Gwendee

some days i really regret this manga getting popular

Ai Weiwei, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” 1995

An astonishingly irreverent piece of work.  This triptych features the artist dropping a Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) in three photographs.  

When questioned about the work, he suggested that the piece was about industry: “[The urn] was industry then and is industry now.”  His statement, therefore, was that the urn was just a cheap pot two thousand years ago, and the reverence we feel toward it is artificial.  One critic wrote: “In other words, for all the aura of preciousness acquired by the accretion of time (and skillful marketing), this vessel is the Iron Age equivalent of a flower pot from K-Mart and if one were to smash the latter a few millennia from now, would it be an occasion for tears?”

However, the not-so-subtle political undertone is clear.  This piece was about destroying the notion that everything that is old is good…including the traditions and cultures of China.  For Ai Weiwei, this triptych represents a moment in which culture suddenly shifts (sometimes violently), shattering the old and outdated to make room for the new.  

ive thought about this piece daily since first seeing it

“And remember: the sky is the limit! You can be anything you want to be!”

“Thank you. I want to be a secretary.”

That stopped them short. “What?”

“A secretary,” she repeated.

“But…” they trailed off, dumbfounded. “Why? You could be a CEO, a scientist, a law–”

“I don’t want to be a CEO,” she said. “I want to be a secretary.”

They scoffed. “You want to answer phones all day?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Schedule appointments?”

“I like organizing.”

“Be a second banana?”

An affirmative nod. “I’m skilled at helping.”

“I just don’t understand,” they said. “HOW could you be okay with all of this?!”

“I enjoy the work.”

“BUT YOU CAN BE WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE!”

“I know.”

“Then WHY?!”

She shrugged.

“Because I want to be a secretary.”

Honestly though, this is very similar to my mom’s experience. She’s always been super bright, but has realized as she’s gotten older that intellectual pursuits just aren’t her jam. She dropped out of her PhD program to have kids, and although she has her master’s and was a pretty good school psychologist, she hated having to make huge decisions. She’s a church secretary now and loves it, and she’s GOOD at it; she’s letting her school psych certification permanently expire this year with zero regrets. If you can be anything you want, that includes the things we don’t tend to value as highly as a society. Not everybody is built for or wants the “respectable” careers.

My grandma did this to me, saying that i didn’t want to get stuck on the outside, making coffee and filing papers. The thing is, that’s exactly what I’ve always enjoyed the most, making and organizing things. That would be enough for me.

Nobody seems to realize that if you tell people they can be anything they want to be they will. And not everyone WANTS to be doctors or lawyers or CEOs or scientists. Sometimes, they just want to be a secretary.

it took me a LOT of therapy before i was able to shrug off the effects of the Gifted Child Upbringing enough to realize that what i really wanted to be was a house husband and Local Queerdad who writes novels sometimes. god, i’m so much happier now.

ain’t nothing wrong with an ordinary life. don’t let anybody tell you you have to be the top dog to be worth anything.

As a secretary for a therapy center—outside of like shitty people in and out of the office, the jobs lit af and you get to look as cute or as Un-cute as you want everyday and it’s totes fine ALSO FREE STATIONARY!!?!?!

Truly the dream.

I agree with all of this and I also feel like the extreme competition for most “respectable” jobs is manufactured by having such a two-tier economy that people are desperate for the financial freedom only a few jobs truly allow.

If someone actually enjoys retail (my mother) and you need retail people why does a retail worker have to be punished with starvation wages?

Also when a minimum wage job goes up to a living wage and someone I work with goes “haha that’s how much I make now I should go work for Dominos” I always just say if that’s what you want to do then you should! You must be so excited that you can! But they just shake their head or admit they’d hate that job. Because when they say that they don’t mean “I should work there and would if I could afford to!” They mean “that job and those people are below me and shouldn’t make my wage.”

In conclusion the entire idea of respectable jobs is bullshit. Do exactly what you want and fight to get what you deserve from it and don’t let anyone tell you you should do anything else.

Normalize doing common, necessary things well. Normalize respecting people who do good work. Appreciate indoor plumbing and functioning electricity and a really good pizza. Appreciate phlebotomists who are good at getting a good sample on the first try.

i loveeeeeee nonlinear storytelling. show me where we are. now show me how we got here. the end before the beginning. show me how it was inevitable or how many chances we had to change things(nothing was ever going to change). let's meet in the middle as all the puzzle pieces slide into place hell yeah that's the good shit.

Every fuge time it say

What are we measuring here, bestie?

Sorry @delightedcrow this can’t remain hidden in the notes you are too correct

Everyone meet ‘Slappy’ the wild sea lion that has gone viral on TikTok after begging tourists for peanut butter sandwiches 🤣

Watch Now: Beloved wild Sea Lion Slappy does her signature bark for a PB sandwich

Check out our list of the BEST memes about our favorite Instagram celebrity Slappy the seal

Wildlife authorities ruin internet’s fun by putting ban on feeding famous sea lion ‘Slappy’

- Top comment: Not me risking a class 2 wildlife felony to feed Slappy a peanut butter sandwich 😂☠️

Internet famous sea lion enjoys new meme craze “Outlaw Slappy” as her admirers continue to offer treats despite the ban from marine wildlife officials

Sad news out of Southern California today as the internet mourns beloved sea lion ‘Slappy’, who was put down by authorities after biting a child that was trying to feed her a sandwich.

I remember a heritage site example of this where there was a famous chapel somewhere in Europe that had a "no singing" rule for visitors. so naturally there are tons of videos of individuals, groups, and even whole choirs singing there, many of them with a tone of "take THAT, fun-suckers!"

I looked it up. it's an active monastery

the no singing rule is to not disturb the very real people living there and trying to go about their very real, scheduled daily lives

and even when that was pointed out, you STILL had comments like "well, they should enjoy the singing! it sounds nice!"

(it's the same with the No Touching rule at museums- assholes will try to get the perfect IG shot or TikTok touching a Greek statue or something because they're ~*just such a free spirit and can't be held down by stuffy rules*~ great job you contributed to ruining the statue for everyone else with your finger oils. thanks)

LIghthouse keepers will never be memorialized like soldiers or cops because they didn’t kill anyone (as part of their job) but they’re like, heroes who saved untold lives through discipline and self-sacrifice doing an impossible lonely job and I’m worked up about  it 

Clinging to a swaying tower in freezing, driving rain, risking death by everything from pneumonia to a fall to a fucking lightning strike to keep the lantern going when you don’t even KNOW if someone is out on the water!! Working! Class! Heroes!

Love very much the sentiment of this post and also love the specific wording of “didn’t kill anyone (as part of their job)” because what lighthouse keepers did off hours is their own business

sorry i covered your neck in dark hickeys and clamped down hard on your throat like limp prey while i was giving you a handjob. you whimpered a little too soft and i blacked out and believed myself to be a feral dog in possession of an entire rotisserie chicken

you all know there's other posts on here to reblog right

everybody else deactivate your account these two need the room for a second

I hope every writer who sees this writes LOADS the next few months. Like freetime opens up, no writers block, the ability to focus, etc etc you're able to write loads & make lots of progress <3

give me your most controversial music opinion

the beatles were one ugly guy moving really fast

this isnt very controversial but will defo get me killed with hammers in some places: ajr isnt bad in fact they are quite good

this might be because I’m a family law lawyer and also an old crone who remembers when marriage equality wasn’t a thing (as in, marriage equality only became nation-wide two months before I went to law school), but I have Strong Feelings about the right to marry and all the legal benefits that come with it

like I’m all for living in sin until someone says they don’t want to get married because it’s ~too permanent~ and in the same breath start talking about having kids or buying a house with their significant other. then I turn into a 90-year-old passive-aggressive church grandma who keeps pointedly asking when the wedding is. “yes, a divorce is very sad and stressful, but so is BEING HOMELESS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF MARITAL PROPERTY, CAROLINE!”

“oh, he thinks a piece of paper shouldn’t define your relationship? ASK HIM HOW HE FEELS ABOUT BEING ON YOUR BABY’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE, PATRICIA.”

“oh, sure, it’s all fun and games until your estranged parents are making medical decisions for you and inheriting all your property, TIMOTHY.”

so, I’ve gotten this question and similar ones before, and I want to use it to go into what marriage actually is.

so, in law, there are a couple of legal assumptions made when someone is a close family member, like a parent. the assumptions are that this person knows you well enough to make decisions on your behalf in an emergency, supports or is supported by you financially, and, most importantly, that they are emotionally significant to you in a way that makes them different from a total stranger or a good friend. immigration law, for example, prioritizes families over people immigrating for jobs alone, because not getting a job doesn’t have the same emotional weight as never seeing your mom again.

the difference is that you don’t get to choose your family (outside of adoption and, uh, legally that’s not a bilateral decision). you do get to choose your spouse. the fact that you chose them is why they get priority for things like inheritance and immigration, even over your parents or your siblings or your grandma.

how does the government know that this particular person is someone you want to have as part of your family? you fill out a form and you tell them.

what happens if you don’t want them in your family anymore, and don’t want those assumptions made about them? you fill out a different form and you tell the government that.

the thing I think that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around – whether you’re a starry-eyed romantic or a pragmatic bitch like me – is that marriage isn’t an announcement of how much you love someone. that’s what a facebook status update is for. you do not need to be in love, or sexually/romantically monogamous, or be religious, or any of the other things people associate with marriage, in order to be married.

it’s a legal decision. it is choosing to get certain benefits (like taxes, because it’s assumed you’re financially supporting each other) in exchange for certain responsibilities (because it’s assumed you’re supporting each other, it stops mattering exactly who bought what after you got married, so divorce splits the whole pool of stuff even if one person bought like 75% of it).

you don’t get the one without the other, and you don’t get either if you don’t affirmatively say that’s what you want to have happen. it doesn’t happen automatically, or in every romantic relationship no matter how serious, because the choice is the point.

and, to be clear: if you do not want, or do not care about, the legal rights and responsibilities of being married, you should not get married. it’s a fucking legal contract that has serious legal implications! it’s not something you should be doing for funsies!

tl;dr: if you want all the shit that comes with a marriage, good and bad, you need to tell the government that’s what you want. if you don’t want it, then you don’t need to do it, but you need to also be aware of what you’re potentially losing (in exchange for what you’re keeping). that should be an informed decision, not one you make for emotional reasons like “I just want everyone to know I’m only having sex with this person forever” or “our love is so pure it transcends legal boundaries.”

Is there any option other than marriage for telling the government you want this person to be part of your family? Like, can you draw up some kind of homebrew contract?

Short answer: No. If there was, queer people would have done it already.

Long answer: That’s a little like asking “can you become a citizen via contract rather than going through the immigration and naturalization process?” Marriage is a legal status: you either are or you aren’t. Can you cobble together very specific stuff, like advanced healthcare directives and wills and whatnot? Yes, absolutely. But anything that requires you to be legally married as a status cannot be contracted away: you can’t file taxes jointly or sponsor someone for a green card or get someone’s Social Security benefits if they die if you’re not married to that person.

Now, to be clear: some things that often require marriage do not always require marriage. For example, usually you need to be married to have someone unrelated to you be on your health insurance, but my job’s specific health insurance plan allows coverage for domestic partners, which they define as a single person who has cohabitated with you for six months or more and is in a committed relationship with you. So even though my fiancé and I are not married yet, he’s been on my health insurance for the past year and a half, because we hit the six month mark of living together right around when I had to re-enroll in my health insurance for the year.

But if we’d gotten married sooner, he’d have been able to get on my health insurance right away (getting married is a qualifying event that lets someone get on a health insurance plan outside of the enrollment period), but since he’s just a cohabitating partner, we had to wait six months for him to get on my insurance. And if he’d moved in with me a month later, we’d have to wait a whole year before he could enroll with me on my health insurance. Even though it’s allowed, it still doesn’t have the same standing as a marriage.

I guess technically adult adoption is an option, in that it is what queer people did for a while in lieu of marriage, but it’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons (not least of which being that you can divorce a spouse but you can’t undo an adoption).

this, THIS is why QPR make me so fucking nervous. i’m not trying to shit on your beautiful poly aroace love affair, i’m asking you HOW WILL THIS RELATIONSHIP HOLD UP IN COURT. cause, news flash: it won’t.

if you have shared bank accounts and a house and a kid with someone who isn’t married to you, they can wipe you out – legally speaking – and you have no recourse. none. you will never see your kid again, unless you’re lucky and contributed half their DNA.

if they have a car accident and end up in hospital, you don’t have a legal right to see them. if they’re in a coma, their parents can pull the plug and adopt that child and you can do nothing.

queers wanted marriage equality not to Be Like Teh Hets, but because it is the most legal protection you can ever have against that bad stuff that comes (and it comes for everyone).

if you don’t have that stuff, if you’re relying on your partners to do the right thing forever and be perfect people and never have a business collapse or a messy family situation or an accident or even to get sick … you’re being really, really naïve.

Pre-legal-gay-marriage, I saw this happen.  I was on a parenting board and one day a woman we’d posted with for years told us her partner and one of their children had died in a car accident.  And because she wasn’t the biological parent of the surviving child – the child she’d been a parent to since conception – her ex’s parents took custody and took the child away and kept her from seeing that child.  Ever.

Because here’s the thing: children are not property.  Specifically, in estate law, children are not, and cannot be “Real Property.”  You cannot bequeath them like furniture, books, and bank accounts.   

“But my will states who I want as guardian!”  You say. Welp.  That statement is, in law, only a (strong) suggestion.  A judge still still have to rule on guardianship of your minor child, and you cannot, from the grave, dictate where they end up.  

Again: Children are not real property. If you are not their biological or legal parent, the state can remove them from your custody and hand them to someone more closely related, or not related at all but merely less gay, less queer, less “inappropriate” by your state’s legal standards.

The woman I knew back then was on good term with her not-quite-in-laws. Or thought she was.  Because as soon as her partner died, their tune changed 100%, they found anti-gay legal support, and they took that woman’s child from her.  Forever. 

That’s not my only “my outlaws are great and fine with us and its okay we’re not legally married” story, but it’s probably the most heartbreaking.  Though the image of a man who has just lost his partner of 25 years watching his ex-outlaws take ½ of his chairs, ½ of his pillows, ½ of his sheets, ½ of his napkins, ½ of his towels, ½ of his dishes, ½ of his books….. is pretty fucking close.  After they made him sit behind “the family” at his partner’s funeral.

My mother was a lifelong Republican, a very conservative Catholic. The thing that pushed her over on legalizing gay marriage was stories about people being in the hospital and their partner of 20 years not being allowed to see them, because they weren’t legally married. She thought that was wrong and unfair. 

Also a reminder “get married” does not mean “have a wedding.” You can file the paperwork and get married in a courthouse or office. There doesn’t even need to be a ceremony, you just have to sign some papers. (Bonus: you get access to the legal privileges of marriage as well as the protections, AND you get to stick it to the billion dollar “wedding industry” that preys on us all.)

#this is also why marriage equality for disabled people is super important

that last bit. because disabled people in usa do not have marriage equality. most cannot get married without losing the benefits they need to survive.

more good news from tiktok: they’ve started blocking celebrities.

they’re calling it block party 2024. just blocking and ignoring countless celebrities who havent said shit about palestine. influencers, actors, anyone who went to the met gala, whatever, they’re getting blocked. and people keep talking about how cathartic it is, how good it feels, how they never realized they could DO that. there was some kind of subconscious law against blocking famous people, but it’s broken, and people are LOVING it. and it’s WORKING. a social media/digital advertising coordinator was talking about how ad companies are PANICKING, because they can’t accurately target anymore. so many big influencers, including fucking LIZZO started talking about palestine the MOMENT their follower counts started going down. and the best part? no one is forgiving them. lizzo posted a tiktok asking people to donate to palestinian families, and all the comments just said you’re a multimillionaire. put your money where your mouth is. blocked.

i feel like i’m witnessing the downfall of celebrity culture, right here right now. people are waking up.

PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP. so many comments saying “blocking x celebrity was hard until i remembered they don’t care if i die. it got a lot easier then. they aren’t my friends, why should i feel like im betraying them?” what a beautiful thing to see

does this not fill you with immense pride and joy

(screenshot from stickbugss1 on tiktok)

Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:

had a dream that I met a wizard and we fell in love and became unhealthily attached to each other so we decided to meld into one single creature together but the process was horrifically slow and painful and most of the dream was us lying in bed holding hands while lesions opened up in our skin and seeped out blue and green fluid and the wizard said "this is going to take a very very long time" and I said "that's ok"

the critics are raving

queen of the world to me