Y'all want to hear a fact that really changed the way I thought about homelessness?
Half of all homeless people were in the foster system at some point. Social Workers often call the foster system The Highway to Homelessness. If you ever had a point in your life where you had to live with friends or family to for a short time to get back on your feet, remember that is a privilege that not everyone had.
We became homeless in 2018 when the Camp Fire destroyed our home. It was a shock trying to get an apartment and having to pay large fees just to fucking apply with no guarantee of getting the place.
#Celtic#FairyTaleTuesday: The Dagda had an enchanted harp, in which the music was spell-bound, and he alone could call it forth. When he played, summer would break in bud and blossom all over the land; or winter with its snows and frosts would come; or sleep or laughter or tears would fall on all who heard the music.
Source: Heroes of the Dawn by Violet Russel
@NeuKelte
I used to play a wire-strung Celtic harp. It is truly a magical instrument. I highly recommend Alain Stivell if you haven't heard him already.
It looks like we may have been feeding two strays. Late yesterday afternoon, we found a lovely, little dilute-gray tabby girl eating from the food bowl. She was sweet, friendly, and affectionate. She ate while we petted her, hungry, but not with the kind of desperate hunger Obi has. I would estimate her to be around ten months old.
We both fell in love with her instantly, but there’s no way we could take in such a young cat at our ages. We’re already concerned about the cats we have outliving us. We hope she has a nice home somewhere and was simply swinging by for a visit. We haven’t seen her today, but if she keeps coming around, we’ll have to decide what action to take.
The weather is gloomy and I have a tent set up on my bed with a projector ready to go.
Any recommendations for things to binge watch?
Disclaimer: I watch a LOT of movies and TV shows and I've pretty much seen everything, but I’m hoping that by crowdsourcing I can find out about something I somehow missed.
You can't unionize part of your workers. You have to unionize all of them otherwise you have no collective bargaining power and will just get fired. We saw this with the actor/writers strike. They were all unionized so they had power. This is a slight simplification, but not much of one.
@grumpygamer
It's also important to have enough commonality of concerns within the union. For complicated historical reasons, I am not represented by the WGA for writing animation. I should be, but instead animation writers are stuck in an artists' union where their concerns aren't well represented. The concerns of programmers will be different from artists or designers. That said, the games biz desperately needs to be unionized.
The most effective propaganda perpetrated by the right over the past 40 years has been creating a world so mind-numbingly shitty that even progressives can't imagine a brighter future anymore
Okay, I'm thinking about gift giving today. A little backstory about why:
Every year my Father-in-law attempts to get my Mother-in-law a gift. She is a bit of a shopper, and is notoriously difficult to shop for. Every year he gets her something he guesses a woman would like (perfume, sweater, jewelry), and every year she doesn't really like it, and ends up begrudgingly using it or returns it. They have been married over 30 years, and seem to have a pretty good marriage otherwise. It's like she wants him to magically understand what she wants, and he is sort of equally bad at the whole thing too. I will never understand why they don't just have a conversation about this. Just for extra fun, she is the most bizarre gift giver, also, to the point that it has become an annual tradition that I show my friends what she got us. A small list of things we have gotten:
A couch cover with grapes on it
A sexy nightgown
A painting of the house they live in
A gourd painted to look like a cat eating a bird
A package of tea that I would have absolutely loved, stuffed with cheap tea bags
Children's Lego sets
Toy trains
Underwear that didn't fit either of us
A wooden board covered in seashells that is supposed to hold a curling iron
A waterproof bed cover
I could go on and on. Just to clarify this doesn't bother me or my husband at all, we actually get a kick out of the weirdness. I don't personally care about presents much, I'm more of an experiences person.
SO, if you've managed to get this far, how do you feel about gift giving/getting? Feel free to elaborate and give examples!
@RickiTarr
My Polish grandmother gave hysterical gifts. Nightgown the size of a tent. Half-used cold cream. Belt with a 25-cent rummage sale tag. Grampa's ugly old ties for my husband. Styrofoam fruit covered in sequins. A ratty old raccoon coat from the 1930s. Old hankies. Aftershave so old it had turned into vnegar.
One year, I gave her rose-shaped soaps. Next year, she gave them back to me.
Okay I'm going to describe something, that I'm thinking that some other people have too:
So, when I'm feeling very sad, emotional, and overwhelmed, and I just feel like I can't keep going. I have this sort of other hyper rational part of myself. I call it Outside Man, mostly because it feels like it hovers over the top of my ocean of my emotions, and can see things from outside of where I am. Outside Man is the one who tells me that emotions change and this intensity of feeling won't last forever, and I need to do the things I know will help my mental state.
Is this or something like this, something other people experience?
And yes, I know that it's probably inherently sexist that I call what I consider my more rational self by a male moniker, but I've called it that since I was a kid, and it's stuck. Hubs said Outside Man sounds like a horror movie!
@RickiTarr
Very definitely. Even when I was out of my brain taking hallucinogens, there was an outside rational part of myself observing. I have often had that voice recognize and comment on situations before I'm fully aware (seemingly) of what's really going on.
Since, my last post ended up in a long thread about the pros and cons of sports, I'm curious, what is your family and personal history with sports?
I'll go first! My Dad grew up in a Sport's household. His Dad, my grandfather, was obsessed, and he wanted his sons to be too. My grandfather was tall with an athletic build like a swimmer, but he married a very petite 4'8" woman, who never weighed over a hundred pounds. Both my Dad and his Brother were average height with a slight build, neither played sports or were good at it when they tried. Not liking sports became my Dad's rebellion. He became a preacher instead, his Dad grew up in a Preacher's family, and hated it. When I was growing up, my Dad always pushed intelligence and spirituality over physicality, we only had a game on if my Grandfather was there. I got a little of both my parents, I've always been small and plump, what science calls a dumpling (please don't fact check this). I enjoyed group activities and non competitive sports. For instance I played volleyball (very poorly), but only enjoyed it if I was on the B team, and had no pressure to succeed in it. I did go through a brief period where I pretended to be really into sports, because I thought it would impress boys. I'd watch just enough to get highlights. I was basically like Moss in I.T. Crowd. Did you see that ludicrous display last night?!
@RickiTarr
My father played basketball, tennis, golf, and played minor league baseball. He then went into radio and would do sports broadcasts. He was always active and into sports. When he was around 80, he dropped dead on the tennis court but was resuscitated.
My brother did track and became a world champion disc golfer.
I never had the slightest interest in sports. Neither watching nor participating. But I love martial arts and have studied a handful of styles. My favorite is Tai Chi.