changingmorphologies:

duskenpath:

In all seriousness I took a death and dying course in college for fun and that’s when I fell in love with, and began to seriously study, spontaneous or “street shrines”. These are the organic, unplanned placements of items when someone is killed, generally, and the community almost descends on a spot. I am fascinated by that interfaith, inter-spirit moment of connection fostered. What drives someone to leave the first item? Who guides them there? What do we, as humans, seek from the leaving of a memorial on a place that now hallowed? And we know it is, to some extent, even if we’re not spirit-workers. We have this human need to bear witness, no matter who we are, and over and over again it manifests as this need to build some space, some monument that says “they were here, and now they aren’t here, and we, collectively, of all faiths and walks of life, strangers to each other, will remember them”

We take comfort in, and protect to some measure, that space we create with tea-light candles and stuffed bears and flowers and it just feels like the Right Thing to Do. We rebuild these spaces when they are torn down by authority and we keep building them up and that’s beautiful

Street shrines are TRULY universal, too. They are largely non-verbal but it’s like we just KNOW what to do, like something moves inside all of us and it doesn’t fucking matter if we can’t understand anyone else standing at the site, it’s just a Knowing. It’s phenomenal 

One of my professors specializes in this, she wrote a book called Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture about her fieldwork in Texas.

ronaldreagay:

f is for friends who abandoned me after 8th grade

prismatic-bell:

harperhug:

twoblackcatsandglasses:

*sips coffee* what a beautiful day to remember that asexuality is real and what the A in LGBTQA+ stands for and that they are not straight but a part of the LGBTQA+ community

What a beautiful day to remember that the people who create the “ace people are straight,” the “bi people are straight,” the “trans people are misogynist,” etc. propaganda are trying to tear the queer community apart to make us all easier to pick off so if you’ve fallen for it or spread it yourself, you’re enabling people who want to do harm.

What a beautiful day to remember the Q stands for both Queer and Questioning, and that Queer isn’t a slur and also it’s okay to not really know what you are yet.

im-happy-at-home:

bicaz:

sonnet59s:

big-disgrace:

hey, you know what i

fucking hate?

you know what really

gets my goat??

that in most of the documentaries that include paul gambaccini, they use his story when he asked freddie, “have you adjusted your behavior in light of the new disease?” and freddie answers, “darling, my attitude is ‘fuck it.’ i’m doing everything with everyone.” but they always CUT HIM OFF THERE.

he adds, “and i also thought, that even though he’s putting up this great front… probably in the back of his mind, he thinks it’s too late.”

but they never include that part. i wonder why. hmm, is it perhaps that they’re demonizing freddie’s sexuality & making it seem like he got aids because he was too indulgent?

fuck that.

tens of millions of innocent people lost their lives not because they were careless, but because the government was careless. i’m sick of this homophobic shit.

it’s so unfair. there are a lot of instances of freddie discussing AIDS which i didn’t know existed until i read freddie mercury: his life in his own words. he was terrified of it and drastically modified his lifestyle in response. he wasn’t oblivious and he wasn’t cavalier. 

“I pray I’ll never get AIDS. So many friends have it. Some have died, others won’t last much longer. I’m terrified that I’ll be the next. Immediately after I have sex I think, “Suppose that was the one? Suppose the virus is now in my body?” I jump in the shower and try to scrub myself clean although I know it’s useless.”

“I was totally devastated when I heard about my friends who have died from AIDS. It brought the seriousness of the illness home to me. I learnt the hard way. When you’re young it is so much harder. I was thinking the other day, we were lucky to have sown our wild oats when we did, but they are just starting out. It is something the young have got to get to grips with.”

“I used to live for sex but now I’ve changed. I’ve stopped going out, stopped the nights of wild partying. I’ve almost become a nun. It’s amazing, I thought sex was a very important thing to me but now I realize I’ve just gone completely the other way. Once, I was extremely promiscuous, it was excess in every direction, but now I’m totally different. I have stopped all that and I don’t miss that kind of life. Everything is fine.”

“You see, I’m one of those people that can go from black to white. I don’t like intermediary measures. It’s quite easy for me to completely give up things. I can give up alcohol at the drop of a hat. AIDS has frightened me to death and so I’ve just stopped having sex. I just like titillation now. I’m into titillation. It’s much more fun. What more can I do? I’ve stopped having sex and started growing tulips!”

“You can’t expect people to just abstain from sex forever. I think the message of safe sex is essential and crucial. Anyone who sleeps around should have an AIDS test.”

“It is a very, very serious thing we are dealing with. I think people have to wait now, better times are ahead. This thing about safe sex is all very worthwhile, but you can still have fun. You can’t expect people to just give up sex. People get freaked, they think they have AIDS and they shoot themselves, and then people find out that they didn’t have it after all. People should be careful, but not paranoid.”

“We’re living with it now and it’s there, on your doorstep, and you’d be a fool to say that you haven’t heard of it. You can’t get away from it. But if you get into the nitty-gritty of it, there are friends of mine who have died of AIDS. It’s devastating.”

“How much more can one harp on about it? I am not the saviour of the fucking thing! I like those television ads where it says everybody is equal with AIDS– like money doesn’t mean anything. AIDS is not prejudiced. AIDS is not prejudiced about who you are or what you do. It gets you!”

“Before, I was very greedy. I was promiscuous, that’s true, but I’ve stopped all that because practicality came into it. You know what I’m talking about. It’s up to the individual. Most people live by sex, but a lot of people can’t do without it. A lot of people just have it as a pastime. I don’t want to suddenly say that sex is boring or overrated because that would be farcical– having just said that I was very promiscuous, that would be a contradiction.”

HOW THE FUCK HAVE I NEVER HEARD ANY OF THESE QUOTES

THIS IS IMPORTANT. The media loves to characterize Freddie as this wild and uncontrollable sex machine, when all this time he was just a terrified and HUMAB LGBQT+ man. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

storytellerluna:

roachpatrol:

sailoryue:

the-stormcatcher-clone:

Y’ALL my sister just dropped a theory about Moana on me and I’m

Grandma Tala. She seemed like a fairly healthy old woman on the whole, right? Dancing with the sea and the rays, doing Old Crazy Lady things etc etc. Okay. Sure.

The thing is, my sister suddenly pointed out that, ever since Moana dropped it as a baby, Tala had possession of the Heart of Te Fiti. The source of Life.

And then she gave it to Moana, who ran off with it to try and get the islanders to voyage out for Maui, and… suddenly deteriorated. Died.

What if the Heart had been keeping her alive. Te Fiti gave Life to the islands, but in the hands of another, what if that isn’t what it does? What if the Heart grants immortality? What if Tala knew, and still gave up the Heart so that Moana could find Maui, restore Te Fiti, and save Motunui?

And if that’s what the power of the Heart really was, no wonder the monsters wanted it.

And that’s why Moana survived in places she should have died, INCLUDING venturing the realm of spirits aka the underworld

okay this is awesome, i love it. i was just thinking the other day about how like, why was it that maui stole the heart to give its power to humans, but then moana carries it all over the place and never displays any supernatural powers at all? it would be really cool if its power was just to keep people alive. like, that’s all the power you need, as a human: just being alive. and from there you can accomplish everything yourself. 

also, moana didn’t even need maui’s powers, when push came to shove. this guy who pulled up the islands and pulled down the sun and could turn into a shark and everything, and the most important thing she took from him was just how to sail the open ocean. she only really needed a demigod to recover information that had passed from her people’s living memory: once she had it again, once she and the knowledge were alive together, she was unstoppable. 

humans didn’t need te fiti’s powers. humans didn’t need maui’s powers. humans love and appreciate the gifts given to them by benevolent gods and heroes, but when it comes to taking care of business— and taking care of each other— just being alive is enough power for anyone.  

just being alive is enough power for anyone.  

whoa.

disappointed-pero-not-surprised:

dank-space-memes:

inkandcayenne:

wilfulwayfarer:

rasec-wizzlbang:

dalaisa-katili:

local-emo-mom:

anarcho-individualist:

explanatorypower:

i dont understand this at all and america scares the fuck out of me

This is the america they don’t want you to see

i love america

This is what you call Waffle House at 2 am when the bars close and everyone is drunk and hungry

*group of people having fun*
this site: wtf this is so scary

People having safe fun at a waffle house is scary for most Tumblr bloggers, reports say.

Some context for those not familiar with Waffle House Culture: 

• Waffle House is one of the few chains in America that’s open 24/7/365, and where you can get both breakfast and lunch/dinner options at any time (I have had so many Breakfast Cheeseburgers at Waffle Houses). The food is really good, and people eat there at all times of the day or night, but it’s particularly popular as a late-night post-drinking spot because it’s all that’s open and it’s the kind of food that tastes especially good when you’re hammered.
  
• Part of Waffle House Protocol is that all the servers and cooks greet every single customer as they come through the door. It sounds lame, but I’ve never been to a Waffle House where that greeting didn’t feel completely heartfelt. My mom is a health nut who could barely find anything on the menu she was willing to eat and yet she describes the Christmas Day lunch we had there one year as one of the nicest meals she’s ever had because everyone was so warm and welcoming. That sense of camaraderie gets turned up to 11, of course, at 2 a.m. when everyone’s shitfaced.
• The jukeboxes have Waffle-House-themed songs on them (once you have heard “Raisins in my Toast” you will be earwormed forever) and there is an arcane system of hash brown ordering: scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced, peppered, and/or capped. The hot sauce bottles say “Casa de Waffle.” 
• Once, in Oxford (UK), my husband and I walked past a kebab van very late one night and he said “why do I smell Waffle House”
• The location of most Waffle Houses means there’s some… classism that tends to get tied up with Anti-Waffle House Discourse, which is probably lending itself, in part, to this being such a fraught topic. (I’m looking at a map and apparently I was born and raised right in the middle of the Peak Waffle House Density Zone)
• It is, in the words of chef Anthony Bourdain, “indeed marvelous— an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody regardless of race, creed, color or degree of inebriation is welcomed.”
  

This was adorable lmao

wholesome post