Don't be a Dick, just be NICE

#mood

A 22 yr old in my org got drunk tuesday night and kinda shit on the fact that I'm running a community cleanup for our chapter. Said something along the lines of "i didn't join up to pick trash." Which really bothers me and it took me a while to figure out why. The whole point of the community cleanup is that we're returning to the neighborhoods where we knocked doors for A4 to help clean up their streets and provide material improvement for free in an effort to build inroads with those neighbors.

Like... if your socialism doesn't include picking uo trash, I'm guessing it also doesn't include doing the dishes, babysitting, or anything else that is important but not prestigious. Idk man, fuck off with that shit. You'll pick up trash and you'll like it until you understand why picking up trash isn't anyone's job but your own. I hate that attitude. If helping and doing activism was always fun and visible and impressive, everyone you know would already be doing it.

Vincent Price and Gene Tierney Laura (1944) dir. Otto Preminger

Am not smol, am tol

HOBBES vs. TIGGER cage match TO THE DEATH say goodbye to your childhood because ONE! WILL!! DIE!!!!

Picturing two tiger plushies just kind of sitting there facing each other in Thunderdome

i am picturing it

After years of living in the adulting world, I think I’ve come to a realization: Manners exist to guide you to good conduct even when you’re in a bad mood.

When you’re happy, when you’re feeling generous, when you’re pleased with your gift or your service or your outcome, it’s easy to be nice. It’s easy to tip the waiter well when you’ve had a good day. It’s easy to thank the teller or the clerk when you got what you wanted out of the transaction. It’s easy to smile and chit-chat with strangers on the road when you’re in a good mood.

It’s hard to tip the waiter when you didn’t enjoy your food. It’s hard to thank the clerk for their time when you’ve just been told there’s a problem with their account and they weren’t able to fix it for you. It’s hard to think of something nice to say when your aunt gave you a crappy sweater you neither need nor want. It’s hard to be nice to people when you’ve had a shitty day. It’s HARD.

That’s what manners are for. Scripts and phrases that you learn by rote to say when you can’t think of a single nice or good thing to say from your own volition. Yes, they’re scripted. Yes, the sentiment is empty. But the scripts work in every situation, and the emptiness provides a buffer between your own unhappiness and the rest of society.

Because most of the time, it’s not the waiter’s fault that the food you ordered wasn’t what you expected. It’s not the clerk’s fault that your account is overdrawn. It’s not the fault of the barista or the stranger on the subway that you got fired today or your favorite aunt died. But even when you can’t summon a smile or a cheery word, you can still have manners, because they will serve you the same in sunshine or rain.

This is very wise and very well put.

I think part of what this can mean for us is that if the manners we learned are not clicking, then we can sit down, have a think about what we WANT other people’s experience of us to be, and aim for that, even if it’s a little different than the manners we originally learned. The point is less the manners and more the agreed upon process of conveying the idea “i care about you as a person and want you to find my presence in your life a met positice, so even when my brain is being kind of an asshole to everyone, including me, I have set lines in the aisle for myself to direct me towards that end goal all the same.”

Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me.

I know there is a lot of discourse (tm) around this right now but listen to me

sometimes you do just have to lie to children.

If, when my toddler is, you know, toddling around saying “mama? Big ball?”

If I were lean down and say “unfortunately the big beach ball for some reason fills you with such an unadulterated rage that is beyond human comprehension that you scream until you pass out, so mama had to remove the beach ball from the premises until you can better regulate your emotions” she would simply stare at me like I had 3 heads full of equal betrayal.

So, for now, instead “big ball went night night!”

Please understand when I say “removed the ball from the premises” I mean I popped it in a fit of exhausted confusion. I murdered the beach ball.

See I’ve lied to you all too and it was better this way.

you can’t just leave this in the tags etc.

You can’t be funnier then me on my own posts, I’m in tears from laughter

[ID: tags: "#that wasn't a lie though the big ball did go night night #it went to the great night night that awaits us all" /end ID]

just overheard my wife spelling something on the phone and i shit you not saying the words “E as in Eeyore” i am on my hands and knees wailing screaming crying pleading and begging people to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet

like the reason this exists is because none of the words sound like each other, which means that even with a terrible signal both parties should be able to clearly understand the words being spelled

i am dead serious that i believe this should be taught in school

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

Batman Returns (1992) dir. Tim Burton

the front seat of the car is a type of confessional

i genuinely think that physically it’s easier to have hard conversations when you’re both facing forward, not having to look at each other. the catholic church knew this also

I firmly believe that some stories can never be translated into a different medium and that's okay

sometimes it has to be a book. sometimes it has to be a movie. if you try to make it something else, it's not the same story anymore.