let's color the world

"You are beautiful when you do beautiful things."

"The present tense of regret is indecision."

"We understand so much, but the sky behind those lights-- mostly void, partially stars-- that sky reminds us we don't understand even more."

"Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is."

"Believe in yourself. You are an ancient, absent god, discussed only rarely by literary scholars. So if you don't believe, no one will."

"Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you."

“Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. That’s what love is.”

"Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?"

"When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves."

"We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?"

"Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error."

"We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people."

"A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A basilisk."

"There's nothing under your bed. There's nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all."

"The night sky is ten miles wide, eight miles deep, and floats three miles up. Its favourite food is grape jelly. It wants to be a drummer."

"Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about."

"Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work."

"And now, a special report. Crocodiles: Can they eat your children? *YES.*"

"Lie down and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry."

"As long as I’m reminding myself things, I’m a good person, worthy of love – both from myself and others."

"Guns don't kill people! It's impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it's a miracle!"

"Everything is exciting! Particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all."

"There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world."

"You miss 100% of the bank robberies you don't commit."

"I like my coffee like I like my nights. Dark, endless, and impossible to sleep through. "

"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."

"And now, the weather."

I discovered this podcast at the beginning of high school, and let me tell you, it rewired my synapses.

Not only was it my first experience with positive LGBT representation, it was the show I clung to when everything else went to shit. Whatever was going on in my life, I knew I had this show in my corner, making me laugh, making me cry, making me feel okay about my place in the universe.

My Mother’s Garden

The garden lasted a few months. Then, an agent of the town’s housing authority found out about it and told my mother it was against the rules. “But no one’s using the land,” I remember her arguing. “The kids in the neighborhood play there.” The response was clear: Get rid of the garden or be evicted. Here was another one of those impossible choices of poverty. This was what my classmates would never understand, as they earnestly debated welfare fraud and the grasping desperation of the undeserving poor.

ID 2: another tweet by @ SurleyBassey from the same date reading, “wrote about it here,” linking to the article ‘my mother’s garden.’ /end ID]

link to original tweet thread

There is always Nicolas Cage

There will always be Nicolas Cage

For the rest of your life

Nicolas Cage has been dead for ten years yet he is still making movies

Hey Tumblr! It’s been a few years since I last did this but I’m back at it again. I like to think I’m the reason they’ve changed the system to get free books but either way nows your chance to help out. I know the power of the internet so just hear me out right quick as I ask for a simple favor. See those cereal boxes up there? If you buy any Kellogg’s product with that Free Book logo keep the receipt! They are doing it so that when you submit a picture of your receipt showing you purchased the product you can get a free book for yourself or have a book donated! It’s super easy to sign up on their site so if you feel like doing that please do! Or maybe you’re lazy and you don’t want to do that. I’m asking you to send me a picture of your receipt! I set up an email especially for this: [email protected] Now I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m bringing it up, so here goes.

I teach kindergarten at a school where the kids have little to nothing. Through generous donations (government, three square, various community partners, etc.) the kids get backpacks, clothes, shoes, free breakfast/lunch, and some school supplies. The school is not in the best part of town. I’ve had students who live with grandparents because their own parents are in jail, kids who have parents that don’t have custody over them for various reasons, and so on and so forth. Now I am trying to get my kids to read books, but they literally don’t have any books at home that they can use to practice their reading. With COVID going on it’s going to be hard to have students get their hands on books because sharing is going to be a no go.

Here’s where you come in. If you happen to buy one of these specially marked boxes and don’t plan on using the receipt please send me a picture of that receipt ([email protected]). If 20 people on here send me a code I’ll be able to get 20 books, which will easily allow me to get each of my students a brand new book of their own. I will gladly take a picture of a handwritten thank you note from my students to show you how excited they are to get a book. They’re five so expect something awesome.

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for the help! We’ve hit my goal of getting 20 books for my students! 🎉 That was with receipts alone. With the points earned $2 was donated to No Kid Hungry, which is an organization dedicated to making sure at risk kids have food. It took a lot of points just to do that, but I feel it was well worth it.

Now if you still have receipts please send them my way! I’m using them to donate books to local schools and just found out that two brand new teachers will be joining my kindergarten team for this school year so I’ll use the codes to get them some books to give to their students too! Just giving books to students all around!

I had an ask about how else to help so just a reminder if you want to you can:

Send an Amazon gift card to [email protected]

Private message me for my PayPal account or Vemno

If you have books please donate them to a local school or library because shipping is getting expensive.

guys help i’m LOSING MY GODDAMN MIND over these fat tiger art scrolls

Aries: This was supposed to be a place of silence and contemplation, and contemplate you have. Perhaps you have become to accustomed to the deep places, or perhaps the things that scare the old gods are more deserving of worship.

Taurus: You give warning after warning and still they come. The world dies around you and yet they cling to any rumor, any scrap of life they can find. They will find nothing, because there is nothing but you, and you are the price they pay for such doomed curiosity. 

Gemini: You were the least of your brethren, but now you’re the only one left. The last to hold the title you coveted for so, so, long. Yet it weighs heavy on your name, there is no honor in victory by default. Flowers grow from their bones now. You will keep pests out of the garden.

Cancer: Heaven was less than you expected. No gods here. Someone had to step up. You will not repeat the mistakes of the past, things will be different this time. You know it will. You know it will.

Leo: You were born as engines of war. How far the world has fallen. There is nothing left worth fighting over, yet still, after all this time, they still come. The legends of you are long forgotten but it matters little. These trespassers will know the glory of the old royal war machines for themselves.

Virgo: What is faith without crisis? Yet you, you saw angels fall burning and dead from the sky, you watched the very birthplace of gods overcome with toxic seawater and burning rain and never did you waver. What is faith when faced with the corpses of gods?

Libra: Salted earth, burning rain, invincible engines of calamity, war. All fall to dust under the winnowing blanket of time. Now the burning storms are gone and orange clouds paint the sky. The sun is beautiful and you are finally alone. 

Scorpio: You knew what was coming long before it happened. It was all bound to crumble and fall. You beckon those who doubt, beckon them with visions of wings, beckon them to join you and watch from the sky as the world crumbles.

Ophiuchus: You know it could have been different had you just been more ready. But your chance has passed and the rivets in your skeleton weigh heavier than they should. You’ve had an eternity to practice. Maybe once someone has the strength to free you from this place, they will also have the strength to fix the mistakes you made.

Sagittarius: The world rots and the old gods still broadcast from their heavens, messages of tribute and service. Of fear and the seals to the deep places. But you and your sisters have seen something truly new. If you want something done right…

Capricorn: What is precious must be protected. The world is a covetous place. You watched the forges like one watches a child. Now there is no need. It was painful but you left your weak skin behind. Now you are molten and painless, with enough eyes to watch over your bounty.

Aquarius: What a wondrous legacy to leave behind. A desire, a compulsion to create, to twist and shape and work the ugly ugly world into more beautiful things. Things that can defend themselves.