Denada Permatasari

you know and like them

You know what’s really important to the other person, their hopes and goals and pet peeves and preferences and fears, and you consciously integrate this knowledge into how you interact with them.

You’re curious about their thoughts and opinions. You’re aware they have a rich inner life and you get excited to find out what they think and how they feel about things, even things that have nothing to do with you. You ask questions and you truly listen to and try to understand the answers.

You seek out opportunities to share experiences with them. You want to be around them and you want to understand why they love the things they love. You want to welcome them into enjoying new things you think they’d like based on your knowledge of them and their preferences.

When they don’t like something you like and vice versa, it isn’t threatening, because you both respect each other and there are other things you can do together. 

you are emotionally available

You pay attention to the kindnesses they show you, and you show appreciation when they listen to you vent or are patient with your foibles or remember your favourite things or make your life brighter in any way.

You make an effort to show these same little kindnesses to them. You often ask about and try to keep track of what they like. You make tiny gestures all the time just to make them happy, and you don’t keep score of them in hopes of getting something you want.

You are honest and considerate with them. When you’re upset about something else you don’t blame it on them or start a fight just to fight. When you need to bring a problem to their attention you do it in a loving way. You don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep and you don’t pretend you feel anything you don’t feel.

You work hard to understand yourself and what’s important to you, what you want and what you feel and why you feel the way you do. Even if you aren’t totally sure what you’re really feeling yet, you try to share yourself with the other person. You’re willing to be vulnerable and let them see your fears and your flaws and your complicated feelings about things.

you actively respect them as your equal

You respect them as a person. There are things you admire about them and you find some of their ‘flaws’ endearing and it’s okay that there are things about them you don’t like because they’re a whole complicated person and you appreciate them for the whole package of who they are. You don’t secretly think you’re better than them. You don’t see them as disposible or fungible or a means to an end.

You respect them as the authority on their life/experiences and acknowledge that however well you know them, there are complexities to them you’ll never fully grasp. You never assume that you’re done getting to know them or that you could make their choices better.

You believe them when they tell you how they feel. You don’t ever try to convince them their feelings are wrong even if those real feelings are in response to a misunderstanding or have a context you don’t fully understand.

You’re comfortable letting them take the lead as often as you do, and you’re willing to compromise on things that affect both of you because their opinions are just as important and well-reasoned as your own. You acknowledge their capacity to know things you don’t or have good ideas you didn’t think of.

you do relational work

You talk to each other when either of you feels relationship problems arising, even if you don’t fully understand them yet, and you work together as a team to keep each other feeling safe and respected and listened to. You work to be patient and supportive and to not take it personally when other things are bothering them.

You apologize, freely and without expecting them to force themselves to heal faster to make you feel better. Your apologies are about letting them know you understand and respect and care about their hurt and that you are choosing not to hurt them in that way again. You don’t have hidden agendas.

When there are choices to be made that affect both of you, you talk them through together and decide together. You don’t expect them to do all the planning work, and you don’t make choices that affect them without their input.

you respect their time and effort and don’t act entitled

You understand you aren’t the only thing they have going on. You give them space to have other interests and friends and you appreciate your time together without making them feel obligated to pay attention to you 24/7. You also make time for them while maintaining your own interests and other relationships.

You make an effort to seek out other sources of emotional support and connection so that you are not relying on this person to meet all your emotional needs.

You don’t expect them to do personal work for you that you’re capable of doing, and if they do such work, you intentionally do similar work for them, work that needs to be done just as often and requires just as much time/effort, because you care about them and don’t want to burden them with extra work.

If they wash the dishes you use, you wash the floors they walk on. If they do the grocery shopping, you the cooking. You don’t ever take it for granted that it’s their job to do personal maintenance work (chores, home care, body care, appointment planning, kinship work) for you without reciprocation. If you are capable of meeting your own basic needs but haven’t bothered to learn to do that work or why it’s important, you seek out resources on your own to learn.

If you genuinely are not capable of doing your own basic self/home maintenance due to disability etc., you don’t assume they will automatically take over that work from now on because of your relationship. You have frank and honest discussions about your needs and their capabilities/limitations/interest wrt helping out.

you actively prioritize their happiness

You make sure they know you appreciate their nos. Every no reassures you that their yeses really mean yes, and you check in all the time to find out what they want and don’t want, because it’s so important to you that they don’t just grin and bear it.

You want them to be happy. You are willing to be deeply inconvenienced without them knowing about it if it will make them happier. You routinely spend time thinking about their feelings and how your words and actions will impact them. If you think they’re unhappy because of you, you want to know why because you are genuinely willing to put hard work into making them happy.

If they’re unhappy because you’re incompatible in a fundamental way, you’d rather give up your relationship with them than let them stay miserable because of it.

The sixteen types originate from Carl Jung’s theory of cognitive functions and, as a member of the psychoanalytic school of thought, the concept of ego development was an integral part of how he formulated his ideas. Therefore, one must understand ego development in order to illuminate the developmental dimension of typology and how types can evolve or mature over time.

It’s pretty likely that it’s a four digit number, and as there are four digits chosen there, that means that there cannot be any repetition. This mean that there are:

No, no, no. Don’t base your deductions of psychology. Let’s talk chemistry. When you first press a button, there’s more of the natural oils on your skin, and therefore it wears down the numbers on the keys faster. Obviously 0 is the first one, then. Try 0791 first.

The light is green.

And here are some more ex-nails.

This looks like something Terry would have given the Nac mac Feegle. (NB, must glow blue in the presence of lawyers…)

If you want something bigger, there are plenty of photos of handsome knives made from old US railroad spikes…

This one is so well-finished that it looks incomplete without a proper grip; of course a grip would conceal its origin. YMMV. Swings and roundabouts..

Not just knives…

There are even swords (with extra metal added, of course).

There’s an attractive Middle Earth Elvish look to these.

my friend left her window open in her bedroom and came back to find this

look at his self-satisfied little face, the cheeky shit

you mean to tell me this isn’t even a pet bird?

that in australia, you have wild birds that just fly from house to house with the express purpose of fucking shit up?

They fly around and fuck shit up

Do you have some kind of mysterious nice birds in your weird foreign country

Went there.

Parrots tried to take our car.

There was another little group of magpies in the park who would attack any solo pedestrian but never bothered anyone walking a dog or pushing a pram, because apparently those were identifiable traits indicating a non-threatening human. In the spirit of inquiry, I started going out of my way to be polite to the magpies - carefully walking a wide arc around them when they were on the ground, etc - and emitting an identifiable call of ‘hello birdie’ before swooping season started. 

I spent the next ten years crossing that park at least once a day and as long as I turned at the first flutter of wings and said ‘hello birdie’ to the magpie waiting to attack as soon as my back was turned, I was fine. Every time, the magpie would stare at me for a minute and then fly off to harass some other pedestrian because apparently the magpies and I, we were cool. 

 Swoopin season on Wikipedia

Anyway, the running gag was that the king (an old Power Rangers knock-off doll) had absolute and unwavering faith in Evil Chancellor Traytor, who basically comported himself like a mix between Grima Wormtongue and Jafar from the Aladdin movies. Everyone was always sure that Evil Chancellor Traytor had something to do with the nefarious scheme of the day. The dude even carried around a poisoned knife called ‘the kingslayer’.

The additional twist on the joke, though, was that he never was behind anything. The king was actually right. Evil Chancellor Traytor was the most devoted civil servant in the entire Action Figure Dystopia. He spent his nights working on writing up new legislature to ensure that broken toys had access to mobility devices, was always on the lookout to acquire new shoeboxes for expanding city infrastructure, and drafted a proposal that once got half the ‘settlement’ in my sister and I’s closet moved to the upper shelf so that vulnerable toys were less likely to be snatched up by the dog.

The knife, as it turned out, was as symbolic as the ‘evil’ in his name. See, Action Figure Dystopia had a long history of corrupted monarchs getting too big for their thrones and exploiting the underclasses. The job of the Evil Chancellor was to always remain vigilant, and loyally serve a good ruler - or, if the regent should became a despot, to slay them on behalf of the people.

But since killing the king would be a terrible crime, the Evil Chancellor had to be the kind of person who would willingly die to spare the people from the plight of a wicked leader; because the murder would be pinned on them, in order to keep the ‘machinery of politics’ working as smoothly as ever.

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor had a diary, in which my sister I would take turns writing out the most over-the-top good shit he’d done behind the scenes. Usually after everyone else had finished talking shit about him. I don’t know why but we got the biggest kick out of being like:

Barbie With the Unfortunate Haircut: Oh that Evil Chancellor Traytor! Why can’t the king see how wicked he is?!

Charmander From the Vending Machine: Char!

Jurassic Park Toy of Jeff Goldblum With Disturbingly Realistic Face: At least if someone puts a knife in the king’s back, we’ll know where to look!

Evil Chancellor Traytor’s Diary: Today I was feeding ducks at the park when I noticed another legless action figure sitting by the benches. I put a hundred dollars into his bag while he wasn’t looking. I really need to increase budgeting to the medical treatment centers. If only we had enough glue, I think we would see far fewer toys trying to get by without limbs… *insert iconic evil laugh*

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor eventually fell victim to one of my mom’s cleaning sprees, and she decided he was too busted up to keep and tossed him out. My littler brother, who tended to follow my sister and I’s games like he was watching a daily soap opera, cried so hard that we had to do a special ‘episode’ where one of the toys found the Evil Chancellor’s diary, and so he got a big huge memorial and the king threw himself into the empty grave and then ordered the toys driving the toy bulldozer to bury him so that ‘Traytor’s grave would have a body’ (this seemed very important for some reason).

Women fought to not have to wear multiple layers of petticoats in the summer, and so a new “crinoline” (technically, a crinoline is an underskirt made of stiff horsehair) was invented, the “cage crinoline” (think hoop skirt) which became dangerous in its own right as women burned to death, became caught in machinery, and were otherwise harmed by the very design meant to be helpful.

Women fought to get rid of restrictive corsetry, inventing “emancipation waists,” (basically a sort of fitted undershirt), Union suits (yep, originally for women but quickly adopted by men), and even the “healthy” S line corset (healthy because it didn’t constrict the ribs. Sadly, like the cage crinoline, it was adopted by high fashion and became a tool of tightlacing.)

Women fought to have more comfortable clothing. Look up the aesthetic dress movement, and the earlier dress reform movement.

Women fought and fought to have swimming suits in which we could actually swim. Once we wore full dresses made of wool to go ocean bathing. Only slowly did the hemlines rise. Pants were added, then the shape became more streamlined. Women were arrested for public indecency. Still, they persisted.

Women fought to have appropriate garments to go cycling in or to ride a horse astride. Women fought and continue to fight to be allowed to attend school in comfortable clothing. I’ve said this before, but when I was a girl, I was required to wear a skirt unless the temperature stayed below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. I was not permitted to wear pants under my skirt, instead wearing woolen tights which itched and would pull down, requiring me to concentrate on keeping my clothing in order as well as my schoolwork.

my mom told me it’s because they ate too much candy

In reference to never using the word ‘very’ when writing, Mark Twain said, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Source

this person (people?) goes about making 10 minute long loopable ambient noise tracks for every imaginable setting (docks, taverns, forests, airships, spaceships, office buildings, sewers, EVERYTHING) and has over a hundred tracks to offer, and on top of that if none of them suit you there’s a huge feature called soundpad where you can mix and match from their set of hundreds of individual sound effects and music clips to make your own ambient background track

It’s about this dude Henry who’s an artist living in New York,

and he has to go back to his hometown in Montana to take care of his grandfather who just recently had a stroke and is wheelchair-bound.

Things are all fine and dandy until Henry finds out that his old best friend from high school, as well as object of his unrequited affections that he’s never really been able to let go of is also back in town. His name is Dean. He’s there with his two sons to recoup from a recent divorce from his wife. 

Henry is extremely frazzled by seeing his long-time crush after so many years, but they spend a lot of time together over the passing weeks and seem to fall into their old friendship very easily. Perhaps a little too easily….??? hmmm???

And with everything with Dean happening, Henry can’t be blamed that he’s entirely oblivious to Pike, the man who runs the local general goods store.

It’s obvious to us (and the whole damn town) that Pike’s been head over heels for Henry since high school, but is painfully shy. He can barely talk to Henry at all and it’s the cuTEST GODDAMN THING oh lord help me from this movie.

Throughout the movie, Pike can’t seem to help himself from wanting nothing more than to make Henry happy from afar. He’s supposed to be delivering food cooked by one of the older ladies in town to Henry and his grandfather’s house to eat every night, but Pike cooks his own, exceptionally better meals, and delivers those instead and tells no one.

Now, Henry does notice Pike, and something about him catches his attention. Even if he doesn’t understand why yet. He tries to invite him to stay for dinner almost every night in an attempt to get him to open up, but Pike only becomes more closed off when he notices what’s going on between Henry and Dean. 

I’ll stop there, as I don’t want to give the whole thing away, but I can’t leave this without talking about the town’s residents in this movie. This place is 100% one of those little towns where everyone knows each other as well as their business, you have nosy little old ladies, dudes who do nothing all day but sit on the porch of the corner store and smoke a pipe, and they all go to church on Sundays.

AND YET, not only is this movie void of any homophobia from any character, basically the whole freaking town is all up in this whole love triangle. They support Pike so much that there’s even scenes where they all play matchmaker with him and Henry. They root for them in the goofiest, most loveable way. 

SO BASICALLY, this is a silly romantic comedy, except gay. It’s all super  lighthearted comedy with tiny bits of drama thrown in. No one dies!!!! No one is killed or commits suicide and has a 100% happy ending!!! The three main guys are just normal guys!!! There’s not a stereotype to be found here!! anD ONE OF THEM IS NATIVE AMERICAN. No seriously guys it hurts me that not everybody knows about this movie. I discovered it when I was in middle school in our video store’s tiny little LGBTQ section, and must have rented it 20 times throughout the years before I finally bought it. I know this movie almost frame by frame I’ve watched it so many times because it’s just so disgustingly cute and always makes me happy. NOW, this movie isn’t perfect. It’s got some clunky acting, weird.. I guess artsy moments that don’t make sense, and crosses into the line of cheesy quite a few times, BUT, that’s really not important. This is treated exactly as if it were a het romantic comedy. Their being gay has nothing to do with the overall story, and is never brought up save for a small plotline where Henry is guilty with himself for never coming out to his grandfather. But overall, more LGBTQ movies need to be like this, it’s just way too rare.

GO WATCH IT YOU’LL BE GLAD YOU DID. Sadly, the only way I know to get ahold of it is to just buy the DVD. But it’s fairly cheap on Amazon! And even cheaper if you buy it used on there, but either way I promise it’s worth it to own. Like I said, I think I kept our video store in business from my renting it so many times.