PotterTrekWhoLock

girls

boys

anyone

no one

friends

etc

So that everyone would know who’s looking for who.

Like:

“Hey that girl is cute. And her wristband says she’s also looking for a girl. Sweet!”

Or:

I went running a little later than usual this morning, which means I caught the sunrise; sunrises are nice and all, but sunrise is way cooler reflected in the faces of the buildings on Michigan Avenue. 

And then I punched a pigeon in the face. Possibly to death. I’m not feeling good about it. 

I was on the return leg, near the CSO, and there was a homeless dude to my right and some pigeons to my left up ahead. I was just running along, mostly thinking unflattering thoughts about Coldplay and why they had to make Viva la Vida so very long, when I startled the pigeons and they took off. 

And you know, sometimes when you startle a bird they fly straight towards you.

So I startled too and ducked right, but as I ducked right, my left foot came forward and both my hands came up to block. And because my left foot was forward, right arm was blocking, and my left arm was already raised, I just like….instinctively threw what I have to admit was a frankly amazing left hook. 

I didn’t mean to. It just happened. It’s probably the most beautiful punch of my life (not difficult, I haven’t punched much) and I socked that pigeon right in its poor tiny face. 

Feathers went everywhere (including up my nose, oh my god) and I stopped and did like a weird hop-turn thing to slow my momentum, and what I saw was just freaked out birds and a cloud of feathers and homeless dude losing his shit laughing.

And I didn’t know what to do, I don’t know what one does when you’ve just punched a bird probably to death. I couldn’t even see a body. Did I vaporize the bird? 

So I looked at the settling feathers and I looked at the homeless dude, who started laughing all over again, and I turned around and legged it (Viva la Vida was still playing). 

So IDK if I can trust any pace I set this morning, because man is inherently destructive and eternally at odds with nature. 

But I did 1.93 in 26:37 for a pace of 13.47 which is slower than my average and likely does account for the bird punching. 

Free Speech Zones, which were a real thing and not a plot element in a particularly ham-handed dystopian novel.

The phrase “hidey hole.”

Watching a budget surplus become a massive deficit that was bigger than it even looked because the White House was just like, “Okay, we’ll just not put the wars on the books and just ask for more money for those every few months.”

The sheer number of times Alberto Gonzalez said, “I don’t recall,” to Congress regarding war crimes and human rights violations.

“…now watch this drive.”

Mission Accomplished.

“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” “yellowcake uranium,” Condoleeza’s “mushroom clouds” fearmongering, and all the other bullshit we were fed to get into Iraq.

Also, “Free Speech Zones” looked something like this:

Matt 5:39

This specifically refers to a hand striking the side of a person’s face, tells quite a different story when placed in it’s proper historical context. In Jesus’s time, striking someone of a lower class ( a servant) with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. Another alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect putting an end to the behavior or if the slapping continued the person would lawfully be deemed equal and have to be released as a servant/slave.   

(via thefullnessofthefaith)

THAT makes a lot more sense, now, thank you. 

(via guardianrock)

I can attest to the original poster’s comments. A few years back I took an intensive seminar on faith-based progressive activism, and we spent an entire unit discussing how many of Jesus’ instructions and stories were performative protests designed to shed light on and ridicule the oppressions of that time period as a way to emphasize the absurdity of the social hierarchy and give people the will and motivation to make changes for a more free and equal society.

For example, the next verse (Matthew 5:40) states “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” In that time period, men traditionally wore a shirt and a coat-like garment as their daily wear. To sue someone for their shirt was to put them in their place - suing was generally only performed to take care of outstanding debts, and to be sued for one’s shirt meant that the person was so destitute the only valuable thing they could repay with was their own clothing. However, many cultures at that time (including Hebrew peoples) had prohibitions bordering on taboo against public nudity, so for a sued man to surrender both his shirt and his coat was to turn the system on its head and symbolically state, in a very public forum, that “I have no money with which to repay this person, but they are so insistent on taking advantage of my poverty that I am leaving this hearing buck-ass naked. His greed is the cause of a shameful public spectacle.”

All of a sudden an action of power (suing someone for their shirt) becomes a powerful symbol of subversion and mockery, as the suing patron either accepts the coat (and therefore full responsibility as the cause of the other man’s shameful display) or desperately chases the protester around trying to return his clothes to him, making a fool of himself in front of his peers and the entire gathered community.

Additionally, the next verse (Matthew 5:41; “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”) was a big middle finger to the Romans who had taken over Judea and were not seen as legitimate authority by the majority of the population there. Roman law stated that a centurion on the march could require a Jew (and possibly other civilians as well, although I don’t remember explicitly) to carry his pack at any time and for any reason for one mile along the road (and because of the importance of the Roman highway system in maintaining rule over the expansive empire, the roads tended to be very well ordered and marked), however he could not require any service beyond the next mile marker. For a Jewish civilian to carry a centurion’s pack for an entire second mile was a way to subvert the authority of the occupying forces. If the civilian wouldn’t give the pack back at the end of the first mile, the centurion would either have to forcibly take it back or report the civilian to his commanding officer (both of which would result in discipline being taken against the soldier for breaking Roman law) or wait until the civilian volunteered to return the pack, giving the Judean native implicit power over the occupying Roman and completely subverting the power structure of the Empire. Can you imagine how demoralizing that must have been for the highly ordered Roman armies that patrolled the region?

Jesus was a pacifist, but his teachings were in no way passive. There’s a reason he was practically considered a terrorist by the reigning powers, and it wasn’t because he healed the sick and fed the hungry.

(via central-avenue)

In other words, Jesus was executed by the State because he challenged the State’s power.

(via rindle-spikes)

Yes, and isn’t it telling that the state ultimately adopted Christianity and started teaching everyone that Jesus said to obey your parents and to just do what you’re told…else he’d send you to hell?

(via iandsharman)

This is why context is important, folks.

“Tim Hortons holds 62% of the Canadian coffee market (compared to Starbucks, in the number two position, at 7%) 

“Canadians eat more doughnuts per capita and have more doughnut outlets per capita than any other nation“ 

“The company [Tim Hortons] opened twice as many Canadian outlets as McDonald's and system-wide sales also surpassed those of McDonald’s Canadian operations as of 2002”

tim horton the hockey player’s signature move was literally picking opposing players up and hugging them. the guy was like 6′5 on skates, built like a tank, would have come out on top in every hockey fight except that he absolutely refused to punch. someone would hit him and he’d just pick them up in a giant, angry bear hug. 

this one time he broke his jaw and leg in a collision and was off the ice for years, and this freaked him tf out, because dude bro do i like…….have value behind all this muscle? what if this like……happens again, bro? what if i can’t play hockey, bro? huh? bro. basically he broke his face and had an existential crisis. happens to the best of us.

so he started a donut shop because he figured he’d need something to do when the next injury rolled around, seeing as oblivion lurks around every corner and none of us have a purpose. he started it in hamilton, ontario. coffee was ten cents. 

anyways, when his face got better, he invited a police officer to come run his company so he could go play more hockey. which he did.

Me: No this snake is not poisonous at all.

*one of them picks up the snake which bites them. They begin to spasm and foam at the mouth*