hello!

watch iron chef america

eat thin mint icecream

avoid life until morning !

thepoliticalnotebook:

This isn’t a post debating the merits of the idea to ban the sale of sugary drinks beyond a certain size, but rather a challenge to the language being used to talk about it. The debate has sparked a momentary surge in the common use of the phrase “nanny state” and variations on the term/notion….

something that’s making me very aware of my privilege

I went to my first day of work today, at a new job. It was sort of a trial day, to get me acclimated. I didn’t like it. The hours aren’t great for me - it’s always working days with nights off, and it’s summer time so I’d rather go to the beach during the day and work at night. It isn’t really close enough to my house to be worth the money I’d spend on gas to get there 6 days a week. I don’t have my own car, so I’d be using my mom’s, and it wouldn’t be very convenient for her for me to have the car so often, and the hours aren’t fixed enough that it would be better for her to drop me off and pick me up afterwards. The work I’d be doing seems fairly stressful, and the money isn’t enough to really make up for that. 

I made an actual list - a pros and cons list. 

I don’t want to take the job. 

National unemployment (in spite of the ways in which this statistic can often be misleading) is at something like 8.2%. I live in a resort area, where even a broke student from a single-parent low-income household like me can actually afford to be choosy about a job. I have bills to pay - phone, car insurance (so I can drive my mom’s), school payments. And yet, because of where I live, simply because I’ve been privileged geographically, I can afford not to take this job. Because I live in a resort town, with tons of seasonal job opportunities, I can decide I don’t want to work somewhere simply because it’s inconvenient, moderately stressful, and not especially lucrative. 

I could also, alternatively, decide to keep the job. My mom would arrange her schedule to suit my work week, so that I could use her car. I have a support system that contributes to me being able to choose. 

How privileged I am, to be able to make such a choice. 

I’m aware of this privilege - so what does that mean? My gut tells me to take the job. So many people cannot choose - why should I be able to? But I know that I could make better money working better hours somewhere else. There are always restaurants hiring nearby in the summertime. If I decide to fight against my privilege, and work a job I don’t like where I won’t make the money I really do need, is that noble, or stupid?

I don’t deserve the opportunity to make this choice any more than someone who lives in an area with very limited job opportunities and no transportation, without a familial support system. Whether I take the job or not, I have the privilege and the freedom to make the choice, and honestly, I will probably take advantage of that privilege in spite of the obvious injustice of it, just as most of us do every day.

this is a lot of mixed media, and my most recent large piece

these are both pastels, the left is unfinished (although nothing’s ever really finished)

some ink, more pencil

these are both pastel and sharpie marker

some more meticulous pencil work

I’m uploading my art, because I feel like any blog I have is incomplete/not really representative of me without it. These three are pencil sketches.

"I am an anarchist because I don’t believe it is possible to enact fair laws and follow them, in the personal soul or in the state. It isn’t possible to decide in advance. That’s why I became a sculptor and made all of these pieces. People think some of them are in favor of revolution. But they’re all just what they’re made of."

from Alice Mattison’s The Book Borrower - a surprising and incredibly insightful novel. I recommend it.

"Everything looks permanent until its secret is known."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles”, Essays: First Series (via tanya77)

(via nickturse)

thedailywhat:

Shepard Fairey Piece of the Day: Ebony magazine commissioned street artist Shepard Fairey (of Obeyand HOPE fame) to create artwork of the late Trayvon Martin to accompany a piece in this month’s issue. Fairey writes:

I have followed Trayvon’s case closely and I think any compassionate human being can relate to Trayvon as a brother or son and would want to see a thorough investigation into the killing of an unarmed person. In my portrait I wanted to emphasize Trayvon’s humanity as well as the public outcry for a just investigation into his death.

[twbe]

Slide down your receiver, sprint across the wire

Follow my number and slide into my hand

(via tree-museum)

"You will be stupid. You will worry your parents as I worried mine. You will question your own choices, you will question your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all, and the thing I want to say is, that is totally okay, that is totally normal, if that happens you’re doing it right. When you’re in school, you know you’re on a path, and there are signposts and there are goals, and they give you grades, which is in retrospect an insanely wonderful thing that people are constantly grading you and telling you you did well, you did badly, you did well, and now you are going to join the confusing mess of life with me and your parents and the rest of us that we’ve been living in for years ahead of you where it is not clear at all how to evaluate anything you’re doing or how you’re going to spend the rest of this time on this earth. Welcome to your future."

don’t worry, he also told us about how he lost his virginity in one of our dorms. 

Ira Glass, in his 2012 Goucher commencement speech (via cincodenada)

(via christielouwho)