The rich are getting more rich tho
his name was Josh Wilkerson and it’s important to point out that he died while taking Reli-On, the common “Walmart Insulin” you see people constantly pushing as a cheaper alternative.
so if you ever see people suggesting this, or god forbid you feel like doing it yourself, i want you to look up this story and remember Josh Wilkerson, and realize that the solution HAS to be bigger and more systemic than that
You never know if someone needs this. Reblog this, even if its not your ‘blog type’. Just do it.
Yes, please reblog
Do it. Now.
i sat here and thought about reblogging this or not but then i realized how many people feel suicidal, and i have too its not dan and phil but i could honestly care less, bc i rather have someone not die then make sure i strictly stay to my ‘blog type’
Blog type doesn’t matter. Caring for people does.
This isn’t my blog type but *deep inhale*
SAVING SUICIDAL LIVES IS BETTER THAN KEEPING IT TO MY BLOG THEME SO DEAR YA’LL WHO ARE SUICIDAL I’M HERE SIS/BRO/SIBLING!! STAY STRONG!!
Blame this guy named tony for this ok😭
i feel the need to reblog bc i just scrolled past this kind of post and my life is hell lol so hi
Just doing it so my check won’t be $1 when I get it
i don’t trust myself enough to scroll
There’s a running joke among people who know me personally that I unwittingly go out in public with a sign on my forehead stating “I Am Non-Threatening. Come Talk To Me.” Because if there’s a chance a bizarre conversation with a total stranger is going to happen, I’m typically the person it happens to.
Some context: I have been pretty darn sick this week. (It’s not Coronavirus, don’t worry.) Since the work in my queue for my day job is comprised entirely of audio narration right now, and I currently sound like a waterlogged Demi Moore, I haven’t been able to work these last couple of days. As a result, I’ve been using my down time to knock out as much of Manu’s redesign as possible. Today, to ensure I didn’t spend the day languishing in sinus misery, I medicated the crap out of myself and took Manu to the Starbucks down the block from my son’s day care.
I hit the bathroom, then picked an empty table, but as soon as I sat down with my venti Comfort Tea and started tweaking the inks on my iPad, I felt the eyes of the man next to me looking over my shoulder.
When I looked up, he had his phone out. “I’m sorry,” he said (in a thick accent I couldn’t place geographically), “I don’t want to disturb. I notice you art. You are artist!”
I tried to smile. “Yes, I’m... Well, I’m trying to be,” I croaked.
He leaned in, like he was sharing a secret.
“I am artist, too.”
He stuck out his hand.
I gently took it, grateful for the bathroom trip I just took in which I washed the scourge off of my fingers.
“Can I?” he asked, holding his phone up.
“Take a picture? Uh... sure,” I said. It’s not like he would be able to steal Manu out from under me or anything, I figured. The panel I was tweaking was magnified out to Guam.
“I am artist. Architect and Designer,” he clarified while he steadied his phone over my iPad. “I am Ilker. What is your name?”
“I’m Venessa” I said, trying to be polite. This, I thought warily, is precisely how I get myself into trouble. I’m too damn nice.
“You know, I come to America twenty years ago from Turkey...”
I put down my stylus. This was going to be a while.
“I like Turkey,” he explained. “I like the country and I like the people. But I am artist. I am not... religious man.”
I nodded.
“I told my wife I was going to go to America and she said, “what are you going to do? You don’t have job! You don’t have money! No Visa!” And I said, “I am artist and architect. I will paint and sell my paintings.
“So I come to America alone. To New York City. I sit outside, and I paint. And people, they liked my paintings. They bought them. This one for $30, that one for $50.
“One day, a man comes over to me and he say, “I like your painting. I see you are also architect.” And he gives me his number and asks me to go to meeting at his office. Because he wants to offer me a job. He starts to talk about a building contract.
“I tell him I don’t know anything about contracts. I have no Visa. I am not American citizen. But he says, “That’s okay. I will take care of everything. You will have nothing to worry about.” And this man, he gave me a job. $173,000 a year. And my wife, he gave her a job too. She was project assistant. I bring her and my two daughters over from Turkey.”
“Wow,” I said, not fully believing the veracity of what sounded like a full-on immigration fairy tale.
“Here,” said Ilker, unlocking his phone and opening up his Facebook app. “I show you my work.” He paused and looked up at me. “I am interrupting. You don’t mind?”
At this point, I was invested. I had to see. Because whatever he was about to show me would either prove or disprove this yarn he was spinning. “Please,” I said, gesturing for him to go ahead.
He opened his photos and my jaw dropped. His work... was UNREAL.
“This is building I designed on Madison Ave.... And this one in Chelsea...”
Holy crap. I had just been to Chelsea with my sister last month on a trip to see a broadway show. I had crossed the intersection of the building he was, at this moment, telling me he designed.
He flipped through more buildings. These, he’d designed in Washington, DC. In Bethesda. In Arlington. All beautiful, streamlined, modern structures I had visited and parked my car in front of. He told me he did much of his concept work freehand. That he worked exclusively in natural media. His preferred media was pen, ink, watercolors, and chalks.
Between photos of his wife and daughters, he went on to show me photos from the RUSSIAN EXHIBITION OF HIS ARCHITECTURE ARTWORK.
Y’all, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe the talent I was sitting next to. Scattered among these gloriously rendered images of some of the most beautiful building concepts I’d ever seen were paintings of scenes in Central Park, the National Mall, and nudes from a life-drawing session he attends from time to time.
When he was done flipping through his phone, he looked at me and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind that I interrupt you. I show you all this because what you are doing is very good. And you should be encouraged. To draw is to make beauty.”
I nodded, a lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I managed. “Your work is astonishing. I don’t even know what to say. What is your name again?”
He held out his hand once more. “Ilker Kocahan,” he said. “I am getting more coffee. Can I get you one?”
I looked at my still-full venti cup. “No thank you. But here, please take my card.”
He held my dinky business card like I’d handed him a treasure and thanked me.
Then Ilker got his coffee, and left the coffee shop.
At some point in his ramblings he talked about America as a place of dreams. How he credits this country with helping him rise to the top of his field where he is now able to sell his paintings for $800-$1000 a piece now that he’s retired. My heart ached to hear him talk about that, knowing how our leadership’s positions on immigrants have taken such a dark and horrifying turn.
Imagine the buildings and museums and public places that would never have been if a business man in the park hadn’t lifted up a Turkish painter who spoke little English.
And now that painter was paying it forward on me.
I still feel pretty darn sick. I’ve still got body aches and a nose that has taken the rest of my face hostage.
But today was a really good day. And I just wanted to share it with you in case you are looking for reasons to keep drawing/painting/dancing/writing. It all counts and it is all good.
If you would like to see Ilker Kocohan’s work, please click here.
UPDATE TO THIS STORY! I would have posted this sooner, but quarantine has had the unexpected effect of zapping all my alone-time...
As luck would have it, I saw Ilker one last time before my area received the mandate to start social distancing. I came into the Starbucks to work on the “Simon Is On the Ground” comic while waiting to pick up my kid from day care, and there he was, happily chatting with the Starbucks manager, who gifted him with a Starbucks hat while I ordered my tea.
A week had passed since our first meeting, so I wasn’t sure he’d recognize me. Lo and behold, as I turned the corner, I caught his eye, and he waved at me. This time, I asked if I might sit with him, and he warmly offered the seat beside him.
While I settled in, he told me that his project was being delayed and that he was going to leave the area and fly home before COVID-19 could make it impossible to travel. The hat was for his wife, whose only understanding of Starbucks was that Ilker really liked the coffee.
As one might expect, we immediately fell into another conversation about art, except this time, I eagerly abandoned my work to hear him talk.
And friends, did I ever get a master class.
He pulled up a painting on his phone which he’d sold for $800. It was a life drawing in ink and watercolor of a woman in a demure gesture, barely detailed and colored in but for her rose-tinted lips and the shadow cast across her neck. He said he felt sad that he’d sold it because he really loved how it came out.
“This is no detailed like yours,” he said, comparing his painting to my panel of Simon and Baz. “Mine is simple. But in a few strokes, I can capture the life of the lady.”
He took his napkin, turned it over, and pulled a pen out of his chest pocket. “Look there,” he said, pointing to a man sitting a few tables away. He began to scribble away on the napkin, lines and lines and more lines. “You see,” he murmured as he ran his pen over the napkin, “I can, with speed, capture the man. I don’t have hours to ask him to sit. I must let go of the planning.”
In seconds, the man across the room took shape on the napkin in a series of confident if also messy lines. It was incredible to watch.
I could instantly see what he meant. He had not produced a photorealistic version of this person on the napkin. But he had captured the man’s essence. The aura of a real person sitting contemplatively with his coffee while reading the Washington Post. I could feel the life of the drawing radiate from the paper.
(When he was done, to my horror, he crumpled up the napkin.)
I shyly mentioned that I’ve been working hard on my own gesture drawing, but had a long way to go, so he asked to see my sketchbook.
I mean... is there even a word in the English language to describe the combination of dread and embarrassment that precedes showing an art master your crap-ass sketchbook that no one sees but you? I didn’t know what to do with myself as he sat there and flipped through the pages.
Eventually, he nodded approvingly and said, “Okay! Is good. But this is sketchbook like every other.” He gestured at the page. “Where are you?”
I was lost for how to respond, but lucky for me, he’s a talkative guy seemingly incapable of awkward silences.
“The world needs to see you in the lines,” he explained. “Someone can look at my work and know, ‘that painting is from Ilker Kocahan.’ You need to draw more and more so that when people look at your drawings, they will know: this work is Venessa’s work.” Then he shrugged and said, “And who knows. I will maybe see you in two years at this Starbucks, and by then, your drawings will be truly yours.”
I’ve shared this story with some close friends who took mild offense on my behalf at his observations, but I really think it took sitting there watching him draw to understand exactly what he was talking about.
Ilker Kocahan has no imposter syndrome. He is supremely confident in every possible way where his art is concerned. The lines that flowed from his pen were fueled by his soul, not his brain. I didn’t think artists like him existed anymore until I was sitting there looking over his shoulder while he scribbled a man into existence, like it was nothing. When I asked if he plots out the perspective on his building sketches in advance, he shook his head no and doodled this on my cake pop wrapper while he rambled on about the components he likes to include in his architecture concepts:
(Don’t worry. I kept it.)
So when he talked about “finding me” in my sketches, I really think he could sense—by the light scratch of the pencil, the trace evidence on the paper of my erasing and failed attempts—my own lack of confidence, my second guessing and self-doubt. My desire to be as good as other artists instead of my desire to express myself.
And in that sense, everything he was saying about my sketchbook was correct. He urged me to get off the iPad as often as possible. To sketch with ink, which is riskier because you can’t erase it, and in that way, give myself no choice but to commit to the lines.
The conversation turned to lighter things after that. He’s apparently an extremely talented basketball player who loves hanging out with his wife and kids. His daughters are both designers. He thinks quirky viral videos are the best thing about the internet. (I agreed.) He’s weak for New York pizza.
Eventually, he bought me a refill for my tea and asked if I would meet him again in a couple of days so he could talk to me about my artwork and help me with my sketching. He even added me as a Facebook friend. When I left the Starbucks to pick up Colin, I was so excited and overwhelmed and grateful to the universe for bringing me into his acquaintance, I texted everyone in my family about it.
But as fate would have it, that night, the local government released its mandate regarding social distancing. He’s likely in Belarus right now with his wife.
I won’t lie and say I’m not devastated that I lost the chance to be his student for an afternoon. But the impression these coffee shop chats left on me was profound. I think about it all the time. For one who struggles with feeling like the artist version of Pinocchio waiting around for permission to be a real boy, it makes all the difference in the world to linger in the huge, unstoppable energy of someone who lives without an inner critic.
I hope I get to see him again after the quarantine is over. I’d love to see if I can fulfill Ilker’s prophecy and meet back at that Starbucks in two years with a different sketchbook in tow. One that I can hand over knowing without doubt or trepidation that anyone looking for me in the work need look no further than the bold stroke of my hand.
Taken the last time we chatted:
Just because it’s a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for sharing this, I cannot express how important this is to me.
hey how is everyone… i got my very first animal crossing game and then it made me make THIS so how’s YOUR quarantine going?
god help me i can never pass up old people with pasts, y’all
remember, this is for a DOOR lock.
remember that when picking a DOOR lock, you have to apply a little bit of pressure to your tension wrench (the thing that you use to turn the knob). too little or too much and you wont be able to pick the door open. you can use anything for the tension wrench. a bobby pin. bits of wire. a paper clip. etc.
its best to be completely silent when youre picking locks bc theres this small ‘click’ when youre picking that you might miss if youre using headphones or listening to music.
.
if youre picking one of these
you jam something thin and long above one of the rotation dials and you push up on the shackle.
. if its one of these
you get yourself some shims. (or make one. you can make shims out of fucking soda cans), you wiggle them in the tiny space between the shackle and the body of the lock, and you pop these suckers open.
. for a chain deadbolt,
you get something flexible but sturdy and you just push this fucker down
. for one of these rotating combination locks
you can also shim this motherfucker open. jam your shims between the shackle and the body and pry it unlocked. if, for some reason, you dont wanna shim it open, maybe you dont have a shim or you just like a challenge, this bitch can be decoded ridiculously easy. heres what you do:
spin this bitch to the right about two or three times to “reset” it. then you pull up on the shackle a bit, and turn it right slowly until you hear a click. your number is two spaces further. then you turn left 360 degrees until you land on the right number again, and start turning this motherfucker left until it stops. when it stops, turn right. if its loose, its the wrong number, keep going left. if its not loose, you have the right number, and you turn right all the way until this bitch pops
.
now you know how to pick several common locks!!!!! congratulations!!!!
Thanku
*frantically takes more notes*
Fuck, where’s my notebook?
This here, my good peeps, is how you do it. I give thanks to the being who made this.
when she says she doesn’t send nudes
when guys objectify women and expect them to send nudes
when someone asks you about your nuclear plans for russia
When Russia sends you nudes
This is my favorite post in all of tumblr
reminder that this post is now illegal in Russia
reblog it, because Russia can´t
Thanks Obama
When Russia makes this post illegal
I want a story about an Italian vampire.
No romance, no action.
Just 200 pages of “What do you mean, I can’t have garlic? Do you know where I’m from?”
TBH I think the main issue would be the mirror thing
have you ever met an Italian man
the amount of time they spend looking in the mirror jfc
a bunch of pissed off vampires stuck in Venice because they can’t go over moving water
Not to victim blame, but you’d have to be a pretty bad Italian to even get turned into a vampire in the first place.
the only two places practically immune to vampires are texas and italy
Let me tell you of A Thing.
Lithuania has no vampires, I guarantee it.
Lithuania has one vampire, and let me tell you, she’s gonna be FURY UNLEASHED once someone gets her out of the centre of that crossterfuck of a burial point.
Reblogging purely for Crossterfuck.
This is a summary of college only using two pictures; expensive as hell.
That’s my Sociology “book”. In fact what it is is a piece of paper with codes written on it to allow me to access an electronic version of a book. I was told by my professor that I could not buy any other paperback version, or use another code, so I was left with no option other than buying a piece of paper for over $200. Best part about all this is my professor wrote the books; there’s something hilariously sadistic about that. So I pretty much doled out $200 for a current edition of an online textbook that is no different than an older, paperback edition of the same book for $5; yeah, I checked. My mistake for listening to my professor.
This is why we download.
Alternatives to buying overpriced textbooks
Spreading this shit like nutella because goddamn textbooks are so expensive.
not necessarily art related but as someone who couldn’t afford their textbooks this semester this is a godsend
REBLOGGING because after a little digging, I found my $200 textbook for free in PDF form.
friendly reminder that this exists since I know we’re all going back to college soon
V A C C I N A T E
sign in a doctor’s office
I have decided to make this a master post of healthcare PROFESSIONALS calling bullshit on anti-vaxx
how i sleep knowing i will pirate every single thing released on disney plus
how y’all gonna sleep after your computers are infected with a bazillion viruses and the feds gon’ bust your asses
how i sleep when I'm pirating disney with a vpn and anti-virus protection.
How I sleep after pirating everything from D+ while using an antivirus, VPN or proxy, and a cantenna to rip off the free wifi at Downtown Disney. If you can’t get wifi directly from the house of mouse McDonald’s will do.
How I sleep knowing I’m pissing off all the Disney bootlickers by pirating:
Oh no! What a terrible thing to do, this information should't be spread by reblogging it, that's for sure.
Okay, I have to admit, using Disney's own wifi to pirate Disney Plus shows is a stroke of absolute GENIUS
You win $430 million tomorrow, wyd?
Not telling anybody.
Ask my mama to take me to McDonald’s and just wait for it….
Mom: Do you have McDonald’s mon…
😂😂😂 the Rihanna gif
this is the money Rihanna, reblog to have someone throw money at you
Smack me in the face with a stack of cash please. And let me keep it after.
SPITE
dude: we have to
GF: we could just…pretend and make noises by the wall–
dude: *popping cap on lube* No other choice
Legends only
reblog to add +10 haunting power to your ghost when you die
i aint risking being a weak ass ghost
Reblog for a +2 to visibility to cats when nothing else can see you
a beaded curtain, but instead of beads they’re worms on strings
you know… these guys
Hi op I hope this satisfies your needs.
Needs more worms
I wanna make one of these that is like a literal curtain of worms
No clear strings available to get caught and tangle, I want them nose to ass like some kind of horrible human centipede of worms, covering my doorway
@fanotastic more worms
Aw fuck. Nothing makes you assholes happy.
Fuck you guys.
My fellow fuckers, I present you-
god, GOD Freddie Mercury was such a fucking badass
This doesn’t do the moment justice. He took the swig of vodka, said “I’ll fucking do it darling”, and then ABSOLUTELY NAILED IT in one fucking take
Mood for 2019: “I’ll fucking do it, darling.”
Reblog for Freddie Mercury level belief in yourself this new year!
Take care of yourself. And don’t trust strangers easily— it might be lethal! Being a girl is scary in so many ways. Yeah it can happen to men, but cmon they see females as an easier target.
I agree on this corrective asswhoopin
If you see this, don’t just sneakily tell the woman or the bartender. Shout for everyone to hear “Hey, you just put something in that drink!” While pointing at the person.
If a predator misses target number one they’ll just go for target 2. If you shame them out of the bar they’ll never come back.
And there is a solid chance of a collective asswhoopin, or an actual arrest for attempted rape.
When in doubt, make the biggest scene you can.
SAME FOES FOR WOMEN. Cuz I KNOW y’all be slipping shit in men’s drinks too
