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I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.

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y'all it's about to get really fucking humid and hot

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via @timothygoodman on instagram

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Saw a post about how halal and kosher meat will likely be the only reliably safe options in the US because their safety and cleanliness standards aren't dictated by what's the barest legal minimum that government food safety regulations demand.

So you're like 5 years away from "ever notice how the musulmans and jews never get sick from bad meat? clearly this is proof that they are poisoning us" right now.

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-deep breath-

A 'no questions asked' food pantry means no questions asked.

When we're stocking our pantry, we are not looking at a person's clothes or their accessories or what kind of car they drove there in. We are HAPPY to see it BEING USED AT ALL.

I don't know anyone's situation. Maybe they got that designer bag at a thrift shop. Maybe its a knockoff. Maybe it was a gift. Maybe they got it when they had money and now they don't have money. Maybe they're getting stuff for a friend.

Maybe they have plenty of money, don't need to be taking stuff from the pantry, but they are anyway because we said-

NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

Do you know what happens when someone takes from our pantry when they don't need it? We're down one item. But maybe they tell someone that the pantry is there. Or maybe they come back to it when they need it. Or maybe they throw a dollar in the donation box. Or maybe they put an item on the shelf. Or maybe they come to our food drive.

WE DONT CARE.

We don't care who used it.

We care that it was used.

Im not a cop. Don't make me do cop stuff, I wont do it.

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okay but if you ever see a male creative who had a string of great work and then everything else he did was dogshit, go to the "personal life" part of his wikipedia and look at his relationships. you'll either find a major tragedy he didn't recover from (completely understandable) or, more likely, there was a woman in his life doing uncredited shit editing his stuff or contributing generally and she's not there anymore.

I told a friend about this phenomenon in literature and he called me weeks later like, I remembered what you said about women doing uncredited work when tim burton came up. he made a string of bangers then everything else just was nowhere near as good. the timeline matches perfectly to when he was with this german visual artist (lena gieseke). he's done some good work in collaboration, but if things were dug into I suspect we would find she did a lot more than people realise.

so yeah whenever you look around like wow women didn't work in history, or, women aren't auteurs, or, there just aren't as many great female writers - societal reasons for that aside, half the time they absolutely did.

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

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https://dieworkwear.com/2022/08/26/how-to-develop-good-taste-pt-1/

From the comments "In my experience clothing on anyone looks best when it is done with confidence. We are all different shapes and sizes. I was really struck by your post on dressing well that included John Goodman in a faded t-shirt and jeans. He rocks it!"

Excellent advice, whatever gender or style one is looking for. Thank you

I'm a trans guy and Derek, I can tell you my wardrobe has improved a huge amount simply by reading your threads. The "dress for your body type" stuff never worked well for me; your threads about putting together an intentional look and for getting a good fit - that's 99% of the game.

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I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

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I absolutely should NOT be arguing with this person, but I find the weaponization of crowd numbers kind of fascinating- as a person who organizes events and DOES use those numbers for a purpose.

"Your (small city) pride had 'hundreds' of attendees? The Taco Truck festival had TENS OF THOUSANDS."

Some key points that pointed out to him- Taco Fest was held in a much larger city (900k to our 34k), on a larger plot of land (35 acre park to our mid-sized parking lot), with a longer showtime (three days to our three hours.) It's somewhat ridiculous to compare the two.

"People from the small city go to the big city all the time. Surely people from the big city must come to your small city- if they were interested. But they weren't interested, which is why your pride was a failure."

Somewhat an admission that you're not from a small city, but also that you've never organized a community event before.

There is something to be said about crowd estimates as an insult, but it has to be in the context what the expected crowd size was vs the outcome. We expected 400, we got 500- success! It's unreasonable to compare our little pride to the big city pride, which draws crowds that are 20x the population of our city. We were not expecting 700k people, so 500 people is not an insult.

It might be a different story if we were expecting 400 attendees, but instead got 100 attendees and 300 protesters. Thats a different message.

So when people say 'very low attendance, little interest,' its very Trumpish.

And this is also why I took a ton of photos- so I could show what 500 people in a tiny parking lot looks like.

But.

Low attendance does not stop community pride events. We'd put on pride festivals if the expected attendance was one five-person polycule and their nervous bichon frise.

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“I don’t want to be a burden” you’re more like a relief, a gift, a blessing actually

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The thing about gay sailors in the Victorian era is that England and America had totally different takes on it. In the british navy they could, and did, literally kill men for having consensual relationships with other men. But in the US navy, even tho John Adams literally copied England's naval regulations when making America's version, he chose to leave out every proscription against sodomy. And no one knows why!!! England was like hmm yes the death penalty and America was like i dont really see how thats my business. And like gay American sailors could still be charged with things like "uncleanliness" or "indecency" (charges that were vague enough to cover a lot of different things) but bc it wasnt specifically forbidden in the regulations "the commanding officers [were given] wide discretion to prosecute, punish, or ignore."*

And by and large US officers seem to have ignored it. We literally have the records of every flogging (the most extreme form of punishment allowed during these specific years) onboard a naval vessel for the years of 1846-1848 and almost all of the cases that involved homosexual activity "unambiguously refer to male/male homosexual activity involving attempted assaults on children, not consensual couplings between adults."* There are also multiple recorded instances throughout the Victorian Era of an American sailor coming forward with a charge of sexual assault and pulling in other sailors or even officers as witnesses who tell their captain yeah i totally saw them and didn't say anything until this sailor told me it was nonconsensual. There are even records recorded by naval recruitment officers of men with extremely explicit gay tattoos being allowed to join the navy. Why did the US navy not care enough to even include it in the regulations while the British navy literally hanged men for it??? Were we so hard up for sailors that John Adams was like bitch we need every gay sailor we can get????

And weirdly enough this was true on American Whaling ships too! In the recorded cases where homosexual activity led to sailors being disciplined (in some cases punishment so mild as just being dropped off their ship at the next port) it was usually in situations where rape was involved and/or there was a high degree of ship disruption related to it (guys getting into a public knife fight for example). Idk I just think thats so interesting especially when America and England were so similar to be so different in this particular area is fascinating

*quotes from Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail by William Benemann

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men love to make fun of women for overreacting in emergencies when they are, in fact, massively under-reacting

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I mean, we knew, but it's nice to hear so succinctly

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this might sound stupid but I can’t help but believe that the new wave of “birth control is actually horrible for your body, you need to get off it immediately” misinformation from influencers and the ‘natural cycle tracking’ apps suddenly being advertised is a sneaky underhanded way of causing more unplanned pregnancies that people now cannot abort. now is possibly the worst time ever to turn towards ‘natural family planning’