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infinity-comics: From Batman #431 (March 1989) Art by Jim Aparo...

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:11:02 -0400

infinity-comics:

From Batman #431 (March 1989)
Art by Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:10:40 -0400

Salty Oceans and Marmalade: ex-boyfriends are like ghost towns

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:10:10 -0400

Salty Oceans and Marmalade: ex-boyfriends are like ghost towns:

writingsforwinter:

I fall in love with men unexpectedly, like an earthquake

that hasn’t shown up on the radar, or a tsunami

or some other kind of sudden crisis. I meet them in bars,

at house parties, at neighborhood potlucks

on blocks filled with cicadas making love so loudly

that even…

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Thu, 23 May 2013 19:07:59 -0400

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:33:23 -0400

thunderpluslightning: Booker T. and the MG’s backing Sam and...

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:37:42 -0400

thunderpluslightning:

Booker T. and the MG’s backing Sam and Dave in 1967. Al Jackson Jr. on drums.

howto-adult: stretchin~

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:34:51 -0400

howto-adult:

stretchin~

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Thu, 23 May 2013 16:27:24 -0400

crushin on people you know you shouldn’t crush on is stupid and dumb

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:50:33 -0400

crushin on people you know you shouldn’t crush on is stupid and dumb

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:13:38 -0400

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:48:37 -0400

quite literally the story of my virginity

Thu, 23 May 2013 01:37:44 -0400

quite literally the story of my virginity

The A-Word

Thu, 23 May 2013 01:26:00 -0400

I have been instructed to write about what I know. This statement implies that I know anything, which I do not. I have never been the type to be so sure of myself that I say something out loud and label it a fact.

I am not wise, I am not intelligent.

I am hope and wonder and questions without answers and answers without questions all wrapped up and vacuum sealed in a ziploc bag labeled “to do” in permanent marker.

I am the grains of sand slipping from your fingers, the perpetual bottom half of your hourglass, the last words on the lips of everyone you have ever loved as you watch them fade away.

Someone told me once that I am a likeable stranger. That compliment still haunts me because it seems that even strangers can tell that the more I get to know someone, the more I push them away.

As I bussed home from school today, I met a stranger who I know will haunt me for the rest of my life. I found an unlikely soul mate in a white-haired woman named Gloria who sat down in the seat in front of me.

I watched her with unconcealed interest as she pulled out a pen and one of those notepads that real estate agents leave in your mailbox. She began writing over the forehead of the mustached real estate man, but no matter how hard I squinted, I could not decode her scribbles.

After itching to snatch the notepad out of her wrinkled fingers for about twenty minutes, curiosity got the better of me and I tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned around slowly and responded with a quiet, “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I stammered, not exactly sure what possessed me to get her attention, nor what I was going to say now that I had it. “I was just… well, I was just curious to know what you are writing. I’m a bit of a writer myself, you see, and I’m nosey to a fault.”

To my surprise, she exhaled softly and squared her shoulders, as if preparing to recite a speech that she had memorized long ago. “I became tired of sitting on my butt all day, is all,” she said with a grin. “I do not take the bus to get from point A to point B; I take it because I enjoy the ride between. I write down everything I see or think or hear so I can remember how everything feels when I forget.”

“Why would you forget?” I blurted out without thinking. Afraid I had crossed a big red line, I lowered my gaze to the floor.

“Cheeky girl,” she muttered with a laugh. “I have Alzheimer’s, if you must know.”

My eyes shot up to hers and my breath caught in my throat. To me, the word “Alzheimer’s” is on the list of words to never say, right along with fucking shit-eating cock-sucking son of a bitch, although those words have always slid off the tip of my tongue with ease. I’ve never read Harry Potter but I understand the whole concept of not saying Voldemort’s name out loud because to me, the A-word is The-Disease-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. I hate spiders and I’m petrified of heights but the only things that truly scare me are genetics and being trapped in a stranger’s mind. An inescapable prison of confusion, a blurred conception of past and present, an uncertainty of any kind of future. Especially because I believe that all I’ll ever have in the end are memories of a life well lived, I’m terrified that they will be stolen out from under my nose. Terrified of becoming a withering body made up of limbs I do not recognize. Terrified of being surrounded by the people from my memories but only being able to remember them on my good days. Terrified of growing roots in a hospital bed under florescent lights eating a box of pills for breakfast lunch and dinner and having someone wipe my ass and wash between the newly developed folds in my flesh because I only remember how it used to look and these new territories have yet to be labeled on the map of my body. Terrified of looking up into the older versions of what I imagined my children would look like and their children as well and wondering how thirty years went by in thirty seconds and wishing I bought that red pick up truck I always wanted but never thought I needed. Terrified of learning too late that life punches you in the crotch then kicks you while you’re down, learning that life itself is a series of experiences but most experiences are out of your control, learning that life from a hospital bed is no life at all.

During my silent meltdown on the bus, Gloria studied my reaction and placed a small hand on my arm. “Dear girl,” she said comfortingly. “I hope I did not upset you. It’s not so bad, after all. Christ, I think I’m a 30-year-old hot blonde half the time.”

At that I began to laugh as tears spilled down my cheeks and I blurted out every reason why Alzheimer’s scares me without ever saying the word out loud. I told her that I’m not scared of death, but rather life without living, being paralyzed, being stuck in one place, in one time, in a broken mind. I told her that it’s an awful thing for her to experience, and I’m so sorry, so so so fucking sorry and I told her that sorry is a recycled word and I use it when I accidentally bump into someone on the street and I told her I wish there was a perfect word to describe how sorry I am but there isn’t and there probably never will be.

I never told her about the tree I love who is planted very far away from me in a hospital bed, his leaves brown and his branches clipped. I never told her that for me, growing up understanding this disease is like being scared to grow up at all. I never told her that watching someone’s mind slip away inch by inch, year by year, makes you crippled. It makes you lose faith in just about everything except for the idea that life is quick and blunt and out of your control. It makes you angry but never gives you a source to point a finger at and scream “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK” because it’s no one’s fault.

I never told her about the old man but somehow she felt it and she simply said, “Don’t be sorry, it’s not something anyone can be sorry for, just sorry about, I suppose. The best medicine is to laugh, because if you don’t do that you’ll just cry and cry and cry and that’s not going to get you anywhere you want to go. There’s no sense in being sour about the things you can’t change. Whoever it is you’re crying for is dwelling on the happy times of the past, and you should, too. I’m a young, leggy blonde, you’re a happy girl with a real awful sad streak, and we’re both alive and it’s a beautiful day outside of that window so you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.”

I smiled, ran my sleeve under my running nose, and relaxed. Gloria turned back to her ugly notepad and began writing about me. She wrote about the happy little sad girl who loves a sick man and who plays the music on her iPod way too loudly. She wrote that my shoulders are slumped from the weight of the world I force myself to carry because I am unable to accept the things I can’t change. She wrote that she hoped we would never meet again because she never wanted to replace the memory of my shoulders hitching up ever so slightly as I stepped off the bus and onto the street after waving her goodbye.

I walked home with a grin tattooed on my face as I remembered the way my grandfather used to sit me on his lap and nibble on my cheeks, or the way he cooked me my favourite meal every time I spent the night at his house. All I could do was laugh and hope that as he is rooted to a hospital bed, he is remembering the way we used to be, too.

nsfwhumor: Best Vines of May 2013 (Part 1)

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:32:47 -0400

nsfwhumor:

Best Vines of May 2013 (Part 1)

allelesonwheels: A compilation of the artwork of Devendra...

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:16:35 -0400

allelesonwheels:

A compilation of the artwork of Devendra Banhart.

"I love you more than my own skin and even though you don’t love me the same way, you love me..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:34:00 -0400

“I love you more than my own skin and even though you don’t love me the same way, you love me anyways, don’t you? And if you don’t, I’ll always have the hope that you do, and i’m satisfied with that. Love me a little. I adore you.”

- Frida Kahlo (via allmymetaphors)

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Wed, 22 May 2013 21:33:43 -0400

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:51:39 -0400

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Foreign Words We Could Use in English

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:47:29 -0400

Foreign Words We Could Use in English:

nevver:

Kummerspeck (German)
Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.

Shemomedjamo (Georgian)
You know when you’re really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can’t stop eating it?

Tartle (Scots)
The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.

Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego)
This word captures that special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do.

Backpfeifengesicht (German)
A face badly in need of a fist.

Iktsuarpok (Inuit)
You know that feeling of anticipation when you’re waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they’re there yet?

Pelinti (Buli, Ghana)
Your friend bites into a piece of piping hot pizza, then opens his mouth and sort of tilts his head around while making an “aaaarrrahh” noise. The Ghanaians have a word for that. More specifically, it means “to move hot food around in your mouth.”

Greng-jai (Thai)
That feeling you get when you don’t want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.

Mencolek (Indonesian)
You know that old trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from behind to fool them? The Indonesians have a word for it.

Faamiti (Samoan)
To make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child.

Gigil (Filipino)
The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute.

Yuputka (Ulwa)
A word made for walking in the woods at night, it’s the phantom sensation of something crawling on your skin.

Zhaghzhagh (Persian)
The chattering of teeth from the cold or from rage.

Vybafnout (Czech)
A word tailor-made for annoying older brothers—it means to jump out and say boo.

Fremdschämen (German)
; Myötähäpeä (Finnish)
The kindler, gentler cousins of Schadenfreude, both these words mean something akin to “vicarious embarrassment.”

Lagom (Swedish)
Maybe Goldilocks was Swedish? This slippery little word is hard to define, but means something like, “Not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right.”

Pålegg (Norweigian)
Sandwich Artists unite! The Norwegians have a non-specific descriptor for anything – ham, cheese, jam, Nutella, mustard, herring, pickles, Doritos, you name it – you might consider putting into a sandwich.

Layogenic (Tagalog)
Remember in Clueless when Cher describes someone as “a full-on Monet…from far away, it’s OK, but up close it’s a big old mess”? That’s exactly what this word means.

Bakku-shan (Japanese)
Or there this Japanese slang term, which describes the experience of seeing a woman who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.

Seigneur-terraces (French)
Coffee shop dwellers who sit at tables a long time but spend little money.

Ya’arburnee (Arabic)
This word is the hopeful declaration that you will die before someone you love deeply, because you cannot stand to live without them. Literally, may you bury me.

Pana Po’o (Hawaiian)
“Hmm, now where did I leave those keys?” he said, pana po’oing. It means to scratch your head in order to help you remember something you’ve forgotten.

Slampadato (Italian)
Addicted to the UV glow of tanning salons? This word describes you.

Zeg (Georgian)
It means “the day after tomorrow.” OK, we do have “overmorrow” in English, but when was the last time someone used that?

Cafune (Brazilian Portuguese)
Leave it to the Brazilians to come up with a word for “tenderly running your fingers through your lover’s hair.”

Koi No Yokan (Japanese)
The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.

Kaelling (Danish)
You know that woman who stands on her doorstep (or in line at the supermarket, or at the park, or in a restaurant)
cursing at her children? The Danes know her, too.

Boketto (Japanese)
It’s nice to know that the Japanese think enough of the act of gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking to give it a name.

L’esprit de l’escalier (French)
Literally, stairwell wit—a too-late retort thought of only after departure.

Cotisuelto (Caribbean Spanish)
A word that would aptly describe the prevailing fashion trend among American men under 40, it means one who wears the shirt tail outside of his trousers.

Packesel (German)
The packesel is the person who’s stuck carrying everyone else’s bags on a trip. Literally, a burro.

Hygge (Danish)
Denmark’s mantra, hygge is the pleasant, genial, and intimate feeling associated with sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends.

Cavoli Riscaldati (Italian)
The result of attempting to revive an unworkable relationship. Translates to “reheated cabbage.”

Bilita Mpash (Bantu)
An amazing dream. Not just a “good” dream; the opposite of a nightmare.

Litost (Czech)
Milan Kundera described the emotion as “a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.”

Luftmensch (Yiddish)
There are several Yiddish words to describe social misfits. This one is for an impractical dreamer with no business sense.

santarevenge: drarna: i know you want to kill hitler, and we’re gonna do that! but it’s my time...

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:27:25 -0400

santarevenge:

drarna:

i know you want to kill hitler, and we’re gonna do that! but it’s my time machine. so first, we go back to ‘96 and see space jam in theaters.

valid