The Over-caffeinated Dad/Soldier/Student

My rants, raves, and muddled thoughts as I try to deal with the reality of life after the military.

[ferretandscarehead]

Look I DON’T CARE if I won’t haVE TIme FoR reading I WILL BRING MY BOOK ANYWAY cause having a book with you when you go somewhere is such a good feeling, OKAY?

[ravenjeep2001]

I will never not reblog this!!!

[taavot-deactivated20170404]

remember being little and thinking dandelions were fun or a pretty color or something and every adult in an 80 mile radius wouldn’t let you say that without screaming ITS A WEED

[rabbittrabbitt]

also like:

dandelions are edible, easy to grow, and are rich in vitamins a, c, k, beta-carotene, calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium

dandelions can be made into wine, tea, soft drinks, and a coffee substitute

they are used in herbal remedies to treat liver and digestive problems and as a diuretic

they’re good for bees!

they make good companion plants for various herbs and tomatoes; their long taproot helps bring up nutrients in the soil and they release ethylene gas which ripens fruit

dandelions secrete latex which means they can be used to make natural rubber 

they make great flower crowns 

[mszombi]

Why ARE they considered a weed? They’re a good flower? Who decided they were bad? =(

[kittyknowsthings]

You can also make beautiful jelly from the blossoms!

[systlin]

They’re considered weeds because they were a poor person resource and not having them was a status symbol.

Let’s back up.

In Europe dating back to the 1500’s and even earlier, you could only have immaculate manicured lawns if you had just pots of money and were able to own land. So, rich nobility had swaths of land, and they demonstrated their wealth and power by hiring people to physically cut the grass and keep their gardens and dig weeds out of the turf by hand. It was a demonstration of money and power. It said “I can afford to have eight people employed full time just to dig things that aren’t grass out of my grass. I can afford to have all of this land doing nothing. It’s not producing food. People don’t farm it or live on it. I can afford to just grow grass, and have someone tend to that wholly useless crop.”

Fast forward a few hundred years. Europeans come to America. Many of them are from the poorer classes in Europe. Many have never owned land before, and now all of a sudden they can (because they stole it from the Native Americans but that’s a whole other rant.)

Now, at first you see little cottage gardens like the lower classes in Europe always had around their homes; places where they grew food and herbs and kept chickens or other livestock. Dandelions were welcome here; they were eaten and brewed into wine and used for medicine, just as they’d been for centuries.

But then people start making a little money, and we have the whole phenomenon of people who can demonstrate that they are Moving Up In The World by buying all of their food and medicine, just like the old landed gentry back in the Old Country. So they do. What goes in the place of those cottage gardens? Why, the same thing that went in the place of productive land back in the Earl of Chatsworth’s front lawn; a lawn.

So. Dandelions were a symbol. They were a throwback to the old days. They were a sign that you were somehow less prosperous than your neighbors, or lazier. (A Mortal Sin in America.) But, many Americans work, and can’t afford to hire a gardener just to grub dandelions out of the yard with a trowel all day.

Enter the lawn care industry, which began to market a dizzying array of poisons and fertilizers aimed at making your lawn a sterile moonscape where only grass grew with minimum effort from the homeowner. This continues to this day and is a multibillion dollar industry that has huge negative impacts on the environment and human health, but we can’t seem to shake that old ideal of a manicured lawn.

We pour water on deserts and poison on native wildflowers to attain it. We expose our children to poisons. We poison pollinators and pets. The days where we recognized a well kept lawn as a symbol of aristocratic leisure are gone, but we’ve been successfully fed a lie that some dandelions and chickweed are Bad by the lawn care industry in their ads for decades. They, obviously, want to keep it going because they’re making fat $$$$$$$ off of us.

THAT’S why dandelions are viewed as weeds.

Also yeah dandelions are really good for bees, and beloved by native bees and honeybees alike. So please, leave them blooming!! You can support bees and do your bit to smash capitalistic exploitation of the working class and the environment all in one go!

[nestofstraightlines]

Lawns are terrible things, a redundant status symbol (‘I don’t need to grow food on my land’ is no longer a proud boast), boring verging on ugly and vastly consuming of water and labour. Let the dandelions grow!

[emmersdrawberry]

I can’t believe dandelions suffered classism.

[spellbookbitch]

Oh my god IM SO SHOOK I ALWAYS LOVED DANDELIONS AND GOT SO EXCITED TO LET THEM GET SO TALL AND LOVE THEM TO DEATH. TIME TO MAKE MY YARD A GODDAMN BOTANY EXPERIMENT

[ravenjeep2001]

Flowers from a recent excursion.

[ravenjeep2001]

My Jeep and how I get to all of the out of the way places I love.

[ravenjeep2001]

My quiet place.

[ravenjeep2001]

Scenes from an abandoned bridge part 2

[ravenjeep2001]

Scenes from an abandoned bridge.

[ravenjeep2001]

Photographs I took at my brothers wedding I. Colorado Springs.

[ravenjeep2001]

Just some pictures taken this week.

[hollyoakhill]

do you ever think about how little Michelangelo cared

[dandraco]

All right, everyone, grab a chair and sit back because I’m going to share with you what I learned about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel in my Art History Class.

The man NEVER wanted to paint the damn thing. But the pope at the time “forced him to” According to my teacher. Michelangelo hated this man, I MEAN REALLY HATED HIM. So did a majority of people. The pope’s nickname translated literally means “Terrible pope”.

And the working conditions were awful. He had to work on his back with all that paint, which is filled with some toxic shit that gave Michelangelo a limp for the rest of his life. (Also, our teacher made us get on our backs and try drawing with both hands JUST to prove how bad and uncomfortable it is.)

At the time, the ceiling was so high, you could barely see it. You need binoculars to get a good look at what’s up there, by the time people could see the paintings, there was a lot of weird symbolism that Michelangelo hid up there.

This one? The creation of the sun and moon? God is mooning you. And the pope and all others after him prayed under that without knowing.

This one? At the time, dissecting was sacrilegious and everyone found out how behind God was what looked like half a brain. blah blah, science, science, that pissed everyone off.

And also, ALLLLLLL the men and women in the Sistine Chapel are all on fucking steroids. My teacher described the women’s bodies as “Men bodies with boobs slapped on.”

And then there is this:

Now this is the back wall. Michelangelo actually wanted to paint this one after he finished the ceiling. (and there was a different pope too, I believe.) However, originally, EVERYONE in that painting was naked. And they didn’t like it. Adam and Eve naked? That’s cool. But Jesus? Now you crossed the line. So the pope at the time hired someone else to censor it and give the important figures clothes. He worked on it for 6 or 9 months before he died.

And then the symbolism in this one is great. Somewhere in the right, there are homosexuals in heaven. (No matter what, the Vatican will say “Those straight men are happy” I’ll get to that in a second), Michelangelo painted himself near Jesus, and the terrible pope is in hell with a snake biting his balls.

And if you were to point ANY of this out to the Vatican, they will deny all of it and claim Michelangelo was a catholic hero. In fact, when they discovered the symbolism around the 60s or 70s, the guy who told the Vatican was kicked out of the Vatican for life.

TL;DR: Michelangelo hated the pope and made the best “fuck you” of all time.

[humanpersonface]

YO. ALL OF THIS^. Michelangelo was hella grumpy all of the time. It was fantastic.

However, as beautiful as this commentary is, I’m gonna make a little correction. The Pope isn’t the one in hell getting his balls bitten; that guy is actually the Papal Minister of Ceremonies a the time, Biagio de Cesena. 

See, when Michelangelo was painting this, as you said, lots of people were uncomfortable with all of the nudity (especially because the Last Judgement [back wall mural] was painted much later when nudity in religious art was even more controversial than before), but the dude who was the angriest was de Cesena. 

He was so angry that he reportedly burst in on Michelangelo while he was working (which is already a big no-no because Michelangelo’s requirements for working were mostly “fuck the hell off and leave me alone or else I quit and I will stab you in the eye with my paintbrush/chisel”.). He then proceeds to tell Michelangelo that this fresco is disgusting and obscene and shame on him etc etc. He also referred to it as “i stui di nudi”, which means “A stew of nudes” which is one of the best descriptions of a thing ever, if you ask me. 

So Michelangelo, probably on the cusp of homicide is like “Thank you for the notes. Now get the fuck out,” and de Cesena reluctantly does. 

Later, he comes to see the finished product and finds that Michelangelo had painted his portrait down in Hell to represent the Minos, King of the Dead. He has the ears of an ass and the above described crotch biting snake:

Upon seeing this and being enraged, de Cesena went to the Pope to demand that it be changed and that Michelangelo be punished. However, the Pope was SO incredibly done dealing with Michelangelo’s snark, tantrums, and general hatred of the world and everyone in it, that he didn’t want to do shit. 

The Pope’s response to him was literally to say “As Pope, I have a lot of influence on Earth and up in Heaven, but I have no jurisdiction in Hell. You’re shit out of luck.“ 

And it stayed.

Michelangelo, grade A artist, snark master, and professional dick.

[umbra-shadowwolf]

My art hero right there lol

[theassbuttofgondor]

All of the above reasons are why I love Michelangelo with a passion.  

[psychiclianna]

Michelangelo, Patron Saint of Tired Artists

[ravenjeep2001]

I will never NOT reblog this!!!!

[ravenjeep2001]

A real shame this attitude isn’t universal.

[ravenjeep2001]

A peaceful stream near my home.

[ravenjeep2001]

Learned how to do slow exposure on my iPhone.

[sizvideos]

Two disabled friends build a forest around their village

[thelilskee]

In a thousand years there will be fables about these two

[esotericaroma]

Yes, and we should start by telling it today..pass it around and pass it on…

[waterrgenasi]

hi uh this is just a psa

IM ANTI-PEDOPHILE IM ANTI-MAP IM ANTI-KINDERGENDER OR WHATEVER THE FUCK IT IS

PUT ME ON THE ANTI MASTERLISTS!!!!

IF YOURE A PEDOPHILE BLOCK ME!!!! IF YOU’RE A PEDOPHILE APOLOGIST BLOCK ME!!! IF YOU BELIEVE PEDOPHILES BELONG ANYWHERE NEAR THE LBGT+ COMMUNITY BLOCK ME!!!!! IF YOU’RE A MINOR ATTRACTED PERSON OR WHATEVER BLOCK ME!!!!

BASICALLY IF YOU’RE AN ADULT WHO IS ATTRACTED TO MINORS AND/OR BELIEVE YOU BELONG ANYWHERE NEAR THE LBGT+ COMMUNITY SMACK THAT BLOCK BUTTON!!!! I DONT WANT YOU INTERACTING WITH ME OR MY POSTS!!!!!! BYE!!!!

[ravenjeep2001]

For reals!!!

[ljloula-deactivated20181207]

And the birthday #socks keep coming! Ty @brookmanmelanie 😍 #crewsocks #blueqsocks #fashionboutique

[ravenjeep2001]

Ok these are great!!!

[ravenjeep2001]

Because Jeep!