Dewey Decimal

Darlene Parent (née Gilbert) skating in pointe shoe skates. 1950s or 60s? This video gives me several different conflicting thoughts:

“Wow! That’s so pretty! She looks like a ballerina on a music box.” “Those must be so difficult to balance in. How does she skate in them?” “It must take a lot of strength to skate in those for very long.” “Her poor feet!”

you’d think a company with such a family-friendly image would take the time to at least explain briefly to its very young audience that all their fave shows will be moving to another service or something, hell, at least do it for advertisements’ sake so that kids can pester their parents into buying disney+, but disney does not care about you and it does not care about your children and it will absolutely snatch the last shred of comfort from a kid’s hands if it means they don’t have to spend an extra $400 recording an ending announcement in different languages

you’d think a company with such a family-friendly image would take the time to at least explain briefly to its very young audience that all their fave shows will be moving to another service or something, hell, at least do it for advertisements’ sake so that kids can pester their parents into buying disney+, but disney does not care about you and it does not care about your children and it will absolutely snatch the last shred of comfort from a kid’s hands if it means they don’t have to spend an extra $400 recording an ending announcement in different languages

you’d think a company with such a family-friendly image would take the time to at least explain briefly to its very young audience that all their fave shows will be moving to another service or something, hell, at least do it for advertisements’ sake so that kids can pester their parents into buying disney+, but disney does not care about you and it does not care about your children and it will absolutely snatch the last shred of comfort from a kid’s hands if it means they don’t have to spend an extra $400 recording an ending announcement in different languages

I’m not one of those guys who subscribes to the “Man Cave” idea. That theory that once you’re in a relationship, you’re required to forfeit 99% of your own home and be grateful to have one room in which you can be yourself and have your own possessions on display. I think if you’re in a relationship, you have a right to make your home reflect your personality and interests as much your partner does. I’ve run into a couple of instances where a woman thinking a man has no right to his own possessions has not gone over so well and it was hysterical.

I once knew a guy who worked in the telemarketing department of a company I worked at. One Friday night after work, he told me about how he ended up breaking up with his girlfriend.

This guy was like me, very clean and orderly and liked things a certain way but he wasn’t volatile about it or anything. He and his girlfriend decide to have a weekend sleepover at his house, a trial run in his mind for moving in together. She showed up and the red flags sprang up immediately. “Where’s your bag?” he asks. “For a weekend? I don’t need one.” she says. His mind reels. “So you’re not gonna change clothes…or shower…or brush your teeth…?” “No. Why would I do that in just a couple of days?” He tries to be okay about it but then she starts “cooking” and the kitchen looks like a war zone. Then there’s the fact that her B.O. seems to get stronger by the hour.

The last straw comes towards the end of the weekend when she walks around his place, eyes his Elvis Presley memorabilia collection and says “If I lived here, all this Elvis shit would get set out for trash, I’m not wasting space on all that.” When it finally comes time for her to go back home, she says “This was fun! Can’t wait to do it again.” “Yeah, about that…” and he dumped her in his own driveway.

He said if he had to choose between hygiene and an Elvis collection he’s built for years and her, he’s gonna be happier being single, cleaner and having his collectibles around than he would be with her.

Another instance happened when I had a garage sale and one of the things I was selling was a talking football player action figure from the 90s that someone had bought me under the presumption that because I was boy, I was into sports (I was not). The action figure was brand new in the box because that was how little I cared about playing with it despite my mother’s best attempts. A woman shows up, sees the action figure and loses her shit.

“Oh God, I am so sick of seeing these! My husband has the whole set and all I want to do is throw them in the trash!” A guy at the sale overhears this and says “Well, I’m sure your husband has a list of things that he’d like to get rid of that you’re partial to but he doesn’t say anything because that’s the give and take of being in a relationship” She blows him off and says “I should be the one to decide what goes in the house and what he can buy, THAT is how marriage works for ME.” The guy changes his argument. “Maybe on your husband’s list of shit that needs to go, you should be at the top of the list…” Everyone else at the garage sale (including me) was now watching silently and wondering when the throw down would happen…

“What did you say?”, she asks him a bit taken back. “I said if I was him, I wouldn’t take that shit that somehow being married to you means forfeiture of my belongings and personality and substituting it all for your bullshit. I’d sooner throw you out than my action figures.” After picking her jaw up off my driveway, the woman hurumphs and storms back to her car. I high-five the guy for making an excellent point after she leaves.

I have a lot of collectibles myself and am currently in the creative habit of going through my childhood Power Rangers and Pokémon toys and putting the ones I absolutely want to keep in shadow boxes and hanging them on the wall as conversation pieces and selling the rest.

I have Funko Pops. I have lunchboxes. I have special edition magazines and comic books in floater frames on the wall. I have more books than I have time to count or read. I have tub after tub of Halloween and Christmas decorations because that’s my favorite time of year. I would never throw all of this stuff away because I’ve purged plenty already and kept what I wanted to keep. It’s all a reflection of my personality and my story. If someone came into my life and said our life together would mean giving all of this up and doing what he wanted, I would consider that a toxic situation and I would end it before I got in too deep.

Men, gay or straight, can find themselves in toxic, abusive relationships, this is not a phenomenon only experienced by women. It just seems that way because men, especially straight men, rarely speak up about it and mistakenly settle on what they assume is some unchangable default result of being in a relationship. It’s not.

I would never move in with someone and tell them to throw everything out that has been a part of them or spoken to who they are in order to make room for me. I am all about organizing and making a space feel cozy, functional and fun and would go out of my way to make sure we both had space for our things and our personalities and stories. One does not have to overshadow or overpower the other in order to make a relationship between two people work.

Yeah, that last comment, that's how fucked up our society has gotten, because men have to conceal or hide or at best get ONE room to put their stuff in, and even then it's treated as terrible and regressive and should not be allowed. The 'Man Cave' aka the one space in a person's house where they're allowed to express themselves and their hobbies and it's treated as a terrible thing because he's 'excluding' his wife from it, while the things that are in there are NOT ALLOWED ANYWHERE ELSE.

What I was hoping this post might touch on is how people cling to book reading as a hobby that will make them automatically smarter or more superior than those who aren’t, no matter how little mental engagement they actually put into reading. There are people who shit on novels like Things Fall Apart, The Jungle, and Invisible Man for not being “entertaining enough.” There are people who base their entire personality on being an avid reader who chose to never think critically or challenge themselves. There are people who think reading makes you more empathetic by default, when in reality anyone, even terrible people, can project themselves onto the hero if they can’t think critically about their own life and choices.

If you think “real literature” doesn’t “work” that way, you’re not thinking substantially about literature, neither in individual instances nor in the broader scheme.

What do you think a tragic hero is? What do you think a quest narrative is? How do you think we can conceive of Seven Basic Plots? What do you think Comedy and Tragedy are? Do you think the Aeneid popped out of nowhere without referencing any of the patterns of Greek epics that made it compelling to its audience? Do you think Shakespeare was popular because his plays were “original” ideas with storylines that would have been surprising to his audience? Do you think fairy tales sprung out of the air as discrete individual units? Do you think no one has ever written anything that follows the patterns of Greek epics, Shakespeare, or fairy tales intentionally? Do you think “literature” contains no works that intentionally evoke an existing pattern in their plots and characters?

“Genre” as bookshops use it is not somehow superior to “tropes.” Fantasy, Westerns, Paranormal Romances, those categories are like, less than one or two centuries old and also damn near useless for anything except marketing. Genre is a hot fucking mess and pretty artificial. Tropes on the other hand? Those have always existed. They are, quite literally, inherent and natural parts of stories.

What “genre” is the Epic of Gilgamesh? What “genre” is the Odyssey? Fantasy? Do you think it is in any way appropriate to “genre” these stories using categories that would have been nonsense to their ancient audiences? What the fuck is fantasy?

Over and over again, we have told stories about heroes destroyed by their hubris, about mortals struggling against the inevitability of death, about the antics of trickster deities, about clever young boys outwitting giants and other malicious characters, about young girls swept into royalty, about brothers in conflict with one another, and the ability to identify these patterns and explore why they have persisted is…basically what literary and folklore studies is.

Just because you consider fanfic or romance to be “lesser” doesn’t mean they can’t be analyzed, or that the mechanical components of those things don’t exist in Real Literature. 10th grade English class clearly didn’t do any good for the people that did pay attention, if people are growing up thinking tropes were invented on fanfiction websites.

As a non-binary trans masc person, it’s terrifying to even step out of the house and I’m not even publicly out yet. The amount of trans and homophobia around England is insane and terrifying: it’s to the point where everyday I’m reading the news and another LGBTQ-related attack is somewhere on the front page. Another transgender person has been murdered in cold blood or another lesbian couple has been beaten up on the tube in London. As someone who has been constantly penalised and put down for trying to be who I am, as well as outted against my will, it’s scary to read these things everyday. It was heart breaking to watch GMB every morning and see Piers Morgan invalidating my gender through an argument with someone who was trying his best to defend me. It was cringe-worthy hearing the comments coming from my own “friend”‘s mouth when I tried to come out.

JKR was a perfect example of just the power of the hate in this country: her voice - and her supporters voices - were so loud that they got the government to backtrack on their plans to allow me to change my legal gender easier. Because it invalidated sexual assault survivors and their hardships. I was sexually assaulted when I was 8: and again when I was 11. Believe me when I tell you, letting a transgender woman use the fucking woman’s bathroom is NOT invalidating your assault. That sounds like a you problem, not theirs.

The government is actively enabling the persistent LGBTQ hate in this country. In the last four months there have been several online petitions which they have HAD to look at due to 100k+ signatures. Each time their only was response was “No, we support you, but no. Too much work.” If you refuse to recognise me as existing- to recognise that I am a law abiding person who deserves to be able to legally be me- then you are not supporting me.

The NHS has a wait time of anywhere from two years to ten years for gender clinic appointments: just to get put on hormone medication, you could be waiting up to 7 years for one appointment. Unless you go private that is. Not only is private extremely expensive, but the NHS practitioners have every right to DENY your referral / diagnosis because it wasn’t done by an NHS professional. So even if you do go private, there’s no guarantee. A lot of transgender people are resorting to illegally obtaining hormone drugs from dealers. We’re that desperate.

It’s gotten so bad that OTHER COUNTRIES are acknowledging that it’s unsafe to live here. Two years ago a British transgender women sook asylum in New Zealand based purely off of her gender identity and WAS SUCCESSFUL. Portugal also accepts asylum seekers based off of gender identity. That is how bad it is here. Transgender people are dying everyday. This is how bad it is.

Its been about 7-8 times seeing the post about men who don’t wash properly for reasons that don’t make sense…. and although funny, it’s also gross and sad because I know there are black men out here who just are missing the cleanliness mark. This is a patriarchy issue… so all races are affected in large numbers I’m sure but I offer this as a public service post for any black man who might need it + black men who pride themselves on taking good care of their hair, skin, nails pls add on to this post @ will.

  The Importance Of Daily Washing/Showering

Bacteria collects on the skin. Dead skin cells also accumulate and contribute to body odor, as well as acne and other potential hygiene problems (ringworm, athletes foot, etc. ) 

Soaps I highly recommend:

ALAFFIA AUTHENTIC  AFRICAN BLACK SOAP-EUCALYPTUS TEA TREE 

you can get bottles of this for 7$-8 @ target and other places and they last a long time. The bar version can be found for 3.99 I highly recommend the tea tree oil infused one because tea tree oil is antimicrobial.

Yardley Oatmeal and Almond Bar Soap

This soap can be purchased cheaply at most dollar stores but it is quite good and removes dirt better than a good number of brands…  all the different scents are good, oatmeal has soothing properties, which is something to keep in mind for people with eczema or sensitive skin.

Aveeno Moisturizing Bar

Similar to above, maybe a better quality of  ingredients… can be found for $2-3 or a little more depending on where u shop

 Dove Soap

Do not sleep on dove soap. Its better than whatever ‘manly’ soap you are currently using. Period

Lava Soap

  Imma b real with ya’ll I’ve never used this one but I see it in hardware stores and I know its some males who won’t use half the ones I suggested because you see them as too ‘feminine’ and such… Red packaging = manly so you’re welcome.

      Soap, Lather & Scrubbing…

You need a soap that's going to lather well, that is going to really move dirt and one that leaves a pleasant scent. Most male soap washes ( Axe, Zest, Lever, Old Spice…. all that shit really) smells like someone threw a bottle of cologne on a moose. These companies assume you don’t really clean and just pile on the fragrance. Do yourself a favor and learn how to really wash.

That’s why besides Alaffia, I recommend you force yourself to use a bar of soap for at least a month… no bodywash shower gels!!! Unlearn bad habits. 

Tools besides soap that reaaaally matter:

Pumice Stone + Brush

If you stepping into a shower and not using one of these on your feet then fam you are not clean. Waaaaay too many men do not even know what a pumice stone is. Google it. watch a youtube tutorial on it.

Silicone Face Scrub

I went into detail about soaps but you need a separate soap for your face. Something that cleans deep and has an active ingredient to counteract gunk that gets in your pores and causes acne. The reason I’m not giving examples is everyone’s skin on they face is soo different you can only get the right one by trying face washes and sticking to the one that doesn’t irritate your skin.

Washcloth (Glove Shown Cuz I Don’t Trust Ya’ll)

Showering without a washcloth is anti-black. You need one. Lather heavy with soap and scrub. You repeat this on all surface areas until the cloth has no film or dirt from your skin. Seriously. The glove I think is good for guys because you just put it on and focus on getting really clean.

Back Scrubber^^ 

There are different kinds but I recommend the loofah sponge. Same rules as the washcloth and this time the focus is on your back.

Nail Clipper/ Cleaner

Should be self-explanatory. Every few days check to see if you have nails that need to be clipped. keep dirt from under your fingernails.

Washing Genitals + Soap and Water Featuring Your Own Ass

The washcloth rules of lather+ scrub until there is no remaining residue is particularly important when it comes to your genital area. You have to get this right. Tie your self-esteem to it. Aaaaand You cannot be a grown man and think that respect can ever be attained by you in this world if applying the soap +water + washcloth principle to your own ass is something you refuse to do.

A lot of dudes refuse to take baths because its ‘not manly’ but I promise you, applying what I’ve said earlier while in a bathful of water you may come to realize that you been playing yourself this whole time. The tub will probably be dirty af if you’ve never approached washing this seriously before.

Finetuning

Take the washcloth to your ears. Same Rules As Above

Take Your Jewelry Out And Scrub Those Areas Too

If you are particularly hairy… body hair wise… consider if that fact is contributing to body odor… if it is… Real talk. U need to cut it. Thats all imma say on that.

Bathe/ Shower Twice a Day At Least From Now On. Your Shower Should Last @ LEAST 15-20Mins Bruhhhh < < you should be reading that and saying ‘bet, 30mins.’ Not ‘bet, 8mins.’

Cologne is grown. Get one that ain’t stank. Until you learn the difference get 

(A Pro-tip Best Believe It) ^^^^

Find A Quality Shampoo For Black Hair. I know a bunch buuut…

A lot of dudes I know use palmer’s cocoa butter for lotion but I recommend 

^^ oils that can be ingested are often safest for the skin. I forgot most dudes don’t know about that.

I repeat OIL IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. Especially, COCONUT OIL. I know the black community raves about that stuff, but there’s been several cases (me included) having a reaction to coconut oil rather it was a allergic reaction or just that your skin is sensitive and does not like coconut oil. Coconut oil has something in it, I can’t remember which makes some people scratchy, dry their skin up more, cause hives. So try different oils like stated like olive oil, jojoba oil, etc for skin. Also make sure your skin actually liked oil. Some people get drier using oil ironically.

But if you lazy and don’t feel like trying to find the right oil for you just use a butter like: