I was looking for someone mentioning what style of dance this was! It looks like swing but slower than I’m used to seeing it.
If I was 1.) able bodied and 2.) able to afford the admission I’d go to my local swing dance group. It’s so fun and versatile!
I’ll need this tomorrow I think.
Workout For Daily Life
The first time I ever got drunk I pulled up the last scene of Twelfth Night on my phone and passionately recited it, voicing all the characters. And apparently this was totally unprompted. There was a lull in the conversation and I just went for it.
I used to have the entirety of Queen Mab memorized but I’m still salty over being harshly graded for that school project and because
“And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly, / To do you rest a thousand deaths would die.”
“Where goes Cesario? / After him I love / More than I love these eyes, more than my life, / More by all mores than e’er I shall love wife“
Is the sexist SEXY-EST thing in all of Shakespeare.
Um no offense but why doesn’t anyone memorize passages from books and then recite them aloud for everyone at parties anymore.
I won a book from a contest at my library. I have dyslexia and they were able to get an audio book for me. Ella Enchanted was the book I picked. I still sometimes listen to the back half when I'm having a rough time.
Do you ever think about how hostile todays world would be for Ella (Enchanted) what with modern advertising? Adblockers MANDATORY lest she enter financial ruin. She couldn’t drive down the road without horse blinders on. I think about it all the time.
Also she’d have to get Mandy to vet all music for her. I feel like she’d just do a lot of movie soundtracks and classical.
Yeah, they never really get into how music with lyrics works for her, do they? I mean, she lives in a world without recorded sound, and medieval(?) music wasn't known for having as many imperative phrases as the modern sort often does.
We know she can resist commands directed at other people that she happens to overhear- the part when she reflexively fastens her mother's necklace around Hattie's neck and then realizes the order was for Olive -but so many songs are just directed at the generic listener.
Would she be stuck with flu symptoms from inability to lick Cardi B's neck, back, etc. until someone came in and countermanded WAP for her?
Ooohhhh this explains why I can cook when I have a caregiver with me but wont when I'm alone.
I'm showing thee caregiver how to prepare the things I like to eat for the days when I can't get out of bed
1. a couple months ago a publicist invited me to a concert and i accepted her invite and she said she’d add my name to the guest list. the night of the concert i was feeling a little tired and not entirely up for walking all the way to the venue and standing around listening to a band i’d never heard of. but then, as i was making dinner, i thought, “why don’t you pretend this is a date night with bill hader?” i realize this is an insane person thing to think. i do often go to concerts with friends; i am not in the habit of pretending bill hader is accompanying me to concerts. but that night i did put on the band’s album and pretend that bill hader was dancing around the kitchen with me while i cooked. and then i pretended that bill hader threw his arm around me on the walk to the venue and walked slower than usual because he’s taller and his paces are longer than mine. then i got to the venue. and i told the lady in the ticket booth that i was on the guest list. and i gave her my name. and she handed me two tickets, and she said, “here, for you and your plus one.” i was all alone in front of the box office. there was no one else around. at no point leading up to this had the publicist mentioned giving me a plus one. i laughed a little to myself at the idea of Imaginary Bill Hader being given his own ticket and then i went inside.
2. on the way home from acting class tonight, a long walk in the cold, i came upon a diner lit in warm golden hues, and i hadn’t eaten all day, and it looked irresistible, so i went inside. “for one,” i said, and the hostess said, “do you want to eat at the bar?” and i said, “no thanks, could i sit at a table?” and i was ushered to a table for two. it was a pretty busy night and i was kind of self-conscious about being the only person eating alone so i was like, “well okay i’ll just imagine i’m on a date with bill hader again haha.” and so i sat there and enjoyed some very good sweet potato ravioli with chestnut-cream sauce, and what was perhaps the best cheesecake i’d ever eaten in my life, all the while imagining bill hader seated in the empty chair across from me. and then at the end of the meal, my waitress came and cleared away my dessert plate, and she looked at me, and then she looked at the empty chair, and then she looked back at me, and then she said, “are you paying separate or together?” again, the other seat was empty. i had been sitting at this table fully by myself for the entire duration of the meal. the waitress had come by the table perhaps five or six times over the course of the hour, seeing me completely alone. and i said, “sorry?” and she said, “separate or together?” and i said, “…together?” and she said, “cool, do you need the machine?” and i said, “yes” and she brought the machine over and i paid, because my dinner companion, despite apparently being visible to my waitress, was imaginary bill hader.
I went to University in the middle of a large city. There were was a lot of tension between the residents who lived right next to the campus and the students as well as the school as a whole.
Landlords were buying up peoples homes and converting them into apartments to rent out to the student population, displacing families and rapidly changing the make up of the area.
Students called the residents ‘the locals’, or, when they were complaining about how, ‘they just didn’t get college culture’, ‘the natives’. Yikes. Add on the residents were majority black and the students were majority white and it’s a Big Ol’ Fucking Yikes.
Moved to the suburbs and my dad was encouraging me to talk to the people I saw while walking the block and to in general ‘go native’. Oh boy that took me aback.
But even outside of the racial and economic tensions in an area, each neighborhood has it’s own little culture.
If you want to know anything about the area you go to my next door neighbor. He’s lived here 52 year and can tell you how long ago a project in your house was completed and if he thinks the people who did it would have done a good job.
If you lost your dog there’s a woman on our block who is always willing to help you out.
We have a block wide yard sale every other year.
Hey I'm sort of curious. I haven't read the book, but I'm a fan of the show and was genuinely disappointed that the phrase "going Native" had an exclusively negative connotation when I watched. Idk if this occurred to you or not, but that's pretty blatant racism. It's especially tone deaf considering this is a show about angels and demons - which have been a tool to commit genocide against us for upwards of 500 years.
Why not just use "human"? It's accurate and doesn't frame an entire demographic as inherently bad or undesireable.
Not trying to garner any ill will, it just rlly bummed me out bc I'm Native and it's an identity I wear with great pride bc ppl have tried countless times to rip it away from me. To see it treated with such disdain was very hurtful.
I understand your concerns, and do not wish to minimise them, or your hurt. Obviously the phrase has colonial roots. However, it's a lower case N, and isn't intended to talk about Native Americans. When the angels talk about Aziraphale "going native", this is the meaning they are using. It may be negative for the grumpy angels, but it's positive for humanity and for Aziraphale and Crowley.
From Mirriam Webster online:
: to start to behave or live like the local people
After a few weeks, she was comfortable enough to go native and wear shorts to work.
Recent Examples:
But dogs that go native make bad guards, hunting companions, and friends.—David Grimm, Science | AAAS, 29 Oct. 2020
Let your yard go native: The Cuyahoga Soil & Water Conservation District is offering seven native plant kits for sale that are adapted to the local climate and do not require excess watering or fertilizer once they are established.—Joan Rusek, cleveland, 6 July 2020
I do like the scorn the opening sentence has for the concept of being "perfectly normal." That's a strong opening for both a children's book and a book about magic.
(Tragically the series doesn't live up to the expectations this sets.)
It also implies The Dursley's go around calling themselves "perfectly normal". Which. It's just not something I can imagine one neighbor saying or another, or Mrs. Dursley mentioning during book club over tea, or the topic coming up in casual conversation. Ever.
The phrasing doesn't come off as non-literal. I get tripped up in the specificity of the action. To whom do they say they are, "perfectly normal, thank you very much."
Does anyone doubt this? We are not actually shown how Harry's magic effects to Dursley's reputation growing up.
It does have a whiff of "tho doth protest too much" since they can't simply be "proud to be perfectly normal". Instead they have to assert (but to whom???) that they are "perfectly normal". They know and are infuriated that they are not.
It's a good set up for the conflict between the Dursley's and Harry, and the idea of an opening that immediately characterizes these antagonists as loving normality and "fitting in" is one I do very much like. But it's not quite there yet.
It needs a few more passes to hit just right.
B-, maybe C+
Anyway,
If anyone does have a recommendation for an urban fantasy book where the protagonist is in someone magically different and surrounded by family which is hostile to their very existence because of that difference I've been itching to read one.
Of, and of course, the protagonist should be explicitly queer because *gestures at previous paragraph*, obviously.
Oh fuck off
The best order to watch Half Life 2 speed runs is this Dev Commentary fallowed by the AGDQ run with it's beautiful, beautiful commentary.
I’m with you Dev’s how is this guy getting shot in the face but not taking any damage? How does he just walk into walls?
Comment section: “Well clearly he's a boat and also a zombie and also doesn't exist,"
Hmm, no, that’s not helpful. But I am intrigued.
Okay, but you forgot to mention if it worked. Did it work?
I didn’t realise this until adulthood but handmade birthday piñatas are the apex of parental devotion. I spent the week cooking for my ravenous teenage cousins and felt a bit crestfallen at times that I was spending so long making something that was going to disappear within minutes—but with piñatas it’s so much worse, they exist to be savagely maimed. Year after year my father asked his kids what shape they wanted this year’s piñatas to be and he spent weeks painstakingly making them in the basement after work, only to watch a bunch of oversugared bat-wielding kids gleefully destroy them in less than 10 minutes.
I mentioned this to him and he said he remembered researching tarantula anatomy for the giant spider piñata I asked for when I was 4, trying to make the fangs the right shape and to cut the crepe paper into very thin ribbons so the thing would look appropriately fuzzy, and I was like “and I don’t even remember it because I was four!! spending so long building a beautiful object only so your kids will have fun destroying it, knowing they won’t even remember it, is such a selfless endeavour” and he said “my other motivation was that you said you wanted the spider to look real & scary so the kids at your birthday party would be terrified of it and you’d get to scoop up all the candy and I wanted to support your slyness & ambition”
My family won’t support me in my vent endeavors so I pay a therapist $$$ instead.
Either way I do not leave comments on fics and only very, very, very rarely respond to the toxic slug pit that is internet discourse.
sometimes people are absolutely WILD about comments, acting like the idea that they shouldn’t be a jerk is a violation of their first amendment rights
last week i read a fic i HATED. it was well written and highly recommended and i wish i had never read it. hours of my life i will never get back.
i disagreed with: it’s interpretation on canon, it’s take on mental health, the social contract between loved ones, recovery, trauma, boundaries, and … more tbh
i could NOT stop thinking about how much i disagreed with it. me and this fic have philosophical differences so large i could give a ted talk and i was still super irritated about it days later.
so you know what i did?
i called up my friends and was like “you guys have no context but i’m going to bitch about this fic you haven’t read in this fandom you haven’t consumed for the next thirty minutes” and they were like “okay sure it’s a tuesday night, we’re in a pandemic, i have nothing better to do”
what did i not do?
leave a comment on this person’s fic because i’m a human person
"it's okay, i can peel back the layers of you until i find the soft and gentle core of you you've had to work so hard to hide"? no. no, it's okay, i know you're hollow; i'm here anyway. you don't have to pretend it isn't masks the whole way down. whatever face you want to wear, i still love you. i don't need you to be good or unflinching or the antonym of violence. if i did, i wouldn't be here. i wouldn't ask that of you.