This Is Great Advice If You Are Able To Travel To The Ballot Drop-off Location Or Have Someone You Trust

Sometimes, Cards Against Humanity games get it right.  (I still prefer Bards Dispense Profanity though.)

I love that this black, spooky-looking house has a lovely garden in front.  Is the garden all foxglove and nightshade and stuff, or does it belong to a family that doesn’t want to get trapped in people’s assumptions (or is really, massively dysfunctional)?

Hi All!

I got tired of missing people on LJ, so I've created a Tumblr account (obviously) and a DreamWidth account. That seems to catch most of the people I was following on LJ who were still posting semi-regularly. I'm considering Twitter, but I don't know if I want to dedicate that much of my life to social media. (I have no problems with the "media" part; it's the "social" that I'm not very good at handling.) Feel free to point me at your favorite people and stuff on either DreamWidth or Tumblr! I'm still getting the hang of who/what is available where.

If your library doesn't have the diverse books you want and you're comfortable talking with (usually very friendly and helpful) people, you can also talk with someone on staff. In addition to the purchase recommendation form, they may have an agreement with other libraries to borrow the books from them for you. This helps two libraries! Your local library learns that more people want diverse books, so they are more likely to buy them in the future. The other library gets check-outs, so they know people are reading their diverse books.

If you don't have time to read, look for diverse audiobooks, CDs, and DVDs! If it's hard for you to get to the library, look at their website or call/email them. They may have pickup lockers in different areas of town or even a delivery service. They probably have eBooks, eAudiobooks, and/or streaming music and movies that you can check out from home.

Friendly reminder that if you talk about how representation is important and how there's not enough diverse media, I implore you to seek out the media that already exists. And if you live in an area with a public library, go to see if they're available at your public library. And then go check them out.

As a librarian, it is demoralizing to see how low the circulation statistics are on lgbt+ books and books by BIPOC authors. I include them in displays and readers advisory, but people still don't check them out as much. Libraries only have a finite amount of resources, including space. We don't get a book then keep it forever. If not enough people check it out, we have to get rid of it to make room for more books. And when James Patterson Book #69 gets checked out 30 times in one year and cool, subversive Sci fi novel with a Black trans woman main character has never been checked out once, the librarian (me) has to make a hard decision.

If you're looking for something tangible and easy to do this pride month, look for lgbt+ books (there are millions of lists online that you can find. It's easier than it's ever been to find diverse books) and check them out from your library.

No time to read? Look for a short story or poetry anthology and just read as much as you have time for. Or just check out a book cus it looks interesting and read as much as you can. We have movies too.

As cool as it would be for me to just keep the books I want and get rid of the ones I don't, I have to listen to the community on matters of collection development. And the community tells me what books they want by checking them out and leaving the ones they don't want on the shelf.

If you think this doesn't apply to you because you live in a progressive area and obviously the books are being checked out, you're wrong. I once worked in a community with a large lgbt population. Those books were not getting checked out. If you want to tell me you live in a conservative area and your library doesn't have any diverse books, you are legally obligated to check the catalog before replying to this post. I currently work in a conservative community and we have lgbt+ and bipoc books. And if you still cannot find any, you are legally obligated to see if your library has a collection request form that patrons can fill out before replying to this post.

Ace-pacas!!

I drew some alpaca’s for pride month

speedpaint

((Likes and reblogs are greatly appreciated))

@the-other-sandy, weren’t we just talking about Grapenuts?

Grapenuts

Neither grapes nor nuts.

The closest thing to gravel still considers fit for human consumption.

Possibly a major joke being played on the human race by hamsters.

I kindof want to see all of these.  I’ve seen enough Shakespeare and adaptations of Shakespeare that they sound ridiculous but also like they could be really good if handled well.

Six Shakespeare adaptations

1. Titus and Ronicus. Somewhat like Titus Andronicus, but with the addition of Titus’s wisecracking brother, Ronicus Andronicus. Known for that one wild slapstick scene with the pie at the end.

2. The Complete The’s of Shakespeare. Consists of every ‘the’ that Shakespeare wrote, delivered in an appropriate manner for each instance. Has the advantage of being much easier for a million monkeys to type. Is therefore much kinder to monkeys than the alternative. Please consider the monkeys. 

3. Henry V in space. We begin the play awaiting the arrival of the French Ambassadors. They are coming from France, which is seven light-years away and several hundred metres under the newly-risen Atlantic. It may be a long wait.

4. A Twelfth Night’s Hamlet. In which Hamlet is shipwrecked on the way to England and has to dress up as a woman dressing up as a man to in order to evade detection whilst avenging his father’s murder, but comedy strikes when he vacillates a little too long in an oddly-mislocated enchanted forest. Everyone ends up both completely heterosexually married and also dead.

5. The Scottish Play, a theatre-safe version of Macbeth which avoids bad luck by never mentioning the title character’s name or indeed anyone else’s name either. Explores issues of identity and confusion. Usually there is at least one murder, but nobody is quite sure of who by who. In fact, because nobody is sure who is king, or indeed what the succession actually is, it naturally follows that the only way to ensure kingship is to kill everyone.

6. Juliet and Cressida. It may have been that Cressida found some way to take advantage of Shakespeare’s not-always-consistent time periods to perform an audacious act of time travel. We are still not entirely sure. In any case we tracked down Juliet and Cressida to ask them what the plot had been, since they were both notably still alive in the present day. But Juliet made a rude gesture at us and slammed the door. It may be that only the protagonists know the plot.

Seriously, if you live in the US, make a plan NOW so that you are ready to vote.

Make sure you are registered to vote.  Many states are “cleaning up” voter rolls, so double-check.

Decide what you are willing to compromise on and what is a deal-breaker for you.  You probably won’t find someone who is a perfect fit, but you can definitely find candidates that are better or worse.

If you aren’t sure whether voting in person will be safe for you by November, find out what you need to do to vote by mail.  Check your state and local requirements for voting by mail or voting early (when it might be less crowded) if you can’t vote by mail.  You may need to request the ballot in advance or send in some form of identification.  Some areas require a witness’ signature on mail-in ballots, which can be hard if you’re are quarantined alone.  Some areas require mail-in ballots to be received or postmarked by a certain date; some have drop-off locations in addition to accepting ballots by mail.  Make a plan NOW so you are ready by November.

While you are voting for (or against) a presidential candidate, remember to look at the rest of your ballot!  Even if you aren’t voting for a presidential candidate, look at the rest of the ballot!  The president has a lot of power, but the senators and representatives can do a lot to support or block the president.  Your state, county, city, and other local governments can also have a big impact on your life.  Most of their decisions will have an immediate effect on you.  Plus, in many cases, this is where presidents and congress-critters get started.  If you don’t like the choices at the top level, start changing the people closer to you.

Every vote counts!  Yes, even at the presidential level.  However, the farther down the ballot you go, the more your vote is going to count.  This applies even more on local primaries and elections that don’t affect national positions.  The pool of voters is smaller in local elections, and many people who can vote won’t bother.  Take a little time to find out as much as you can about your local candidates, and vote for the ones who support most of your values.  

It’s easier to take time to check out candidates and issues if you are voting by mail.  However, even if you are voting on election day, you can frequently see what is on the ballot in advance, so you can do your research.  Make sure you understand those awkwardly worded (”Do you support removing the proposition that opposes...?”) questions and convoluted propositions, so that you’re voting for what you really want.

Plan ahead and vote!

Yo Biden just announced an infrastructure devolopment/clean energy/environmental justice plan and it's honesty pretty fucking amazing and much more ambitious than I ever would have expected from him, goddamn. He's trying to Eisenhower/New Deal our way out of the economic collapse.

Some notable points addressed by this plan:

Expanding American railway systems

Fixing the crumbling roads, bridges, dams, etc. that haven't been kept up

Capping abandoned oil wells

Undoing Trump's financial bailout policies for unclean energy companies

Reinvesting in American-made automotive companies

Getting America to 100% clean energy by 2035

Fixing air, water, and ground pollution issues that disproportionately affect poc

Getting justice for victims of environmental racism

Reinstating a bunch of environmental and medical jobs Trump had cut

Getting the US back on the Paris Agreement/Climate Accord

This is beautiful!  It reminds me a bit of @the-other-sandy‘s neighborhood when we were teenagers.

“A house I pass on the way to work has this sculpture in its yard. Its about 8 feet tall.”

(Source)

Pay attention to what is being cut -- public radio and television, libraries and museums, education, research. Elon knows how to count; he's counting the benefits he can take away from the public.