beth / berkeley, ca / bipolar disorder, fibromyalgia, pots, arthritisl/she her pronouns,/ intersectioal feminism, disability rights. anon is on - send me something fun đș
Women over 30 just getting real fuckin weird because we’ve realized that the lie we’ve been told about how we have to be in our 20s our whole lives is fucked up and fuckers can’t stop us we’re too powerful
my mum told me when you hit 40 you basically ascend and give not one single fuck
Five (5) more years until Ascension.
Oh, it’s so true. I thought I was out of fucks before 40, but lo, I found new depths of fucklessness. Amazing. Awesome. 10/10.
Wait until you get to 50 - I ‘ve scraped the bottom of my fuck barrel and that puppy’s dry as dust
It’s the circle where people pretend the American Dream is real so want the aesthetic that shows they worked their way out
so when i was a teenager, i was homeless, and also did a lot of activism surrounding the issue of homelessness among queer youth. occasionally some newspaper or magazine etc would do an article about this activism.
there was one time that stands out to me in particular because a fashion magazine had done an interview with me and subsequently sent folks to do a photoshoot to accompany the article. they had a stylist they sent down to select clothes for the photo shoot who, i am dead serious, was picking out clothing they thought fit The Homeless Teenager Aesthetic. artfully pre torn and frayed $250 jeans (studded, for extra Edge, with a skull design. in rhinestones.) a $70 tank top with Graffiti Print Design. (the clothes did, in fact, still all have price tags on; i gathered they had some sort of policy around keeping them in Like New condition for… return? reuse on different photoshoots? i wasn’t really clear on what happened after they had served out their life making real homeless teenagers look fake homeless.)
i tried explaining that this was Kind Of Silly and didn’t actually look anything like the clothes i wore, since what with the homelessness and it being chicago and, uh, cold, i preferred my clothes as hole-free as possible for as long as possible in order to be alive.
but they were very insistent. people will expect you to look the part.
and, you know… subsequently go out and buy the expensive clothing that tells them exactly how to look the part, from the comfort of their cushy homes.
this is exactly why the “distressed” fashion trend bothers me so much. They’re charging extra for t shirts with holes in them and unraveling sweaters. They’re gentrifying poverty tbh
Better than that.
If you’re poor, you NEED to not look poor. Your clothes need to be up to date. Clean. Well-maintained. You need to avoid scuffing them or staining them, because if I show up to work or an interview with holes over my knees and a moth-eaten sweater? Unprofessional. Sloppy. Careless. A slob, with no ambition or respect.
But if you’re rich? Who cares. You can own one pair of suit pants, a pair of jeans, slacks, chinos, leggings, leggings, overalls, and pre-torn jeans. An outfit for every event. You can WEAR distressed or sloppy clothes and not worry about coming off as undesirable, because that’s not a problem for you. You can look as dirty as you want in your free time, because you have a secure and stable income that isn’t threatened by that.
Poor people need to look rich in order to be respected. Rich people want to look poor because it says ‘look at me, I have the luxury of experiencing life hands-on, I don’t need to maintain my appearance because I can replace jeans like Kleenex"
Theyâre also meant for hiltops, not small rooms. Cant get the right reverb with all that echo.
theyâre also meant to make you fight the english. donât forget that part.
My fav bagpipe player was a dude who would go out to the middle of a soccer field near my college apartment on Sunday. No one was using the field and heâd just be out there playing his heart out and the sound were just spread out over the plains. Iâd be working on art for class so Iâd open the window and listen.
I still have fond memories of the day a kid biked up to the edge of the field, ran over to the bagpiper and the music stopped for a moment and as they talked. I couldnât hear it but I had assumed the worst, that someone had decided to tell him to stop playing. Instead after the pause the musician seemed to nod, readjusted his bagpipes and started belting out the Star Wars theme.Â
Holyshit that is the most interesting thing Iâve heard in awhile
Holy shit yes
years ago me and the boys went to our pals for new years eve. We get there and heâs like âweâre going next doorâ and we were all âokayâÂ
So.. itâs getting close to midnight and weâre chilling with these people we had never met and the older bloke goes âwell itâs time to get readyâ and we were all âwat?âÂ
dude comes back in the room carrying some bagpipes. turns out he used to play the bagpipes in the army. So midnight comes and this dude is out in the middle of the street tooting away. it was glorious.
Let people of color rent me for an affordable fee to deal with White Nonsense.
A few services:
Caucasian Shibboleth: I’ll ask the same questions, drop off the same applications, and jump through the same hoops as you would, but a white lady this time.
Sympathy For the Devil: I will accompany you to a place of your choosing and face your foes with whatever combination of performative empathy and baffled optimism gets you out of the situation fastest. Yes, I do cops!
And of course…
The Nuclear Option: That’s right, I will cry. White Lady Tears working for you!
$10/hr+travel if I’m only helping you avoid inconvenience. Travel only if I’m protecting you from assault.
âChaldeans have been targeted by ISIS and subjected to genocide, as have other religious minorities,â said Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), who is herself Chaldean Catholic of Assyrian descent, in a statement. âTheir deportation represents a death sentence should they be deported to Iraq or Syria.â
And now one year laterâŠ
My dad is Assyrian/Chaldean and when the news broke last year that Iraq was no longer on Trumpâs Muslim ban list we quickly learned that Iraqi nationals were now subject to deportation. Previously there were protections in place, especially considering the violence, discrimination, & you know literal genocide experienced by Kurds, Chaldeans, & Assyrians if they were to be deported. The raids happened in Detroit - another obvious move. The Assyrian, Kurdish, Chaldean population there is huge because literally all of them come through Detroit when they come to the US and most just settle there. The raids targeted those who had PRIOR felonies - most were non-violent, many were from years/decades ago, and they had served out their punishments. THIS IS RETROACTIVE PUNISHMENT and, in Jimmy Aldaoudâs case, it was a retroactive death sentence.Â