Madness and witchery… are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public, in ancient as well as modern contexts. Consider how many female celebrities of classical mythology, literature and cult make themselves objectionable by the way they use their voice. For example there is the heartchilling groan of the Gorgon, whose name is derived from a Sanskrit word garg meaning “a guttural animal howl that issues as a great wind from the back of the throat through a hugely distended mouth.” There are the Furies whose highpitched and horrendous voices are compared by Aiskhylos to howling dogs or sounds of people being tortured in hell. There is the deadly voice of the Sirens and the dangerous ventriloquism of Helen and the incredible babbling of Kassandra and the fearsome hullabaloo of Artemis as she charges through the woods. There is the seductive discourse of Aphrodite which is so concrete an aspect of her power that she can wear it on her belt as a physical object or lend it to other women. There is the old woman of Eleusinian legend Iambe who shrieks and throws her skirt up over her head to expose her genitalia. There is the haunting garrulity of the nymph Echo (daughter of Iambe in Athenian legend) who is described by Sophokles as ‘the girl with no door on her mouth.

Anne Carson, The Gender of Sound

@ august please be a little gentle with me I’m so tired

Villa Borghese. Rome, Italy.

reblog and make a wish! this was removed from tumbrl due to “violating one or more of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines”, but since my wish came true the first time, I’m putting it back. :)

OH MY FUCKING GOD, IT’S BACK ON MY DASH.

THIS SHIT WORKS OKAY, I AM DEAD SERIOUS.

The last time I saw this on my dash, I didn’t think it would happen, so jokingly I wished I could go to a fun. concert.

AND GUESS WHAT, I WENT TO A FUCKING FUN. CONCERT.

THIS SHIT WORKS, TRY IT.

YOOOOOOO

I SAW THIS ON MY DASH THE OTHER DAY AND THOUGHT “ITS WORTH A TRY” SO I WISHED I COULD GET A 3DS

LITERALLY LIKE 4 DAYS LATER MY DAD SENT ME A PICTURE OF THE 3DS XL HE BOUGHT FOR ME WHILE I WAS AT SCHOOL

IM STILL FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS

holy fuck, I didn’t expect this to work, I was like psh, whatever it’s just a quick reblog, but I wished my Dad would actually respond back to me AND HE FUCKING DID A FEW DAYS LATER, I GOT A FUCKING TEXT FROM MY DAD TODAY WHO HASN’T SPOKEN OR RESPONDED TO ME IN MONTHS HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THIS MAGIC IT WORKS. 

I WANTED TO SEE MY BOYFRIEND AND I DIDN’T THINK I’D GET DAYS OFF BUT THIS WEEKEND I’M HEADING UP THERE??? THIS IS CRAZY SHIT 

SO LIKE I JOKINGLY WISHED FOR MY OWN LEN KAGAMINE AND THEN LIKE A WEEK LATER I GOT A LEN NENDOROID??? H ELP

WTF OKAY SO THIS SHOT ACTUALLY WORKS BECAUSE WHEN I WISHED, I HAD WISHED MY CRUSH WOULD LIKE ME BACK AND GUESS WHAT? I HAVE A BOYFRIEND NOW. WHAT THE HELLLLL?????

ok I’ve said this before but IM DOING IT AGAIN THE FIRST TIME I SAW THIS, MY WISH DID COME TRUE SO I REBLOGED AGAIN AND SAID IT IN THE TAGS BUT THEN I WISHED FOR SMTH ELSE AND IT LITERALLY LITERALLY HAPPENED LIKE A COUPLE DAYS LATER WHAT THE HELL SO NOW IM WRITING THIS HERE FOR YOU BC I DONT BELIEVE IN THIS CRAP BUT STILL IT’S AN AWFULLY BIG COINCIDENCE

THE BOY I FELL I LOVE WITH LEFT TO TRAVEL THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD AND HAS BEEN GONE NOW FOR 3 MONTHS. WE HAVENT SPOKEN SINCE BECAUSE I DIDNT WANT TO MAKE HIM FEEL TRAPPED TO ME AND NOT ENJOY HIS TIME SO I WAITED FOR HIM TO CONTACT ME FIRST. I SAW THIS ON A PARTICULARLY LOW DAY WHEN I WAS MISSING HIM SO MUCH I CRIED FROM THE PAIN, GUYS I REALLY LOVE HIM, SO I THOUGHT MEH WHAT THE FUCK, AND WISHED HE WOULD JUST LET ME KNOW HE WAS OKAY.

GUYS.

HE FUCKING CALLED ME 20 MINUTES LATER

20 FUCKNG. MINUTES. LATER.

GOOD THINGS DO HAPPEN. AND ITS IN THIS POST.

I wish for someone to leave something in my ask.

OKAY SO I ASKED FOR A HEDGEHOG AND NOW GUESS WHO HAS A PET HEDGEHOG

worth a shot huh

why not.

Brendan Cox, the husband of Jo Cox MP, who we have very tragically lost today. I think we should all echo these words. (via ed-milibands-beard)

DEAR YOUNG BRITISH PEOPLE

The EU referendum is on the 23rd JUNE and here’s some scary stats the BBC decided to throw at me this morning: 

“just over a third of 18- to 24-year-olds intend to or are certain to vote, compared with well over two thirds of the over-75s” mix that with “those under the age of 35 are roughly twice as likely to vote to stay in as those over the age of 55″

DO YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS HEADING? No? Then let me spell it out for you, Hamilton style:

We are gonna get ourselves kicked out of the EU if you don’t get your arse down to the polling station and VOTE for us to stay on the 23rd June.

So, here I am, doing my best to convince you to VOTE STAY.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

I get it. You’re apathetic. Politics is boring/corrupt/pointless, all the parties are the same, we’re screwed anyway etc etc. I FEEL YOU. Mate, do I feel you. But THIS referendum has NOTHING to do with political parties or alliances, even the muppets running this country are split. THIS is about the SINGLE QUESTION of if you want us to stay, or want us to leave.

And if you don’t vote for us to stay, then the older generation will most likely vote for us to leave. 

SO WHY ARE WE HAVING A REFERENDUM?

The EU has been going pretty great considering it was all one giant experiment, and it’s been swimming along mostly A-OK for years, but then… the Tories got desperate. Last election, they promised a referendum to get some of the right-wing *cough*UKIP*cough* votes, so now, here we are, having a vote about the EU even though, WE HAVE NO FUCKING PROBLEM WITH THE EU.

BUT WHAT HAS THE EU EVER DONE FOR US?

Being a member of the EU means you can hop across borders as you please: you can study abroad, live abroad, and go on holiday abroad within the EU with much less hassle than if we were outside it. 

But they are also responsible for a bunch of welfare laws that we take for granted: 

👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit

But seriously here’s some other things that you might not have realised were thanks to the EU:

At the minute it’s a great symbiotic system where we have plenty of freedom but also, plenty of support. 

SO WHY DO PEOPLE WANNA BREXIT?

Because it sounds like a breakfast cereal and I’m guessing they’re hungry af. Admittedly, we have to pay a fee to be in the EU (but relatively, this is minimal) and it can also mean more “red tape”. But as far as I can tell these are all just very polite ways to say that the EU just have too much gosh darn ~power~ over us. URGH. First of all, this is not the British Empire, we’re allowed to have allies, and it’s a good thing that we have other nations keeping us in check. (And with the Tories destroying the country, you might find yourself hoping that the EU did have more power to keep us in check). Secondly, we’re already a special snowflake in the EU, and they grant us PLENTY of leeway, so it’s not as if they’ve got us by the tighty whiteys. 

The Leave campaign are scapegoating refugees as to why we need to leave the EU which would be hilarious if I didn’t live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by white middle-class racist UKIP voters that are goddamn licking it up. (Cornwall. Don’t even.) They are using the recent “migrant crisis” to emphasise that as soon as someone becomes an EU member they can live anywhere in the EU, as in, all the EU countries that are nicer than we are and actually let people fleeing from their wartorn country stay, can therefore decide to move to the UK. But, yo, leaving the EU won’t stop immigration. And even more hilariously, our borders are actually more likely to be weaker if we leave the EU than stronger.

Putting aside the fact that apparently millions of people in our nation don’t give a fuck about refugees that are in part OUR GODDAMN FAULT and certainly if you’re a human being OUR GODDAMN CONCERN, the Leave campaign are apparently forgetting about OUR IMMIGRANTS. 

As in:

2.2m British nationals that, if we leave the EU, are suddenly dumped into muddy water. Oh yeah, Leave campaign, I really see you caring about them. 

I’ve honestly never seen such hypocrisy in my life. 

OH, AND IT’S ECONOMIC SUICIDE

The Leave campaign cannot produce a single independent study to show that economically we’d be better off leaving the EU.

jk it’s because we’re NOT.

Our economy is now so tied to the EU that it would be a fucking MESS if we left. It’s 57% of our trade. It’s 1 in 10 of our jobs. It could take us a decade just to untangle ourselves. And, lord knows, we’d never win Eurovision again.

TO SUMMARISE

On JUNE 23RD please vote to REMAIN IN THE EU. If you do nothing, it’s likely we’re gonna be outvoted by hypocritical racist UKIP-wankers and get our country in an even worse financial state.

The reason I am here BEGGING my 12 followers and 200 spambots to VOTE TO STAY is because the last time there was a referendum, I was a naive little undergrad, and I thought “this option is so obviously better, everyone’s going to vote for it” and HAHAHAHAHA DID THAT NOT HAPPEN. You may think you don’t need to vote, but YOU DO. 

Governments are only as smart as the people informing them.

We need to give our idiotic government as close to an actual representation of our country’s opinion. That means we need to get our turnout percentage up to AT LEAST two-thirds like the over 75s so that the result of the referendum is an actual reflection of opinion.

That doesn’t happen if you don’t vote. 

So please, check you are registered to vote RIGHT NOW. And on June 23rd, VOTE TO STAY.

We’re already fucked here in the colonies, don’t get fucked over there too!

The European Union isn’t perfect. Infact, it’s in dire need of a damn good rewiring. However, it’s in our best interests to stay. We, the UK, absolutely cannot survive outside of it.

A lot of the older generation feel betrayed by the EU because they were, according to my parents and grandparents, sold the idea of entering it based on a lie: Labour told them it would only be a trade agreement and then, well, it wasn’t. Entering it completely fucked our relationship with the Commonwealth, too: sense of betrayal aside, most Commonwealth countries have free trade with one another but we can’t do that because of the EU treaty.

So a lot of people want out because they never really wanted in in the first place.

But.

It is way too late to change those things. Our relationship with the Commonwealth is likely to remain fucked no matter what we do at this point, and while I understand the anger at having been tricked into political union I don’t think anybody can reasonably claim that pulling out 30 years later is a sensible balm to the wound.

The Tories want out of the EU because they want out of the European Convention on Human Rights, among other things. That sentence alone should tell you why we need to stay in: our government is pissed because Europe won’t let them commit war crimes.

Please, guys. Vote to stay in. Remember when the boomers outvoted our attempts to get a fairer voting system? This will be a thousand times worse.

workshopping the title of my research paper

WHY ARE YOU LONELY: A TEXT GAME - Mallory Ortberg

WHY ARE YOU LONELY: CHOOSE ONE

Mallory Ortberg plz stop laying my psyche bare for the world to see

Most people reblog the same cute dog picture or nice Beyonce GIF every time it comes across their dashboard, but this is what apparently makes me reblog a thing twice.