caelonaut

[caelonaut]

I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

That's love. 🐈‍⬛🐈❤️

[caelonaut]

Internet Safety

[caelonaut]

It should be a bigger scandal that J.K. Rowling is threatening to sue small accounts for accurately calling her a Holocaust denier. So glad the Streisand effect exists. Now we can all rebuke her reprehensible views more than ever.

[caelonaut]

i have mealprepped for all three meals each day for the week (including washing and de-stemming my grapes!) and ALSO washed all of my sheets

is everyone blown away by my incredible force of will and indomitable spirit

[caelonaut]

one of my favorite (read: least favorite) things about how people treat cleopatra is she’s so often called a slut or is only ever portrayed as being this incredibly sexy, often scantily-clad seductress, when in actuality 1. while some ancient sources describe her as somewhat pretty, it generally seems that what was attractive about her was her intellect, charm, and voice, and the sources that refer to her as extremely sexy/slutty are specifically out to condem her, 2. she was a brilliant politician who chose her affairs as a way of securing power for her country and not just so she could have a bunch of sex (which shouldn’t be an issue anyway), and 3. one of the men she had an affair with was mark antony, ancient roman super slut supreme, a man known for his love of sex and tendency to wear extremely short tunics for the sake of showing off his sexy legs/probably also his dick

i’m not saying there’s anything wrong with portraying cleopatra as beautiful or even sexy, because she clearly had allure. all i’m saying is that, if your cleopatra is wearing less clothing than your mark antony, there’s probably a problem in your depiction of them

[caelonaut]

Me and Tom Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley. The Imposters. The Grifters. Inventing Anna. Saltburn.

I love stories about con artists, sociopaths, and imposters.

I've rewatched the Netflix series Ripley about six times since it came out.

When I was about thirteen years old, I read every book in the local public library about cons and cold reading. I read about how to win people over in business, I learned how to cold read. There were all these books out there that TEACH you how to pretend to be a normal person that someone wants to be friends with! These books teach you how to get people to trust you, to believe you!

I found these to be amazing tools. I could not get people to believe me, I could not figure out why people disliked me. I could not figure out what I was doing so wrong that made bullies kick me in the halls or throw things at me from schoolbuses. I knew it was something wrong with me, I knew I was messing something up, I knew I was failing. So I studied.

I studied how to fake the things I actually felt and believed.

The thing was, I wasn't lying most of the time. Most of the time I was using the social techniques of con artists and cold readers to get people to believe that things I meant. If I said "yes I like this song" in a way that was natural and comfortable for me, the person I was talking to thought I was being sarcastic and mean and that I hated the song, that I thought poorly of them for liking it. I did not! I liked the song! But to get the other person to believe me I had to remember to do all these extra things, like turn my body to 3/4 face the other person, to smile, to make me voice sound like a smile. I would think about cuddling a puppy in order to get the right amount of warmth in my eyes. I would lean in and raise the pitch of my voice.

There are all these extra THINGS I had to learn and remember to do in order to get people to respond to what I intended to say.

So, yes, I love media about con artists and grifters. I love watching people be good at that switch, at putting on the mask. I love watching people in a panic that they will be caught, be revealed, because that's how most social interactions feel to me -- constant worry that my mask will slip and the person I am talking to will suddenly feel that I'm lying to them, that I'm faking everything. (I am faking everything but it's to make sure they believe the truth! Which they won't believe unless I fake everything! I am an imposter, but in support of the truth!!)

Part of what I love about the Netflix Ripley is that Tom is only good at lying to other people when he has successfully gotten himself to believe what he is about to say. He practices and rehearses his lies so that he can sell them to others. I used to practice my facial expression in the mirror, trying to get them to look like other people's faces and expressions. I would practice my tone of voice and how to make it sound warm and friendly. All the things Tom does -- except the murders! and the theft! -- all the SOCIAL things Tom does, I have done those things in an effort to hide my autism and be accepted by the people whose respect and friendship I wanted.

Con artists, cold readers, and comic books taught me how to pretend to be neurotypical.

[caelonaut]

[caelonaut]

Goddamn it,this is one of my favorite panels now

[caelonaut]

Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) (1919) Directed by Richard Oswald

"Widely considered the first feature-length film aimed specifically at a gay audience, made all the more significant for its humanistic depiction of gay men and its explicit plea for the end of their social and legal persecution." (x)

[caelonaut]

In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton's hometown of Sevierville Tennessee was at 34% (Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate). That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood. They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day. As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels. That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education. The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge. What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of "Coat of Many Colors" dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

[caelonaut]

[caelonaut]

More stories from hell (retail) today I was ringing up this lady and she goes oh I want to do part of this on a gift card and the rest on normal card and I go ok and then she hands me a folded piece of paper. I think oh OK it must be folded around the gift card, right? Wrong. It is a folded sheet of 8×11 printer paper with "$40" written on the inside in ballpoint pen. I go what is this. She says a gift card. I say this is not a gift card. She says yes it is. I say this is a piece of paper with "$40" written on it. She says "well it's a gift card." I say it absolutely is not. I am grinding my teeth. She says well I want to use it. I say you physically cannot do that bc it is a piece of paper. I cannot scan or swipe it. I apologize, as if this is my fault, and not because she is completely insane. I hate it here

[caelonaut]

Watching the new tasting history and very charmed by the fact that the whole Michelin Star system apparently started out as, like, a galaxy-brain marketing campaign for the concept of road trips.

[caelonaut]

smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

[caelonaut]

If people were too mean to you when you were growing up, a newborn animal will materialize inside your brain and it’s so so scared and shivering and it will stay there for years. Decades, even. And whenever you say something kind of weird but true to your heart the animal will tell you “Noo! You can’t say that! If you say that, everyone will hate you!”. The animal means well. It’s so so small and everything is so scary for them and it’s just trying to protect you. But listen to me. Listen to me. Whenever this happens, you can’t do what the animal says. You can’t. If you do, you’ll become as scared as the animal. You have to keep saying weird shit. You have to keep doing things the animal wouldn’t approve of. If you do enough things that scare the animal, maybe one day it’ll go to sleep.

[caelonaut]

Hey now, you’re an all star

listen to what I orchestrated

SoundCloud

[caelonaut]

0 cis women have been harmed by gender neutral language around pregnancy