I wanna believe that dragons existed, due to seeing them in all cultures, but I also want to believe that humanity all looked at a lizard and simultaneously said
“Can I get that in a large?”
Going through your comments on Fight Club is reminding me that I was actually fascinated by this story before I fell violently out of love with it because of...well, the kind of guy who tells people his favorite movie is Fight Club, you know what I mean?
god i know exactly what you mean i spend more time around that kind of person than i ever wanted to be (context: i am a film student)
i’m mostly able to retain my love of fight club because 1) it’s just REALLY GOOD OKAY 2) i’m utterly fascinated by gay fiction of this particular stripe (gay men writing about masculinity, personal identity, and self-hatred, preferably framed in a relatively surrealist manner)) and i’ll shove anything i can find directly into my awful maw; fight club just happens to hit every single one of my weak points
there’s a lot of good meaty subtext to fight club and a whole mess of subtext to unpack so it’s VERY fascinating to really delve into but of course i am saying that as a person who is balls deep in love for this work
i resent how bad Those Kind of Guys have ruined fight club every damn day of my life and hope that in another world fight club is recognized as the seminal gay lit masterpiece it should have been hailed as
Well out of the blue I just remembered today the time I accidentally joined the cast of a production of The Princess Bride….in the middle of the production.
And you’re gonna just leave us there
I mean, if you guys wanna hear the story, it is a pretty fun one
Some years ago (6? 7 years ago, I think?) there was a pirate exhibit at the state museum. We had actual artifacts from the Queen Anne’s Revenge, creepy wax dummies, historical costumes etc, it was awesome.
I was really into Pirates of the Caribbean at the time, because I played the mmorpg with some high school friends of mine (and some of their parents sometimes, who also got addicted to it), so of course when they announced “Pirate Night at the Museum”, in which visitors were encouraged to dress up, I was over the moon. So I’m there with my friends, my parents, and my sisters, running around the exhibits after the museum is technically closed.
They replaced the creepy wax dummies with people in costume at this point, and it was pretty epic.
The highlight of the night would be a showing of The Princess Bride. The movie would play on the big screen while actors would be on a stage below, acting the whole thing out word for word and shot for shot as it happened. Any audience members who knew lines were encouraged to shout them out as they heard them.
Here’s the thing. My parents love that movie. Like you don’t understand they were quoting it to us in its entirety when we were still in highchairs. I could reenact the battle of wits scene before I ever actually watched it. So my family sits in the front row, behind the railing, quoting everything right along with the actors and film.
And then comes the part in the Pit of Despair with the Albino. And the cast didn’t have anyone on the stage with Wesley. I don’t know if the Albino couldn’t make it that night, or if they’d never cast him, but it was really weird to see Wesley just lying on the stage awkwardly while the Albino is supposed to be treating his injuries.
I started twitching. My mom and sister look at me and they’re like “do it.” And one of the ushers is like “you know the part? do it”
So I launch over the railing, run up onto the stage, and take over from there, doing my best impression of the character. Being that I was a 5′2″ blonde girl in a corset and puffy sleeves, Wesley had some trouble keeping a straight face.
Then they got to the scene with Humperdink telling the guard to clear out the Thieves’ Forest, and…they didn’t have the guard either. So my twin sister up in the audience is like “hang on, I got this” and then she launches over the railing to make sure Humperdink isn’t just sitting awkwardly talking to thin air.
This meant that yes, I got bopped on the noggin by Fezzik, and yes, my sister got to do the “Give us the key.” “What key?” “Fezzik, tear his arms off.” “Oh, you mean this key!”
They made up stay on stage and take a bow with the cast when it was over, it was hilarious. Then the next year, since they still had the exhibit, the museum called my sister and was like, “So….that was super fun last year. Do you and your sister want to be audience plants and do it again this year?”
The answer, naturally, was heck yes. Since we had new volunteers playing Count Rugen and Inigo this time, this also led to my sister actually choreographing their fight scene herself. Which was awesome.
It’s a very similar situation to the one the US was in last year. One “ugh a boring politician they’re not exciting and has ties to the big banks and voting for them won’t change anything god i hate the system” candidate versus one “oh look a charismatic fascist who will probably literally kill us all and throw the country, if not the continent, into utter chaos” candidate.
do you know what waking up every single morning in America is like since the Trump inauguration? C'est un fucking cauchemar, is what it’s like. Don’t live like us. YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE US.
Are medical professionals biased against the mentally ill?
THE first time it was an ear, nose and throat doctor. I had an emergency visit for an ear infection, which was causing a level of pain I hadn’t experienced since giving birth. He looked at the list of drugs I was taking for my bipolar disorder and closed my chart.
“I don’t feel comfortable prescribing anything,” he said. “Not with everything else you’re on.” He said it was probably safe to take Tylenol and politely but firmly indicated it was time for me to go. The next day my eardrum ruptured and I was left with minor but permanent hearing loss.
Another time I was lying on the examining table when a gastroenterologist I was seeing for the first time looked at my list of drugs and shook her finger in my face. “You better get yourself together psychologically,” she said, “or your stomach is never going to get any better.”
If you met me, you’d never know I was mentally ill. In fact, I’ve gone through most of my adult life without anyone ever knowing — except when I’ve had to reveal it to a doctor. And that revelation changes everything. It wipes clean the rest of my résumé, my education, my accomplishments, reduces me to a diagnosis.
I was surprised when, after one of these run-ins, my psychopharmacologist said this sort of behavior was all too common. At least 14 studies have shown that patients with a serious mental illness receive worse medical care than “normal” people. Last year the World Health Organization called the stigma and discrimination endured by people with mental health conditions “a hidden human rights emergency.”
I never knew it until I started poking around, but this particular kind of discriminatory doctoring has a name. It’s called “diagnostic overshadowing.”
According to a review of studies done by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, it happens a lot. As a result, people with a serious mental illness — including bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder — end up with wrong diagnoses and are under-treated.
That is a problem, because if you are given one of these diagnoses you probably also suffer from one or more chronic physical conditions: though no one quite knows why, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome and mitral valve prolapse often go hand in hand with bipolar disorder.
Less mysterious is the weight gain associated with most of the drugs used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which can easily snowball into diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. The drugs can also sedate you into a state of zombiedom, which can make going to the gym — or even getting off your couch — virtually impossible.
It’s little wonder that many people with a serious mental illness don’t seek medical attention when they need it. As a result, many of us end up in emergency rooms — where doctors, confronted with an endless stream of drug addicts who come to their door looking for an easy fix — are often all too willing to equate mental illness with drug-seeking behavior and refuse to prescribe pain medication.
I should know: a few years ago I had a persistent migraine, and after weeks trying to get an appointment with any of the handful of headache specialists in New York City, I broke down and went to the E.R. My husband filled out paperwork and gave the nurse my list of drugs. The doctors finally agreed to give me something stronger than what my psychopharmacologist could prescribe for the pain and hooked me up to an IV.
I lay there for hours wearing sunglasses to block out the fluorescent light, waiting for the pain relievers to kick in. But the headache continued. “They gave you saline and electrolytes,” my psychopharmacologist said later. “Welcome to being bipolar.”
When I finally saw the specialist two weeks later (during which time my symptoms included numbness and muscle weakness), she accused me of being “a serious cocaine user” (I don’t touch the stuff) and of displaying symptoms of “la belle indifference,” a 19th-century term for a kind of hysteria in which the patient converts emotional symptoms into physical ones — i.e., it was all in my head.
Indeed, given my experience over the last two decades, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the statistics I found in the exhaustive report “Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness,” a review of studies published in 2006 that provides an overview of recommendations and general call to arms by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. The take-away: people who suffer from a serious mental illness and use the public health care system die 25 years earlier than those without one.
True, suicide is a big factor, accounting for 30 to 40 percent of early deaths. But 60 percent die of preventable or treatable conditions. First on the list is, unsurprisingly, cardiovascular disease. Two studies showed that patients with both a mental illness and a cardiovascular condition received about half the number of follow-up interventions, like bypass surgery or cardiac catheterization, after having a heart attack than did the “normal” cardiac patients.
The report also contains a list of policy recommendations, including designating patients with serious mental illnesses as a high-priority population; coordinating and integrating mental and physical health care for such people; education for health care workers and patients; and a quality-improvement process that supports increased access to physical health care and ensures appropriate prevention, screening and treatment services.
Such changes, if implemented, might make a real difference. And after seven years of no change, signs of movement are popping up, particularly among academic programs aimed at increasing awareness of mental health issues. Several major medical schools now have programs in the medical humanities, an emerging field that draws on diverse disciplines including the visual arts, humanities, music and science to make medical students think differently about their patients. And Johns Hopkins offers a doctor of public health with a specialization in mental health.
Perhaps the most notable of these efforts — and so far the only one of its kind — is the narrative medicine program at Columbia University Medical Center, which starts with the premise that there is a disconnect between health care and patients and that health care workers need to start listening to what their patients are telling them, and not just looking at what’s written on their charts.
According to the program’s mission statement, “The effective practice of health care requires the ability to recognize, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others. Medicine practiced with narrative competence is a model for humane and effective medical practice.”
We can only hope that humanizing programs like this one become a requirement for all health care workers. Maybe then “first, do no harm” will apply to everyone, even the mentally ill.
By JULIANN GAREYPublished: August 10, 2013
The author of the novel “Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See” and a co-editor of “Voices of Bipolar Disorder: The Healing Companion.”
Reblogging because this is the sort of thing that needs signal boosting the heck out of it. Probably many of the people who see this in my Tumblr are people who already know from first-hand experience as a patient. Probably most of the people who even know my Tumblr exists are not in a position to perpetuate this problem (because they aren’t doctors). But I figure if more people get info like this circulating, maybe eventually someone in a better position to reach more doctors with this kind of information and open serious dialogue about how to address the problem will come across this.
Until then, at least a better informed patient population can, I hope, be in a better position to advocate for themselves—if not always as individuals then perhaps as groups.
tony totally does have a superpower. its just that his superpower is not dying of caffeine overdose which only rarely comes in handy when fighting supervillians
#the other half of his superpower is the ability to locate coffee anywhere #which is how he knew what direction to start walking when he was in afghanistan #‘the nearest pot of coffee is 23 miles east’ #and then he started walking through the desert #honestly that’d be kind of a fun plot device #somebody write it I’m too lazy (via @buckykingofmemes)
There is a reason Tony never mentions that he’s a mutant. It’s not that he’s ashamed, or even that he’s afraid of the negative impact the news would have on the Stark name and his business.
It’s that he got such a fucking lame power.
The X-men can fly, control the weather, shoot lasers from their eyes, and make things go boom. Tony? Tony get’s the amazing ability to metabolize caffeine extra well (okay, on a level that would kill ten average people) and sense it for miles.
He’s one of those mutants whose powers fall into a category all their own. teeeechnically, he’s actually an alpha level mutant, given the complex way his body processes caffeine and the nearly fifty mile range on the sensor aspect of his talent, plus the degree of sensitivity. But in practice? The few people in the know mostly consider him to be a beta mutant, since his power isn’t really applicable as a defence or offense.
At any given moment he can tell you with pinpoint accuracy what things within a block of him have caffeine and what they are, even managing to differentiate between different kinds of coffee. He can even tell you who made it, if he’s met the person.
(He tries to explain it to Pepper and Rhodey, once. Tries to explain that it’s not that he’s measuring the level of caffeine in a pot of coffee really, it’s that everyone makes coffee differently. If he focuses, he can tell that the pot of coffee down in the accounting break room was made by Margery, not Cole, or Clarke, or Franchesca, because it feels like her. Numbers and irritation and impatience coupled with the peppermint sticks she likes to swirl in a cup of black. He knows he doesn’t manage it well when all he gets are indulgently confused smiles from his two friends.
Charles Xavier prattled a bit about possible subconscious empathic or telepathic impressions, but honestly Tony doesn’t really care. He just does what he does. It’s not like the mechanics really matter with a useless power like his. He doesn’t stay at Xavier’s long. Hanging with the X-men makes him feel like a toaster hanging out with sports cars.)
It’s not until he’s kneeling in scorchingly hot sand, an unforgivingly bright sun high in the sky above him and bits of scattered metal around him, that he’s thankful for the power evolution gave him. Because when he reaches out with that strange other sense of his, he can feel all the distant pinpricks of sensation that mean, ‘Here! There be coffee here!’. Most carry the notes of people who feel like the land around him, but one….. Smiling grimly, he heaves himself to his feet and looks east, towards the distant call that carries with it a taste of foreigntiredordersyessirdutythiscoffeeSUCKSman that tells him there are american soldiers that-a-way.
The fun thing about smutty fanfic is that kinks are weird and nonsensical and often impossible to predict based on someone’s public-facing persona, so most of the time it’s basically impossible to be out of character. Is Batman into petplay? Does Hans from Frozen get off on being beaten with sacks of oranges? Go for it - it’d make as much sense as anything else!
Batman fights crime in a borderline-daddy leather fursuit with only his eyes and mouth visible and you’re wondering if he might be into weird shit.
To be fair, Batman lives in a world where that sort of thing seems to be regarded as normal.
Are you implying that Batman’s outrageous kink would be vanilla sex?
Well, kinks are defined in relation to societal norms.
sometimes you fight, not because you think you can win, but because you need to be able to look back later and say, “i fought.”
“In King Lear (III:vii) there is a man who is such a minor
character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely
“First Servant.” All the characters around him – Regan, Cornwall, and
Edmund – have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story
is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such
delusions. He has no notion of how the play is going to go. But he
understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of
old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it.
His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in a
moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part:
eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is
the part it would be best to have acted.”
– C.S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night”
So Stanford professor Ken Taylor has a whole lecture on this in Hamlet, and the role of defiant resignation (citing Kierkegaard’s concept of resignation) where you are urged to act despite understanding that it won’t change anything, simply to demonstrate your dissatisfaction with the world as it stands, and your belief in what it should be. But Steve demonstrates a lot of this.
When nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do.
Prince Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool… as if the way one fell down mattered.
Prince Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters a great deal.
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: Okay guys, so the war’s over, you had a bunch of losses but you won in the end. Time to go home, let’s roll to see who gets there firs—
Odysseus’s player: I got a critical failure.
Homer: The cyclops asks you who you are. What do you do?
Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”
Homer: Roll for deception.
Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.
Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”
@fairkid-forever this is the Aragorn/Arwen fic and it’s super short but DELIGHTFUL and also I might write a version because I am madly in love with it.
They were used to bleed patients, back when virtually every illness–mental and physical–was treated with bloodletting, purging, and blistering. It punctures the skin at many points and draws the blood like a syringe, so the doctors could measure how much blood they were taking. It was considered more scientific and more humane than a knife, a blood stick, or a real leech, which were also in use. They were used at Bethlehem Royal Hospital in the 1700s. They were, of course, medically useless, although no one knew that at the time.
There are pink starbursts on the inside of Thomas’s elbows. The scars trail up the vulnerable skin of his inner arms in perfectly even rows.
“You weren’t sick,” James grinds out, fingers digging into that tender skin.
Thomas looks utterly vacant for a moment, his breath slow and steady. “They believed they were helping me,” he says after a while.
It’s often been remarked that Spider-Man’s schtick wouldn’t work nearly so well if he didn’t live in a town with so many tall buildings, but consider: how well would Batman’s “I am the night” routine work if he was operating out of a normal city where people actually live, rather than a perpetually twilit urban hellscape that looks like the Art Deco movement had a one-night stand with Soviet Brutalism in a wrought-iron-and-gargoyle factory?
That is my favorite description of the Batman aesthetic ever.
OMDFG that’s a perfect description.
Imagine Spiderman ballooning in wide open areas. No, sorry, can’t get to that crime, its against the prevailing wind.
Also, Batman brooding on top of a Wafflehouse.
Batman: God, this stupid city with its sufficient lighting and lack of crumbling infrastructure to shoot grappling hooks into
Superman: Everyone for miles has lead poisoning, I’ve spent the entire night stopping crossword puzzle museum robberies and heists at the Second National Bank of Gotham on the corner of second street and second avenue, and earlier the wall of…clouds? smog?…cleared up for a minute and I’m pretty sure the sky was literally blood red
As an entry-level DnD player can someone explain to me in the simplest possible way how to differentiate wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers from each other?
wizards is imbued with magic, you just need to prepare mentally your spells.
sorcerer studied magic, you need to physically prepare your spells and often need materials.
warlock has magic because of demon, you have access to mainly dark magic as well as eldritch blast as a free unlimited cantrip.
to be honest, play-wise wizards & sorcerers are very similar as they tend to have a lot of shared spells. sorcerers get to specialize in a school of magic more than wizards though. and warlock its pretty much just dark magic.
this, except reverse wizards and sorcerers.
sorcerers innately have their magic (usually because someone fucked a magic being. often a dragon)
wizards studied magic and learned accordingly. they also tend to be older, but not always.
warlocks get their magic from pacts with magic beings (which i don’t think necessarily have to be demons).
Wizard: … I’m ninety, live in a tower, and read all day. where the fuck do you think? (Alternate answer: Basically radically experimental guerilla chemists)
Sorcerer/ess: Natural ability and a stupid amount of work!
Druid: The plants love me! I love the plants! Have you met my wife she is a shrub! T H E P L A N T S E M P O W E R M E
Cleric: I am a literal saint back the fuck off and do your job if you want heals.
Bard: IDK i was in a rap battle and the other guy literally caught fire so like…. yeah.
Reblogging again for the Druid, Cleric, and that bard line.
As an entry-level DnD player can someone explain to me in the simplest possible way how to differentiate wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers from each other?
wizards is imbued with magic, you just need to prepare mentally your spells.
sorcerer studied magic, you need to physically prepare your spells and often need materials.
warlock has magic because of demon, you have access to mainly dark magic as well as eldritch blast as a free unlimited cantrip.
to be honest, play-wise wizards & sorcerers are very similar as they tend to have a lot of shared spells. sorcerers get to specialize in a school of magic more than wizards though. and warlock its pretty much just dark magic.
this, except reverse wizards and sorcerers.
sorcerers innately have their magic (usually because someone fucked a magic being. often a dragon)
wizards studied magic and learned accordingly. they also tend to be older, but not always.
warlocks get their magic from pacts with magic beings (which i don’t think necessarily have to be demons).
Wizard: … I’m ninety, live in a tower, and read all day. where the fuck do you think? (Alternate answer: Basically radically experimental guerilla chemists)
Sorcerer/ess: Natural ability and a stupid amount of work!
Druid: The plants love me! I love the plants! Have you met my wife she is a shrub! T H E P L A N T S E M P O W E R M E
Cleric: I am a literal saint back the fuck off and do your job if you want heals.
Bard: IDK i was in a rap battle and the other guy literally caught fire so like…. yeah.
Reblogging again for the Druid, Cleric, and that bard line.
Actually you know what. Just don’t mow. Get rid of your lawnmower. Turn your whole yard into a wildflower field or an edible garden. Lawns are the invention of the upper class to show wealth through wasted plots of grass that is meticulously tended for no reason other than to be grass. It’s literally an empty plot of land they kept because they had so much money they didn’t need it to grow food. Not using a yard as just a yard is an act of rebellion.
One of the main industries still supporting lawns is chemical pest control companies, and they’re also responsible for the insecticides that crashed the bird populations in the 40s and 50s as well as a lot of what’s killing bees and butterflies now. The herbicides they produce specifically targets “bad” plants like dandelions, buttercups, and clovers, which are plants bees rely on for early spring feeding. Grass is just grass; it would be great for feeding small mammals if people would let it grow more than three inches, but they won’t.
So, yeah. Kill lawnmower culture. Plant some native flowers. Grow some vegetables and fruit trees. Put out bird feeders and bee sugar spots and homes for both. Be kind to bugs and birds and rabbits and opossums and whoever else might wander by. Make your neighborhood a lot more beautiful.
I can be evicted for not mowing, so my alternative is to tear out the grass (itself an invasive species planted by the owner) and replace it with low growing native ground covers. In my area, that means certain species of white clover, and alpine strawberries.
Lawn tearing is a hugely involved project that has pressed my entire household to the limits of our disabilities, however.
For most people, the best choice is “overseeding.”
This is a technique wherein you acquire enough seed for the replacement ground cover to do the entire space 2-3 times, and seed the lawn area thoroughly enough that the grass simply cannot compete with the sheer number of other plants.
To learn about local ground covers and flower mixes for your area, try contacting the farmers associations and agricultural boards nearby. FFA and the 4H are both happy to provide this info.
To buy the seed in large quantities, be prepared to shop from a farm supply chain. While flowers will usually need to be purchased from a garden supplier, ground covers such as clover and rye are best bought from the fallow field or grazing pasture sections of farmer supplies. This will ensure you get the large quantities needed for over seeding at the lowest possible price.
White clover in particular is native to give swaths of the US and Canada (please check your local area though), and for lawn replacement over seeding, you want 10lbs of seed per acre.
If you have pulled your lawn, you can get away with 5 lbs per acre.
Mix in a local wild flower collection with your cover clover and you’ll have a flower field yard that is truly spectacular in short order.
If you’re not at risk of fines or eviction for having ground cover over 6 inches, then you can simply aerate your yard, throw down the flower seed, and let it go wild.
If you have the time and patience and energy, a more traditional lawn replacement- one more closely reassembling the neighbors lawn and garden rather than a wild lot - will be “xeriscape” areas made with local species. Xeriscape is a style of yard designed to use no irrigation, while still remaining pretty, alive, fertile and active. Most tea and culinary herbs grow very well in xeriscapes, but fruits and vegetables tend not to get enough water to produce well.
If you have a way of irrigating, such as large rain barrels or a cistern, a high water table, a stream spring or pond on your property, or just regular and thorough soaking rain interspersed with strong sunlight and sun exposure, a fruit and vegetable garden is very rewarding as well, but it will require constant maintenance that your xeriscape or flower field will not.
If you get Heritage flowers that will reseed themselves, the flower field will require effectively no maintenance after planting. A xeriscape should be touched up every season, or thoroughly pruned and maintained once a year.
An edible garden, however, is an often daily commitment.
The easiest place to start is local berries. Whatever berries grow (or grew) wild in your area. Berry bushes are extremely low maintenance, but when they fruit, you should try to pick the fruit relatively quickly. Otherwise it will draw ants, flies, and other unpleasantries to your yard and, if the bushes are near the house, into your home too.
The next lowest intensity plants would be fruit trees and fruit vines. Again, these need to be determined by your climate. In Florida, for example, oranges and passionfruit are great choices. In Pennsylvania, apples and grapes will do better.
Run the vines along the property fence if you have one, or trellis them up a sun-facing wall of your home.
Fruit trees need full sun exposure, and have very individual planting requirements based on the age, type and size of the tree. The store where you purchase the tree will provide you with detailed information.
As for more traditional vegetable garden content, all of it will be more work and commitment than the fruits listed through here, but the easiest place to start is with vining vegetables such as cucumber and squash. Leafy greens, tomatoes and tomatillas are also very beginner friendly!
However, greens grow best in the cooler, dimmer early spring and late fall seasons.
Onions and potatoes that went to sprout in your kitchen will grow easily, but getting a good harvest from them is more tricky, so leave that until your second year when you are more confident in your skills. That said, potato and onion flowers are quite pretty, so feel free to let them grow!
If you’re interested in a good reference book for designing and dealing with an eating garden as a yard replacement, Half Acre Homestead is a hugely valuable book.
For xeriscapes, because they vary so hugely by location, you’ll want to stick to local information sources : your local gardeners guild, the future farmers association, 4h, and the local agricultural oversight board. All of these people are hugely passionate about plants and the environment, and will be invaluable resources.
Additionally, they will know who has the best rotten hay and animal manure for mulching and composting.
This for longer than I meant it to, but hopefully it will help you get started on destroying lawn culture and getting more in touch with the local environmental community!
unfortunately, a lot of rental properties won’t let you do that either fuck the lawn culture pushing landlords
also worth noting that overgrown/long grass lawns can really fuck with people with limited mobility (at least the grass where I’m from, it tires me, able bodied, out trying to navigate), and also brings the danger of hidden venomous snakes (i’m australian, enough said). of course, the solution to this would be low growing ground covers.
That’s true. My landlord “misplaced” my security deposit of over $1000 USD and refuses to do any necessary home maintenance tasks like plumbing or replacing a broken kitchen stove, however, so I’m taking a very “well fuck it” attitude towards all this.
For mobility purposes, I find that the best choice is just to make a path. Packed dirt, or paving stones, leading to the kinds of places you might hang out in your yard, and let the rest grow tall. I use a cane, though, not a chair, so I’m not sure how well that will work in all cases.
reblogging for rebellious, disability-friendly botany
I was watching Rogue One the other day and the hammerhead ships are one of the most fantastically human responses to things I've seen in a while.
Admiral Raddus: That goliath of a star destroyer’s been disabled, let’s smash into it with a hammerhead! Profundity Crew: *Looks suitably confused*
Raddus: We can smash one ship onto another and blow up the shield generator in one move! Crew: That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, how would that possibly work? Raddus: Do you know what group pilots the hammerhead? Crew: That’s the Aldeeran Reds, a human cre…. ahh… *Gives the order*
the thing I love most about Kirk’s string of ex lovers across the galaxy is that every time he runs into one he’s like
“!!!!! How are you!! I missed you so much!! How’s your career?? Successful?? I’m so happy for you!! Haha, remember that time we almost got married!! But both of our careers were in the way?? That hasn’t changed but I’m still kinda in love with you and I’m happy you’re doing well!!! Goodbye forever again it’s a shame we never got married but I understand!!”
Bring back this kind of male hero please and thank you.
Hey, so I don’t talk about politics much on here, tumblr’s my safe zone both for myself and my followers
(Because who doesn’t need the break?) BUT
I did want to mention something that I do that is much less overwhelming than a lot of the MUST CALL THIS ONE NOW
AND THIS ONE
until you have a list of fifty million things that are ALL TERRIBLE and you feel like it’s your fault the world is about to end because you can’t do them all yourself RIGHT NOW
‘cause of course that’s no good for anyone, especially yourself but also the world
which numerous other people have mentioned, but in case you’ve missed it, is a website which gives you a manageable list of issues, pulls up the appropriate phone numbers for who to call, and gives you a script as well as a place to record your feedback (ie message, talked to someone, etc) so you can chart your progress.
but jilly, my followers say, the telephone is an infernal device that triggers my anxiety and maybe I can make a call or two or maybe I can’t but either way I end up having a panic attack and crying next to my desk all morning HOW IS THIS BETTER?
wow, think the other half of my followers who don’t have weird phone issues, that is a very specific example jilly, are you ok over there? to which I reply I AM NOW BECAUSE I STOPPED TRYING TO MAKE PHONE CALLS
5calls.org is, even if you’re not actually making literal phone calls, an excellent organizational tool to help prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed by ALL THE TERRIBLE EVERYWHERE and gives you a bullet list of Actual Things To Do and tells you just to start with five of them rather than trying to do 100 at once. Yay. <3
which brings us to the how do you use 5calls.org if you’re not calling people, jilly?
Now, you can uses resistbot either via texting on your phone OR facebook messenger (which may help some of you because Easier to Type At Computer or if you don’t actually have a smartphone, though I know politicians never believe that that is a thing) and it will FAX your comments of whatever sort directly to your Senators’ office(s). (YES THEY STILL HAVE FAXES! It’s amazing.) Avoid the phone! Don’t buy stamps! Just say whatever and it will print it FOR YOU. (It will unlock additional options as you use it, but that’s where it starts, faxes to your Senators. It has a very nicely paced progression.)
AND, if you are also using 5calls.org, you can just … use their list and copy their scripts so if you don’t know what to say while typing any more than you do while having to talk, it’s all right there for you.
So hey, be an adult, participate, but there are tools out there so doing so doesn’t make you even more stressed than the news does to begin with. (There are way more tools than just these two, obviously, but they are very user-friendly and easy to access with a computer even if you’ve never been politically active in your life.)
“Call your mother. Tell her you love her. Remember you’re the only person who knows what her heart sounds like from the inside.”—wow this made me sad. (via bl-ossomed)
could you imagine The Enterprise having like a yearly inspection and Kirk bugs out every time because the best running ship in the fleet certainly doesn’t become so because they follow therules. He has to remind the crew a week in advance to actually call him Captain and use formal titles. Bones and Scotty’s shared bathroom which is one hundred percent a liquor cabinet/distillery cannot be a thing.
Sulu has to collect all of his plants out of everywhere that’s not the Botany Labs and hide the illegal ones he picked up during their journey in his quarters. Scotty has to remove all of his Scotty-Approved-Modifications from Engineering. Spock can’t work four shifts in a row and break the ensigns that challenge him in the gym to sparring matches. Bones can’t medically offer alcohol to anybody. Uhura needs to not curse every ten minutes, in any language. Chekov needs to focus more on his console and less on every pair of legs walking by his station.
Nurse Chapel needs to actually do what McCoy says, rather than agreeing with him then doing something wildly different but more productive and helpful. Bones isn’t allowed on the Bridge unless called. Spock needs to sit at his console, standing up and leaning over all coy is actually a safety hazard. Scotty can’t use scottish slang over the comm system
But then something *happens* like it always does to Kirk–the “hole in space/giant glowing hand” kind of thing–and all of that goes out the window–in the course of, say, 38 hours Jim gets called “jim” 50 times, Spock never goes off shift, the ship is hit and all of sulus plants fall out of the closet they were stuffed in, uhura is swearing up a storm and Scotty’s jurry-rigging everything, checkov gets caught staring at the pretty alien, and Chapel does her damn job thank you, and Bones appears in the bridge to yell at everybody like he does.
BUT, at the end of the day, Kirk has secured a new treaty because the culture values closeness over formality, Spock’s marathon at the science station has collected enough data to keep the academy busy for *months*, one of the aliens is fascinated by the plants ensuring a new collaboration between their scientists and starfleet, Scottys improvements to the systems prevent their new friends from getting eliminated by their enemies and uhura’s swearing intimidated the enemy into backing off, and the princess is totally ensnared with Chekov–oh, and Bones discovers the cure for the new mystery illness is the bathroom moonshine, and chapel saves the fucking day.
The inspector just throws up their hands because he’d read the Kirk file, *but he never believed it was true*
Some of you are saying that the citizens of Hasetsu probably think Viktor is just Yuuri’s eccentric foreign boyfriend and I cannot say how much I agree.
“What a nice young man,” says Tamura-san, who used to run the fish shop in town and now usually sits beside the register and chats with customers while her grandson rings them up. She was born before ice skating was declared an Olympic sport and has absolutely no idea who Viktor Nikiforov is.
“Yes, we’re very glad to have Vicchan staying with us!” Hiroko says of Viktor, who’s standing behind her cradling fifteen pounds of tuna and smiling brightly at Tamura-san.
“How good of you to follow Yuu-chan home after he graduated!” Tamura-san continues, about ten decibels louder than she needs to. Tamura-san is about 87% deaf in her old age, but nobody has the heart to tell her so. “You must love him very much!”
Viktor, who has no idea what she’s just said to him but who heard Yuuri’s name, just blindly says, “Oh yes!” and grins even brighter.
“Have you seen Viktor Nikiforov?” demands a rabid paparazzo of some poor fisherman just trying to do his job.
“Who?” asks the fisherman, frowning at the lens of the camera.
“He’s tall? Foreign? Silver hair?”
“You mean Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend?” says the fisherman. Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend had run by ten minutes before with his poodle in tow, European synth pop blasting so loud from his headphones that it could be heard for a full minute both before and after he ran past. The fisherman doesn’t exactly know where Katsuki-kun found that guy, but he looks at Katsuki-kun like he hung the stars, so the fisherman can’t blame him.
In the end, he tells the paparazzo to go the opposite direction of the one he just saw Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend go.
A girl from Hasetsu graduates high school the summer Yuuri returns from America and is inspired by his experiences to go to college in America as well. She arrives in her freshman year dorm room and is greeted by a poster of Viktor Nikiforov hung up by her roommate.
“Why do you have a picture of Viktor?” she asks, bewildered. Viktor is wearing a pair of black slacks and a bright pink shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel.
“Oh, you know who Viktor Nikiforov is?” her roommate asks, excitedly.
“Do YOU?” the girl asks, incredulous. Viktor is known to her as “That foreign guy that followed Yuuri back from America when he came home” and also as Viktor-Who-Puts-Jam-In-His-Tea-Like-Who-Even-Does-That. Certainly not as Viktor Nikiforov, Five-Time World Figure Skating Champion and definitely not as Viktor-Who-Deserves-To-Be-On-Someone’s-Wall.
Come October, Viktor has started introducing HIMSELF to people as Viktor I’m Yuuri’s Boyfriend. While half of Russia reads articles about Figure Skating’s Living Legend, a sleepy town in Japan wakes up every morning to Yuuri’s Boyfriend Viktor wheeling through town on his bike with Yuuri and Their Cute Dog.
For a pair of supposedly enlightened and un-attached people, Obi-Wan and Yoda sure are obsessed with killing Darth Vader. Beginning with their first conversation in his home, Obi-Wan tries to turn Luke into a Vader-killing weapon. He fills Luke’s head with lies and half-truths and deliberately gets himself killed in front of Luke in order to make Luke want to kill Vader. Yoda not only continues to withhold some key facts (like how Vader is Luke’s father), he also claims Luke can not be a Jedi without first confronting Vader. Since when is taking on a Sith or killing your own father a prerequisite for becoming a Jedi? It’s not; it’s just Yoda’s attempt at emotional blackmail.
The crazy thing is that Darth Vader isn’t even the problem. Darth Sidious arranged the Clone Wars, he arranged Order 66, and he’s the one ruling the galaxy. Vader, meanwhile, is basically just his trained attack dog. So why is Vader the one who absolutely has to die?
For Obi-Wan it’s guilt and love. He loved Anakin (or at least the idea of Anakin) and he needs to believe that man is dead because otherwise he gravely injured his brother and condemned to a life of suffering and slavery. Acknowledging that Padmé was right, that there was still good in Anakin, would mean acknowledging that he, Obi-Wan, could have saved Anakin and didn’t. Obi-Wan needs Luke to prove that he was right, that Vader is irredeemable, and he needs him to ‘fix’ the mistake he made by not killing him outright.
For Yoda, it’s vengeance, except that he’s nowhere self-aware enough to acknowledge that. The Jedi Order was Yoda’s entire life. It defined him and gave him meaning. As a long-lived being, loving individuals was too painful, but he could love and be attached to the Order because the Order was eternal. And then it wasn’t. The boy who was supposed to be the Order’s tool, the Order’s Chosen One, sided with their enemy and utterly destroyed them. Vader betrayed him and and obliterated Yoda’s life’s work. And Yoda hadn’t even wanted him! Everything that went wrong began after they took Anakin in against Yoda’s better judgement. In Yoda’s mind, Vader is the living embodiment of everything wrong in the galaxy. No wonder he has to be destroyed.
