#little-lorayne

[queenklu]

Tea

(I will stop doing these when people stop sending them, I love telling stories)

So I hate coffee, if the big tea vs coffee debate is a thing tea wins by a) default, b) a landslide, I hate coffee so much. And I do like tea, I just have a really low heat tolerance for beverages? Which is where this story comes in:

When I was a kid my parents would make hot chocolate via microwave and like, baaaaarely above lukewarm because do you give children boiling hot beverages? No. But one day we went to a restaurant where I ordered a hot chocolate. It had a little red coffee straw. My parents didn't get a chance to warn me. Soooooooo

I tend to make tea and then forget that I've made it until it's room temperature, drink half, then forget again.

[madlori]

Lori! I saw a couple episodes of Avatar back when it was on Nickelodeon, and thought it looked fun, but I haven't watched it in almost 10 years! Why should I pick it back up?

BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH MORE THAN FUN.

Avatar is a self-contained, internally consistent 60-some episode continuous arc.  Each character has a logical progression, each character has conflicts, their interrelationships evolve, their roles in the story evolve.

It has awesome women who are not token characters, it has ambiguous villains AND ambiguous heroes and sometimes they’re the same person.  It has creative mythologies that are not all Western (in fact none of them are) and really excellent martial arts choreography and super cool superpowers and romance and excitement and philosophy and big fuzzy flying bison and IT’S JUST AWESOME OKAY.

In case anyone’s not clear on the mythology of Avatar, here it is in a nutshell:

In the Avatar world, some people are born with the ability to control one of four elements: water, air, earth or fire.  These people are known as benders - airbenders, waterbenders, firebenders, etc.  In general bending occurs within certain populations, each of which are based on an Earth culture.  The Water Tribes are based on Inuit, the Fire Nation on Japan, the Earth Kingdom on China, and the Air Nomads on the monks of Tibet.

But there is one person, the Avatar, who has the ability to control all four elements.  He or she is reincarnated each time an Avatar dies, and they also have the ability to channel the experiences and abilities of their previous selves.  The Avatar is tasked with keeping peace and balance among the four nations.

A hundred years before the events of the series, the Fire Nation started getting hostile.  The previous Avatar died, and before his successor, a 12-year-old Airbender named Aang (he’s the bald kid with the arrows), could take over, Aang was caught in a storm and frozen for 100 years until he was freed accidentally by a waterbender named Katara and her brother. In the meantime the Fire Nation had basically taken over everything.  He must now learn his other three bending disciplines (Avatars are born into one bending discipline - airbending, in Aang’s case - and must learn the other three as they mature) super fast before facing the Fire Lord and restoring balance.

All this after having just learned that his entire race was massacred by the former Fire Lord in an effort to destroy the Avatar.

AND LOTS MORE STUFF HAPPENS.

[markscherz]

Hey Mark, you reblogged a couple of photosets of legless geckos a little bit ago, and in one of them, I (a nature interested laywoman) could definitely tell that they were geckos based on the pointed shape of their heads. But in the other, I wouldn't have been able to tell that they were geckos and not snakes. So how DO you spot the difference between legless geckos and snakes when they're not so pronounced?

Super great question!

Alright so I do it based off of instinct - I have seen enough of them now that I can easily distinguish between them without second thought.

BUT if you were to try to point out the differences, they are as follows:

Pygopodids have external ear openings. NO snakes have these. This is a very good indicator.

All pygopodids (legless geckos) have thick tongues (vs. thin, deeply bifurcated tongues in all serpents, which are more akin to the tongues of varanid lizards).

Pygopodids probably don't use their tongues for sensing their environments the way snakes do. If they behave in the way geckos do, they will lick the substrate occasionally to sense chemicals, but generally will use their tongues only during eating and cleaning. Snakes, on the other hand, as I'm sure you know, flick their tongues out to sense chemicals on the air, on a regular basis when active.

[x]

In the case of scaly-foots (genus Pygopus), there is a reduced appendage that helps to distinguish them from snakes:

[x]

Pygopodids have continuous scalation around their midbodies. So where higher snakes (i.e. not typhlopids and their allies) usually have wide, single ventral scales down the length of their bodies, pygopodids have several ventral scales per row:

Those are the most distinct features. So I hope they help!

[leupagus]

I'm starting my second term at university tomorrow, and I'm coming off the back of completely failing almost all of my classes last term. I have support systems in place (Student Services, counseling, etc.), but I'm still panicked about fucking this term up as well. I have to get a job this term too, since my parents cut my funding (or at least, their bit of it) until I get my grades back up, and I'm feeling overwhelmed. I really want to do well, but I'm psyching myself out already.

YOU ARE FUCKING AWESOME for getting that support system in place. Seriously, I am beyond impressed — and I want you to know that everybody in the world fails, sometimes hugely and we all fail multiple times. But you're getting yourself back up and you're going to try again. Do you have any idea how cool that is — and by extension, how cool you are? I hope you have a pair of super rockin' shades that you can wear, so you can do the patented David Caruso sunglasses move several times during the day. You deserve to feel like you just delivered the punchline that leads into the credits; that's a silly metaphor, but it's true!

As for the job — dude, you've got this in the bag. Talk to those support systems, sign up for volunteer work (if you can and if you have time), ask your friends and fellow students for advice on the job market around your school. Even those concrete steps — building a resume and working on cover letters — will help show your parents how serious you are about getting back on track, and that's just as important as anything else.

Panicking about this term is totally acceptable, and go ahead and panic as much as you need to, but remember to turn at least some of that panic into the work that will get you through the term. Talk to your professors (or if they seem like douches (which let's be real, is pretty common in academia) talk to the TA or even just a senior student in the department) about your concerns, about ideas they might have to help you learn what you've come here to learn. If you approach them now, I guarantee you'll feel better; being honest about what's happened will help to stop that feeling you've got in the pit of your stomach that you're just faking your way through. And also remember that no matter what your parents think about grades or what you felt about the events of the last term, you still learned last term. And that's what education is about - not tests or grading or finals, even though those are important. You're there to get your curiosity scratched and to listen to ideas you never even thought about. Always hold onto the joy of what you get to learn every day; you've gotten into a school that you love enough to stick with even when it gets hard, and that in itself is pretty damn rad.

[eastendstarlet]

I WAS TAGGED

ages ago sorry by sinistermoxicity :D 

Rule 1: Always post the rules.

Rule 2: Answer the questions you were tagged on and make 10 new ones.

Rule 3: Tag 10 new people and link them to your post.

Rule 4: Let them know they were tagged.

Questions:

1) do you smoke?  hmm. not really? I mean i'll have the occasional one, but i'm not  a heavy smoker. At all. 

2) favorite type of music ooh. uhm honestly it changes so much. I LOVE alternative and indie and all that shizz.. but hard rock too... pop.. bluegrass... love it. 

3) where in the world do you live? right now? Washington state. :3 at the moment anywayyyy.

4) how tall are you 6'0"

5) what ethnicity are you? I am Russian, Scottish, Irish, Maori, Mongolian and Samoan. My gran calls me off white idk lol

6) do you speak any other languages beside English I speak English, German, Russian, Hawaiian, Maori, Ukrainian, Czech, some Polish and basic Italian, spanish and french. 

7) when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Honestly? My first thing was a WWE superstar. Then that and a professional surfer. Then that and a motocrosser, then that and a musician.  I was a diverse child haha 

8) do you ever sing karaoke heck yes. i rock it.  after i've had alcohol.  This should really be would you do it sober? Cause no. jahahhaha 

9) do you have any children? want children? don't have any, but i love kids. And when i am in a stable place in my life, yes. 

10) who do you resemble more mother or father?

Both reallly.  Idon't know. lemme ask.  Mother is angry with me so she said, "YOU ARE YOUR FATHER' S DAUGHTER."  Da said, "you look like you. leave me to the game." SO BOTH. BECAUSE THEY ARE EXTREMELY UNHELPFUL. My questions:

1) hogwarts house?

2) favorite type of music

3) where in the world do you live?

4) how tall are you

5) favourite tv series?

6) do you speak any other languages beside English

7) when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

8) BFFS? (yes i know, i'm mentally 12) 

9) do you have any children? want children?

10) got a doppelgänger?

raiseitupmymasterarse.tumblr.com  kriisehoi.tumblr.com 4ever-a-nerd.tumblr.com  yourcanadianoverlord.tumblr.com  awkwardkatie.tumblr.com cayology.tumblr.com little-lorayne.tumblr.com because-fandoms.tumblr.com thelegendofme.tumblr.com

[queenklu]

If you could go to dinner (and/or take home for the night) with one person, living or dead, who would it be?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

this is difficult bc a lot of the people i’d like to meet would probably be TERRIBLE dinner companions? (Shakespeare for example, like, not at all interested in conversation with me, pings off to make friends with the bartender to get EXPONENTIALLY DRUNK and then laid, not a gr8 nite 4 me).

sooooooooooooo

maybeeeeeeeeee

OH! OH i pick Jeremy Renner. That way when Tom Hiddleston forces us to watch Jungle Book we can be solidaritively supportive of his poor life choices (also we can hide under tables and flick balls of paper at the other Avengers actors and have a great time idk maybe i mean i’d pick jeremy renner

DECISIONS HARD

[queenklu]

2661! 1749! 953! (i love scotland, i've always wanted to go there :D)

On one of my last days I walked to the movie theater to see The Losers by myself—this is the bridge in Stirling that crosses the railroad tracks to the other side of town.

Original barebacking in the British Museum. ~SCANDALOUS!~

HOGMANAY! Aka new years! There’s a whole day/night that’s the festival of lights and it’s really cold but there’s fire like in this chandelier or in these big globes and it’s so pretty kdfalds

TAKE ME BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK

[queenklu]

573

Robert the Bruce’s heart is buried under this rock and no I’m not making this up.

Just his heart.

Probably.

(I think they did a catscan on the box and were like ‘ORGANIC MATTER yay probably a heart’ once because somebody needed to prove it with science.)