pens-and-paperbacks:

increasingly-insane-direwolf:

countless-potr:

urbanfantasyinspiration:

increasingly-insane-direwolf:

increasingly-insane-direwolf:

Half Goblin, half Hobbit.

Goblit.

God dammit I did this just for a pun but now I’m imagining this whole backstory where a wounded female goblin flees from some battle and winds up on the edges of the Shire and she’s gonna jump some Hobbit dude named Blinko Tumbrush but Blinko’s so unfailingly polite that his first reaction on seeing someone in a rough situation is to invite them in to dinner and gobbo chick is just like “… uh… ‘kay.”

And then she has dinner and it’s the best thing she’s ever eaten and even her little green brain is able to put together “If I knife this guy so I can take his stuff he can’t cook more of this” so when he asks her to stay the night she’s just like “Fuck yeah breakfast”.

And all the other Hobbits in the area are staring at this new arrival who starts begrudgingly working in the garden (she can pull out the weeds they’d normally have to hitch livestock to) and they’re all thinking “Uhhhhh that’s a fucking Goblin there, chief” except if they actually acknowledge that she’s a goblin then it’s a huge to-do and a lot of excitement and possibly there would be adventure involved in chasing her off. So they just sort of silently, collectively decide they’re going to ignore it and all go “Oh, Blinko finally found himself a lady, how nice, she must be one of the Glumbrushes from over the far side of West Farthing, I always did hear they were on the homely side, not much hair on their feet you know.”

And eventually in due time along comes Korbo Tumbrush and decently cute Hobbit baby but the biggest fucking ears you ever saw on a Hobbit and he’s a bit green and everyone is thinking “That’s a fucking half-Goblin you’ve got there, chief, you fucked a fucking Goblin, you made a baby with a damn Goblin my guy” but this would be an immensely rude thing to say to someone so they’re just like “Oh how nice, Blinko, he looks just like you, has those Glumbrush eyes though.”

And Korbo the Goblit grows up a proper little man in his waistcoat and pipe and every so often someone visits from a different part of the shire and sees this plump green dude with massive flappy pointed ears and they start to open their mouth only for a local to leap right in and go “HAHA YES THAT IS KORBO TUMBRUSH A VERY UPRIGHT HOBBIT WE ALL LOVE KORBO HE’S GLUMBRUSH ON HIS MOTHER’S SIDE (WE THINK) THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!!” and the visitor just starts nodding along emphatically because this is clearly something that is Not Spoken Of.

I fuckin love it

I. I have to know …

Does Korbo know!? Like is the Gobit aware his momma is a goblin? Or does he just grow up like

“yup us Glumbrushes sure do look different”

He leaves home on an adventure and stumbles n a hoard of goblins marches right up like

“how do ya do fellow hobbits? You know I’m half Glumbrush myself”

Alright, so, Korbo got in a fight once.

Once.

The Tumbrushes are, as a family trade, purveyors of fine pieces of wood. Not of large amounts of lumber, for which Hobbits don’t have a particular lot of call save occasionally, but rather of particularly nice pieces suitable for the making of fine window trimmings, floors, or the occasional carved bit of artwork to be given at a fancy event. Obviously for this one doesn’t go cutting down any tree willy-nilly, and Korbo had spent most of the day out and about looking for suitable trees.

(Korbo also personally assisted in cutting them down, being rather well known as on the strong side for a Hobbit, wink wink, nudge nudge.)

Having put in a genuine hard day’s work and rather pleased with himself, Korbo retired to the local bar to have a few beers and a smoke and to partake in good company, all of whom had gotten so used to pretending there was nothing odd about him that it was almost as if there was genuinely nothing odd about him.

Until along comes Humdil Thumbletoe.

Now the Thumbletoes were what was known in the Shire as “experts on genealogy”. This might sound like quite a good thing when you consider how well-versed most Hobbits are in their family lines, until you consider that most Hobbits are already well-versed in their family lines. A Hobbit being thoroughly knowledgeable of their family tree is not much to be remarked upon, so when it is remarked upon it is more to mean that the Hobbits in question are such tremendous mooches that they have had to dive far more deeply into their bloodlines looking for more relatives to leech off of than any Hobbit would generally consider polite.

Humdil was fairly brawny as Hobbits go, which was about all you could say for him. In fact Humdil had realized that was really all that could be said for him and had become a bit of a bully. And so it was he entered the bar that night with a very put-upon third cousin twice removed (by marriage) and caught sight of Korbo for the first time.

“Why, look at that one!” he bellowed, guffawing. “He’s so ugly his mother had to have been a Goblin, ey!”

The whole bar goes quiet. Aside from the obvious abominable rudeness of this, Humdil has said the thing that is never supposed to be said, and is clearly too stupid to realize he’s right. All heads slowly turn to Korbo.

Now, it is well known that Korbo has inherited his father’s tendency to never give a single solitary hairy-toed fuck about anything. He has currently been in the running to be at least the second most chill dude to ever be born in the Shire. And indeed, right now he’s still looking perfectly calm, puffing on his pipe. He sets the pipe aside, finishes off the last of his beer, and stands up.

“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”

Now Hobbits are mostly a peaceable lot, not given to wars or fighting for any old thing, but a bit of fisticuffs outside the bar is hardly unheard of. Mostly everyone is kind of nervous about this because they’re still not sure how Korbo is reacting to this whole Goblin thing. So someone takes Korbo’s jacket and Humdil’s third cousin twice removed (by marriage) grudgingly takes his, and the two square off.

Now, Humdil was a big Hobbit, it was true, but there were a few things that, being a moron who didn’t realize he was right, and who had never been outside the Shire or seen a Goblin anyway, he could not possibly know.

For one, Goblins have long, spindly arms, giving them a surprisingly good reach for their size… not abominably long, certainly not in the case of a half-Goblin, and certainly not above being concealed by the cut of a well-tailored shirt. Second, they are compact, wiry creatures, with dense muscle over their otherwise lanky forms, and given to that a Hobbit’s already greater mass and the anchoring benefit of large, wide feet, well.

The moment Humdil stepped forward and started to swing, Korbo’s fist shot out like one of Gandalf’s better rockets and struck him directly in the nose. His flight was also, for some weeks after, compared to one of Gandalf’s rockets, though not quite as far and the explosion at the end was mostly him laying on the ground cursing wetly due to all the blood streaming from his nose.

Korbo apologizes profusely to all and sundry for the disturbance, collected his jacket, and goes home. Honey is out picking mushrooms (still being of the more nocturnal persuasion after all these years), but Blinko’s sitting by the fire reading a book. Korbo sees that there’s a newspaper (full of lots of extremely important things like how the pipeweed was growing and which barrels of beer were going to be uncasked that month), so picks it up and sits down to read.

“Evening, Da.”

“Evening, son. Pleasant evening out?”

“Oh, fine. Save for I broke Humdil Thumbletoes’s nose for him.”

“Hm, hm, I see. Why did you feel the need to do that?”

“Well, he called Ma a Goblin, you see.”

Blinko slowly lowers his book, and slowly raises his head. Looks at Korbo for long moments. Raises one eyebrow a little.

“Son. You know full well your mother is a Goblin.”

“Well, yes, but he didn’t know that, and he said it as an insult anyway so it being true or not doesn’t really matter that much, does it?“

“Hm, hm. I suppose that’s true at the end of the day, isn’t it?”

Blinko goes back to reading his book. Korbo continues reading the paper.

“You could have stabbed him,” Blinko eventually notes.

“Aye, could have stabbed him,” Korbo agrees easily enough. “But it’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”

“True, true, probably would have been a bit of a mess in the road, not very thoughtful to the community,” Blinko allows.

And that was the end of it.

I love all of this so much. Also-

“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”

The power. I set down my drink after that one.

wastelesscrafts:

How to Sew Bedside Pockets Organizer - free sewing tutorial

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Sew a row of pockets to keep extra things off your nightstand and organize your bedside!</p>

SewCanShe Free Sewing Patterns for Beginners

DIY bedside pockets organiser

If your bedside table’s always overflowing or if you simply don’t have the space for one, check out this bedside pockets organiser tutorial by Sew Can She. It’s a great way to use up scrap fabric and keep your stuff off your floor.

(Image source) [ID: a quilted organiser with five pockets of different sizes hangs from a bed frame. Each pocket is made with a different fabric. A plush rabbit, two books, and a doll with blue hair poke out of the pockets.]

allthingslinguistic:

microsff:

My naym is pome / and lo my form is fix’d
Tho peepel say / that structure is a jail
I am my best / when formats are not mix’d
Wen poits play / subversions often fail

Stik out their toung / to rebel with no cause
At ruls and norms / In ignorance they call:
My words are free / Defying lit'rate laws
To lik the forms / brings ruin on us all

A sonnet I / the noblest lit'rate verse
And ruls me bind / to paths that Shakespeare paved
Iambic fot / allusions well dispersed
On my behind / I stately sit and wave

You think me tame /
  Fenced-in and penned / bespelled
I bide my time /
  I twist the end / like hell

---

* “lik” should be read as “lick”, not “like”. In general, the initial section on each line should be read sort of phonetically.

Written for World Poetry Day, March 21, 2018. When I had this idea earlier today, I thought it was the worst, most faux hip pretentious idea for a shallow demonstration of empty wordsmithing skill in poetry ever. So I had to try to write it. I mean, how often do you get to fuse the iambic dimeter of bredlik - one of the newest and most exciting verse forms - with the stately iambic pentameter of the classic sonnet?

BREDLIK SONNET

dkcissel:

theblazeofmemory:

blackbackedjackal:

Why do wild opossums look like this?

And ‘pet’ opossums look like this?

It’s because people don’t know how to keep them. Wild opossums have incredibly varied diets with everything from mice to bugs to mushrooms to berries, and they’re always on the move.

When people have a “pet” opossum, they have to have picked it up as a baby and habituated it to humans, and now they treat it like a house pet. Many of them are fed trash diets of dog food, raw meat scraps, and processed meat like hot dogs or hamburger. The lack of calcium at an early age leads to metabolic bone disease, which bows the long bones of the limbs and weakens their bodies. So they can’t climb anymore and don’t walk or run nearly as much. Combined with a poor diet, they gain weight quickly.

Many ambassador animals in rehab centers and zoos can develop the same problem. Especially rehab centers, a lot of captive Virginia Opossums are surrenders from people who realized keeping them is illegal, but the MBD has already started. Even with a better diet, they can become overweight really easily. It was such a struggle to keep the opossum I worked with at a healthy weight because something as simple as too much fruit in her diet would start pushing her weight up again. Even then, I don’t think we ever managed to get her to a “normal” range.

They look buggy eyed because what looks like the “whites” in that last picture is a sign of fat deposits in their face and around their eyes.

Please, please, PLEASE reblog this! It’s so important, and it’s a very visceral example of how inappropriate, unskilled and unnecessary captivity harms wildlife. Even the professionals can run into challenges keeping their charges in good health, and that’s in spite of their very best educated efforts. So you can imagine how poorly captive wildlife in the hands of those who don’t know what they’re doing will fare. (Heck, my very first comic was on this topic!)

The wild is the best place for wildlife, and good rehabbers know this and will do everything they can to get an animal back into its natural habitat unless it literally won’t survive out there. The “I saved a baby possum I found and kept it as a pet and it’s sooooooo cute!” people are the problem, as they’re the ones taking an animal that, with proper handling, could have gone back out into nature and had a much better life as well as diversifying the gene pool.

spin-measure-cut:

systlin:

needsmoreresearch:

femchef:

Risu just sent me this and I am SO DELIGHTED

World's oldest string of yarn found in French cave

Archeologists say they have found the world's oldest piece of yarn or cord, making it the earliest known evidence of textile and cord making

CNN

Ahhhhhhh!!! Go read it! Go read it!! The cording was plied by Neanderthals!!! The article talks about how we can’t keep thinking about them as being stupid it’s so delightful! In these trying times, let’s read about some joyful anthropological and archaeological discoveries!!!

Read it!  The fact that it’s plied is so exciting!  For plied cord, you first spin your fibers in one direction (they did it clockwise) and then take that collection of singles and twist them in the opposite direction (in this case counterclockwise).  So it’s a process that requires planning and experience.  You spin your first bit, you set it aside, you spin your second and third, you ply them.  You can’t do it all in one go.   And unless this piece happens to be the work of the very first person to spin fibers, and that person was a super genius who not only invented the idea of spinning but the technique for plying, it shows that the Neanderthals were communicating technological skills amongst each other.  Which I mean isn’t news in and of itself, but this is just one more piece of evidence.

FERAL FROTHING IN FIBER ARTS
THIS SHIT IS SO COOL

Holy shit this is incredible! The puts textile technology at 40,000 - 50,000 years old; the earliest previous evidence we had was 20,000 - 25,000 years.

And also, like the poster above said, this is evidence of *planning*. I was going into the article thinking “hmmm, extremely cool but probably thigh-spun two ply which is a single stage process…?” but no! This is three ply cord! I guess it might be possible to do thigh-spun three ply (be bloody tricky though which would be evidence of skill in itself), but more likely this was a highly skilled multi-stage process.

Holy shit.

inneskeeper:

cries-5-ever:

inneskeeper:

Someone just paid me fifteen dollars to tell y'all my opinions on white vegans so here you go.

It’s bullshit. The entire premise is bullshit. Everything about veganism is bullshit just in general, but white veganism in general is the fucking SSS-tier FGO Merlin levels of bullshit.

If you’re a vegan out of dietary necessity–this post is not about you, move on with your life. That includes “just don’t like meat/animal products” because we protect picky eaters indiscriminately in this household.

If you’re a vegan because you think it’s more ethical your head is so far up your ass you might as well be eating animal products cuz that’s what shit sure is.

There is not a single thing ethical about white veganism. It’s ridiculous to act that way. Veganism is literally turning your diet into imperialism. What, you think that your quinoa and acai smoothie made with coconut milk and nutella isn’t a horrific injustice done to pretty much every indigenous piece of land in the name of feeding your consumerist fad bullshit?

If killing cows is so bad, what’s y'all’s take on the palm oil plantations they’re burning down the Amazon for? Sure, orangutans are really charismatic and all, but what about the 1/3rd known species of birds worldwide and a full 30,000 species of endemic plants in it as well? Where does turning once-staple foods of indigenous people, like quinoa, into massive monocultures which the people who grew it can no longer afford it since it’s all getting shipped out via cargo plane to your friendly neighborhood Target factor in?

The meat industry is hurting the environment due to greenhouse gases, you say? What about all the produce that’s having to be shipped in from overseas and international waters because it’s not like you can fucking grow your pineapples in North Dakota? Where does that carbon footprint factor into the situation? Are you actually being vegan out of concern for the environment, or is it a meaningless gesture to be popular on social media about while refusing to examine the inherent classism and racism baked into the very foundations of your “anyone can do it” diet?

Do you dislike factory farms? Join the club! Neither do most farmers, funnily enough! But where’s the exploitation in your neighbor’s backyard chicken coop eggs? Is the rabbit fur an angora naturally sheds on its own being spun into high-quality yarn cruelty to the animal? Can you explain to me where the honeybees are getting the bad deal?

If your issue on ethical veganism is animal cruelty, then you campaign for more stringent animal husbandry regulations. You support your local small-scale farmers which treat their animals right that are otherwise getting shoved out of the market due to corporate farm fields. Because if you’ve got enough grocery money to shop exclusively vegan, you’re the kind of person who can go to a farmer’s market and actually support your community that way with no real issue, because again, your entire diet culture is wrapped up in needing to be seen as better than others more than anything else. You turned a type of food into evangelical protestantism.

Nothing about white veganism makes any fucking sense the second you look at it for .2 seconds. It is a performative diet made for wannabe Instagram influencers who get off on telling other people that they’re evil for eating honey, graciously ignoring that their agave nectar is causing an ecological crisis of overharvesting and throwing desert ecosystems out of whack, among everything else.

It’s foolish. It’s ridiculous. It’s literally not how any of this fucking works. I’m exhausted of people not treating veganism for what it is: Just another fad diet made to take money out of “empaths”’ wallets, only this time it’s actually managing to fuck over the entire global environment and multiple levels of working class citizens, rather than just being a waste of everyone’s fucking time! Congrats, vegans. You have done literally nothing right. You made every single wrong choice and have to double down on it now, because just like in a cult, the second you admit to yourself that maybe this whole schtick isnt environmentally friendly in the slightest, you now have to deal with the repercussions of Literally Everything You Did!

Much easier to just talk about how much healthier you are now that you take a shot of apple cider vinegar every morning on the internet. Takes less effort that way. Get well soon.

I understand the frustrations but it isn’t like that in real life, you’re just seeing vegan influencers and ascribing all vegans as that.

actually no I very specifically state that this is about white veganism, not vegans generically! :)

Addition, from an ask I got asking what I meant by white veganism:

“When we say white veganism, we are not saying vegans who are white (as so many of them seem to think). White veganism is a specific type of militant veganism perpetrated by white people in which their diet is a status symbol masquerading as social media activism, where it’s more important to stay updated with the current instagram superfood trend than any meaningful activism. The focus has become even less on animal care and has reduced into reactionary anti-animal, and anti-human.

White veganism is a direct cause of purity and social media-based performative culrure and its inherent anxieties, and can act significantly closer to a cult than merely a style of eating. They are often evangelist and militant in their natures, shaming nonvegans out of the concept that "anyone can choose to be vegan” and therefore not living vegan is a moral crime, as well as perpetuating racism, classism, and ableism in their ideals.

I have genuinely no opinion on veganism or vegans. At best I find them often empathetic but misguided and not understanding the full picture (or, if they are vegan out of dietary restrictions or needs, that is not relevant to any of this and i would not presume to speak about nor for them).

But I do have a deep and passionate disdain for veganism as an Instagram trend, especially when those who view it as such act as though it is a moral superiority and prerogative, rather than a fad choice which has become commercialized and sought to make large profits on, often at great social and cultural harm to countless indigenous cultures.“

beakedwhalesyo:

poetry-protest-pornography:

Please enjoy this updated meme:

Aw yeah! The complete set!

raphhaels:

okay i’m curious bc my parents were relatively young having me but idk what age difference is “normal” between parents and kids as i’ve met people with plenty of variations. so if you want, reblog this and tag (don’t comment) how old your parents were when they had you. my mom was 25 and my dad was 21. 

will-o-the-witch:

will-o-the-witch:

“I Would Love to Dress Like That”

You totally can!

• Most expressive fashion isn’t about what you wear, it’s how you wear it. I guarantee you can pull it off.
• No matter what you wear, if you act like it’s fine and you’re supposed to be wearing it, nobody will second guess it.
• Most people really aren’t analyzing your outfits; they’re busy worrying about themselves. Anyone with an opinion usually minds their business.
• Start small. Try getting one or two “statement” pieces and pair them with more simple, neutral clothes. Plaid pants with a solid top. Funky patterned shirt over some jeans. That long rockabilly skirt with a cute sweater.
• If you feel good in it, it’s a good outfit. The end result is to look good, not follow a bunch of so-called fashion “rules.” (Unless it’s like business formal or something. Then maybe be careful.)
• You’re trying to dress like you. You don’t have to like or wear everything from your favorite genres or commit to only one style. Again, nobody is putting you under a microscope!
• Don’t be afraid to mix patterns. Play around with what you have and experiment in your mirror. There are also lots of online tips on how to make good combos.
• Advice from my mom: Get all the way dressed up, then take one thing off, and you’re good to go.
• Give yourself a rule of thumb. Mine is that before I go out, I ask the question “If I were to die today and this became my ghost outfit forever, would I be okay with that?” then make sure the answer is yes. Find a litmus test that works for you!

Looks like the terfs found this so to be clear: THIS AIN’T FOR Y'ALL. Y'all are actually a big part of the problem for having such nasty opinions about what other people are supposed to look like and be, fuck you very much.

This is about niche subculture aesthetics but also genderqueer/nonbinary expression, GNC outfits, outfits that trans people love but don’t feel like they can “pull off,” dressing as a fat or disabled person, and embracing outfits that capture the expression of YOU whether that look is conventional to other people or not.

timemachineyeah:

timemachineyeah:

Imagine if we took the cop budget and turned it into a free ride service budget

Bringing this post back because I wanna talk about it more.

Read an article in the local paper submitted anonymously by a woman who got a DUI two years ago.

My first instinct was to hate her. Because I hate drinking and driving. Viscerally. Anyone who knows me knows how intense I can be about impaired driving of all kinds (drunk, high, tired). It’s not worth it. It gets people killed. I lost a good friend to a drunk driver. Don’t ever. I’ve gotten in fights with people! I have stolen keys!

“Don’t ever” was, in fact, the point of her writing it. But not because of the danger posed to others. Because of how much a single DUI had ruined her life for two straight years. This also didn’t garner much sympathy from me, because obviously the REAL reason not to drink and drive is because you could kill someone. What do I care if someone irresponsible is inconvenienced?

Anyway, this woman was pulled over after leaving a bar where she had two beers to drive a few blocks to her friend’s place. This didn’t really make me more sympathetic because I’m a hardass when it comes to drinking and driving, but she wasn’t pulled over for any kind of impaired driving. She was driving perfectly. It was clearly the kind of stop that happens late at night when the cops are just fishing. The cop made up something about her stickers being placed wrong or a faulty light, before making her take the normal physical impairment tests (as someone with dyspraxia these scare the shit out of me, but that’s neither here nor there) which she passed just fine. In fact, her driving was perfect, her reactions were perfect. But then came the breathalyzer. And her blood alcohol was just too high.

She got arrested.

And the rest of article was her detailing her attempts since to try to get her license back.

The for profit companies she had to take classes from, the for profit companies who make you pay to install the breathalyzer in your car, how if you are able to plead poverty to get aid for that installation you also have to commit to going once a month to a for profit company that will calibrate your discounted breathalyzer and how if you don’t go your car will get remotely bricked and how the pandemic interrupted the hours of these places without notice meaning her car needed to be towed when she missed an appointment after the place was closed when she expected it to be open, how this added to her sentence, how she lost her insurance.

As I read this, I thought, sure, about how much I hate drunk driving. About my knee-jerk, visceral lack of sympathy. And I asked myself:

Does any of this actually make me feel safer?

And it doesn’t. It doesn’t make me feel any safer at all. This woman was writing this article to say “Don’t drink and drive. Not even once. It’s not worth it.” But what I got from it was, these punitive measures aren’t preventing people from drinking and driving. They’re just… giving cops and for-profits fun new ways to mistreat and exploit normal people. People we, people I personally, can feel disinclined to protect because of judgments we have about them.

Meanwhile, people are still going to drink and drive.

And I thought about what would work. What would make me feel safer. And you know what would make me feel safer? If people who hadn’t planned ahead could still get a ride home. I’d much rather someone call the police (or a service that’s one of the many we institute to replace them) and go “I drove here but I don’t think I’m safe to drive home” and have the reply be “someone will be right there”. Then a pair of public servants show up, one to drive you home and one to drive your car home, and you get home safe.

I would love for traffic safety to be, like, the actual goal of how we manage traffic laws.

But more than that, punitive attempts to control people, blatant disproven behaviorism, doesn’t work. If your political philosophy is about finding the “bad” or “undeserving” and ensuring they struggle, I can’t identify with it. It’s hard to come up with a type of “common crime” that I have more disdain for than drinking and driving, but disapproving of the way this woman has been treated is not the same as justifying her actions. I don’t care! I don’t care if she learns her lesson! I don’t care if I like her! Everything you’re doing to her for a single breathalyzer failure is not keeping the roads safer!

The moment she failed the breathalyzer, you should’ve just given her a ride. That’s all I need.