thankyoufortheadventure

Latest Posts by thankyoufortheadventure

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?

This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).

But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."

- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.

The night sky on Mars

Send this to every Christian you know

ppl are always writing characters doing dumb shit like roasting a fresh-caught rabbit over an open flame instead of making a stew with that thing. great now you’re letting all the fat drip down into the fire as it cooks, wasting calories and flavor as well as causing the flame to flare up = inconsistent heat source,… when you could be maximizing the nutritional value of small game by making a soup or stew. Come on

Thinking about how wild it is that enshittification starts as a way for the rich to squeeze the populace for more money but ends up infecting everything so even luxury products decline in quality. They’ve got more money than fucking God now and for what? Literally they can’t even buy fun nice stuff for themselves because they killed craft.

Anyway this post is about Dhaka muslin but it’s also about everything.

bbc.com

The ancient fabric that no one knows how to make

Nearly 200 years ago, Dhaka muslin was the most valuable fabric on the planet. Then it was lost altogether. How did this happen? And can we

if you think about it, every time we tranquilize animals to transport them safely to another place, we are the sleep paralysis demon

That has to be the most humiliating way to describe one of Earth's most terrifyingly effective predators.

Mira would push Brennan off the sofa and help Violet stand on his back.

Ridoc: The floor is lava!

Liam: *helps Sloane onto the table*

Mira: *pushes Brennan off the sofa*

Garrick: As you can see, there are two types of siblings.

Buffy, guidance counsellor extraordinaire and cheer coach, with her potentials cheer team that happens to know how to behead a primordial vamp—hear me out.

it's been years since i saw it in full but i'm thinking about the last season of buffy again. crazy how the "back to the beginning" motif manifests as the new high school starting as a huge deal - dawn is a student there, the hellmouth is underneath it, spike's crazy in the basement, the new principal is the son of a slayer. buffy even gets a job as a guidance councilor for troubled students, arguably the best episodes in the season are all about it. and then in the second half they bring in the potentials, a massive group of troubled teenagers who need guidance- a class, one might say- and they just. live at her house. train in her backyard. perhaps there was a second, more thematically significant place for high schoolers to go to learn. oh well.

Cuties~🫶

I have a folder called Time is a Flat Circle in which I collect evidence of humanity. Here is most of them.

Kafka’s archive of longings (prev.)

(excerpts from “Letters to Milena”, Allan Kaprow “Comfort Zones”)

if you’d like to support me … 🌼

Our system is broken.  It is cruel.  It is dehumanizing, degrading, and it’s vile nature is so, so unnecessary.

We need universal healthcare today in America.  We needed it 40 years ago.  It’s cheaper, it’s simpler, it’s more efficient, it’s more effective and it is so, so, so much less cruel than what we have.

Additional sources/references:

Universal Healthcare Cost in America would be cheaper by trillions of dollars

The US has worse life expectancies than socialized healthcare countries

We have worse generalized healthcare results

We have the most expensive care

Our system is so cruel and unique that doctors from other countries literally can’t believe what happens here

I can’t tell you where or how to activate to help solve this.  There are politicians, groups, and activists pushing for this in so many ways.  I can tell you when, though.

Now.

Panels 1 - 10

i need less "happy, fluffy cinnamon roll" luke skywalker and more "raised in the ass-end of nowhere with spiders 4ft across who used to shoot rats the size of saint bernards for fun, who at 19 killed one million people in a single shot and just happens to be really optimistic for a guy who is a guerilla fighter and a space revolutionary"

Spicy-brained friends, I would like to propose an update to the very useful ‘if you hate everyone, eat, if everyone hates you, sleep, and if you hate yourself, shower’ mantra to live by

Have you suddenly become a petty, hateful little gremlin who thinks people should face the firing squad for (checks notes) leaving teabags on the counter, breathing loudly, or daring to exist in the same space as you? Perhaps mundane and reasonable requests like ‘hey, we agreed to hang out now, let’s hang out’ make you want to scream and move to a yurt in the woods.

You. Are. Overstimulated.

People talk a lot about being overstimulated, and the physical/mental effects of it. What I haven’t seen is people talking about what it does emotionally, and it took me an embarassingly long time to link up those nitpicky, resentful emotions with the state of overstimulation/meltdown/shutdown.

These feelings do not mean that you’re a bad person! They probably aren’t how you actually feel about the people around you. They probably do mean that your nervous system is at its absolute limit and any request/demand/stimulus is Too Much and taking you into fight or flight territory.

Go lie down in a dark room for an hour, or find somewhere safe and familiar to stim for a bit. If it’s happening a lot, schedule yourself regular low-stimulation shutdown time

Signed: someone who moved in with their nearest and dearest only to have a massive crisis of faith about Suddenly Hating All of Them. I don’t hate them, it’s just overstimulating living with people. If I can spare anyone else a similar 9 months of suspecting that they may actually be a bit of a shit person, then this post is worth it!

They spent money so I can make y'all look at their frog. That's a great frog. 👍

I'm spending money to make you look at my frog. 👍🏽

ken getting arrested alongside barbie after she punches the guy who smacks her ass presents so many possibilities

ken saw barbie punch the douchebag and was like “LET’S MAKE THIS A PARTY” and joined in on the smackdown

alternatively, the guy’s friends tried to jump in and ken wasn’t having ANY of that

ken saw barbie getting shoved into a big car with bright lights on the top and was like “OH BOY! can i come too?? 😊😊” and just kind of tagged along

alternatively, he realized what was going on and was like “EXCUSE ME OFFICER i too have committed A Crime so please show me to The Jail with my beautiful girlfriend” so they wouldn’t be separated

ken got in trouble for trying to help barbie escape but in his defense no one TOLD him resisting arrest is a crime because no one told him what being arrested or crime is

ken didn’t know who these men showing up to take his girlfriend away were, but he could see she was very upset and excuse?? you cannot take barbie away from ken without her permission??? so long story short, ken punched a cop

ken fully burned something down earlier and the cops were like “two birds one stone” when they came to get barbie

“The whole world’s a fucking casino. In a casino some of the smartest people in the world are doing everything to keep you gambling. They’ve taken the clocks off the wall. They’re pumping in oxygen. They’ve even thought about the patterns on the carpet. Everything has been scientifically engineered to keep you pulling that lever. And that’s our entire world now. It’s one big casino where some of the smartest people in the world are asking themselves: ‘What is the best way I can get people to eat more? What is the best way I can get people to watch more pornography? Or take more pills? How can I use artificial intelligence to serve people the exact succession of sixty second videos that will keep them staring at their screen for an entire day?’ I used to be a personal responsibility guy. A big reason for that is I have insane discipline. If I needed to completely stop eating candy for ten years, I could do it. Done. So if I ever saw someone who was obese, I’d think, I could do it. Put me in the exact same situation, and I’d lose the weight. But now whenever I see an obese person on the jogging trail, I just want to give them a hug. It’s almost enough to make me cry. I think God, this must be so fucking hard for you. And it’s going to take perfection: insane discipline, and time, and money, and listening to all the right podcasts. Every day of the week needs to be perfectly regimented. Five years of absolute perfection. That’s what it’s going to take. Because a ton of the smartest people in the world are getting paid massive amounts of money to figure out a way to make you fail.”

From a queer elder…

Being queer isn’t supposed to be palatable to non-queers.

We don’t tick little squares on a checklist of “queer enough”, we obliterate the checklist.

We defy societal norms that say our bodies, families or relationships have to look a certain way.

Queer is the insult we took away from oppressors. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

The people who hate us will hate us regardless of how palatable we make ourselves.

Stop licking fascist boots by policing queers who are queer in different ways than you.

Oh, someone is bi/pan trans lesbian with he/him pronouns? So what! They’re welcome on the rainbow. Their identity doesn’t have to make sense to you, it has to make sense to them.

Our identities don’t make sense to non-queers. They see us as unnatural and disgusting, so why are you turning around and crapping that same garbage out at your own community??

Once you drive the visible queers underground, the same people who hate us all will target you next. Nobody will defend you because you drove away everybody who would have.

Enough already!

— sincerely, an old queer.

someone i follow on instagram just put out the PRETTIEST rendition of the traveler's prayer

Ms. Johns, my high school English and Literature teacher, must have been dead wrong about my osmosis theory because I have no other explanation because I've been operating under my own creative connotations for years now.

I got the Top 4.47% on this English Vocabulary test

I gave my soapbox speech about how weight loss is mostly bullshit to two different patients in a row yesterday and so help me I’m pretty sure one of these days someone is going to say “but SURELY you agree I’d be HEALTHIER if I lost weight!” bc you can see the disbelief in their eyes. And like. Sure, maybe! You might see some improvement in biomarkers like LDL and A1c, and your knees would probably feel better. But you would be amazed at how much more good you can do for yourself by focusing on things you can actually meaningfully change without resorting to making yourself miserable. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables—it’s hard bc they’re more difficult to prepare and more expensive per calorie and go bad faster than other foods, but they’re what we evolved eating the most of so they’re what our bodies need the most of. And walk around more; sure, cardio is great for you, but if it sucks so bad you don’t do it, it isn’t doing shit for you. And we evolved to walk very very long distances, a little bit at a time, so our bodies respond actually very well to adding walks into our schedules, which is vastly easier than adding workouts that are frankly designed to be punishing when the definition of punishing is “makes you less likely to do it again in the future.”

You get one life. It is shorter than you can begin to imagine. Don’t waste it hating yourself because somebody is going to make money off that self-hatred. You deserve better than to be a cash cow for billionaires who pay aestheticians and dermatologists to make them (or at least their trophy wives) look thin and beautiful no matter what they actually do.

ghostlight gravekeep ghoulboss

You're literally a source of joy. How do you do it?

i think reason i am joyful is similar to reason i am successful: LUCK. i was born into circumstance that created this outcome. the chemicals in my dang brain give me joy and i did not ask for this nor earn it. i am no better or worse than a buckaroo who is in a constant battle with sadness, these are just the mechanics of our brains.

i say this not to disappoint but to ENCOURAGE others. if you are having a down day please remember you DO NOT NEED TO BLAME YOURSELF FOR YOUR MIND. there are things you can do and steps you can take with drive and determination and practice this is true, but the ultimate number one trot for these harsh ways are usually factors outside our control.

the REAL TEST is what you do with these circumstances, how you trot through life with the understanding that we are mostly caught up in a current and our swimming provides limited movement in the water.

here is the key for me. i do not have 'everything', and i certainly do not have 'nothing'. like the vast majority of buckaroos i am somewhere in the middle but i am SO GRATEFUL for what ive got. i have perspective on the grand uniqueness of this fleeting moment and i feel so thankful i get to be here for it.

so along with harsh awareness that hand of fate is stronger than most would give it credit for, i also have an equally large helping of gratitude. i take time every dang day to consider how lucky i am, not for my joy or my success, but lucky just to be here in the first place even considering such things