Another week, another Humpday. And that means links! At least it does if you’re here, I have no idea what it means anywhere else. - Chuck Wendig wrote a great piece about sexism in publishing, and …
If you aren’t a gamer, you might not be aware we just celebrated the closest we get to Christmas this past weekend: Free RPG Day. Inspired by Free Comic Book Day and started in 2007, Free RPG Day w…
Omg if you reblog this I’ll put a musical that I think you’d like in your ask based on your blog and your posts?
“We’ve made our sacred fire. We’re going to stand our ground here.”
Seismic trucks won’t pass, says Elsipogtog war chief, calls for help from all Nations
ELSIPOGTOG, NEW BRUNSWICK – A sacred fire, which must burn continuously and be monitored for four days, has been lit by Mi’kmaq peoples from all corners of traditional Mi’kma’ki, who have gathered in the New Brunswick community of Elsipogtog. They, as well as non-Indigenous peoples from the local communities and beyond, have now begun to congregate in a field – with permission given by the owner – adjacent to the junction of highway 126 and highway 116 west.
The gathering, which now comprises about 40 people, is directly in the path of seismic testing trucks – or “thumpers” – that are conducting geological surveying on behalf of SWN Resources Canada. SWN is exploring for shale gas deposits. Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples worry that the seismic testing will lead to hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – of Kent County, much of which is under exploratory lease to SWN.
Elsipogotg war chief John Levi has noted that the gathering will remain peaceful, but that the seismic testing will not be allowed to continue past the sacred fire.
“We’re not going to let them pass. This is the reason why we’ve set up,” Levi told the Halifax Media Co-op. “We’ve made our sacred fire. We’re going to stand our ground here. This would be the spot here, so we’re asking for support from all non-Native and Native peoples.”
I’m curious.
Guys, they’re playing our song.
It was our last, best hope for good sci-fi…okay, not really. But close!
Water, Carbon, Ammonia, Lime, Phosphorous, Salt, Saltpeter, Sulfur, Fluorine, Iron, Silicon, and trace amounts of 15 other elements.
I can do it.
I’m going to make myself a girlfriend using alchemy.
YOU CAN’T TRANSMUTE A HUMAN WITH AN ORANGE AND A PACKET OF CHIK-FIL-A RANCH DRESSING
well with that attitude you cant
*sigh* I’ll get the automail ready…
(Source: the-animation-alchemist)
25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore
1. People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs.
2. While you’re drafting that business plan, cut your projected profits in half. People are getting rid of bookshelves.
3. If someone comes in and asks where to find the historical fiction, they’re not looking for classics, they want the romance section.
4. If someone comes in and says they read a little of everything, they also want the romance section.
5. If someone comes in and asks for a recommendation and you ask for the name of a book that they liked and they can’t think of one, the person is not really a reader. Recommend Nicholas Sparks.
6. Kids will stop by your store on their way home from school if you have a free bucket of kids books. If you also give out free gum, they’ll come every day and start bringing their friends.
7. If you put free books outside, cookbooks will be gone in the first hour and other non-fiction books will sit there for weeks. Except in warm weather when people are having garage sales. Then someone will back their car up and take everything, including your baskets.
8. If you put free books outside, someone will walk in every week and ask if they’re really free, no matter how many signs you put out . Someone else will walk in and ask if everything in the store is free.
9. No one buys self help books in a store where there’s a high likelihood of personal interaction when paying. Don’t waste the shelf space, put them in the free baskets.
10. This is also true of sex manuals. The only ones who show an interest in these in a small store are the gum chewing kids, who will find them no matter how well you hide them.
11. Under no circumstances should you put the sex manuals in the free baskets. Parents will show up.
12. People buying books don’t write bad checks. No need for ID’s. They do regularly show up having raided the change jar.
13. If you have a bookstore that shares a parking lot with a beauty shop that caters to an older clientele, the cars parked in your lot will always be pulled in at an angle even though it’s not angle parking.
14. More people want to sell books than buy them, which means your initial concerns were wrong. You will have no trouble getting books, the problem is selling them. Plus a shortage of storage space for all the Readers Digest books and encyclopedias that people donate to you.
15. If you open a store in a college town, and maybe even if you don’t, you will find yourself as the main human contact for some strange and very socially awkward men who were science and math majors way back when. Be nice and talk to them, and ignore that their fly is open.
16. Most people think every old book is worth a lot of money. The same is true of signed copies and 1st editions. There’s no need to tell them they’re probably not ensuring financial security for their grandkids with that signed Patricia Cornwell they have at home.
17. There’s also no need to perpetuate the myth by pricing your signed Patricia Cornwell higher than the non-signed one.
18. People use whatever is close at hand for bookmarks—toothpicks, photographs, kleenex, and the very ocassional fifty dollar bill, which will keep you leafing through books way beyond the point where it’s pr0ductive.
19. If you’re thinking of giving someone a religious book for their graduation, rethink. It will end up unread and in pristine condition at a used book store, sometimes with the fifty dollar bill still tucked inside. (And you’re off and leafing once again).
20. If you don’t have an AARP card, you’re apparently too young to read westerns.
21. A surprising number of people will think you’ve read every book in the store and will keep pulling out volumes and asking you what this one is about. These are the people who leave without buying a book, so it’s time to have some fun. Make up plots.
22. Even if you’re a used bookstore, people will get huffy when you don’t have the new release by James Patterson. They are the same people who will ask for a discount because a book looks like it’s been read.
23. Everyone has a little Nancy Drew in them. Stock up on the mysteries.
24. It is both true and sad that some people do in fact buy books based on the color of the binding.
25. No matter how many books you’ve read in the past, you will feel woefully un-well read within a week of opening the store. You will also feel wise at having found such a good way to spend your days.
The link specifically calls bullshit on the book that laments what all these brilliant writers would lose if they had medicated their depression - the book also glosses over the fact that they all either killed themselves or drank themselves to death, something most consider more “silencing” than antidepressants.
Books like this terrify me. I know there are creative people out there who have mental illnesses and need help, and they will read this book and think, “Well shit, I’m not doing THAT! I will lose my genius!”
I am an anecdote, not part of data in a study, but here’s my story: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I didn’t take it seriously until I got on antidepressants. Then the fog lifted, and I had the energy to think, to write, and to believe in myself.
Depression isn’t romantic. Your tragedy is not a benefit. If you hope your early death will hope someone recognizes your genius in 100 years, then your priorities are seriously fucked up.
And I know drugs aren’t always the answer. But if you have a mental illness like depression, bi-polar disorder, anxiety disorder, or worse, then you need help. Drugs may do it. Therapy may do it. Better living may do it. But your illness isn’t making anything in your life better, not even your creative brilliance.