Buy a pencil and paper. Get a writing program and a keyboard.
Spill all your ideas into a notebook that will never see the light of day. Write down literally every idea you have that even sort of relates to the scene/chapter/book that you want to write until your thoughts converge on a pointed attack.
Quality vs. Quantity? No competition. Quantity all the way. The more you write, the better you will know your story. Worry about Quality LATER.
Think about where the idea came from. Go there. Set up a cardboard box and live there. This is your home now.
What is the coolest, most self-indulgent thing you can think of? That’s what you want to write at this point, until you get some steam.
Short-term goals, my friends. And by short-term, I mean a minute from now, ten seconds from now. What are you going to do to write RIGHT NOW? Stop thinking about an hour from now, stop thinking about a day from now.
This is not a book. This is not a book. You are not writing a book. You are writing a story. A story is much easier to take bites out of than a book. A book is a big, scary, colossal thing. Stories are fun and carefree.
Get yourself a writing friend. A cactus, an old bottle of nail polish, a fish in an appropriately sized tank, etc. Make them hold you accountable.
Set crazy low goals. Promise yourself you will write ten words today. Ten words and you will be the Best Writer in the Entire World to Ever Exist. Accomplishing things is a morale booster and will urge you to write more.
““Faery women were once called “fateful women” (femmes fatales): desirable, seductive, empowered with supernatural gifts and with an intimate knowledge of the hidden powers of stones, plants, and all things natural. These women were the guardians of special groves, streams, wells, and other sacred places of beauty and power. In the role of muse, they inspired human poets, musicians, and artists.””
This is one of the best stories we read in a long time. An arborist AKA a tree caretaker and tree surgeon from Redondo Beach, California had to watch the death of one of his favorite trees, which was ordered by the mayor. Although he lost a great battle, he won the war. Find out how he avenged the death of his 30-year-old pepper tree named Clyde.
His story was recently shared online and has already been shared over 150k times. RIP Clyde.
My hot tip for today is that sometimes you can do silly, spiritual pagan things because they’re fun and they don’t have to be particularly logical or relevant in any way. You don’t have to believe in everything 100% to do and enjoy things.
Every Samhain my mother leaves a plate of food outside. She says that the ancestors come in the form of raccoons to eat it. When I was little I of course wholeheartedly believe this. Now I think we probably just have a lot of raccoons in the neighboorhood, but that understanding doesn’t detract from the tradition. Suspending my disbelief for just one night to think that the animals I see wandering about are visiting spirits makes Samhain a hell of a lot more spooky and mystical then it would be otherwise. I wouldn’t want to do it any other way.
We don’t touch the garden between Samhain and Yule. The explanation given for this is that anything left outside during this time is food for the fairies and taking it angers them. As I’ve gotten older and learned more about gardening I’ve realized that this is probably an explanation for why we need to let the soil rest, and I certainly don’t think picking a plant in early December is going to cause me any harm, but don’t pick the plants anyways. Leaving the garden alone during the cold months makes tending to the plants that much more enjoyable and special during the hot months, and if my reasoning for why I can’t harvest that very last squash of the fall is fairies then that’s my own business.
Sometimes when I go down to the beach I find strange or out of place things. My explanation for these things is always selkies. In the back of my mind, I’m always aware that there’s probably a much more logical and reasonable explanation for whatever I’m seeing but those reasons usually aren’t quite as interesting, so I say that it’s selkies. And that’s fun. I feel like there’s some unspoken rule that after a certain age you’re not allowed to try and believe the things you’ve imagined, no matter how inconsequential and silly those things are and honestly, that’s boring, I’m not a fan.
The point here is that not all of the things we do in the name of our spirituality and faith need to be serious or even well thought out. Clearly, if you’re doing a ritual or a spell that’s one thing, but there are other fun little ways to make your spirituality more magical and wondrous that are less about what’s actually happening and more about the suspension of disbelief. And those things are wonderful and fun, and they add a little bit of joy to your life.
I meet a lot of witches and pagans who take themselves and their practice very seriously, and well that’s fine to a certain extent I think it can sometimes make your spiritual beliefs feel like a chore. Letting yourself have fun this way can be a really good way to prevent that.
I imagine TAZ Amnesty’s Mama looking something like Chelcie Lynn’s character “Tammy”, complete with Reba shirt and an unlit cigarette often dangling precariously on her lips
million dollar idea: instead of spending thousands of dollars on steady-cam equipment, filmmakers should just attach a camera to the head of a chicken and carry the chicken around as you film.
In 1926, Poland sent the US a birthday card with over 5 million signatures. Polish citizen Leopold Kotnowski visited the White House to present the card for America’s 150th birthday. It has 30,000 pages full of art, photos, poems and pressed flowers. Volumes 14-110 were digitized by the Library of Congress, and some are available online. SourceSource 2Source 3
financial goals: bathtub that’s deep enough for me to be 100% fully submerged; preferably one of those triangle corner ones. Also maybe being debt free but the tub comes first
me, 8 years old, sitting in the largest bathtub that they have on display in the Home Depot:
Our school used to ask children who were late questions about maths, but those that they can’t answer yet. And then they made kids write down that they don’t know math. My 11yo classmate (who was always great at math) was crying after this.
Oh god, my elementary school was hell.
I remember this one music teacher who, for some reason, REALLY fucking hated autistic kids. I would know, because everyone in my weird therapy group was targeted while everyone else was ignored.
I saw her physically drag a kid out and threaten to get him suspended because he was to scared to dance solo in front of his peers.
There was also “lunch detention,” and they didn’t fuck around with that. They didn’t isolate the students like that, they fucking shoved them in a separate room and forbade them from sitting together or talking. They slowly brought in several teachers and eventually the principal, and they all, one by one, told us that we were horrible, reprehensible people who would never be successful.
And you wanna know HOW you got lunch detention? Not finishing your work on time, even if it was a one-time thing.
State sanctioned child abuse
‘Child abuse’
Y’all are insane.
It may not be child abuse but honestly, some of this shit is fucking insane and harmful to the students than it is helpful.
I mean.
It is abuse.
Emotional Abuse is a thing
man when i was in 1st grade i had ticks/habits from nervousness/anxiety (still do but whatever). back then i had long hair and would chew it every so often (not rip it out to eat, just kinda…chew). and i vividly remember my teacher fucking publicly calling me out saying ‘don’t chew your hair! yuck!” like in front of the whole fucking class as we were just doing work or some shit. of course everyone else noticed and giggled n shit. made me shrink back w humiliation so hard. I hate how its stuck with me so hard after all these years
me: don’t play dragon age. it takes forever. you get too attached. the characters do things and you tear out your hair and you make 10 wardens and 5 hawkes and about 20 inquisitors and you stop leaving the house and you’re obsessed, you dream about it, you think “fine dwarven crafts direct from orzammar” is the funniest sentence in the english language, nothing will compare, it will ruin you
Heat pits just say a snake hunts for warm-blooded prey.
Slit pupils help snakes precisely judge distance for an ambush, while round pupils are for active foraging + chase-hunting. Like, garter snakes root around for crickets and worms and fish, while pythons wait for a mouse and STRIKE! Thus:Round vs Slit pupil.
Round snoot has nothing to do with anything.
Y’all shouldn’t grab a snake to check its tail scutes anyway, that’s dumb af.
Ball Pythons have chubby cheeks ‘cause they have to open their mouths real wide to swallow big things, and that’s where their muscles go. Small-mouthed snakes don’t need as much slurping power.
Coral snakes [pictured above] have the second-strongest venom of any snake, but they have round eyes, no heat pits, a round snout, and no retractable fangs.
The average person can’t bloody tell what’s a heat pit vs a nostril. Here’s pictures of the illustrated snakes above. They’re too damn close in appearance, and their markings are super similar, and they both swimand stay in the shadows so if you’re in an area where cottonmouths live, and you see a dark brown-to-black snake, just leave it the fuck alone!
This is a spitting cobra when it doesn’t have its hood up. Pretty chill brassy bro, right? WRONG! This sucker will spit venom in your eyes from 6 feet away!
BLARGHHHSSST~
What a cute slithery noodle, right? Friend-shaped head and neck,round pupil, no heat pits – we good, right?
Hahaha WRONG! That’s the Inland Taipan, literally the most deadly snake on this bitch of an earth. One bite’s worth of venom is enough to kill 100 fully grown men. It makes your kidneys fail while your skeletal muscle falls apart and you’re vomiting and seizing even as your blood thickens and forms massive clots. So yeah. This slithery beauty is a DO NOT APPROACH!
Woah Look at those heat pits! Slit-thin eyes! Spooky af, right?
Nah bro, that’s an emerald tree boa. They just wanna eat birds and sit in a tree all day.
Snoozin’ friendo~
Anyway, snakes are a varied species and the illustrated infographic being passed around is total bullshit.
Don’t approach strange snakes.
Don’t approach a snake unless you’re 100000% certain it’s the type of snake you think it is, and you have solid knowledge of all the types of snakes in your area. Just leave the wild noodles alone.
a shame when the only “fresh produce” inner city families recieve is rotting nutrients found in corner stars. check your privilege brain, it may not be expensive but sometimes it’s inaccessible.
Also $11 is a lot of money for some people? That could go to a larger amount of longer-lasting food, like how much soup, beans, pasta, and rice could that buy? What if you need a new pair of work pants or extra gas money?
11$ is some people’s food budget for the week, AND they have to get enough calories to survive 10-12 hr workshifts on their feet. that means rice and ramen. fresh seasonal peaches and plums are the very definition of luxury for most working people.
y’all know that john mulaney quote “the things crazy people say mean nothing to them but everything to me?”
every time i hear that quote, i think about how i got this light-up pen
i got this pen four years ago when i was working as a barista at starbucks. I was on the registers and taking the order of this woman, who ordered a nonfat latte, because she was “watching her weight”
so this guy behind her, whom no one was talking to, for some fucking reason says “wathing your weight? but what about the wait for your watch?“ (which is a completely unhinged response. like just complete Mad Hatter nonsense)
anyway this lady gets really uncomfortable and of the five people (me, him, her, the other checker, and the customer at the other register) who were now sucked into the uncomfortable silence, i decided that i should alleviate the tension by saying “you can’t wait for a watch; you don’t have the time”
and then he said “oh, quick girl!”, gave me that pen, got out of line, and left without ordering anything
The USPS is the fastest, cheapest, and most accurate mail service on the planet last I heard, and is the biggest employer of veterans in the entire country.
On top of that, mail carriers: -have wages that top out at over $30 an hour (and their wages go up in predictable steps based on how long they’ve been with the USPS) -have excellent benefits, including a shit-ton of vacation time, plus a pension, and they can retire after thirty years
But they also have one of the oldest, biggest, strongest unions in the country. That must piss off Republicans so much.
Also, side note: they take zero taxpayer dollars. They’re entirely funded by postage.
(”But I heard they were doing terribly!” They’re not. Congress saddled them with pre-funding their retirement 75 years out to intentionally put them in the red and make them look bad. I’m not joking or exaggerating. There’s tons of info, but here’s the USPS’s own info: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/fy2010/ar2010_4_002.htm )
Men can be witches. Trans persons can be witches. Nonbinary persons can be witches. Genderfluid persons can be witches. Agender persons can be witches.
Gender has zero influence on a person’s witch-hood.
The guy got his life and career destroyed by his divorce, cut him some slack.
he was also sexually assaulted by a man who could destroy his career
protect him
reblog if the man on the right is just as beautiful as the man on the left
people grow old? like, that’s a thing that happens? leave my guy alone.
This man deserves everything let him he happy
Ok… This is what happened to Fraser
-His wife ditched him and asked for 900k a year,
-He was sexually assaulted which he said kicked him into a deep depression
-He stated that the stunts from the 3rd Mummy movie completely destroyed his body and he was in and out of the hospital for 7 years even having to get surgery to repair his vocal cords.
-He apparently blamed himself for all this which only worsened his depression.
This man has literally been through hell this past decade so please lets cut him some slack and wish him the best
A middle school in Achille, Oklahoma is closed following violent threats by parents on social media against Maddie, a 12-year-old transgender student who identifies as female and used the girls’ bathroom.
Maddie had been using the staff bathroom at her old school but used the girls’ bathroom at the new school because she wasn’t sure where the staff bathroom was. She was then accused of peeping under a bathroom stall. Her mother said it was probably because she “leans very far forward to use the bathroom.”
Then the threats began on a private parents’ Facebook group for the school. The parents called Maddie “it” and “thing”, suggested that her genitalia be mutilated to make her female (“a good sharp knife will do the job real quick”). One said it was “hunting season on them kind” and said there was “no bag limit.”
Maddie’s mother Brandy Rose said she fears for her life: “These are adults making threats– I don’t understand it. She’s an awesome kid. To see any fear in her, I can’t explain how bad that hurts me for them to hurt her.”
KXII reports: “The sheriff said the mother filed a protective order against one parent but no other arrests have been made, however several agencies including the FBI are stepping in to see if any comments constitute a hate crime.”
See the screenshots:
Sorry to say this but if we have to think about whether or not threatening to cut a 12 year old child is a hate crime means there is no hope for us. What has this nation become when it’s citizens feel they have a right to threaten minorities with no fear of repercussion. The only ringing heard now is the death knell of freedom..
Most people don’t even use cursive for signatures. Eventually, they all just dissolve into squiggles.
Plus Some people’s cursive can be pretty unreadable even when they do put in the effort.
Oh noooooooo, society is chaaaaaaanging, what will we dooooooo~???
I was taught cursive, told I would need it in high school when we started writing essays.
Teachers didn’t accept anything in cursive. By the end of highschool teachers were not accepting hand-written essays and everything had to be typed. Though, they assured me cursive would probably be a thing in university because you have to write essays in class sometimes too and wouldn’t have access to computer to type it up.
In university, we were warned, that cursive can be a faster method of writing, but harder to make legible when writing quickly. We were warned if the professor couldn’t easily and quickly tell what we were saying, it would count as not having written anything. This included in-class exam essays on a time limit. So no one used cursive.
So while I was constantly being assured that cursive would be very useful when I grew up, it only became increasingly obsolete.
Why would we continue to teach obsolete skills? Why waste the time?
That being said… kids are exposed to a lot of different fonts… some of which are cursive. I think they can figure it out.
cursive is more of an art form than it is a way of life now a days and i appreciate the beauty of the script but its not practical unless you can do it really well and quickly for anything school related tbh.
So I used to have a Russian friend who had a pretty thick accent and like a lot of Russians tended to eschew articles. She would say things like “Get in car.” And stuff.
Well one day this asshole who had been kind of tagging along with us asks her why she talks like that because it makes her sound dumb and I still remember her response word for word.
“Me? Dumb? Maybe in America you have to say get in THE car because you are so stupid that people might just get in random car, but in Russia we don’t need to say that. We just fucking know because we are not stupid.”
One time I was proof reading a paper for a Russian student. As I was correcting her paper with her, the many mistakes in her grammar started weighing on her. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, almost sobbing,
“In Russian I am so intelligent and clear. In English I am like [an] idiot”
Respect to anyone trying to master a foreign language. I get so sad thinking about that student.
Full offense but people who make fun of someone else’s accent or belittle their limited vocabulary when they’re speaking a language not native to them are fucking disgusting and are just begging to be punched.
They’re speaking your language because you don’t know theirs. That’s not something they should be made fun of, it’s something that should be commended because learning a language is hard fucking work.
Willow Wisp's Witching Corner 