We have tons of septum jewelry in gold to make you fancy
Don’t try to put a ring on my finger just drown me in gold for my nose
I just find it hilarious that eurovision was invented because europe was like “no more war guys, fight it out through songs”
MEDA’S STRATEGIES FOR LIFE WHEN YOU HAVE COGNITIVE DEFICITS AND BASICALLY EVERYTHING SUCKS: POSSIBLY PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES
- WHEN IN DOUBT, MAKE A TO-DO LIST
- WHEN IN MORE DOUBT, BREAK TO-DO LIST DOWN INTO SMALLER STEPS
- WHEN IN EVEN MORE DOUBT, PUT STEPS IN A SPECIFIC ORDER
- FOR ADDED REASSURANCE, NUMBER YOUR STEPS
- if a particular part of a task scares you, make that an individual step
- even if it makes you look like a giant idiot
- ESPECIALLY if it makes you look like a giant idiot
- you must attack the aspects of the task that (for whatever reason, rational or irrational) require you to surmount a major cognitive barrier
- and bring these aspects INTO THE LIGHT
- and MAKE THEM APPEAR MANAGEABLE
- seriously if the idea of OPENING YOUR TEXTBOOK fills you with a nameless and inconsolable dread, put “open textbook” on the list
- then cross it off once you do it
- crossing things off is fun and provides instant positive reinforcement
- honestly I bet you get a hit of dopamine every time you cross an item off a list*
- YOU MAY FEEL QUITE STUPID AT FIRST
- WHATEVER, THIS IS BETWEEN YOU AND GOD**
- IF ANYONE TELLS YOU TO LOOSEN UP, PUNCH THEM IN THE TEETH
- THAT CONCLUDES TODAY’S LESSON, GOOD DAY
<3
(seriously this is useful, soul-restoring advice)reblogging so I remember to do this during finals
TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDE
Also, here’s a link describing what “bedroom tax” is for those of us not in the know: http://www.bromfordgroup.co.uk/welfare-reform/bedroom-tax/
Listen, I know tumblr only cares about American news, but this is really fucking tragic, and if this doesn’t get an coverage I will be incredibly angry.
The conservative’s bedroom tax has actually led to a woman taking her own life. Let me repeat that for you; a peice of government legislation had had such a detrimental impact on someone’s life that they wrote letters, packed up their things, and walked into the M4 in front of a lorry. The bedroom tax has only be in place for the last 5 weeks.
For those of you that don’t know, the bedroom tax isn’t technically a tax; if you’re living in a rented property, and have an extra bedroom, you’ll have to pay a certain amount of money back to the government. Children under the age of 12 are expected to share with all their siblings, children under 16 are expected to share with their siblings of the same gender. The government placed no limits on how many children could be expected to share a room. It would have saved the government £490 million a year; the UK loses £5.2 Billion a year in tax evasion alone. [citation]
Stephanie Botrill, from Solihull, had lived in her house for 18 years, and her two children had, relatively recently moved into their own properties, one of them within the last year. She previously paid a rent of £320 a month, and bedroom tax would have meant she paid £400; she was having to starve herself to afford this. Let me reiterate that for you; a woman was having to go without food because of a cruel tory policy. The house the council offered her was nowhere near where she currently lived, and 30 minutes walk from the nearest bus station; she would have been nowhere near her family and friends. To make matters worse, the council said she’d have to pay for any damage to the house, which would have exceeded the £2000 she was given to move house.
Stephanie had been saying since the policy came in how she couldn’t cope. She even went to the GP, but only got sleeping pills. In the end, it all got too much, and she wrote letters to her children, grandson, friends, and neighbors and walked into the M4, dying instantly.
The Sunday People has photos of the letters, but I won’t post them because they broke my heart, but if you want to see them, they’re here
As well as this, her family was struggling to pay for her funeral, so the Sunday People contributed. We live in a country where we can pay £10 million pounds for the funeral of a woman who called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, but someone’s grandmother kills herself because she can’t afford to live in the house she’d lived in for 18 years. I hope everyone feels thoroughly disgusted.
The worst thing is, Stephanie’s story has a more extreme ending, but it’s fairly typical of a bedroom tax victim case. Although the tory’s policies targeted towards those on benefits claim to help to push people into work, and end a ‘something for nothing’ benefits system (and the whole thing reeks of deserving and undeserving poor) this is not the case at all.
Take a guess at what percentage of the people receiving benefit in the UK are unemployed. Guess. I was way, way out. The actual breakdown is this 42.3% elderly, 20.8% low income, 18.4% families, 15.5% sick/disabled, 2.6% unemployed. Only 2.6% of those on benefits in this country are unemployed.
In addition to this, the people most likely to have spare bedrooms are older people, who’s children have left home. They are not people living off the tax payer, whatever that means, they are people who have lived their lives in cheap rental property who’s children have left home, and so rely on their friends, like my Nana does, for company. And David Cameron and his tory cronies want to move these people away from their communities, their friends, the brick and mortar they’ve made their home, because they have the cheek to have a couple of spare bedrooms.
I hope you’re angry, because I’m really fucking angry.
You know who has got spare bedrooms? David Cameron, who got lucky enough to be born to a millionaire and the daughter of a Baronet, and his wife Samantha who’s father is also a Baronet. His personal wealth has been estimated at £30 million, inherited from off-shore tax havens. Like I said earlier, the UK loses £5.2 Billion a year from men like Cameron. To misquote Obama, Cameron’s not the solution, he’s the problem.
Meanwhile, more people like Stephanie Botrill, hounded from the home she’d raised her children in, and the community where all her friends live, will probably walk in front of lorries.
To cut a long story short, if you even think about voting Tory in 2015, I hope you think about Stephanie Botrill, and I hope you never sleep again.
the millennial problem:
two millennials are barreling towards adulthood at 95 miles per hour. one of them has been coated with the most extravagant paint money can buy, but their steering apparatus is locked up until that coat’s paid off; the other’s breaks have been ripped out mid-trip, the thief yelling, “what, did you think you were entitled to these?” over their shoulder. half the tracks have been torn away to build second, third, and fifth garages for trains that are no longer running. solve for x.
tell me again how the song goes — i’m so inadequate i might forget. if we’re not informed enough then we’re apathetic morons, but if we’re too informed we’re oversensitive reactionaries; if we think we deserve more then we’re narcissistic cutthroats, but if we’re happy where we are then we’re passionless layabouts. if we’re making money then we’re materialistic automatons who only care about stuff and don’t value the important things in life, but if we’re broke then we’re disgusting, spoiled children who expect everything in life to be a handout. if we spend too much time with technology then we’re antisocial, soulless zombies who spell the end for human interaction as we know it, but if we spend too much time together we’re a dangerous, unstable element who should get real jobs already. we’re a disgrace; we’re a embarrassment; we’re a mistake; we’re a disappointment; we’re not what you wanted, however you slice it, and all of it’s our fault, right? right? oh, god, am i getting the melody wrong?
here’s what i propose, everyone who wants to open their twenty-four-hour news cycles or their pork-barrel mouths, who wants to use their filthy fucking hands to tear this generation a new one: you try it. you come up with a picture of the generation you seem to want: one that’s neither apathetic nor engaged, one that’s neither ambitious nor content, one that’s neither rich nor poor, one that’s neither technologically connected nor interpersonally involved. don’t forget to factor in the variables — the years of economic instability; the globalization of everything from communication to art; the hugely stratified individual experiences we’ve had based on things like race, sexuality, gender, and socioeconomics, on things that come with whole histories of systemic bullshit; the overwhelming burden of student debt that so many of us face; the fact that hindsight is 20/20. you write the formula for the millennial that will shut you the fuck up about all the things we should be and aren’t, about all the ways we’ve failed you, and then you bring it to me. i promise you, i will try it. anything for a little peace and quiet, right? anything to stop hearing it everywhere i go: that voice saying that, at twenty-three, i might already have flunked out of life.
(both millennials crash, spectacularly and yelling for help, into the station that never built a platform for them to pull into. onlookers stand by and shake their heads, wondering about the deplorable state of trains today. that’s what happens when nobody does the fucking math.)
The death toll in Bangladesh IS a feminist issue
A couple of weeks ago I extensively ranted about how neoliberal feminism has kind of become the default/ the neutral*. Some people were offended by my statements (I won’t bore you with an account of that as the offenses were mostly taken to Twitter). A week or so later and unrelated to my attempt at analysis of neoliberal feminism, I was told I had to “separate” issues of race, poverty, etc from feminism because they were not related.
This morning I woke up to news of an updated death toll: 1000 people so far, have died in the factory fire in Bangladesh.
In September 2012, when the European Union went through a short moment of outrage at the discovery that people from Bangladesh were attempting to cross borders into the EU, I wrote **:
Here is what neither the WSJ [ED: Wall Street Journal] nor European media or Frontex reports usually address: Bangladeshi migrants are escaping a desperate economic situation brought upon by decades of Western intervention and the perpetuation of an economic model based on sweatshop labor and lack of basic rights to feed the consumption patterns of the US and the EU.
According to a report published by the International Monetary Fund (not exactly a paradigm of humanitarian research), exports of textiles, clothing, and ready-made garments account for 77% of Bangladesh’s total merchandise exports. Bangladesh’s garment exports – mainly to the US and Europe – make up nearly 80% of the country’s export income. The country has more than 4,000 factories employing between two and three million workers and the industry currently employs 1.5 million workers, approximately 80 % of whom are women. More than 4% of the clothes sold in the EU are made in Bangladesh. The conditions in which these clothes are made, with salaries that do not even cover the bare basic necessities, conveniently forgotten when discussing migration patterns.[…]
Women, who make more than 80% of the labor force, are often subjected to sexual harassment and rape.
Here’s the problem I have with this neoliberal feminism: they have traded an in depth geopolitical and social analysis involving gender and the position of women in the West in relation to women everywhere else for the promotion of consumer empowerment dressed up as “choice” and career advancement. “Here, improve your chances at success by wearing the garments of your choice!” or “Here, see the latest fashion trends and pretty outfits! Wear this to succeed in your office job”, promoting this aspirational, mind numbingly decontextualized consumerism. The role models of this neoliberalism parading their manuals to better lean in and “having it all” chants as the only kind of gender analysis we are afforded. As women, we should aspire to rule the corporations that caused this death toll; as consumers, we should aspire to close the wage gap that prevents us from buying more “stuff”, with nary a word about how that “stuff” is produced, by whom and under which conditions. And when faced with over a thousand deaths, this neoliberal feminism will induce us to some form of rightful indignation (OMG all these people died! OMG this is terrible! ad infinitum) while obscuring the root causes of this death toll. Then, when the people that have to live day in, day out in these appalling conditions eventually leave and become undocumented migrants somewhere in a Western country, this very same neoliberal feminists will tell us that “migration is not a feminist problem” and we should “separate” these issues from gender.
To close in another self referential moment, I once said that this feminism thrives to make us better managers of exclusion. Nowhere is this more clear than in the atrocious death toll of Bangladeshi textile workers who supply Europe’s garments. Gender equality, it seems, is all about becoming the CEOs of the corporations that make these living and dying conditions possible.
* Yes, I am self referential today but I can sort of explain that: usually, I go through topics in a more or less long term way, with some of them recurring for years. There are a few themes always underlying whatever topics or news items I explore/ think about. I suppose I could call those the basis of my belief system and politics (notes on racism, xenophobia, immigration, feminism, varying degrees of leftist ideas, etc) and then I tend to spend days, if not weeks, just thinking of topics, even way past the time I posted something. So yeah, I tend to become self referential because those issues occupy a lot of my idle time simply thinking of them or reading further about them.
** See note above about being self referential.
