Ganz Nebenbei: Meine Lieblingsfotografien Der Letzten Zwei Jahre

Carved this small gallery after filling the shell with resin first, to try and make smaller windows (so it won't break).

LOOK INTO MY EYES AND TELL ME THIS ISNT SPOCK CODED I DARE YOU

Genuinely, what happened to “feminism is for everyone”?

That’s the feminism I grew up with: encouraging people to recognize that fighting sexism and restrictive gender roles helps folks of every gender. We’d push back on the idea that feminists hate men, pointing to inclusive feminist literature and how many men are feminists.

Now, there are so many people insisting that the solution to patriarchy is to openly hate and ostracize men no matter what. Why? What is the benefit? It’s certainly not effective in fighting oppressive structures to exclude half the population from your cause on the basis of immutable traits. It may feel cathartic to say horrible things about men and try to punish them for your frustrations with patriarchy. But the only actual effect I see is the increasing right-wing radicalization of young men, who are being told that the left hates them for the way they were born and presented with an abundance of proof that it’s true.

Why are we going back to treating men and women as different species? It doesn’t fix things to say “well women are the good gender and men are the bad one” this time. If you sincerely want to dismantle sexism, you’re going to have to unpack and let go of all sex and gender essentialism—even that which considers women inherently pure and men inherently immoral.

War on humanity in an ice cream franchise shop

Cloudy day, windy

Your boss' makin a loss

But I told you I'd never eaten this kind of ice cream before

And now I'm back for a second helping

First day it was sunny and I was in a good mood

Today I got no such excuse

The word "smile" is overused by corporate and music that's gentrification misspelled

So I'll commit the greatest rebellion of the industry:

You just looked at me.

Desperate claws in a sunny smile I've trained to be a good customer to the service

I ask you if I should take a cup or cone, your opinion

Well, it's my choice

But you can give me a little more in a cup.

I laugh too loud. Answer too loud. You're making money, I'm spending money.

'i hope to see you again, miss.'

That's not part of the script.

They don't say miss here.

Hope has dirt under her fingernails

Hope has dirt under her fingernails. Her broken foot trembles beneath her as she stands up, reading herself for another punch.

Faith clutches the rim of the sink, breath fogging up the mirror. Then she takes her meds and closes the door behind her.

Perseverance hands bribes to cops and takes the first cleaning job she gets, eyes averted as she gets slapped for tardiness.

Selflessness shivers on her bedroom floor, the memory of loosing a patient on the operation table replaying behind her eyelids again.

Love sits in the visitors hall of the hospital, waiting to replace the wilted flowers beside the coma patient.

Passion only leaves the house to go to therapy, the world too painful to look at for long.

Strength looks at the others and decides to make a home in their hearts.

Precious

The puppy is no longer young but he is still small and fits in the crook of my arm like a sleeping babe all sleep-warm and honey-slow blinking up at me with wide black eyes.

I hold his tiny face in my cupped careful palms press a kiss into the wisp-light fur at the nape of his neck and tell him like a vow: You are so good and so precious and so beloved.

And a soft, gentle thing in the cavern of my chest slowly rises to reply heartbeat-quiet: We are. We are. We are.

- by sylvie (j.p.)

I saw a city die

However dramatic we make death out to be, really, a human death is quite easy. Your heart stops. Once. One kind of death for everyone.

Have you ever seen a city die? It's not one death. It's uncountable. A tree so big you can't watch its fall. Like you can't watch the sun travel. There it is. You get distracted. Something flashes on your wall. You look out. It is gone.

A city's deaths are very varied. Some are gardens dying. Some gardens don't die, but really they do. Really, they're dead.

Some are wild trees dying. The ones we watered by mistake, or by a thread of benevolence. Strung through palms and generations, maybe. A collective nurturing, and every solitary splash thought it was alone. They die, until they become the kind of sticks who's snaps are anonymous. There is nothing here.

Some are people leaving. There are a lot of those. But if you watch people leave, you notice they were the ones who came in the first place. Not the ones who already were.

The ones who already were always are. They are the city. Killing an elephant takes rounds of lead to the heart. Still it takes hours untill it falls, days until it stops breathing. It's not easy, killing a dragon. Those that are must be killed differently. They do not leave. But you can make their home hostile to them. Twist and contort it until those that are have no place to be. They find a new spot, of course. A new city. Who's life blood they aren't.

A city dies a hundred deaths. Like watching someone assemble a puzzle, it's not dramatic enough to watch the process. Like sand falling. Suddenly the glass is empty.

The problem is the body. It's our symbol, vessel and object of death. Without it we don't recognise decay.

Death of a city is the rarest thing you'll see. The bigger, the less you see it. The most imposing, the less you'll watch. The more lights, the less you notice the void.

Because it's a lie. And when you notice. Finally notice,

all you see are the whisps; floating. No sound. Unwatched. No meaning in silence. Nothing. Pathetic in the way they outline whatever isn't there anymore.

Among the stars on a Friday afternoon (2022)

US Elevation.

by @cstats1

This. Is. Epic. You win the internet.

My family is not very religious most of the time.  We pray at Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving dinners, and my mom’s entire side of the family excluding her parents and siblings is hardcore religious so whenever we do anything with them it’s kind of religious.

But the point is, most of the time we aren’t, but every year at Christmas time, a church in the next town over puts on a Bethlehem and it’s kind of a tradition to go.  They go all out.  The building is massive, and they’ve got it all decked out.  There’s animals and stalls and everyone is in costume and in character.  When you get there, they give you some pennies and you can go and barter for cool little trinkets, and there’s other more expensive things you can buy with your own money.  And they have the best apple cider.  All in all, it’s pretty cool.

But anyway.  We go every year, bundled up in hats and scarves and mittens, and have a good time.  We’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, and my mom talks about going when she was a kid.

I’m going to mention again that everyone is massively in character, especially the really super hardcore religious adults.  Because this is an important fact.

Every year since I was about thirteen or so, there’s been this one lady who worked at a stall selling ponchos (I have, like, three.  They’re really cool).  She was probably there before that, but I was thirteen when she started trying to barter for me to marry her son, who was also about thirteen.

“What a pretty little thing.  I think you’d make a very good wife for my son.  These are your parents?  I’ll give you six goats for your daughter’s marriage to my son.”

Her son, meanwhile, is in the “shop” behind her looking absolutely mortified and like he’d rather be anywhere else than there, and I’m pretty sure I probably looked just as embarrassed.

My parents gave her some sort of excuse, like it wasn’t enough goats or they weren’t ready to marry me off yet or something, and we moved on.

The next year we’re back again, and come up near to the same stall.

“Ah!  You’re back again!  Have you married your daughter off yet?  I can up my offer to nine goats and three chickens for your daughter to marry my son.”

Somehow she remembered the exact people she’d tried to buy their daughter off of for an entire year?  So my parents are refusing her offers again and me and the son are trading embarrassed looks and we go on our way.

And then it happens again.  And again.  And again.  Each and every one of the last six years this lady has tried to buy me in goats to be her son’s wife. 

 A couple years ago when we were waiting in line to get inside my mom jokingly said that they should accept this year and see what she’d do and I completely refused because it was mortifying enough as it was.

One year we brought my friend with us and we’re waiting outside and my sister was like “Are you gonna sell Kee this year?” and my dad was like “Maybe if there’s enough goats” and my friend was confused as heck and I was like “This lady tries to buy me to marry her son every year.  I told you that” and she’s like “Yeah but I didn’t think this was a thing that actually happened” and she was still skeptical and by the time my parents had finished refusing the lady’s offer, she’s killing herself laughing and then spent the next few months telling me I couldn’t look at guys because I already had a fiancée.

Anyway, it happened again this Christmas and the son has somehow gotten almost ridiculously attractive since last year.  The speech this year had something to do with how I was far too old to not have a husband yet, and the son and I just rolled our eyes at each other as his mom tried to barter with my parents for me.

This year’s offer was twenty six goats and nine chickens.  My sister looked up how much goats are worth, and was mad our parents didn’t sell me so she could have sold the goats and gotten $2000-$8000 for them.  My dad says they’re waiting out on an offer of a camel.  My brother thinks they should have it more than once a year so he can get more apple cider.

Now I’m back at uni, and in my first psych class of the semester the guy sitting beside me looked really familiar.  

As in his-mom-tries-to-buy-me-with-goats-every-Christmas familiar.

That kind of familiar.

We introduced ourselves before class started and I sat there for a couple minutes readying to make a total fool of myself in case I was wrong before turning to him again.

“This is going to sound really weird if you aren’t who I think you are, but by any chance does your mom try to buy you a wife with goats every Christmas?”

His friend gives me a weird look as he walks past me to sit on the other side of him, but he’s definitely putting the pieces together.

“That’s you?  Bethlehem in [city name], right?  God, my mom is so mortifying.”

And we both kinda laugh and meanwhile his friend is giving us both weird looks now because apparently he didn’t know that his friend’s mom was trying to buy him a wife using livestock.

So he turns to his friend and is like

“Oh, I forgot to introduce you.  Danny, this is my fiancée, Kee.”

And I kinda rolled my eyes and was like

“I’m not actually your fiancée.  Your mom hasn’t offered my parents enough goats yet.  But apparently my dad will sell me for a camel.”

And he laughed and shook his head like

“I am not telling my mom that.  I don’t want to see what she has planned for if your parents ever accept.”

So yeah.  His friend was really confused by that point and we explained it to him and it turns out he’s pretty cool and we’re Facebook friends now and hang out in psych classes.  Apparently his mom only ever tries to buy me for him and she and my mom had gone to the same church growing up which is why she can always pick us out.

So yeah.  That’s the story of how some lady tries to use goats to buy me to be her ridiculously attractive son’s wife every Christmas, and how he’s in my class and we’re friends now.