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Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati

@deputychairman / deputychairman.tumblr.com

“what’s the worst fruit” i hope you fucking die im strangling you what the hell is wrong with you. ‘the worst fruit’… has god not made all of these fruits in the same light???? cunt

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rottenlittlefink

Red Delicious Apples

just got a call from the american psychiatric association. you old dogs, i said, picking up on the first ring. how many times i gotta tell you to lose this number. i don’t want you coming around here anymore. “listen, toots, we’ve been doing some thinking,” they says, and i says, guess there’s a first time for everything. “you’re a real funny dame, sugardoll. reviewing criticism, we’ve determined that the biggest issue with our previous diagnostic and statistic manuals of mental disorders is the anonymity of it all. we’ve been circling around a vague figure of the mentally well without defining the traits of a mentally well person. there’s no personality. what we need is a cute broad with a couple opinions to model the psychological norm.” so i’m saying back up and give it to me straight: i’m the new standard of sanity? can i get that in writing? and they say, “as the american psychiatric association we hereby state that you are the baseline and any deviations from your personality are deviations from the very concept of sanity, at least in the united states psychiatric system.” they’re making it public tomorrow. it’s a nice gig, if you really want to know. never thought they’d let a woman do it.

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Source: tumblr.com

Yes! Eliot had read reports of a mission in Antartica where this exact thing had happened, so he incorporated it in the poem. There is a double meaning, obviously, because it's also a reference to Jesus on the road to Emmaus. But it is very much on purpose. He wrote:

 "The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted"

Green-glazed jar, Tang Dynasty, 701–800 CE. © Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (EA1956.3114).

This type of brightly glazed ceramic was made for only about fifty years, during the reign of emperor Minghuang – who ruled from 712 to 756 – when the Tang dynasty was at its height. At the time, the capital city Chang'an (modern Xian) was one of the most populous and cosmopolitan in the world.

Courtesy Alain Truong

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