so I watched one too many videos of people making fancy Victorian lampshades and said “well I already have all the supplies I need for that, including hubris” and now here we are.

as it turns out, I was right and it’s not actually that hard, but the one thing none of the tutorials have explained is how to avoid sticking yourself with pins every two minutes. and also how to keep from bleeding on your lampshade.

The gods of crafts are dark gods, and they require a blood sacrifice.

so last night it finally hit me that in 6 months I am going to be moving halfway across the country on not quite a whim but definitely a hope, a prayer and also a dream to go a grad program and then try to finagle my way into a weird and highly specific career. and no you will not be getting any further details on it because I do not want to dox myself. this is also, for once, not the problem

the problem is! that I have to condense my entire apartment down into three suitcases and one vera bradley bag of shit to trek with me across the country (am I driving? flying? who the fuck knows, definitely not me), shove the rest of it in my childhood bedroom at the cost of my parents and hopefully not have to get a storage locker because, one way or another, I will be (unfortunately) moving back into a college dorm. something that I, a 26 year old, really do not want to do. but alas. I am.

so tonight I embark upon the quest of My Clothes.

"saph," you might be saying. "it is January. you have six months."

yes. six months to figure out where to put All Of My Shit. and I do not want to leave it until the last minute. I do not want it to be July and suddenly I realize I have too many clothes. which I know I do on account of the fact that I have worked retail for the last five years and have, thus, accumulated far too many clothes.

so. this fine evening. I will be attempting to fit My Entire Closet into one (1) very average sized suitcase. I expect this will be go horribly. but it is 7:25pm and I have hot chocolate and unfortunately nothing to lose.

roughly one hour later I have discovered that I own possibly too many pairs of jeans and unfortunately I want to keep nearly all of them. I also own alarmingly few pairs of shorts. I have very few formal clothes which is not really a problem because I don't work a formal job but also I feel like I should prioritize bringing at least one or two formal things with me. I also forgot that I own a large number of sweaters and sweatshirts....

I've further decided that I'm going to end up packing all of my work clothes into the vera Bradley bag along with the socks underwear and etc, leaving one Massive suitcase and one carry on suitcase for All My Other Stuff (sheets and blankets, kitchen shit, shower shit, shoes, decor etc) if I am driving, which I feel like is likely, I will have a bit more room for stuff but I am not going to bank on having that room.

also as for the vacuum bags, yes I am considering that but given that I don't think I'm going to have a proper vacuum Out There I don't want to rely on having to vacuum bag things and then not be able to vacuum bag them down again to get back......

also I am done with my hot chocolate. I want more.

thankfully I still possess my sanity.

another 30 minutes later. I've managed to get a few sweatshirts, probably too many shirts, pants and a dress into the suitcase. even more surprisingly the suitcase managed to close.

were now onto work clothes.

I have a friend who travels a LOT for work, for months at a time, who packs a single suitcase of essential clothes. When she gets to wherever she's going, she finds the equivalent of Goodwill/secondhand clothes shops and buys stuff to fill in her wardrobe. When she leaves she re-donates everything.

if you’re reading this, i’m wishing for the universe to be kind to you

For all my mutuals, this and a grilled cheese cut diagonal

The idea of “but everyone knows that” needs to stop.

I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.

Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!

But let me tell you a story:

I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.

One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.

At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.

I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.

Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.

The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.

And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.

So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.

So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.

By all means, let them know so they can make informed decisions, but being kind will go a lot further than attacking them for some info they might not know yet.

if i had three wishes they would all be to make web 2.0 utterly illegal and go back to normal html

how do we explain to children that all our tech briefly worked perfectly and over time we threw it all away for sleek menus and corporate opacity

"we could give you a link to this mp3 OR we could run it in a proprietary player app that must connect to the internet every time you hit the resume button"

when i upgraded from a flip phone to an iphone and realized i could no longer record and set a custom ringtone because apple wanted me to buy radio pop ringtones, i realized, oh cool new tech isnt made for us it's made to exploit us and we are going to let it happen

ouch

"I know chatgpt is bad but you just don't really have any choice" you literally do. Don't use it. Have some moral backbone.

it's been like 2 years. i havent touched it. never needed to. "you don't really have a choice," are you so swift to forget the recent past? Bitch i still use itunes to download mp3s to so i have them forever and any song i want, then my sister burns them to CDs. When boycotts rolled out my other sister got no thanks to scan what products we shouldn't buy. i still use corded headphones not because "its older" but because it's easier. a fool criticizes those who buy candles 200 years after the invention of the electric light until the power goes out. become ungovernable. you are not immune to propaganda. you've never had Chatgpt forced upon you, the only thing forced upon you is the idea that Chatgpt is forced upon you. why claim you need something today that you didn't need yesterday. little bitch.

to my student who emailed me today asking if she should title her essay “what does grendel eat for breakfast? danish” or “no arm, no foul,” thank you. you don’t know that i was in the middle of hashing out how i’m handling your classmate’s intentional plagiarism, but receiving that email reminded me that some of you take your teenage rebellions in the right direction, and i love u for that.

Catherine Schell as Maya - Space: 1999 (1976)

I imprinted on this show SO damn hard.

(Don't get me wrong; it was terrible. That's not the point.)

kill me once, shame on you. kill me twice how did you do that

i grew up in a family of left leaning hippies (thank god) but i can't stop thinking about the one holiday dinner party where my teenage cousin said something about immigrant hotels and needing to stop the boats and there was like. a pause at the table until our grandpa, a very mild mannered man, just went "now where the fuck did you hear that?" Incredible aura. ive never heard that man swear before or since but man did he pick a perfect time for it.

I was at an ex's holiday gathering when one of his siblings said something about "all of the immigrants ruining the kids' schools" and their dad, the Sicilian patriarch of the family said "Like the immigrant you're planning on inheriting money from?" and I have never giddily sat through a more awkward silence.

Interaction witnessed at post office today:

Elderly lady mail clerk and young customer are chatting. Customer says, "oh! I'm wearing my boss's coat right now, give me something weird to put in the pocket!" Others within earshot all start looking for something because, hey, important quest. Mail clerk finally reaches under counter, pulls out a large roll of labels, and tears one off.

Twas this

Btw, if you’re every really bored and want to do something nice, there’s a website that lists about twenty-ish elderly people, a small blurb about them, and an address that you can send cards to. It changes monthly and you can write whatever you want (even if it’s short or just drawings). Been doing it all month and it’s such small thing that makes me feel so good and I know is making others smile. Random ass post, but genuinely is making me so happy every time I do it.

"ugh forced marriage? this plot is so toxic"

That's the kink

"they can barely/can't control themself from ravishing their partner? How is that portrayed as ROMANTIC??"

That's the kink

"why is the plot so fixated on how tiny the main character is compared to the love interest?"

Grisps your shoulders so firmly

Buddy you're not gonna believe this

-via Design Bloom, November 24, 2023. Very cool! Some excellent info on exactly why these will be so useful in the comments.

Here's the thing about Jareth from Labyrinth right?

He's made up.

That's not necessarily the same thing as not REAL. But he, just like all her friends who show up in her room before her adventure as toys and figurines, exist in relation to her, in response to what she wanted and needed. She told the story and there he was, there he always had been. But she's a teenage girl who doesn't know what she wants yet, and Jareth kind of pays the price.

"but the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and had given her certain powers." He's an archetypal oxymoron. He's both the dastardly baby stealing villain and the royal love interest trying to relieve the heroine's suffering, Cinderella style. He's fucked either way by being both. She doesn't know if SHE wants to be the villain or the heroine until he shows up and then she decides on the heroine, so he has to sneer and menace and challenge but it's too late for him!! it's too late, The King Of The Goblins Had Fallen In Love With the Girl, he's Cinderella's prince too and he has to try, he gives her a poofy dress and takes her to fucking goblin prom, sweeps her around the room like a music box with perfect posture and room for Jesus.

But it doesn't work buddy, it can't work. You're just a story for a teen girl to grow up in, and as the villain you have to be defeated. He's so complex because his tropes contradict themselves, and he doesn't understand why he has to lose when he was only doing the job he was given. In his last scene he is pale as death with shadows under his eyes, backing away and begging for his happy ending with nonsense mishmash promises that belong to both halves of him.

"I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me." I'm sure you are, Jareth. No wonder.