thalassophobicplesiosaurus-blog

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real power is going outside knowing you look ugly and also knowing that if you chose to perform femininity in accordance with patriarchal standards you could look attractive, but genuinely prefering to look ugly and not feeling bad about it. feels good feels organic

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I made a difference in the world!

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Prayer to Amanda

Amanda Fucking Palmer, patron saint of loud-mouthed vulnerability, can you teach me how to be like I was made for it ?

I hear you crying in a room and it makes me invincible, can you explain it Amanda ?

Can you teach me how to body, shirtless on a stage with a piano, how to peel off the gazes thrown at me by men too old to be my father because I dare exist when it’s hot, can you teach me how to show the world what I have inside without tearing my skin off, or is the trick just that ?

Amanda Fucking Palmer patron saint of asking for help without taking or drowning, can you teach me how to exist without the guilt of it ?

I have calluses on my hands from singing too fast and too hard, where is the balance Amanda between happiness and bloodshed ?

May we all learn something from you : that people want to help, that we are all in pain, that it feels better if we dance, that apologies do not make a life, that we’re too scared for our own good, that sometimes, if you bite into it, the fruit really does taste sweet.

Fucking amen, and all that.

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Darude - Sandstorm is a whole musical genre all on its own

“all star” by smash mouth, but only using the sounds and beats on my synth (and also anthony “ten second songs” vincent on some other instruments) these titles are getting too long

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you’re never too old to learn how to draw

never too old to learn how to write. or sculpt. or paint. or design.

learning an art is a decision, not a “talent.” you have to choose to devote time and energy to it. there are rare ppl gifted with the ability to pick up a skill faster than others, but ultimately it all comes down to the choice to invest in it.

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Let's talk about mynoise.net

Have you ever been listening to Rainymood and thought, “Yeah, this is good … but it would be nice if I could customize the sound more, or if there was a little more choice.

Let me introduce you to MyNoise.

MyNoise is a customizable sounscape looper with so many options, even within each soundscape.  So say, for instance, you really love rain sounds when you write or study or relax.  Anything.  I know I’m a big fan of rain sounds.  They have a page for that.

But say you like really high, pattery rain, and LOTS of low thunder.  Here’s where MyNoise really stands out: you can customize that.  See those sliders with all the cute colors?  That is your equalizer. You can adjust the levels based on what you want to hear more and less of.  Here’s how it looks when you want high, pattery rain and low, rumbly thunder:

But say rain isn’t really your jam.  Say you want something a little more ambient, a little more background noise-y.  Something with people.  Well, they have customizable coffee house chatter that even has the levels listed for things like “kitchen,” “babble,” and “table”:

Or say you miss the ocean.

Or say you miss your cat.

Or say you miss your spaceship.

Or say you miss the dungeon where you and your team of scalawag adventurers used to explore and face off against, say, dragons.  In the dungeon.

This site is seriously so helpful, and those are just a fraction of every kind of sounscape the site has to offer.  The best part is that if you want to layer it with music (for instance, I’ll layer a playlist + rain + coffee shop if the scene I’m writing takes place in a coffee shop), you can adjust the master volume, meaning all of your layers stay at their respective volumes, just louder or quieter.

Enjoy!

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Australian comedian Jim Jefferies points out the ridiculousness of American pro-gun arguments. x x

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them: you don’t watch game of thrones?? really? how come?

me: 

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Poverty and oppression make people fatter

A common fat-phobic belief is that fat people are fat because they overeat. A recent submission to @facebooksexism​ perfectly illustrates this stereotype and the harmful classist attitudes it perpetuates: 

Like most fat-phobic beliefs, this stereotype is completely wrong.

It is well accepted in public health science that food insecurity – which is the lack of consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living – predicts higher body weight. 

Some reasons for this association include:

Limited resources and lack of access to nutritious, affordable foods. Heavily processed, low-nutrition foods are usually cheaper, but are more calorie dense and less satisfying to eat.  

Cycles of food deprivation and overeating. Low income people often run out of money for necessities like food before their next paycheck arrives, resulting in extended periods of hunger and starvation followed by periods of compensatory eating when the paycheck arrives. Such eating patterns cause weight gain over time.

High levels of stress, anxiety, & depression, all of which cause physiological changes resulting in weight gain over time.

Limited access to health care. Many chronic health conditions, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, thyroid dysfunction, and type II diabetes, cause weight gain when left untreated. 

All of this means that systematic oppression causes people to be fat for reasons that are outside of their personal control, and that poor fat people are not lying when they report that they cannot afford to put food on the table. Stop spreading the harmful, oppressive, and fat-phobic belief that you can judge a person’s nutrition or eating habits by the size of their body.   

- Mod D

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Can I Still Be Yours?

My mother says my name With a hint Of self-conscious laughter But good intenteions & my trans body grows lips Like wings of wax So that Finally I can speak & kiss & be heard & be loved in return.

How do you tell someone That you forgive them Without acknowledging That they hurt you?

It took us hours of tears Like spilled liquor at shitty bars On nights like running mascara Before getting the words out: Sometimes you cannot see The elephant crushing your kin; But that doesn’t mean it isn’t Filling up the room.

How do you tell someone That you love them despite Without acknowledging You hate them a little?

My mother calls me the wrong thing & my heart clenches up again & I am running again & my trans body once again Feels like a cage To keep the words trapped in Like a thing that’s always On the verge of & never truly my own.

How do you tell someone That you are hurt Without acknowledging That you deserve it?

I write about my mother And the Sorry is like a drug, Like a knife I take to my chest Asking: Can I still be yours? Can we still be each other’s Even if only as wounds?

How do you tell someone That you want to try again Without acknowleding That you gave up first?

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Untitled poem from when I was 18

What do I have to do to get my own attention? The world invades bringing messages all confusing and vital too much so that I wish I could slip into sweet unconsciousness. Even in my sleep the wheel grinds and my dreams are filled with plans and papers rubbed out and scribbled with complex formulae in the margins. I see more when I close my eyes Hear more in the pressing silence Feel more out of my numb body and surely, following this strange logic I might truly think If I were out of my mind.

Context: It was 2004. I had yet to experience depression, and didn’t know I had anxiety. I had no idea what a panic attack was (even though I’d already experienced several), nor did I know what PTSD or dissociation were. I hadn’t heard of ADD yet. I had 20mins of internet access per week and no MySpace profile. The term “mental illness”, to me, implied white rooms with padded walls and little else. But I knew I wasn’t quite normal.

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Fruits and vegetables, before and after human intervention. 

Source

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War… And Peace

I think that if one day I was asked to describe the human race, I would tell them about World War I. When the entire world was thrown into chaos. I would tell them about the trenches. The holes that humans dug in order to hide from the enemy, the enemy that was almost close enough to touch. The enemy that almost looked like them.

I would tell them about No Man’s Land. About how no one could gain an inch of ground, because the second someone lifted their head from the trench they were dead.

And then I would tell them about an odd occurrence in human history. (because war isn’t odd at all to us) I would tell them about December 25, 1914 A.D. The war was still being waged. People were still being killed by the thousands for reasons I don’t think anyone truly understands. Humans were still horrible, but then in the middle of all this horror they began to sing.

Songs of silence, and peace, and hope, and love were sung in the trenches on both sides, and both sides laid down their weapons, and refused to fight anymore. We call this the Christmas Armistice.

That’s what humanity is. Humans are awful, hateful creatures that will always wage war, but they are something else too. Give humans the smallest chance, even if it is just a day of the year that they happen to associate with peace and family, and they will forget about why they are meant to hate one another. They will forget about race, and creed, and any other thing that divides them and they will sing.

They will sing the songs of their childhood and realize that the man at the other end of the gun barrel was once a child too.

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My daughter                        wouldn’t hurt a spider That had nested Between her bicycle handles For two weeks She waited Until it left of its own accord If you tear down the web I said It will simply know This isn’t a place to call home And you’d get to go biking She said that’s how others Become refugees isn’t it?

Fady Joudah, ‘Mimesis’ (via soracities)

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In case you missed my snap story yesterday

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So I work at a video game store in a mall and across the hall from us is this really nice suit shop. One day one of the guys came in an asked if they could use our microwave (the store they used to go to closed down) and we bargined for use of their bathroom in return since the mall bathrooms are like a 5 min trek.

So for like three months now we just have these men in really nice suits come in and talk while using our microwave and teach them about nerdy shit? Then I, the goblin king in various shitty tee shirts and paint stained pants, walk into their super expensive store and just get greeted with “Yo dude what’s good?” and talk about the pains of steaming silken dress shirts properly and it’s my favorite business interaction every day

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Lucifer Morningstar, the actual devil, is all about personal responsibility, agency, and taking the blame for your actions. (Except where he himself is concerned, but we all have our foibles.)

Reese is so frustrating and dangerous. He came across as a real piece of work from early on and I think I finally pinpointed what’s so terrible about him. He’s entitled. He’s the sort of man who really think he deserves your love, that every little stumbling block is a chapter on the road to your happily ever after. He’ll disregard your choices, ignore what you say, all to hold up his idea that he loves you more than everyone and deserves your love in a way that no one else does. 

When he goes to talk to Linda, it’s not to make things right between them, it’s to “earn her back” like she’s some sort of prize he’s guaranteed if he acts good enough, if he learns the right life lessons. It’s like that Peridot quote, “you’re supposed to reward my emotional honesty!” He really can’t move past his view of her as “his wife” and begin to see her as her own person. It’s a subtle delusion but a really destructive one for him and everyone around him and I think Lucifer and the writer’s room does a good job of showing how this line of thinking ultimately tears everyone around you down. It really is a toxic behavior pattern, a loss of connection with reality on a ridiculous scale, and so often media glorifies it. 

But here even Dan, who worries about Chloe and still can’t shake the old habits of their relationship, doesn’t see her as some prize he’s bound to win if he gets all the right achievements and levels up. He has his own hobbies and life, he interacts with other people, he works with Chloe professionally and they still have a relationship as friends. Linda, who readily admits her and Reese’s marriage was bad and broken, has moved on and is ready to be a better person because of it. Everyone else is miles ahead of this guy and he comes off as pathetic and a danger to himself. Ultimately he can’t recognize what’s wrong with his worldview and it dooms him. That ending scene wasn’t a torture in the traditional sense, but it proved how his pattern of behavior was his own Hell. Even on earth, it destroyed him.