The ones you take all by yourself

she made it seem so effortless.

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:37:40 -0400

she made it seem so effortless.

"For people who are gay or support gay marriage, I get how seeing thousands of people come out to..."

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:03:02 -0400

“For people who are gay or support gay marriage, I get how seeing thousands of people come out to make this statement is incredibly disheartening, but take solace in this: Gay marriage is happening. Like many drive-through window lanes, it ain’t going backwards. And your bonus is this: You get gay marriage, and all your political opponents are going to get is Type 2 Diabetes. Here’s my prediction: In ten years, America will have a lot more gay marriage and a lot more Chick-fil-A restaurants because they are both quality products.”

- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

i went to see this movie by myself tonight. it was the first...

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:57:00 -0400

i went to see this movie by myself tonight. it was the first movie i’ve ever gone to by myself. so let me start by pretending you were sitting next to me and saying it was GREAT. not too hokey, funny in a pop-culture mimicking type of way, and benefitting from amazing chemistry between the leads (hence the picture, no surprise they’re now dating). but you were not sitting next to me, so let me continue by telling you a little bit about the people who were. when the lizardman first appeared, the man to my left whispered aloud, “oh damn!” Oh, damn was right, that thing was terrifying. when the deliciously addictive emma stone starting talking about living in a chocolate house, the man sitting to my left laughed just as hard and as long as i did. i felt a strange sense of community with these two strangers sitting on either side of me. i jumped, screamed, and laughed as a part of community that had nothing in common with except for the flow of emotion from screen to seat. it’s interesting how much you let loose when you have nothing to prove to anyone around you (i screamed like a little girl during every pop-out and frankly, i don’t give a damn). it was freeing, knowing that there’s a big difference between being alone and being lonely. every day i relearn that lesson here.

now that’s just good writing. and acting, for that matter.

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:38:06 -0400

now that’s just good writing. and acting, for that matter.

MORE AND MORE KORRA

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:24:29 -0400

MORE AND MORE KORRA

"Taxi driver I swear I’ve got three lives Balanced on my head like steak knives I can’t..."

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:11:00 -0400

“Taxi driver
I swear I’ve got three lives
Balanced on my head like steak knives
I can’t tell you the truth about my disguise
I can’t trust no one
And you say ‘allahu akbar,’ I told him don’t curse me
‘bo bo you need prayer,’ I guess it couldn’t hurt me
If it brings me to my knees
It’s a bad religion”

- Frank Ocean.

Solar Specturm art installation by Peter Erskine - Italy | “New...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:02:00 -0400

Solar Specturm art installation by Peter Erskine - Italy | “New Light on Rome 2000”

Photo

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:47:09 -0400

sarah got me hooked.

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:44:03 -0400

sarah got me hooked.

not sure if i love it yet. although i find the dog to be a...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 19:56:30 -0400

not sure if i love it yet. although i find the dog to be a little more human than humanly possible, i enjoy the portrayal of a family through an silently subjective observer’s perspective.

there are two shores i now dream about.

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 19:45:36 -0400

there are two shores i now dream about.

the woman’s voice is annoying, but this is basically my...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 19:44:22 -0400

the woman’s voice is annoying, but this is basically my life right now. it feels kind’ve like magic to me.

can’t quite put my finger on why, but this picture makes...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 19:40:44 -0400

can’t quite put my finger on why, but this picture makes me happy.

"What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us Something I think about this sometimes: about how messed up we..."

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 23:06:46 -0400

“

What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us Something

I think about this sometimes: about how messed up we all really are on the inside. How we put on this “day face” and try to just live life and be okay, but underneath all that we have all these layers of neuroses and disappointments and unresolved issues that stay dormant until they’re triggered. Not overtly, most of the time — we wouldn’t be able to function if it were overt all the time — but under. Underneath us, inside of us. Things that happened to us that changed us. Heartbreak and trauma woven into the texture of our skins.

I think about this sometimes when I’m talking to someone, especially someone I know. It’s always more pronounced when it’s someone you know: you’re looking at them and they’re looking at you and you’re discussing something stupid like where to get dinner and all of a sudden it’s a surprise punch in the stomach, simultaneously seeing the person right in front of you and everything they’ve been through smudged around them like a sort of aura. You look at this person who was once on the verge of suicide, or overcame a serious illness, or had a dad who drank or no family at all, and they’re right there, talking, standing. They’re fine. They’re there. And you get this sudden impulse to weep or just touch them actually to make sure they’re real and wish you could borrow their strength for a moment because your own bones are crumbling.

It’s crazy to think about sometimes how all of us, even the most put together of us, are comprised of layers upon layers of experiences that once broke us, cracked our shells; about how we’re constantly mending ourselves, gluing ourselves together so we can remain in one piece and keep going forward for some reason. Underneath the outer layer we’re these coarse tangles of fears and mental blocks and sense memories and the older we get the more they just build and build. Sometimes we want nothing more than to be able to “let go” and leave the past in the past where it belongs, but these things imprint, in a way. They brand us. We can’t get rid of them and we wouldn’t be ourselves without them.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently and we started discussing our “stories,” and the more she told me about her life the more I became in awe of her — I felt like, if I were ever made to go through what she went through, I probably wouldn’t have made it past the 8th grade. But then, if I step outside of myself sometimes and take an objective look at what I went through, I’m in awe of myself as well. It all looks like so much more when you just look at it from a distance; more intense, in a way. More overwhelming. More something.

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger but it also makes us f-cking tired.

We promise ourselves we’re going to stop letting ourselves get hurt. We wrap ourselves in impenetrable cocoons, or we try to. But it doesn’t really work that way — as much as we want to become immune, become untouchable, we can’t be: the world still wants to play and we can’t really say no. We’re just as fragile and breakable as we’ve always been; we just have more layers on this time around.

Of course, someone somewhere always has it worse. And I’m not going to say everyone deserves some sort of medal for getting out of bed in the morning. But damn it, when you think about all this weight that piles up on us, and all our different coping strategies (some adaptive, some not so much), and the scars we accumulate throughout our lives (everyone has them) that make us all the interesting damaged messes that we are; the way we individually experience loss and heartbreak and nothingness and push through it, we’re doing a pretty good job as humans. We do things. We go to work. We go to school. We do the laundry. We breathe. We function. We grieve and we pick ourselves up and adapt and keep going.

We keep moving, because there’s not a whole lot else to do.

”

- Mila Jaroniec

cabinporn: White cabin in Connemara, Ireland. Submitted by Anna...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 22:56:20 -0400

cabinporn:

White cabin in Connemara, Ireland. Submitted by Anna Marina Denner.

I swear if I’m ever rich, I’m buying a nice little place in Ireland. Or Iceland for that matter.

i can appreciate this guy. very pretty and honest.

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 22:50:57 -0400

i can appreciate this guy. very pretty and honest.

ohyeahdevelopmentalbiology: genannetics: A Fruit Fly Embryo...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 22:14:13 -0400

ohyeahdevelopmentalbiology:

genannetics:

A Fruit Fly Embryo Montage

These brilliant photos, taken by the lab of Dr. Stephen W. Paddock from the University of Wisconsin, are various stages of embryonic development in Drosophila (fruit flies). Fruit flies are extremely useful (and popular) model organisms for studying developmental biology, basic biological processes, population genetics and other basic genetic processes (like mutation and disease).

i love when the line between science and art is blurred.

Photo

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:05:13 -0400

Audio

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:03:00 -0400

"A Few Drinks While Pregnant May Be OK"

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 20:32:00 -0400

"A Few Drinks While Pregnant May Be OK":

This article has received way too much coverage. I can’t complain about the science: this group of researchers conducted an experiment and garnered results, which is the definition of science, really. No one can tell them not to publish their results. I honestly am glad they did. Maybe they didn’t have to hold a press conference though. Or publish one study under the pretense of five articles (they did the same procedure and five separate tests on the same study group, which does not warrant five separate publications). I guess I’m most concerned that smart news organizations such as NPR or Huffington Post would run this with headlines including “drinking,” “pregnancy,” and “ok” in the same sentence. Prenatal alcohol exposure is dependent on a variety of factors, including most prominently the genetic background of the mother - and fetus - and environmental agents such as stress or diet. Although these researchers found no significant difference across a sample, this does not mean that individuals cannot be severely affected by a few drinks. I’m not concerned about the pregnant women who lack the temptation to drink: they will probably read this article with vague interest before sitting down to watch the latest episode of game of thrones (or the glee project, whatever they fancy) with their virgin shirley temples; I’m concerned about the women who are looking for this exact piece of evidence to fuel their existing desire to drink while pregnant. How does NPR define a few? No idea based on the headline. A woman who is fighting alcoholism may take findings a little too seriously. Maybe a few drinks won’t hurt. But several drinks DEFINITELY can, and will. It is better to wait than to accidentally impair a child’s ability to live as they want to live. Things like this can only lead to damage. I fail to see the potential good.