Latest Posts by sweetpotatoliker - Page 2
hrmm. well hold on now ive been filled with a sudden joy and whimsy for the world
Free Yale online courses that sound interesting
This one is actually my favorite. They put a LOT of full courses on youtube! They also have some courses on Coursera.
Arts & Literature
Introduction to Classic Music
Cervantes Don Quixote -- Youtube
Dante in Translation -- YouTube
The American Novels Since 1945 -- YouTube
Modern Poetry -- YouTube
Milton -- YouTube
Introduction to Theory of Literature -- YouTube
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner -- YouTube
History & Social Studies
African American History: From Emancipation To Present (2010) -- YouTube
Introduction to Ancient Greek History -- Youtube
Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 -- YouTube
Roman Architecture -- YouTube
Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature -- YouTube
Death -- YouTube
Capitalism: Sucess, Crisis and Reform -- YouTube
Introduction to Political Philosophy -- Youtube
Foundations of Modern Social Theory -- Youtube
Global Financial Crisis
The Making of Modern Ukraine
the imperial chinese examinations are a godsend for enjoyers of pathetic historical men such as myself. they gave rise to so many types of guy, such as: guy who failed the examinations like forty times and despondently wrote one of the great works of chinese literature between failures; guy who failed like ten times and decided “you know what? this is bullshit. this all has to go” and started a brutal peasant uprising; guy who just barely passed and was suddenly thrown into a very high military position, which he has ABSOLUTELY no training for; and guy who failed several times, faked a degree, got hired by harvard to teach chinese, had his fake degree discovered after he got to boston, begged harvard to let him teach because otherwise it would be really embarrassing for them all, taught like seven students, and died of pneumonia
IF THE ROUTINE NO LONGER SERVES, YOU MUST ALTER THE PATTERN, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?? YOUR LIFE STARTS WITH YOU
it was never anything grand that vincent painted w those strokes like its running molten silver and gold that hes seeing when looking at faces and barley and wheat in fields and skies above them. everything was beautiful rivulets and ridges and dancing in front of his eyes bc he saw it as beautiful as simple things often are. and then he communicated that because he had to. the plus side of training your eye to find beautiful in the mundane and simple things you only need to get out of your bed and house to see is that you then Have to tell people about it somehow otherwise you will die drowning in air. what a dear life to live that is and how easy it is to decide for that to be the way you live it
In 4th grade, my bff was in a death feud over chess with a boy in our class but instead of competing like normal people they decided that the best way to determine who was chess master was for each of them to select one of the two biggest idiots in class and teach them to play chess, My Fair Lady style, and see whose idiot won. We are just now, 22 years later, grappling with the moral implications of this exercise.
i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said "we're not catholic here". now every time i'm doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.
i cant breathe he just kept on fucking talking
when i was 9 years old i got my first job washing pitchers and citrus squeezers at a small time juice shop franchise that some big city kid spun out of a series of Lemonade Stand Pop Up events he did across the lower east side of Las Vegas. turns out if your boss is younger than you then child labour laws dont apply in the state of nevada so this 8 year old from Reno was running dozens of these juice shops across the state run entirely on 9 - 14 year old drop outs like myself who said fuck school im gonna make it on my way the only lessons i ever needed come from the mean streets of the city and i the only teacher i need is my two fists and a pay check and the school bus would be the city bus.
When I find myself in times of trouble, Vash the Stampede comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom,
they put him in batter......
Reblog for a larger sample size for no sample size at all, because obviously nobody will vote
some little reminders i needed today <3
@lilcowgirl7 \ anaïs nin mirages: the unexpurgated diary: 1939-1947 \ jeanette winterson why be happy when you could be normal? (via @weltenwellen) \ @sunsbleeding \ dante émile it’s winter, i’m not in love yet but i’d like to be \ franz kafka the diaries of franz kafka, 1910-1913: “january 2, 1912” (via @dailykafka) \ sheryl st. germain going home: new orleans \ mary oliver dream work: “wild geese” (via @lesbianherstorian) \ @inkskinned \ bryan washington visitor (via @typewriter-worries) \ nia vardalos tiny beautiful things (via @julykings) \ ada limón the hurting kind: “it’s the season i often mistake” (via @firstfullmoon) \ lev st. valentine there’s this game i play every morning (via @darkerthanerebus) \ raymond carver rain (via @figtreeification) \ anis mojgani songs from under the river: “here i am” (via @saintsebastiensbf)
buy me a chai latte
Jenny Holzer, Truisms, offset poster, 1978, 17 x 22 in.
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
my arch nemesis cynthia is, of course, at the bank, because we both were sent like clockwork to pick up the checks of our husbands. she is wearing a lovely long green gown, which i know was on behalf of me, because, as my husband will tell you, our house abhors green and glamour. already the tellers look at each other under their little hats, for they love our tirades, i’m sure, although not more than i hate them.
“oh, is that your knitting?” my arch nemesis cynthia peers her eyes at my hands. “is it some kind of… sock?” everyone knows she and i used to be close before we were married and our husbands, smartly so, have introduced us to the idea of true vengeance.
“it is a scarf,” i say. i want to tell her that when the time comes and the world gets cold it will go over my mouth and i will breathe warm air and it will fill my lungs and i will be able to run around with my love even in the dark night. “it is not,” i say, “over surprising that you should be caught unawares of a scarf,” i say, “as i’m sure enjoying winter festivities are too beneath the handsome qualities your husband prefers.” pompous ass.
the tellers pass each other eyes for now it has started and they are delighted.
my arch nemesis cynthia thrusts out her hand. a white bottle. “rat poison,” she says. “i would expect the whole town knows about your little problem.” stage whisper. “such a shame, my dear.” then she rustles her long green skirts - which i know she wore on behalf of me - and she shimmies herself out of the room like royalty. oh, she floats everywhere she goes, beautiful black hair behind her. the bottle in my palm is cold. i will devise how to get her back starting first thing tomorrow.
the week, as always, is a long week, for there is much to make and do and knit and be. my husband comes home and i love him for who he is; for he never comes home without checking the state of the house up and down. he is the kind who loves his home so completely and sets each room like a stage for a great band to come playing. i am too ashamed to tell him why so many of the rats go missing, only make him a stew the next morning to celebrate. his favorite, although not mine, i’m afraid. plenty left over.
my arch nemesis today - of course - in a green the color of rotting. a bruise is uncarefully covered on her cheekbone, so striking against all of her dainty. her husband would say it was for her ungraceful nature, and i know mine would agree. i strike first, already delighted by my master plan, shoving over our best picnic basket tied with a bow. “i made you and yours a stew,” i say, “for beneath all that you carry” all that horrible wealth of your husband “it seems you’re getting rather skinny.” i can’t resist one last comment. “i am worried you’re about to waste to nothing.”
She plucks it out of my hand. “yes, if it weren’t for you and your husband’s dwindling wealth,” her sarcasm is biting, “i’m sure i will be nothing in, oh, 5 weeks time.” she arches a brow. “so long from now.”
“i am counting the days,” i tell her. her lips purse. the tellers behind me make a choked titter. perhaps, by their estimation, i have won this round quite completely. i go home to my husband smiling. he asks where i have been and i tell him i’ve been at the bank, but he checks anyway because i like to get up to tricks and he doesn’t like to fall for it. it is a good game we play. at night, when he is asleep, i am so in love that i must convince myself to pull the covers over my nose and practice breathing. how silly to wake him up for a young girl’s feelings.
the first week of five: she gives me a solid, ugly ring that requires three knuckles to hold. “i feel so badly for your status, and i must remember to practice charity,” she says. “it such a small thing, but do be careful amongst all that thin pine furnishing of your house, which dents so easily.” my husband appears at the bank’s front door. just checking. so lovely to be picked up by him. at night, in a rage, i try it - beneath the table bends easily. i scuff out the scratch with walnut before my husband can see. i pull the covers over my face in bed and breathe.
the second week: i wear her ugly ring and give her more stew, this time hearty with meat. her dress is a meadow. my heart each time it sees her collapses on itself. she hands me clothes for my husband, since his wealth continues to go missing, and the charity of her heart is so loving. i am so ashamed i bury them far by the old tree, where all my shames go hiding. again, the covers. it, by now, helps me sleep. i have gotten so good at it that i can simply shimmy my shoulders to be perfectly toasty and buried.
the third week: she asks how comes my knitting. i tell her it’s nearly complete. she asks how comes my husband, whom she must know has been ill recently, and who is doing quite badly. i go home to him, shaking. even sick he is a good housekeeper, who comes home examining for dust and dinge so i do not fall behind on my chores. who checks to be sure i spoke to only him and no one more, for fear a man might snatch me. tell me, who else has a man so involved, in this day and age?
the fourth week she is envy green. i shove a whole heaping of stew at her, for now her husband has gotten it. i say it will return him to spirits, she laughs, a sudden, beautiful sound, even in the quiet of a bank. everyone stares. maybe it is the stress that is making her quite improper. i feel the same way. so much is happening and it always seems she knows. she says she heard he has left me nothing in the will, which everyone already knows. she says she doubts either of us can dig upwards from the hole we’re both in. i look at the bruise on her nose. i tell her to mind her own husband, and be careful where she goes.
the fifth week: so final. her, garishly lime green. and i in black, to pick up a check that hardly seems the effort. it will be enough to cover my husband’s funeral. she smiles at me and hands me a silver bottle. she says quietly: now that i am destitute, there is one thing for it all, and everyone would understand quite completely. it would be quiet, and quick, and complete.
it is the night of the new moon, so dark no man can see in it. i receive notice her husband has died, and i am sorry to say i find a terrible joy in it. the air has changed cold. i have left a note asking to be buried in my scarf, the last thing i have made on this earth. i go through each perfect room, but there is nothing else to take with me, for the house has always been his and his alone, and now aches to be gone of him. i would not serve as a good tender for it. having spent so many nights watched carefully, the silly girlish freedom i’d gain would surely set the house ablaze.
i follow her instructions. quick, quiet, complete.
the horrible rustling is what does it. like a million green skirts. and then it is dark, and i am in my own coffin, eerie with pine. my head hurts but i must be quick and quiet. they have listened and buried me with my scarf. i shimmy my shoulders just-so and get it over my face. bring my arms up, ugly ring heavy, and begin to hit as hard as i can, over and over, the thin wood of my husband’s favorite furniture, the cretin. it would be pine, of course - he left me no money to be buried in any nicer recourse.
the wood splits so horribly, and then it is very hard to breathe, harder than under the covers, and i have to remind myself to be patient and continue to dig upwards, while my throat closes and my heart beats so loudly and the whole thing is so heavy it is a universe. the shifting of gravedirt is loud, and loud, and i feel i will be turned into a worm, and i fear everyone has forgotten about me, or i have gotten the timing wrong, or i will really die down here in the dirt and the cold
but then her hand, and my hand, and we are both digging towards each other, and she lifts me so easily from the ground like a plucked turnip and holds me against her, us both panting and muddied. we can only stay like this for so long, here in my pauper grave, and then we are both running to the old tree where we met, and unburying a second thing; my lovely box of shame, and men’s clothes, and all of my husband’s dwindling fortune i have slowly been squirrelling away.
my love and angel cynthia, who has black hair like a curtain and a mind so fast i sometimes am in frank awe at it, who is, even now and dirty and raw: even now the only sun in my life.
like this, i a man in an almost-dawn, and us cleaned by the river, and her smiling so widely, and only a faint bruise on her, and our pasts behind us in ugly garish colors. and her delicate hand and beautiful nose and when i finally get to kiss her it feels like green feels; my favorite color, all warm and nature and sunny grace and grass and lying awake so filled with love it makes you shake.
i hold her, and she holds me, and our future is a love like a dream unburied.
an incomplete collection of tweets i consider to be short poems
everything is about reaching the ending except for the ending which is about wanting to go back to the start
nothing better than a character who has all the signs of being deeply traumatized by a formative event somewhere in childhood except when you look at their life there's no traumatic event to speak of. guy whose entire existence points backwards to some horrible original sin but when you get to the beginning theres nothing there. did they forget what happened to them or is it the absence of a happening that is itself traumatizing? who knows but they'll never stop searching for something that explains how they feel :)
coping with exams by posting on tumblr for the first time in my life. anyway I am so madly in love with clay pool from the shama trilogy because there is truly a blank space in the market for loser lesbians and she is literally the Ideal.
i mean look at her… this frame… she’s so me. seeing one (1) pretty girl and immediately puts my own life in danger to free her from jail. god clay is sooo… i could write a ton more cleverer things about her but I just want to say here that she’s So Special To Me and I love her very much. that tweet that was about breaking the cycle of abuse and ending with the words “but i think clay can do it. clay’s nice.” TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN!! clay WILL do it.. she IS nice. i am holding her Gently in my hands. she’s so boyfriend material if you know what I mean. she is a girl boyfriend. she is a boy girlfriend. do you get it.
reblogging is so fun when you have absolutely 0% audience. i am the dream sequence in frog and toad rn where toad is screaming on the stage and frog keeps getting smaller and smaller
I always forget that when some people ship characters it's because they want them to fuck and not because they think they exist as twisted parallels of each other. "we all have the same goal, to see them fuck." I personally have the goal of coring them like apples and showing them they're the same or could have been under different circumstances.
they should invent a someone that will love me if they never see me again and will love me if they see me every Tuesday
can anyone remember that post about how children write the best poems & it had an article attached showing the differences between little kids' poetry & preteens?? im desperate to find it again