Just Having Fun!

Morning glory

My print shop

Artist: Tim Brierley

what men hear: “I have no idea whatsoever, but here’s a totally random guess”

what you say: “I’m not an expert on this subject”

what men hear: “I don’t know anything about this subject and need its bare fundamentals explained to me”

what you say: “I could be better read in this area”

But there are men in my life who I respect, who I think are generally good communicators, but who have admitted to me that if they do not know the answer to something they will just state their best guess in a confident tone of voice, with no hedging or clarification to warn the listener that what they just said was pulled from their ass.

I once asked my high school boyfriend what noise a platypus makes and he confidently told me "oh they quack" and I said "really? that seems like they'd have different noise-making structures than ducks since they're not birds" and he said "oh yeah you're probably right. I was just guessing." And had no idea why I was mad! I was like, so if I ask you a question you might just bullshit me?? What if I had believed you and gone and repeated that to other people? I could have looked like an idiot. I could have spread misinformation to a ton of people! But I have told that story to other men and had them say "oh yeah I totally do that."

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".

Second sword-embroidery, this time with roses and (?) blueberries.

This is what's called a poetic epithet, and it happens all the time in writing. Consider, for example, Homer and his wine-dark sea, or Shakespeare and his death-mark'd love.

If you were then to start using them instead of the word they're describing, you'd be making a kenning. For example, if instead of describing the sun as honey-bright, you said "the honey-drop in the sky". Kennings are best known from Norse writings, like "the path of serpents" for gold, or "Grímnir's lip-streams" for poetry itself.

◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – The sun / was ho/ney-bright / that af/ternoon