Posted 2 days ago, on May 16, with 12,461 notes
Posted 1 month ago, on April 10, with 7,883 notes

instructions for my funeral

1. don’t you dare
show up looking like

someone you aren’t. it’ll be enough,
having a broken pulse, don’t

break my heart, too.

2. if the priest
starts talking about
how I

was a good fucking catholic, stop him. tell
him about my clumsiness and
my relentlessly curly hair, tell him
about the boy

I was in love with
when I was sixteen. if he doesn’t

understand, tell anyone who will listen.
my ugly fingers, scarred from
nervous habits. my explosive

laughter, the way
I only did sing

in the shower.

3. please, oh

God

please. leave the bouquets at home. don’t
layer death on top of me,

I

don’t want to struggle
getting back to you

on Christmas by way of a flickering candle,
on your 39th birthday

in that space of darkness that is every blink.

4. don’t worry
about being formal, I

never was. I’d rather you
get up there and

sing Vienna by Billy Joel than
sit in the pew, your hands folded

for the first time in years

over me, and my unfolded oxygen supply.

5. know that
I have

never been
afraid

of dying. death is the truth. I

fear lies. don’t lie. don’t wear
sadness like a scarf

that doesn’t suit you. don’t
steal winter

from Hades, everyone knows
hell is cold. I was always

a summer girl.  

Posted 1 month ago, on April 10, with 5,235 notes

combusticate:

a new york

image

time’s

image

best selling

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author

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yep

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he’s famous

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so proper and well behaved

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john green everybody.

that’s john green.

Posted 1 month ago, on April 5, with 67,337 notes
Posted 1 month ago, on March 29, with 47,802 notes
guardiancomment: Chelsea Welch, the US waitress who was fired after she posted a picture of a tip receipt on Reddit, wrote for us: I was a waitress at Applebee’s restaurant in Saint Louis. I was fired Wednesday for posting a picture on Reddit.com of a note a customer left on a bill. I posted it on the web as a light-hearted joke. This didn’t even happen at my table. The note was left for another server, who allowed me to take a picture of it at the end of the night. Someone had scribbled on the receipt, “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?” I assumed the customer’s signature was illegible, but I quickly started receiving messages containing Facebook profile links and websites, asking me to confirm the identity of the customer. I refused to confirm any of them, and all were incorrect. I worked with the Reddit moderators to remove any personal information. I wanted to protect the identity of both my fellow server and the customer. I had no intention of starting a witch-hunt or hurting anyone. Now I’ve been fired. The person who wrote the note came across an article about it, called the Applebee’s location, and demanded everyone be fired — me, the server who allowed me to take the picture, the manager on duty at the time, the manager not on duty at the time, everyone. It seems I was fired not because Applebee’s was represented poorly, not because I did anything illegal or against company policy, but because I embarrassed this person. In light of the situation, I would like to make a statement on behalf of wait staff everywhere: We make $3.50 an hour. Most of my paychecks are less than pocket change because I have to pay taxes on the tips I make. After sharing my tips with hosts, bussers, and bartenders, I make less than $9 an hour on average, before taxes. I am expected to skip bathroom breaks if we are busy. I go hungry all day if I have several busy tables to work. I am expected to work until 1:30am and then come in again at 10:30am to open the restaurant. I have worked 12-hour double shifts without a chance to even sit down. I am expected to portray a canned personality that has been found to be least offensive to the greatest amount of people. And I am expected to do all of this, every day, and receive change, or even nothing, in return. After all that, I can be fired for “embarrassing” someone, who directly insults his or her server on religious grounds. In this economy, $3.50 an hour doesn’t cut it. I can’t pay half my bills. Like many, I would love to see a reasonable, non-tip-dependent wage system for service workers like they have in other countries. But the system being flawed is not an excuse for not paying for services rendered. I need tips to pay my bills. All waiters do. We spend an hour or more of our time befriending you, making you laugh, getting to know you, and making your dining experience the best it can be. We work hard. We care. We deserve to be paid for that. I am trying to stand up for all of us who work for just a few dollars an hour at places like Applebee’s. Whether a chain steakhouse or a black-tie establishment, tipping is not optional. It is how we get paid. I posted a picture to make people laugh, but now I want to make a serious point: Things like this happen to servers all the time. People seem to think that the easiest way to save money on a night out is to skip the tip. I can’t understand why I was fired over this. I was well liked and respected at Applebee’s. My sales were high, my managers had no problems with me, and I was even hoping to move up to management soon. When I posted this, I didn’t represent Applebee’s in a bad light. In fact, I didn’t represent them at all. I did my best to protect the identity of all parties involved. I didn’t break any specific guidelines in the company handbook – I checked. But because this person got embarrassed that their selfishness was made public, Applebee’s has made it clear that they would rather lose a dedicated employee than an angry customer. That’s a policy I can’t understand. I am equally baffled about how a religious tithe is in any way related to paying for services at a restaurant. I can understand why someone could be upset with an automatic gratuity. However, it’s a plainly stated Applebee’s policy that a tip is added automatically for parties over eight like the one this customer was part of. I cannot control that kind of tip; it’s done by the computer that the orders are put into. I’ve been stiffed on tips before, but this is the first time I’ve seen the “Big Man” used as reasoning. Obviously the person who wrote this note wanted it seen by someone. It’s strange that now that the audience is wider than just the server, the person is ashamed. I have no agenda here. I seek no revenge against the note writer. I have no interest in exposing their identity, and, at this point, I’m not even sure I want my job back. I was just trying to make a joke, but I came home unemployed. I’ve been waiting tables to save up some money so I could finally go to college, so I could get an education that would qualify me for a job that doesn’t force me to sell my personality for pocket change.
Posted 3 months ago, on February 1, with 45,859 notes

Oh dear. Tumblr “updated”.

asianhistory:

Like many of the 52,676 of you, I’ve been dreading the new update that has suddenly inflicted many of the users on this website. It’s small, cramped, and counter-intuitive. It’s not at all seamless, and it disrupts my blogging experience. Worst of all, it’s time-consuming and it disabled my missing-e. 

Yes, even blogs in the tumblr spotlight, with tag editing capabilities (who essentially maintain tumblr tags for free) use missing-e. Extensions and add-ons from outside sources make tumblr’s flaws vanish — until tumblr introduces them again. Tumblr really doesn’t want people using missing-e. Why, I don’t know. Missing-e has made this blog run smoothly and efficiently. I could reblog with other people’s tags and only delete the ones I didn’t want. I could drop-down menu select a blog and reblog a post straight to that blog without opening a new window or navigating away from my dash. I could mass edit asks, queue or randomize the queue, tag without leaving the dash, and so on. 

Tumblr enjoys directly taking the things that make the site useable, user-friendly, easy, or straightforwards, and overcomplicates them. This is absurd. I’m upset, and frustrated, and trying to bring something of decent quality to my followers — and I certainly don’t get paid even a fraction of what tumblr employees make, so I fail to understand the blatant disregard for use-input in any of these updates. In theory, this blog should be a choice blog to ask about potential updates — tumblr themselves chose me to feature in the initial spotlighting changes from the old directory. I have a high volume of followers, I’ve been using tumblr since 2009, I understand what I like about this site, as well as what I don’t. But tumblr isn’t asking people what they think, or if they want to test things, and that’s infuriating. 

I don’t have the desire to suddenly switch platforms, and I probably won’t. But at the moment, I have a wordpress blog already registered (although set to private) for both my history blogs, just in case tumblr becomes or continues to become completely unusable. I don’t want that to happen, of course, if I didn’t like tumblr I would have never used it for blogging over wordpress. If at any point, I do switch-over, the change will be gradual to dual blog-platform blogging. I would slowly update tumblr while backlogging on Wordpress. Tumblr is my preferred website. I want to use it, I want to continue cultivating the followers I have here, I want, after four years of using this website, to feel like my concerns as a user would be listened to, accounted for, and respected. I work as part of the greater tumblr community. But as it stands, I’m just trying to figure out how the hell this new dash works — I think you reblog as text via the drop-down menu next to the gear, and the tiny post window expands to fill your whole page as you write…which…is a problem. Tags are now at the foot of a post, and forget editing, it looks to be far too much of a hassle if the post windows expand with text size. 

I’m continuing to back-edit, tag, and organize old posts. Sorry this month has been full of so many moderation posts guys, and good luck with your “update”…!

Posted 3 months ago, on January 25, with 89 notes

Varying Your Body Types

dredsina:

By me, Sara D. (Heh.)

I think it’s very important for artists to vary the types of bodies they draw! Not only does it add visual interest and diversity, but different body types can enhance your characters! (Plus it’s more realistic; when was the last time you walked down the street and everyone had the same body type?) I know I have a hard time drawing different bodies, especially with men, so I’m making this tutorial to teach myself as well (I’ve heard the best way to cement learning something is to teach someone else).

So! Bodies! I’m going to use women for this tutorial because I feel they have more variety in their bodies. One of the most obvious ways bodies differ is in their amount of fat.

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[Click here for full size]

On average, people store fat mostly in core areas like the bust, the waist, and the hips. It is important to remember that people gain and lose weight differently, and this is true no matter how fat or skinny one gets. However, these are common places people store fat:

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The face and neck can be immediate indicators as to how much fat the rest of the body has; when someone loses or gains weight, it’s initially obvious in the face. This is possibly because the eye is (usually) drawn first to the face.

In addition to differences in the amount of body fat, bodies vary vastly in their proportions. The two main ways they differ is skeletally and in fat distribution. The hip to shoulder ratio is skeletal, and someone with wider shoulders might look more powerful or masculine, and someone with wider hips might look more grounded or feminine.

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The torso to legs ratio is also a skeletal ratio. Someone with long legs in comparison with their torso might look taller than someone of the same height with a long torso, and they might also look skinnier.

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(I say as I finally get some visual variety all up in here.)

Because the hips are also one of the places with the most weight gain in women, large hips can also be a matter of fat distribution. The three main places where the fat ratio really matters is in the bust, the waist and the hips (making up the core of the body).

While men usually carry weight in the belly area, the fat distribution can really vary with women. Some women carry more weight in the bust, some in the belly, and some in the hips/thighs. Some women carry more weight in two areas, like the bust and the hips, the bust and the belly, or the belly and the hips. Some women show no obvious bias to any area and carry weight equally.

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[Click here for full size]

Taking into account skeletal ratios, fat distribution patterns, a vast human weight range, muscle tone and age, there are endless permutations of body types. It would be a shame if you used only one!

Oh, and that first image looks really interesting as a gif.

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Posted 4 months ago, on January 16, with 24,938 notes
Posted 4 months ago, on December 28, with 79,574 notes

lascocks:

typette:

constellationstessellations:

imageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimage

Holy shit

these are hilarious but also… really professionally made? hahaha

These are adorable omg

(Source: ghostiegirl)

Posted 4 months ago, on December 26, with 1,704 notes