‘staring into the camera like you’re on the office’ is such an interesting cultural phenomenon because it points to one of my very favorite things in pop culture, which is the use of commonly known fictional situations to indicate an emotion or context that is extremely specific and can’t necessarily be communicated with language alone.
why do characters on the office look into the camera? on the office, the characters are being filmed as part of a documentary; they understand they are being filmed and can acknowledge that fourth wall and those theoretical future viewers. but because the office is a comedy, that fourth wall acknowledgement is not about explaining motivations or gaining approval for an action, but about sharing an agreement with a group of people who are not actually there.
characters on the office look into the camera when something ridiculous is happening that no one in the room thinks is ridiculous but the person looking at the camera, were they to say ‘this is so ridiculous’ to the people in the room, their comrades in fiction, they would get serious pushback or anger; to those characters the situation is serious. the character looking into the camera is a more objective viewer, like the audience, and by looking at us they’re putting themselves on our objective team. and in the future when this ‘documentary’ would air, they would be vindicated as the person who understood that the situation was ridiculous.
so in real life, when we talk about ‘looking into the camera like we’re on the office’, this very specific emotion is what we’re referring to: that we’re in a situation that any objective viewer would find inherently ridiculous, and are seeking acknowledgement from an invisible but much larger group that would agree with us, even though nobody in the situation would do so. we’re putting ourselves in an outsider position, a less emotional position, and inherently a more powerful position, because we’re not vulnerable to being laughed at like all the ridiculous people we’re among. we’re among them, but we’re not with them, and the millions of people watching us on theoretical tv would be on our team, not theirs. that’s such a specific idea and concept, and one that’s really hard to communicate in pure language. but we can say ‘looking into the camera like we’re on the office’ and it’s much easier to communicate what we mean.
for me that’s what pop culture is for, and why it’s so important that it’s pop culture. maybe it feels more special if it’s only you and a grape who know that something exists, but the more people consume something, the more its situations and reactions become common knowledge, a sort of communal well from which we can draw to articulate real life problems. and ultimately, the easier it is for us to communicate and understand each other.
You know how anti-abortion propaganda pegs women as emotionally distraught, sad and alone after their abortions? I was one of them.
I never expected it. Leading up to the procedure, I was laughing my ass off in the clinic, joking with my best friend about how we wanted to keep the “sack of cells” to put on the mantle.
But in the three weeks following my abortion, I sobbed at everything. Being alone was debilitating. I lost my shit and banged my head. Laugher was a foreign concept.
I was everything the pro-lifers said I would be.
When I wasn’t sobbing, I was rolling around in bed, with just enough energy to want to get out of bed, but too little to put my feet to the floor. And when I was up, I snapped. I screamed when something went wrong—or just not right.
As in not finding a spatula—this was grounds for a full-on breakdown in the kitchen, because not finding it meant not making myself lunch, which meant eating out, which meant spending money, which meant time not working and not working meant I wasn’t functioning.
I was equating my self-worth to my ability to find a spatula.
I threw the rest of the utensils on the floor, partly out of desperation, partly out of rage. I slammed the drawer. I hit my head with my palm. I wanted the mess in my head out. I wanted out.
It was ironic though, that I, the usual dreamer of escape plans, of plan Bs, Cs and Ds, was unable to see the several other spatula-like utensils in my kitchen, or recognize the other lunch options crowded in the fridge.
I was not myself.
On less volatile days, I begged my husband to stay. I begged him to come for me at lunch, to leave work early, to arrive at work late. I was being clingy—I, the one who shoos everyone out of the house on the regular, because they disturb my sacred workspace.
When my husband did leave for work, I created imaginary situations about how I was going to end up alone. He was going to leave. He was just waiting for the right day. Surely he would reach a breaking point with me. Surely everyone would. How much of my emotions could anyone take? Even I couldn’t take much more.
Logic was gone from my brain and my body. I couldn’t make sense of anything. My head was constantly spinning in some vicious cycle. I wasn’t myself. I felt powerless.
I was everything the pro-lifers said I would be—except regretful. I didn’t regret the abortion. At all.
That’s when I understood what was really happening to me. It was the hormones.
I remember the day. I was in the shower. I couldn’t get over this idea of loneliness. Sure, I had outbursts before, courtesy of synthetic hormones. But never had I felt so alone. I loved being alone. It wasn’t like me to be distraught over it.
And then it hit me.
“Oxytocin! It’s the oxytocin!!!” I blurted out. My mouth hung open as I stared into space processing it all. “It’s the oxytocin.”
Somehow my mind had wandered back to ninth grade health class in—guess what—Catholic school. The lesson was on hormones. While the teacher brushed as quickly over the topic as possible, he did manage to sputter out a few facts on oxytocin, AKA the bonding hormone. We learned it was what connected mothers and children and husbands and wives. That was it.
What the teacher really wanted to say was that oxytocin plays a major role in pregnancy, and it gives your orgasms that toe-tingling wow-factor. But you know, this was Catholic school—where the smoke from the burning fires of hell clouds the curriculum.
Somehow this nugget of information stuck with me, all the way to my post-abortion meltdown.
So I thought: If oxytocin was responsible for bonding, could the lack of it be responsible for my loneliness? And if my body was producing more of it because of the pregnancy, did production stop as the sack was yanked out of my uterus? And did this send a shock through my body and mind?
I was betting yes. I set to researching as soon as I got out of the shower. My hormones were way imbalanced. This I knew. The powerless feeling reminded me of all those times they gave me depression and bipolar meds and nothing changed until I threw away my birth control pills.
My weepiness was so absurd it had to be related to estrogen. My mood swings and racing thoughts were just like those I would get from the pseudo-bipolar hormonal imbalances.
But all this from the voluntary expulsion of some cells? This was new territory.
I knew women suffered from some pretty messed-up hormonal imbalances after giving birth. Post-partum depression is a widely recognized issue, even if it isn’t completely understood.
So I researched that. And what did I find? Oxytocin. Turns out that women with lower levels of oxytocin are at higher risk for post-partum depression.
Hmmmm, I thought.
So what about miscarriages? After all, your body is used to producing extra pregnancy hormones and then it stops.
And then what about abortions? Technically, it’s the same in the eyes of the uterus. This search took a little more effort.
While I did find evidence claiming that miscarriages cause hormone imbalances and emotions like that of post-partum depression, it wasn’t as forthcoming.
We talk a lot about women being depressed after a miscarriage, but not in a physiological context. The tone set by the American Pregnancy Association and the American Psychological Association is that these post-miscarriage emotions happen because of the sadness caused by the loss of the baby, as if hormonal changes are a mere add-on.
But that’s not always true. I wasn’t sad that I lost a baby or killed some cells or however you want to see it. I didn’t regret it. But I was still so, so sad.
Unfortunately, no one gives you a pamphlet in the abortion clinic warning that your hormonal changes may fuck up the next month of your life.
Other countries do, but not ours. Australia, even Canada, and the most Catholic Ireland acknowledges the hormonal changes that lead to emotional distress (within the context of a miscarriage, of course).
These are just the facts we need to be spreading. This is the dialogue we need to be creating.
I’m not crazy. We’re not crazy. The ones who dismiss physiological issues for psychological concerns are the ones who need to be examined. Not us.
Kudos to the women who already know this and thank you to the ones who are sharing it.
For more on the subject of abortion and hormonal imbalance, check out
Period Makeover and PASS Awareness.
Yes! After losing a pregnancy to abortion or miscarriage your hormones change dramatically. It is completely normal to be very emotional during this time. I’d like to add that it’s also normal to have a lot of emotions that have nothing to do with the hormone changes. Any and all post abortion emotions are real and valid no matter how or why you’re feeling them.
@xojane-yahoopartner thank you so much for writing this. i never fully understood my post abortion depression quite this well before.
holy shit yall, signal boost the FUCK out of this.
I’m reblogging to add that we need this science to protect women from being emotionally manipulated into unnecessary guilt by the far right.
Women who terminate are not validating anti-choicers by experiencing these emotions.
things my impossibly young looking Roman history lecturer has said
‘listen to your seminar tutors over the booklet, but only for seminars - in lectures i am king. unless you have me as a seminar tutor as well, in which case i am your king and god.’
‘has anybody played Rome: Total War? no?’
‘Cataline tried to burn the city and everyone he hated but he failed because, in short, nobody liked him.’
‘the mediterranean diet didn’t include tomatoes in the ancient world. i know. oh my god. i know.’
‘so of course when Hannibal turns up, the senate goes ‘sod it, lets kick his arse’.’
‘one man’s optimates is another man’s silver-spoon bearing prick.’
‘we don’t have much information about the 70s BC, largely because Plutarch doesn’t care.’
‘i’m not saying Rome: Total War is entirely accurate, but its battle campaigns are surprisingly historically informed.’
[hand drawing a map in chalk because the projector is broken] ‘i’ll give it a go, this is why i hate technology, and oh. well. that’s not italy.’
‘every army needs bakers and prostitutes, this is just a fact of life.’
‘Sulla. He’s a bit of a badass, but also a bit of a prick.’
‘yes, that is a slide from Spartacus. The film, not the series, which is more accurate and less like soft porn.’
‘the Romans liked Campania because its very fertile. they didn’t know this was because of its proximity to a volcano - poor buggers found THAT out later.’
‘Crassus gets given command of Syria and high fives everyone in the senate.’
‘Catullus was very pithy, very hellenistic in style. unlike the Iliad, which is 24 books of tedium.’
‘An Afternoon at Carrhae: the Romans being shot at repeatedly by Parthian cavalry because if there’s one thing the Romans aren’t good at, it’s having a cavalry.’
‘It’s good to have fast legs in war. Caesar moves very fast, not unlike Napoleon. The Usain Bolt of ancient warfare. I’m not sure why I said that, it’s an atrocious analogy.’
‘Athens is the Edinburgh of the ancient world; it has nothing to offer but education and pretty buildings.’
‘Shout out to those of you who spent your teenage years playing Rome: Total War.Which is what I did.’
‘The senate go into a panic and they decide to flee Rome at dawn, but some idiot forgets the treasury. I know. Ridiculous.’
‘Again: don’t use elephants during warfare. They’re not as cool as they look. And given they’re now endangered, it’d just be mean.’
‘I had to use this meme, I’m sorry. You’re all aware of the one does not simply walk into mordor meme right? I’m sorry, we’ll move on.’
‘I put this photo in for dramatic effect but I realise that it’s just a field. I don’t know why people bother going to see battle sites, they’re all really boring. I saw bones once, they were quite interesting. But most battle sites: boring.’
‘Caesar doesn’t tell Rome anything while he’s away in Egypt for a year, so they have no idea Pompey’s dead. All they know is that Antony is being a pain in the ass, which is, in all honesty, not unusual for Antony.’
‘Caesar is very good at one liners. You always draft a pithy one liner before a battle so you have something to say when you win. You don’t want to win and then just be like ‘whoo, thank god for that.’’
I want to be this professor except with Shakespeare
Public bathrooms are such a godless place. Ppl do the most bizarre stuff
one time i walked into a mcdonalds bathroom and their was shit on the wall with actual hand prints like a scat version of the shining and it took everything i had not to vomit after the immediate 180 i did
Last week I really had to pee walking home from the bus stop so I jumped into the park bathroom a few blocks from my house (in a pretty upscale area) and there was a chick in goth lolita dress smoking crack in the men’s room.
after i saw the remake of annie, i went into the bathroom and this guy at the urinal was whipping his dick back and forth while singing uptown funk and his friend was urinating beside him and laughing the entire time
My dad and I stopped at a truck stop in Northern California (or Southern Oregon, it was a long time ago and I don’t remember) when I was 12 or so and I ended up needing to go to the bathroom while we ate, so I was directed towards the back of the building. I walked in and saw a woman laying in a clawfoot bathtub, immediately shreiked and turned around apologizing, to be greeted with 10-15 truckers, including my dad, laughing their asses off.
…It was a blowup doll.
okay that story beats the ones i had
Let me tell you a story about Dairy Queen and the time I closed an Allsup’s.
With my ass.
Many moons ago, when I was but 14, I, my father, and several others were going on a fishing trip to southern Colorado. Now, like good Texans, we loaded up at 5:00am to make the twelve-hour trip in a single day because, you know, that’s what you do in Texas.
Several hours later, we found ourselves in Childress, the very gateway to the Texas panhandle, a surreal place a thousand Tumblr posts could be written about. There, we had a proper breakfast at Dairy Queen, certainly a Texas institution. I recall quite clearly having a basket of disappointing chicken strips and unpleasantly greasy fries. It was a bland, unsatisfying meal, but I was 14, still sleepy, and really quite hungry, so I ate it regardless.
Not long after, I felt a sensation like one my young body had never felt before.
To say that I was in discomfort would be putting it mildly. I was cramping, I was sweaty, I was fairly sure I was one hard bump in the road away from shitting my pants and forever ruining not just my pants and my pride, but the back seat of my father’s friend’s harvest gold metallic 1999 Ford F350 Super Duty.
This day, the prairie tan upholstery of the harvest gold metallic 1999 Ford F350 Super Duty would be spared.
Mercifully, as we entered one of the many smallish towns on the way through the panhandle, we stopped for gas at an Allsup’s. Then and there, I was making my final stand. Every muscle in my body clenched desperately, holding in the terrible burden foisted upon it by a meal of grease, batter, and regret.
Like all Allsup’ses, it was a liminal space, a place that had no real business in the real world and was, instead, a small, dingy realm within its own flimsy walls, a pocket dimension with a spinning rack of country music cassettes and CDs from artists I’d never heard of and a Blue Bell freezer that was likely only ever 1/3 full no matter how long the early days of that Texas summer might drag on.
It was here, in this space between spaces, an outpost in the first real steps into the panhandle, that I would commit one of the gravest crimes of my life.
Stealthily, as though smuggling some secret only slightly less terrible than the grim truth my life had become, I made my way to the back of the dingy, unpleasant gas station. Thankfully, it had an indoor restroom that didn’t force me to ask for a key, one of the few saving graces of the little mess of a place.
I would, in short order, rob it of even that marginal virtue.
With my stealthy power-waddle into the lav, I locked the door behind me, my body and mind already relaxing, knowing that relief was at hand and soon my suffering would be over though I didn’t know at what could that relief would come, I couldn’t have known. The restroom was not overly dirty, but just the same I mouthed a hushed “fuck” as a churning growl from ominously low in my gut warned me there was no time for the gossamer security of a paper ass gasket, this was happening then and there, the process had already begun, the die had been cast.
Hurriedly fiddling with my belt buckle as I approached the toilet, the promise of relief quickly gave way to desperation. In seeing the finish line so close, my body was quickly losing the will to struggle across. The time of choosing had come, and it was not mine, not my body’s, this was Dairy Queen’s battle; it had been from the moment that overly-dense, overly-greasy shadow of a meal had touched my lips.
With no small desperation, I threw myself at the seat, and it was perhaps in that forced desperation that the morning came to a head. The sound my body made was unreal as a daisycutter of shit blasted out of me, still several inches above the seat. In that moment, time itself lost all meaning, I became part of the liminal space of that Allsup’s and the forsaken dungeon that I had doomed its lavatory to be. I couldn’t bring myself to straighten out enough to actually sit down, in part for knowing the seat had been lost to what had poured out of me and in part because the pain of my cramping gut wouldn’t allow it.
When it was over, I felt a mixture of emotions that seemed wholly fictive, like something no true human could ever experience. In the immediate aftermath, relief ruled over all other sensation, the pain was gone, the fear was gone, I was left purified… And then I saw at what cost.
Indeed, I was purified, but what I was purified of had found its way into the world and found, in turn, terrible purchase. It had not just dominated the toilet. It was on the walls, it was on the floor, it was even on the underside of the sink. The spread was so wide, so even, and so dense that it seemed no human ass could have created it, it seemed the work of evil, and yet there I stood, staring at it in horror, at my creation.
Amazingly, as though shielded by Providence itself, I was saved from a similar fate. Somehow, miraculously, I was no more sullied than had it been a regular, uneventful trip to a restroom. As I transferred every bit of evil within me into that Allsup’s restroom, it lost whatever dignity it had that I might retain my own, something I am grateful for to this day. Careful to avoid touching any, you know, shit, I tidied myself up and debated for a moment trying to clean the restroom with the minimal tools at hand, but I knew it was a lost cause, there was no way a damp bit of single-ply could solve anything I had done.
Leaving that forsaken lavatory to stew in my misdeeds with a similar stealth, I made my way out of the restroom and out of the Allsup’s together, finding my way back to the renewed security of the prairie tan and harvest gold metallic Ford F350 Super Duty. Shortly thereafter, my father found me, asking if I’d gone in to use the restroom yet, if I’d seen its unbelievable horror.
Using my exhaustion to my advantage, I looked up from my book, undoubtedly looking tired and befuddled.
“Nnno? I was gonna go in, but I used the restroom at breakfast and I just want to get through this chapter, why?”
It was an expert lie and, by God, somehow it worked. Somehow.
Other parts of the story go on from there, but they don’t relate to public restrooms, where this story does pick up though is a year later.
By sheer coincidence, my father and I were making another trip through that part of Texas. By sheer coincidence, our journey took us through the same town in the panhandle. As I saw familiar scenery move past the window, I felt a hot wash of guilt work up through me from below.
And that’s when I saw it.
The Allsup’s.
Not just closed, but boarded up, plywood over its windows, black plastic covering its door. My stomach dropped and my eyes went wide.
It was then that I told my father the terrible truth of that day a year before.
He was strangely proud I had closed a gas station with my ass.
that had me enthralled from start to finish and i am determined to get everyone on tumblr to read the story of how your ass is responsible for the closure of a business.
History wants so badly for Cleopatra to be beautiful. Like they can’t conceive of Rome being intimidated by anything less
because being a linguist, fleet commander, and powerful ruler doesn’t matter, only her looks
Her Arab contemporaries raved about her being very interested and knowledgeable in the sciences.
She completely reformed the system in Alexandria, and Egypt at large; making it much more of a functional powerhouse.
She did what 300 years of her ancestors couldn’t: Managed to get the support of both the Greek AND Egyptian subjects she ruled.
There is a sculpture that has been identified as her, through comparisons to coins minted under her rule, that proves beyond a doubt that she wasn’t particularly beautiful.
It isn’t that people just happen to believe it by mistake. Rome was fucking terrified of her and painted her as a vapid, scheming, beautiful, sex obsessed queen to discredit her to their people. She was a threat, and that was how they handled it. The unfortunate thing is that that is the most surviving record of her. A smear campaign against one of the smartest, most powerful women in human history.
To consider Europe a single being is the worst you could do. Everybody hates everybody. The British hate immigrants, Germans hate Italians, Italians hate the French and other Italians, the French hate everyone else
In conclusion
Eurovision is the battleground on which the old hatreds are rekindled.
Also, this is quite frankly the most accurate post i’ve ever seen in my life.
ok but has anyone considered… stormtrooper memes. stormtroopers with injokes. stormtroopers quietly passing along little nudges and references while they’re standing guard or patrolling endless hallways. hux pausing halfway through a speech, suspiciously— he just heard a very tiny, staticy giggle. like,
(standing in front of blank wall or empty box) nothing to see here, move along
let’s just put that in the back pocket for now mmkay
*eats ration bar* mm mmm tastes like [dead comrade]
you can’t be mean to me on my birthday
*force chokes a problem*
(between heavy darth vader wheezes) i’m not mad, i’m just disappointed.
(when something falls over) rebel scum!
*points at large machine* mom
it’s party time (everyone stands perfectly still for at least a minute)
(when friend come into the room) you’re surplus to requirements
I have lived to see the Prime Directive implemented on Mars, a warp drive break the laws of physics, and a legal battle with Klingon insults in the briefings.
As I get older I’m finding that a lot of the “intellectuals” I used to admire are actually just condescending and pretentious. And also realizing how much more important it is to be present, considerate, and empathetic because nobody really knows what they’re talking about and anyone who claims to know everything about anything is feeding you bs.
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
Okay, this is in incredibly petty nitpick, but: if you’re writing a fantasy setting with same-sex marriage, a same-sex noble or royal couple typically would not have titles of the same rank - e.g., a prince and a prince, or two queens.
It depends on which system of ranking you use, of course (there are several), but in most systems there’s actually a rule covering this scenario: in the event that a consort’s courtesy title being of the same rank as their spouse’s would potentially create confusion over who holds the title by right and who by courtesy, the consort instead receives the next-highest title on the ladder.
So the husband of a prince would be a duke; the wife of a queen, a princess; and so forth.
(You actually see this rule in practice in the United Kingdom, albeit not in the context of a same-sex marriage; the Queen’s husband is styled a prince because if he were a king, folks might get confused about which of them was the reigning monarch.)
The only common situation where you’d expect to see, for example, two queens in the same marriage is if the reigning monarchs of two different realms married each other - and even then, you’d more likely end up with a complicated arrangement where each queen is technically a princess of the other’s realm in addition to being queen of her own.
You’ve gotta keep it nice and unambiguous who’s actually in charge!
What if oxygen is poisonous and it just takes 75-100 years to kill us?
My science teacher said he thinks that’s true actually
Yeah this is actually pretty much exactly what is going on. It’s why anti-oxidants are such a big deal. Bonus fact: oxygen oxidizes stuff in your cells or, in other words, it’s not toxic, just setting you on fire
very very slowly.
What if there are aliens out there but they subsist on entirely different substances and they’re just scared as shit of us and our crazy ass hell planet? Once in a while some alien anthropologist type suggests checking out the people on this inhabited planet out towards the galaxy’s edge. The other aliens just look at the naive academic with horror. No!! We do not go to that world. That is where the DEATH BREATHERS live. They recreationally consume poisons and are more or less composed of biological fire. Their atmosphere is made of rocket fuel. We must leave the DEATH BREATHERS in peace. Do not go there. Do not.
I tend to always reblog posts about humans being terrifying weirdos to aliens.
okay but…that is actually what went down on earth about 2.5 billion years ago.
Earth was doing just fine with a mostly nitrogen/carbon dioxide atmosphere and everyone was happy to go on living in anaerobic bliss and then cyanobacteria suddenly hit the scene, altered the atmosphere composition so that there was a ton of oxygen gas and killed practically everything (97% or more of all species on earth).
We are literally descendants of the DEATH BREATHERS and cyanobacteria is our deadly mother.
The cyanobacteria holocaust is so big, it doesn’t even have a cool name; it’s just called “The Great Oxygenation Event”; the *second* most apocalyptic extinction event in our planet’s history is the one that’s called THE GREAT DYING (the Permian-Triassic event, about 252 million years ago).
This shit makes like the rock-throwing that wiped out the dinosaurs look like kindergarten.
OH HOW I LOVE THIS POST. It makes me so much happier about being alive. I AM BURNING VERY SLOWLY. *hugs it*
I just realized……Hydra knew super-soldiers could survive despite being cryogenically frozen, because they did it to the Winter Soldier.
So they knew for certain that Captain America was alive after he crashed the plane in the Arctic.
I find the timing of Cap’s find very suspicious.
I personally believe Obadiah Stane was somewhat affiliated with Hydra (and had them send the Winter Soldier to have Howard killed). And he could easily influence where Howard searched for Steve and the plane.
I believe that Obadiah misdirected Howard intentionally whenever it looled like he was close, bc Hydra didn’t want Captain America back.
It was only when Obadiah died that SHIELD found Cap.
this… makes soooo much sense, but also, FUCK! I didn’t need this pain.
On the flipside, imagine if Hydra, knowing just how much a serumed up person can survive, actively was looking for Steve… and they found him first. Imagine Steve barely-conscious and still trembling with bone-deep cold as he’s stuffed into The Chair for the first time.
It doesn’t work as expected the first time (Steve thought the grave was supposed to be cold and final but instead he’s dying by inches with electricity burning through his veins, twisting whips of fire tearing through his brain) so the Hydra scientists note down their results and hunker down for a fullscale Science Experiment!
They recalibrate and try again.
And again.
And again.
Meanwhile Steve tries to hold it all together. He knows that he’s surprised to be alive (in the worst moments he wishes he wasn’t). He knows he was fighting a war (he’s pretty sure they must have lost). He knows that nobody is coming for him (not the kid from Brooklyn, the only one who really cared about HIM is, well…)
(And nobody’s coming after the soldier, the war hero, the propaganda machine, that came after. Who would believe he could survive that crash? The ice?)
(Even if he lives through this, the man that used to be Captain America isn’t sure how much of Steve Rogers will be left.)
After a few months, one scientist gets the bright idea to bring in the Original for comparative testing. The new Subject goes absolutely ballistic the first time he sees the Winter Soldier.
Focused on restraining their new Subject, none of the scientists catch the flicker of expression (emotion) that dances over the Original’s face.
It’s three weeks before they leave the two alone together without muzzles to prevent biting (from the Winter Soldier) or speech (from the Subject). The higher-ups are annoyed by the number of otherwise promising recruits who have requested transfers after five minutes of talking to (or being talked at by) the Subject.
“I know you,” the Winter Soldier says firmly. After three weeks of observation he’s sure in this if not much else. They’ve wiped him a few times for fresh data, but he’s been clinging tenaciously to what little he can conjure up of that face, that voice, that attitude.
(‘Mouthy’ is the word that keeps springing up.)
(And punk. Or jerk? He’s not sure why those words make his lips twitch up at the corners.)
“You do,” the other man, the one who once was Steve Rogers and might be again. “You know me, and we…we’re gonna get out of here. Together.”
I’m the type of girlfriend who always just wants to annoy you like let me hold your fucking hand and let me just hug your back and put my head under your shirt or bite your shoulder or bite your nose or hug your head or some shit idk i love you hoe
has to literally be dragged home at the end of the night because they refuse to acknowledge that the party has ended and they’re the only person still there
2. Blissful Drunk
does nothing but laugh
just happy to be included
too good for this world
loves you so much even though they just met you four minutes ago
probably also does acid
3. Emotional Drunk
not great at parties
is either crying tears of sorrow bc there’s no chips left or crying tears of gratitude bc someone showed them where the bathroom is
brings out everyone’s inner mother
4. Parent Drunk
keeps everyone’s shit together
everyone thinks they’re sober but they’ve actually had 5 shots in an hour
knows when u need to go home and will make sure you get there
holds back your hair when you’re vomiting at 3am
5. Slutty Drunk
never gets cold
makeup never smudges
never has to buy their own drinks
you think they’re sloppy and have no idea what they’re doing but every move is calculated and intentional
6. Sloppy Drunk
wasted by 10pm
needs to be taken home early
will drink anything you give them as long as there’s alcohol in it
So, I’ve had the flu for like a week (I’m still not well and I’m quite worried about going in to work tomorrow but having been absent for two weeks, I think it’s time I made the attempt) and I have alternated between semi-lucid and SUPER ANXIOUS depending on when I took my cold medication. Like, I’m flipping my shit over something that’s not due at work until mid-May.
But one of the few benefits of having dealt with depression for twenty years is that I know when something I’m feeling is unrealistic; not enough to help, but enough to prevent myself from doing stupid shit, which is almost as good.
So I, knowing that my anxiety was irrational, googled “Anxiety” and “Flu” and APPARENTLY THE FLU CAN GIVE YOU ANXIETY. And not just like, “oh shit I’m sick and stuff is building up” anxiety. Like literal biological Capital-A Anxiety. It seems that cytokines, which are a kind of cell protein, are linked to anxiety and depression, and are released in way higher numbers when you’re sick. I haven’t sought out the studies yet, but there are studies which indicate that reports of depression actually peak during high flu season.
So if you’re sick and freaked out, FYI, there’s probably a stronger biological link than you suspected. Blame it on the cytokines!
the solar system is probably the most purely, simply fun exploratory experience humans will ever get to have, because there’s nobody there! there’s no colonialism and we don’t have to worry about aliens yet, so its just. fun!
we just land a robot on an empty planet and make it do wheelies and every few days we find like a cool rock and scientists yell about it on twitter
that point in the semester where everything is like
ever since I made this post it gets reblogged when there’s about 3 weeks left before finals which lets me know that it’s that point of the semester again
Why isn’t using sign language more common in society? like??? Not even just communicating within deaf communities but for everybody to use with anybody?
I feel like this should be standard learning material for those working in loud workplaces or with machinery, or maybe idk for talking underwater or when someone else can’t hear you at a concert. Or what about when somebody is having a panic attack and can’t talk, or just isn’t all that comfortable with voicing their feelings?
Why isn’t nonverbal communication more integrated into our society? Cause it should be.
