"There's brooding and moody truths Moving through the moonlight The world's lonely edge There be monsters Hedging no tomorrow In ruinous blue" Oh song lyrics, you are so intense. Courtesy Cousteau.
16yo daughter just informed me that as a little kid, she legit thought she could teleport in her sleep, and was pretty freaked out about it.
Why?
Well I just poked her on the sofa where she'd fallen asleep, and told her to go to bed, cos she's way too big to carry upstairs now. And she confessed, when she was little, and I did used to carry her to bed when she'd fallen asleep somewhere (a frequen occurrence, she used to like to curl up under furniture with the dog and take a nap), she'd wake up the next morning in her bed and wonder how in the hell she got there.
The answer, obviously, she was a sleep teleporter :)
imagine that youâre in another country, just minding ur own business and speaking swedish, and then this total stranger just whispers âsvennebananâ Â
So this one time, about 20 years ago, I was living in Switzerland and went out to lunch with my ex and a bunch of his workmates (really high powered finance guys, all Swedish), to the Hilton in Basel. There were about 7 or 8 of us, and when we got there, we asked for separate bills, cos it's really expensive there (this will matter later :)
This one guy Björn was being a real pig. The waitress was gorgeous, this tall icy Princess Grace type blonde, and he was really enamoured, and kept saying things like "Men kolla pÄ hennes ben! Skulle gÀrna ha dem runt min hals" and much much worse, right in front of her, in Swedish. I was the only woman there, and really uncomfortable, but he just wouldn't stop.
When she came back with the bills, remember this is a long time ago and credit card charges meant an physical imprint of the card you had to sign. So he's still going on about all the nasty he'd like do with her, and we all sign our chits... and she comes back with our carbon copies, and as she hands Björn his, she says "och varsÄgod".
I swear he couldn't get out that door fast enough. Which is why we were already outside before anyone realised most of our CC carbons said 0,00 francs, and she'd put the entire bill for the whole party on his :)
I love seeing this series of the Lindauer portraits medievalpoc has been posting lately. These paintings are very well known where I come from, but I suspect most of the world has never seen any of them.
But there's something really weird and disconcerting to see a bunch of people who look like me and everyone I knew growing up, and realise we're the POC.
I just never thought of myself that way. Even though intellectually I know others do. And it's not even like I haven't run into my own personal experiences of deeply embedded racism, both at home and since I left. It's like that feeling when you walk past your own reflection and don't quite recognise it, except in reverse. Because I recognise myself in these images, it's everyone else who doesn't.
for people who donât know, Tuebl.ca is essentially a FREE AND AUTHORIZED ONLINE LIBRARY WHERE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD FREE .EPUB VERSIONS OF POPULAR BOOKS.
When I say authorized, I mean popular authors PUT THEIR BOOKS UP THERE FOR FREE BECAUSE THEY KNOW EBOOKS WILL GET THEM NEW FANS WHO WILL THEN GO ON TO BUY THEIR Â BOOKS.
Every so often I reblog this because more people should know about Tuebl.
Itâs free ebooks.
Legit, free ebooks.
Iâm talking legitimately every time I see a book on my wishlist on Amazon I go to tuebl first and like 8 or 9 times out of ten IT IS ALREADY THERE, AND IF IT IS NOT THERE, THE AUTHOR HAS PLACED OTHER BOOKS THEY HAVE WRITTEN ON THERE.
For the love of god, spread the good news. This is why the internet is created. Full stop.
**Tuebl is infamously one of the biggest e-book pirate sites on the net. **
Nothing on there is authorized other than public domain stuff you could get (in probably better quality) at Gutenberg or Open Library. They do not respond to DMCA takedown notices either, even though they say they do.
If you have time to make a wishlist on Amazon then go pirate copies of those books on Tuebl, you have time to google "is Tuebl legal" and see that it's plainly not. And if you still go download the books, that's on you: But don't try to justify it to yourself and others by saying the authors put their work up there, when they didn't.
I've been reading http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/ which is a really cool blog about well, people of colour in medieval art. There's a lot of discussion there about how people have trouble seeing anything outside their own internal frame of reference. Like assuming that PoC means black, that the author of the blog is black. Some of it's quite hilarious, and most of it makes me a little sad.
It reminds me of conversations I had several times in the US that went something like this:
"Are you Native American?" "No, I'm Maori, from New Zealand" (crickets) "Oh, so you're a native american New Zealander?"
I am really not kidding, I had that exact conversation at least 3 times over. And a fourth time where I got "Oh so you're an aborigine then".
Or the one that went: "So are you British?" "No, I'm from New Zealand" "Oh wow, cool, you speak really good English!"
Again, more than once.
or once even: "So are you British?" (that was the usual guess) "No, I'm from New Zealand" "Ohhhh... must be hard getting used to wearing clothes all the time right?"
I'm a fairly fair skinned maori woman from New Zealand. I have long dark hair, very dark eyes, and olive skin, although fairer skinned than anyone else in my family, it's still olive relative to most white people. And I've come to the conclusion, in most places I am the generic "other". I always look like I don't come from here.
I've had people speak to me on the street in Greek, in Serbian, in Spanish, in Farsi, in Turkish, you name it. Anywhere people with tan skin and dark eyes can come from, people have guessed I'm from there. As long as there isn't here, that is.
Entering the US, I get called out as Arab (generally Iranian, actually, which I don't mind, all the Iranian women I know are stunning so I take that one as a compliment.)
When I lived in Texas, I would often be handed paperwork in Spanish and have to ask for the English version.
In Switzerland I got physically patted down by Israeli military once while going to the Hilton for lunch. The Israeli finance minister was there having lunch too, turned out, and did I mention, I look vaguely arabic?
Once when going to Finland on a ferry, I got yanked in the passport line because they thought I was an Estonian gypsy. On asking why that might be a bad thing, they were reluctant to answer, but I dragged out of them that apparently they are notorious for running passport theft rings.
Talk about racial profiling. Oddly enough, fair skinned or not, in NZ (and Australia) I am unmistakeably Maori. Also oddly enough, that isn't really worthy of comment either.
And I think the funniest part, those folks up there who thought I was a Native American New Zealander, who didn't speak English and ran around in a grass skirt all day, they were trying to be friendly and they were trying to be politically correct and negotiate the difficult territory of how to discuss race and ethnicity without offending anyone, and by trying so very very hard, they failed in the worst way. On the one hand, I appreciate them trying. On the other hand, the entire thing is just a huge face palm, because why does it matter? It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. I simply don't understand why my race is fair game for a topic of discussion by someone looking for a conversation starter. What's wrong with the weather? WHY DO YOU CARE?!
I've lived all over the world - US, UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia. I'm often asked where I'm from, and what my nationality is, where I'm a citizen of, but the only place I've EVER been asked my ethnicity, is in the USA.
Okay but seriously if you are attending college while experiencing any sort of mental illness then you are an impressive human being. Even if you donât always make it to classes. Even if you donât always do your homework or pass all your tests. You are doing something that is incredibly difficult when so many of the odds are against you, and regardless of what you are studying you deserve a Ph.D. in being a total and complete badass.
do u have any idea how much this post fucks me off i am not seven u condescending git
Seriously, I have been dealing with mental illness most of my life - and unlike the majority of these people I see on tumblr, I have actually been diagnosed - for more than a decade. (Thatâs not to say undiagnosed people donât have it, but self-diagnosis really pisses me off). Attending college was not âimpressiveâ, The odds were not all against me at all. Because each person has their own life and mental illnesses are not some catch-all bucket of special snowflakes.
I am just so sick of seeing these self-congratulatory posts encouraging special snowflake feelings. My life - and the lives of most of the people who reblog this - is a hell of a lot easier than that of people whoâve had to drag themselves out of domestic violence, institutional racism, poverty, etc. And the self-diagnoses and ânot being treatedâ are false equivalencies and unless you actually have experienced the difference between treatment and not being treated for a verified, diagnosed mental illness by a professional - you probably have no fucking idea what youâre talking about.
Yes, sometimes mental illnesses can be extremely severe and someone is making huge bounds by going to college and whatnot. But lumping everyone together in this condescending self-congratulatory bullshit is ridiculous. Mental illnesses are a huge range, and this is the equivalent of saying asthma and melanoma are the same thing. Theyâre not. Each can be huge fucking problems, but itâs all situational. Anxiety and bipolar disorder are not the same. Aspergerâs (the go-to self-diagnosis these days) and the other, more serious forms on the autism spectrum are not the same. If you want to survive in the real world, if you want to be respectful - this sort of bullshit has to stop.
This. For TBI survivors too. Especially if you are lucky enough to not look too "damaged". I struggle daily with whether or not to tell teachers or team members at work or in school with me that I have issues, because mentioning it at all turns into either "omg, you're so speshul" or "But you don't LOOK stupid" (ok they rarely say stupid, but I know that's what they mean. And one guy once did say "Oh but you don't LOOK retarded"). Or because if I use the technical, medical words, people who think they know what "amnesia" or "brain lesion" means from pop culture, can't connect that imagery with reality, something I've been having to do for over 20 years. And yet some of my behaviours frustrate and annoy people I have to work with, so they end up just thinking I'm difficult, or distracted and not paying attention or flat out weird, and it'd be a lot simpler if I could explain it without it always coming loaded. But I can't do that. So to take a really simple example, I end up sitting there frustrated almost into tears, when a teacher says "don't take notes", and then calls me out in front of the class for "ignoring their instructions" or give a sarcastic "really, you will be able to remember this, it's very simple". Because I have to take notes. It is quite literally almost the only way to stuff new information into my long term memory. I don't even always have to re-read them, it's the simple act of writing things down that sets up a different path in my brain for transferring things from short-term to long-term memory. I'm glad I can take notes, and that I had great cognitive therapists and learnt strategies that work for me. But if I have to defend or justify or explain it, I always end up being the kicked puppy with everyone petting me on the head saying "oh you're so brave". Well fuck that. I am not a pet to be petted and congratulated for existing, just so you (generic you) can feel all wonderful about yourself, that you were nice to the broken person today, so don't patronise me. If I had a cast on, I wouldn't have to explain anything. I can't put a cast on my brain. And if I had a cast on, you wouldn't be telling me I was brave and wonderful for just showing up. You might say "oh that must be a pain, is there anything we can do to make this easier, shall we rearrange the desks?" but not "gosh, just that you came is such an achievement". There's a huge difference between appreciating that there is a difficulty, accommodating that difficulty within reason, and patronising someone for having it. And just because it's new to you, I'm over 20 years in on this, and I've heard it before... even if I don't always remember properly.
I don't know what you mean by trance. Theres a tumblr page of a king snake named hannibal on tumblr and it doesn't look albino to me is what I'm talking about
Sorry, but hannibal doesnât ring any bells. And I went through the king snake tag and didnât see anything.
How I tackled my cupboard of doom (in our case, it's a big storage area under the stairs, so there was quite a bit of crap in there), in case it inspires you: * Got out every box, bag, storage container (plastic or otherwise) I could find. Smallish ones better than biggish ones.
* Bribed cajoled and threatened (not really :) my kids into emptying said cupboard willy nilly into all boxes, bags, etc until it was entirely empty. Took em about 20 minutes all told, and I knew if I did it, I would stop half way and start sorting, and then not put anything back.
* Vacuumed out the space while everything was sitting in the hall, so the cupboard was at least not completely full of dust, then shoved all the boxes, bags, etc's back in there, still willy nilly, but now compartmentalized in manageable chunks.
* For the next however long it took, which was about two weeks I think, I got out one box or bag or whatever, took it into the living room after dinner, and emptied that mofo out. Literally taking one thing out at a time, finding it a home, or putting it in the trash. 20/10's if the box was a big one, but most of them actually only took under 20 minutes.
* Stopping after each one! So easy to get on a roll and think "oh that only took ten minutes" and going to get another, and finding myself four hours later buried in dust and 27 trash bags to take out and, well you know how it goes.
Setting the resulting trash bag by the door so I'd remember to take it the hell out the next day.
Worked for me, also I found things like the dough hooks for my food processor that I hadn't seen since two houses and ten years ago :)
When we first moved here, my little daughter used to use it as a playhouse - she's too big for that now, but it makes a great cat den: I put a couple of catbeds in there, there's room for a cat box and food and to keep them at separate ends, and now if I need to shut the cats up (we've had builders in and out of the place a lot lately) I have somewhere safe to do it too!
Hello! I have a question for you, as long as you don't mind. I was wondering, since I saw your post about cultural appropriation of tribal tattoos, if you could clear up some things? I like this style, and I find the cultures they come from amazing and beautiful. Now that I'm older though I know what CA is, and I do not want to get a racist tattoo. So, if I take inspiration from the style and design something myself, is that still wrong? I can just not at all, but I like designing such things.
I have no idea when you asked this, sorry, so I hope you haven't been waiting weeks for an answer! Anyway, this is gonna be a bit long and rambly.
tl;dr version:
Don't get one on your face or butt or thighs unless you really know what you're doing
Don't say you have a moko. You don't.
While I can't say don't do it, it's your body and your art, I'm gonna be blunt and say mixing art from different polynesian cultures is gonna look really dumb, so get a good handle on what is traditional to the specific culture you like the art of most, and stick to that.
Long version:
It's partly about the placement: Moko on the face, buttocks and thighs hold traditional meaning, they're like a wearable passport, they tell about your tribal affiliation and your genealogy and who you are. Getting one on your shoulder or arm not so much. That's why Mike Tyson's is so hated (apart from the fact it's ugly as sin).Â
The other thing is, the symbols mean things, and sometimes you see people with really mixed up messages. For instance, Samoan and Maori designs look a lot alike but nobody sane would mix them. Turtle shell designs are popular in the islands, and small fish, where you'd probably more likely see sharkteeth symbols in Maori, because turtles are exceedingly rare in New Zealand, and shark are really common. There's a lot of sites out there that don't make any distinction, but there's a whoooole lot of ocean between Hawaii and New Zealand and the Society Islands, and although the symbology is related, it's also unique to each place. I guess there's no real reason you can't mix them if it's just about aesthetics, if I'm honest, but would you mix Chinese and Korean in the same tattoo? I think most people wouldn't. And I think most Chinese or Korean people would snicker if they saw that (at best, if they weren't actually offended).
Then there's the terminology: The Maori name for Tattoo is "Ta moko", or just moko, but not all tattoos are moko, only the traditional ones, done the old (painful way), that you have to earn and talk a tattooist into even doing. There's a similar word in all the polynesian languages. Notably you don't really get a say in what gets tattooed on you with one of these either, it's one part tradition and genealogy, and one part what the Ta Moko artist says goes, and you just shut up and take the pain (and I held a cousin's hand through getting one half of one butt cheek done this way, and this was a big old rugby playing 200kg guy and he was bawling like a baby and nobody there blinked an eye at him either, cos it huuuuuurts getting it done the old way.)
The thing is, some people get all pretentious and say they got a Moko, when what they really did is no such thing. Because there is another word for tattoos that are just decoration, and that is Kirituhi, which is literally "skin writing". If you really want to do something Maori, that is the word you need to search for, to find design ideas, and to get a sense of what is ok. Here's some other words you can search for in Maori too: Koru is the unfurling fern frond, it's the base of probably most maori designs. Hei matau is a symbolic fish-hook (symbolises wealth, good fortune, because if you have a fish-hook in NZ, you'll never be hungry :) Tiki is pretty much our trickster demi-god (every culture has one :) but it's also often used for pretty much any human-like representation. Manaia is also a figure, but it's more of a bird creature (if I was going to get kirituhi, it would be a manaia.)  Roimata is a teardrop shape, I guess you see that more in carving than tattoos, but it turns up here and there. Oh and Kowhaiwhai (see below the picture). By the time you've dug out those, you'll probably find more, those are just the things I can come up with off the top of my head.
In the pic above: Ta moko on his face, and thighs (and I think the face one is drawn on for the performance, but the thigh ones look like the real thing. The main symbol here is called "Koru", the unfurling fern frond. The ones on his chest and arm are Kirituhi. You'll notice moko only come in black (dark green when they're older), Kirituhi can have other colours, because it's just art, but Maori designs only really use Black, Red, Yellow and White. The design of his armband is a pretty common style, it's called Kowhaiwhai, you'll see it as panelling in meeting houses, as headbands, or the bands around the top of women's dresses too, again made up mostly of intertwined Koru. And if you look at it right, the tattoo on his chest has eyes - it's a face.Â
And btw: Thanks for asking. It's an interesting topic, and I hope I didn't give you any bad advice, maybe others have something to say too. And you definitely gave me something to do on a sunday afternoon with the flu :) Â
I applied for a job. Wrote a CV, and a cover letter, for the first time in 15 years. I've worked since then, but sort of got jobs via friends and people I knew, a bit organically.
I'm scared to death, and sort of oddly calm at the same time.
On the one hand, I still have a semester and a half of school left before finishing this degree. So there's no real pressure on me just yet to actually be working. On the other hand, this is kind of a dream job, and if I get it I won't have any problem deferring school, or doing that part time (I'll have plenty of time at 50%, an hour or so train ride each way too, wifi and power there, might as well be at home in my living room.)
Mostly it just feels like a really big step that I am mentally in a place to even consider it, after the tragic year it's been. I spent most of the summer in a rut of depression, they say a suicide often triggers others, in those close, to be blunt, I can believe it, I was drowning in grief and guilt and pain. And it's not like when someone dies naturally or in an accident, I've had people actually blurt out to my face they have been avoiding me because they don't know what to say or how to say it. Which I actually didn't mind, because I've been avoiding people too. All of the people.
But I'm finally at the point where the idea of spending 8 hours in an office with other people and having to hold myself together emotionally doesn't terrify me like it did even a month ago.
So I'm considering this a trial run, if I get an interview, neat, if I get the job, astounding, but if I don't, at least I know I'm starting to keep my head above water again.
I cracked the whip on my first âfreeâ day. I moved all of the clean laundry away from the side of my bed and moved one of the bookshelves up near the headboard so I donât have to squeeze past it to get into bed.
I did a shit-ton of dishes. Yes, I actually measured it and it was a shit-ton.
Don't want to come down as a Samsung fangirl, but we have three in galaxies in the house (a mini II, an Ace II and an ace note) and the battery life on all three of them is ridiculously good. More to the point, given your situation, Samsung's site lets you find, track, lock, even wipe and download call logs and contents of texts to your pc, and since it's at the hardware level no app required, so a thief can't remove it. I've used these features a few times, since one of the above phones belongs to a 14yo who doesn't exactly lose it, but can't always find it (apparently when you are 14, there is a difference.)
And way more importantly, you seem more positive, and I am really glad :)
Oh what the hell, I already broke UtterlyFubar today, let's try send her right over the edge :)
Actually I can't think of any. All that comes to mind is Incubus Succubus (who sing weird wicca chants) and almost definitely have a song about all hallow's eve (I think they have three about Beltane) and Bif Naked, who I keep meaning to recommend the "Tango Shoes" video of to UtterlyFubar anyway. Because reasons (listen to the lyrics girl :). But adorable as I find Bif, she's not really halloweeny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD0xF7rVQuY (Tango Shoes, Bif rocks. I want her tank.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3va0rSBRic (Wytches, the song that got me stuck on Incubus Succubus, it's utterly hypnotic) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGlalcA2SVo (All Hallow's Eve - oh yup of course they did have one. Band name spelling optional, according to these guys: Inkubus Sukkubus heh).
You really wouldn't want me to be DJ for a Halloween Party. I'd play tons of Corvus Corax. Who are a german goth bagpipe band. Or something like that. I have no idea how to describe Corvus Corax http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxrkrTctPA Guess you could say this is D&B :) - in my head it's how a totally how a pagan halloween party would sound. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjfiiR6oaNs Corvus Corax doing a chunk of Carl Orff opera, live. I'd kill to see this.
