advice from dad

So, my Dad is a 73-year-old Mexican man who has lived here since he was 16. He was in Watts during the riots in 1965; in 1992, when I was in LA, as soon as the Rodney King verdict was announced, he called me, told me what was coming, told me how to stay safe. He has survived horrible living conditions, being kidnapped, physical abuse, prejudice, discrimination. He learned English, got his green card, pays his taxes, works hard, and has three daughters. 

I thought he would be devastated today.

But he wasn’t.

He saw that I was sad and angry, and he asked me why, pretending he had no idea. I almost started crying. And then he said, “no se me chicopale.” 

It means, don’t lose heart. Don’t give in to despair.

I asked him why he wasn’t upset.

He said, basically, “The world has always been this way. There are always people who are afraid, who are racist, who are awful. This is not new. And it will never go away. He won. We can’t do anything about that. All we can do is what we can do. Fight for what matters to us. Take care of each other. And don’t lose heart. And here, I got these unsalted cashews for you and a bag of jamaica drink mix and can you show me how to use the new washing machine because it’s not working.”

And, for reasons I can’t articulate, I feel a little better. 

As a Jew who just spent two hours talking to a rabbi for the first time in thirty years, please give your dad a hug from me.

Tikun olam, the rabbi reminded me. Literally, it means world repair. It means we live in an imperfect world, and instead of looking to the Heaven of the next world, it’s our duty to be a light in THIS world – to protect those people who need our protection, to work for social justice, and to improve the world as a whole.

The world needs our light.

dungeon meshi at the gay bar

i want a shirt that has a QR code on it for some kind of horrible malware so that if anyone ever tries to film me in public their phone will automatically scan the code and be reduced to a functionless brick

Modern day Medusa

I’m an art history teacher, and was summoned from the depths of hell that is writing letters of recommendation before the Nov 1st deadline to provide this spooky image with some context!

This is probably some iteration of the concept of memento mori. My Spanish is rusty but the text in the foreground translates to something like "I used to be what you are, and you will be what I am." The text in the mid ground definitely says “la muerte no me ...” (something like ”death doesn’t [insert verb here] me,” but it’s really blurry and I can’t read the rest.

Essentially, it is a reminder of the inevitability of death, and in many contexts it is used to suggest its humility as well: this skull once contained a brain and a consciousness, and represents the existence of a whole, unique human being that has been reduced to an anonymous, lifeless vestige beneath the flesh that, while never seen in life, was nevertheless once alive and provided the scaffolding onto which the flesh took shape. From a physiological perspective, the topography of the skull is a really important part of shaping how our faces look, but to the layperson most skulls look indistinguishable from one another, especially in comparison to the face in life. 

As for the hood worn by the figure holding the skull in the foreground: I saw similar ones being worn during the procession of La Macarena (an icon on the crying Virgin Mary) during Holy Week in Sevilla, Spain in Civilizations (an art history docuseries on PBS that I like to show my students). Those of us from the US might associate this kind of hood with the Ku Klux Klan, but that is definitely not what is happening here (it turns out that the KKK probably stole the idea of the anonymity-guaranteeing hood, because of course they would). Some cursory research has revealed that it is called a capirote, and it is worn during Holy Week to conceal the identity of the wearer and direct the attention onto God instead (notice how the hat is tall and pointy, gesturing up towards Heaven). 

The history of the capriote is super interesting: pointy hats have oftentimes been associated with sin, humiliation, and/or evil in the western world. In the medieval world, Jews were sometimes forced to wear a pointed hat (called a ‘Judenhat’ or ‘pileus cornutus’) to distinguish them from Christians. Some sources describe the wizard or witch’s hat, which is pointy, as resembling the horn of the Devil and symbolize the wearer’s allegiance to them. You may be familiar with the 'dunce cap' (a tall party hat that ‘slow’ students were forced to wear in classrooms as a form of humiliation and punishment, which yikes), the or the capirote worn by penitents during the Spanish Inquisition (a form of public humiliation and punishment from the same family as the ‘scarlet letter’ and stocks and pillories) as well as prisoners, like this figure in a Goya etching or these figures in Goya’s early 19th century work The Inquisition Tribunal. They are used nowadays in some Catholic brotherhoods as a part of their regalia. 

Please add if you have more!

everyone has dreams about being lost at school, late to work, cant find bathroom etc but whats yalls most common Uncommon stress dream. ill always have dreams about having various problems with my fish tank

zuko really would just do anything for a cute boy I mean jet is like "hey let's do sword crime" and sokka is like "let's do a prison break" and zuko is just "so true king are you single"

Wow

I haven't laughed this hard in a while omg

Today’s absolutely adorable preview comes from @pepper-arts! You don’t want to miss the other baby dragons in this piece!

Today is your last day to preorder!

Shattered my wrist from slapping that statue of Mothman on his inexplicably fat ass too hard

- @jistring

PUT YOUR HAND IN THAT CRACK

AND YOU WONT GET IT BACK

WHEEEEN THE JAWS OPEN WIDE

AND THERE’S MORE JAWS INSIDE

WHEN IT SWIMS ON A REEF

AND HAS TWO SETS OF TEETH

WHEN IT JUMPS FROM THE MUCK

AND YOU SCREAM “WHAT THE FUCK!?”

A part of him warmed at the attention, manifesting into a stalk that burst from the earth beneath his feet, growing up to his sternum before unfurling a burst of unmistakable yellow petals that tickled his chin. It was soon joined by others, several stalks emerging on all sides until both of the paladins had been enclosed in a loose ring of sunflowers, one blooming so close to Pidge that she felt the prickle of the leaves on her arms.

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