The entire video so you can get the full context and impact of everything she was talking about

PRAISE BE… PERIOD.

her name is Kimberly Latrice Jones and she is the author of a fantastic book,  I’m Not Dying With You Tonight

In addition…

Eartha Kitt spoke four languages and sung in eleven.

She auditioned for the Katherine Dunham school of dance on a dare, made it up as she went, and received a full ride.

Eartha Kitt left to Europe, yes, where her career wasn’t impacted by American black balling, and where the people loved her; and when she finally returned to American media it was as a star in the Broadway musical Timbuktu. MIND YOU, Queen was so iconic that the audience gave a standing ovation the moment she appeared on stage. 10 years of nothing, and these people are falling over her before she opens her mouth.

Eartha Kitt came from nothing, her family used to sell her to people in their county like a work mule. Her mother chose a man over her, and she went to live with a relative who abused her, until she was rescued by another relative who took her in in Harlem. Eartha Kitt lived her youth feeling rejected by everyone around her, and she STILL built herself up.

Eartha Kitt was the voice of Disney villain Yzma in all works that she appeared in (even recording a villain song that never aired as a result of script rewrites called ‘Snuff Out the Light’), she was Madame Zeroni in the ‘Holes’ movie adaptation. For clarification she was the FIRST Catwoman, and she sang the ORIGINAL Santa Baby.

Eartha Kitt was one of the first stars to embrace the concept of sex positivity, and owning the rights to one’s own body and sexuality. She stood up for LGBTQ people because quote

Eartha Kitt is one hundred percent my hero, a testament to the belief that we never have to be victims of our circumstances. We can be icons regardless of our origin.

Tip for all my student readers: if you’re too lazy to use a bibliography creator like NoodleBib or RefWorks, let Google generate your bibliography entries for you. All you have to do is google the article/book title in Google Scholar, click “cite” at the bottom of the search result, and copy either the MLA, APA, or Chicago cite into your word document. 

Signal boost because omg how did I not know this in college?

Since registration is starting soon I figure this is ample time to remind the six people who look at my Tumblr that citing your sources is really important in college and that this will be your best friend forever.

If you’re in high school and want to go to college? Learn to source! You’ll be way ahead of the curve and it’s 100% more important than knowing what the hell a predicate nominative is.

I use http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ to figure out how to cite for my papers, and it’s been quite useful for the three years I’ve been at this!

What some person says: You need to do research for fantasy and think critically about how your world functions. How did they domesticate those creatures, and how are they feeding them? How are your cities fed, and what happens to their waste? How are all those soldiers trained and paid? Have you googled feudalism? 

What y’all think they mean: fill your book with unnecessary factual details about your fantasy world that no one cares about 

What they actually mean: You need to know the way your world functions for your own benefit, to be able to create a story that makes sense and holds up under scrutiny. If you don’t research, you’ll end up repeating dumb stereotypes about Medieval England that are more based on modern biases than real history and making grotesque factual errors that will make your story unreadable for anyone that paid more attention in class than you did. Not to mention that your pool of inspiration will be entirely based in other, already written fantasies, instead of the vast, colorful and woefully untapped well of actual human history. 

do u guys understand how creepy the pledge of allegiance is though like every day when ur a kid everybody just chants how great america is every morning it’s creepy

You do that every morning???

EVERY MORNING.

wait

wait

is this a real thing i thought that was just in the simpsons

no son

Wait, other countries don’t do this.

*whispers* Not even Russia

I remember when my dad had a conversation with me

because I asked him what the Austrian pledge of allegiance was (because he’s from Austria)

and he said “we don’t have a pledge of allegiance”

and I said “why not?”

“honey, think about what training your children to mindlessly pledge to a flag, without really knowing what they’re talking about, sounds like to Austrians”

“oh. hitler.”

“exactly”

So I wrote this poem about two years ago and I shared this with mostly friends and family but I just felt that more people needed to see it

My Mother’s Mother and Alzheimer’s by Claudia Herrera

My mother’s mother started with a desert

she had started to fill this vast emptiness with drops of memories slowly but surely until she had an ocean of them

Thank you to the mother of my mother for the ocean that you’ve gifted to us

My mother’s mother was given a monster which awoke only to torment her

She was given a storm, a jail, a kidnapper, and a torture room all in one disease by the monster that clearly cared for my grandmother’s brain

My mother for all she was worth tried to come up with an escape plan only to fail again and again

My mother’s mother forgets the present and lives in the past

She no longer remembers how to do her hair, go to the bathroom, and brush her teeth

The monster living in her brain takes everything and gives nothing back for the monster does not care who it needs to beat up to get what it wants

My mother’s mother instills fear in my mother that one day she will be forgotten by the person who raised her

We fear that she will leave and never come back, get lost in that desert with only a few drops of that ocean we so dearly loved

We fear that the monster living in our own brains will come to get us when we least expect it

We fear that we will go with her in that vast, open, and empty desert

The mother of my mother has a desert once again

Sportacus broke into my house while I was sick and ate all my chicken soup. I woke up to sounds in the kitchen and saw him just casually eating all my soup, so, in my anger, I yelled that Robbie Rotten would never love him because he’s a dirty soup thief. Then he cried. Then I cried.

Please reblog quietly

I love how the guy is like done with Misha’s shit, like he knows exactly what Misha is going to do. I aspire to be that level of annoying.

i love that moment of absolute acceptance and tranquility that washes over you exactly 1 minute and 35 seconds before an exam begins. when you look at the notes you’ve been trying to absorb and realize that at this point you’re either ready or you’re not and you put them away and all the anxiety and doubt you had up until this moment just floats off you like steam from a hot summer sidewalk after a storm.

i think this exact situation is where actors who have to die on-screen draw their inspiration. that look in their eyes when they realize their wound doesn’t hurt anymore, and they look at their friend, their face awash with acceptance and near-relief, and the light leaves their eyes,

they learned that in a stats class.

the professor: everyone put your phones away and clear off your desks

me:

so i saw some people discussing how loki in ragnarok shouldn’t have been at all phased or subverted by dr. strange – which i agree with, but also, hey, it’s comedic and you can argue that he was taken off-guard, but upon re-watch, something stuck out to me –

there’s this moment when they appear at the bottom of the stairs and thor rolls down the last couple and stands up and he says

we could’ve just walked.

and it made me think of how magic works in terry pratchett’s novels, how (to paraphrase) the hard part wasn’t turning someone into a frog, it was not turning someone into a frog when you knew how easy it was.

like, the whole scene with dr. strange is just. all magic. all pointless magic. unnecessary magic, when, well. they could have just walked.

whereas loki doesn’t really rely on magic overmuch in the movie – he uses it as a tool, when he needs it, but if the job can be done with plain old non-magical trickery or a knife, he just uses those. he resorts to magic when he’s cornered by valkyrie, he uses it when his goals are most directly accomplished by using magic rather than by other means.

whereas dr. strange is using magic all over his scene, just to use it. just because he can. magic was unnecessary for ninety percent of what he did in that scene, the only time he needed magic was to whisk them away to norway. but he teleported all over the place even when he only needed to move a few feet, gave thor an ever-refilling beer that just spilled everywhere, floated around to make a show of how ~magical~ he was, when…

he could have just walked.

i mean, i’m very sure that the filmmakers intended it for comedic effect, but there’s also a layer there of dr. strange being much less comfortable with magic than loki is – loki doesn’t need to bust out the magic at every opportunity, it’s simply a skill, a tool that is completely under his control and at his disposal. whereas dr. strange (at least in his scene in ragnarok) is showing off, which reeks of insecurity.

i guess i’m thinking… if you take the magic away, loki is still a deadly, formidable opponent with many tricks up his sleeve, but dr. strange is just a guy in a cape.

this is good and true because in the comics loki and dr strange got in a fight in a parking lot and then both of them had their magic taken away so loki just punched stephen through a wall and called it a gay ass day

Aside from bees and butterflies, bats are one of the most important pollinators on the planet - especially in tropical and desert regions. 

(Source)

lost in the sauce

happy Thursday the 20th

I’d have to wait months or even years for another chance to reblog this, so why the fuck not?

next days you can reblog this on a Thursday the 20th

August 2015

October 2016

April 2017

July 2017

September 2018

December 2018

June 2019

February 2020

August 2020

You know, just in case you wanted to set your queue for the next 6 years

HAPPY THURSDAY THE 20TH EVERYONE

Your church-going, God-worshipping sister adopted a small child and you’re excited to see them. But when you do, the child is a menace. They’re throwing things everywhere, setting furniture on fire with seemingly nothing, chanting in Latin to summon demons, but the weirdest thing is that your sister doesn’t seem to mind.

“You literally adopted the antichrist, Anne. What the fuck.”

“Yeah, I knew when I saw him at the orphanage. I figured if the kid had some decent fucking parenting that we could avoid the whole ‘Revelations’ shite. Nasty business, that.”

George, who’s name has been kindly changed from Damien, approaches his new mother with a huge spider in his hands. It promptly bursts into flames.

“Good job, love. Now go find the rest.” George’s face makes no expression, but his eyes shine when he recieves a pat on the head for his efforts.

As the months go by, George seems to settle down. He adjusts to school, friends, and the positive reinforcement Anne gives him. She encourages the good he does, even though the powers he uses aren’t “good”. When she gets calls from the school, it’s about a rambunctious boy that won’t sit still. Not a destroyer of the world and innocence.

It’s at Christmas dinner, that you let slip your amazement to your mother. How good Anne is for him and how he’s improved a lot. Still summoning hellhounds for games of fetch, though.

“Oh, he’ll forget how to do that when he falls in love the first time,” Your mother laughs, smiling wide.

“How do you know that,” you ask bewildered.

“Because, you did.”

okay so someone please write the story of the family of super-low-key holy warriors who have made it their mission to locate the antichrist in every generation (because when one gets spoiled they try AGAIN) and adopt them and love them into not being the antichrist anymore, thus perpetually delaying the apocalypse

delaying the apocalypse via good parenting I love this