Jun. 28th, 2017

dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2skAEz5:
laporcupina:

(The MTA deities are Elder Gods: elemental, ruthless, demanding, and vain. MTA is a syncretic religion; it is an occasionally ill-fitting combination of three smaller pantheons: the IRT, BMT, and IND. As a result, the MTA gods are jealous gods and fights between them are frequent and frequently legendary. New Yorkers are never sure if a subway problem is the result of the gods being unhappy with their supplicants or simply squabbling among themselves, although it’s generally assumed that the century-long delay in consecrating the first of the subterranean shrines along Second Avenue after removing the sky-based temples is the reason that the locals and expresses never have their doors open at the station at the same time so you can switch.)

The scene: a crowded evening rush-hour train, two women sitting next to each other on the bench, nowhere to stand. The lady next to me, twice my size, asks me to move the straps on my backpack because they are touching her. I comply, then go back to my doze. A stop later, she’s at it again, complaining that they are still touching her. The only strap in her general vicinity is the one still on my arm and I don’t feel the contact, but I pull my elbow in a little for show – there’s nowhere for my arms to go, either. It’s not enough. She complains a third time, elevating her voice along with her indignation. I suggest that she should lower her personal space expectations during rush hour, which is not what she wants to hear, but she’s not interested in escalating it to physical confrontation and goes back to watching something on her phone. I go back to my doze again, but first silently wishing her a lifetime of sitting next to small, loud, hyperactive children on every ride.

The MTA gods are capricious and capable of great kindness and great cruelty, sometimes both at once. They love blood sacrifice and whimsy in equal measure. And so on a day when they rattled their immortal chains with some fury, I had my plea answered favorably.

At the next stop, even more people get on and I first hear and then see a little boy, maybe six years old, board with his harried mother. He’s bouncing all around in his three inches of allotted space and I smile and thank the MTA gods for their boon. I then offer the mother my seat – she accepts very gratefully. A moment later, I see why: the boy is one of two. There is a little brother, maybe three.

“Good luck,” I tell the lady next to me as I get up, all virtue and NYC solicitousness, as the two overstimulated kiddies climb up into the space that had once been occupied by a snack-sized adult dozer. The look on her face as she realizes what I’ve done warms the dark cockles of my soul. 
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2sQvvSR:
They’re lovely, but they MUST be kept in a pot, or a raised bed, or on a good-quality leash with a chest harness, because mint and its cousins spread like… IDEK, like a rash. Like dandelions. They’re tough, hardy and highly motivated. Even a tiny root fragment will suddenly turn into a Mint Tree if you don’t tear it up. I swear I’ve seen new plants popping up from BURIED SCRAPS OF LEAF. Once they’re in the ground they establish a beachhead and spawn secretly, possibly through osmosis. I cannot advise you to stick a mint plant in the ground unless you are a bold and unconventional disciplinarian.

The joke is that after running around after the mint like a spaniel chasing a whack-a-mole for a year, Dr Glass then planted a plant that would do the same thing.

Great plants, hard to kill, keep them in a pot (ESPECIALLY where invasive)
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2slM59u:
oh a random slice of life from visiting my sister in Maryland. It was me, my older sister the Lt. Col. (who just moved to MD from GA), and Middle-Little sister, and we were painting Lt. Col. Sister’s middle son’s room in the new house. It had wood-panel walls and glossy black trim, it had to go before the child could really live there, he’s a seven-year-old ball of sunshine and can’t be subjected to wood paneling. So we painted it all in shades of blue and it took forgoddamnever.

At one point someone brought up the thing about the Gay Cousin– you know, how there’s always one– and how our group of cousins is so white-bread that I’m the closest thing we have. And yeah, I mean, I’m a whole person, so I count, but I’m so invisibly queer, I’ve had the same dude for 15 years now and nobody realizes. 

As if to prove the point, Lt. Col. Husband was standing in the doorway with a beer, having just put the kids to bed, and said, “Wait, in what way are you the gay cousin???” 

I’ve known the guy a decade. “I’m bi,” I said. “I was pretty serious with a woman before Dude. I’m clearly not super into getting around, but I’m definitely not a straight person either.”

He was like, “does that count??” and to their credit, both of my sisters were like, “yes that counts what is wrong with you”, and he sort of went off and stood in the corner with his feathers all ruffled for a moment. 

Buddy, I’m the sister that likes you, don’t screw this up. And also, yet more testament to the fact that if you don’t know any gay people, it’s because you’re not paying attention.

This narrative of how you Come Out one time and then you’re Gay Forever is like, the least true thing ever to become a narrative trope… 

Also he tried to argue about the upcoming cakes for gays Supreme Court case on the basis of homophobia being a 2,000-year-old religious practice and i was like are you seriously reducing all of Christianity to homophobia maybe crack a Bible sometime and read the bit where Jesus actually talked, it might open your eyes. Also if it’s cool to refuse cakes for gays, why can’t lunch counters be whites only too? I mean what kind of America are you arguing to live in, here? 

I got the feeling he was doing the white dude arguing for the sake of arguing thing that’s so fucking obnoxious, but I was Not Having It so we didn’t get far into that. I told him to let me paint his child’s bedroom in peace. 
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2slSLoa:
invisiblespork:

Also if you’ve tagged me in a post or responded to a post or added commentary to a post…basically if you’ve attempted to interact with me in any way, I’m not ignoring you. My activity/notifications page is showing me basically nothing and won’t load beyond like the past 10 notes? So in practice all I see are maybe the last few people to like a post. I just have not seen anything. Sorry all :(

I’m getting something like this only… it keeps going but then it’s just showing me stuff I’ve seen before? It’s so odd, and it just means I’m not sure whether it’s just that nobody’s talking to me lately, or I’m not being shown notes. I don’t know!! 

I’m sure it’s worse for people with more activity. 

Ughhhh whyyyy I’m so tired of being the product of the sites I’m trying to use. Nobody really cares about the product’s user experience. The actual sites are for the advertisers and data collectors, and we’re just here to generate content for them, so there’s no real incentive to make it usable the way we want– the ways we work around the broken parts are more illuminating, for them.

Sigh.
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2sm7NdA:
White dude devil’s advocate: exactly it, summed up. 

My own dude has done it, at various points in the last decade and a half. I mean, it’s been a decade and a half, everyone fucks up once in a while. But we had a solid couple years where we argued over Why Is Pride A Thing.

And it’s just. It’s so ubiquitous that you can’t just write people off over it or you literally wouldn’t know anyone anymore.

It’s always the same shape of arguments, but it’s seldom identical enough that you can just verbally copy-paste your same response; I’m always caught off-guard and like, “wait what”, and I know they see hesitation or Too Much Emotional Engagement as you losing, and so I often get these nebulous ‘victories’ scored on me and that makes it so much more frustrating. I’m like, Christ, you’re so tedious I don’t know what to say, that doesn’t make you right! Also you just personally attacked part of the core of my being and you want me to stand there with my guts in my hand and tell you calmly why that’s not warranted? And you win if I get mad? Man this game sucks.

So I’m definitely going to do a lot more “listen bub, you’re a man, so your role is to look pretty and lift heavy things and grill stuff, so go grill me a thing and leave the advanced discussion to the women who can actually understand it”, because that at least knocks them off-guard and keeps them from awarding themselves the point. They think they’re arguing for the sake of argument but they’re not really doing it in good faith to be convinced, and they’re not respecting how much higher the stakes are for me as a queer person with a vulnerable reproductive system, and they haven’t done any fucking homework first, so I see no reason to actually deploy the Rhetorical Guns. “Listen, honey, lift some weights or something, and maybe you can talk with the big girls once you’ve read some bell hooks or something.” [My b-i-l’s specialty with the Army was running their fitness program so he actually literally works out as part of his job, so it’s extra funny. He’s a very Beefy Boy and not used to being called pretty. But man his biceps are the size of my head, it’s unreal.]

And like. White dudes want to argue about everything. My dad keeps dragging up Bill Clinton. I don’t have the fucking time for that, the Russians are going to bring down our power grid or maybe 45 is going to start a nuclear war for funsies or maybe the GOP’s going to actually start culling the disabled, I can’t even fucking tell anymore. I can hang if we’re discussing Viking history or something where we all have equal emotional stakes, but somehow it always circles back to feminism and queer theory and shit they know painfully little about that I live all day long, and I’m like, why are you wasting my time with this if you can’t read a fucking book and get yourself at least to like, 101-level shit. It kills me. It’s so boring.
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2s1CIwA:
oh i think i might post my 13,000 PWP porn with the working title Yavin 4some, featuring Han Solo’s POV, a present-tense narration, and Shara Bey, Kes Dameron, Leia Organa, and Han Solo having literally all of the sex, because why not. but I need a real title and to convince myself it’s okay. 

anyway. That’s the state of the me.

Also, I was going to work next week but then I realized I’d requested it off because I was going to be at the farm and even if it fucks up all my scheduling I’m incredibly tempted to just– still take that week off because my house is a shambles and my brain is a disaster and I just want to sit and look at my life and my choices and take stock in my own home for a minute, so. 

Maybe I’ll get my shit together next week, who knows?

Once I’ve gone away for the weekend to celebrate my 15th anniversary with Dude, of course. We’re going to go the Thousand Islands and not do a whole hell of a lot, for two days. It’ll be keen. We’re not helping my family move or anything. We’re not even going to see anyone we know, let alone do any work. It’ll be novel. 
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2tZob5U:
brainstatic:

The media always mindlessly parrots the line of “defunding Planned Parenthood.” That’s Republican spin and they make no attempt to correct it. Planned Parenthood is not a governmental program, it does not appear anywhere in the budget. This so-called defunding is making a rule that Medicaid can’t pay for Planned Parenthood, which is the majority of their income. But here’s the thing: they’re still letting it pay for other healthcare providers that do abortions. This is an exemption for Planned Parenthood specifically. It’s a purely political assault on a single entity that the right has demonized, because it’s where poor women get healthcare. Making a law that targets one specific group or person goes against our whole philosophy of how a democracy should operate, and it goes totally unreported on. 

Profile

dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
dragonlady7

January 2024

S M T W T F S
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 2627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 04:26 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios