scrawls and élan vital.

ok dudes

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:42:00 -0500

if you don’t keep it down about how full you are or sing that silly song about being lazy at the top of your lungs or throw up in the hallway outside of my room (or something) or TRY TO OPEN MY DOOR AGAIN BECAUSE YOU THINK IT IS YOURS i will be upset. just because MOST people are not here doesn’t mean EVERYONE is not here.

Let's be clear.

Thu, 09 May 2013 23:02:09 -0500

As a “whole lotta woman” who is 5’7” and 170 pounds, I am a fat-positive feminist. I am a body-positive feminist. I feel like I’ve had to get into too many discussions about it this week alone, and I’m annoyed. The career of my choosing is probably one of the most physically demanding out there and I HAVE to be in tip-top fighting shape in order to do it.

However.

I am working on gaining that muscle and maintaing a healthy relationship with food, my self-image, and my body in general. I am not going to deprive myself of things. I am not going to diet, or do things that don’t feel good. I am making a lifestyle change because I need to in order to do what I DREAM of doing and, in reality, I’m learning pretty quickly what foods and movements make me feel good and what don’t.

But if you come at me from any direction other than “I support you in the choices that you are making,” I call bullshit. If you come at ANYONE else in any direction other than “I support you in the choices you are making,” peace out.

Here are some articles and blog posts and resources in case there is any confusion on how fat-positivity and body-positivity is tied up in and important to intersectional feminism, because these writers have said it better than I’m currently able to.

That moment when

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:19:07 -0500

andreavengeance:

You realize that this time next year, you will be getting ready to graduate with a bachelor’s degree.

You realize the school and people you have been so involved with for 3 years will not be a part of your daily life.

And you realize how much you’ve actually grown up despite not feeling any different

Writing prompt from io9

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 23:27:07 -0500

I almost never sleep through the night since Mom put the house on stilts. Sorry, not JUST stilts. Stilts with LEGS. Stilts you have to OIL so they don’t get cranky and knock dishes off the counter if they rock too hard.

It started when she got fired. She started pulling things out of the “catch-all” drawer, broken clocks that Jon had busted during his I-want-to-be-a-mad-scientist phase, toys I had thrown in there when the parts that moved stopped moving. She fixed the dishwasher next. I came home one day and she was sitting in the kitchen, the pieces spiraled out around her with a blue post-it note designating the name and order d each piece. I picked up a crummy-looking piece and she told me, without looking up, to run to the hardware store and get a new one just like it. The neighbors started bringing things over, busted toasters, slow watches, and I made more runs to the hardware store. They started paying her, and so we didn’t get too worried and it just kept happening

She pulled up half the carpet in her room for a workspace, and wouldn’t let anyone in unless she was between projects. Then she started making things. She built me a hanger-sorter, which took the empty hangers out from between the full ones, so I didn’t have an excuse to leave things on the chair anymore, she said. Jon got an alarm clock that would dump little bits of water on him if he hit the snooze button too many times.

She started installing solar panels around the windows and on the awnings, and tinkering with the water heater and wiring. I came downstairs for some water one night, and she had ripped out a section of the wall in the living room to make the outlet to the left of the door work, and it hadn’t since before we had moved in. But she made it work. She started gathering up our relatives’ addresses and asking us to draw pictures of where we wanted to visit (the world’s largest ball of twine was Jon’s, mine was lakes and snow-capped mountains somewhere) before we went to sleep.

We went to sleep-away camp that summer, at her request. And when we came back, sun-tanned and mosquito-bitten, with pen pals and stories, the stilts were there. They were splayed around the house like a spider’s legs, and the foundation had been exposed. The neighbors glared when she popped her head out from behind one of them, streaked with grease and dirt and sweat. “Hey guys,” she chirped. “Welcome back!”

She asked us about her plan the next day. There were chickens in the basement, a garden in half the kitchen, and she had bolted all the furniture to the floor. She had been living off the grid since we left that summer, recycling water for the garden, building a better heater. Jon and I stayed up all night talking about it. Neither of us had friends close by, just the ones we had made while at camp. We agreed, and she started it up as the sun set. They shuddered a little when the house left the ground, and the chickens weren’t happy about it. Jon and I stuck our head out the window like dogs, and Mom piloted from the newly-repaired outlet in the living room.

The rocking got me. Never in one direction, just back and forth and up and down and side-to-side. I’d wake up from dreams of being lost in the ocean, or trapped in a box as it tumbled downhill. I watched the moon and stars go by the first night.

After that, I’d go sit with the chickens and watch them sleep, undisturbed by the rocking. I’d oil the machinery when it started to groan in the way mom demonstrated to both me and Jon when the stilts started to complain. Once, the house shook so badly that a cabinet fell off the wall and half the plates were smashed. We used the shards to make a table, and mom disappeared into the basement for three days before we started moving again. Sometimes, after that, mom would stop the house if we were getting close to a city, and I’d drop right off to sleep.

Reblog this for your URL in circular gallifreyan

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:47:28 -0500

bluewalrushair:

michygeary:

harperhug:

uncontrolablegiggles:

deerstalkingdeathfrisbee:

I may regret this but I promise to write the URL of everyone who reblogs this in gallifreyan. Make sure you’re set up to receive submissions otherwise you won’t get it.

OMG YOU ARE AWESOME

100th reblog; you’re definitely going to regret this.

But so pretty.

please?

do want

nevver: Forever

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 12:22:14 -0500

nevver:

Forever

source: http://www.sembeo.com/media/Matrix.swf

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:36:52 -0600

source: http://www.sembeo.com/media/Matrix.swf

fuckyeahfeminists: The Boy Scouts of America is accepting...

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:06:31 -0600

fuckyeahfeminists:

The Boy Scouts of America is accepting public feedback about ending its ban on gay Scouts and leaders. Its Board will vote by Feb. 6. Let’s FLOOD their lines with thousands of calls. (Believe me, the other side’s busy, too…)

If you call 972-580-2330, a rep asks: “Are you FOR or against the change in policy?” Just say FOR and you’re done! Can’t get thru? Email nationalsupportcenter@scouting.org

Make the call/email and then REBLOG this message! Tell BSA to suppose equality

An Evening of Awesome -- Hosted by Shimer College

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:50:39 -0600

John and Hank Green will take the stage at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, with special guests the Mountain Goats, on Tuesday, January 15, 2013. “John and Hank Green: An Evening of Awesome” will take place one year after the release of The Fault in Our Stars and will include special guests, musical performances, and more.

“John and Hank Green: An Evening of Awesome” will be live streamed via the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel so that fans across the country can enjoy and participate in this anniversary event.

Shimer College is hosting a Livestream for Chicago-area residents, and you’re invited! (: We’ll see you at 5 in Cinderella Lounge, and the livestream starts at 6:00 Chicago time, so we’ll socialize and watch old vlogbrothers videos and get STOKED. If you have any questions, just message me (esiuolaras.tumblr.com) and I’ll try to answer them. (:

Nerdfighters and the Mountain Goats at Shimer College!

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:38:00 -0600

It’s been a year since the publication of Green’s acclaimed The Fault in Our Stars. To mark the anniversary, Green and his brother will be performing at Carnegie Hall with the Mountain Goats—and everyone is invited, via live streaming video! Shimer College will be hosting a livestream event for Chicago-area Nerdfighters, and you’re invited.

Shimer is located on IIT’s campus at 3424 S. State Street, on the 2nd floor. Someone will meet you at the door between the two buildings and direct you to where you need to go. We’ll be there around 5pm (Chicago time) and stay until the livestream is over, but the livestream starts at 6 Chicago time.

For more information or directions, message me (esiuolaras.tumblr.com) and I’ll help you out!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Femme

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:53:00 -0600

I have been struggling with this desire to dress very femininely for about a week and a half now. I have given into it twice, putting on the only pair of heels I own once. The second time donning a colorful skirt and sweater tights and a pair of flats I bought for fifteen dollars and paid for all in ones. The cashier gave me a funny look.

But heels hurt, and I can only tolerate skirts for a short amount of time.

Maybe it has something to do with wanting to throw my femininity into people’s faces, to shout that I am HERE and still important even in shoes that hurt or skirts that make people say “damn” when I wear them with a specific pair of tights.

I want to put on ridiculous amounts of lipstick sometimes and leave marks on the faces of people I love as they squirm to get away from my stained mouth, laughing.

I spent 20 minutes ogling shoes online today.

These are not things that I have ever done.

I decided to ask my hairdresser to cut all my hair off when I was around 12, and again every few months after that until it was a quarter of an inch of hair all over my head when I was 15. I sort of relished when people would call me “sir,” because I hid inside of my clothes. I remember picking out something to wear on the bus home from a friend’s house based on how it would make me look like a boy so nobody would bother me. I borrowed my grandfather’s shirts (huge and brown, with wolves on the front) and wore them constantly because they hid my breasts and stomach.

Once, I was in my closet, changing shirts for a party. One of my family members came to find me because I was making us late and she asked what I was doing. I explained I was self-conscious about my stomach and how it showed more than I wanted it to because of the tightness of the shirt. She told me, “If anyone’s going to be staring at something, it won’t be your stomach. It will be your breasts.”

It was not ever a matter of self-hatred, but just discomfort in skin and flesh I didn’t know how to take care of or move. Both girls I was very close to at the time of growing up (my sister and my cousin) were slender (one was a dancer and one was very tall) and I compared myself to them constantly. I reveled in being told I couldn’t sing the female parts in musicals and I had to sing with the men (once I was even cast as a young boy, but I didn’t know how to bind my chest properly, so everyone in the audience knew I was only acting).

I think I am comfortable now. I think I am comfortable and want to push my comfort zone. I stagger in heels. I cringe around things in skirts. I am self-conscious in makeup and feel like I can’t touch my face because I put it on perfectly this once, what if I mess it up and can’t do it again?

I have never embodied that hyper-femme person who has only piped up every now and then, but I think I would like to now that the craving is much stronger. I would like to still be someone who MATTERS and can be taken seriously even in a lot of makeup and a dress. I would like for heels to stop being an obstacle but something I can choose to wear when I feel like it. Maybe through learning to balance in high heels I can learn to balance out my intellectual, mental sense of self and the embodied, very female sense of self.

Her Space

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 13:02:00 -0500

Sometime during the night, the heater had quit and the crack in the window had made him gather all the blankets around him as he slept.

He had been staring at her space on the bed for twenty minutes, searching for some depression that her shoulder had made the last time she had slept there. She would turn her face away from him, the back of one hand pressed up against the wall, even though it always made her wrist fall asleep. The other hand would curl around her stomach and he would try to interlock his fingers with hers in one moment of waking comfort before the calamity of dreams.

He missed her, and not just for the extra warmth on this chilly day.

He stood up to close the window, which rattled after it was shut. He perched on the bed and tried to find some sign that she had been there. Some impression or smear of leftover makeup, a stray hair tie that had slipped out while she slept which she had left behind. Something to prove that he hadn’t been imagining the mumbled sleep conversations, the half-awake questions when he would get up to let the cat in. He missed her reminders to shut the window, even if the heater was acting up again. He missed her silent laughter when he tickled the inside of her elbow right before going to sleep, the laughter that shook her body in his arms and when she’d flip over to get him back.

The cat jumped off the bed and landed softly on the floor, four small impacts in the shortest span of time, and padded over to the door and nudged it, then looked back.

He got up, shivering as his t-shirt traced chilly fabric fingers over his shoulders and the shifting of his skin.

He opened the door and the cat ran out under her outstretched arm and the second key. She looked up at him and smiled, sleep written in the corners of her eyes and mouth and along the flyaways of her hair.

“I thought we might want breakfast,” she said, rustling the grocery bags. “Can I come in?”

Raincoat

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:14:04 -0500

There is very little to say, and it’s been raining all week.

Your yellow jacket is still sitting where you left it, slick with water and dripping on the floor.

The cat has walked through the puddle six times.

My socks are drying on the windowsill and the sun is starting to come out from behind the trees. I can’t find my phone, but it’s been ringing for half an hour.

I have said too many of the wrong things with no thought to the consequences.

When your face fell for the first time after I laughed with you over coffee last winter, I didn’t realize that I had caused you to question me.

When you threw your mom’s plate and it shattered against the wall, I cheered with you as we cleaned up the shards. I didn’t know you pulled the pieces out of the trashcan later and cried.

I’m not sure when the last straw was piled on or if I kept piling them on afterwards, but I can only plead ignorance and hope you’ll get too wet to not return for at least your raincoat.

"Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:05:44 -0500

maybethings:

april-is:

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew — however poorly used -
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her — Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — out of her bag —
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers —
Non-alcoholic — and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American — ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands —
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate — once the crying of confusion stopped
— has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

OW OW OW MY EYES MY EYES

Mah-scles

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 20:38:18 -0500

I’ve been working out 2-3 times a week for maybe a month now.

And I’m seeing muscle development! It’s great in my arms and in my legs when I see some definition.

skdjhfksj I’m just excited.

Photo

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 20:36:55 -0500

A List of Practical Ways to Protest "Save the Pearls"

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 15:17:00 -0500

litglutton:

Today, tumblr has exploded in opposition to Victoria Foyt’s novel “Revealing Eden,” the first book in her Save the Pearls series. This outpouring of intellectual criticism is great! Follow the “Save the Pearls” tag and you’ll found a huge collection of people who have written up poignant and articulate reasons why this book is a very, very bad thing. But what if you want to do more than post about it on tumblr?

Rate the book 1 star on the websites for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, LibraryThing, and other popular book review sites. Even if you do not feel comfortable writing out a reason for your low rating, enough 1 stars will influence the book’s overall rating and discourage potential readers.

Comment on the Save the Pearls Facebook page. It is actively maintained, so your comments will be read by some aspect of the publishing house.

Reference Save the Pearls and Victoria Foyt on twitter. This is quick and fairly easy.

The Save the Pearls website allows you to comment on the book’s video trailers and Eden’s blog. You may even submit your own videos there. Just be warned that the site has been “moderating” comments, so negative remarks may never actually be posted.

I will personally ask that all users who make direct comments towards the book and author refrain from using profanity, violence or threats, yet I accept that I cannot control or expect to control your actions. Use your best judgement.

Do you want to move beyond the Internet?

Visit your local library to inquire whether or not they stock “Revealing Eden.” If yes, speak with the head librarian about the many options available for the library. You may start a petition to: a. remove and throw out any copies, b. personally buy the library’s copies from them, so that the establishment is reimbursed for the money they spent, or c. restrict access to the book for any reader under 18, requiring them to have a guardian’s permission in order to check out the book. Just keep in mind the library’s funding (or lack thereof) and how they typically acquire books. Some may find it painful and harmful to actually throw novels out, so offering donations or compromises will always be helpful.

Create your own collection of alternatives that you can suggest/lend to potential readers. The genre of race-related dystopian fiction exists and there are high quality others out there. “Noughts & Crosses” by Malorie Blackman is a good place to start.

Do not buy the book! If you are interested in reading it but do not support the author, then look into (legal) ways in which you can get a copy without giving money to the publishing house. Having one copy that you may lend throughout your circle of friends is a good idea, as is exchanging and borrowing digital copies through online libraries.

I do not recommend or advocate stealing copies of this book, destroying someone else’s property, or impeding upon an adult’s right to spend their money/read however they choose. If you want to have a bonfire, as I joked before, go for it. Just make sure that all copies are willingly and legally burned.

And as always, educate yourself on the matter at hand before taking action or criticizing those who take action. Tumblr is filled with wonderful commentary on what is wrong with this book series, so in addition to the Save the Pearls tag, here are a few of my favorites: X x X x X x

#chicagoarchitecture #sixmonthoversary #nofilter #trumptower...

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:02:12 -0500

#chicagoarchitecture #sixmonthoversary #nofilter #trumptower (Taken with Instagram)

#chicagoarchitecture #sixmonthoversary (Taken with Instagram)

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:49:11 -0500

#chicagoarchitecture #sixmonthoversary (Taken with Instagram)

#chicagoarchitecture #sixmonthoversary the cool thing about this...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:29:39 -0500

#chicagoarchitecture #sixmonthoversary the cool thing about this building is that the truss at the top is what supports it… there are no supports on the bottom! The pillars that look like they’re holding it up are just decoration. (Taken with Instagram)