#but that's because i'd just heard box and that was revolutionary

[srirachaz]

sometimes a song isn’t that bad it just had the misfortune of being placed in the album directly after the most life changing song on the planet

[maidservant-hecubus]

My father is an Ashkenazi Jew. His parents were first generation Americans. Their parents escaped the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and came to find their American dream. They fought in wars and opened businesses and assimilated and my generation barely has a few words of Yiddish between us. My mother is as much of a WASP as it gets. American Revolutionaries and Signers and some household name civil war feature players. Not old money, but old America and undoubtedly white. I'm patrilineal. Not a Jew to a lot of Jews. Not a Jew to a lot of my Jewish family. Even though i was raised Jewish. Even though I look like my father. Even though i got enough of something in my DNA to get asked "What are you?" more often than not. More often than I'm just accepted at face value as "white". When i was little we lived in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. Like the 5-10 kids in every family sort of Irish catholic neighborhood. The kids calling me a christ killer and refusing to play with me because they heard it from their parents sort of irish catholic neighborhood. For some reason my parents tried to send me to the catholic school down the street. I lasted less than a week because i didn't understand their rituals and their language and they found out my father was a Jew and they couldn't have a christ killer in their midst. I was just sad i didn't get to wear the cute plaid skirt anymore. So i went to the public school and my well meaning shiksa mother who never converted but learned the Chanukah prayers and helped cook Seder dinners came to the school to teach the class about Chanukah. She taught them songs and all the kids got dreidels and had so much fun spinning the top for chocolate coins. It was nice to feel normal. A few weeks later a boy in a higher grade attacked me on the way to the bus and smashed my art project (we had made pig noses from solo cups to celebrate reading charlotte's web) into my face and called me a filthy jew. I didn't understand, i was more upset to lose the project i was so proud of. Other things happened. Things I wont talk about because putting them in context would doxx me. But a million reminders that i wasn't one of them. I wasn't welcome because i was Jewish. My parents divorced. My mother left. Far away so I'd only see her a handful of times growing up. And I went to live with my Dad in a city that seemed like it was overflowing with Jews. Everyone knew my holidays! In public school the teachers looked like my family and had familiar sounding names. We had the high holy days off just like christmas or easter. We sang Chanukah songs in the winter recital and nobody's mom had to come teach them to the class. Finally I belonged! My friends and cousins started planning for their b mitzvah celebrations and i asked for my own. I asked to go to hebrew school so i could be more like the people i belonged with and celebrate the things i loved about myself and them. "But you're not jewish." My father would say. This was news to me. The christ killer. The filthy jew. But a 10 year old has little power over their lives. So i didn't go. I didn't have a bat mitzva while my cousins had theirs. It was okay because i still belonged more than i ever had. But i was still jewish enough to keep the holidays and pray and fast and get sent with a box of matzo to my WASP grandmothers for easter, and have matzo packed in my lunch to eat in AP algebra in 7th grade and get asked if I'm a "Yid" by the teacher. And still to this day not know if it was endearment or insult but by then I knew even in this magical city being a Jew wasn't always safe. in highschool I tried to take hebrew lessons with a friend in a similar situation as me. She was also hungry to reconnect. I don't remember why the classes or the friendship fell through, but they did. My next "friend", a goy raised catholic from another neighborhood, liked to accuse me of being money driven when i picked up a penny on the sidewalk or tried to ask who was going to pay for the zine's she wanted to publish.

 "What are you?" I'd get asked a lot on the street by curious strangers, "Where are you from?" "Are you Italian?" Always Italian. I never really understood that, but its become code in my head for "You look like you're white but something about you is very not white and I just can't place it, so Italian seems safe and polite." I'm not here to unpack the Italian part of all that. I don't even know what I'm unpacking for myself by writing this except I've been sick for days and I'm so tired and this is all that my foggy brain can wrap itself around. Later I'm an adult and on my own and getting bloodwork done. The Nurse is a black woman and so sweet to me. She can tell I'm nervous about the needles because I've already stumbled through my apologies for my herd to find veins. So she distracts me with small talk. Where do i live? I tell her. She looks worried for me. Tells me that it used to be a nice neighborhood before white people took it over and she warns me like she's my own mother to be careful because they aren't safe. I doublecheck the skin she's putting a needle into. Whatever she sees isn't white. I love her for it. For a moment I belong there with her. She doesn't ask what I am or where i'm from, but she knows what i'm not. I'm the only one keeping the holidays with my family. We celebrate Passover because I go home to my fathers and cook the dinner and print out the Haggadah and lead the Seder to the tune of my drunk catholic stepmother eating my food and telling me i'll never be a jew. She's more of a jew than I'll ever be because she grew up in a jewish neighborhood and her friends were all jews and she married a jew and i was just playing pretend. I stopped going home for holidays and they stopped observing anything except Christmas. I marry a goy. "Is he a jew?" is the first thing my father asks and he's disappointed when i say no. He's abusive, i run. I end up living in the attic of this older old money WASP couple who need a live in house sitter. They're pillars of their church and they know someone from the WASP side of my family very well and its a funny coincidence and they think i belong there. I know from their divest from Israel bumper stickers that i don't. Then they find out I consider myself Jewish and i see the light in their eyes die and its replaced by something hard and disappointed. Now, while writing this, i can laugh about being the jew in someone's attic. But then, it was only a few months after that they started coming up with excuses for why I needed to move out. I did, their excuses never manifested into reality. I got married again. A jew this time! a Jewish medical professional liek grandma always wanted. She's a convert and her ex was a rabbinical student. I think maybe i'm home finally. She has to understand. I'm not Jewish enough for her. We don't keep holidays at home because i'm not a jew. I cry every year when pesach comes and goes and i haven't recited the plagues or eaten matzo piled high with horseradish. She insists on putting up a christmas tree. She turns abusive. I run.

I'm alone now and no longer in that magic jewish city. I'm far away and surrounded by mega churches and cows and the bagels suck and people quote the bible at me like some call and response that i don't have the cheat code for and I don't belong here at all but i'm finally finally free to light my menorah and recite the plagues and study torah with the group i found here on tumblr who love and accept me even though i'm patrilineal. Oct. 7th happened a few weeks after I moved here. I worry about my family back home and i think no one will look for Jews here among the cows and mega churches, so I can be a safe place for them to run if things get bad again. But i still don't fit in here. I don't look right. The last name I have now is common here and too white for whatever people see when they look in my face. I get interrogated about it a lot. But i learned quickly how to smile and say "have a blessed day". I hide my menorah when maintenance comes to work on my apartment. I flew home last month. Just for a visit. I've never been away from home this far or this long. And I'm the type that covers nerves and anxiety with chattiness, so at the airport i made a for-now-friend while we both waited for the plane to board. She's Puerto Rican. We talk about our lives. Our families. Her twin sister and i go by the same nickname and so we're family now. We talk about food. So much food and how much we love cooking and how important food was at home. "Are you Italian?" she asks as we're stepping through the hatch into the plane. Why always Italian? I wonder for the millionth time in my life. And I freeze up for a moment between fighting my carry-on over the gap and terror that I'm about to see the light go out behind her eyes and i'll lose this for-now friend. "No," i laugh but its not a real laugh and i see the concern in her face as we squeeze through the aisle because she can hear the apprehension in my voice, "I'm Jewish." And something strange happened because her face lit up and she smiled and said "No way?! You guys have GREAT food!"

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: mario mini

Debut: Super Mario 64 DS

Today's Weird Mario Entity is a Weird Mario Head! Mario is the least weird Mario Entity there could possibly be, but there is an easy solution, and that is to remove his body, and hide it from him. Everyone loves when that happens! His floating head in Super Mario 64 is iconic and nostalgic. His floating head in Mario Teaches Typing is oh so funny. But I think my personal favorite Mario Head is mario mini! What is mario mini? I won't tell you, because I don't know!

Here is one sighting! This is the Tox Box Shuffle minigame. Yoshi is under one of the Tox Boxes, and you need to watch to find out which one! But you are not the only one watching. Oh, no. Mario Head is watching. And he is SO watching! There on the top screen, gazing down at the bottom, watching the boxes swap around. Is this divine intervention? A heavenly Mario Head here to advise you? Two heads are better than one, and a Mario head is worth at least four standard human heads!

He's just here to watch, though. Maybe he's fascinated by the Tox Boxes here using their original design instead of the one this very game gave them. He will not help you. Help? From Super Mario? When his dear friend is in peril? No way! You are on your own, and he will react according to your choices. If you find Yoshi, he will be so happy! He will laugh, using the voice clip normally heard when his tuckus is set ablaze. And if you get too many wrong, he will act like he got knocked out, and fly back in a daze! Maybe this minigame is his new torso, and you're toying with his vitals!

He behaves pretty much the same in Boom Box, the game where you must match the sounds made by chests. He also reacts in delight upon hearing each sound! He recognizes them! Like a dog seeing a squirrel on TV! There is a lot here for him to be interested in seeing, I think. A fascinatingly still image of Yoshi opening a chest on the shore, with a wooden chair submerged behind him, and to top it all off, the chest isn't even using the same design as the actual interactable ones. I'd expect nothing less from a mario mini product!

So now we ask, what IS mario mini? Mario's head is just in front of what seem to be a bunch of screens displaying its name, like he's floating in a department store where every TV is synced, showing the same commercial on loop. If these were TVs, they would certainly be mini. But maybe this is a view from INSIDE the mario mini? Imagine it. A revolutionary VR experience where you can look at a bunch of screens that say mario mini on them. How much would you pay to do that? J-just curious!

The "mini" is probably because these are minigames. But then, why these two? I guess they were the ones they had the least ideas of what to put on the top screen for! To me, mario mini above all else reminds me of Pokemon Mini, like a tiny Mario game you can put in your pocket and take with you instead of taking a much better Mario game with you. But we will never know the truth of mario mini! Mario Head will never tell us, and we would know. We've been holding his torso for ransom this whole time!

[kinetic-elaboration]

January 18: Memorials

Today was the law school memorial. It went better than I thought it would. I was getting pretty nervous about it because yet again the communication was terrible. Former employees were only invited to one half of the event and then they all got nervous about coming early. There was no information about parking for them. And I found out literally 5 minutes before that the program for speaking (I use the word program loosely because there was no program) only allotted ten minutes for all library people so I wouldn't be able to say anything. That ended up being not entirely true--other people who were told they couldn't speak did anyway and the whole thing still ended early--but it was sort of true, in that the organizers really only intended for the director to speak and she just split her time with other staff and it ended up being enough by chance. And like, I was thinking of it as extemporaneous remarks but also like... like open mic, you know, and people can just speak, not whatever this actually was that I heard in whispers and rumors just moments before. Some sort of hybrid of 'planned speaker list where people read speeches' and 'just whoever wants can come up or what have you.'

Anyway, the point is, I did chicken out. I was more intimidated by the people than I had thought I would be, and I was also really upset and already crying and I didn't really want to go up last and cry in front of all these randos. But part of it was also that I took the news about the 'ten minutes' thing as basically a message that I wasn't welcome to speak and from that moment on I forgot all my remarks and just sort of... you know, threw up my hands and went oh well. Because I need to be able to prepare for things, mentally; I need to visualize them, I need to be secure in them, especially if they make me nervous. I cannot have the game plan changed last minute. It's unfair to do that to me, I think.

The point of this is that I'm getting really tired of this utter clown car that is my workplace. Just competence levels really scraping the basement floor here. I'm also tired of so much of my friend's legacy being caught up in this, like, political nonsense. The ex-dean made remarks that I felt were literally pointed at the library to tell us to shut up about the poaching--and a lot of library talk is also about all the bad feelings from this era. I get that it's relevant and I get that grief brings up other messy emotions too but I'm just tired of it. The law school sucks balls; that's nothing new. I miss my friend.

A part of me feels kind of cowardly and bad that I didn't speak. But another part... I spoke to people I actually knew and I told some stories and gave some thoughts, and maybe that was all I needed to do or should have done. Nothing that I'd been planning to say was revolutionary. Maybe it would have been nice to go up there and say 'I'm not doing a general reminiscence, here's a story I think is fun, bye' but again I can't change gears like that.

I did like how almost all of the speakers were library people and most of the focus was on library history and her role here. The second half was in the lobby for the students and while I know my supervisor was annoyed that the library got erased there--these students wouldn't have known her there, that history isn't really relevant to them. I thought the remarks were very nice.

I did think it was funny how a couple of people veered very close to stories about the administration sucking but without saying it in so many words, and I hope the guilty parties FELT guilty because they deserve it. One student told the story of the missing donation box but she told it as if the box had just been taken by fairies or something whereas actually it was taken by law admin because it looked "unprofessional" or "messy" in their pristine ugly-ass lobby. And oooooh my friend was PISSED about it at the time. In some ways I felt like her legacy was...not whitewashed, but maybe only partially given. People spoke of her kindness and generosity and friendliness and all of that is true--but those weren't ways she just happened to be. She worked to be that way. Those traits stemmed from a really strong, uncompromising set of moral values--she had Opinions and she wasn't afraid to share them. She had beliefs about how she thought people should be and act, and then she was that way herself. She lived up to the standards she set but she set them for everyone. I think it's both more true and more of an honor to her to say 'her cheerfulness wasn't an accident of her personality, but rather reaching out to people, showing them kindness, caring about their lives, and remaining committed to relationships in the long term, was part of her moral code, part of her intense loyalty, to such a degree that she didn't always understand how anyone else could think differently.'

But I also don't think the students would know her well enough to see all that.

It was really nice to see the retirees and former employees again, including the woman who had my job before me and trained me in my early days here. I haven't seen her since about 2018 and I missed her. After the memorials, the director ordered pizza for us and we had sort of a long lunch, and then almost everyone in my department abandoned ship. I had sort of been thinking of asking to leave early but I didn't, and then one person left to work from home as she usually does on Thursdays and the other just tapped out. I knew the deceased a lot better so, I won't lie, there was a part of me that was like this is hard for YOU?? but I know that's mean and ungenerous and unkind of me. I toughed it out the last 90 minutes since everyone else had gone, so. I did talk to my supervisor for literally 60 of those minutes. I told her I felt obligated to stay and she was like 'I won't know if you don't do anything. We can chat until I leave if you want,' so, yeah--the capitalist machine will not grind me down in my grief.

After I left, I put the yellow flower I'd been wearing--all of the library staff and former staff were wearing them--on the statues outside. Then I just went home.

[novelmonger]

Ooh, we have a clear winner this time!

Final Fantasy II - While not my favorite Final Fantasy by any means, I remember having fun with this one. It tried out some rather revolutionary things for its time, and introduced some staples of the Final Fantasy franchise. I was surprised to discover it was this game that introduced chocobos; they're such a fixture, I would have expected them to have been in the first game too. Also, this game taught me the word "doppelganger" - the battle against which was one of the more memorable ones, I think.

Oregon Trail II - I didn't play this game as much as the first one, but I remember it was a lot easier. I probably only made it to Willamette Valley twice in the first one, but I could get to the end of Oregon Trail II most times I actually played it all the way through. I also remember the buffalo moved waaaaaay faster in the second game, so it was a lot harder to shoot them. It's like they were on roller skates or something, scooting back and forth in front of you.

Stairs - Not surprised at all nobody voted for this. Very obscure indie horror game that unfortunately I remember most for giving me motion sickness ^^' The ending was really scary, but mostly I found it kind of forgettable.

Another Code: Two Memories - An underrated gem of an adventure game for the DS. I was mostly interested in it because it was made by the same people who made Hotel Dusk, which was basically the whole reason I got a DS in the first place. It's definitely not as good as Hotel Dusk, but I liked it. I should probably play it again sometime, because I don't remember the story very well at all.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - This adventure game will live forever in infamy with me and my siblings because of its weird voice acting. Some lovely examples we still quote to each other, some fifteen years later: "The door. Was locked." "It didn't work." "Hi! I'm George Stobbart." It was kind of like a lower-quality Last Express to me, and the mechanics could be really clunky. But that might have been because I played the Wii port, so maybe it would have been fine if I'd been using a mouse instead of a Wiimote.

F-Zero X - Classic racing game. So many good memories of playing this with my siblings. While racing games are usually not my style, we had lots of fun with it. I still distinctly remember the first time we played the Sand Ocean level, where you can go spinning around and around through the tunnel and go flying through the air if you pop out while still on the ceiling, and we were all whooping for the sheer joy of it ^_^ (But Mute City will always have the best F-Zero music <3)

Five Nights at Freddy's 3 - In my opinion, the weakest of the series. For one thing, it's not set at an actual Freddy's location, but a recreated "haunted house" type attraction, so most of the spooky stuff there is supposed to look spooky and, ironically, ends up less so :/ As soon as you figure out the gimmick of the game, which I did on Night 2, the tension and creep factor goes way down. I was about as bored as you can possibly be when winding up a music box and fixing faulty wiring to keep a mangy, haunted animatronic from coming and eating your face :P

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream - I was really surprised to see that this one won! I thought for sure it would be too old and obscure for anyone to have even heard of it, let alone played it. I haven't read the short story it's based on, but it certainly made for a trippy (and kind of depressing) post-apocalyptic game! @_@ What I find most fascinating is that Harlan Ellison wrote the dialogue for the game and did the voice acting for the computer AM, even though he said he hated video games. Maybe he just wanted to make sure they did it right...? In any case, I'm sure that's why the game's dialogue is so good, even if the voice acting is a bit meh.

Arbitrarily-Chosen Video Game Tournament, Round 1.2

Welcome to the Arbitrarily-Chosen Video Game Tournament, where we will find out which of the games I've played is the best game of all time!

Why? Don't ask. Just vote and reblog!

[bemusedlybespectacled]

okay, you absolutely don't have to answer this if you wouldn't like to, but i am very curious about the funny story about your best friend's suicide???

OKAY THIS IS THE STORY

so just for the record this was @aquietrevolutionary who I actually do still follow even though she died in 2017 but ANYWAY OKAY THIS IS UNDER A CUT BECAUSE IT'S VERY LONG

also, like, content warning for death/suicide/mental health stuff. obviously.

so, just for background information: I was roommates with her for almost our entire college experience so I knew her and her parents really well. her mom was very friendly but also an evangelical Christian who thought fantasy fiction was witchcraft, and her dad was also nice but an atheist libertarian who was extremely pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps. unsurprisingly, they were divorced.

I definitely played up the Extremely Modest And Conservatively Religious vibe I tend to give off due to my fashion choices and hairstyle when I was around them, so they also really liked me. this + the fact that I was her best friend meant that, at one point, she made me her emergency contact and gave me her parents' telephone numbers in case something happened to her.

[narrator voice] this was foreshadowing.

after we graduated, several things happened to tank her mental health that are too long to get into, but basically, she'd already been hospitalized once because she had an extremely active plan (as in "had bought a gun and was sending out goodbye texts"). so her having shit mental health was a known thing, but she'd been talked off the ledge at least once before. so when I heard from a friend of hers that she hadn't posted to tumblr in days and had skipped a planned D&D session, I called in a welfare check on the non-emergency line in her city.

that was a Saturday night. I didn't hear anything from the cops all Sunday. Sunday evening I called them back to be like, "Um yes excuse me could you let me know if my friend is alive????" and the cop who was on the phone with me was like "oh yeah, she's dead. do you have any contacts for her next of kin?"

oh boy DID I. but I had them in the notes app of my phone, and I couldn't find it & stay on the call at the same time, so I asked to call them back in five minutes while I found the numbers. when I called back in five minutes, the same cop said, exact words: "oh, we don't need that information anymore, someone's already been notified."

oh cool! they must have found her dad's contact info and already called him! (narrator voice: this is also foreshadowing) so I call him and leave a voicemail along the lines of, "Hi, Mr. Revolutionary, this is BB, Quiet's roommate, I'm so sorry about what happened." I get a call an hour later from him being like "hi BB uh can you tell me what in the hell you're talking about," because he'd literally just gotten off a plane from a vacation in Hawaii and the first voicemail he listened to when he got off the plane was an incredibly ominous voicemail from me.

SPOILER ALERT: HE HAD NOT BEEN CONTACTED. I WAS THE ONE WHO HAD TO TELL HIM SHE DIED.

I still do not know who the fuck the cops contacted, unless they meant that they'd contacted me, which 1) they hadn't contacted me, I called them, and 2) I'd literally only been off the phone with them for five minutes. I know it wasn't her job, her dad, her mom, her sister, or anyone else in her immediate circle. so like, all I can think of is that the cop got off the phone with me, ticked some little box that said "emergency contact notified" somewhere, and then immediately forgot the entire conversation he'd had with me five minutes prior.

so now – because I'm the one person that everyone who knew her also knew and I'm also the person who called in the welfare check and hey, I've already done it once! – I'M NOW THE DESIGNATED DEATH ANNOUNCER. so I'm the one who got called up by her job to ask where she was, and also the person who had to break the news to all our mutual friends, and also the one who sent in her death notice to our alma mater, and for NINE MONTHS AFTERWARDS I was STILL getting Facebook messages from people like, "Oh, wow, I didn't realize she was dead! let's talk about her for an hour, stranger!" because that's my job now, I guess.

BUT IT GETS WORSE

I took the weekend to go to her funeral, and like. I was in law school. I didn't have a lot of funeral-appropriate attire. so I was wearing my one black sort of business dress that's really thick and hot, and the funeral was in Virginia in September so it was basically summer, and I had to wear it to the airport because I wouldn't have time to change before the funeral. so I show up at her mom's house for the funeral pre-game dressed like, you know, someone who's going to a funeral, and everyone else is in, like. tie-dyed T-shirts and jeans. somehow, I managed to be overdressed AT A FUCKING FUNERAL.

BUT NO. IT GETS WORSE.

for the next...... hour? or so? I had a VERY awkward conversation with her mother on her porch about why she thought her daughter had killed herself. her personal theory was that she'd [sinful thing redacted out of respect for her mom asking me not to repeat it] and felt so guilty about it that she had to kill herself. (she had not-completely-speculative reasons for this theory but it was incredibly unlikely if you knew my roommate well at all)

and I'm sitting there sweating my ass off like "how the fuck do I tell this woman that not only do I know all the gory details of her daughter's life and can guarantee that what she thinks happened did not happen but also that I'm 99% sure the reason she killed herself is because she felt like she'd never experience sex or romantic love because honestly sometimes she was a little bit of an incel and yet also somehow maintain the illusion that I am an innocent neophyte who thinks bare knees are sinful and would never discuss such a thing???"

anyway I and her family and our friends all went to the funeral (which I found incredibly ironic because she was an adamant atheist and yet they kept saying she was "in the arms of Jesus"), and then my friends and I went out for Chinese food, and then we went back to our respective accommodations.

now, again, going to the funeral was an emergency situation. I wasn't exactly booking a vacation here. so I'd booked a $50/night motel room nearish the airport because it was cheap and available.

this was a mistake.

at like 4 AM, there's someone fucking banging on my door. it was a lady who was very clearly intoxicated (unsure if she was drunk or high or both but she was NOT aware), and apparently she thought that my motel room was someone else's, because she's like, "LET ME IN, BABY! BABY, I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! BABY, I'M SORRY! LET ME IN!"

so like. okay. I've just spent the past week being Death's Telephone Operator while also going to my 3L classes and clinic and trying to write a eulogy for someone who doesn't actually feel dead to me yet. I showed up to this funeral dressed like Morticia Adams at a business conference when apparently the dress code was T-shirts and jeans and no one told me. I had the incredibly awkward experience of trying to not reveal every intimate detail of my dead friend's life to her fucking mother while also trying to give her support and closure. and now some drunk lady is trying to break into my motel room to find her boyfriend or some shit.

anyway that's how I ended up at a Waffle House at 7 AM, because my life was a complete shambles at the moment but Waffle Houses are a constant and I hadn't been to one since starting law school and GOD IF I'M ALLOWED TO ENJOY ONE THING THIS WEEKEND IT'S GOING TO BE FUCKING WAFFLE HOUSE.

[kaijuno]

So this is a Xanax submit

This is gonna take some twists and turns. My great grandpa had a lumber mill in Oskaloosa, Iowa and my particular branch of the family are Californians because my grandpa went to USC (and was the kind of student who gave blood when they still paid you for that to get beer money and had less blood to get more drunk) and was put in charge of the family's citrus orchards in SoCal around Pomona and Alta Loma/Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo where my mom grew up (she went to Cal Poly Pomona). They were a wealthy family with a good name in lumber and citrus... until my great grandfather died and my idiot grandpa and great uncle pissed away literally all their money on fucking racecars (if you've ever heard of Bonneville?) and vacations and ended up in the High Desert (known for meth on a Breaking Bad level--Yucca Valley has more shared needles than a pine tree; I lived there for a decade) with a house worth less than their mortgage on it. Okay so before I get to the craziest shit I have to say that my grandparents were stereotypical Trump supporters who saw that their neighbors had head coverings and a box truck and said "they are Muslims making bombs," but after my grandpa died not only did their neighbor come by and explain they're Coptic Christians and women cover, but that he did house renovations, BUT we were the ones who had to call the bomb squad on OURSELVES because my grandpa had a pineapple grenade and a LIVE tank shell from his time as a Marine in a tank crew in Korea. Okay but like I said my family is ultimately Iowan and I went to the University of Iowa and we have legit, married cousin-fuckers in my family (my mom's generation), but--and I'm not making this up I swear to Christ--one of their respective uncles married an honest-to-God Marshallese princess and when these cousin-fuckers got married, the wife was ALSO a Marshallese princess. So my prominent Iowan family destroyed its wealth in California and now middle class for two generations it includes Pacific Island royalty. Also again I swear to Christ one of my ancestors was a first generation German immigrant who fought in the Revolutionary War and his name was Adam and his wife Eva. I'm the tenth generation son from an Adam and "Eve" which Biblically would make me... Noah. (Side Note: I'd like to make it clear I don't abuse "xanny" and it's purely for avoiding the panic attacks that just recently were bad enough to take my voice away.)

[solomonfiore]

Galatians

<artwork: by Yock Yoshitaka Kawakami>

"It was rightly said of Sade that his is the work of a moralist. Erotic books are almost alike in this respect: either they are working toward the elaboration of a revolutionary morality, or they echo the morality of their age, against which they are protesting."

-Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues

What's a girl your age doing on the streets at this hour? It's appalling. Look at what you've done to yourself! Sit here. No, not there! Here! Like this. There. No, don't do that. I want to talk to you. I'm gonna pay you and I wanna talk to you. Because I care. Unlike these other guys out here. I actually care about you. I want to help you. Like we talked about last night, I believe that God has a plan for you and I've come to help you find your way. I know it sounds crazy, but you need to hear me out. Aw! Perk up! You know what they say, don't you? "Bad company ruins good morals" (Corinthians 15:33). Are you still mad about yesterday? It was just a nibble. You can hardly see the bite marks. Did you read the literature I gave you? Well, I brought more. I've been driving by this spot for months. I see how sick you are. I see you getting in and out of these cars all night with different men and it breaks my heart. I've been praying for you daily. Yes, I know. It is a very nice car. Thank you. A 2015 Acura MDX. It gets thirty miles per gallon, 290 horsepower with an Ohio-built powertrain. This baby has everything. Almost completely paid off. These models are assembled in Lincoln, Alabama. I only buy American. You see, unlike you, I have a real job. I'm a productive member of society. I have a job and a family. I earn my keep. I pay taxes so you can shoot dope all day and fuck whoever you want. Uh-huh, you heard what I said, girly. I don't mince words. It's about time somebody gave it to you straight. And you better listen up because I'm not gonna be here the day after tomorrow. I'm going on vacation. We're going to Aruba this winter. You ever hear of Aruba? I bet you don't even know where that is. Perhaps you could go with us. You could meet my daughter. She looks a lot like you. Minus the crazy hairdo and the slutty clothes, of course. What's all that crap in your face anyway? What did you fall in a tackle box or something? Hahahaha! You people are unbelievable. How about your arms? How'd they get all scabbed up like that, huh? Looks like you've been pickin' at them. That's fucking disgusting, you know that? Vile. You sell yourself to strangers for next to nothing. Just so you can get your next fix. It's a shame, I tell ya. A crying shame. Such a waste. Do you know how dangerous it is to be out here? You should be at home with your parents. You should be going to school, planning what colleges you want to go to... Not risking life and limb, getting into cars with strangers and killers and middle-aged men like me! If I was your father I'd have half a mind to give you the what for, young lady! Tell me what you did with that last trick. And don't spare me a single detail. I'll get mad if you leave something out. Show me how you used your mouth. That dirty mouth of yours. Yeah, like that. Good. Where are we driving? You ask too many questions. And I'm not paying you to ask questions. Don't you think you've used your mouth quite enough already tonight as it is? How about giving it a rest. It's about time you started listening for a change, little lady. That's right. Take the cotton out of your ears, stick it in your mouth, and listen. Don't give me that face, you little bitch. I'm paying for this. No! Don't! You're not leaving this car until I say so! Am I hurting you? You ain't seen nothing yet! I swear to God I will pull this hair out of your fucking scalp if you reach for that door handle again, bitch! Just try me! Try me, you dumb fucking whore! Now! Get out of this car very slowly. Yes, that is a gun against the back of your head. It's a Desert Eagle Fifty AE semi-automatic pistol with a black oxide finish and a ten inch barrel that'll blow that pretty face of yours right out through the back of your little, fucking skull so shut the fuck up and move nice and slow, got me? You can scream as loud as you want out here in these woods and no one is gonna hear you for miles. Better do exactly what I say then, okay? So... You didn't read what I gave you last night, huh? Didn't have time? Too busy suckin' and fuckin', I guess.

Is that it? I figured as much. I highlighted what we're gonna read tonight, sweetheart. Galatians - Chapter 5. Ever read that passage out of the Bible? No? I didn't think so. Keep your hands on top of your head and get down on the grass. There. Like that. Right there. No, don't look at me. Look at the book. Look at the good book right in front of you. Where I'm shining the flashlight. Yeah, right there. Just like that. You can read, can't you? Don't worry. We're gonna read it together. Dammit! Hold still and stop whining! I'm gonna see to it that you get down on your knees and pray if it's the last fucking thing I do, you little fucking twat! You got that? Galatians - Chapter 5! Start reading! Now!

Solomon Fiore

November 21, 2015

[tesria]

I'm almost 40 and I'm British. Section 28 was repealed in England in 2003 when I was 20, two years after I finished A levels, so it was illegal for teachers to even mention gay people in sex ed (or at all) when I was in school.

Out of about 180 students (16-18 year olds, the three oldest year groups) I knew 4 queer people (including myself) who came out at all at school, though we mostly only told close friends. That we could tell anyone at all still felt like a revolutionary change in acceptance compared to just 5 years earlier, and I knew I went to a relatively good school when it came to social awareness. The world was getting kinder overall, slowly. Even so I only knew those 3 other people who told anyone. That's about 1% of 16-18 year olds when I was 17, which was the peak amount after the last came out and before one of them left for uni. No one under those year groups came out, at least not openly enough that I knew about it. There were no trans people transitioning or out in any way at my school.

I met trans people (as far as I knew) for the first time at uni. I'd been aware of them before through one of my friends, whose older sister was bi and taught him things about the wider community. It filtered down to us like forbidden knowledge.

At my uni, a place with over 20k students iirc, there was only a small LGBT society and only 2 trans women who had anything to do with it in all the time I was there. I'm sure there were other trans people who were transitioning (I don't think anyone was fully transitioned by 18, or even by the time they graduated at 21, nothing really *started* until 18 back then, and with the waiting lists and gatekeeping...), but those two women were the only ones out/visible even to other queer people. Out of 20,000 students. My degree was in psychology and I took sexuality and gender courses, but it wasn't until my final year project questionnaires about bi/homophobia came back with notes on the male/female tick boxes that I ever heard of non-binary people. It was 2005 and I was 21.

The world has changed and that's wonderful. Please understand that when we're surprised it's delight, it's relief, it's seeing the progress since we were your age and cheering! I'm a little less surprised than most because I've been aware of the school situation for my young teenage nibling, but seeing it accepted in a relatively casual way is so lovely.

Do high school kids these days just have trans classmates now. Like I keep seeing zoomer posts casually referring to it. Fucking wild if true.