current thoughts while trying to be social

 to It would be easy to say this is “yet another example of how boomers destroyed culture,” but it would be more apt to blame how capitalism’s exploitation of baby-boomers destroyed culture. In the first couple hundred years or so of the middle class’s existance, young people grew up inside an extended family and learned social roles by emulating their elders. Being a good host or hostess, and a good guest, were values that society recognized as skill-based. Hence, elders actively taught those skills and young people actively learnt them. But come along the baby boom, with an unprecedented combination of wealth and relative numbers, and corporations rushed to define a “teenager” market segment that they could profit from directly by separating their demographic off from the more stable “middle class family” demographic. So “teenage culture” emerged, and they myth of the “generation gap”, and baby boomers never learned the more sophisticated skills of being good guests and good hosts. And hence, many of those skills are only available to people who like hiding out in the HM435-HM477 sections of the library stacks. So here are two little hints from my time in the UBC main library, tested and proven over nearly half a century:

1) When you host a gathering, you have a duty of care to your guests. You have a legal duty of care to keep them reasonably safe, and you have a social duty of care to help them be reasonably comfortable. So try to greet each guest as they arrive, remember their name and something interesting about them, and --> introduce them by name to someone else at the party who might find that thing interesting too.<-- Sample script: “Bill, I want you to meet Emma. She is restoring a ‘65 Barracuda, similar to the one you restored.” After your guests are mostly finished arriving, keep an eye on your guests and when one is backed into a corner behind the potted palm looking miserable, go fetch them and introduce them to someone else. Sample script: “Oh, Phyllis, there you are! Have you met Toby yet? Toby! You should really tell Phyllis about your pet tortoise!” 2) When you are a guest and you get buttonholed in this way, help out your host by at least pretending to be interested in ‘65 Barracudas or pet tortoises, and asking the other guest something. Ask them anything. Or if you see the guy moping behind the potted palm before your host does, approach them and ask them something. The key is, use the words “what” or “where” or “how” to ask the question, rather than “do/did ...?” That way they cannot simply, desperately, answer “yes” or “no” and have to tell you something you can build on. And don’t worry about “not wanting to pry”. People tend to really like to talk about themselves, provided you give them leeway to decide what part of themselves to talk about. Sample script: “Lucky you! How did you manage to get your hands on a ‘65 Barracuda/pet tortoise?” Or if you didn’t get a prompt from your busy host, “What canapés are the tastiest?” or the old standbys Sample script: “what school do you go to/what are you studying/what do you do in your spare time when you’re not at a cocktail party?”

You can actually memorize just one of these open-ended questions and use it in nearly every circumstance; and then follow up by noticing what the answer makes you curious about, and asking that. Enjoy.

september 17th 2022 cquackblr plant incident

finally ive found the entire context i was so confused but so deeply shaken by “couldn’t die because it was never alive in the first place”

Wilbur tweeted! and link to the VOD:

“Ours Poetica” Poems

this is a master list of all the poems used and referenced in “Ours Poetica” by zeeskeit on A03

Chapter 1: “where beauty stands and waits"

Constantly Risking Absurdity by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Chapter 2: "The nows of summer glitter in a ring; These are cities where I had hoped to live"

Triolet for Late July by Peter Kline

Chapter 3: “and my nights, and my doubts, and my friends/my beautiful, credible friends.”

All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs by Christian Winan

Chapter 4: "I do the very thing I hate...I do not do/the good I want.

Eating Dust by Joyce S. Brown

Birthday by Richie Hofmann

Chapter 5: "my darling turns to poetry at night"

My Darling Turns To Poetry At Night by Anthony Lawrence

Chapter 6: “I gave/shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my/velocities, watched myselves sleep.”

Birds Hover the Trampled Field by Richard Silken

Chapter 7: “And I learned after:/everything that opens is a mouth./Every mouth will spit you right out.”

Plastic Bag from Corner Store Laments the Self by Aliyah Cotton

Pristine by Hilda Raz

Chapter 8: “the only way to run through the neighborhood/was to run through it together,”

Teenage Riot by Matthew Dickman

Chapter 9: “This is an ancient practice: predicting the future/in another’s prone body”

Haruspex by Teresa Pham-Carsillo

Chapter 10: “you hurt because there are things/you’ve never been taught to do”

failed avoidance of "the body" in a poem by Destiny O. Birdsong

Cento Between the Ending and the End by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Chapter 11: “We are the sons of flint and pitch”

I see the boys of summer by Dylan Thomas

*this will be updated as chapters are posted*

5000 years ago, 6 feet tall made her a giantess

God can you imagine if Donald Trump became president? There’d be like a new bubonic plague and he’d be like “idk drink bleach about it”

Throwback to when I took acid for the first time in 2013 and predicted the events of 2020 like the fucking oracle of Delphi

Holy shit

Happy March 32nd, everyone!

you can only reblog this once a year

collecting these like marbles

Had to label the old trash barrels so the collectors would know to take them

This should be the last post on tumblr before it is shut down.

if we ever close down, I HOPE this is the last thing we all reblog