Wait? What did you say?

Neurodivergent Nurse at your service

[waitwhat]

Hello. It’s nice to be back from the hellscape of twitter.

And no. I’m not selling my url.

[lilacbreastedroller]

BIG DISCLAIMER: i was 9 when 9/11 happened, so this might be more about my own crystalizing tastes than anything else. i think it’s a pretty darn good theory tho and other people have validated it.

BIGGER DISCLAIMER: i am not saying that country music prior to 9/11 was free from nationalist, racist, misogynist undertones - i just think that these themes became more the norm!

MY HOT TAKE:

with very few exceptions, including goodbye earl, before he cheats, and daddy Iessons (side note - all women!) 9/11 ruined country music. around 2014 onward we’ve got margo price, sturgill simpson, jason isbell etc., who are making country music great again (wink), but those folks are mostly considered “alternative” country. the mainstream country music for well over a decade now is a glut of trash performative patriotic / working-class-but-not-really lab-crafted budweiser-sponsored nonsense that has managed to sound rebellious (or has convinced its fans that it sounds rebellious) without ever actually questioning any power structure. so much so that artists who ACTUALLY criticized the government were literally blacklisted for nearly a decade (the dixie chicks)

pre-9/11 country music, though not perfect or ideologically pure by any stretch, did not have the raging american flag painted truck boner that comes to mind for a lot of people who say “i like everything except rap and country”

SPECIFICALLY, toby keith’s “courtesy of the red, white, and blue (the angry american)” (2002) literally destroyed country music. it was a direct answer to the 9/11 attacks and war song in support of the invasion of afghanistan. the lyrics read like a disjointed feverish email chain letter forwarded from your great uncle sprinkled with glittering american flag gifs and heavily saturated pictures of bald eagles. the entire song is lifted from an estimated 248 peeling bumper stickers collected from rusted trucks on cinder blocks in overgrown yards, cut up and arranged to fit a catchy, formulaic tune that is almost certainly the background music playing in george w. bush’s head at all times.

“we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the american way and uncle sam put your name at the top of his list and the statue of liberty started shakin’ her fist and the eagle will fly, and it’s gonna be hell, when you hear mother freedom start a'ringin’ her bell”

country music and the new country musicians that toby keith paved the way for became so pro establishment and so unquestioningly nationalistic that, again, the dixie chicks who went against this grain were blacklisted by the industry and received death threats from country music fans. hell, there are folks who STILL froth at the mouth at the mere mention of the dixie chicks.

9/11 killed outlaw country - how can you sing the praises of law breakers when your main circuit consists of singing to troops? there are some great classic country songs critiquing the police state - especially from johnny cash and merle haggard - now country music artists hold fundraisers for FOPs. new country music is basically in-law country music.

you don’t have to write a pro-bush patriotic anthem to be part of this post-9/11 ruination. playing meaningless songs about living in the heart of (read: white) america, eschewing the city (read: not white), and cracking open a cold one with the boys for “authentic” country music is also important to the war effort.

there’s a progression of themes here:

post 9/11 top tier: war anthem, vocally patriotic, directly used as pro war propaganda; which paved the way for: “things used to be so much better” thinly veiled racist laments, good for campaign ads; which paved the way for meaningless party anthems - attempts to make things “like they used to be” and craft a reality that neither the artist nor listener likely ever experience.

that brings us to what most people think of today when they say they hate country music: the country party anthem - “tiny hot gal in tight jean shorts who can drink beer like the guys, she doesn’t like beyoncé Like Other Girls, oh she’s so into me and my truck, i’m gonna take her fishing after i finish sowing my corn - sung by a guy who’s never touched a tractor” - has overtaken the tragic, done me wrong, despairing country ballads of tammy wynette, george jones, and even up into pre-9/11 contemporaries like reba mcentire and george strait. you didn’t necessarily have to be country to relate to their pain. now you have to perform suburban redneckness to enjoy luke bryan.

when was the last time you heard a sad country song?

after 9/11, cowboys (whether or not they had ever been near a cow) weren’t allowed to be sad anymore (no more done me wrong country), and they certainly weren’t allowed to question authority (no more outlaw country). partying hardy became the most important American Thing and if you don’t sing about that, our Enemies Will Win.

so - understanding that country music has always had bad stuff, and that like any genre it suffers from commercialization, 9/11 DESTROYED COUNTRY MUSIC. and toby keith gleefully helped destroy it.

for some further evidence of the decline of country music, please listen to the dixie chicks’ “long time gone” which is an indictment of the industry (i believe it was written before 9/11 but my point still stands - the genre was on the decline and 9/11 was the major cultural event that hastened the decline).

maybe i am a curmudgeon - almost every generation of country music has had its own “country music is not what it used to be” anthem, but i really think something distinct happened with 9/11.

[thunderboltsortofapenny]

Can confirm. Alan Jackson and Toby Keith, the blacklisting of Dixie Chicks, literally the only singer I can think of that ever spoke out against anything from 2001-2010 was Johnny Cash. I’d also say that the uber-patriotic stance lead to the shiny, vapid County Boy® nonsense that lead to so many of the solo artists all sounding and looking the same.

[cenodyke-deactivated20211019]

Johnny cash wrote an entire album about the destruction of Indigenous lands and of Indigenous people, Kris Kristofferson has been an activist most of his career working closely with the UFM, Woody Guthrie was a social justice advocate and union activist, Dolly Parton has tackled explicitly feminist issues even in the 60s and has been an avid supporter of her lgbt fans, Willie Nelson made Farm Aid to try and help farmers in danger of losing their farms due to mortgages keep them and is also an avid supporter of LGBT rights as well as marijuana legalization, Lorettea Lynn wrote about birth control in the 70s and had her song banned, i could go on!

When in the correct hands, country music is a powerful medium, but post 9/11 it’s been handed off to apathetic white men who have turned it into the most useless genre of music out there.

[girlmeetsbanjo]

[vvhack]

[boluscoffeestat-deactivated2020]

reblogging more for the derpy dog :D

[pagewoman]

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul

John Muir (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

[theitunurse-deactivated20190904]

I’m a doctor. We get all the glory. And credit. And guess what? We only deserve part of it. I started out in medicine in the mid-80′s, volunteering at an ER. And the biggest shock to me was learning how much of what happens in a hospital is nurse territory. Doctors will see you anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes a day, depending on how sick you are. And the rest is the nurses. They’re the ones making sure you get your pills and checking that your vital signs aren’t dropping. They make sure you don’t fall down and break something. If you start vomiting, doctors will run out of the room and the nurses will rush in. They change your wound dressings and start your IV line. They’ll bring you a warm blanket. And clean disgusting things off you. Even if you’re drunk. Or delirious. Or mean. And through all of this they try be friendly and positive. Even though you aren’t their only sick patient. I respect nurses. I learned early on that they’re key to being a good doctor. You piss off the nursing staff, and you’ll have a miserable career at that hospital. Respect and treat them well, and you’ll never regret it. They’re as important to being a good doctor as your medical degree. Maybe more. If you come out of medical school with a chip on your shoulder against nurses, you better lose it fast. Because they will make or break your training, and often know more than you do. Be nice and they’ll teach you. A good neurology nurse is often a better inpatient neurologist than some doctors I’ve met. I remember a guy named Steve, who was an intern with me a long time ago. We were only a few months out of medical school, and as we were writing chart notes one morning a nurse came over and asked if he’d go listen to his patient’s heart. With icy contempt, and not even looking up from the chart, he said “I don’t have to listen to his heart, because I looked at his EKG.” They ain’t the same thing, dude. If he’d listened he might have noticed that the patient had developed a loud murmur in the last 24 hours. When the attending caught it a few hours later, Steve got chewed out. If he’d taken the nurse’s advice, and listened, he wouldn’t have gotten reprimanded by the residency board. Here’s a quote from “Kill as Few Patients as Possible” by Oscar London, MD: “Working with a good nurse is one of the great joys of being a doctor. I cannot understand physicians who adopt an adversarial relationship with nurses. They are depriving themselves of an education in hospital wisdom.” Those doctors are also depriving themselves of friends. On a difficult day on call, sometimes all it takes is a sympathetic nurse to temporarily add you to her patient list, steal you a Diet Coke from the fridge, and let you cry on her shoulder for 5 minutes. It doesn’t make the day any less busy, but helps you absorb the punishment better. What got me started on this? While I was rounding this weekend, a grateful patient’s family brought the ICU nurses a box of donuts, and so the staff was picking through them. One said, “Oh, this kind is my favorite, it has cream filling.” And a patient in one of the rooms yelled, “Hey, babe, I got my own kind of cream-filled dessert in here! Come have a taste!” You say that to a waitress, and you’d likely get your kicked out of the restaurant. You say that to a co-worker, and you’d be fired and/or sued for harassment. You say that to a lady in a bar, and you’ll likely get a black eye. And what did the nurse do? In spite of the patient said, she went in his room, turned off his beeping IV pump, and calmly told him that he would not talk to her that way. And I admire that. Nursing is a damn tough job. And the people who do it are tougher. And somehow still remain saints.

Angela Ar (via

theitunurse

)

This makes me feel good.

(via adenosinetriesphosphate)

[waitwhat]

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away, or eat it away, or starve it away, or punch it away, or even therapy it away. It’s just there and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it, and love it, and move on and be better for it … across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.

Cheryl Strayed  (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

[wnq-quotes]

I miss you, my love, and have such a need to see you. Solitude may well be of benefit to me, but how hard your absence is for me! I long for your little face, your voice, your gestures, and your tenderness. I’m quite melting with tenderness for you today — and it’s painful.

Simone de Beauvoir, Letters To Sartre (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

[waitwhat]

[wordsnquotes]

Your heart will fix itself. It’s your mind you need to worry about. Your mind where you locked the memories, your mind where you have kept pieces of the ones that hurt you, that still cut through you like shards of glass. Your mind will keep you up at night, make you cry, destroy you over and over again. You need to convince your mind that it has to let go…because your heart already knows how to heal.

Nikita Gill   (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

The women whom I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because their shit worked out. They got that way because shit went wrong, and they handled it. They handled it a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, but they handled it. Those women are my superheroes.

Elizabeth Gilbert (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

[waitwhat]

The irony of breaking up on the first is that every day of the calendar is counting the pain filled days.

[gotinstarblog-deactivated201512]

[half-black-phillip]

I’m so mad because this worked

[britney2007spears]

help me roger

[telanu]

Reblogging myself because

Originally posted by gifs-for-the-masses

[luthienebonyx]

Reblogging myself because… what was that? Five minutes?

O_O

[riskpig]

………my friend has made me curious

[maryburgers]

help me roger

[maryburgers]

Update: after I reblogged this someone messaged me offering me tickets to the sold out Hausu screening with a Q&A and autograph session with the director

[hermes-whore-deactivated2019021]

let’s do it, roger

[spitefulreality-deactivated2015]

Roger helppppp

[curvycorinneranga]

I need you Roger!

[thaebae]

ROGER PLEASE

[leaping-hare-witchery-deactivat]

Roger, baby, won’t you help me out?

[therealpexton-deactivated201804]

roger please 

[fenland-witch-deactivated202005]

Come on Roger, bring us that luck please. 🤞

[wheelietrash]

Roger, babe.. please

[boluscoffeestat-deactivated2020]

For my Cubbies #flytheW

[waitwhat]

Why the heck not.

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

I lost myself trying to please everyone else. Now I’m losing everyone while I’m finding myself.

Unknown  (via thatkindofwoman)

[catgifcentral]

…and she’s gone 

[woodelf68]

Another victim of the Void.

[snitchwillow]

I love her facial expression right before she slips through lol. she just pauses and is like “welp, here I go, goodbye world”

[link6echo-deactivated20181215]

I woke my bf up by cackling for WAY too long over this

[since-the-900s-deactivated20190]

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

“THIS IS HOW IT ENDS”

[wordsnquotes]

I have lived in my body for years and still need maps and lights to find my way to how I feel.

Michelle K., “Body of Maps” (via wordsnquotes)

[words-and-feelings-deactivated2]

Go ahead tell me how much of a mess you are, how many flaws you think you have, how many mistakes you’ve made. Watch me love every inch of you in every way and tell you you’re perfect every single day.

 tullipsink (via thatkindofwoman)