Narcoleptic Octopus

Pictures from The Resurrectionistby E.B. Hudspeth.

Ok so here’s the deal.

Last night our internet was cut off, simply because we can’t afford to keep paying for it, I’m currently writing this from a shitty internet cafe about a mile away from where I live.

The other donation page is still up, but has so little traffic I’m kind of only leaving it up as a reminder by this point.

I have kept back a few points that illustrate daily just how dire the situation my Mother and I are in, simply because it’s personal. but I think I really have to illustrate the point now.

My Mother and I shower once a month. We wash our hair once a fortnight. This is because, thanks to the situation the Government has put us in, we can barely afford water. It has been this way since November last year.

Also since November last year, we have not once used the Heating, regardless of the fact that this meant we had to go through the coldest Winter Britain has had in recorded history with no heating whatsoever.

We’re looking for places to move to, but nowhere in our price bracket will accept people on Benefits, they say this phrase: ‘No DDR’, which means they do not want people on Benefits.

I usually save aside £10 a month for luxuries, just so Mother and I can continue to feel Human rather than depressed grey blobs, we barely even have that anymore.

Work is non-existent for someone with my qualifications, and believe me when I say that, while I do not regret taking six years out of education to help care for my Grandmother, I begin to resent it a little when I’m told I’m under-qualified.

I don’t expect to raise the full amount I;m asking for, simply because it’s a lot. But it’s there to illustrate just how seriously we’re backed into a corner.

Mother is depressed, and her PTSD is acting up in reaction to the constant stress we are under. I, myself, am only kept on the straight and narrow due to the presence of my friends, and now with the internet cut off, I won’t even have that.

It isn’t hard to reblog this, please.

Tweet it, share it on Facebook, Reblog it, I don’t care, please just spread it around.

You can choose any combination of sounds you like - for example, fire + wind in leaves + forest birds - and click “Export to file” to save it on your computer.

38% Creek at -76% below

62% Heavy Rain at 0% below

42% Thunder at 38% below

COULD YOU IMAGINE THE SEX YOU COULD HAVE ON THIS THING

Half way through and with 33%.

We need your help to spread the word about the campaign!

Ok, so…

I found too many things about people — teens especially — only realizing that not saying no does not equal a yes once they’re told.

So I made a thing.

I’m so sorry if I did something wrong, I’m not 110% sure what I’m doing, so I’m almost scared to post this, but…

Yeh-shen by ~OnceISpoke

commodoreshock said: When I was a kid I loved Cinderella. The Disney version I could take or leave, but I had illustrated copies of the Chinese version, a Native American one, and one that I think was Scandinavian. I loved that they were similar but unique in their own ways.

Hey followers, did you know that there are a lot of Cinderella-type stories  from around the world, and that one of the oldest is the story of Yeh-Shen from China? It features a guardian fish spirit instead of a fairy godmother and a pair of golden slippers.

CNN actually researched how much it would cost to go to Hogwarts

It’s stated in the books that tuition to Hogwarts is “free for all children in Britain”. I don’t know why they thought it wouldn’t be - it’s a British high school, not a college. So there, you just saved yourself $42,024.

In Chamber of Secrets, Mrs. Weasley emptied her entire bank account which contained only two galleons [£10 / US$20] and she managed to buy all five children’s entire set of books and potion ingredients with this, as well as Ginny’s robes, hat, clock, cauldron, and wand!!! And we know she bought all of these as she mentioned having to buy them. The fact that she bought all of these with only £10 pretty much proves how absolutely ridiculous CNNs estimation is.

If you want more proof, the actual cost of Harry’s want is far over estimated here, and the exact price in both pounds as US dollars can easily be found right within the books! Harry’s wand is bought for seven galleons, a galleon being worth about five pounds [mentioned by JK Rowling in an interview and in FBAWTFT/QTTA] means that his wand was £35, or US$53. So there’s some straight-out-of-the-books-and-word-of-god proof that the figures CNN have given are way off the mark. Not to mention the fact that even if you don’t go to Hogwarts, as a magical human you’re gonna have to buy a wand anyway if you want to do magic.

As for the school books, I’ve done an approximation based on various prices given through-out the books and on Pottermore. While these prices involve a substantial amount of guess-work, I think you’ll agree that my calculation is far more accurate than CNNs:

The Standard book of Spells costs one sickle [29p / US59c]. On the back of my comic relief copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them it says it costs fourteen sickles [£4.60 / US$8.26]. One Pottermore, all text books are one galleon [£4.97  / US$10.17] - however Pottermore currency only uses galleons so it’s likely they have rounded off. Lockhart’s books, the most expensive in the series, are five galleons on Pottermore meaning that the exchange rate in the books puts them around two galleons and fourteen sickles [£14.60 / US$20.80]. If we put a high average on this and assume that all textbooks are approximately a galleon [they are likely much less], and that each year has around seven required reading books, the entire price for seven years worth of books would be forty-nine galleons, which equals approximately £243, or US$367 - and remember, this is the maximum estimated price for the textbooks.

For the minimum, we need to consider that the Weasleys get a lot of things second hand, with Ginny’s copy of A Begginers Guide To Transfiguration being described as “a very old, very battered copy” - likely no more than five sickles. If they got all their books around that price, it would cost them no more than £14 / US$21 for the entire seven years worth! So school books, far from being US$516, fall somewhere between US$14 and US$367 for the entire seven years at Hogwarts.

Next we have robe, glove, cloak, and hat prices - these are never mentioned in the books or on Pottermore, so I can’t account for that. However I seriously doubt it’s as a high as they’ve got here. Considering books in the wizarding world are generally much cheaper than in the muggle world, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that clothing is as well. Likely a maximum of a galleon for a single set of robes.

They’ve also forgotten a huge number of things - cauldrons, potion ingredients, scales, and star charts, among others.