what if instead of gendered bathrooms we had named bathrooms. you could only go into a bathroom that has your name and if there isnât one then youâre screwed
If you see a post saying adults are responsible for keeping children safe online by not being weird and your first instinct is to say ânot everything has to be PGâ youâre fucking stupid
Actually yes majority of things should be safe for kids because they have access to the Internet and there is media targeted at them. And they canât even navigate shit made for them because some weirdo on the Internet decided everything needs porn made of it. Itâs sick
is there a source for the Ava thing because I tried to Google and even checked her twitter but didnât see her say that? Just saw her say twitter was being disgenous abt not allowing wishing harm onto anyone.
yeah, no worries. first one isn't my screenshot so idk if it's still up, though I did see it shortly after she posted it bc that's when I unfollowed her.
just took the other two tweet screenshots myself, they're live on her twitter rn.
note all the time stamps of the above vs her apology...
and apparently she's been busy blocking people all weekend, so here's a few solid replies/tweets either on or specifically about @tinykinseyscale's thread.
There is an old belief in Serbian villages and small towns that certain pumpkins (and watermelons), when left outside during a full moon, will turn in to a vampire.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
âPatreon â Commission info â Buy me coffee â Twitter â Instagramâ
I think itâs great that Pumpkins (and other squash) were only introduced to Europe around 1600 and the Serbs wasted absolutely no time blaming them for their problems.
âUnfortunately the bulk of American homeless are voluntarily so. â
I guess, if by âvoluntarilyâ you mean âthe streets are actually better than this crappy shelterâ. If you think the vast majority of homeless, drug-addicted or not, wouldnât choose a tiny private apartment with climate control and a door they can fucking lock from the inside over sleeping on the streets in a hot second, youâre severely mistaken.
The most horrid filthy secret of human interactions throughout history is that practically anything will be âvoluntaryâ if you can make the alternatives worse enough.
This is the updated version of âSome people would rather die than go to the poor house.â
I once donated to a drive that pledged to give âŹ500 to each homeless person they helped. They filmed the ones who gave permission.
Do you know what each single one did upon receiving that? Get up and get themselves a private room for at least the night. They also all talked to the social worker who handed out the money, but everyone agreed that their immediate concern was a room, a shower and a couple of square meals of their own choosing.
Three Dutch reporters who went onto the streets for three weeks also said they often felt less safe in shelters than outside. People need some basic safety and affordable housing, but those responsible for housing prefer to build âupmarketââŚ
I think a common misconception is that lesbian, gay, bisexual are "neat little boxes" that a lot of people don't fit into but that's not the case. Each label encapsulates a lot of different experiences and approaches to attraction. A lesbian that doesn't want sex is still a lesbian, a bi person who struggles to tell the difference between platonic, romantic and sexual feelings which differs or doesn't differ according to gender can still be bi. A gay man who isn't all that interested in dating is still gay. These are not limiting labels and not every person who uses an lgb label feels exactly the same about attraction.
if you believe that lgb labels are close minded, exclusionary, or somehow not enough than you donât understand how these identities work and what lesbian, gay, and bisexual mean. that is on you to educate yourself, not on us to reinvent our words or create new ones to encompass experiences that were already fully included. full stop.
#my wants are simple#but my dislikes are many and complex#but Iâll begrudgingly read fics I ignored after getting through the tags#and whaddya know I was right I didnt like them (x)
Story Time: Get a load of what happened to me at Starbucks today.
Thereâs a running joke among people who know me personally that I unwittingly go out in public with a sign on my forehead stating âI Am Non-Threatening. Come Talk To Me.â Because if thereâs a chance a bizarre conversation with a total stranger is going to happen, Iâm typically the person it happens to.
Some context: I have been pretty darn sick this week. (Itâs not Coronavirus, donât worry.) Since the work in my queue for my day job is comprised entirely of audio narration right now, and I currently sound like a waterlogged Demi Moore, I havenât been able to work these last couple of days. As a result, Iâve been using my down time to knock out as much of Manuâs redesign as possible. Today, to ensure I didnât spend the day languishing in sinus misery, I medicated the crap out of myself and took Manu to the Starbucks down the block from my sonâs day care.
I hit the bathroom, then picked an empty table, but as soon as I sat down with my venti Comfort Tea and started tweaking the inks on my iPad, I felt the eyes of the man next to me looking over my shoulder.
When I looked up, he had his phone out. âIâm sorry,â he said (in a thick accent I couldnât place geographically), âI donât want to disturb. I notice you art. You are artist!â
I tried to smile. âYes, Iâm... Well, Iâm trying to be,â I croaked.
He leaned in, like he was sharing a secret.
âI am artist, too.â
He stuck out his hand.
I gently took it, grateful for the bathroom trip I just took in which I washed the scourge off of my fingers.
âCan I?â he asked, holding his phone up.
âTake a picture? Uh... sure,â I said. Itâs not like he would be able to steal Manu out from under me or anything, I figured. The panel I was tweaking was magnified out to Guam.
âI am artist. Architect and Designer,â he clarified while he steadied his phone over my iPad. âI am Ilker. What is your name?â
âIâm Venessaâ I said, trying to be polite. This, I thought warily, is precisely how I get myself into trouble. Iâm too damn nice.
âYou know, I come to America twenty years ago from Turkey...â
I put down my stylus. This was going to be a while.
âI like Turkey,â he explained. âI like the country and I like the people. But I am artist. I am not... religious man.â
I nodded.
âI told my wife I was going to go to America and she said, âwhat are you going to do? You donât have job! You donât have money! No Visa!â And I said, âI am artist and architect. I will paint and sell my paintings.
âSo I come to America alone. To New York City. I sit outside, and I paint. And people, they liked my paintings. They bought them. This one for $30, that one for $50.
âOne day, a man comes over to me and he say, âI like your painting. I see you are also architect.â And he gives me his number and asks me to go to meeting at his office. Because he wants to offer me a job. He starts to talk about a building contract.
âI tell him I donât know anything about contracts. I have no Visa. I am not American citizen. But he says, âThatâs okay. I will take care of everything. You will have nothing to worry about.â And this man, he gave me a job. $173,000 a year. And my wife, he gave her a job too. She was project assistant. I bring her and my two daughters over from Turkey.â
âWow,â I said, not fully believing the veracity of what sounded like a full-on immigration fairy tale.
âHere,â said Ilker, unlocking his phone and opening up his Facebook app. âI show you my work.â He paused and looked up at me. âI am interrupting. You donât mind?â
At this point, I was invested. I had to see. Because whatever he was about to show me would either prove or disprove this yarn he was spinning. âPlease,â I said, gesturing for him to go ahead.
He opened his photos and my jaw dropped. His work... was UNREAL.
âThis is building I designed on Madison Ave.... And this one in Chelsea...â
Holy crap. I had just been to Chelsea with my sister last month on a trip to see a broadway show. I had crossed the intersection of the building he was, at this moment, telling me he designed.
He flipped through more buildings. These, heâd designed in Washington, DC. In Bethesda. In Arlington. All beautiful, streamlined, modern structures I had visited and parked my car in front of. He told me he did much of his concept work freehand. That he worked exclusively in natural media. His preferred media was pen, ink, watercolors, and chalks.
Between photos of his wife and daughters, he went on to show me photos from the RUSSIAN EXHIBITION OF HIS ARCHITECTURE ARTWORK.
Yâall, I was stunned. I couldnât believe the talent I was sitting next to. Scattered among these gloriously rendered images of some of the most beautiful building concepts Iâd ever seen were paintings of scenes in Central Park, the National Mall, and nudes from a life-drawing session he attends from time to time.
When he was done flipping through his phone, he looked at me and smiled. âI hope you donât mind that I interrupt you. I show you all this because what you are doing is very good. And you should be encouraged. To draw is to make beauty.â
I nodded, a lump in my throat. âThank you,â I managed. âYour work is astonishing. I donât even know what to say. What is your name again?â
He held out his hand once more. âIlker Kocahan,â he said. âI am getting more coffee. Can I get you one?â
I looked at my still-full venti cup. âNo thank you. But here, please take my card.â
He held my dinky business card like Iâd handed him a treasure and thanked me.
Then Ilker got his coffee, and left the coffee shop.
At some point in his ramblings he talked about America as a place of dreams. How he credits this country with helping him rise to the top of his field where he is now able to sell his paintings for $800-$1000 a piece now that heâs retired. My heart ached to hear him talk about that, knowing how our leadershipâs positions on immigrants have taken such a dark and horrifying turn.
Imagine the buildings and museums and public places that would never have been if a business man in the park hadnât lifted up a Turkish painter who spoke little English.
And now that painter was paying it forward on me.
I still feel pretty darn sick. Iâve still got body aches and a nose that has taken the rest of my face hostage.
But today was a really good day. And I just wanted to share it with you in case you are looking for reasons to keep drawing/painting/dancing/writing. It all counts and it is all good.
If you would like to see Ilker Kocohanâs work, please click here.
Ilker Kocahan holds a bachelorâs degree in Industrial Design with a minor in architecture from the University of Marmara, Faculty of Fine A
UPDATE TO THIS STORY! I would have posted this sooner, but quarantine has had the unexpected effect of zapping all my alone-time...
As luck would have it, I saw Ilker one last time before my area received the mandate to start social distancing. I came into the Starbucks to work on the âSimon Is On the Groundâ comic while waiting to pick up my kid from day care, and there he was, happily chatting with the Starbucks manager, who gifted him with a Starbucks hat while I ordered my tea.
A week had passed since our first meeting, so I wasnât sure heâd recognize me. Lo and behold, as I turned the corner, I caught his eye, and he waved at me. This time, I asked if I might sit with him, and he warmly offered the seat beside him.
While I settled in, he told me that his project was being delayed and that he was going to leave the area and fly home before COVID-19 could make it impossible to travel. The hat was for his wife, whose only understanding of Starbucks was that Ilker really liked the coffee.
As one might expect, we immediately fell into another conversation about art, except this time, I eagerly abandoned my work to hear him talk.
And friends, did I ever get a master class.
He pulled up a painting on his phone which heâd sold for $800. It was a life drawing in ink and watercolor of a woman in a demure gesture, barely detailed and colored in but for her rose-tinted lips and the shadow cast across her neck. He said he felt sad that heâd sold it because he really loved how it came out.
âThis is no detailed like yours,â he said, comparing his painting to my panel of Simon and Baz. âMine is simple. But in a few strokes, I can capture the life of the lady.â
He took his napkin, turned it over, and pulled a pen out of his chest pocket. âLook there,â he said, pointing to a man sitting a few tables away. He began to scribble away on the napkin, lines and lines and more lines. âYou see,â he murmured as he ran his pen over the napkin, âI can, with speed, capture the man. I donât have hours to ask him to sit. I must let go of the planning.â
In seconds, the man across the room took shape on the napkin in a series of confident if also messy lines. It was incredible to watch.
I could instantly see what he meant. He had not produced a photorealistic version of this person on the napkin. But he had captured the manâs essence. The aura of a real person sitting contemplatively with his coffee while reading the Washington Post. I could feel the life of the drawing radiate from the paper.
(When he was done, to my horror, he crumpled up the napkin.)
I shyly mentioned that Iâve been working hard on my own gesture drawing, but had a long way to go, so he asked to see my sketchbook.
I mean... is there even a word in the English language to describe the combination of dread and embarrassment that precedes showing an art master your crap-ass sketchbook that no one sees but you? I didnât know what to do with myself as he sat there and flipped through the pages.
Eventually, he nodded approvingly and said, âOkay! Is good. But this is sketchbook like every other.â He gestured at the page. âWhere are you?â
I was lost for how to respond, but lucky for me, heâs a talkative guy seemingly incapable of awkward silences.
âThe world needs to see you in the lines,â he explained. âSomeone can look at my work and know, âthat painting is from Ilker Kocahan.â You need to draw more and more so that when people look at your drawings, they will know: this work is Venessaâs work.â Then he shrugged and said, âAnd who knows. I will maybe see you in two years at this Starbucks, and by then, your drawings will be truly yours.â
Iâve shared this story with some close friends who took mild offense on my behalf at his observations, but I really think it took sitting there watching him draw to understand exactly what he was talking about.
Ilker Kocahan has no imposter syndrome. He is supremely confident in every possible way where his art is concerned. The lines that flowed from his pen were fueled by his soul, not his brain. I didnât think artists like him existed anymore until I was sitting there looking over his shoulder while he scribbled a man into existence, like it was nothing. When I asked if he plots out the perspective on his building sketches in advance, he shook his head no and doodled this on my cake pop wrapper while he rambled on about the components he likes to include in his architecture concepts:
(Donât worry. I kept it.)
So when he talked about âfinding meâ in my sketches, I really think he could senseâby the light scratch of the pencil, the trace evidence on the paper of my erasing and failed attemptsâmy own lack of confidence, my second guessing and self-doubt. My desire to be as good as other artists instead of my desire to express myself.
And in that sense, everything he was saying about my sketchbook was correct. He urged me to get off the iPad as often as possible. To sketch with ink, which is riskier because you canât erase it, and in that way, give myself no choice but to commit to the lines.
The conversation turned to lighter things after that. Heâs apparently an extremely talented basketball player who loves hanging out with his wife and kids. His daughters are both designers. He thinks quirky viral videos are the best thing about the internet. (I agreed.) Heâs weak for New York pizza.
Eventually, he bought me a refill for my tea and asked if I would meet him again in a couple of days so he could talk to me about my artwork and help me with my sketching. He even added me as a Facebook friend. When I left the Starbucks to pick up Colin, I was so excited and overwhelmed and grateful to the universe for bringing me into his acquaintance, I texted everyone in my family about it.
But as fate would have it, that night, the local government released its mandate regarding social distancing. Heâs likely in Belarus right now with his wife.
I wonât lie and say Iâm not devastated that I lost the chance to be his student for an afternoon. But the impression these coffee shop chats left on me was profound. I think about it all the time. For one who struggles with feeling like the artist version of Pinocchio waiting around for permission to be a real boy, it makes all the difference in the world to linger in the huge, unstoppable energy of someone who lives without an inner critic.
I hope I get to see him again after the quarantine is over. Iâd love to see if I can fulfill Ilkerâs prophecy and meet back at that Starbucks in two years with a different sketchbook in tow. One that I can hand over knowing without doubt or trepidation that anyone looking for me in the work need look no further than the bold stroke of my hand.
i know that âdonât harass people for being weird, they might be autistic!â is a fairly popular take on here. but as a Certified Autist, iâd like to add that harassing allistic and/or neurotypical people for being weird is also bad, and should not be done
and before you come in with âyeah, you never know who is and isnât autistic, and you shouldnât force people to out themselves!â i want to say two things: one, i agree. and two, even if you could magically avoid ever harassing a single autistic person, it still wouldnât be okay to go after NTs for being weird. theyâre people, janice. theyâre allowed to be really invested in naruto
For the record, Pansy Division is a VERY openly gay punk band. Green Day chose Pansy Division to accompany them on their first major label tour..... in the 90s.
Green Day also wore Pansy Division merch!
AND, they actually hung out with Pansy Division!!
+ Billie Joe Armstrong is openly bisexual. Green Day has been out here supporting the queers for 3 decades.
For the record, this was in 1994, when Green Day first blew up as a band after releasing their album Dookie, which was a hit. When I Come Around? Dookie. Basket Case? Dookie. Welcome To Paradise? Dookie. It was their first album to really blow up.
And on their big break, Green Day chose a QUEERCORE band to open for them on their first major tour?!!! During the 90S?!!! I wasn't alive for the 90s but I can't even imagine how game changing that must've been.
vaporwave
origamiaround
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
