#My life

[septembersung]

Catholics believe it’s important to name their child after a saint because giving them a “Christian name” is literally required by canon law.

That’s from the 1917 code, even the 1983 code still says:

“Choose a Christian name” and “a name not foreign to Christian sentiment” is arguably a wider net than “a Saint name” but you can see why it would be referred to that way commonly.

It isn’t always enforced anymore and cultural norms are shifting to use “Catholic adjacent” names, including place names (eg Lourdes, Guadalupe, Fatima) even where historically a given culture didn’t. Variations of names are accepted as well (eg Jennifer is a variant of Genevieve.) I don’t have a citation but I’m confident beati and widely venerated recently passed persons would have been namesake candidates too, historically. And of course ymmv on what any given priest, even some flavor of traditional one, will know, care about, or enforce.

TLDR naming your kid a saint name isn’t something hipsters made up and doesn’t deserve to be mocked since it’s actually. you know. an ancient, pious Catholic practice enshrined in law.

There are so many things you can mock Catholic subcultures for please choose something else.

[imagine-all-the-people]

Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m 54. Sure, I’m a proud Gen X’er, and I get that I’m older-ish—but honestly, being in my 50s still feels surreal. I recently heard someone say, “Even though I’m this age, I still feel the same mentally as I did when I was young.” That really resonated with me. Physically, maybe not all the time, but overall, I think, feel, and act more like someone in their 30s than someone in their 50s.

Yesterday at work, a few people complimented me on how pretty I looked. I was having a good hair day (see the picture above for proof!). I told them - “not bad for 54!” 😅

“Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been."

— David Bowie

It’s a beautiful reminder that growing older is a journey of self-discovery and authenticity.✨

[e-vay]

Terribly sorry, but what did you win an Emmy for? I'd like to know so's I can track it down and maybe watch it.

Oh haha no need to apologize. I work for an Arizona television station and so I'm the art director for 2 news channels, a sports network and a lifestyle show. I don't know that any of the shows we make would be of interest to any of y'all.

One of the awards was for a series that one of our reporters did for our newscasts that featured 'bucket list' things to do in Arizona. It's broken into 3-parts but if anyone wants to check it out, it's here:

[x] [x] [x]

(Fun fact, my husband designed the shirt April's wearing in those)

The second award was for a special Halloween episode of our lifestyle show. Unfortunately, our lifestyle show isn't available online which makes me very sad because the Halloween special was so much fun. We all worked so hard on it from costumes to props to special effects, even the entire episode was in black and white!

Thanks for asking!

[sassy-girl-666]

💕💖💕

“So much of what we learn about love is taught to us by people who never really loved us.”

— r.h. Sin

[pinkanonwrites]

Hey are you alright? I know things are tough right now and you haven't posted anything in a while so I'm concerned. If you're just taking a break I understand completely I just wanted to make sure you're OK ♡

Hi, thanks for reaching out! To be completely transparent, I got on a new medication several months ago and ever since then I've been having a really hard time with pretty much all of the artistic endeavors I enjoy, like seeing and writing.

I don't want to change it because it's working SO WELL for my mood stability, but every time I sit down and try to write something it feels like my head is full of fog, so I've been struggling a lot with processing words and actually getting them down. I've been wrestling with that fog a lot lately, actually. It's kinda been messing with how I process how much time has passed, too. Physically and emotionally in doing really well, I'm just trying not to pressure myself too much to write cause I just end up feeling down about it.

I really appreciate the concern, though! As much as I'd love to say I'll be back soon with plenty of ideas and fics and drabbles, I honestly have no idea how long it's going to be until I get a handle on this. It's just an adjustment period. But I have no intention of stopping writing completely, nor do I intend to delete/remove any of my previous works from my blog!

I'm hanging in there, so don't worry!

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Today I discovered that "bro visited his friend/the visiterrrrrrr" isn't necessarily a widely known meme outside of tumblr after I referenced it irl and seemingly came across as a complete maniac, ironically exactly creating the circumstances of the original meme

[weaselle]

i want to talk about real life villains

Not someone who mugs you, or kills someone while driving drunk, those are just criminals. I mean VILLAINS.

Not like trump or musk, who are... cartoonishly evil. And not sexy villains, not grandiose villains, not even satisfyingly two dimensional villains it is easy to hate unconditionally. The real villains.

I had a client who was a retired executive for one of the big oil companies, i think it was Shell or Chevron. Had a home just outside of San Francisco that was wall to wall floor to ceiling full of expensive art. Literally. I once accidentally knocked a painting off the wall because it was hanging at knee height at the corner of the stairs, and it had a little brass plaque on it, and i looked up the name of the artist and it was Monet's apprentice and son-in-law, who was apparently also a famous painter. He had an original Andy Warhol, which should have been a prize piece for anyone to showcase -- it was hanging in the bathroom. I swear to god this guy was using a Chihuly (famous glass sculptor) as a fruit bowl. And he was like, "idk my wife was the one who liked art"

I was intrigued by this guy, because in the circles i run this dude is The Enemy. right? Wealthy oil executive? But as my client, he was... like a sweet grandpa. A poor widower, a nice old man, anyone who knew him would have called him a sweetheart. He had a slightly bewildered air, a sort of gentle bumbling nature.

And the fact that he was both of these things, a Sweet Little Old Man and The Enemy, at the same time, seemed important and fascinating to me.

He reminded me of some antagonist from fiction, but i couldn't put my finger on who. And when i did it all made sense.

John Hammond.

probably one of the most realistic bad guys ever written.

If you've only ever seen the movie, this will need some explaining.

Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park in 1990, and i read it shortly thereafter. In the movie, the dinosaurs are the antagonists, which imo erases 50% of the point of the story.

book spoilers below.

In the book, John Hammond is the villain but it takes the reader like half the book to figure that out. Just like my client, John is a sweet old man who wants lovely things for people. He's a very sympathetic character. But as the book progresses, you start to see something about him.

He has an idea, and he's sure it's a good one. When someone else dies in pursuit of his dream, he doesn't think anything of it. When other people turn out to care about that, he brings in experts to evaluate the safety of his idea, and when they quickly tell him his idea is dangerous and needs to be put on hold, he ignores his own experts that he himself hired, because they are telling him that he is wrong, and he is sure he is right.

In his mind, he's a visionary, and nobody understands his vision. He is surrounded by naysayers. Several things have proven too difficult to do the best and safest way, so he has cut corners and taken shortcuts so he can keep moving forward with his plans, but he's sure it's fine. He refuses to hear any word of caution, because he believes he is being cautious enough, and he knows best, even though he has no background in any of the sciences or professions involved. He sends his own grandchildren out into a life-threatening situation because he is willfully ignorant of the danger he is creating.

THIS is like the real villains of the world. He doesn't want anyone to die. Far from it, he only wants good things for people! He's a sweet old man who loves his grandchildren. But he has money and power and refuses to hear that what he is doing is dangerous for everyone, even his own family.

I think he's possibly one of the most important villains ever written in popular fiction.

In the book, he is killed by a pack of the smallest, cutest, "least dangerous" dinosaurs, because a big part of why we read fiction is to see the villains face thematic justice. But like a cigarette CEO dying of lung cancer, his death does not stop his creation from spreading out into the world to continue to endanger everyone else.

I think it is really important to see and understand this kind of villainy in fiction, so you can recognize it in real life.

Sweetheart of a grandfather. Wanted the best for everyone. Right up until what was best for everyone inconvenienced the pursuit of his own interests.

And my client was like that too. His wife had died, and his dog was now the love of his life, and she was this little old dog with silky hair in a hair cut that left long wispy bits on her lower legs. Certain plant materials were easily entangled in this hair and impossible to get out without pulling her hair which clearly hurt her. When i suggested he ask his groomer to trim her lower leg hair short to avoid this, he refused, saying he really liked her usual hair cut.

I emphasized that she was in pain after every walk due to the plant debris getting caught in her leg hair, and a simple trim could put an end to her daily painful removal of it, and he just frowned like i'd recommended he take a bath in pig shit and said "But she'll be ugly" and refused to talk about it anymore.

Sweet old man though. Everyone loved him.

[septembersung]

Been going round and round with my neurospicy kid about the necessity of some rule following in a society and How to Function In Structured Environments and now he’s telling me all about how, well, Beregond broke rules! for reasons! And it was fine!

[thestuffedalligator]

My brother-in-law has a Thing where he gives me increasingly rare copies of The Bee Movie and it’s long since gone from “Goofy running gag” to “I don’t know how much money he’s willing to commit to this bit and it Scares Me.”

Where the fuck can we go from here

[trek-tracks]

When a student copies an essay online instead of writing it and then painstakingly changes every word to a synonym until the text no longer makes any sense...

call that the Ship of Thesaurus

[foldingfittedsheets]

So that’s how my morning is going.

[sassy-girl-666]

Totally relate

If they walked away, it's no accident. If they left you, it's no accident. If you tried to make it work and it wouldn't work, it's no accident. Accept it as it is and keep going. Stop begging people to stay, let em go.

[artbyblastweave]

A few years ago, when Avengers: Endgame came out, I had a tutoring gig with elementary schoolers. And there was this one little girl who really, really wanted to spoil what happened in Avengers Endgame to me, but I hadn't made it out to see the movie yet, so, you know, I politely ask her not to, but she really wants to tell me what happened. So I tell her, tell you what, it's free time right now, so you draw me a picture of what it is you wanted to spoil for me so bad, and then after I see the movie I'll unfold it and look at it, is that a good compromise? And she's like, yeah, that'd work! So she draws a picture at and gives it to me. That weekend, I go see Endgame, and when I get back from the theatre, and true to my world I unfold the drawing, and it's a crayon, mommy-and-daddy-and-me-out-front-of-our-house-style depiction of Black Widow's lifeless corpse splayed out on the rocks of Vormir

[strangerthanfictionlife]

Went on vacation to San Francisco and had some fun at the beach

[e-vay]

We are ready for the Sonic Symphony!

[athenasdragon]

This was really good and a huge hit at work! It’s incredibly rich and filling; it definitely would have been better alongside coffee.

Trying to explain where it came from to people who don’t play video games or understand how they work was definitely a chore though haha

I think there’s going to be a perplexing uptick in apricot preserve sales this week