My professor talked about how women aren’t used to asking for things in the work place, such as raises, because we’re conditioned to downplay our achievements and hold off on asserting our value. She discussed how, even now at this stage in her career (a published doctrate), she shakes when she askes to be considered for a raise and about the first time she was really successful at getting one. After class I asked her what she asked her boss and she winked at me, took me to her office, and asked me to take notes.
She said she practiced this technique like 5 times in her office before she requested a meeting with her boss. I’m gonna share it with you guys because I really loved it.
You start off by thanking your employer for their support (whatever that means in the context of your work environment).
You then say that you would like to take some time to discuss next year’s salary.
You say, allow me to refresh your memory regarding some of my accomplishments or contributions from the past year, and you present a written summary of all that you’ve done.
You close by saying, I hope that next year’s salary reflects this list of contributions and you thank them for their time and see yourself out.
I just loved how she made it seem so much less daunting of a task. She said not to underestimate your achievements as women have a tendency underreporting what they’ve done.
The fact that she shared this with me really meant a lot as well as women really need to be there to empower each other and help guide each other towards success. So if you end up using this, let me know! I want to see how it works for you ^_^.
!!!
It’s also helpful to research what people in your position are generally paid and give that to your employer. My mom was always underpaid in her positions and was able to consistently get a raise by showing that she should be making significantly more for the position and job duties she was doing.
Kay but my favourite thing about Elfangor is that when you meet him in The Invasion he’s this mysterious, noble, powerful alien with this aura around him that lets the kids know that this guy is a Big Deal
and then you see him in the Andalite Chronicles and he’s driving across a Taxxon planet in a bright yellow Mustang drinking Doctor Pepper and blaring the Rolling Stones
I love Elfangor a lot
Somewhere there is a universe where Tobias’s dad has been Marco’s dad’s eccentric coworker for ages, so when in, like, Book 20, when ‘Al’ is finally revealed to be a Majestic Alien War-Prince in disguise, nerdy little Tobias is basically bluescreened from the unbelieveable awesome and Marco’s like “this dude almost got fired for hacking a vending machine and eating all the strawberry Pop-Tarts during a code push.”
yeah but more importantly WHY HASN’T ANYONE WRITTEN THAT FIC
You know what? Fuck it. Everyone who reblogs this by… Hmm… June 6th gets a hand-drawn dragon head based off of what I think of you.just by looking at your blog.
Shoplifting gets low-income retail workers punished or fired and does absolutely nothing to hurt corporate profits.
Whatever financial hit a store takes from shoplifting, it gets taken out on their minimum wage workers. Most of those workers would get fired if they took any one thing from the store, no matter how much they needed it.
When you shoplift, you’re endangering poor people’s jobs. It’s not cool.
ADVICE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ON TUMBLR
Shoplifting is a GREAT WAY to put mom and pop businesses OUT OF BUSINESS. Shoplifting is a GREAT WAY to throw off a stores inventory which will throw the employees under scrutiny. Shoplifting is a GREAT WAY to put innocent employees in an extremely unsafe position because their options are to either A: let you get away with it and report you and then possibly get FIRED for “being inattentive” or B: Attempt to confront you and risk you throwing a FIT making a SCENE and eventually get the employee FIRED for “Not treating customers right” and shouldering the responsibility for the scene YOU JUST MADE. Shoplifting is a GREAT WAY to force companies into downsizing because they aren’t pulling enough revenue- firing hundreds of people who never did you any wrong.
Shoplifting is a GREAT WAY to make a complete jerk out of yourself and hurt as many workers as possible in the process.
And because the OP seems like something a person who only cares about themselves might say, you can also get caught and prosecuted. In fact if you do it often enough, it’s inevitable that eventually you will.
Yup. Plus, having any sort of criminal record can restrict you not only for the employment opportunities you’ll apply for later in life, but even for some volunteer work - and if you end up unemployed, depending on where you live and what your circumstances are, you may be required to do volunteer work in order to qualify for assistance.
in case you were wondering if anyone will remember your random acts of kindness:
when i was in kindergarten, i met a boy named jordan. i don’t remember meeting him. i remember knowing him when, one day before dismissal, he came up and asked if he could be my friend. i was a painfully shy kid, and he was friendly and fun and talked a lot, so i said yes. we were the kind of friends that kindergarteners are: buddies during snack time, sharing the best crayons when we colored, and never even thinking that it could go outside of the walls of our school. it was fine. it was great. i had a friend. he’s the first friend i ever made on my own. he’s the first person who made me realise that i could.
my next clear memory of jordan comes when i was in fourth grade. in the morning, i was talking to kristen, who was one of my only friends at that point. she was looking forward to gym, because it was dodgeball day. i was not; i was always picked last in gym class, no matter who the team captains were. you don’t pick the slow-moving kid with glasses if you want to win, and grade-schoolers can be cruel. jordan heard, though; i remember that, because i remember him looking at me as i pointed out how much i wasn’t looking forward to gym, and i remember my cheeks burning because this popular kid heard about my problems.
we had lunch, and math, and finally gym to round out the day. gym, and dodgeball, and riley being one captain, and jordan being the other. and jordan, who won the coin toss, who got his pick of any kid in our class, picking me first. he didn’t even hesitate. he called my name, he pointed to me, and he smiled at me when i walked up to stand next to him. when riley laughed and picked derek for his team and taunted jordan about how he was going to lose, jordan laughed right back and told him that with me on his team, he was definitely going to win. (i don’t remember if we won or not. we probably didn’t. all i remember is not hating dodgeball for one day, and that was enough.)
fast-forward another few years, to another gym class in another school. we were doing baseball, which was my own personal hell in seventh grade. my eyesight hadn’t gotten any better, and i was too tall, too skinny, too out of touch with how to move my limbs to possibly make the bat and the ball connect. rules were rules, though, and no matter how far back in the batting line i stood, nobody was allowed to go back in the building until everyone had a chance. i made myself last every chance i could, because by that point anyone who was interested in the sport had gotten their fill and wandered away, and it didn’t matter that i stuck my elbows out and hunched over the plate and swung and swung and swung at balls that kept whizzing by me and smacking into the fence.
this day, though, this day was the worst day, because i had to be in the middle of the lineup. i don’t remember why; i only remember the sick feeling in my stomach, the feeling that the class would laugh at me as i stood there praying i didn’t move the wrong way and get hit with the ball. when i got up to home plate, i grabbed the bat and stood there and stared at the pitching mound, and jordan smiled back at me. i was clearly nervous; it was no secret that i hated gym, wasn’t any good at it. there were two kids on bases in the field, and someone in the back made a comment about striking me out; one of the kids on base groaned about how he was just going to steal home. jordan kept smiling as he walked off the mound, came up next to me, and quietly asked if he could show me how to hold the bat, how to stand. he demonstrated how to swing, and told me to just try to hit it gently. “just like this,” he said, and held the bat out in front of himself. bunting. i knew the name, even if i’d never been able to pull it off before. “hold it there. you’ll hit the ball.”
i nodded. i didn’t care. i wanted it to be over with.
he walked back to the mound, looked back and me, and then took a few steps forward. “just like i said,” he told me, and i nodded again. he tossed the ball very gently, and i held the bat out, and miracle of miracles, i bunted the ball. “run, run,” he yelled, making a ridiculous dive for the ball, kicking it out of the way of any of the outfielders who were catching on and heading for it. “first base!”
i ran. i made it to first base. i laughed, because i had never been able to do that before, and jordan turned and smiled at me before returning to the mound and striking out the next three people at bat, one right after the other.
now consider this: i met jordan almost twenty-five years ago. i remember these things, these small kindnesses, the things he didn’t have to do but did anyway. he probably doesn’t remember doing any of them. he probably doesn’t even remember me, at this point, and that’s fine. i remember his kindness when there wasn’t a ton to be had, and i remember him smiling when everyone else was laughing at me.
kindness matters. thanks for being kind, jordan. and to everyone else who has been kind, to me or to someone else: thank you, too. your kindness is noted, is appreciated, is remembered.
Confession: I have a friend who likes to text me at like 4am when he’s had nightmares or he can’t sleep or he just needs a friend. He thinks I’m always awake at 4am but really I go to bed around 12am and I change his text-tone to the loudest one I have just so it wakes me up when he needs me.
you’re the kind of friend everyone needs
I think that since its been a year since I made this post its time for an update. In the past year I’ve watched this post grow and grow, people I work with have told me about it as “this post I saw the other day” and they have no idea it’s my post. The person I wrote this about has even reblogged it. He is no longer texting me at 4am. Not because we no longer speak but because the nightmares have stopped. He and I both are in a much better place. Most often the only times he’s waking me up at 4am is when he’s pulling me closer to him while we sleep. He’s more than a friend now and I’m forever thankful to have him. Everyone messaged me saying he was lucky to have me but I think I was just as lucky to have him and I would do it all over.
like the problem with the tumblr community is that no one is allowed to safely fuck up
if i was my uneducated ignorant little 14 year old self y’all would have ripped me a new one and probably scarred me for life
and that’s so scary tbh, that a community of adults would and DO witch hunt and harass minors over things they’re being children about
How to gently acknowledge and inform a person:
Check their blog/content/about me. How old is this person? If they are still in HS/under 18, remember that this person is a minor and needs guidance, not chastising.
Second, look at a little bit of their tumblr. Are they going through serious mental health struggles(Depression/suicide/etc)? Please take this into account when formulating your response.
Finally, evaluate why you follow this person to begin with. Now, if you are 19 and following a 17 year old, then you are within the same age bracket and can talk to this person as if you are talking to a peer. 12/13/14/15 year olds are still formulating their opinions of the world, and you being nasty to them isn’t going to help inform their opinion. So why do you follow a 13 year old? Would you hang out with this person IRL if you two were in the same location? Would it be weird(mentally and physically) for you to hang out with this person? If the answer is yes, unfollow their blog and step away from the situation.
NOW, here is how you formulate a PRIVATE ASK OR FAN MAIL to someone who has said or done something problematic. Shaming them publicly for ignorance/limited world view is a great way to close someone off or harass them, and you don’t want to do either of these things. Online bullying can take on many forms, and being an adult harassing a young teenager adds to online culture problems
“Hey! I noticed that you reblogged (x). I wanted to let you know that this is really hurtful to (x) group, and it is offensive because of (x) reason. I just wanted to let you know because you may not have known. Thank you for receiving this message and listening”
This points out what is wrong, why it is wrong, and does not demand anything of the person you are sending this message to
And then you step away. Do not send this person 20 asks. Do not threaten them. STEP AWAY.
If they engage, respond, or ask further questions, answer them kindly. If they don’t respond, don’t continue to engage.
REMEMBER: you were 14 once too. You said and did things that you cringe at now. You said and did things that were problematic. Getting yelled at was not what you needed. You grew up, you learned, you changed. Let others do the same.
the fact that the parks and recs quote about alex hating most things but not hating laurens wasn't even that far off from an actual quote....
you know, you are 100% correct.
“You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent of the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.” -alex hamilton, in an April 1779 letter to john laurens (chernow pg. 123)
hamilspeak for “i hate most things but i never seem to hate you”
i can’t even make this stuff up, man. goddamn. lams is the realest.
New rule, non muslims can’t say the word jihad. Until you stop conflating a word that means personal struggle with faith and temptation with terrorism youre just not allowed to say it.
I’m not a Muslim but I just thought I would reblog this because I think it’s definitely worth listening to.
It’s totally okay for non muslims to reblog this, and i encourage it. Im just glad you’re listening.
The word means “struggle,” not “holy war.” War is never holy.
In Islam, we are taught that the most noblest form of “jihad” is the internal struggle–the struggle inside our souls, struggling to stay true to ourselves (our beliefs, our morals/values, our emotions. etc…). I believe that we can all agree that it is such a major struggle trying to stay true to yourself in a world that constantly tries to challenge you and put you down.
All right, look, everybody, let’s get one thing about me absolutely clear. I am a taker-of-no-shit with a short temper. I am aware of this. I have been called a cold and ruthless bitch by everyone from people I hated to my now-ex-boyfriend to my family. I’m over it. I have moved on. I’d rather be divisive than indecisive, etc, etc.
So, uh. An anon calling me names ain’t gonna impress me, mmm-kay?
when I start feeling insecure about my lack of creativity when it comes to naming things I like to think about how Victor Hugo wrote a novel about poverty and the sociopolitical struggles of 19th century France called The Miserables and called the lead character John Mcjohn
If you’ve had unprotected sex and are afraid of possibly being at risk for HIV, please go to the emergency room and ask about POST EXPOSURE PROPHYLAXIS.
Works for up to 48 - 72 hours after exposure to HIV.
BOOST!
I wouldn’t need this but this is actually really cool and I’d like to share it in case anyone might need it.
If you see this on your dash REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG!!!! You could save a life
SAVE A LIFE 🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃
There’s a FDA approved daily medication called Truvada, or the PrEP treatment, that is 92-99% effective in preventing the contraction of HIV.
Private insurance and Medicaid cover it. You can also get it for free in a lot of high risk cities like Atlanta, NY, and San Fransisco.
PrEP is for prevention of contracting the virus think of taking it as a vitamin so you won’t get sick - it’s a preventative measure and should by no means replace condoms, dental dams, etc
PeP is after you know or think (!) you’ve been exposed to the virus and you would start to take this in a time frame of 3 days (after three days it’s ineffective) and then continue the treatment for the course of a month as a way to stop the virus from making copies of itself. I wouldn’t call it a morning after pill but it’s like your total last resort and not guaranteed to work but still you need to get on it if you have been rawing or even exposed to hiv+ blood as a health worker or from intravenous drug use or if you’ve been sexually assaulted
you ever thought that maybe the reason girls say they’re fine when they’re not, or they’re not mad when they are, is because the second they show any semblance of emotion they’re written off as hysterical bitches that are probably on their period?
THE FUCKING DA VINCI CODE HAS BEEN CRACKED
Reblogging again, because this will never be irrelevant.
“I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.””—Isaac Asimov (via skinnybaras)
ok seriously like. when someone on this site is 100% without question known to be a pedophile, with hard evidence against them that they own/view child porn and want to fuck real life children and are a danger to real children, DONT FUCKING REPORT THEM TO TUMBLR all that does is get their blog (ie: all the evidence, and any personal information they may have posted that could be used by authorities to track them down) deleted, which does nothing to keep children safe, it just means they arent on tumblr anymore. when you come across someone like this its best to use sites like these:
for the love of God, report the person using these kinds of services, NOT tumblr’s reporting service, so that the proper authorities can track them down and deal with them accordingly
my beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world fave:
my trash-shit fave:
my I love to hate them fave:
my I hate to love them fave:
my I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire non-fave:
my I didn’t care about them either way at first but the fandom makes such a big deal about them now I can’t stand them non-fave:
my I could take them or leave them kinda non-fave:
my I will go down with this ship and I won’t put my hands up and surrender, there will be no white flag above my door. I’m in love and always will be fave ship:
my dirtybadwrong fave ship:
my they’re cute together and I dig them but I’m not all that terribly invested kinda fave ship:
my I didn’t care about this ship either way at first but the fandom makes such a big deal about it now I can’t stand it non-fave ship:
sometimes i get a little stressed out because i’m living in a part of history that’ll one day be talked about and discussed and papers written and what am i doing? what have i done? laundry, barely
would you rather eat for free for a year or get new clothes for free for a year?
Okay, speaking as someone who’s had some experience with the ‘it would be awesome if food was free because money is not a thing’ thing, the clothes are a better solution. And let me tell you why. Food has almost no resale value (like, you could make a case for the canned stuff, but I’m assuming that, given the choice, we’d all prefer to NOT eat sketchy canned soups, right?). Clothes on the other hand…you take advantage of that ‘free clothes’ clause and you acquire a fuck-ton of designer clothes in your size or bigger (because they have to be theoretically for you, so they can’t be smaller) and then you sell them and you use the money for food. Boom. Your income from your job can go entirely to things like rent and utilities.
I made these points in a reblog, but I want to re-state them in their own post, so that it shows up in the main tag.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a story about sexists, told by non-sexists.
I know it’s a bit confusing, because we’re so used to seeing stories about sexists told by sexists. We’re so used to sexism being portrayed by sexist male filmmakers for the sake of a sexist male audience, that we’ve been fooled into thinking this is the only way sexism even can be portrayed.
eabevella’s review of MMFR pointed out that the villains never call women “bitches,” nor are they shown overtly leering at the women in the film, and took this as evidence that the villains in the movie are not sexist. That they objectify women, but only in the way that they objectify everything, and their objectification is in fact quite egaitarian.
While the assessment that the villains are not shown leering or spitting gendered slurs is correct, I’m going to go ahead and say that the conclusion eabevella drew from this is wrong, wrong, so very wrong.
See, there’s a great lie we’ve been told – that in order for an audience to understand that a character is sexist, women must be humiliated on camera.
The truth is this:
When a male character calls a female character a bitch in a movie, that is not the filmmaker’s way of showing the audience the character is sexist; that is the filmmaker’s way of showing the audience that the character’s sexist point of view is worth hearing.
Read that paragraph over and over until it sinks in.
Mad Max: Fury Road makes it absolutely clear that the villains are sexist, and it does so without ever once implying that their sexist point of view is worth hearing. Instead, we learn that they are sexist second-hand, through context and world-building.
We see that the wives have been dressed in ridiculous, impractical gauze bikinis. We see that the wives are not only young and healthy, but also model-pretty. Through these subtle details, the narrative makes it clear that Immorten Joe, the villain, chose these women not just as useful stock, but as sexual objects in which he took sexual pleasure.
In contrast, when the movie introduces the audience to the wives, the movie makes sure to portray them in as humanized, and non-sexualized a manner as possible. Even when they are literally bathing together, we don’t see any water running down chests while the models arch their backs and run their fingers through their hair and sigh pleasurably. Instead we see a bunch of women perfunctorily rinsing off legs and feet, looking exhausted. When they see Max for the first time, they take on fearful, closed off expressions, and project fearful, closed off body language.
Compare this to, for example, Theon Greyjoy’s castration in HBO’s Game of Thrones. We know he was castrated, even though no one ever says the word “castration” and the camera never shows a penis being lopped off. The filmmakers manage to convey that the mutilation has taken place, but respect the character enough not to make a lurid scene out of it (and yet proceed to make lurid scenes out of every possible denigration and mutilation of every possible female character they can cram into their commercial free timeslot).
.
As for Imperator Furiosa, it is hard for us, the audience, to not see Charlize Theron as a beautiful woman. But when we compare her appearance in the movie to that of the wives, it’s clear to see that Imperator Furiosa is, in fact, the opposite of what Immorten Joe and his war mongering culture view as desirable, beautiful, or womanly. They do not sexually objectify her because to them she is sexless.
If we ignore our own biased understanding of Furiosa – as a character that a beautiful actress is portraying – and instead immerse ourselves in the culture of the Miller’s world, it becomes obvious that Furiosa has taken great pains to make herself genderless under the villains’ gaze, and that her efforts have succeeded.
From Entertainment Weekly:
It was Theron herself who unlocked the image of the androgynous warrior—a woman who has escaped the fate of other women by erasing her gender.
“I just said, ‘I have to shave my head,’” Theron recalls. Furiosa is a war-rig operator living in a place where all other females have been enslaved as breeding and milking chattel. But Furiosa is barren and therefore of no value to the despot Immortan Joe and his soldiers. She is considered worthless. ”They almost forget she’s a woman, so there is no threat,” she says. “I understood a woman that’s been hiding in a world where she’s been discarded.” [x]
.
The villains in the movie are absolutely misogynist. They are absolutely sexist. They do absolutely view beautiful women as sexual objects that exist purely for the male gaze.
But the movie is not about them.
The movie, instead, portrays sexist men as obstacles for the heroes of the movie to overcome.
“oh hey,” she said, “it’s a really touristy area, but since you’re gonna be passing through anyway, you might as well stop by pier 29, see the dragons. also, there’s a—”
“hold on,” i said. “i knew your city had mountains, but. dragons? uh, actual living dragons?”
“dude, it’s not a big deal. they’re there all the time. of course they’re majestic and everything, but they’re loud and cranky and mostly they lie around eating garbage. now and then the city council will talk about trying to make them roost somewhere else, but—”
“dragons,” i repeated. i knew it was making me sound like a rube, but it was a lot to take in. “you live in a city that has dragons.”
“no, it’s cool, we used to go see them when i was a little kid. it’s worth doing. but that whole area is mostly dragon-themed gift shops, and the commercialization is kind of a bummer. also, sometimes a dragon will melt somebody’s car and it’s a whole problem.”
“honestly, i forget other cities don’t have them?” she said. “there’s a few other sites on the west coast where they gather. portland calls them wyverns, but that’s a portland thing.”
“chicago’s got, like, bunnies and songbirds,” i told her, “but otherwise it’s just your typical vermin. pigeons, rats, sphinxes—”
“sphinxes? what the hell.”
“oh, yeah, they nest in the el tunnels. sometimes a fucking sphinx will flap down out of nowhere, bring the whole train to a halt until the front car answers a riddle.”
“that sounds exciting,” she said.
“it’s the worst. your train winds up being twenty minutes late, and you just have to hang out hoping somebody up there read their mythology. there’s supposed to be a program where the conductors get trained in riddling, but i don’t know. rahm emmanuel keeps saying it’s not a budget priority.”
“huh,” she said. “guess the grass is always greener and all that. but on some level, it’s nice to remember that even with all these big box stores, the country still has some variety left in it.”
“yeah, did you know that in rhode island they call water fountains ‘bubblers’?” i said.
“whoa, seriously?”
“i read it somewhere. crazy, right?”
“crazy.”
i am here for urbanized mythological creatures
Switzerland has a lot of dragons, but dragons have long since moved on from collecting gold. There’s a purply-scaley one that roosts behind the Mad Mex that refuses to stop hoarding signposts. The city uses banners for the main roads and sells a lot of maps.
Golems love cities–with their stone buildings and sidewalks. There are strict laws about what one is allowed to say to them, because golems tend to be rather literal and very obedient. There’s always one kid who thinks he knows better. He doesn’t.
OH MY GOD THE CHICAGO SPHINXES, DON’T GET ME STARTED. Here’s the thing. When you buy your Ventra card at the machine - which is another one of Rahm’s scams, leasing that out to a private company, wtf was he thinking - it’s supposed to have the answer to the riddle on it, right? The sphinx is supposed to scan the bar code and let the train through.
that never fucking happens. Especially on the Blue Line which is down for maintenance all the time and constantly switching tracks and running shuttles, which means half the time you’ve got a sphinx that came over from the fucking Orange Line or some shit and is full of riddles that only the Irish mooks from Bridgeport understand. Or it’s in Polish only. Or it’s got a glitch that makes it stutter and if you interrupt it, it’ll get snippy and bite your head off. LITERALLY. They hush it up but it happens. Businesses lose millions from sphinx-related tardiness every year.
And then there’s a case back in ‘96 when it was proven after the fact that the “wrong” answer the Red Line Sphinx got was actually A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE REGIONAL VARIATION but by then, the Sphinx had already eaten half a car full of drunken Cubs fans. I know, not much of value was lost there, BUT STILL.
You think SPHINXES are bad? Detroit has imps, thousands of them, and you know what they love? Buses. You know the major form of public transit in Detroit is? BUSES. So the drivers have to literally shoo away imps at every fucking stop, making them 30 minutes late, an HOUR late, and it’s not like there’s anything you can DO, because they’re all leftover from when the car companies were big, and ALL OF THOSE FUCKERS CLOSED.
So of course there were hundreds of orphaned imps, and they kept SAYING they were going to reopen the factories, or at least get some good junkyards, but nooooooooo, they never did, so the imps just bred and bred, and now they’re all over every bus and it’s not like you can ever count on getting anywhere on time and long story short, I’d take a sphinx over imps ANY day.
yeah as someone who did high school and college in michigan and now lives in chicago, i have to say that as far as the age-old sphinxes vs imps debate goes, they’re both terrible in different ways. the imps are way more common and they probably have a wider total reach, and oh my god nothing like trying to board a bus already covered in those little suckers when said bus is already forty minutes late—
(sidenote: ugh people from bloomfield hills saying stuff like “well if i lived in detroit, i’d have the sense to carry around a nice heavy club or walking stick—” yeah dude good luck with your walking stick against two dozen imps)
but the sphinxes. let’s not, uh, sugar coat this: the sphinxes don’t just slow commuters, they kill people. and yes, if you know the riddle, you’re fine. but what if someone else offers their answer first? what if you get some overly cocky freshman philosophy major who takes it upon himself to answer for the whole car?
i think in the back of our minds, all chicagoans know that rahm emmanuel’s administration isn’t gonna lift a finger until one of the sphinxes goes after a wealthy tourist and it makes national news. and even then, we’ll get, like, flashy riddle-solving software installed in all the red line trains, and maybe the brown line, but no way is it gonna cover the whole infrastructure.
basically if you ever need to take the green line or the pink line, you wanna start studying your classical mythology and folklore fucking yesterday.
@copperbadge do puns work on Sphinxes as well as riddles?
You bet your sphinxter they do.
(Sphinxes hate that one but they’re obliged to honor it.)
I want to write an alternative version of Romeo and Juliet where instead of being a little ponce and trying to work things out for himself, Romeo asks his smarter friends what to do about the whole thing and Benvolio and Mercutio come up with the world’s greatest plan:
Marriage of convenience between Juliet and Mercutio.
Think about it.
Juliet’s parents want her to marry into the Prince’s family. Mercutio is a good compromise between no marriage and Paris.
Mercutio probably won’t get his inheritance if he keeps being HELLA FUCKING GAY ALL OVER THE PLACE so a beard is only a benefit to him.
They would probably get along great rolling their eyes at how adorably stupid Romeo is.
Romeo and Benvolio could get a “bachelor pad” right next to Juliet and Mercutio’s house. Every night, Romeo and Mercutio high five as they hop the fence to go bang their one true love.
The second half of the play is just all of them trying to keep up the charade and being “THIS CLOSE” to getting caught all the time. But everything ends nicely because true love conquers all.
Everybody wins. Nobody dies.
THE SHAKESPERE AU I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED
DUDE DID YOU JUST FIX ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC PLAYS EVER CREATED?!
ONCE AGAIN EVERYTHING IS SOLVED BY THE QUEER LENS.
I tried to argue that Ophelia resonated because Shakespeare had made an extraordinary discovery in writing her, though I had trouble articulating the nature of that discovery. I didn’t want to admit that it could be something as simple as recognizing that emotionally unstable teenage girls are human beings. …
When Ophelia appears onstage in Act IV, scene V, singing little songs and handing out imaginary flowers, she temporarily upsets the entire power dynamic of the Elsinore court. When I picture that scene, I always imagine Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and Horatio sharing a stunned look, all of them thinking the same thing: “We fucked up. We fucked up bad.” It might be the only moment of group self-awareness in the whole play. Not even the grossest old Victorian dinosaur of a critic tries to pretend that Ophelia is making a big deal out of nothing. Her madness and death is plainly the direct result of the alternating tyranny and neglect of the men in her life. She’s proof that adolescent girls don’t just go out of their minds for the fun of it. They’re driven there by people in their lives who should have known better.
