Don’t you dare, for one minute,
believe that my kindness makes me
anything but insurmountable.
I did not unzip my chest to every kind of hurt,
and stagger back, wounded and alive,
just to hear you call me weak for trying.
I think if you get quiet and honest with yourself–really honest, the kind of honest you need to get to your best work–you know when you’re stalling. You know when you’re working, when you’re bored, when scared, when you’re lost, when you’re stuck and when you’re stalling. It’s remembering to have that gut check and act on it that’s hard.
You working? Building something, losing a sense of time passing as you engage with your characters? Great. Keep going. Remember to take breaks and whenever possible stop when you still know what comes next.
You bored? Tough shit. If it was always fun everybody could do it. Take a short break and get your ass back in your chair. If you really need to, connect with the WHY–why are you doing this? If you can’t answer that, you’re sunk.
You scared? That’s normal. Keep going. Writing is telling truth by telling lies. It isn’t safe; it’s scary. But bravery isn’t defined by a lack of fear, it’s definied by what we do in the face of our fears. Be brave. You have it in you.
You lost? Get up. Go for a walk, take a drive, take a shower. Call somebody and talk the problem through. This IS the discipline of writing.
You stalling? You’re scared or bored or lost. See above.
the amazing Kelly Sue DeConnick, answering a letter asking “How can I stop doing stuff that isn’t writing?” in Bitch Planet Issue #8. (via sbyzmcpherson)
Singing was as natural as breathing for Ralph Edmund Stanley, who was born Feb. 25, 1927, on Big Spraddle Creek in Dickenson County, Virginia. His first public performance was in church, and when he was 11 years old, his mother said he could either have a pig or a banjo. Luckily for music fans everywhere, he chose the latter. His style of banjo picking — which, like the man himself, had no frills — would go on to influence countless musicians. Most people will recognize his voice from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?. He was 89 years young. #bigfoodbiglove #ralphstanley #bluegrass #countrymusic #banjo #southern Won’t you spare me over til another year Well what is this that I can’t see With ice cold hands takin’ hold of me Well I am death, none can excel I’ll open the door to heaven or hell Whoa, death someone would pray Could you wait to call me another day The children prayed, the preacher preached Time and mercy is out of your reach I’ll fix your feet til you cant walk I’ll lock your jaw til you cant talk I’ll close your eyes so you can’t see This very hour, come and go with me I’m death I come to take the soul Leave the body and leave it cold To draw up the flesh off of the frame Dirt and worm both have a claim O, Death O, Death
You know, this whole thing was an accident, this Ham4Ham. When we had our first lottery, 700 people showed up, and we didn’t know what to do with all of that so I just got up and said a few words and said, “thank you for trying to do the lotto, we love you very much, goodbye!” And it’s turned into this. – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s intro to his final Ham4Ham show, 6 July 2016.
Hello hello hello and welcome to the hopefully definitive database of Ham4Ham shows. Accept no substitutes.
Please feel free to message me or send me an ask about broken links or additions. The only thing I ask is that you be specific, because as you can see this post is very long.
Thanks to everyone who took video so that those of us in far away places could take part. – Yr Obd Svt, L. [redacted].
Rodney turns the lights on for Ronon in The Long Goodbye (02×16).
If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also
Matt 5:39
This specifically refers to a hand striking the side of a person’s face, tells quite a different story when placed in it’s proper historical context. In Jesus’s time, striking someone of a lower class ( a servant) with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. Another alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect putting an end to the behavior or if the slapping continued the person would lawfully be deemed equal and have to be released as a servant/slave.
I can attest to the original poster’s comments. A few years back I took an intensive seminar on faith-based progressive activism, and we spent an entire unit discussing how many of Jesus’ instructions and stories were performative protests designed to shed light on and ridicule the oppressions of that time period as a way to emphasize the absurdity of the social hierarchy and give people the will and motivation to make changes for a more free and equal society.
For example, the next verse (Matthew 5:40) states “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” In that time period, men traditionally wore a shirt and a coat-like garment as their daily wear. To sue someone for their shirt was to put them in their place – suing was generally only performed to take care of outstanding debts, and to be sued for one’s shirt meant that the person was so destitute the only valuable thing they could repay with was their own clothing. However, many cultures at that time (including Hebrew peoples) had prohibitions bordering on taboo against public nudity, so for a sued man to surrender both his shirt and his coat was to turn the system on its head and symbolically state, in a very public forum, that “I have no money with which to repay this person, but they are so insistent on taking advantage of my poverty that I am leaving this hearing buck-ass naked. His greed is the cause of a shameful public spectacle.”
All of a sudden an action of power (suing someone for their shirt) becomes a powerful symbol of subversion and mockery, as the suing patron either accepts the coat (and therefore full responsibility as the cause of the other man’s shameful display) or desperately chases the protester around trying to return his clothes to him, making a fool of himself in front of his peers and the entire gathered community.
Additionally, the next verse (Matthew 5:41; “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”) was a big middle finger to the Romans who had taken over Judea and were not seen as legitimate authority by the majority of the population there. Roman law stated that a centurion on the march could require a Jew (and possibly other civilians as well, although I don’t remember explicitly) to carry his pack at any time and for any reason for one mile along the road (and because of the importance of the Roman highway system in maintaining rule over the expansive empire, the roads tended to be very well ordered and marked), however he could not require any service beyond the next mile marker. For a Jewish civilian to carry a centurion’s pack for an entire second mile was a way to subvert the authority of the occupying forces. If the civilian wouldn’t give the pack back at the end of the first mile, the centurion would either have to forcibly take it back or report the civilian to his commanding officer (both of which would result in discipline being taken against the soldier for breaking Roman law) or wait until the civilian volunteered to return the pack, giving the Judean native implicit power over the occupying Roman and completely subverting the power structure of the Empire. Can you imagine how demoralizing that must have been for the highly ordered Roman armies that patrolled the region?
Jesus was a pacifist, but his teachings were in no way passive. There’s a reason he was practically considered a terrorist by the reigning powers, and it wasn’t because he healed the sick and fed the hungry.
Yes, and isn’t it telling that the state ultimately adopted Christianity and started teaching everyone that Jesus said to obey your parents and to just do what you’re told…else he’d send you to hell?
technology related sensory memories from my childhood
sliding the metal cover on floppy disks
the slight resistance of inserting cassette and video tapes
ripping off the strips of holed paper off of dot matrix printer paper
rolling the wheel on a disposable camera to take another photo
The heaviness and rubber texture of the roller ball in a computer mouse, and the little ring of lint
Unkinking the curly cord of a telephone while you talked
The -peww sound and slowly fading image of a crt monitor turning off, and then running your finger through the static on the dusty glass
The crunch of opening or closing a plastic Disney vhs cover
The sound effects in kidpix
Extending and collapsing metal antennas and using them as magic wands
Manually rewinding cassette tapes by spinning them around my fingers
Playing with the rubber casing of the buttons on a Walkman–pulling them away, rotating them, slipping them from side to side on the stiff posts of the buttons
The audio and visual static at the end of a videotape
The satisfying thwap-thwap-thwap as you page through a well-filled CD sleeve book
How weird and small and light the first cordless phone felt
Sticking your fingers into the holes of an older relative’s rotary phone they still have yet to replace, and pushing to get the dial to turn and the oddly-satisfying click-click-click to get to the right number.
The sheer loudness and weight of a typewriter: the loud clack! as keys struck paper, the high-pitched warning ding! at the end of the line, the whirring zip! of shoving the heavy carriage back to the start.
The blockiness of computer monitors and towers: huge boxes with sharp lines, cases a roughly textured matte beige.
Depressing the power buttons into the casing of various electronics – and if you didn’t push hard and deep enough, it wouldn’t turn on at all.
Turning the heavy handle on the inside of the car door, and the window lowering in soft jerks.
The weight of your parents’ camera and the strange milky brown of new film being installed before the back of the camera was shut with a soft click.
The actual smell of the camera film.
The smell of the house after getting the first window-unit air conditioner. (It smelled like other people’s houses, not ours.)
The high-pitched, barely audible whine of the television tube.
The sound and feel of turning the TV dial really fast, past the empty channels (and it was faster for UHF than for VHF, since there were so many more UHF frequencies.)
E v e r y t h i n g about the slide projector–the back light when the man lamp isn’t on, the sound and feel of the fan, the motion and sound of the slides being pushed in and pulled out and the carousel advancing, the clunk when the direction is changed, and the glow of the images…
The heavy feel of turning the film strip in class. That God awful BEEP.
that awful squeak when you used the new piece of chalk on the board.
spinning the dial of the radio to find the right station and the joy of finding some obscure station that you could only get if you fiddled with the knob just right.
A scratched CD skipping in the same place every time.
Placing the arm of the record player down, how sharp that needle could be.
The gargantuan effort of trying to turn the wheel of a car with no power steering.
the cracked, sharp, extremely hot vinyl seats of your parent’s van.
Watching the analog numbers flip on the pump at the self serve gas station.
The heat expelled from the side of the teacher’s overhead projector and the smell of non-toxic transparency markers.
The gradual slowing of the Walkman as the batteries died.
Pulling a 5.25″ floppy disk out of a cloth-paper sleeve.
The heft of the gray, brick-like Gameboy and perching like a gremlin under a table lamp so you could actually see the screen.
The ksssshhhhh-boing-a-boing-a-beep-kssssssssh of the modem connecting.
Sticking your finger through the swinging silvery door of the coin return on a payphone and scooping forward to look for change.
Sliding the switch on the splitter from TV to AV to watch a movie.
Pressing your nose to the tv screen and seeing the tiny, tiny vertical bars of red, blue, and green
The smell and unnatural chill of freon when the car air conditioning came on.
The sound and bright colourful dancing lines of a loading Spectrum ZX Game, and the excitement – only a few more minutes til you can play!
The rude jolt as an audio cassette flipped sides automatically
Your music jolting along with your movements if you tried to run while using a discman
Static seemingly from nowhere in the middle of a radio or TV programme you were enjoying – moving the ariel or portable radio around until you found that sweet spot where the sound/picture were reasonably clear again.
Programmes you’d videod yourself off the telly, with the end of the credits after the programme before, the channel ident, and at the end, occasional announcements about one of the stars appearing in a now long forgotten west end show.
Listening to a cassette that’s been recorded over and and over, and hearing the faint ghosts of songs and programmes that had been taped over.
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