tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
Of course it’s YOU tumblrbot.
Nothing screams “I haven’t read them both” as loudly as someone comparing Battle Royale to The Hunger Games.
—Me (via wilwheaton)
John Green's tumblr: How to Get Your Book Banned in Arizona
Step 1: Write about people who aren’t white.
Step 2: THERE IS NO STEP TWO.
You will very rarely see me curse, tumblypoos, but…but…I mean, what the fuck? How is this even possible? This reads like an Onion article.
To be clear, it is now ILLEGAL to teach de la Pena’s novel (which I’ve read…
(Source: heracrossed, via fypblog)
(Source: walnuttreerecords)
There’s been a lot said, rightfully, about the ridiculous situation in the USA recently, where a panel comprised almost entirely of middle-aged men came together to discuss their thoughts on an area where they have, one would suspect, very little actual experience: women’s birth control.
It’s a ridiculous situation. Even more so when you consider that a number of women were turned away from speaking as “not appropriate and not qualified” to speak on the situation. There’s been enough written about this now that anything I say will have already been said, frequently and far more eloquently, so I’ll move on to my main point.
This is being portrayed as a scandalous event, an injustice the likes of which we rarely, if ever, see! Except… No.
When was the last time a person who is actually on benefits on the UK was given a platform to air their views about benefit cuts and similar issues to the people who matter?
It happens, to my knowledge, very very rarely. Instead, reports are written by highly paid, expensively educated ‘experts’, which are then read, discussed and acted upon by MPs who are predominantly, judging by the figures on the Houses of Parliament’s website, middle-class white men, around a third of whom went to fee-paying schools, nearly all from financially stable backgrounds. These are not people who can ever begin to understand what it means to live in poverty.
To me, this seems like a very odd way to go about things. People who have no experience of a situation are told about said situation by other people who haven’t experienced it, and then go ahead to make massive decisions concerning the situation, none of which will ever effect them personally.
I’m currently at university in England, but when I’m not there (and for the last 18 or so years) I live at my mother’s house in the welsh valleys. At the primary school I attended, free school meals were the norm rather than the exception. I’m very lucky - my dad has a stable job, and now my mother does as well. My brother has an apprenticeship and pays rent to my mother - but significant cuts to certain benefits could leave me without a house to return to when I come home from university for the summer. And I’m one of the fortunate people in my area. For an awful lot of people there, money is just another thing that they’ll hear about but never have.
What MPs see are reports, as I mentioned above, and headlines screaming “DISGRACE as benefit claimants buy PS3s and HD TVs!”
That’s not a disgrace. They aren’t wasting their money irresponsibly. Giving people just about enough money for rent, bills and food to ensure they don’t “fritter it away” on things like TVs and other entertainment, as I’ve heard suggested, is one of the single worst ideas I have ever heard. That is giving people enough money to survive. Miserably. What it is not, is giving people enough money to actually live.
Reports and headlines will never, ever be able to tell you the real human impact of any action a government takes, whether it’s to do with abortion, poverty, or any other social issue.
People with experience can.
And it’s time those people got their say.
I have a problem
Saw this in Asda today. Thing of dreams!
Most people’s thoughts when they see that - “Wow! I’ll never have to buy tea bags again!”
My thoughts when I saw it - “Wow! I won’t have to buy tea bags for like… A month!”
Just so I’m clear: Misogyny in advertising on TV is totally okay. Violence on TV is totally okay. Encouraging people to self-diagnose mental illness on TV is totally okay.
Flipping the bird on TV, though, is totally not okay.
Is that pretty much it?
Okay, that’s what I thought. So, allow me to just say something real quick here, okay?
For fuck’s sake, America, it’s not the 1950s any more. Grow the fuck up.
Arghh.
I dun goofed, guys. Really really not good.
Sexism in 2011 is a different, more subtle beast, which shows itself in insidious ways: it is there when a man shouts out a sexualised comment as you pass in the street; it is there when your male colleague makes a joke about it being your time of the month; and it is there when you are called a slag, a bitch, a whore or told you are not as good at map-reading or driving or any of those other quintessentially “male” skills you are deemed too dim to master.
And, as Boycott points out, if a woman objects to any of this – even if it makes her feel uncomfortable – she is somehow seen as poo-faced or not a good sport.
—
Guardian UK Article “Why Sexism is no Laughing Matter”
(via bigassfemme)
And this is why feminism is still relevant to you personally, not just in distant cultures living in far off countries you don’t really know anything about.
(via moratorium)
(Source: Guardian, via moratorium)
Interrupting Leaky writing for a minute because I HURT MYSELF :(
If you’ve followed/added me on any other website you’ll probably already know this and will have heard me whinging about it, but LOOKIT I LEFT THE COUNTRY IN A WHEELCHAIR 
With Fawkes obviously because I’m the most badass. Went to hospital when I got home, and now I’m in a big uncomfortable leg brace, and it’s more than a week later. Doing all of the sadface. Apparently I damaged (or tore) ligaments in my knee, so I have to take it easy for a while!
Thought I’d avoided Leakyflu too, but then I got sniffly, and started coughing, and then coughed up blood in work, so I guess I wasn’t immune. Between that and my leg, I’ve missed 4 shifts at work, which is going to sting my pocket next month! Both are on the mend though, and I’m going back to the hospital for a follow-up this evening.
NOTE ABOUT LEAKY WRITEUP
If I met you and you’re reading this and I haven’t mentioned you by name, fucking deal with it I haven’t forgotten you, I just don’t fancy going through a MASSIVE LIST OF NAMES. You’re all lovely. I promise. I was going to write something else as well but idr what OOPS OH WELL
Leakycon!
So yeah, after I left the film ticket desk at about 2, Ceri and I headed off to the Wizarding World park for a bit before the opening festivities, wearing robes (Ravenclaw, of course), which was probably a bad idea because, as had been hinted by the previous days’ weather, Florida is WARM. So yeah, we melted our way onto the Hippogriff ride and I went on one of the dragons! But time was tight, so we had a quick browse around Hogsmeade and melted our way back to the RP for the GRAND OPENING. Lots of little technical bugs etc, but the sentiment was all still there. Punctuated by songs, so we saw Hank play, if I remember, Accio Deathly Hallows?
Then we got let loose on the park again! Very bizzare atmosphere, totally awesome. Took FULL advantage of the free pumpkin juice (Which tasted weird, but was kinda addictive) and shedloads of free butterbeer, which was GORGEOUS. Tiny queues, so we did the Forbidden Journey, which looked stunning, even the queueing area was awesome, it’s very strange to walk around Hogwarts… Also rode the other dragon, and went on the Hippogriff about 10 times with Ceri.
The strangest bit about it was wandering around and just walking past Evanna Lynch and John Green and Hank and all the Starkid folks like it’s nbd whatever. That was something of a theme for the entire week.
OKAY THAT’LL DO I’m off to unrealistically plan all of the holidays so I can spend all the money that I don’t have! I’ll carry this on tomorrow probably
Leakycon?
Leakycon! Landed in Tampa on Sunday evening, got on a swanky as fuck coach up to Orlando, checked into the hotel and SLEPT. Which was nice. Monday was Disney day, which was… All Disney and magicy and awesome. Disney is Disney.
Tuesday, we hit up some shops, I bought some $160 sunglasses because I’m a tool and they’re pretty and have the Cubs logo on the conner of the lens. After that, we went and met up with some of Ceri/Rebekah/Kerstin’s side of the internet for a meal. They were all lovely! Walked(/danced, in mine and Sharif’s case) around Citywalk for an hour or two, then went back to the hotel for about 11pm, planning to get a good load of rest, then get up early for Leaky registration opening on Wednesday morning! But no. we got back to the hotel, flicked through twitter, and saw that Leaky’s twitter was talking about opening registration for a couple of hours, at like… 1am. We wondered what kind of queue there was, so Rebekah rang the Royal Pacific’s front desk, and asked if their reception area was full of wizards. And got hung up on, for some reason. So, we all piled into a taxi and headed over, and found the ‘official Leakycon area’. Ceri and I got registered, got our swag and were done in 10 minutes, Rebekah didn’t get her stuff because they “didn’t have the ‘s’ surname stuff out yet”, and Kerstin’s stuff wasn’t printed out properly. We hung around and chatted with a few people for a while, then headed back to the hotel for, as would become a theme, about 3 hours of sleep.
So, we got back to the RP at 7am, like they’d told us… And when we got there, we were told they couldn’t do anything until 9. So, lots more hanging around, trying to catch another 5 minutes of sleep on a bench.
Come 9am, come massive queues, we hung around in the queues a bit, then I wandered off to try to find out where my volunteering orientation would be, so I could get that done before I volunteered on thursday. Got bounced around a bit, ended up asking Maureen Johnson, because she had a walkie talkie, who was lovely, but knew about as little as everyone else. Eventually found out, and was told “Well, I can’t really teach you now, but… Well, are you doing anything until the opening ceremony thing?” I wasn’t, so I ended up volunteering for an extra 4 hours on Wednesday, helping set up and run the film ticket desk. We needed 4 people, and we had 2, so we recruited Frak from Pottercast, and Scarlett Byrne (Pansy Parkinson in the films), and we all hung out and gave out film tickets for a few hours. They were both awesome, and Frak had brought his sketchbook with him, so we all had a browse.
I’m realising that this is getting really long so I’m going to stick this up as “part 1” and write “part 2” later!
Submitted by cristinita
