Somatic Fix

poems, prose and ramblings

[volach-deactivated20230326]

“When the handle has snapped off the basket that held all your eggs…” gone girl tier monologue

[maaarine]

@W_Asherah

[aidashakur]

[librarychair]

As much as I want to support ethical farming practices I will be buying the cheapest bag of frozen chicken thighs as much as the next frugal/poor person which is why animal welfare needs to be legislated, not left up to the invisible hand of the free market or some bullshit. Invisible hand of the free market finds itself around a lot of throats.

[niamhermind]

"Invisible hand of the free market finds itself around a lot of throats."

That is such a line.

[kvetchlandia]

Uncredited Photographer Anti-fascist Partisan Member of Tito's National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia Albina Mali Hočevar. The Scar on Her Cheek is From a Combat Wound She Received Fighting Fascists on Her 18th Birthday in 1943 c.1944

[dragon-in-a-fez]

said this as part of a larger point in a reblog but I'm gonna make it its own post:

humans have the right to do things that are mildly bad for us sometimes.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

you have the right to eat way too many pierogi and make yourself a little sick. you have the right to go skydiving. you have the right to pull an all-nighter building the Imperial City of Tamriel in Minecraft. you have the right to get drunk in your living room watching football.

life is not about making the safest most logically correct choice at all times. you're a blob of salty meat piloting a flesh mech and you get to act like it.

[problemnyatic]

This is called dignity of risk and it's a big topic in disability rights spaces. id elaborate but im fuckin wiped

[fedorahead]

it's always funny how people will advocate for bodily autonomy when it comes to certain things but then shy away from anything they personally wouldn't do to their own body. like yeah, that's why it's your body buddy. i can do what i want with mine.

[debelice]

One 0f the greatest and hardest dance scenes ever recorded......

[the-haiku-bot]

One 0f the

greatest and hardest dance scenes

ever recorded……

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[tyrograph]

Cab Calloway and the Nicholas brothers! I don't think I've ever seen the colorized version of this before!

[bunsunbunny]

I haven't seen it in color either! It's a fantastic dance scene!!

[hyrude]

is the world really such a terrible place? yesterday i asked if oat milk was extra and the barista said yes so i said ok just regular milk then and when she gave me my chai latte she whispered “i used oat milk ;)” doesnt that make u want to live another day?

[hyrude]

here is my life philosophy: next week there might be someone ahead of you in line at the store who’s short a quarter and you have a quarter and you can give it to them. if you weren’t there, they’d have to put something back. the week after that you could be getting lunch and the waiter might ask if you want some pancakes someone else ordered and never picked up. you could find someone’s lost cat. you could watch someone’s bag while they go to the restroom. there are so many ways you are going to touch other people’s lives and they are going to touch yours and there’s no way to know when it’s going to happen. so you have to keep living!!! i wouldn’t want to die knowing that tomorrow the barista will give me free oat milk just to be nice. 

[elaninrecovery]

When I was 11 years old - we went to Sea World for my birthday. This was to avoid the realization I had no friends, and no one to come to a birthday party and probably because someone gave my mother free tickets at work. It was kinda a shitty day despite being at a theme park full of cute animals. There was a new roller coaster there that had just opened so we decided to go on. I was nervous. I’d never been on a roller coaster.

A group of 6 college kids were ahead of us in line and started chatting with me. Full on just having a fun conversation with someone literally going through the beginning of a very awkward middle school period. I was so shocked they wanted to talk to me. I think my mom mentioned it was my birthday. They were very nice about it. When we got on the ride they told us to go ahead of them so we could sit at the front of the car since it held 8 people.

Now the ride (called Journey to Atlantis - I believe it is sadly no longer there) started with a slow ride of beautiful visuals of dolphins and oceans and computerized images of this imaginary Atlantis before going up the hill to the beginning of the coaster, where it paused for about 30 seconds, and then the ride started. The college kids must have known there would be a pause. Maybe they’d ridden it before I’m not sure.

But as we sat there on that peak, 6 people I’ve never known, and will never know again, sang a very very lonely 11 year old happy birthday. Loudly. And with gusto. They were happy and laughing and joyful. And it made me feel less alone in the world.

I am 29 years old this year, and I still remember them. I still remember that kindness. It is so important. It doesn’t go into a vacuum. It exists beside me in my daily life. And I love the idea that I have been that person to someone else too.

It’s stunningly lovely to be human when we’re kind to each other.

[shutyourmoustache]

If you have the means to donate gifts to toy drives or shelters, please keep the above tips in mind so you can help meet people’s wants and needs! 💓

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

i just started listening to hozier (ik, like over a decade late, whatever), but bruh. some of y'all did this dude so dirty. everything i've ever seen of him on here has been like "uwu magical forest man" and so my black ass goes into it expecting white boy indie music, but instead i get this radical leftist irish guy straight up singing the blues, like?? (singing the blues/having a lot of blatantly black musical influences, BUT crediting his influences in the process, which is a an important distinction)

like y'all. has anyone told tiktok what kind of music this man actually makes? bc some of them might be shooketh to find out their precious forest man is actually telling them to dismantle the oppressive institution of colonialism while actively paying homage to artists of color

well, that and also to eat pussy, but same thing tbh

[wizardarchetypes]

had a dream this morning that I left my phone open for 13 hours by mistake to a tiktok of an AI watermelon dancing over a black background to an obnoxious children's song. my friend brought it to me and she was like "duuuuudddeee your algorithm is gonna be fucked" and i started scrolling through tiktok and every single video was AI fruit dancing to different children's music and i was like "oh man i'm gonna have to delete the app to undo this" and my friend said, "dude it's gonna be worse than that" and i opened up instagram and tumblr and all of my social feeds were dancing AI fruit so i had to factory reset my phone

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I want slower packages delivered by transportation workers who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding

[theparadigmshifts]

@mortuarybees​: #i think its deeply important for all of us to come to terms with the fact that its actually fine to be mildly inconvenienced

[morriganwarrior]

ThriftBooks take 12-18 business days as per their own site. I've had it take longer. I survived. You do not need next-day delivery.

[punkitt-is-here]

its tough out there but so am i

[ashlgcostumes]

“A child/student/young person asked me how to do X why does nobody get taught anything these days!!!” It’s you, buddy, you’re the teaching, this may legitimately never have come up before, why do people think education is exclusively some kind of abstract preemptive measure, most importantly done by other people so the rest of us only get the benefits and don’t have to do the work. Sometimes the person who is going to teach this is you. Fucking step up

[homoquartz]

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

[owlskitten]

When I was a kid and would go hiking with my dad and sibling on vacation, every time we would pass another group, my dad would do the smile and nod and “hey”. And then after we’d turned a corner, he would say more quietly, “I must make friendly social noises so they do not eat my young” and my sib and I would crack up laughing.

Gotta remember that we’re mammals under it all.

[bethanydelleman]

My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.

What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.

Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.

But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?

[lew-basnight]

People kept trying to do this to my petcare business. “Let us build you a website! Let us buy you some ads! Let us print you flyers and cards!” I have exactly as much business as I can handle, and I’m happy with that. “But if you expand you could hire other people to do the work and pay them less, and raise your prices and eventually you can work from home!! Let us help you!” I’m doing this because I like playing fetch for a living, I like being outside moving around all day every day, I like spending time with each animal separately, I like being trusted by my clients with the keys and codes of their homes, it makes me feel proud. None of what you’re offering me is what I want. I don’t want a dozen miserable contractors who I pay 40% of each visit, I don’t want to try and wrangle and hire and vet people to do the part of my job that I like for me. That sounds bad. That’s a bad idea. And they looked at me like I was speaking an alien language. “But… website!! SEO! Ad buys! Targeted coverage! Constant growth!!” I don’t want any of that in my life it sounds fucking awful

[stjohnstarling]

One of the cruelties of capitalism is that if you want to do work you’re good at and love, a lot of the time your only option is to enter into some kind of business, and as soon as you do that, all the structural incentives of the system start trying to pull you away from the parts that you’re there for (i.e. the things that make life worth living) and towards various kinds of exploitation. Anyway, this also applies to writing and selling novels.

[thehappysatan]

I agree with OP down to my bonessss. The best things are done with pasison by artisans, who deseve to be compensated respectfully, but aren't into their work from a place of greed or whatever misguided capitalist-brained bros think 'efficiency' is.

I'm plenty efficient, at getting things done the way i intend to.

i described to my econ-brain-rotten brother how i run my tattooing business and got the same responses as above.

It's like he absolutely didn't hear me when i explained the nuanced reasons i even started doing this work; I started tattooing because i was tired of the isolation of my (at that point) decade-long career in the animation industry. I was sick of my best work rotting on hard drives in shut down studios, of never getting to see anyone interacting with my art.

Moved to a big queer city, where my community got me started: queer tattooers patiently shared information and resources with me. early on, friends volunteered to let me experiment on their skin. Then they started offering to pay for materials, then more. Then they brought their friends to me...

I have a beautiful community of people who know me from the drag scene, from the poetry and writing scene, from the techno scene - and all these ppl come to me because they know me, met me, trust me, because they felt comfortable in my presence.

I only have like 1200 followers on my tattooing Instagram - which rly isn't a lot for a tattooer. But i stay busier than some ppl who have more followers - and im pretty sure that it's because 90% of the ppl following me have actually met me irl. I don't give out my info to just anyone. I have to have a nice interaction with them - and they with me - and i basically invite them to get to know my work, if i think they'd be interested, if they seemed excited about it.

I built my business out of love and care, and connection. I built it because i wanted more of these things in my life. I am making what i wanna see in the world.

Im deeply proud of what I've accomplished as a tattooer, exactly because i stuck to my own beliefs and built a business that is fully customized to me, what im excited about, my abiliy and disability levels, and my philosophical values. This part of my life is all mine, crafted and chiselled just how i want it.

I don't like getting up in the morning, so my sessions never start earlier than 1300. I have a hard time focusing alone + i wanna empower ppl who aren't artists to play with art + help ppl practice and engage their decision making and request making skills - so i design the tattoos with them sitting right next to me, being part of the art process. I don't like doing math and counting so i give my clients a sliding scale based on project complexity, and they get to choose how much they pay me. This also doubles as a way to give ppl more agency in the process of getting a tattoo. Etc etc it goes on and on - every aspect of the process is considered and phislophically and emotionally calibrated. I love what I've created and i love giving the gift of a well-crafted thing......

And after hearing me explain all that, my brother said my marketing wasn't efficient and my business isn't scalable...

I dunno, i think smtng abt capitalism legit gives ppl brain damage or smtng wtf

[thehappysatan]

@asmadasthehatters you can't leave that in the comments, buddy

[heymerle]

There's this assumption, in marketing and in business for the last 40 or 50 years, that growth should be unlimited.

That exists in the real world, and it's called cancer. It will kill whatever it's growing in.

[thessaralka]

some of the best fics I've ever read and keep coming back to had like 700 hits and 1-2 comments. i mean life-changing works that left me breathless and changed the trajectory of my life.

i became a writer who gets paid to write because of fanfics i read when i was 12 that no one knows about, and are probably deleted now.

seriously, don't write your fic to get likes. don't write to get comments. it's not the reader's job to inspire you to write. yeah ofc it's great to get positive feedback on your work, but writing only to get validation for your work is shitty reason to make art, because what happens to you when people hate it, ignore it, shit on it, misinterpret it? you crumble and you either stop making art, or you change your art to please others and it becomes shitty art because it's not true.

art needs to be the byproduct of illogical passion, a burning need to put pen to paper and your blood and pain onto a blank page for yourself, not something you do for attention or validation or comments.