an-ungraceful-swan

[an-ungraceful-swan]

I don't wanna hear one more bitch saying that contacting your senators&reps doesn't work

Btw, this is FAR from getting rid of the land selloff from the BBB. Keep at it. Mike Lee specifically is notable because he's from Utah, the state that's pushed for that sell off very heavily for mining income.

[an-ungraceful-swan]

POV: You’re Josh Abrams about to drop the worst pick up line of all time

[an-ungraceful-swan]

GET GRUFFALO'D, BITCH

[an-ungraceful-swan]

updated as of 6/21

Here’s my Keepblr Summer Reading board, I’m gonna count everything I’ve read since the start of June!

Under the cut are the books I’ve read broken down!

Read a “Popular” Book You’ve Never Read: Don't Let The Forest In by C.G. Drews (6/16)

I'd heard quite a few good things about the book and it kept popping up in recommendation lists which is how I deem something popular or not. It was fine, it didn't really move me the way I think it was trying to and It all felt like. Very simplistic for what it was trying to do. The prose was nice though.

Read a Translated Book: V13 Chronicle of a Trial by Emmanuel Carrère (6/1)

Translated from French, this book documents the trial following the attacks on the Bataclan. It’s not an easy or light read by any means, but it’s very thorough and invested in all parties as human first and foremost.

Read a Debut Novel: Boys With Sharp Teeth by Jenni Howell (6/13)

This book was very conceptually interesting but just left me kind of confused. I really did want to like it but for like 68% I had no idea what was going on. Some books can function on vibes alone, this book was not such a book. The end definitely got better, and then much worse, and overall a very muddled reading experience.

Write a Book Review: My Goodreads

I'm not a particularly good reviewer but I try to write a paragraph or so for literally everything I read if only to remind myself of my thoughts on it. It's not detailed to perfection, but it gets the job done.

Read a Book Over 400 Pages: Practical Rules for Cursed Witches by Kayla Cottingham (6/5)

This book is by definition an intentionally cozy, lighthearted fantasy, but it still knows how to pull at the necessary heartstrings and still make you laugh. It’s the type of book you can really tell the author had fun writing and that’s always an improvement to the reading experience.

Read a Book Solely Because You Like The Cover: Summer Girls by Jennifer Dugan

This one is so cute, both the cover and the book itself, it's not trying to do much aside from be a fun fluffy romance and that it does! It's not my genre of choice but it was very light, good summer read.

Read a Book From a Genre You “Never” Read: Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt (6/10)

I'm not opposed to reading nonfictions but economics is not my cup of tea and I only read this because I couldn't find anything else the library had on demand. It was fine, posed some interesting theories but didn't change my life or anything

[an-ungraceful-swan]

I can't do much but maybe this will interest someone. This cookbook is by a classically trained autistic chef, made for people with sensory issues. It's sold 1/6th of its initial run because apparently no one wants to have an autistic person interviewed on TV.

Apparently it's also very funny.

Spread this around! I bet someone here can use this.

[an-ungraceful-swan]

“they never should have said yes when you asked.”

“i didn't ask—” [GUNSHOT] [CAR CRASH] [BOOM] [PEOPLE SCREAMING] [SIRENS] [GLASS BREAKS] [DISTANT YELLING] [EXPLOSION] [HELICOPTERS AND NEWS TRUCKS] “... WE’RE REPORTING LIVE FROM THE SCENE-“ [AMBULANCE SIRENS]

[an-ungraceful-swan]

for no reason whatsoever here’s a reminder that if you consider yourself a leftist/punk/abolitionist/anarchist/radical in any sort of way and get called into jury duty, you are to become the most square person on earth during the jury questionnaire!!!

don’t be that guy who says fuck the police in the jury questionnaire! that just gets you sent home! if you want to generate change, interact with the case and use your jury vote for good! ESPECIALLY if it’s a high profile case!

[an-ungraceful-swan]

do you think they know how much they contributed to online literacy? to the spirit of curiousity? to the idea of doing research yourself instead of always having it laid out in front of you?

[an-ungraceful-swan]

Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

[an-ungraceful-swan]

I know that some British people take umbrage at Americans calling the Great British Bake Off relaxing, but it's just because GBBO is such a different kind of stressful from American baking shows.

American baking shows will be called something like "Cupcake Knife Fight", there's horror movie lighting everywhere and dramatic stings every 5 seconds. All of the contestants are shit talking each other and fist fighting over the one single deep fryer provided by production. It will show the judges all whispering to each other at their super villain table overlooking the whole kitchen, and one will be like, "Oh my god. Everyone look at Brenda right now. She's straight tanking it." And it will cut to Brenda, who is running around covered in flour and crying and also bleeding for some reason. Then you get a clip from an interview with one of the contestants, and they're like, "I really need to win this. Without this award money, I'm gonna need to close my restaurant, sell my dad, and live out of my car. AGAIN." Then the giant digital doomsday clock overhead lets out a horrid klaxon, the judges tell half of them that their cupcakes taste disgusting, and one of them gets eliminated and sent to walk down the dramatically-lit shame hallway never to be seen again.

Meanwhile GBBO is in a lovely, brightly colored tent, there are delightful and friendly hosts/jesters there to keep everyone entertained, and all of the B Roll is of like... a bumblebee going into a flower, or a lamb running in a field. And yes, there will be moments where someone will mess up their timing or something, and they'll be looking at their bake through the oven door like, "oh gosh I don't think this will rise in time!" Then they stand up to find Paul Hollywood directly behind them ominously. His creepy whitewalker eyes will glow white, and he'll say something like "the 12th of June. 2035. Drowning." And his eyes will go back to normal and he'll walk away. Then the baker gives a playful grimace to the camera and says "that didnt sound great, did it?". Cut to a sweet looking older woman sipping tea on a stool and she says "oo I do hope that Prue enjoys the taste of my sugary, sticky baps!". Then, at the end, someone gets a gold star for doing good, and the loser of the episode gets in the middle of a giant group hug. You see all of them at the end of the series at a giant carnival with their families and the post credits informs you that all of the contestants have become a Partridge Family-style traveling band and stayed friends forever.

[an-ungraceful-swan]

"An insult to practically everybody with any point of view at all" one of the most beautiful sentences possible with the English language.

[an-ungraceful-swan]

they should hold 4 versions of every olympic event in this order to witness the full breadth of human capabilities:

primary schoolers

random nonathletic adults

olympians

olympians roided and doped up to the max

[an-ungraceful-swan]

the whole "lipstick on a pig" thing makes no sense because the second we gave a pig access to makeup she became god's cuntiest soldier

[an-ungraceful-swan]

i had a vision please use these for good or evil or whatever

[an-ungraceful-swan]

I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven't seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka "raptures of the deep"

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.

when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍