Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: 30, 49, 56, 71

More questions from this ask meme, yay!

30: Does anyone hate you?

HA, oh, baby, I’m an asshole.  I’m confident that more people hate me than like me.  My high school teachers were trying to get me expelled, I used to get into fistfights, I shout people down when they start talking about how well, black people are an evolutionary step down or well, homosexuality is illegal because Leviticus or well, Muslims are dangerous.  If I had a dollar for everyone who called me a bitch or told me they hated me, I’d not be on a scholarship, I’ll tell you that much.

49: Is your life anything like it was two years ago?

Two years ago?  Yeah, not unlike.  College, Adler, the occasional medical catastrophe, writing novels.  Same old, same old.  Four years ago, on the other hand, not even slightly.

56: Do you think you like someone?

I dunno, I’m one of those people where I need to have someone sit me down and go “you’re aware that you’re into that person” before I realize.  I had a terrible crush on this STUNNING girl from Kenya at my summer program, and I just saw a guy tonight who was…goddamn.  Just.  One hell of a jawline, with the whole rumpled slightly-smudged-with-grease mechanic’s vibe.  But I also go to a VERY small school when I’m not on break, so not a lot of…variety, you know?

71: Do you have someone you can be your complete self around?

My dear @twistedangelsays, and my parents.  

phantomrose96:

Prompt-based fandom events are when you really learn everyone’s colors like you’ll find the people who take the prompt “death” and come up with some smarmy ship-art of character A and character B walking over dead leaves while wearing scarves and drinking hot cider and then you’ll find the people who take the prompt “sunshine” and write how a bright glint of sunshine reflected off the barrel of a gun is the absolute last thing character A sees before taking a bullet to the chest

you can lead a content creator to water but you sure as fuck can’t make him drink

(via minutia-r)

alrightanakin:

My therapist just told me that I “use humor to cover up past trauma so I don’t have to deal with it” and that “it will take years of extensive therapy to genuinely recover from it all” and I literally burst out laughing and finger gunned @ him

(Source: marisaauntmay, via slyrider)

lovelyladylunacy:

lovelyladylunacy:

socialjusticethespian:

lovelyladylunacy:

lareinaxcvi:

lovelyladylunacy:

why does no one ever talk about how lewis and clark met why isn’t that taught in history classes it’s like some rom-com meet-funny trope and i’ve literally never heard it brought up. literally the start of one of the most famous friendships in america and no one talks about it.

Wasn’t Clark just Lewis’ commanding officer? I guess I don’t know this story either. Can you tell it?

yes!! oh my god!!

so at twenty-one years of age, stupid stubborn hotheaded ensign meriwether lewis decides to get hella drunk and crash the party of one of his superior officers, starting an argument over politics (namely, defending thomas jefferson, his neighbor and veritable father figure) and insulting his host and basically being an embarrassment. so, he’s arrested and leveled with a court martial!! because this ridiculous boy can’t mind his fucking manners when he’s tipsy apparently!!

but instead of having to explain to his poor mother why he got booted out of the continental army, he’s acquitted (”with honor” bc apparently i’m not the only one who plays favorites when it comes to meriwether lewis), but he has to be reassigned so he doesn’t piss off his commanding officer again (awk). and whose brand new sharp-shooting rifle unit does he get transferred to?? take a wild guess!!!! that’s right, william clark’s!!!! and over the next six months meri falls deepfuck in totally platonic bro-love with him until clark resigns his commission for family reasons. then, roughly eight years later, lewis writes him to ask if maybe he’d like to travel to the ends of the earth by his side and, well, the rest is history.

But how do you know it was platonic

i hope you guys understand that when i say “platonic” i say it in the patronizing sarcastic tone of voice i always use when i talk about meriwether lewis’s big ol’ crush on his bff. maybe i can’t prove totally that he was v gay and probably at least a little bit madly in love with clark, but damn i wanna believe love exists ok.

lewis’s obvious sexual repulsion of women, his inability to find a wife, his desire to live with clark after the expedition, that last letter he wrote to clark before his violent death that we don’t have because clark burned it – we can read a lot into all of this if we want to, but even besides all of that the point remains that meriwether lewis was intensely fond of clark, and that they cared deeply for one another, and that their personalities complemented and completed one another in a way that makes you think twice about soulmates.

sooooo, was sacagawea, covering for their relationship?, I need to know history!!. (via @adaywithoutlightis-night )

actually, sacagawea was a sixteen-year-old kidnapped shoshone girl sold into sexual slavery to a french trader named toussaint charbonneau, who pissed power couple lewis and clark off to no end due to generally just being who he was as a person.

whereas lewis had no real interest in women from what we can tell from his writings, he actually wrote about how much he admired sacagawea’s extreme fortitude and numerous skills that helped them throughout their journey. lewis also actually delivered sacagawea’s child!! she had a very difficult birth (probably because she was a child), which sent lewis into multiple kinds of panic. clark, however, really doted on sacagawea and her son; he gave them both nicknames, looked out for their safety during the trip, and was very close to them even after the expedition and ended up adopting sacagawea’s son. he was also a notoriously bad speller and i don’t think he ever spelt charbonneau’s name correctly ever not even once (which makes me think of the blenderdick cucumberpatch meme tbh).

(via permets-tu-not-permettez-vous)

notpotable:

yamitamiko:

nientedal:

animatedamerican:

feminismandhappiness:

giandujakiss:

teapotsahoy:

survivablyso:

xparrot:

fluffmugger:

vmprsm:

darkseid:

freebismuth:

moonsandstarsandmagic:

vintagegalpal:

emilievitnux:

there-is-irony-everywhere:

jmenfoot:

scavengerridley:

Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????

“I feel there’s a lot of rules of politeness and codes of behavior there you have to follow. […] A friend of mine taught me that when you go in some place you have to say “bonjour” before you say anything else, then you have to wait two seconds before you say something else. So if you go into a store you can’t be like “do you have this in another size,” or they’ll think you’re super rude and then they’ll be rude to you.” [X]

#wait you don’t do this is other countries??

So that’s it guys. French are not rude, we just don’t like it when people don’t say “Hello” or “Hi” when they start a conversation. 

Don’t everyone say “Hi” before they ask something to someone? What’s next? Saying please is also a french thing or others countries does that too? 

Canada is similar. We say sorry and please. The Hello thing seems strange, but it actually makes sense.

Bro, this threw me for a loop when I moved up north. Like in the southern United States you say “Hi, how are you?” And then make a few seconds of small talk before you ask your question or order your food and when I went to Connecticut they were like “What do you want?” Without any hello or anything. In other places they just STARE at you waiting on you to place your order and gtfo.

I laid my hand over my chest the first time, and the only way to describe my look was “aghast” before I said “Good lord!” My husband said it’s the most southern thing he’s seen me do. He thought it was hilarious. But…. Like??? That’s rude as fuck??????? Don’t y'all say say “Hello” before throwing your demands at someone??

maybe this is why everyone thinks new yorkers are rude

this is absolutely why ppl think new englanders r rude. no one has any fucking manners

african culture, at least in ghana, demands you greet a person before you ask them something. if youre in an open market they may even ignore you if you dont.

We do this in Australia as well. If you just started straight off saying “yeah I want XXXX” we’d think you’re rude as all fuck.  You say hi, then make your request.  It’s basic acknowledgement of the other person as a person rather than some random request-filling machine.

Huh. Speaking as a New Englander, I usually go with “Excuse me,” but sometimes “hi” or “hey,” but with no pause – it’ll be, “Excuse me, hi, I was looking for X?” From my POV, it seems rude to get too chatty and waste some stranger’s time; I assume they have better things to do than make small talk with me, so I just get my request out there so they can answer me and get back to whatever needs doing. I always thank folks for their help afterwards, if that helps?

(The rules of etiquette are strange. People say New Englanders are rude and cold, but once during an unexpected snowstorm here in Seattle, my car got stuck and I was standing by the side of the road at a busy intersection in the snow for half an hour waiting for my housemate to come pick me up, and not a single person stopped. Back in Massachusetts, every other car on the road would’ve been pulling up to check to see if I was okay, if my phone was working, did I need a lift, etc.)

No but this was the first thing my cousin told me in France? you never ever ever start a conversation with anyone, not even like “Nice weather today, huh?” without saying Bonjour first. You HAVE to greet them or, just like Ghana, they’ll ignore the shit out of you, you rude little fucker

(And “excuse me” or “pardon me” doesn’t cut it. you still have to open with bonjour)

[and I can’t speak for New England but coming from Chicago and then moving Out West where the culture is VERY influenced by the South and DETERMINED to think of themselves as small town folk… I HATE when I have to make small talk before ordering food??? Like, if it’s a coffee shop that’s pretty much empty I’ll chit chat for a few seconds, but I’m still not going to make inane conversation about the weather unless the weather is extreme.

In a big city it is rude as fuck to waste my time making small talk with me when we are not even friends or neighbors??? I am here to get shit done. There are four other people in line behind me, and I don’t want to waste their time. I am here, I HAVE MY ORDER ALREADY DECIDED BY THE TIME I GET TO THE FRONT BECAUSE I AM NOT A CAVE WOMAN, and I am being polite by saying both Please and Thank You and not wasting other people’s daylight.]

I live in a small northern city, and I feel it would be rude to engage someone in more than maaaaaybe a sentence of small talk before placing my order. In addition to feeling I was wasting their time, I’d feel like I was demanding emotional labour (small-talk is emotional labour for *me*) that they weren’t being paid to give.

so bizarre.  New Yorker here.  Saying hi, how are you, etc before these kinds of commercial interactions is what’s rude to me - because ffs, there are people in line behind you, we have lives, move it along.  It’s really just a dramatic cultural difference - but borne of a real practical necessity.

Oh my god saying ‘hi’ takes less than A SINGLE SECOND YOU ARE NOT WASTING ANYBODY’S TIME In Spain you have to say hello to people before you talk to them even people who work in retail deserve that bare minimum courtesy hello??

Transplanted New Yorker here, and the feeling here is: people who work in retail deserve the bare minimum courtesy you would afford anyone else, which is to not waste their time.  You maybe say a half-second “hi” and/or possibly “excuse me” to be sure you have their attention, then you get to the point as quickly and concisely as possible.  You don’t wait to get a “hi” back, you probably don’t ask “how are you”, you definitely don’t talk about the weather.  You smile and keep your tone of voice courteous-to-friendly, you say please, you thank them when you’re done, and you do. not. waste. their. time.

Except ”time” is really only shorthand for the concept:  you don’t intrude on their lives more than you have to.  NY is a very very crowded city which allows for very little personal space, so New Yorkers have developed a form of courtesy that involves minimizing our unavoidable intrusions on each other.  Which is why we hold doors without making eye contact, and why we tend to feel that in any interaction with a stranger, it’s actively rude to do anything but get to the point immediately.

Interesting discussion of regional differences in conversational convention.  But the amount of “my way is the right way; everyone else is super rude and also wrong” going on in this post is giving me hives.  

Hey.  Listen.  "Polite” and “rude” are relative concepts.  Something you were taught was rude may not be seen as rude elsewhere, and might even be the polite thing to do.  Conversely, something you might have been taught was polite might be seen as rude elsewhere.  Saying “no one has any manners” about a group of people whose culture and, by extension, whose conversational expectations work differently than yours is really arrogant. 

In the US the thumbs up means good job or great. In France and Germany it means one, they start counting with the thumb instead of the index finger. In Greece it’s an obscene sexual gesture.

This guy I knew in college worked with the campus d/Deaf/HoH group and told a story about the dinner they had to welcome everyone in. They were trying to tell this little old lady what one of the dishes was, something casserole I forget what kind, and she was getting really flustered. Finally they figured out they were speaking to her in ASL and she was from South Africa. The ASL sign for whatever it was (spinach maybe?) in South African Sign means sex. They were offering this little old lady a sex casserole.

There’s an Italian toast ‘chin chin’, mimicking the sound of the glasses clinking together. It becomes hilarious when Japanese folks are around since in Japanese chin means penis.

As for the South, I will bet you anything that how we have conversations at the register stemmed from the homestead days when a farmer would come in to town maybe once a month and this would be the only time they’d get to talk to someone they didn’t live with. I like talking with customers! If I can get them to smile then it’s a victory and I have a better day for it. It only becomes emotional labor if they’re an outright ass or are sexually harassing me. But in the big crammed city of New York it makes sense to take the get your shit and get out approach, people have a subway to catch. Out here I had to drive myself anyway since it’s fifteen minutes to the edge of town from where I live, so what does it matter if I spend an extra minute at the register?

It’s important to be aware of the differences and ultimately there’s a degree of ‘when in Rome’ that has to happen. Someone who moves from Greece to the US is going to be startled by the amount of thumbs up but ultimately they’re going to have to adjust. Someone from the US is probably going to be shocked that telling someone they did a good job was taken as an insult and they similarly are going to have to adjust. Mom’s a damn Yankee transplant and said it was weird moving to the South and having cashiers younger than her daughter call her dear, but that’s just what we do. Sweetheart, darling, honey, sugar, they don’t have overtly romantic/sexual connotations here. As long as there’s not a leer attached to it if a guy calls me ‘sugar’ when I’m at work it doesn’t parse as a flirt because it’s not one, it parses the same as if he called me ‘miss’. But when a busload of Californians came through it took me three people to realize that ‘baby’ was not flirting, it was just California. NOTHING is universal.

This is the biggest place I’ve ever worked so it took some getting used to, like any skill, but even being socially awkward it’s easy to tell what scripts to follow. Test the waters, if they don’t respond then okay this is a move them through kind of person, be quick and efficient and to the point, feel good when they smile at ‘last question I promise, do you want your receipt’. If they do then pull out the five small talk scripts, get a smile, feel good when they laugh at the cat small talk script.

It’s also important to note that claiming your culture’s way of doing polite right is a fantastic way to fall into some really bigoted nonsense. In Puerto Rico the personal bubble is much smaller than in the US proper, like RIGHT at your elbow close. I had a cashier who was super uncomfortable because our steward was getting in her personal space constantly and he was pissed off because he was trying to HELP her with moving orders why is she mad at him? Once I sat them down and explained the difference they both had this aw shit moment because from their own standpoints they were being polite and from the others’ standpoints they were being rude. After that they were fine, when he got a little too close she’d say ‘whoa man my bubble’ and he’d laugh and shake is head and step back.

Lots of non-white cultures have things like that, particularly since white America has serious problems with sexualizing ANY physical contact to the point we’re all touch starved. The normal speaking voice is at a higher volume or it’s more acceptable to show your emotions or gesture when you speak. None of this is WRONG, but when people star getting into ‘my culture is the only right culture’ then guess who comes out on top? It ain’t the little guy.

the last two adds are great, but: I don’t care WHERE you’re from, it will ALWAYS be rude to take the last donut/cookie/slice of pizza/gulp of juice/etc and leave the empty container there for someone else to find instead of throwing it away YOURSELF since it is EMPTY.

you know you you are.

screw you.

(via determamfidd)