from twitter user deejaygeejaygee

it just gets better

and better

In case you missed it

for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’

jerry is here

my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”

When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”

I was done for the day.

This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.

I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.

I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English. 

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG

My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…

I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.

I love those stories so much…

Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)

that’s hilarious

I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY 

Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”

What the hell Biblical Hebrew.

Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.

^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one. 

Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.  

All of these *chef’s kiss* but the Medea one is hands down the best

s/o to my classics professor who managed to get a tire changed on his rental car while doing research in Greece by telling them his chariot had broken down

dropout tv is like . what if there was an animal shelter but it was for 30 yr olds with BAs in Theater

Apparently people who don't have executive dysfunction think that actually working on something is the hardest part of doing something. And that's why they get mad that you call the rest of the project "easy" after you've finally worked through doing the plan and know what to do when you're working.

So when you're through with the epiphany of how to make it physically possible to make the thing you're making, and you're sharing the plan with excitement, because the hard part is over, and now you only have to get your hands moving and do it, they get mad at you like

"it's not that easy! It's a lot of hard work! >:C"

they mean it, because

to them, working is the hardest part.

They don't have to fight their brains to get started. They don't have to fight their way through making the choices, making the plan, making yourself make the thing. People who don't suffer from executive dysfunction think that the hardest part is actually doing the thing.

when you have executive dysfunction, it’s like... you’ve just clawed your way up a long steep embankment of loose gravel, and you flop exhausted into the construction site, and you’re like “oh thank fuck, time to lay some bricks, i absolutely could do this all day” and the guy who drove to the site goes “what’s wrong with you man bricklaying is hard graft!”

not as hard as crawling up the gravel mountain bro

there’s also good hard and bad hard. doing the thing might be hard, but at least you’re doing it; it’s good hard. just getting to the thing in the first place is hard and it’s fucking miserable. executive dysfunction puts so many bad hard things in your way before you can get to even the good hard things.

sometimes i describe it as my transmission is broken, every thing else works fine but no matter how hard I pump the gas pedal, I ain't getting anywhere because I can't

if you got an additional line of income that guaranteed your basic needs would be met, (notes below)

notes:

- the money can come from whatever source you'd like to imagine. UBI, sugar daddy, magically delivered in unmarked bills onto your dining table overnight by elves, blackmailing jeff bezos, wherever

- it will keep coming indefinitely

- basic needs: housing, food, medical care, clothes, etc. You would not be rich, but you would have enough. It will rise with inflation and such, to have the same purchasing power as before.

- any money you earn at your job (or anywhere) is on top of the basic needs money. How much you get is not affected by how much you make elsewhere

- vacation doesn’t necessarily mean you go anywhere; you just don't need to go to work

I'd continue to do phlebotomy because I Am Good At It and it needs doing. But I'd only do it four hours a day.

One of the most memorable interactions was Saturday. Into our booth strolls a small family, tempted by free samples of freshly brewed tea. We chatter and give them the spiel, that the tea is character merch and we’re a cozy health-based app called Forage Friends.

The young girl zeroes in on our pride pins.

“They have my pin!” She says excitedly. “They have my flag!”

The dad blinks. He is surprised, but also calm and positive when he sees it’s the lesbian flag. “Oh. That’s… different from what you told me.”

“That was months ago, dad.” And she rolls her eyes. Definitely a teenager.

I turn to him and say, “Yeah, dad.” And we share a little laugh about it.

He says, “No, it’s great. That’s amazing, honey. It was just news to me.”

“Well, I guess I just decided to stop lying to myself. About liking guys. Like right now.”

A little lesbian just came out to her dad and he was super cool about it.

I’m standing there in my tie-dye mask and my cheery blue apron pouring tea and making small talk and I’m trying really hard not to cry or compare it to my experience, the fire & brimstone, the disgust, the conditional acceptance as long as I never bring it up.

So as this beautiful bonding is going on, the girl’s even younger brother turns his gaze around. He’s in a snorlax hoodie and bored and wants to go look at the swords across the hall. But on the other side of our booth….

“WHY DO PEOPLE DRAW THAT?” He asks loudly, and we all turn to our neighboring booth.

Our neighbors were extremely lovely people. Every time we had a break we would talk, and we became good friends over the weekend. They kept apologizing that their booth was next to ours and we kept repeating that it was totally fine. Their booth was great. I even bought their merchandise.

The thing that was so contentious, that they felt the need to apologize for, was that they were selling explicit titty hentai stickers of popular characters. They were censored with little yellow R18 labels but the content was very clear.

So back to the family: I freeze and immediately go somewhere else to let dad handle this question. With adult customers I’ve been loud and positive about our neighbors. (“Man, how has it been boothing next to them?” It’s been great! They bring a lot of foot traffic and they’re kind and wonderful professional neighbors. If anything it’s a fun juxtaposition. We believe in artistic freedom. I bought a sticker too!)

But this is a kid, it’s not my place to explain anything…. But I was extremely curious about what this chill dad would say.

“Well,” dad says with a long measured silence between each word. “Sometimes people are horny.”

how does tumblr even work do you just like talk to yourself until people are like "i like this one"

this is actually exactly how it works

if parks and rec was still being made they’d do a bit where ron swanson has to wear a pronouns name tag and it’d just be “???/???” And it’d cut to a talking head of him going

“I’ve been a fool all this time. It’s bad enough the government knows my name, but now they want to know my gender? So I’m not letting them know my preferred pronouns. As far as I’m concerned, no one in this building should refer to me at all.”

double lol-bow

it's so beautiful

so stupid and beautiful

PLUS ULTRA or some weeb shit iunno I don't watch the animes

I had initially hoped to get my "given" to the same amount as "received" but I'm not entirely sure that's possible and also I have to sleep before much longer

and this combination pleases me besides

satisfaction achieved

moral of the story: when in doubt, pester @thebibliosphere for fun and profit

not to sound like an edgy emo 13 yr old child again but some punk covers of pop songs do sound way better

Honestly, covers of songs in completely different genres are one of my favorite things. This one in particular is one of my favorites.

B R O

happy baby donkey

the only good innovation from facebook was the poke feature. tumblr needs the poke. when a cute girl is mass reblogging me and i don't wanna call them out to their face but i wanna go hey. i see you. being cute. rubbing your face on my blog like a cat. that's what the poke's for

@staff give me fingers so i can do mischief

"who knows what they still do on tumblr"

us:

happy tdov my loves. don't let anyone else define your transness for you.

help trans women evacuate gaza