"The Many Revenges of Kip Flynn"

amanda brooke. hi.: This is what happened to me.

Wed, 08 May 2013 18:41:01 -0400

amanda brooke. hi.: This is what happened to me.:

HI. I am Amanda and I am a stand up comedian living in Toronto, Ontario. I have been doing stand up for over five years and I am madly in love with it. I have experienced my fair share of sexism in my career, much like many of my fellow female comics have. I had gotten really good at turning a…

"After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity..."

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:19:18 -0400

“

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

”

- Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be. (via oliviacirce)

DUMB: Art is not only for the talented. Art is for everyone.

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:51:47 -0400

DUMB: Art is not only for the talented. Art is for everyone. :

geewebber:

For a great portion of my young adult life, I believed that great artists were all tortured souls. I thought that talent was something born of great personal suffering, mental illness, and a driving need to escape into creativity. I was also told by those who wanted to guide me that it would be…

the burning boots: Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Sleep No More Again: Intertextuality and...

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 22:29:21 -0500

the burning boots: Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Sleep No More Again: Intertextuality and...:

trixieboots:

Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Sleep No More Again:
Intertextuality and Indeterminacy at Punchdrunk’s McKittrick Hotel

The opening line of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” posits a ruined English estate as encoded dream content. The line is spoken in…

thepoliticalnotebook: 10,000 anti-fascist demonstrators in...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:48:59 -0500

thepoliticalnotebook:

10,000 anti-fascist demonstrators in Dresden yesterday, the beginning of the 68th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of the city in 1945, formed a human chain to block neo-Nazi protesters from marching. Neo-Nazi protesters have, in the past, used Dresden’s anniversary to stage mock funerals to mourn the death and the fall of the Third Reich, but in recent years anti-fascists have begun to outnumber them. There were only 800 to the 10,000-strong human chain this year.

Arno Burgi/European Pressphoto Agency

[The New York Times’ Lede Blog]

malindalo: gwendabond: jerismithready: Dorothy Parker’s...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:53:37 -0500

malindalo:

gwendabond:

jerismithready:

Dorothy Parker’s telegram to her editor.

This are my thoughts at almost every deadline, but especially with this novel. The story is finally where I want it, but there are still so many rough edges I want to cry. I want every syllable to be brilliant.

Never have done such hard night and day work never have so wanted anything to be good and all I have is a pile of paper covered with wrong words.

David gets turned in tomorrow, wrong words and all.

(PS: Thank God for copyedits.)

Dorothy forever. Who among us has not felt this?

Ugh, so true.

Kip Flynn.

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:24:40 -0500

Kip Flynn.

infinity-imagined: City lights photographed from the...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 13:14:07 -0500

infinity-imagined:

City lights photographed from the International Space Station and Neurons imaged with fluorescence microscopy.

Source images; Cities (1) (2) (3) (4) (5), Neurons (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

But what are the names of the cities?

roseaposey: “Judgments”I took this last year, but in...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:27:24 -0500

roseaposey:

“Judgments”

I took this last year, but in retrospect, I think it’s my strongest piece from high school.

Working on this project really made me examine my own opinions, preconceptions and prejudices about “slutty” women and women who choose to cover all of their skin alike. I used to assume that all women who wore Hijabs were being oppressed, slut-shame, and look down on and judge any woman who didn’t express her sexuality in a way that I found appropriate.

I’d like to think I’m more open now.

Megan Amram: Corrections

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:56:23 -0500

Megan Amram: Corrections:

meganamram:

The New York Times would like to issue corrections for the wedding announcement of Mr. Adam Penview to Ms. Katie Jasper that ran in yesterday’s paper.

We incorrectly identified in the announcement that Mr. Adam Penview and Ms. Katie Jasper were married at the Church of the Holy Trinity in…

Hacker Tourism: Democracy is hard.

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:36:00 -0500

Hacker Tourism: Democracy is hard.:

peteforde:

I’m currently sitting on a train in Ottawa on my way home to Toronto.

Literally sitting; the train hasn’t moved in four hours. There’s a blockade of the tracks which is part of a much larger solidarity protest across Canada. Native Canadians are demanding action in the form of access to the basic…

huffpostcomedy: Bill Murray on Gilda Radner: “Gilda got...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:06:47 -0500

huffpostcomedy:

Bill Murray on Gilda Radner:

“Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.

So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know.

And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.

It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.”

- from Live from New York: an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

[via oldloves]

wildnessliesinwait: Binti Jua is a western lowland gorilla...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:08:57 -0500

wildnessliesinwait:

Binti Jua is a western lowland gorilla female in the Brookfield Zoo, in Brookfield, Illinois. Binti is most well known for an incident which occurred on August 16, 1996, when she was eight years old.

A three-year old boy climbed the wall around her zoo enclosure and fell 18 feet onto concrete below, rendering him unconscious with a broken hand and a vicious gash on the side of his face.

Binti walked to the boy’s side while helpless spectators screamed, certain the gorilla would harm the child. Another larger female gorilla approached, and Binti growled.

Binti picked up the child, cradling him with her right arm as she did her own infant, gave him a few pats on the back, and carried him 18 meters (59 ft) to an access entrance, so that zoo personnel could retrieve him. Her 17-month-old baby, Koola, clutched her back throughout the incident. The boy spent four days in the hospital and recovered fully.

criterioncollection: A shockingly accurate Royal Tenenbaums...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:34:36 -0500

criterioncollection:

A shockingly accurate Royal Tenenbaums tattoo.

wickylouwho: History was made in 1973 when Marlon Brando...

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 05:09:57 -0500

wickylouwho:

History was made in 1973 when Marlon Brando declined to accept the best actor Oscar for his role in The Godfather to protest the treatment of American Indians. His demurral, which was delivered on stage by a young Native American activist named Sacheen Littlefeather, generated intense controversy and criticism throughout the country. Almost 40 years later, some in Hollywood still seem to hold a grudge.

This is what happened to her back then:

Littlefeather says she was immediately blacklisted in Hollywood. She received death threats and was lied about in the media, with some reports claiming, for example, that her Native dress for the Oscars event was rented. (It was her Northern Traditional pow wow dance outfit.)

“I found out from friends in the industry that they had been visited by FBI agents right after the Academy Awards who had threatened to put them out of business if they hired me. In those days [the FBI] planted a lot of seeds in the media,” she says, referring to the FBI’s efforts to infiltrate many of the social movements of the day in divide and conquer tactics to discredit and destroy civil rights groups like the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.

She was also discredited and called a stripper because of a Playboy spread she had done the year before.

Today, her name and reputation are STILL being dragged through the mud all because she was asked to stand up for a cause she believed in.

The subject came up on the August 27 airing of NBC’s Tonight Show while host Jay Leno was talking to comic and FOX-friendly pundit Dennis Miller. The conversation turned to Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren:

Miller: Elizabeth Warren? Is that the chick that says she’s an Indian?

Leno [chuckling]: Well, yeah, no.

Miller: She’s about as much Indian as that stripper chick Brando sent to pick up his Oscar for The Godfather, all right?

Leno: Check that reference! Hang on, you mean Shawsheen [sic] Littlefeather?

Miller [audience laughter]: Sacheen Littlefeather. Of course I remember!

Leno: 1971 was that? Oh my God!

Miller: You know, I sent the Warren campaign a donation today, but just to piss her off I sent it in beads.

Miller’s comments—and the laughing audience—are glaring reminders that ugly Native American stereotypes are still pervasive.
[…]
The Leno-Miller segment about Littlefeather mostly escaped the notice of the media, but that’s partly because she deliberately delayed responding to it. She is surviving a battle with breast cancer just this year, having only recently been officially declared in remission.
[…]
The cancer treatments have left her very weak and vulnerable to stress—she says the Leno-Miller conversation so disturbed her that it triggered an episode of internal bleeding which required medical attention. Since then she has written a letter of protest to Leno and has mounted a campaign demanding an apology.

So far her letter has been met with silence, and The New York Times declined to publish a letter written by longtime friend Priscilla Burgess on Littlefeather’s behalf. High-profile feminist lawyer Gloria Allred refused to represent her and instead referred Littlefeather to a lawyer in Los Angeles who offered to represent her—for $150,000.

Basically I’m just posting this because a lot of people on here seem to think so-called “social justice warriors” are making a big stink out of nothing when people point out mistreatment of Native Americans and the use/abuse of their culture in society. Actually, it does matter. Did you hear those boos when she started speaking, asking for fair representation? She is still being mocked today, and being ignored. You’re kidding yourselves if you think Hollywood gives a fuck about minorities. George Clooney can fuck right off.

howtoskinatiger: Near the shores in the city of Van, a cat and...

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 19:23:54 -0500

howtoskinatiger:

_{Near the shores in the city of Van, a cat and a fox are often seen playing together. A local said he first saw them together when they shared some left over fish from a fisherman. The pair soon began to play together and it has now been over a year since they began this unlikely alliance.}

This is Jan Smithers, the actress from ‘WKRP...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:44:11 -0500

This is Jan Smithers, the actress from ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ who wasn’t Loni Anderson.

newsweek:

pleasedtomeetya:

I’m not sure why I’m so fascinated by this cover from mid-sixties Newsweek about teenagers, but I am.

OMG: The Teens! This has apparently been sitting in our drafts for about 8 months now. Hot.

(via alittlegarcon)

I'm not gonna lie to you...: Don't Mess With Single Moms, Romney.

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 09:36:58 -0400

I'm not gonna lie to you...: Don't Mess With Single Moms, Romney.:

laurenelizabethash:

During tonight’s debate Romney responded to a question about AK47 gun laws by saying that pregnant women “should get married” because children raised by 2 parents have less of a chance of living in poverty. And therefore acquire guns and kill people? Yes, that’s what he was implying.

I tweeted…

Joyland Magazine's Tumblr Presence: The Joyland Tumblr Directory

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:47:53 -0400

Joyland Magazine's Tumblr Presence: The Joyland Tumblr Directory:

joylandmagazine:

A brief sampling of Joyland’s contributors and editors who are on Tumblr. If we missed you, please say hello in the notes and we’ll include you.

Screenwriter and Joyland New York author Katya Apekina.

Member of the two-time contributor club, Roxane Gay.

Joyland New York…

R.T. Rybak: We built it together: a hand up for Mitt Romney's family, Paul Ryan's family, and mine

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:31:40 -0400

R.T. Rybak: We built it together: a hand up for Mitt Romney's family, Paul Ryan's family, and mine:

rtrybak:

At first I didn’t think we needed another person chiming in on Mitt Romney’s latest stumble. His remarkably clueless comments dissing 47% of the country he wants to lead speak for themselves.

But when I thought more about this — and watched a different, shocking video last night — I felt I…