Animals In Hats? But Wait, There's More! @smashinbeetlessinceorson - Tumblr Blog

lokihiddleston

KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989)

pangur-and-grim

#that book was so goddamn stupid

inkskinned

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

inkskinned

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

Seems legit

we all hear about kudzu being introduced as "erosion control" in the South but I don't think contemporary people understand on a gut level what that means

these are images from a 1930s pamphlet that endorsed kudzu, entitled "stop gullies: save your farm"

It was Bad.

headspace-hotel

Invasive plants need to be understood as part of a much larger cycle of incredible violence against the land.

peat-moss-and-starlight

For context: erosion on that scale occurred as a result of our clear-cutting entire states. The land east of the Mississippi used to be covered in old-growth forest to an extent that we literally can’t imagine anymore, because most of us have never seen a forest over 100 years old. It turns out if you remove all vegetation from a landscape, you end up with a bunch of loose soil ready to move downstream. A fast-growing plant that covers everything in dense vegetation sounds like salvation when you’re surrounded by 40-foot deep gullies that get wider with every rainstorm.

smashinbeetlessinceorson

There are tiny pockets of East Coast old growth left and everyone should go there. Seeing that majesty inspires awe and reverence. Envisioning it while driving home on an interstate highway causes grief. Remembering it while watching clear-cutting development induces nausea. Explaining it while engaging with politics inspires rage. Talking about it with others who know it brings every memory flooding back, plus resolve.

#old growth mentioned between people who know it is an instant moment of silence for all of these emotions