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bames nond's having a stronk, call a bondulance

@sky-of-starflowers / sky-of-starflowers.tumblr.com

aunt dude, icon made on picrew.me/image_maker/257476

the best way i can think to describe the experience of reading moby dick is you’re in line at the dmv and this guy behind you very loudly says “well who HASN’T had a gay experience” and then proceeds to tell you every detail about his life in between anecdotes about how great sperm is and how ropes work and sometimes he’ll say the most poetic shit you’ve ever heard in your life and them jump RIGHT back into explaining how a whale is a fish because 1) it swims in water and you’re still only like halfway through the dmv line

Apparently when i was a kid as soon as i could dictate what i wanted for christmas i asked for nothing but a 'glamorous chair' in my letters to santa over and over until my mum got tired of my relentless faggotry and staplegunned a purple feather boa to a stool for me

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin 

wish list for people who don’t want anything

aka possessions which are just possessions, but which have noticeably improved my quality of life: for when people ask you “what do you want for your birthday/Christmas/graduation” and you instantly transform into St Francis and pledge fealty to Lady Poverty because your mind went blank

  • nice. new. sheets. I cannot emphasize this one enough. if you’re still using the same sheets you had in college, you should probably get new ones. get yourself some 100% bamboo rayon sheets—they’re silky and perfect for summer and great for sensitive skin! or, if you’re cold all the time, flannel sheets!
  • kitchen knives. or even just one really good kitchen knife.
  • new curtains—blackout if you are a creature of the night like I am
  • fleece lined anything, but especially sweatpants and hoodies. wool lined socks are also good. if you don’t have the option of coming home after work and putting on an entire outfit that is loose and fuzzy, you should change that, because you deserve that option.
  • cookie sheets with a layer of air between the top and the bottom. the bottoms of your cookies will never burn again.
  • kitchen scale!!! no more leveling off flour with a knife and getting it all over the table!! now all your measuring is just shoveling stuff in and out of bowls like you’re at the beach. baking is both more accurate and also way more fun.
  • coffee bean grinder. if you want to upgrade your coffee experience, this is a great one-time purchase. just-ground beans have a much better flavor than pre-ground.
  • CDs!! ask for a gift card and expand your physical music collection! or a collection of the DVDs for your favorite show!

A few more things!

Good luggage. Whether it’s a suitcase or a duffel bag or even just packing cubes, it’s all helpful!

Good art. If it’s someone you trust, you can ask them to surprise you with a piece they like, otherwise you can have a few back up suggestions of ideas (I saw a framed piece of just the hands from Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Man and have not forgot about it since)

Good good pillows or fluffy blankets to go along with those nice new sheets from above

Office supplies. Pens, markers, sharpies. All the sharpies.

Coffee travel mugs (can one have too many?). If they say they still want more ideas, also ask for a bag of their favorite beans/tea

Look around your house, what do you have that is still from college? Ask for a better one of those.

And for the future planning, especially if you’re me and forget things: make a document of “things I’d like but don’t want to buy for myself frivolously” and then select items from that for a wishlist.

Some other suggestions along these lines:

  • Nice hand soap/ candles/ detergent - Make sure to clarify if there’s any smells you really do/ don’t want
  • Nice towels - The ones you want are called ‘bath sheets’, they’re extra large
  • Small table lamps/ indirect lighting - It is truly incredible how much using a few smaller lights vs The Fluorescent Sun That Lives On The Ceiling to light rooms improves existing in that room
  • Kitchen canisters- Make sure you ask for ones with seals! These both improve the lifespan of your flour/sugar/what-have-you and are much more convenient than digging into the flour bag only to find it has torn at the back and turned your counter into the Swiss Alps

If you have a favorite local restaurant, or independent bookstore/small business, ask for giftcards! I have asked for and received giftcards to my favorite local pizza place and my local comic book shop for birthdays and Christmas many times and I love that because I get to support a small business and pick something out for myself later.

I HEARTILY second the bath sheets option. Regular sized towels are shit. If youre wrapping them around yourself starting at your underarms, then regular ones barely cover your ass, and they only just overlap at the front.

Bath SHEETS, however, are much larger towels, and on me when i wrap them around myself, they reach from my underarms to just above my knees, and they wrap properly around me and arent threatening to part at the front if I take so much as a step forward, the way regular towels do.

Ive been using bath sheets for YEARS and they are SO SO SO much better than the piddly little stupid-sized “normal” towels. Get yourself some bath sheets. You’ll never look back.

A lot of these are less helpful suggestions once you’re in your mid 30s and you already have too many of several of these things. So I’ll add:

- flavored syrups/mixers: most of these include non-alcoholic recipes anymore even if they were originally meant as cocktail ingredients, and you can make all kinds of incredible things with them. My best friend got me a watermelon-cucumber syrup that I made sodas out of all last winter when I forgot about the existence of summer

- little trays to collect stray objects. You know what I mean. You can never have too many little trays.

- odd silverware: this one’s tricky if you’re committed to having a matching set, but if you’re not, the right kind of person will have a blast finding you iced tea spoons, pie servers, dessert forks, any of those things you don’t need often enough to justify buying for yourself but really wish you had when you needed them

- a spare x, where x is something you use often and really like and would be devastated to lose or break. Good scissors, nice earbuds, chapstick in your favorite flavor, the water bottle in the size you’ve finally determined is perfect for your needs. Something you notice you’ll get up to find the Good One even if a different option is close by

- a more interesting/unique version of something you already have: I do not need or want another lamp, but a few years ago one of my friends got me a lamp hand painted by a local artist with Van Gogh’s sunflowers. I adore Van Gogh, I never shut up about it, and this is just a stunning and spectacular thing that is also useful! I was thrilled to get rid of a cheap Target lamp and replace it with this. Other good options for Artsy Versions of things you already own: 8x10 picture frames, mugs, hooks/knobs/fan pulls (you can swap these out easily even if you rent)

And may I also recommend pairing this with Hobbit Birthday, that is, celebrating by taking some of the functional but suboptimal stuff you just got replacements for to the thrift store. You get to feel good knowing you’ve donated something actually useful that somebody will want to buy, and you get rid of something cluttering up your space, win/win. Knowing you’re going to do this can make it much easier to ask for upgrades to things you already have, which gives you lots of ideas.

I cant believe this tweet is how I find out

now all the things you guys have told me about american high schools are starting to make sense

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jeaninelatragedia

holy shit.

You're not really supposed to say it this way, because its considered crass, but here in the US children are culturally and legally considered essentially the property of their parents.

Note that its considered more crass to point this out than it is to treat children as property in the first place.

video games aren’t meant to be played with other people. video games are meant to be played alone in a dark room at night time while you work through weird feelings about your gender.