people have so little appreciation for craftsmanship and it’s frustrating and sad. like i saw this video on facebook of a guy making a small throwing axe by hand, from start to finish, and half the comments were like “or just buy an axe for $15”
the dude didnt just want an axe! he wanted the experience of handwork, he wanted to engage in a tradition of craftsmanship, he wanted to practice skills. the process of making things is about so much more than the thing you make
if i knit a hat, the fact that i’ll have a hat at some point is tertiary to everything else i get out of the experience. it’s meditation, it’s how i interact with a community, it connects me to a history, it mediates my anxiety, it’s a sensory experience, it’s me engaging with my body in a way that is careful and thoughtful and elegant and beautiful
handwork is so devalued for a lot of reasons, and those reasons are almost always socially complex – there’s a lot to be said about how class and gender play out in different hobbies; how cost can become prohibitive in learning skills that were once vital to the poor, how certain kinds of labor have become a luxury, how histories of gendered labor cause that labor to become mocked. all of those things and so many more are difficult to grapple with
automation tends to lead us to believe that making is all about things, but when you practice handwork, you give the process its own kind of value and reap all its intangible rewards. if i could explain one simple thing to anyone who has ever asked me why i don’t just buy a hat, it’s that there’s a lot more involved in a process than just its product.
… I need to be either more or less descriptive for file titles for story-bits that do not yet have a title or a titled AU. Because I keep side-eyeing “Jedi Porn Movies” before I remember it was based off a tumblr post that I reblogged at one point for plot bunny fodder, and fuck if I can remember where to find it. And involves no smut, just a lot of Obi-Wan being very red in the face, Qui-Gon being thoughtful, and Mace Windu trolling everyone because he can.
*points up* And now, thanks to this magnificent person, this is going to become an actual story, and not just a periodic diversion of the “what was I doing with that again?” sort.
… I need to be either more or less descriptive for file titles for story-bits that do not yet have a title or a titled AU. Because I keep side-eyeing “Jedi Porn Movies” before I remember it was based off a tumblr post that I reblogged at one point for plot bunny fodder, and fuck if I can remember where to find it. And involves no smut, just a lot of Obi-Wan being very red in the face, Qui-Gon being thoughtful, and Mace Windu trolling everyone because he can.
So, a family friend is still struggling to pay for some medical bills incurred by detatched retinas, along with all the bills of daily living. Right now, he, and his wife, are facing foreclosure on their home. They desperately need money and soon to keep them in their home. If you can’t throw a dollar or two their way, please reblog and signal boost?
Happy mid-January, everyone. 2018 so far has, shall we say, not been kind to many of us. I am far from the only person I know who has had at least one friend pass away in the past three weeks, and then there are all the various medical, fiscal, interpersonal, and other “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that plague us… and I don’t know if those are coming at us thicker and faster than usual right now, or if it is just that it all seems harder to bear in January, which for most of the folks I suspect read this, is the dead of winter.
I said back in October that normally I try to keep the serious “begging”-type updates to once a month, and the rest of the time I try to keep it a bit lighter and provide something in the way of “content”; so of course it’s now been about a month and a half since the last Standard Begging Update. The holidays did get in the way of that… and then the last two weeks have had so many spirit-crushing moments that I’ve been hard pressed to get up even the gumption to write this. Now, the past six weeks haven’t been unmitigated bad news. The car is back in mostly-working condition; still needs a lot of work but nothing that’s keeping her dead on the driveway. And the most critical utilities didn’t get turned off; thanks to the generosity of some folks we are almost caught up on those (not counting payments that are not past due yet, but come due in the next two and a half weeks).
The real problem *now* is that the mortgage company has turned down the request for further assistance, and we’re facing foreclosure in the pretty near future. As in, maybe as soon as this week. And as you might expect, that is ON TOP OF all the other bare living expenses and getting to other past due bills (including the pile of medical bills). Therefore, IF YOU ARE ABLE TO, please donate – even if it’s just a fin or a sawbuck, every little bit helps. And please PLEASE spread the word as much as you feel able; share this fundraiser on lots of social media, by email, even by writing the link on restaurant napkins and passing them around. Encourage folks you know to donate and to spread the word themselves. (But remember, NO FEELING GUILTY if you don’t have the means to donate, or enough spoons to spread the word as far as you’d like.)
And if you have any job leads for either of us, PLEASE contact us! As you might guess, relocation IS an option, though for family reasons it would be good to stay within reasonable distance of our parents.
*hugs you all* Because today is a day for hugs, and I’m going to run out of spoons if I go putting hugs in everyone’s ask box.
Feel free to reblog this to give a hug to every one of your followers.
*who is comfortable with being hugged. If you do not like hugs or are uncomfortable with physical contact, or even just prefer not a hug from someone not a mutual friend, cookies or other snacks suitable for your dietary needs and restrictions.
Scotch = whisky or broth. there is no other acceptable usage of this word.
are you against the term scotch-irish or something?
Scots-irish works just as well. Scotch is generally only used for produce and such.
I hate it when people call us Scots scotch.
We’re no made of whiskey. Or are we?
You’re gonna kick yersel’.
WhiskEy = Irish
Whisky = Scottish
For those asking earlier why it’s wrong to call the Scots “scotch” ^^^^^^^
I gather there are parts of Scotland where “Scotch” is the normal usage. But “Scots” has become the standard now. Certainly my grandmother used to say “Scotch is whisky, terriers, and sticky-tape. The people are Scots.”
It was a term often used at us, conflating us along with produce. So no, it’s not a term for people. Not if you’re trying to be polite.
I didn’t know this. Which is odd since Highlander was one of my first fandoms.
Also, I now want fic where Methos refers to Duncan as ‘scotch’ on purpose. Because he totally would.
And justifiably get his head kicked in for it 😀
*is scrolling through tumblr because last thing before bed, and sees Methos mentioned*
*facepalms*
Ok, so not exactly fic, @amara1783, but meta sort of outline of potential fic I’m not writing.
Methos would deliberately use the wrong word. Possibly to make a point, possibly to be an ass, and really, no one is quite sure which. And MacLeod, understandably, yells at him, and there are more words exchanged, and someone walks away. Or both of them, it really isn’t important.
Later, Duncan might happen to mention this incident to his dear cousin Connor, and Methos would get his head kicked in the next time he makes the mistake of being in the same general vicinity of Connor MacLeod, and wakes up from a temporary death to find Connor giving him a very decidedly unfriendly grin. Methos knows this does not mean there’s going to be an attempt to take his head. Life would probably be a lot simpler if that were the case.
Methos is probably going to spend the next century having a very hard time keeping a hold of aliases. Because while Duncan MacLeod might not be particularly inclined to being that sort of petty vindictive – he’s a pretty straight-forward kind of person on that front – he has plenty of friends who are that sort of petty vindictive, and Methos can be an absolute ass.
Eventually Methos apologizes, and MacLeod accepts, but it takes a while for everyone to get the memo that they’re on speaking terms again. This is not the first time this has happened, and it will not be the last, but then, you take someone who dragged himself from being death and chaos incarnate to being a mostly-decent person by sheer force of will…. well, there are bound to be incidents when one of his friends has a rather more rigid and life-long code of ethics and takes a while to wrap his mind around maybe not everyone who is decent now has always been so.
(This is not to say Methos is not flawed, and isn’t an ass at times. He is. He’s Methos. But he keeps trying to be better, and that’s why MacLeod eventually forgives him even the worst of the things MacLeod has learned about him. Because Methos at least tries. Even if it does take yelling at him sometimes to get through his head that he has done something wrong. He doesn’t make the same mistake twice.)
You can also, hilariously, buy “organic” couches, which due to my respiratory issues we’re going to go check out probably this weekend. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.
,,,grown on a pesticide free couch farm in California, where the couches are allowed to mature naturally
That’s exactly what I thought the first time I read it lmao, but supposedly they use organic wool (meaning the sheepies were raised on organic pesticide free farms so their wool isn’t “chemically” treated (I mean of course it is, cause everything is chemicals, but you know what I mean)) and organic cotton and other stuff and blah blah blah so supposedly they get to call it an organic couch.
It’s hella expensive so unless sitting on it feels like being carried in the warm embrace of heavenly angels we won’t be buying it, but we thought it would be fun to go look at and I can rummage around their kitchenware stuff 🙂
I ask this with care in my voice…
Would it help with your health issues? I mean if it helps… like what do we need to do to help you afford this? If it helps… it would be a sound investment… wouldn’t it?
New furniture is always hard for me cause of the chemical dyes and other stuff, but we’re at a point in our house where we actively need new furniture cause all the stuff we have is hand me downs and falling apart (and I’m allergic to a lot of the fillers) and the cost to fix it is…well lets just say the quote I got for one couch…I could have bought an entire new living room set from wayfair or something. But then we encounter the “new furniture” problem.
So I mean, if I can sit on this thing on Saturday, bury my face in it and not come up in hives/wheezing after five minutes, it’d be fairly awesome, and we could look in to taking out a payment plan of some kind cause uh, yeah $5000 for a single three seater couch is a little substantially out of our price range…but I mean, if they gave us 12 months to pay it off or something that might be doable.
If not I’ll just go with wayfair and wheeze for six months 😛
Honestly with your Scottish stubbornness and general DIY punk attitude couldn’t you make your own couch for like a grand or less and know exactly what went into it? You could embroider it with tiny gay vampires or something cute.
…I require someone with embroidery skills stat.
My embroidery skills have atrophied due to hands refusing to play nice with tiny tiny stitches, though I can probably make a pattern for cute vampires for line-art embroidery. It’s been a decade since I last did something like that, but I haven’t forgotten how. Also, I know dad’s made furniture in the past, just not a lot of it. I’m pretty sure making a bench with a back that can be upholstered and cushioned could be done, though I’d have to talk to him about what it would take to convince him to do that.
Fandom: Criminal Minds AU: A Darker Twist Word Count: 100 Characters: Spencer Reid, Maeve Donavon Ship: Spencer/Maeve
Warnings: Dark AU
She’s warm and welcome in his arms. Safe. Beloved. Here, she’ll stay safe, high above the noise and fume of the city. Spencer smiles to himself as he dances slow circles with Maeve. It’s been nearly a year since he’d eliminated the threat of her stalker, to keep his muse safe. A year of peace, so she can see that she is safe. That he keeps his promises. Even, that he can keep his promises without bloodshed or death.
Perhaps he can do this forever, to keep her happy. If it keeps her safe, he thinks he can do anything.
*hugs you all* Because today is a day for hugs, and I’m going to run out of spoons if I go putting hugs in everyone’s ask box.
Feel free to reblog this to give a hug to every one of your followers.
*who is comfortable with being hugged. If you do not like hugs or are uncomfortable with physical contact, or even just prefer not a hug from someone not a mutual friend, cookies or other snacks suitable for your dietary needs and restrictions.
I have so many thoughts about the Founders. And most of those thoughts are how they were done so seriously wrong for what they were built up as….. I should write that rant at some point….
I would like to see your rant! 😀
As for me….
They had so much potential, and they became just another alien enemy hell-bent on galactic domination. My brain continually lumps them and the Borg together as “big bads from parts of the galaxy the Federation has had little-to-no contact with”…. and also, of late, “aliens that could have been so much more than the ‘they aren’t like us’ boogeymen”.
I mean, the Borg are the “omg, using technology to expand/extend lives is eeeeeevil”. The “ew, cyborgs”. Without any real counterweights to the argument that technology used to directly extend/expand lives is a bad thing.
And the Founders are the “can’t trust someone who doesn’t fit in neat little boxes” aliens. Which. Even humans are messy and don’t fit neatly into boxes most of the time, but that doesn’t make those who won’t fit into a rigid framework any less people. Any less good people. Any less deserving of respect and the consideration that all people should be given. To live their lives without others imposing some framework on them.
Which of course, drags them into the context of the real world, rather than keeping the meta within the canon, but. *shrugs*
There's a Mirror on the Wall 