Give me something to sing about

Wake up babe, new octopus just dropped

If I tell you this is a horror dance number it still won't prepare you. That last move was so terrifying even the judge was like "Let go! Let go!" If you told me they're actually possessed I'd believe you.

The music is a remix of the song Mere Dholna from the Bollywood movie Bhool Bhulaiyya, a remake of the classic Malayalam horror-comedy Manichitrathazhu. It's about a young bride that seemingly becomes possessed of Manjulika, a dancer of the ancient royal court whose tragic death has turned her into a vengeful spirit, one who evokes the wrath of the goddess Durga Kali. In the iconic scene that is repeated across remakes, the groom and his family discover his bride dancing in the dead of night in a manic, disassociative fugue, wearing a moth-eaten dancer's costume and a face smeared in kohl, ash and vermilion. She's hallucinating that she's Manjulika dancing carefree for the court with her lover. The upbeat music is deliberately incongruous with the pathos and creepiness of the scene in reality, especially as it crescendos in the bride's head to the moment when the king decapitates Manjulika's beloved in a fit of jealous rage.

This specific number is by the all-male troupe B Unique, performed for the Indian reality talent contest Hunabaarz. It's a modern fusion based on Bharatnatyam that turns up the creep factor by 200% and is basically a showcase of contortionism and synchronicity. One of the most perfectly choreographed and executed dances I have ever seen. Truly incredible!

Kadeem EnPointe

I don't even go here (ballet), but this dancer came across my feed at random on FB, and I think that if he's looking for the right audience.... well, Tumblr loves a beautiful man doing beautiful dances in beautiful clothes.

He's also selling prints on his website!! Like this one!!

There are a lot more than just this one, but this is one of my favorites. There's also artwork of him in the prints section!

if your ostomy bags, incontinence supplies, and sanitary wipes are single-use,

if your joint replacement, bone plate, pins & screws, or spinal hardware is cobalt & chrome,

if your meds come in a plastic container you can’t recycle or reuse for sterility,

you are still innocent. you didn’t choose this particular life. we all must do what we can to survive and that includes using technology and consuming resources. it is only human and we all do it.

Don’t reuse the syringe. Don’t use cloths over alcohol swabs. Choose the battery powered device over the rechargeable if it means you can carry spares. Don’t use the reusable container if you can’t get it open. Don’t choose the reusable option if you can’t keep it clean. Don’t overfill the sharps container. Don’t improvise the tourniquet. Don’t eat the expired food if you can’t afford to be sick. Don’t choose the sustainable option if it doesn’t meet your needs.

There’s a lot said in the news and in activist circles about your personal carbon footprint but BP came up with that to deflect responsibility for their various and horrifying behaviors and to make us turn on each other. You know what’s more dangerous to marine life than straws? Literal tons and tons of commercial fishing nets abandoned in the ocean, and the microplastics and forever chemicals dumped by corporate manufacturers and oil companies

YOU the person, the individual, have to live, and whatever that takes? That’s good. That’s a good thing, because it means we get you in the world. Use your medical equipment, your medications, your AC, whatever you need

You physically cannot do the damage of a fleet of oil tankers or a fracking company, even a thousand or a hundred thousand disabled people cannot do the damage of someone with a personal jet

You aren’t doing anything wrong, something much bigger than you is trying to trick you into hating yourself so that you don’t hate them

⋆˙⟡ The economy of small towns is not quaint. It is precarious and everyone knows exactly how precarious. When the plant closed, or the mill shut down, or the highway got rerouted fifteen miles east, the whole town felt it in a specific and lasting way. There are towns that have been dying for forty years and the people in them know it and don't talk about it directly but it's in everything. The storefronts with plywood where glass used to be, the school that consolidated with the next town over, the young people who leave and the question of whether they're coming back that nobody asks out loud because everybody already knows the answer. Writing a small town without writing its economic reality is writing a set, not a place.

⋆˙⟡ There is a specific kind of person who runs everything and they are not elected. Every small town has someone. Sometimes a family, sometimes just an individual, who is not officially in charge of anything but whose opinion determines outcomes. The woman who's been on every committee for thirty years. The family that's owned the land since before living memory. They don't have to make demands. Everyone already knows where the edges are. A newcomer or outsider won't see this power structure at first because it isn't written down anywhere. It lives in who gets called first, who's consulted before decisions are made, whose silence means disapproval. Writing this type of character correctly means never letting them explain themselves. They don't need to.

⋆˙⟡ Leaving is a complicated moral act and coming back is even more complicated. The person who got out, who went to college, who moved to the city, who built a life somewhere else, occupies a strange position. There's pride in them, genuine pride, and also a kind of low resentment that nobody names. They think they're better than this. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but the suspicion is there. And when they come back, for a funeral, because things fell apart, because they got sick, the town doesn't quite absorb them back in the way they expect. They're not who they were. But they're also not from away. They're in a third category that doesn't have a comfortable name and everyone, including them, is a little awkward about it.

⋆˙⟡ People maintain relationships for decades past the point where they would have ended anywhere else. Because the pool is small and leaving is a whole thing, people stay in friendships, in dynamics, in proximity to people they would have simply stopped seeing in a city. The woman who is still friends with her ex-husband's sister because their kids go to the same school and their mothers are in the same Bible study and it would be more work to be enemies than to just keep showing up. These relationships have layers and scar tissue. They are not warm exactly, but they are not cold either. They are maintained. Writers often write relationships as chosen. In small towns, a lot of relationships are simply continued.

⋆˙⟡ Local history is oral and it is everywhere and it is not neutral. The story of what happened to the Henderson property, why the Murphys and the Dales don't speak, what exactly went on the summer of the flood; this history lives in people, not in records. And it gets told selectively, with emphasis and with meaning. The version your family tells is not the version their family tells. History in a small town is a living argument. A character who grew up there absorbed a version of local history that shaped their understanding of who deserves what and why, and that version has gaps and biases they cannot fully see. A newcomer doesn't have access to this history at all and will keep misreading things because of it.

Yes

No

But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting.  Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible.  Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible.  Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.