Nobody Expects the Elvhen Inquisition

calling the sex I have with my friends “hookup culture” is insulting and incorrect. these are guys who take care of me and take me on dates and watch fun movies with me. being a disabled faggot too, they help me clean my place and take my trash out for me. they care for me and are on my emergency contact lists. trying to slap the label of “todays hookup culture!!!” on it is diminishing and devaluing those relationships

Like. I remember back in my grocery store cashier days I did so much crazy shit.

When WIC (Women, infants, and children voucher program to help low income mothers/families with children) people were in my line I would pretty much know who they were. Before the cards they had to tell us upfront they were WIC and show us their vouchers for what they were allowed to get (it was awful some times. Like. 2 gallons of milk. $4 worth of vegetables etc etc). They’d always have items hanging back, waiting to see what the total was and if they would have to take it off the belt.

I began to place the fruits/vegetables a certain way on the register scale so that like 1/2lbs of grapes read as like .28lbs or something. Then act shocked when I said that they still had X amount of lbs left. They got all their fruit and vegetables.

I think it started to kinda? Catch on to the women? Because I would have the same moms in my line month after month. And even after they switched to the cards (they worked like food stamp cards?) I’d still do the same thing. They were able to get more produce for whatever shitty max amount Indiana gave them.

but irregardless it, to me, makes him just that bit more Flavorful, adds more context to his visible need to help the downtrodden get their dues, especially against people using the rigged system to their benefit. and in WUDM it gives his dislike of the church more substance than "reddity atheist" (i have No love for the church myself but a more nuanced viewpoint on why someone might feel that way is always more innteresting).

And *I* have this thing where I always always know when he’s there, because every time he’s not wandering around like the ghost of bob marley and isn’t immediately visible it’s because he’s stopped moving to watch the film from directly behind me, which makes the back of my neck tingle like a dog sensing an earthquake

Which has on more than one occasion resulted in me interrupting the movie to tell him to just sit the fuck down and stop lurking in the shadows, Jesus Christ, it’s like I’m being haunted by the memory of ancient sins

Which has in turn been shortened to just “ancient sins”, every time I feel him doing it again

We… were not. 

War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away. 

And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few. 

“We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.” 

It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful.

But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us. 

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

France, Holland and Germany:

In Venice in particular, the style lingered and became popular to wear during Carnival, or as a way for upper class women to disguise their identity so they could engage in activities that might otherwise be considered improper (gambling, flirting, or just like... going about the city without a proper chaperone) 

an interesting construction note - these masks weren’t tied on. They were made with a bead or button attached inside the mask which was held between the teeth. If a wearer wanted to speak, she would have to remove the mask.