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.
Having had to spend all of college listening to physics majors at Caltech talk about stamp collecting while I was trying to teach them biology, fucking thank you, Randall Munroe.
