dragonlady7 | Dec. 4th, 2020

Dec. 4th, 2020

tag this kind of shit

via https://ift.tt/3mU29Nb

so i am at an intersection of being fucking insane with regards to no longer knowing how to reconcile needs and wants with the spending of money, like a fundamentally broken consumption machine is what i am here, and then you intersect that with the traditional holiday gift-giving season, and my family being generally chill but sort of thoughtlessly so about the concept of gift-giving and obligations in general, and I am currently completely enmeshed in a maybe-i’m-fine stare of paralysis where I keep having Gift Ideas and looking at Gift Idea Websites and putting things maybe into Shopping Carts but also just not actually doing that, and I keep having ideas of things I Ought To Make but that’s tied up in the paralysis of well I have to spend 40 hours a week working plus another ten to twelve hours a week cooking (more?) plus six or seven hours a week working out and people are expected to have leisure but how do you do that and anyway where do I start a project that’s something I haven’t done before? I stand around in my basement and look at the craft materials I have and then I walk away.

Anyhow. I don’t have any executive function of any kind. (I mean, this is fundamentally who I am, as a person; we can blame the fantastic six-month wait I had to be able to get unemployment earlier this year because of a one-digit transposition on a piece of paper six years ago, or we can just accept that this is how God made me, probably, and let the SSA and DOL entirely off the hook.)

But I DID buy my niece a skate helmet. I have purchased one (1) thing so far, for Christmas.

I’m not seeing anyone for the holiday except possibly my mother-not-in-law who as every year has refused to give us a gift list and for whom none of us has any ideas.

Oh I have a stocking stuffer-type gift for Farmsister, who I am also not seeing. (Because Dude found it, because she commented favorably on some thing he owns and he was like “ah! I will buy her one of those as well!” so we did.)

It’s fine, really? Only I don’t know how to be anything else than what I am.

Also I keep seeing things that I want, but the entire concept of wanting things has become completely divorced in my head from the concept of actually acquiring things. I have been wanting a new pair of non-snow-but-winter boots for three years now and have sixteen tabs open in Zappo’s, and the ones I’m wearing have lost all the faux-leather-wrapping from the low heels and are starting to have the soles come detached.

I bought glue, instead, because I got the skate helmet on Amazon (easiest if she needs to return it because I got the wrong one or someone else already bought one) and they have glue there too, so.

Sigh. I finished up the film transfer orders at work early so I don’t have to go in early today and that meant I could take a nap instead of working out yesterday afternoon so when I woke up early this morning I worked out then instead, but now I’m ready to go in and it’s the same time I usually do. I’m forcing myself to sit here and drink coffee and will go in closer to normal time because there is no reason to go on.

OH Non-Responsive Guy is back to work today but we never did hear the results from his covid test. Since he was the only person directly in contact with the infected kid. Who also is coming back, tomorrow, because it’s been three weeks and he’s now tested negative. So i guess really it doesn’t matter?

The NYT has an interactive thing where you can find out how urgently you should be in line for the vaccine and Dude filled it out and got “dead fucking last” which is actually reasonable and he was like yes, that is fine, I have the most work-from-home-able existence of anyone on this earth, I just want to do my part. Which was my point as well. I just want to do my part. I’m afraid of the disease, of course, but what I’m terrified of, what I lose sleep over, is that I would give it to someone. That’s what I most urgently don’t want. Please, vaccinate the healthcare workers, the hospital janitors, the bus drivers, the postal workers, the grocery store clerks– the people keeping us fed and alive and safe and keeping the infrastructure running and whatnot.

You know they’re going to give it to lawyers and stockbrokers first though. You just know it! And then they’re going to insist restaurants be open, even though you know bartenders will get it last. It’s going to become a pageant of serving the wealthy, just like everything else.

metz/lambert, meet death sitting, the witcher, witcher 3 spoilers

via https://ift.tt/2JDOdbB

A new chapter, featuring Ciri gleefully annoying Emhyr, and Lambert and Keira being cute in the snow, and Lambert doing typical Witchery things like getting himself nearly killed and not being fussed about it. Oh, with a small Lil Bleater cameo, too.

Chapter 4: Need Or Want https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578783

This chapter concludes this story, so that I can post the next story, which was the first Lambert/Keira thing I wrote and which I’ve now had to heavily edit since I discovered so many things about them to explain why it wasn’t working initially, so– I don’t have it titled or quite finished yet but I’ll be posting it soonish and that’s where the Plot Starts, so all this has been setup, and I appreciate you all following along.

I should really separate this out into a sub-series; it’s still in continuity with Meet Death Sitting but it’s probably confusing not to differentiate. Hmmmm what can I call this series??? Accepting suggestions; the winner will probably be the pithiest two-word phrase out of the thusfar-published stories, LOL.

(Stories will probably remain in both series, the way I handled the Star Wars things with Lost Kings semi-separated from Home in the Wind but still under the umbrella of it.)

I’m glad I put Ciri in this one, mostly because I love making her annoy Emhyr.

Emhyr examined her for a moment. “You’re hoping it’s [Geralt],” he said.

“Why wouldn’t I hope to see him?” Ciri asked. The likelihood that Emhyr was displaying any true jealousy was much lower than that of him using this to try to provoke her, she knew that by now. “He’s someone very important to me and attempting to conceal that would only make it more obvious. For that matter trying to conceal my close ties with any of the Wolf School Witchers would only make me look either weak and foolish, or ungrateful. My past is a matter of public record at this point and while I’m open to adopting a more civilized aspect to make me easier for Nilfgaardians to work with, it seems counterproductive to go beyond that and seem to be pretending not to be what I am.”

“I appreciate the distinction,” Emhyr said, “but you could err more on the side of the civilized aspect,” and he gave her posture a pointed look.

She smiled cheerfully. “I could,” she said, “but I could also save it for someone who isn’t already stuck with me.”

but that also means i'm not writing things on the slips anymore, and it was so useful, and nobody else does, god it saved so much time, no customers understand that we're not psychic and idk why, some of them act SO WEIRD when you ask their names!, god i am not a fae i just need to know what it's filed under!, i promise i'm not stealing your name

via https://ift.tt/3mIokFJ

mosticonicposts https://mosticonicposts.tumblr.com/post/634613844611825664/homiedepot-snorlaxatives-just-had-the :

homiedepot http://homiedepot.tumblr.com/post/174558387554/snorlaxatives-just-had-the-strangest-encounter :

snorlaxatives http://snorlaxatives.tumblr.com/post/174551638554/just-had-the-strangest-encounter-at-the-cvs-photo :

just had the strangest encounter at the cvs photo counter…. i was like “hi i had some photos printed through your website” and the employee just said “so?”

“Hi I had some photos printed through your website”

CVS employee:

certified iconic post

i mean. i work in a photo lab and we have those little envelopes where we tear a strip off and hand it to the customer like a claim check, so they remember to come back? and customers love to come in and hand that to me, like i’m going to know what the fuck it is, when we have such a wide range of services and the thing their lil reminder slip matches could be literally anything.

When I worked the sales floor I started writing on the slip what the thing was and what the customer’s name was, so that when people handed it to me I could look at the slip and actually get some information.

but like.

“hi I have some photos.”

“ok, here are some photos.” This seems to be what customers expect, but like. How do I know who you are? We asked your name so we could fill out the bag, do you think we’ll just remember what your name was?? Or do you just want me to randomly pick some photos to sell you? You probably want your photos, don’t you? So maybe, just maybe, you need to tell me who the fuck you are.

You manage to wrench the person’s name out of them, so you get that and you go to the alphabetical file of the photos, and after a while you’re like “I don’t see anything, what was it?” and they’re like “oh I had a poster printed” see THAT would also have been good info to have, before I pawed through all the drawers for regular photos, because here’s a shocker, posters don’t fit in the little file thingies so we file them in a whole other place!

Listen especially this time of year I am not here to carry this conversation, I am here to do actually kind of a technical job, help me the fuck out here and don’t expect me to read your mind and know just what you’re here for. Please tell me your name and what you ordered, I am so tired and so busy.

yikes, do read

via https://ift.tt/36F1dXc

Imperial Wars Always Come Home https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/imperial-wars-always-come-home:

brotheralyosha https://brotheralyosha.tumblr.com/post/636598970204979200/imperial-wars-always-come-home :

“Because I spent so long working on the later Roman Empire and its political disintegration, I’m deeply wary of making too explicit a comparison between it and the present-day United States. It’s too easy to make an overdetermined, square-peg-into-round-hole type of argument simply because it’s available and I know it well.”

“But one area where the comparison makes a great deal of sense lies in the role of the frontier.”

“There are a lot of different ways of understanding the end of the Roman Empire in the west: barbarian invasions, internal dissension, economic collapse, some combination of the above, or a gradual slip into imperial senescence. The one that’s always made the most sense to me focuses on the imperial periphery.”

“The Roman Empire’s frontier zones were a space dominated by the Roman army, not just as a military force but also as a cultural and economic institution. When the people living beyond the frontiers - barbarians - interacted with the Roman Empire, they were really interacting with its army. Sometimes they fought it, sometimes they supplied it with food and supplies, and most often, they joined it. The result was a distinctive shade of frontier culture focused on the Roman military, but with a healthy dose of “barbarian” - wearing trousers, using Germanic words, and so on - mixed in. This culture encompassed both sides of the border, creating a zone of intense interaction stretching well into both the barbarian lands and the Roman Empire.”

“In the later stages of the Roman Empire’s existence in the west, it’s often hard to tell the difference between a force of rampaging barbarians and a Roman field army. Both drew their recruits primarily from people living beyond the frontier. They used the same kinds of swords and wore the same kinds of helmet: Even the famous Sutton Hoo helmet from 6th-century England is just a Roman cavalry helmet (a Spangenhelm) with a cool-looking mustachioed face mask added. Roman soldiers spoke a variety of camp Latin that was generously spiced with Germanic words. Plenty of barbarian raiders had served time in the Roman military; it’s not hard to imagine that some barbarian recruits into the Roman army had probably raided Roman territory at some point before they joined up. Even Roman soldiers recruited inside the empire’s boundaries were often descended from recently settled barbarian groups.”

“The upshot of all this is that rather than seeing a series of barbarian invasions that brought foreign invaders into the Roman heartlands, we should instead think of what happened as the transposition of frontier culture from the periphery to the imperial core. We can’t really draw a line between the “barbarian” and Roman military, because there wasn’t a firm distinction; the two bled into one another, and it’s easier to think of this as a militarized and ethnically distinct frontier culture. This culture, and people who had been brought up with it and molded by it, was what moved, not a distinct series of barbarian ethnic groups who were unfamiliar with Roman ways and practices.”

“The Roman frontier was a violent place. It was, after all, a militarized space. When the frontier and its military culture expanded into the formerly peaceful Roman core, violence came with it. A military aristocracy that derived its position from its war-making capacity replaced the Roman civic elite; where the latter survived, it assimilated to the new, militarized aristocratic culture. Armies tramped through the interior, sacking and burning cities like Rome and Carthage. It’s a safe bet that the average folks of lowland Britain, coastal Spain, and fertile North Africa didn’t welcome the sight of the frontier coming toward them; that meant violence, blood-stained swords, armored men rifling through their possessions, burning huts, and much more.”

“When we see Border Patrol agents wearing camouflage and helmets, carrying M4s with optics, rigged up like they’re about to go on patrol in Ramadi or the Korengal Valley (or deal with a migrant caravan in the southwest), that’s empire coming home. The viciousness of their handling of immigration during the Trump era, complete with threats of gunfire, concentration camps, and consistent dehumanization, has been a preview of their handling of American citizens. So too have been the various misdeeds of American soldiers overseas.”

“Even leaving aside the fact that the mishmash of federal agencies providing these paramilitary forces are stocked with veterans of overseas conflict - about 30 percent of Border Patrol agents are veterans, for example - the equipment and us vs. them way of approaching conflict are straight out of the imperial frontier. The fact that these paramilitary policemen aren’t actually soldiers isn’t as relevant as the ways of thinking about force and power, and who constitutes a legitimate target for violence, that empire produces. At this point, the periphery has entered the imperial core.”

“When we see armed agents of the state beating a Navy veteran with batons, tear-gassing moms in bike helmets and the mayor of Portland, and planning further deployments to Chicago and Albuquerque, I can’t help but think of that man who spent five centuries buried in a mass grave at Towton, of his old wound and crushed face. Is that where we’re heading? Is it inevitable that the tools of imperial war will be even more explicitly turned against people here at home”

“All empires fall. When they do, the violence and terror they’ve wrought on others has a way of coming back around.”