#happy fuck the English day

[desertthorn]

[conivolos]

ELLIPSUS I LOVE YOU

[solarishashernoseinabook]

[Video description: A panning shot of five dictionaries on a table. The video moves on after a bit to a shot of the Compact Oxford English dictionary, a two-volume dictionary in a slipcase. A person opens the dictionary, moving a grey cat out of the way gently, and opens a drawer on the slipcase to show where a magnifying glass would normally fit. /end]

[betweenblackberrybranches]

Making spinach noodle egg casserole but i am dumb and should have put the spinach ontop so the noodles dont get burned :(

Will probably still be tasty tho but lets see

[kausijuoppo]

Palentine's day

[bluberimufim]

Pedro & Inês (cultural ramblie)

Happy Valentine's Day!! <3<3 When I planned this post, I did not realize Carnaval and Valentine's Day were on consecutive days (catholic calendar calculations continue to kick my ass, just like every year), so you get TWO cultural ramblies for the price of one!!

This one is a bit different from the other ones. I usually talk about legends or holiday traditions but this is actually just history! Still, I felt inclined to share partly because this is a major thing in portuguese culture and partly because this is the most overdramatic historical anecdote I have ever seen and more people need to know about it. Now, let's get into it!

The Tragedy of Pedro and Inês

(portraits of Pedro and Inês, made centuries after their deaths)

In 1340, Prince Pedro of Portugal, son of King Afonso the 4th, married Constança Manuel of Aragon. When she moved to Portugal, Constança brought along her lady-in-waiting, Inês de Castro. You can already see where this is going.

Pedro and Inês fell madly in love and began a secret relationship (which seems to not have been that secret at all). In 1344, Afonso the 4th exiled Inês to the castle of Albuquerque, near the border, out of fear that this affair would sour diplomatic relationships with Castille.

It just so happens that Constança died in childbirth one year later. Despite his father's requests, Pedro refused to remarry, claiming that he was still too overcome with grief over his wife's death. Instead, he had Inês's exile annulled and began living with her. During this period in which they lived together, they had 4 children.

In 1355, five years later, King Afonso the 4th ordered the assassination of Inês de Castro. She was killed in Coimbra, in Quinta das Lágrimas, where legend says you can still hear her crying at the fountain where she lost her life, later named Fonte das Lágrimas ("Fountain of Tears"). This moment, along with another one further ahead, is the one all the poets go crazy for.

Inês's death triggered a revolt against the king, led by Pedro. However, there was never an actual physical confrontation, since the queen-mother was able to stop it in time.

In 1357, Pedro rose to the throne, becoming King Pedro the 1st. He claimed that he had married Inês in secret around 1354, legitimizing their children and making her possibly the only posthumous queen in history (someone fact-check me on this). For avenging her death, he was dubbed "Pedro, the Just".

He had matching tombs made for him and Inês so she could be buried as queen by his side. They still stand today in the Monastery of Alcobaça, where you can visit them. They were placed on opposite ends of the transept, facing each other, so that they could be face to face when they rose from their graves. The inscription on Pedro's tomb is thought to read "Until the ends of the world". I'll show pics later, don't worry.

You thought I was done? I haven't even gotten to the overdramatic part! (Ok, the tomb thing was pretty dramatic, but this part is extra as hell)

As King Pedro the 1st, he had Inês's two assassins executed. According to a somewhat contemporary chronicle by Fernão Lopes (still Middle Ages but a century later), he had their hearts ripped out, one through the chest and another through the back. Sources seem to disagree on whether this actually happened or not, but Fernão Lopes was a pretty reliable guy in other parts of his chronicle. And, this being strictly myth, it is said that he made those two assassins kiss the hand of Inês's corpse as they would the queen's. For this, he was dubbed "Pedro, the Cruel", on top of his other title. Perfectly balanced and whatnot.

Here's a painting by Pierre-Charles Comte about it:

The Tombs

I saw them in early November of last year and I cannot overstate how amazing they are in real life. The whole church they're in is beautiful but the tombs are just breathtaking, especially knowing the story behind them.

They're the reason I wanted to make this post. They are considered some of the greatest masterpieces of portuguese gothic sculpture. They are full of intricate carvings and, despite missing a few pieces here and there, are still in amazingly good condition today. You can visit them for free any time.

Here are the pictures I promised. The last 2 are taken by me!

Some historical notes (cool facts)

This is mostly about the corpse coronation part because I found it in my research and thought it was cool.

The first dynasty of portuguese kings didn't have coronations. They were seen as warrior kings first and foremost, and therefore felt no need to pledge their allegiance to Christianity. If they did swear over something, it was a shield. They did not have the fancy ceremony.

What can we learn from all this, you ask?

Write that overdramatic romance you've been wanting to. You'll never out-drama queen King Pedro the 1st.

[ctl-yuejie]

love my supervisor, but would love him even more if he wouldn't always request to get assigned court sessions at his nearest court.

his nearest court is the one I have the hardest time getting to when they schedule the first session at 8am.

they always schedule for 8am.

[w3ath3r-0f-sw34t3rz]

lyric of the day ˚♫⋆｡˚

"she's knitting pretty outfits on the sofa worried 'bout the fact she's getting older talk until she crashes on my shoulder May 3rd Waterman Avenue"

alice rhys

[justinefrischmanngf]

thinking about my job ! idk man i really really love my job yesterday i went through this girl's maths tests with her just like . bc i was there and i could . (i was off the clock, but only just so i figured i'd just help get her started) and it was sweet !! it was sweet she did really fucking well on one of them and pretty well on another and like idk i really just like teaching i like being part of these kids' lives and i don't think that i'm a big part of their lives or anything, but i do hope that i can give them a sweet moment here or there......... it's just nice i like it i'm so grateful i was able to find and get this job i am so happy that this is something i get to do

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

I get a customized box of tea every month, and have had a subscription for years now. It's my treat and morale booster, and arrive usually within the first week of the month. After I try all the teas, I leave a review for each of them, and then the next box is customized further. Plus, you get points that can be applied to receiving a free box, or more tea samples, and other various goodies. I've used mine for free boxes twice.

Through Sips by Box, I have discovered soooooo many teas. Some of them are big nope and go to a friend or neighbor. Other teas that are very yummy have resulted in me buying enough to have them daily for a month.

You take a little quiz thing to put it what you like, don't like, things you cannot have, and various other things. I have celiac disease, epilepsy, and a high sensitivity to caffeine; some ingredients in herbal teas will result in an ER visit. Not once have a received a tea with these ingredients via Sips.

If you can't afford a box for a few months, you can pause your account. I had to do this for about six (very miserable) months. It was easy and took less than a minute.

Here's the little bit the shared with me about y'all signing up:

Send a friend $15 off their first Sips by Box & 200 bonus points for signing-up using this link. You'll earn 200 points when they sign-up for a free account and 600 points if they subscribe to the box!

If you're interested, please click the link and sign up. Consider it a gift exchange and a great way to make me extremely happy. I currently have 379 points and need a 418 more so I can get a free box.

Thank you and enjoy!

[mychlapci]

when youre a non-native english speaker trying to write in english good chances are your internal monologue is just "is that a word? nonplussed, thats a word. nonplussed. is that a word? thats not a word. im crazy. its gotta be a word. am i confusing it with something? what the hell does nonplussed mean anyways?" like 60% to 90% of your entire writing process

[ppulverse]

is this girl flirting with me on my birthday 😭 please don't

[yuribalisms]

Essentially what it is all boiling down to is I have fully realized I am bad at being a person, that will always be true, and I don’t know how to handle that

[jasper-dracona]

So uhhh I was just gonna make an addition to this in the tags, but i didn’t realize how verbose I was gonna be, so I ran out of tags. So I’m gonna continue it up here cause I don’t wanna rewrite all the tags:

But writing the words “maybe I won’t become a palaeontologist” caused me to burst into tears in class. I pushed through and kept writing to finish off the piece, but something in my heart had snapped like a twig.

I used short snappy sentences and repetition to show my anger, fear, frustration, and most importantly, my constant anxious thoughts that kept giving me anxiety attacks during tests. Telling me over and over again that I was never gonna make it. That I was stupid. That I’d never make it into university, let alone survive it.

This also, conveniently, was a motif in the text.

Anyways, a week or two later I got the grade back for that piece, and if I’m remembering right, it was pretty solid. But I didn’t… really care about that, which was very weird for me at the time. But for some reason I just wanted to have it back. Despite the pain I felt in writing that phrase, I felt an inexplicable urge to read it again. So, when I got it back, I tucked it away in my backpack.

That night, sitting at my desk, up too late, I pulled the pieces of looseleaf out of my bag, and read what I had wrote in full. Most of it was still just as visceral as when I had written it, and while it was emotional, it didn’t bring me to tears like it had before.

Until I read that phrase.

I sobbed for probably over an hour that night.

After that I made a consistent habit of digging out that piece, reading that line, and letting myself cry for a while whenever I was feeling hopeless about school or my future. And each time I did, it got a little easier to read. Slowly I was convincing myself that this wouldn’t be the end of the world, that things would be okay, that I would be okay.

And I think this was among the top 3 best things I ever did for myself. Along with going to my doctor about getting assessed for ADHD and a particular break up.

And now I keep journals with my most visceral of emotions in them, so that I can go back and read them over and over, and learn to accept how I feel, and my situation. I write prose and poems and unorganized swaths of thoughts and feelings. I draw, scratch and scribble with a shitty pen, with no care for beauty, just expression. (I did this a lot during anxiety attacks in my math quizzes and tests. I’ve lost most of them but I remember how much those made me feel too)

The idea is that if I keep writing and drawing these things, I’ll eventually come up with another of those twig-snapping phrases, or a visceral image, and I can look back on those and view them again and again, allowing me to process those emotions.

It’s cathartic and therapeutic, and I’m glad I learned to do it, all thanks to that shitty fucking chemistry test.

(GOD this ended up long, sorry lol)

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

[jouno-s]

every day i am ashamed to be british. my country is beautiful and i could never belong anywhere else but being represented by this government is ruining me. british actions both past and present are a horrific stain on this country and i will never forgive our genocide-enabling government for its inaction

[bmpmp3]

i keep choosing like the hardest songs possible to try to learn to make midis for vocal synth covers on. why do i keep doing this to myself. like is that reverb doubling back creating noise, vocal doubling, or a harmony. if its a harmony i'll explode on impact