Analyzing the politics of a work that's meant to be apolitical is actually a really interesting exercise because it asks you to critically examine what the creator considers to be "political" in the first place. Which ideas are just How Things Are, and which ones are Political, and how is that influenced by the creator's beliefs?
Angrily lashing out at the suggestion that it's possible to do basic media analysis was foundational to the ragebait ecosystem of the 2010s, from which we got basically the entire culture of modern far right politics, btw.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.
Like, my assumption this whole time has been that when folks go "I misunderstood this post that says [thing] as saying [unrelated thing] because I mistook [word] for [completely different word that happens to start with the same letter]", that was a bit. What do you mean they're teaching kids a reading method that's tailored to produce this exact error?
Mississippi used to be at or near the bottom national literacy rankings and as I understand, their near meteoric surge in literacy rate ranking is almost entirely due to the fact that they largely still use phonics
And I want to emphasize here that the poor literacy is the intended outcome.
We've done the research on how to make a good education system and it's been put into practice irl via Finland, who has one of the best education systems in the world and it was built almost entirely using US research.
The lack of reading comprehension is the intended outcome
I understand the urge to comment on recent trends in which people seem to want increasingly sanitized media compared to the recent past, but when you say things like "people used to just shrug and move on when there were books and movies that made them uncomfortable" it's like...well. actually people used to convict artists of obscenity in a court of law.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Hello, I work for a large moderately evil corporation and for at least five years now I have to sign a yearly thing to say I will never ever have one of these devices in the same room as me while I work.
My large moderately evil employer takes it for granted that these things are spying on me at all times, and you should too.
like. i'll leave this alone. but HOW are historical romance books not sexualizing the fall of breeches. literally a blowjob flap. not to mention the collars that open to the diaphragm. the décolletage with a wide neckline one swift tug from being revealed. the calves on display. the intimacy of finally seeing the real hair beneath the wig. cmon it's basic storytelling
women straight-up didn't wear bifurcated undergarments in most of Europe until the 1820s, and even then, those pantalettes you see around had open crotch seams for ease of using the toilet
just saying ;)
(you may or may not be able to pull down a wide neckline depending on the type of garment; some were much more structured than they looked. and often there was a rigid support garment underneath hiding Boobs from easy view. just for people's reference)
Look at this setup and tell me no one has ever written a story of ladies getting into the habit of leaving each other notes in the pockets and borrowing small items simply for the excuse of slipping a hand into the other's pannier
My favorite is the fidget spinner space station. It almost feels like someone designed it first and then fidget spinners came out and now everyone laughs at it… instead of the other way around.
The year is 2009, the place is the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu, and I am recovering from a still-undiagnosed disease that left me with a 100+ degree for over three weeks, extreme weight loss and permanent Brain Damage. I have signed up for an introductory Art History class because I need an additional Humanities credit.
It's called "The History and Philosophy of the Japanese Tea Ceremony", and for a class I can only sort of remember, it stands out.
So I'm in professor Roberts' Japanese Tea Ceremony class, looking and feeling like death warmed over, but I'm genuinely interested in the subject matter and show up to every class because I have nothing better to do, and ask questions and turn in my homework, even if neither are particularly coherent at times, and rapidly become his favorite student. The thing I learned in public school was how to show up to events even if I don't want to, analyze tests and other written materials for patterns and charm educators by holding up my end of a conversation, skills that have served me in the modern world far more than learning actual course content would have.
The Tea Ceremony, historically, takes a good month to prepare and the entire evening to carry out- the guest list is curated to create social bonds and intellectual stimulation alike, a poem is composed for the season, and a seasonal flower arrangement created to decorate the space. When the guests arrive, they must all crawl through a small door to enter the tea garden, regardless of profession or rank. Hands are ritually washed in spring water, and there is a slow processional walk through the garden, to admire the artistry of the landscaping, and the composition of seasonal elements to create this particular night of beauty. The entire ceremony is about appreciating both the joy of existing right now, in this time and place, and the unification of the self and the universe and the endless cycles of nature.
The guests arrive at the tea house and meet the Tea Master, who will be making the Matcha that evening. The guests are seated in particular order, the Most Revered Guest- sometimes a high-ranking official, sometimes a visiting scholar or artist- is seated closest to the Tea Master. The Poem is read aloud. The Flowers are admired. The tools for making the Matcha are taken out, examined as objects of art, and their history told. The matcha powder itself is taken out- the case examined, the cultivation of the tea discussed, and only then does the Tea Master make the Tea.
Matcha is not brewed- it's a fine powder made of crushed green tea leaves, and the powder is whisked together with not-quite-boiling water in a bowl to create a much more substantial and flavorful drink. This drink is presented to the Most Revered Guest first, who is expected to take a sip and, in a moment of Zen spiritual clarity, comment on its flavor and how all the elements of the tea, art, garden and season all complement each other, and perhaps offer some sort of philosophical statement.
At least,
That's how it's supposed to go.
About a month before the spring semester is over, Professor Roberts announces that he has a surprise for his class- a good friend of his, a Professional Tea Master, will be visiting Hawai'i, and has agreed to perform a Tea Ceremony for our class! I am very excited. The other 10 people in class are varying levels of amiably confused to distressed by having to go to An Event (TM) for a grade, but agree. One of my classmates, an astrology hoe named Jessica, pointed out that with the 11 students, Professor Roberts, and the Tea Master, there will be 13 people present, which is basically inviting disaster.
"Jessica." Sighed Professor Roberts. "It's a Tea Ceremony. What disaster could happen?"
Despite Jessica's misgivings, Preparations for the ceremony went on. We learned about Ikebana while deciding on the Ceremonial Bouquet and tried our hands at it with what Professor Robert could get at the grocery store for $12. We learned about calligraphy and different types of poetic compositions while making the Seasonal Poem, and stain the hell out of the classroom carpet learning the brush strokes. We learn about different types of Matcha Bowl sculpting and glazing and we are not allowed to touch the demonstration bowls or the kiln because Professor Roberts was beginning to suspect that some of his students (me) were suffering from coordination issues. I apply myself with zeal, if not necessarily talent. I was, at the time, an Art Major, but my professors in the art department had been grading me on a secret "this bitch almost died last semester and is re-learning how to hold a pencil" curve, and boy howdy did I stumble and break leaves and splatter ink like it.
Despite my ongoing unmonitored recovery, Professor Roberts viewed my enthusiastic class participation with rose-colored glasses, and about a week before the ceremony we had a class where he brought out the used Kimonos and Obi and other forms of japanese dress he'd borrowed from the theater department so that we would be traditionally dressed(ish) and experience the ceremony authentically(ish). While people were trying on clothes to see what would fit, he took me aside and told me he wanted me to be in the position of Most Revered Guest, the person who makes the zen statement upon which the entire event hinges.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I asked.
"You're the only person who doesn't fall asleep in class and you talked about how the flowers stagger their blooms to not compete for the bees- you're perfectly engaged and conscious of the seasons!" He said, blindly. "You will need different shoes though." He indicated my flip-flops. "I won't make you learn how to walk in Geta, but nothing with Heels. Ballet flats are fine."
"...These are the only shoes I own." I said.
Professor Roberts stared at me.
"-I used to have a pair of sneakers but I think a homeless guy stole them while I was at the beach last month."
"What?" Roberts blinked.
"He probably needed them more than I do. I'll see if I can borrow some flats."
"...I don't think I've ever met a woman with less than 10 pairs of shoes." Said Roberts.
"I'm not a woman, I'm and undergrad." I said, still three years away from learning the term 'Nonbinary'. "Those are Jordan's only pair of shorts, you know." I pointed at my classmate, who had been wearing the one (1) pair of basketball shorts for the entire semester.
"I WASH THEM." Jordan shouted defensively, wearing the longest Men's Kinmo the theater department had, which barely came down to the top of his calves.
"Oh God." Said Roberts, a horrifying new world opening up to him like a tub of Expired sour cream.
*
It was the day of the Ceremony.
The Seasonal Theme we'd worked on was "The Turn Of Summer", and the weather was complying maliciously.
Normally, Tea Ceremonies are scheduled for the more temperate evening, but due to the school needing to host something in the adjoining cultural center later, we could only use the Tea Garden in the middle of the afternoon, and the summer sun was a sweltering 98 degrees and a similar level of Humidity. The Camelias were melting.
Where Jordan had difficulty finding a Kimono that suited his ent-like proportions, I'd had the opposite problem and the only Kimono short enough to not trip my Hobbit-sized self was a Child’s size. My roommate had helped me get into the Kimono and Obi before the ceremony, and leant me a pair of her Ballet Flats, but we discovered an issue- this Kimono was designed for a flat-chested prepubescent youth, and even though I barely scraped 5'0", I had the robust proportions of an Irish Peasant, and the only way to avoid displaying a frankly offensive amount of cleavage was to use the widest Obi we could find and sort of tuck my boobs into it.
"Hm" I said. "Kind of hard to breathe."
"Yeah, but you're sitting for most of it, right? It can't last more than an hour, so just like, shuffle and don't talk much?" She suggested.
To her credit, the first forty-five minutes of the ceremony only involved shuffling through the gardens and not talking while the Tea Master lectured us on some of the finer points of the garden's design.
But then we got to the Tea House- a small structure only barely able to accommodate the 13 of us, which was in the shade but hotter than the outside because of the roaring fire in the middle of the room, where the water for the Matcha was boiling. The room was surrounded by a narrow sort of porch, part of which hung over the Koi pond, where several massively overfed carp blurbled expectantly for treats at the arrival of humans. I sat down, legs folded under me like Professor Roberts had insisted, and realized that this pushed the Obi UP, and now my rib cage was being compressed in all directions.
I tried to pay attention to the rest of the ceremony, but two and a half hours is an awfully long time to listen about lecturers you've already heard when your body is undergoing a sort of internal horserace to see if the heatstroke, sciatica pain and numbness, allergies or suffocation-by-compression will cause you to pass out first. My legs had gone numb below the knee by the time we were done with the flower arrangement. My entire legs were numb before we were done with the Poem. By the time the Tea Utensils came out, I was seeing spots of colored light in my vision and could only breathe if I focused on it very, very hard.
But! The ceremony was genuinely interesting! and Professor Roberts was counting on me! So I did my best not to sway or throw up from watching the Tea Master whisk the Matcha, and dutifully took the bowl with a pair of hands that felt like slabs of ham that I was attempting to puppet from another dimension, and took a sip.
They say that Smell and Taste are far more closely connected to the emotional centers of the brain than any other sense, and I believe it because the instant I inhaled both the grassy, powdery smell, and tasted the moderately viscous bubbly liquid, I experienced an intense flashbulb memory back to a previous late May-
The Year was '98, the place was my elementary school art room, and we'd been using the seasonal hot weather to paint on a massive scale as the art dried quickly- each third-grader had been given a roll of butcher paper, a cheap brush, squirts of non-toxic paint and a water cup, and allowed to go hog-wild on our murals, and the rush of creative energy and the imminent sense of freedom as the semester drew to a close truly embodied the summer of youth, carefree but with an almost psychotic fervor, where lack of care was both freeing and dangerous as you lost track of your surroundings in the act of creation-
Which isn't a bad seasonal-philosophical connection statement to make, but the actual words that came out of my mouth were:
"Wow. This tastes exactly like paint."
The first sound I heard after the moment of silence was the cartoonishly loud gasp of horror from Professor Roberts, which was almost immediately drowned out by the thunderclap of laughter from the Tea Master, slapping his thighs and wiping tears from his face, unable to stop. I desperately tried to explain the connection between the fact I might be dying of heat stroke right now, and how I ended up drinking my paint water back in Mrs. Krantz's art class because back then I was also dying of heat stroke, but mostly ended up wheezing half-formed sentences as the rest of the class took sips and offered opinions varying between "Wow, that's thick. Like a Hot smoothie." and "Oh yeah, it tastes like summer. Like how a freshly-mowed lawn smells like summer." Professor Roberts slowly melted into a pile of shame, and the Tea Master slapped him on the back, still howling with laughter.
"They're honest! Nobody else will be honest! This is magnificent!" he wheezed.
Eventually, everyone had their taste, and the ceremony was concluded. The second the Tea Master had packed up his tools and stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, Professor Roberts was in my face.
"HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT?" he hissed, grabbing my arm and pulling me up. "GO APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW!" he shoved me out onto the porch where the Tea Master was looking at the Koi, who had started bubble-begging aggressively again.
Except that my legs felt like blocks of wood that my pelvis was renting from another planet where legs hadn’t been invented yet, my vision was entirely static between the dehydration and lack of oxygen, and my vestibuar system had fucked off an hour ago, leaving me to stay upright by purely by the virtue of the over-tightened Obi. So instead of bowing and apologizing profusely like my professor expected, what I actually did was stumble out of the room, say something like "Hsdfkf" and topple head-first into the koi pond.
Fortunately, the impact of the bottom of the pond with the top of my skull activated a sort of last-resort emergency self preservation system and I inhaled with enough force to break the Obi-Jime and probably a couple ribs from the pain that hit both my sides like lightning. Unfortunately, the thing I was inhaling was fish-shit riddled Pond Water, so my emergency self-preservation system ordered an even harder Exhale.
The Tea Master, to his immense credit, had immediately jumped in after me, and pulled me upright just in time for me to forcibly exhale half a gallon of rancid pond water directly into his face, then start screaming. Screaming is an extremely appropriate reaction to have when injured, because it alerts everyone that you require medical attention, but is very unpleasant to experience from four inches away, which is probably why he then immediately dropped me.
Fortunately the pond wasn't very deep and this time I sat there, scream-gasping as my lungs reinflated, Koi fish burbling and sucking at me with tremendous excitement, until the EMT from the campus clinic arrived, a vanguard before the actual ambulance.
"Okay uh. You're bleeding." he said, cautiously wading into the pond.
I opened my eyes to find that I had apparently acquired a large and profusely bleeding head wound, which had activated some long-suppressed Shark Instincts in the Koi, which were eagerly gumming at the streams of blood and trying to suck on my forehead. "Good thing they don’t have teeth." I said in the distant bliss that only zen masters and people with serious head injuries get to experience.
"Do you want a towel?" he asked, helping me up.
"No, this is rather refreshing, actually." I said, still absolutely smashed on endorphins, Koi still enthusiastically swarming at my kneecaps.
"I mean like for your-" the EMT Gestured Vaguely at my torso.
I looked down and realized that not only had I broken the Obi-jime, the entire Obi had come undone and was floating several feet away, and I was only wearing the Kimono, fallen completely off my shoulders and was only being prevented from performing a full Lady Godiva by the valiant efforts of the safety pin my roommate had put in to keep it folded correctly while we figured out the Obi.
"Professor Roberts?" I stood up all the way, soaking wet, bleeding from my forehead with such force as to create actual streams of blood down my face, neck and chest, tits out, and addressed the poor man standing, white-faced on the deck above the pond. "I don't think I'm going to be in class on Monday-" I paused to fish a small Koi that had gotten trapped in the remains of the now-ruined Kimono, and tossed it back into the pond. "-Can I schedule a make-up exam for the Final?"
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET IN THE AMBULANCE!" He screamed.
I was x-rayed for a skull fracture, but my lifelong membership to the Lactose Tolerance Club had protected me, and I happily texted my roommate to come pick me up as "They x-rayed my head and found nothing" while the doctor stitched part of my scalp back together.
The following morning, I discovered that Professor Roberts had graded my exam before I took it. 100%. Truly, the best way to get a good grade on your finals is to get a serious head injury.
So, Matcha is not a Tea, in my humble opinion.
Matcha is an Experience.
And sometimes that experience is drinking something almost exactly like paint, ruining an important cultural ceremony, traumatizing your professor, and introducing a bunch of fish to the taste of human flesh.
***
If this made you laugh, there are more funny stories on My Patreon, or you can help support me by tipping my Ko-Fi. Thank You.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“
Just as courage is not the absence of fear but doing the brave thing in spite of it, patience is not the absence of irritation but doing the kind thing in spite of it.
Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.
Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
this may be an Unpopular Opinion (even on tumblr) but like the 8-hour workday is just Too Gotdamn Long
like even sitting in an office for eight hours a day isn’t particularly pleasant (or healthy, as we are beginning to see) but when we’re talking about doing *actual work* for that same amount time it gets pretty fucking brutal
doing literally *anything* (even leisure activities) for eight hours straight tends to be less than enjoyable but when we’re talking about things like construction, landscaping, factory work, and hell, even foodservice and retail, eight hours is a fucking ETERNITY
i might just be a lazy weak-willed bitch but honestly i think i’m not entirely wrong
this was being worked towards by leftist labor unions way back in the day after the time of FDRs new deal. people in the 40s and 50s were already starting to realize that we no longer actually needed an 8 hour work day or even a 5 day work week.
even with the comparatively primitive factory tech of the time we were already creating a huge amount of excess production back then and companies were making massive amounts of profit. So it already stood to reason that companies should either let their employees work less and thus each employee could work a shorter shift without lowering the yearly compensation of each employee, or in cases where businesses provide an active service they would shorten the shift but hire more people to cover the necessary operating time. but of course that would mean less money for people at the top so companies fought back hard and we ended up with nixon’s bullshit and so on and now its considered the norm for us to spend the vast majority of our lives doing work that really just amounts to waste.
The IWW realised this and were fighting for it all the way back in the 1930s. This is a take with a lot of historical and theoretical grounding, OP, so you’re standing in good stead.
I’d also like to add it’s also been studied and scientifically proven that after 6 hours, we have an extremely noticeable drop in productivity. Sweden saw nothing but benefits from a 6-hour work day, including worker productivity, happiness, and half the amount of sick-leave used when applied to nurses.
