[shaking myself by the shoulders] i will get better. i will continue. i have no goddamn choice

A drawing of the wonderful coton_crayon.

fun funeral facts

For those of you interested, the youtube channel Ask A Mortician does a lot of videos on taboo death subjects, answers questions and is a huge advocate for natural burials and being present during the actual funeral process so you don’t get taken advantage of by the funeral industry. She’s one of my favourite youtubers and I highly recommend her videos.

I’m not OP, but as a fellow Ask a Mortician fan (I’m even on the Patreon, Caitlyn is out here doing G-d’s work), HERE IS AN UPDATE:

—cremation and burial are not your only options. Some states now offer aquamation (basically your body is put in a special brine that breaks it down into nothing in a few hours) and terramation (aka human composting; your body is put into a dedicated pod with plant matter that accelerates the decay process and turns you into nutrient-rich soil in about six weeks). You also have the option to donate your body to a body farm or medical school. Check your state’s or country’s laws, and if you don’t see the option you want, contact the Order of the Good Death to find out who’s advocating in your area. If the answer is nobody, YOU can always be the person who starts the ball rolling.

—“bury your cremains in this fancy urn and you’ll become a tree!” is a scam. Cremains contain no organic matter. If you want to be a tree, go for terramation or natural burial.

—“turn your loved one’s cremains into a diamond!” is a scam. While you can technically turn cremains into a zircon (artificial diamond), the result is likely to be EXTREMELY ugly due to the amount of inclusions. If you want to wear a loved one’s cremains as a memento mori, you’re far better off speaking to an artisan jeweler about getting a modern version of one of the glass rings or pendants that were popular in the Victorian era. There are likeminded people out there who will absolutely do this for you in a beautiful and compassionate way, but the “it’s diamonds!” techbro startup thing is not the way to go.

—what is and is not respectful to the dead will vary based on culture, but the one constant should be consent of the deceased. What do THEY want to happen to their body? Have this conversation with your loved ones while they’re alive, and make sure the answers are written down. I know my sister wants a traditional Jewish burial—“just put me in the dirt and forget about it,” in her words—and she knows I want to be terramated. I know my dad wants to be buried next to my mom, although I need to check in with him if he wants his body buried or if he wants to be cremated first. Destigmatize this talk. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable—making sure your loved ones know exactly what you want takes a burden off them in the future, and making sure YOU know what THEY want will both help you when the time comes and provide the comfort of knowing you’ve fulfilled their wishes.

And finally:

The reason I’m such a staunch Caitlyn evangelist is because there is a nonzero chance one of her videos saved my life. My mom died sometime in the night between the first and second of January, 2021. Because travel for large amounts of people was off the table, my dad opted for two small funerals—one here with a funeral home that refused to handle her body without a showing (unfortunately this was part of Covid price gouging—there was literally nowhere else capable of taking her), and one with our proper family funeral home in our hometown. Because of Covid, this meant it took A FUCKING MONTH for my mother to be buried, and that shit is absolutely scarring. I’d recently watched Caitlyn’s “what does a full embalming look like” video, and her partner for that video said she likes to bring the family in to assist in helping with the deceased person’s hair, makeup, clothing, any part of the process they’re willing to do, because she feels it helps with the grieving process. I was ready to grasp at anything that would let me feel like my mother wasn’t stuck in an episode of American Horror Story, especially after the shitshow that was the funeral home here in Arizona. With this in mind I called the family funeral home and asked to do my mom’s makeup; while I personally shudder at the thought of a traditional American burial, it’s what she wanted. Nancy—our family’s mortician for the last 40 years—readily agreed.

And so I went in, put on some of my mom’s favorite old country singers, and did her makeup exactly the way she taught me when I was sixteen, with her own cosmetics instead of what the funeral home had on hand. Her hair was thin and fragile from her last illness and I couldn’t curl it, but I fixed it up as well as I could, and painted her nails.

And let me tell you something.

The other mortician lady was right.

It was a massive comfort to me when Nancy took one look at my mom and said “oh, when you said she did her makeup differently you were right. I never would have guessed to do this.” (I don’t know where my mom learned to put on blusher, but she did basically the exact opposite of every makeup tutorial I’ve ever seen, and her method of doing eyeshadow was extremely 1940s.) Every single person at the service kept saying she looked exactly like they remembered from so-and-so’s wedding, such-and-such’s graduation, this-and-that’s honorary party. It wasn’t a vague “oh she looks so good”—she looked LIKE HER to those who remembered her. People who knew I’d done her makeup said they could tell it had to be someone who’d known her well. I remembered her horror at seeing unfamiliar makeup on her own mother’s face, and it was a massive comfort to me to know she was turned out exactly as she would have liked. And my dad? My dad hadn’t even cried yet. But he cried when he saw her in the same makeup style she’d worn at their wedding. He was finally able to cry and connect to my mom, his wife and beloved, and begin to find closure, seeing the woman he knew instead of a tired, worn body that bore little resemblance to her. It mattered. To him, to me, to my mom’s friends. It mattered a lot.

I don’t know that I would have ended up suicidal if not for that hour alone with my mom and Charley Pride and a stack of Bare Minerals compacts. But her death hit me hard and the month that followed was a special circle of hell, and I think I might have. Every time I think of her death and her burial, I think of that video and I’m insanely grateful it exists. (Incidentally, Nancy agreed. She said she thought she might make it an option for other families, after seeing both my response and the response of others in our family circle.)

Caitlyn knows her stuff. Watch, learn your rights, teach others to be death-positive. Life is the only occupation with a 100% mortality rate, so we might as well do it the way we want.

North Tunica, Mississippi

I know this place. It's about 45 minutes from where I live. This one reminds me of where my aunt lived in the same town.

Fiber arts is just Math in sheep's clothing

enough toxic masculinity I'm ready for salubrious mexicanity. I'm ready for a social movement that encourages (esp straight, cis) men to indulge in things that make them more joyful, emotionally healthy, and help them strengthen not core muscles but core compassionate communication skills.

I cannot stress enough that I have a minor speech impediment and voice-to-text decided it was more likely that I said "mexicanity" than "masculinity." I was not in fact alluding to the potential healing benefits of being Mexican. I am however perfectly content with this post being about that instead.

many thanks to those who thought this post was about gomez addams. from this moment forward, tis

glad to see my tags have been greenlit by the studio audience!

#gomez addams--peak masculinity #this is what the machismo ideal looks like #he's short. he worships his tall scary wife. every night is ballroom dancing date night. and he waltzes with such SWAGGER. he is so excited each and every day to wake up and be a husband a father a brother. he encourages all of his family in their interests. he is a friendly and (tries to be a) helpful neighbor. he spends his time swordfighting & loving his family & playing with train sets #peak performance

Id like to propose we invent a paper document u can have where it states that youve had a prescription for so many years, that u can just have it. Walk into any pharmacy. 200 miles from home. Nobody has ever heard of you. Show paper. Get prescription. For free. A prescription diploma. You put in so many years on this prescription, you graduate from having to ask for it. Life could be so perfect.

Hear me out: Cross Stitch, Knitting and Crochet are literally the PERFECT hobbies for autistic people. It’s got texture, instructions to follow, codes and symbols to learn, grids to match. It’s repetitive, it makes soothing little noises. A lot of special interests have related patterns so it’s a 2 for 1 deal. Good starting conversation topic if you are feeling social but also doubles as a reason to ask to be left alone. Shit slaps.

Post NaNoWriMo - Now What?

So if you've only been loosely paying attention, the NaNoWriMo organization has collapsed in a controversy of mismanagement, lack of oversight, abusive forum moderation and a whole host of issues that's resulted in souring the whole thing for a great deal of people. While the spirit of NaNoing will probably continue, a lot of people understandably don't want anything to officially do with the organization anymore.

But you - like I have - still think NaNoWriMo has been very useful to get writing done. Here's some ideas on how to keep going.

How to Get Started

What to Use to Get Started

You can keep going with the NaNo energy without the official name. My local library has started a monthly write-in, and I know many people who have found success with Shut Up and Write. Look into what works for you!

the scottish accent the audiobook reader (elizabeth evans) gives cormac makes him about 10x more attractive in my head change my mind. i’m a sl*t for scottish accents

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

https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947

Here’s the whole video. It’s called “Don’t Be A Sucker” and it’s 17 minutes long.

don’t just scroll past this actually watch it, it’s only 2 minutes long. If you re-recorded this today word for word with modern actors and places, it wouldn’t even look out of place as a PSA

300,000 notes and i can’t find a transcript

Transcript: (sorry for the language!)

Speaker: “I see negroes holding jobs that belong to me! And you! I’ll ask you, if we allow this thing to go on, what’s gonna become of us real Americans!”

Hungarian man with clear foreign accent: “I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.”

Young man: “This man seems to know what he’s talking about.“

Speaker: “What are us real Americans gonna do about it? You’ll find it right here in this little pamphlet—the truth about negroes and foreigners! The truth about the Catholic Church! You’ll find…” [audio grows quieter as camera shifts to the onlookers]

Hungarian man: “You believe in that kind of talk?“

Young man: “I dunno, it makes pretty good sense to me.“

Speaker: “And I tell you, friends, we’ll never be able to call this country our own until it’s a country without… without what?“

Other man: “Yeah? Without what?“

Speaker: “Without negroes, without alien foreigners,”—the young man is nodding, following along—“without Catholics, without Freemasons! You know these…“

Young man: “What’s wrong with the Masons, I’m a Mason.” Looks to European man worriedly, “hey, that fellow’s talking about me!“

Huungarian man: “And that makes a difference, doesn’t it.“

Speaker: “These are your enemies! These are the people who are trying to take over our country! Now you know them, you know what they stand for. And it’s up to you and me to fight them!” A bunch of the onlookers in the vicinity wave him off like he’s crazy and turn away, “fight them and destroy them before they destroy us!”

Speaker: “Thank you.“

One man in the now somewhat awkward crowd: “claps“

Young man: *is visibly uncomfortable*

Hungarian man: “Before he said Mason, you were ready to agree with him.”

Young man: “Well yes but, he was talking about… what about those other people?“ *the pair sit down on a park bench*

Hungarian man: “In this country, we have no ‘other people.’ We are American people, of course.“

Young man: “What about you? You aren’t American, are you?“

Hungarian man: “I was born in Hungary. But now, I am an American citizen. And I have seen what this kind of talk can do. I saw it in Berlin.”

Young man: “What were you doing there?“

Hungarian man: “I was a professor at the university. I heard the same words we have heard today. But I was a fool, then. I thought Nazis were crazy people, stupid fanatics. But unfortunately it was not so. You see, they knew that they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country, so they split Germany into small groups. They used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation.”

“surely this will not cause my chronic illness to flare up,” i say, actively doing something that has never failed to flare my chronic illness