The Simple Things

TAKING GIF REQUESTS !xD

 I have so much art supplies that I hardly use, only because I forget that I *have* them. I want to do all of these things, and I have all of this time, but very little drive to do so. I think it’s because I have so much CRAP. I want to clean when I get home. I want to get rid of books and manga and clothes I never wear and boxes of trinkets and slips of paper I never look at, I want to throw out the big box of..old drawings that I feel sad to peruse. I have plenty of sketchbooks filled with memories for me. I know this is very counter-Joe-Meyer (always my art hero :D) but I feel it needs to be done. And under my BED! What is even UNDER there? I want to clear everything. Part of the issue is I have so many things “stacked and packed”, or I can only access things by moving things to the middle of my room/my bed/etc. I want to access all my art supplies! Hell, I want to do BADGES! I bought 20$ worth of con badge holders and clips a few years back. Where did they go? Nobody has badges by me. I’d love people to have badges by me! I’d love to do traditional art, markers, pens, etc! But I can never find what I need when I need it..everything is so random.

I’ve been disorganized my whole life, I don’t even know where to start.

“On reddit (news/discussion website) this morning, there was a thread titled: “If a person cannot be held responsible when they consent to having sex while drunk, how come they are held liable when they decide to drive while drunk?”

The top comment is one of the best ways I’ve ever heard this question answered, and I felt the need to repost it for everyone to read. This is what we should be teaching our children. :)

“There’s actually something interested to be said about this.

I’m involved with some rape crisis activism, and one of the metaphors that activists use when talking about date rape is that of drunk driving.

Thirty years ago, the ‘responsible’ attitude toward drunk driving was “On New Year’s Eve, stay off the streets, because there are a lot of drunk drivers out there who might kill you.” And then, starting in the 1980s, there was a concerted public health effort to shift the paradigm toward the phrase we all have drummed into our heads: “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” As in, it’s not your responsibility to hide from drunk drivers; it’s your job to recognize that drunk driving is irresponsible and unacceptable, and to prevent your friends from doing it - in other words, to make drunk driving taboo. And it worked! Lots of us in our late 20s think of drunk driving as a secular mortal sin…something we would never, ever do, and that we would be disgusted and angry to have discovered our friends had done.

Right now, we think of it as girls’ responsibility to protect themselves from rape: don’t get tanked! don’t leave your drink unattended! don’t let your friends leave you at the bar! etc. This is the “stay off the streets, drunk drivers might be out there!” safety model. But someday, a generation or so from now, it might be something different. It might be: “Friends don’t let friends have sex with drunk people.” Or, to put it slightly differently: our kids might take it for granted that you need active, sober consent from someone before you bone them. Shocking!

Does that sound horribly harsh? Are you about to rush to your keyboard and say, “That’s so unfair! Lots of times when drunk people say they want to have sex, they really mean it!” Sure. And the truth is, many times when you get behind the wheel when you’re drunk, you get home safely. But sometimes, when you drive drunk, people get hurt. And that girl who is stumbling along next to you might be in a blackout, or the survivor of some really fucked up abuse, or you might be too drunk yourself, and in too much of a rush to realize that the scared 18 year old you’re about to get with is whispering “no” and doesn’t mean it as a joke.

Here’s a message from the future: don’t have sex with drunk people. If you meet a drunk girl at the bar, flirt with her, make out with her on the street corner, and program your number into the phone. If she invites you home, hey, sure, go back with her and make out til dawn. Then fall asleep, make some breakfast, and distract yourself from your hangover by doing it to your hearts’ content once you’re sober.

After all, what have you got to lose? If you truly don’t believe she’ll still sleep with you once her head clears…how much was that consent worth to you, really?”

“

from Katie Peterson via Facebook

From emmyc’s blog, I found a transcribed quote. She had linked the youtube, so.

“Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

-Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show

I toyed with my friend’s hair while he had his head on my side, and we were laying in shorts, t-shirts, and no shoes or socks. We came back from a walk and we sprawled across the cracked, worn, loved leather couch in the living room. The muffled silence clung to the insides of my ears like cotton balls, warm and dry. Somewhere in the distance, the buzz of a weed-whacker droned on. I shut my eyes a bit, and just fell into this summertime lethargy. There was a freshness. I curled my toes and shifted, reveling in my limbs and my digits, feeling another human being breathe against me comfortably. I ran my fingers through his hair then, and admired the sheen of his attempted bleaching, his darker roots coming in now. I paid close attention to the place where his roots met the bleached strands, the clean line of his work. I ran one finger perpendicular to the flow of his hair, delicately, just barely aware of contact. I could feel each individual strand settle for a moment into the grooves of my fingerprint, before I moved to the next: a musician playing a million-stringed guitar.