Ten pounds of personality in a five-pound bag
Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire
Don Martin
This was a really fun book to read! Definitely accessible to mature children, but has enough to hold an adult’s interest. I loved finding out in the Afterword that he named characters after his own family tree.
And it makes me want to look up various cryptids, monsters, haints, whatever. Particularly the nightjars.
So, I don’t intend to wade into aro-ace discourse here. My opinions are my own and I’m afraid of Tumblr.
But yesterday I had this really cool metaphor finally finish working its way through my head, and that is: Romantic relationships are to Friendships as Petals are to Leaves.
I remember back in 9th grade biology, learning that petals are just hyper-specialized leaves. They develop with different pigments and shapes and so forth, to serve a different purpose in the plant, but they’re the same homologous structure as a leaf.
And that’s how I think I view romantic relationships. They’re like friendships, but hyper-specialized.
It’s hard to explain “what makes a relationship Romantic” when you take sex out of the equation. To the point that I do sometimes think I might be aromantic, or demi-romantic.
But I do very much appreciate the relationships that rise to the level of Romantic, so it’s not that it never happens! It’s just…I don’t know?
Just muddling through, trying to figure myself out. 😊
I just saw this video from SNL for the first time and it’s great.
This weekend I made a new playlist and I noticed how these three songs make a triptych:
Cable Street: we would not be moved
Hometown Letdown: I moved away
Dixieland: I moved to a new place
Now, obviously that’s an oversimplification of each of those songs! 😂 But the contrast/grouping was just very interesting to me.
The Young’uns – Cable Street https://genius.com/The-younguns-cable-street-lyrics
Maddie Zahm – Hometown Letdown @maddiezahm https://genius.com/Maddie-zahm-hometown-letdown-lyrics
Steve Earle – Dixieland @SteveEarle https://genius.com/Steve-earle-dixieland-lyrics
Great great video about how to communicate/what your unspoken factors say to other people in the language THEY have learned.
It’s okay if you don’t know that language. But you have to let them know that.
I just watched this Instagram post and it made me realize: I think I had an advantage growing up in that every Sunday I had a demonstration of “let’s read three stories and then analyze them” in the form of the liturgy/homily.
Father Jerry Fogarty and his “Three Points” was really just prepping me to write a five paragraph essay. 😂
Anyway, enjoy this thought provoking video about the Prodigal Son.
Ever since my own divorce five years ago, I’ve turned into some kind of Divorce Doula for a number of friends. It’s difficult emotionally, but rewarding to be able to help them through the worst period of their lives.
The biggest thing I tell them?
That’s it. That’s the first piece of advice.
You have to have a lawyer that’s got attorney client privilege with you and will not share your questions with the other party in the divorce case.
No matter what you think about Narcissism Discourse, your job now is to minimize contact and conflict with your ex partner. Don’t start fights. Don’t try to litigate disagreemens. That’s what the lawyer is for.
If you do something like Mediation or Collaborative, you’ll still need your own lawyer to look over the outcome and make sure there’s nothing you’ve missed.
If your friend says something about the divorce or what your responsibilities are, nod and listen and ask your lawyer about it.
If your friend says “you’ll have to pay alimony forever” they’re full of shit. Ask your lawyer.
Even if your friend says something that seems plausible, they’re full of shit. Ask your lawyer.
You need your own lawyer with a legal and ethical responsibility towards you.
Having a lawyer is the best way to ensure that you’ve dotted all your i’s and have covered every eventuality. You don’t want an expensive surprise happening.
Like the Etsy mug at the beginning says. This, too, shall pass. Like a motherfucking kidney stone. But you WILL get through it.
I haven’t read this, and I wouldn’t know how to evaluate it even if I did; but the abstract is very compelling to me.
A few different things crystallized into this post.
The most relevant one, though, was when someone I know temporarily lost access to his usual AI image generator and he decided to just post his image prompt to the discord instead.
And you know what? The prompt he sent was beautifully written. It might not have technically been poetry, and I suspect he would object to seeing it referred to that way, but it evoked such a beautiful image in my mind that I think it counts.
You have this power. If you are getting good at writing prompts to make the machine paint a picture for you? Start writing those prompts down. Let your reader create the image your words inspire in their own mind.
You are already a poet. Just open the door and let the words flow out.
Saw this on Facebook.
I worried at first that this was AI; but then I recognized the center of the triptych as being one I had seen before (and actually own a sticker of).
I like the idea of saints as relatable people – in a way, they are the celebrities of the Catholic church. (Someone make a “youth minister voice” joke about that.)
And I think it’s lovely to sanctify regular people: to say “This is someone whose life I believe is worth emulating.” Which, in the end, is the purpose of sainthood under Catholicism: to see another ordinary human’s life, and to say “Emulating this will bring me closer to the Divine.”
So be kind. Be generous. Be loving. Be that which you admire in others. If you have such trauma from your upbringing (or if you have no relation to the cultural context) that “what would Jesus do” is a hurtful or meaningless phrase, then you should instead ask yourself: “What would Dolly do?” Then go and do that.
