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  • I feel I must address the saga of the couple next door, because…well.

    They were making some extraordinary noises, at about 4:30ish in the afternoon, and I eventually gave up and went down to the front desk, where I had a great conversation with a woman I will call Yolanda (not her real name but not too far off, who was a hero.) I will also remind my readers that I am in Georgia so all colloquialisms are reported as they happened.

    ME: Hi! We are about to have a very awkward conversation!

    YOLANDA OF THE HOTEL: We are?

    ME: Are you ready?

    HOTEL: I’m ready!

    ME: Are you braced?

    HOTEL: Let’s do this!

    ME: The couple in the room next to me is having incredibly loud sex.

    HOTEL: Oh sweet baby Jesus.

    ME: I admire their enthusiasm! I am glad they have found each other!

    HOTEL: *tries not to laugh*

    ME: They are clearly having a VERY fulfilling relationship!

    HOTEL: *choking noises*

    ME: But if you are at the stage of your relationship where you are making that kind of noise in the afternoon, you are gonna make it all night as well.

    HOTEL: Oh yeah! *loses battle, begins laughing*

    ME: I am a children’s book author–

    HOTEL: *begins slapping her hands on the desk*

    ME: –and I gotta get up at 6:45 to go talk to third graders. Is there any way you can move me to a different room?

    HOTEL: Oh thank the lord. I though you were gonna ask me to go pound on their door.

    ME: That seemed unkind. For you and them.

    HOTEL: I’ll move you right over. (Shuffling of room numbers occurs)

    ME: You heard that one before?

    HOTEL: Oh honey, I’ve worked hotels for fifteen years. I’ve heard pretty much everything.

    Tour Day 2 & 3
    (via fuckyeahursulavernon)

  • Untitled post 15114

    thatsnotsoonenough:

    Who ya gonna call?

  • Untitled post 15117

    mypatronusisrorypond:

    billiethepoet:

    emilianadarling:

    Thanks, JT. :3

    Also – this will be the first time he’ll march in Toronto’s pride parade as the Prime Minister.

    He’s

    been

    to

    pride

    lots

    of

    times

    before.

    That moving to Canada thing looks better and better.

    So Canada gets this gem, and we’re probably going to be trapped with Trump. We are suffering down here

  • Untitled post 15120

    freshgirljade:

    This is fucking gold.

    Whoever registered the website is a fucking legend.

  • Students At Fake University Say They Are “Victims” Of Government Sting

    Students At Fake University Say They Are “Victims” Of Government Sting

    kaylapocalypse:

    inquisitivefeminist:

    theunitofcaring:

    So I know, like, “abolish the U.S. government” isn’t actually a practical step forward but gosh if I had a button that could do it – 

    the government set up a fake university, persuaded international students it was a real university, got thousands to enroll, and then revealed it was a sting and they’ll all be deported with an immigration violation on their visas for enrolling in a university that they should have known was fake. Despite the fact that, in order to make the sting more successful, they got the fake university accredited, so if students did check it would all seem legitimate!

    they did this with our tax money!

    Holy what the fuck

    WHY

  • God damn

    shadesofmauve:

    pyoorkate:

    So, our PERC holes had to be dug on a day when we weren’t available to be there. That’s because we were running to meet the ‘if we want to build this autumn’ deadline — which we found out a few days ago is actually unachievable.

    It turns out that even had we got all of our ducks in a row (which they are pretty much) then we couldn’t have hit it because the permit approval process for the septic is way longer than we were told by our septic designer. Of course, just before we found this out we had a great chat with the house permitting guy who told us that he ended up reviewing it – his current timeframe would mean we’d be able to make our build-date targets (based on the septic designer’s estimate of times). Of course we were super excited – then we find out that the permit process is at least double what our designer said… and sadness.

    So, anyway, to get back (at least vaguely) to the point. We find out it’s not doable and are then out on the plot with our to-be-arbourist planning where our house will be and find that the oldest, largest tree in the entire 5.5 acres is the one they’ve decided to stick the septic right in the middle of the root system for.

    This would, unsurprisingly, kill a beautiful tree.

    Seriously, we talked about needing to protect the place with our guy-the-excavator – who dug the holes for our septic guy, and I expect that conversation happened with the designer too, although I wasn’t there. But Kathryn and I always rave about this beautiful tree.

    So we go out with our arbourist who is first up horrified at the potential damage done already, then we realise that the system is pegged out right in the root system – and the alternate is also in the root system of the same tree.

    Seriously?

    Gaaaah.

    So now we’re faced with nearly $700 of costs for relocating it because we took our eye off the ball and thought that people might actually give a shit about their environment. When we talked about it before hand the septic guy was all “oh, we’ll look at the site and dig some test holes and pick the best location”. All the holes are within about 40? of this one poor tree.

    Let me remind you again, 5.5 acres.

    Oh lord. This is not something we need.

    In other news, we’re off to look at some lettings to see if we can find a short term, uncarpeted 6 month lease so that we can do our building planning through the winter and put it up in the spring.

    Also: The cake I’m baking erupted in the oven. Cue hideous burning smell. Also, in the 35 minute cooking time it’s come out like jelly. I’ve no idea why – it’s staying in there longer, but seriously? And also yesterday’s trip to the dentist turned out to be the first of 2 (on top of the original 2) – as my tooth had rotted out enough that removing the filling left me with a crown, instead of a filling, and he still is wondering whether I need a root canal. Yay.

    God damn was originally published on Mostly lemon based

    Egads. I think you should try to make the septic people or the excavator (I’m not sure which it was?) eat at least some of that $700 cost for going against your express wishes!

    I’m really sorry about the timing.

    And I can’t offer anything in the way of storage space, but I CAN provide you a bed (inside, even!) if it hits that point!

    ALSO TELL US ABOUT YOUR FUTURE HOUSE! Mom said something about a kit? But that didn’t fit with what you seemed to be talking about so I r confuzzled.

    Yeah, it’s tricky. We told the excavator but aren’t certain we told the septic guy – but then he said he’d look over the land and pick ‘the best’ space – not ‘the most accessible’ space. Feh. It’s slightly tempting to switch to another septic designer, but the other one has a not-great rating from the BBB.

    Thank you again for the offer :) We’re going to check out some houses with short term leases, which should tide us over winter… but if it all spirals into disaster… you may find us camped on your porch ;)

    …and the future house will look a bit like this – without the porch and with a 16?x16? shed roof extension (we’d love the porch but we can’t afford the porch and the extension). It is a kit – everything’s pre-cut and we just assemble it like a giant meccano / erector set. It’s everything to a watertight skin and framing for the interior walls. No electrics/plumbing…Oh, and no windows in our quote…  But does have the rain screen and cladding :)

    It’s exciting though, or it will be if we can get the land developed…

  • fuck-me-barnes:

    carmanitaknits:

    wagrobanite:

    think-progress:

    Members of Congress are living off food stamps for a week to protest Republican cuts. It’s a challenge for them, but GOP cuts would hurt millions of everyday Americans. 

    Why does this not have more publicity. This needs it!

    I want a reality tv show where politicians have to live in poverty for a month. They have to live in Government housing, shop with food stamps, and get only a limited amount of money for clothes. Because here, they still have all their trappings, lilke nice cars and thousand dollar suits. I want them in Walmart jeans trying to determine if they can afford a carton of milk. 

    Give them a full calendar year. I want to see them confident in January, and sometime around June choking back tears at the Safeway because they are tired, so tired, of eating 25 cent cup noodles, eyeing other peoples’ full grocery carts with a dull bewilderment.

    Let me see them despair because they have a persistent nagging cough that won’t go away and might be turning into pneumonia but the minute clinic is $60, which might as well be as six million dollars, either way they ain’t got it to spare – and that doesn’t count the cost of prescriptions. Let me hear them tell people about the muscle cramps they get at night due to eating non-nutritious garbage for months, the weakness from persistent hunger. 

    Let them know the shame and frustration of only owning one pair of cheap polyester pants for work and one pair of thrift-store jeans, and both persistently have ripped crotches and seams coming undone, no matter how many times they get sewn back up.

    Let the women know the particular sort of despair that comes once a month when you can’t afford even the cheapest pads or tampons.

    Let them understand the frustration of being charged a $35 fee for a $2 overdraft. Let them watch as the bank holds charges from different days in “pending” till they all come through on the same day, and the bank charges them four times for a single overdraft because “the charges all cleared at the same time”. 

    I want them to know the particular pain of having to decide between food for the week, or transportation costs to and from work. You can’t have both. Choose wisely.

    You do not truly understand poverty until you’ve lived it and a month isn’t enough to encompass it. Not even close.

  • Untitled post 15043

    tanngelo:

    this is it

  • Untitled post 15046

    mortiferamorphasmus:

    wetwareproblem:

    opalescentlesbian:

    wetwareproblem:

    runkjat:

    wetwareproblem:

    runkjat:

    wetwareproblem:

    runkjat:

    wetwareproblem:

    vergess:

    wetwareproblem:

    barbidreamdumpster:

    bifoxstiles:

    adayinthelesbianlife:

    The first Pride was a riot.

    Wall sticker in Marlborough lesbian pub, Brighton.

    i’m actually realizing this now

    but the original poster said “queer power” and someone erased that and replaced it with “gay power”

    real classy

    this real

    Well. I’m not exactly an expert at image analysis, but the bottom text in the first one looks much cleaner than the top text while the second one matches better. Also, the creases in the second one on the Q and U seem like the sort of detail that wouldn’t be faked. Finally, this actually matches up significantly better to “queer” politics than “gay” politics; it was always queers who advocated and took the front lines in direct action.

    If you put the image in an editor or just view the full size of the first image, it becomes very obvious that the text on the bottom was added later: all of the vertical lines in every letter are pixel perfect straight lines. That is basically impossible with a photo of a poster that is both visibly at an angle, and has paper weathering and other distortion. Look at the verticals of the white text to compare. The only distortion of the text is the jpg artifacts we would expect in that level of contrast. There is no lighting on the pink text either, another highly suspicious trait.

    Additionally, if you crop out the pink text in op and run an image search you get the second photo, as well as four or five other photos of the poster, all reading “queer power.”

    With the pink text left in, however, the only version of the poster is this exact image, sourcing to op.

    I want every single person who ever argued with me on That Queer Post to take a long, hard look at this. I have been told at least dozens of times that “nobody is saying you can’t identify as queer,” that I’m “ignoring history,” that they’re not trying to shift back to gay, etc.

    Now, here’s this post, in which queer people are having their art defaced in order to rewrite their identity. Where they’re being forcibly rewritten as gay. Where history is being literally goddamn erased. It’s got three times the notes of That Queer Post, and as far as I can tell, @bifoxstiles is the first one to challenge this narrative. And I’m not gonna hold my breath on y’all to call out OP.

    They’re literally stealing our history, rewriting it into a new version that excludes more than half of the community. And nobody’s challenging this. You’re too busy trying to shut down inclusive, egalitarian language.

    Shame on every last one of you.

    Queer is a slur and not everyone wants to identify as it stop using it as an umbrella term

    MOTHERFUCKER don’t you start that here.

    The people who made this poster? They wanted to identify as queer. How do I know? Because they fucking did. And now you’re supporting someone coming along after the fact and literally stealing their identity from them.

    Here’s a better idea: I will continue using “queer” as an umbrella term for groups of people who happily identify as queer, and if you don’t like it you’re cordially invited to never talk to a queer person again.

    Stop stealing our identities.

    You are welcome to identify as queer if you reclaim it, and many ppl do, but that doesnt change the fact that there are plenty of lgbt ppl who think of it negatively (personally i am not one of these ppl so i cant speak for them, but i respect their wishes and i hope u will too). A better umbrella term to use is LGBT, imo.

    That would be a lot more reassuring if you hadn’t shown up specifically to defend taking the word queer out of someone’s mouth and relabeling them as gay.

    LGBT is a shit umbrella term. It prioritizes the historically-centered parts of the community over historically-marginalized groups, it completely leaves off swathes of the community, and these days it’s habitually used by the sort of gatekeepers who want to actually throw out sections of the community.

    Again: If you don’t want to identify as queer, you don’t have to. But you don’t get to take that word away from any member of the community. If you don’t like it, just walk away and make your own shit.

    I never thought I’d have to say this to members of the community, but: We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.

    I’m not trying to take it away from people. If you want to reclaim it then good for you, but I’m just saying that not everyone wants to be called queer and using it as an umbrella term to include those who are potentially triggered by it or just dont like it is shitty.
    Also did u practically just say “Im using this slur as an umbrella term and if ur uncomfortable with it then get over it and walk away” or am i reading that wrong

    You literally showed up to defend someone who had taken away a queer person’s words to put gay in their place. Stop pretending otherwise. If people don’t like that word, they’re fine not using it – but they can create their own works, rather than stealing and defacing ones made by queer people to erase us from them.

    No. I said that if you’re not comfortable with someone using queer as an identifier, the responsible thing to do is disengage from them and make your own art, your own statements, instead of stealing and relabeling theirs.

    If you’re not comfortable with someone else labeling you “queer,” you have zero right to label them “gay” without their consent.

    I feel the nuance that people keep missing here is that queer is not only acceptable to reclaim on a personal level, because queer groups exist. Groups that gather under that label exist. It is absolutely an umbrella term for those groups. Honestly people hear “umbrella term” and they lose their shit because they think umbrella terms can only be used to encompass the entire community instead of subsets of it, so that must be what you mean, and how dare you! :/

    But, honestly, this isn’t a nuanced discussion – it’s an insistence that if you use queer to refer to more than one person at a time and that person is not your own self, you’re coercively labeling other people who don’t want that label. Except… this is incorrect. It is so incorrect it erases swaths of queer people who have been gathering in groups under the label for the last 100 years. It’s a push to eliminate the label altogether, by reducing it to something you have to keep to yourself.

    The only coercive labeling going on in this entire post was the OP who changed the poster (and a little the person insisting on using LGBT). Queer is not a super-private self-identifier only that isn’t allowed to be used for finding community, ffs.

    I would add something here, but there’s nothing left. @opalescentlesbian nailed it.

    Not Gay as in Happy, But Queer as in Fuck You!
    Every time I think about the Queer Community this is the phrase that I think of.

    Thank you @wetwareproblem for standing up for the rest of us.

  • unreconstructedfangirl:

    sandandglass:

    Samantha Bee
    explains why the outcome of the Brexit referendum makes it even more important
    to reject Trump his racist sentiments in November

    Amen.