bangingpatchouli

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Hobrosexuality - when men mooch off women.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A slain Minnesota lawmaker was the House’s top Democrat and helped shepherd a package of liberal initiatives to passage when her party had a narrow majority two years ago. After Democrats lost their majority, she helped broker a deal to keep state government funded and provided a crucial vote to pass it, though her party hated it.

State Rep. Melissa Hortman, 55, the House’s Democratic leader and former speaker, was shot to death early Saturday in her Minneapolis-area home along with her husband by someone posing as a law enforcement officer. Another prominent area lawmaker, state Sen. John Hoffman, was shot and wounded, along with his wife, in their home about 15 minutes away in what Gov. Tim Walz described as “targeted political violence.”

The shooting shocked officials in both parties in a state that prides its politics as being “Minnesota nice,” despite higher partisan tensions in recent years. While Minnesota hasn’t voted for a GOP presidential candidate since 1972, and all of its statewide elected officials are Democrats, the Legislature is nearly evenly divided, with the House split 67-67 until Hortman’s death and Democrats holding a 34-33 majority in the Senate.

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Hello Matthew.

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Sooooo uuuhhhhhh I’m a published VB artist now ✌️✌️

The full comic is available on Etsy, sold by LuckofQueens :D

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dean jr. who's always known his dad's a little... different, than most of his friend's dads.

his dad, who volunteered to billet a different student from the local college's theology or history department in the guest bedroom every year since dj was twelve.

his dad, who flinched at loud noises -- metal thermoses dropped on concrete floors and doors slammed in high summer winds -- but who'd get this eerie meditative calm whenever he heard fireworks, or caught a snippet of foley gunfire in some old war reenactment on the history channel late at night.

his dad, who wore more and more weird occult jewelry the older he got -- heavy silver chains laced with charms that jangled when he walked, and bracelets with arcane script etched on them, and always that thick, tarnished ring on a chain around his neck. (one of dj's earliest memories is sitting on his dad's belly one lazy weekend morning in bed, propped up against his dad's bent knees, trying to pull that ring into his mouth. dad prying it free with those big gentle hands of his and twisting the chain so the ring hung down the back of his shirt where dj couldn't grab at it.)

his dad, who loved movies more than almost anybody dj's ever known, who had the best collection of old bootlegs and classic movies dj got to introduce first his friends and then his dates to, who'd get quiet and a little misty-eyed when he'd slip old westerns and black-and-white monster movies on during his insomniac spells.

his dad, who cooked like shit but could bake almost anything on his first try, no matter how convoluted the recipe. his dad, who had this ancient 1920s toaster that burned the bread half the time but who steadfastly refused to buy a newer one made sometime in this century.

his dad, who got a little detached at the end of things, who'd ramble on to dj and his hospice nurses and anybody who'd listen that when he was young, he'd walked amongst the horsemen and seen the righteous man slay death with his own scythe and beheld the apocalypse. that he'd killed god and trapped the devil and cut down angels and demons both.

his dad, who talked in his sleep, who ground his teeth at night so badly the family dentist wanted him to wear a mouth guard while he slept, especially after he broke a molar during dj's sophomore year of high school and swallowed half of it before he woke up.

his dad, who maybe was special forces or something like that; something that left him with action movie hero scars but secret enough that dj couldn't ever find him in the national archives. (his grandfather, he found; one john eric winchester, born april '54, deceased july 2006, joined the marines 1973).

his dad, who had a bigger first aid kit than the school nurse, who picked dj up after a foul ball split open his eyebrow during little league baseball, heedless of the blood smeared against the shoulder of his shirt. his dad, who sat dj on the tailgate of his pickup and closed up the cut with butterfly strips; who sent dj back on the field to finish the game in his blood-crusted jersey that said "WINCHESTER-ATCHISON" arced across the back because mom had paid his little league dues.

his dad, who never took flowers to cemeteries, just whiskey and dozens of salt packets snaked from restaurant condiment bars. his dad, who never smoked as far as dj knows, but who always had a lighter on him anyways.

his dad, who had a meticulous will and a crematory service already picked out and paid for; his dad who had dozens of friends dj'd never met who showed up at the funeral in nice-ish jeans and logger boots, who slapped dj on the shoulder and told him tall tales about how his dad saved their lives "back in the day". his dad, who left dj the house and the car and the antiquarian books, and seventeen boxes full of burn bags that dj dutifully incinerated in the massive backyard fire pit his dad dug the year dj turned six.

his dad, who almost never called dj by his full name, who would ruffle up his carefully gelled hair and call him "deej" and smile with all his teeth, who had visibly been crying after dj's graduation, but who'd yelled louder than anybody else when the principal announced, "dean hayden winchester, class of 2046".

his dad, who told dj he loved him in a casual, careless way, every day dropping him off at school and every time he hung up the phone after dj left home, and one last time while holding his hand in the bed with rails that the hospice had provided.

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when's the last time you tasted blood and what would it take to stem the flood

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you know there are limits to what i'll do, right? aw, he's playing hard to get, that's cute.

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[Men who lived boys, Julian thought, simply loved beauty, in a way men who loved girls did not. There were beautiful girls who had the same pure effect as beautiful boys, but girls were to be assessed as mothers-to-be, they were not simply and only lovely.] A.S. Byatt, The Children’s Book

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Supernatural S8E20 Pac-Man Fever

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Another resignation from CBS due to Trump’s lawsuit against that network.

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If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

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dean is imprisoned by his devotion for sam. at first, it was a childlike wonder for his tiny baby feet and the slope of his little nose. dean would curl around him in his crib and hold him close, nose pressed to the crown of his head and whispering to him about knights of the round table.

then, everything innocent and sweet burnt alongside their mother and was replaced with a desperate kind of love that made john glance twice. he sat beside a toddling sam in the back seat of the impala and kept their hands tangled together, fingers sticky and warm. he’d carry sam on his back until his legs were sore and screaming, hold him close when john was quiet and staring over a bottle of whiskey.

then sammy went to school, and dean was busy learning about things terrible and worrying that sam would be taken from him while he slept. he was there when sam was dropped off and there to pick him up, teeth biting lip and cheeks gnawed raw.

he was never far from sam, never. they ate together, slept together, shared the same bathroom all their childhood. and then sam was gone, for so long and seemingly never to return to his side and dean was distraught.

he didn’t eat, he fought until his knuckles broke and his nose went crooked, he slept with every women he came across and hunted in nameless towns miserable and tired.

and then sam was back. legs bent awkwardly in the passenger seat with cheeks flushed and alive and so close to him. he felt high with companionship, hands and shoulders grazing sam’s and knees knocking under diner tables. they bickered and sang along to the radio and it was an overwhelming sweetness that scared him blind, and he kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye obsessively.

then their dad was back and so angry, and dean’s teeth were oily slick with blood that dripped down his chin. his eyes were slits and he wanted desperately to be okay, for sam to be okay. and then his dad, who he was devoted to only second to sam, was pleading with sam to choose the demon over dean.

john said, “killing this demon comes first, before me, before everything.”

and like white hot lightning, sam’s eyes flicked to his in the rearview mirror, and he whispered, “no sir, not before everything.”

in that moment, dean understood that this devotion was mutual, that sam loved him just as selfishly, that he would live because sam said so and there was no one he believed in more than his little brother.

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this was so not worth crawling out of my grave for

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"As a result of these deadly quarrels, Pollux found himself separated from Castor for the first time, and such was his love for him that he asked Zeus to either bring his brother back to life or deprive him of his innate immortality."

Castor and Pollux // Sam and dean

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(x)

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The Onion continues to never miss