone pines (Pinus langaevea) and got his increment borer stuck in the tree. this tool costs almost $800, so he asked the forest service if he could cut down the tree to recover the tool. after cutting it down, it became apparent that the tree was actually the oldest living organism. ever. (around 8,000 years old). so, not just some asshole. the guy feels extremely guilty and has even broken down in tears during an interview about the accident

[wellshitcaitlin]

OH MY GOD SO LET ME TELL YOU A STORY

So after the grad student cut down the tree and discovered it was the oldest tree in the world he quit studying forestry and went to study salt flats (can’t cut down the oldest trees in the world on salt flats no siree none of that happening) and he was being interviewed about his research, but in the middle of the interview the reporter just stops and says “wait aren’t the guy that…”

And he just takes off running. Literally. Turns around and runs across the salt flats away from the interview and I feel so bad for him but I can’t help but start crying I’m laughing so hard about it imagine a guy high tailing it across salt flats away from a dude with a recorder

[ronswansonmemes]

[iraffiruse]

[amaralesbian]

I don’t think ppl realize that the oldest “millenials” are like 30+ now. We know what vhs tapes and CDs are. If you mean teenagers, say teenagers.

[books-quoted]

It’s the world dear, did you expect it to be small?

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (via books-cupcakes)

[theintrovertnation]

JOIN THE INTROVERTNATION MOVEMENT

[eliciaforever-deactivated201906]

This guy in my town owns a rug store, and he’s always changing his sign out front but he’s also the biggest Dad in the world so his jokes are awful but brilliant

[egax]

I have been saving this since last year. Happy Earth Day everyone.

[pawnees]

big mood

[timon87]

POErtraits