You Should Go or Do or Give
+ Registration is open for the 2015 LGBT Muslim Retreat so get in there!
Queer as in F*ck You
+ God Ashley C Ford stop being so great please: I’m Queer No Matter Who I’m With.
When you’re dating one person, does every other person instantly become unattractive to you? Do you transition from being straight, gay or lesbian to being a Sandra-sexual, Matt-sexual, or Alanna-sexual? I didn’t think so. In my current relationship, I am having the best sex of my life, and I am still attracted to women. There are still women on the street who catch my eye. That doesn’t mean I’m in hiding from my true inner lesbian; it means I’m a living, breathing, queer human.
+ Jennifer Swann has this profile on Casey Legler, How a Former Olympian Became an LGBT Icon of the Fashion World.
+ FUCK yes. How We Got Here: Portrait of the Artist as a Queer Feminist by Clarity Hanes.
+ EXCUSE ME but your mega crush Brittani Nichols of Words With Girls got her segment, Oppression Olympics, into the second act of this episode of The Xperiment so give it three cheers.
Doll Parts
+ Shaadi Devereaux‘s When Every Summer is Your Own Personal ‘Summer of Sam’: On the Taking of Black Trans Women’s Lives and How to Stop It Now on BGD is fucking brilliant.
Saw This, Thought of You
+ A Self-Care Playlist for the Sensual Woman Smoking Weed in the Shower. Well bless you Jia Tolentino. Bless you.
+ I just loved this piece so much! I want so many things in life, and a tour of Amber and Casey’s ‘micro-scale’ farm is one of those things SUE ME OK. Ariel Schwartz‘s Here Comes the Whole Foods-ification of Marijuana.
+ Do you want to dive deep, deep into the land[fill] of K-Cups, going all the way back to their inception and then on through the possibilities, if brief, of their maybe-brighter future? Be my guest: How Bad Are K-Cups for the Environment?. This is over 10 days old — BLASPHEMY I KNOW — but I really did see it and think of you, so what choice did I have?
+ Why Are White People Expats When the Rest of Us Are Immigrants? !!??
+ The Origins of the Anus. This is subtitled, “The extraordinary evolution of our most embarrassing organ,” and I just have to argue that I think my most embarrassing organ is my nose. Is my nose an organ? WHATEVER.
+ Actually I saw this and thought of myself because I’ve been obsessed with elderly care since I was a child (was it the holiday dance recitals at the local nursing homes?): Cochlear Implants May Benefit Mind and Mood of Older People.
And Finally
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I Am Big Bird coming May 6.
NO YOU’RE CRYING.
YOU’RE STILL CRYING.
You had me at Muppets. (oh dear, I just realized the post is There’s a Muppet at the end of this post, was that a reference to There’s a Monster at the End of This Book?! Oh, feelings. That was my favorite childhood book, my sister would read it to me all the time).
Ah. I’m a puddle. I am a puddle on the floor. I need to see I am Big Bird.
YES I AM STILL CRYING.
This reminds me of the v. important Muppets Movie camera test in which Kermit and Fozzie examine the nature of authentic puppethood (and experience ennui).
This is fantastic!!!! Thank you for sharing it, I hadn’t seen it before.
So I am going to share this with a bunch of people because that was the greatest! Thank you for sharing something I have never witnessed in the Muppets area of my life.
This is absolutely incredible! Made me day :)
I’m so excited to see I Am Big Bird!!! I’ve been hearing about it for years and soon I can actually watch it!! And cry my eyes out at how beautiful it is! The Muppets and Sesame Street are my life!
I read the expat thing earlier on the guardian app as it’s something that has bothered me since the beginning of the great british immigration “debate” (quotation marks because it’s really just incitement to racism and dickheadedness) as so many Brits abroad refer to themselves as expats when they really are migrants or immigrants and there are more “Expats” out there than there are “migrants” coming here. Argh! Frustrating use of language. Thanks for including it here.
Ah don’t even get me started on UK immigration. I lived there for 15 months and even as a white university educated, middle class immigrant I felt unwelcome.
British people (collectively, not every individual obviously) think they are gods gift to the world. Especially all the daily mail reading ‘expat’ pensioners swarming the south of europe in droves refusing to learn local languages and being a burden on the medical system. They seem to think Other countries should be proud and pleased to host them, while people from those countries are criticised for using their EU rights to come to the UK to work and pay tax.
This immigrant couldn’t wait to leave!
It’s a hideous shambles. My family is British, and were living and working and paying tax and health insurance abroad – being migrants- when I was born/a baby. My parents learned Italian and integrated in Italy. When we visit no one speaks English, unless I am completely confused by the conversation. I find those who refuse to embrace the culture, language and pay their way when they move abroad a total embarrassment. They’re also usually the ones who moan about people moving to the UK. As you pointed out Daily Fail readers.
So sorry you had such a bad experience here. I also, as you state in your post below, thought “expat” was about intention to stay, in my case possibly because of the term repatriate.
It’s weird, having had a non traditional upbringing in a multicultural extended family with some Italian elements I rarely feel British, or at least what the far right would like British to be. It’s such a shame that their idea of Britishness permeates so much and makes people feel unwelcome.
Ok. The vast majority of British people are not far right. Yes there are plenty of areas in the UK where racism and homophobia abounds (where I grew up is a prime example), but there are also plenty of people around that are lefty liberals.
Also, that gods gift to the world comment, as a British person who obviously grew up surrounded by British people, in my experience it is the exact opposite. There are plenty of people that find the concept of ‘expats’ utterly ridiculous too.
It seems to be a certain type of person that, as someone has already mentioned, never really integrates into their host country, refuses to speak the local language and refuses to eat local food. These same people criticize people that are claiming asylum in the UK, having experienced/escaped god knows what, for the same behaviour as them. Trust me, plenty of british people are completely ashamed and embarrassed by these people too.
As an economic migrant to Canada, now a Canadian, I have also seen both sides (to an extent). One of the reasons I left the UK was because of the loudmouthed bigoted minority making life unbearable for everyone else. Anyone that even mentions immigration in a slightly hostile way now and I get really fucking angry.
I emigrated to Canada (a country with a culture and language almost identical to the place I grew up in) with every conceivable advantage (I’m white, youngish, in good health, able-bodied, fluent and educated in one of the official languages of Canada, economically stable and at the time was presenting as heterosexual & cis). But despite all of that, starting all over again in another country is still bloody hard work, extremely stressful and incredibly expensive. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for those that are trying to forge a new future in a place with a completely foreign culture and language and as a visible minority. I have nothing but respect for those that make a life under such circumstances.
Btw, I’m not and never will be a god damn expat. I’m British Canadian and bloody proud of it.
Yeah most of the British friends I really connected with had some kind of International element to their lives, a parent or partner who was from another country or they’d lived abroad. I guess wherever you’re from, there is a different mentality between those who have experience living outside their home country and those that have only ever lived in their home country.
You don’t have to apologise, it wasn’t necessarily people that ruined my time in the UK (although the burglar that stole my passports and laptop came close to winning that title!) … I had a run of bad luck and literally felt like a curse lifted from my life when I left! I think I just wasn’t meant to be there!
Yeah, that was quite thought provoking for me.
I hadn’t realised the term was so loaded with race and class. I actually thought it was about intention to stay. Eg family friends on a work secondment abroad are expats because it’s a temporary contract whereas my dad is an immigrant because he moved from his home county to settle for good. I’ve always thought of my dad as an immigrant even though he is white for this reason.
Struggling at the moment with what to call myself. .. I’ve recently moved back to dad’s country so I’m in my place of ethnic origin and I’m a citizen by birth but I didn’t grow up here. .. am I still an immigrant?
Big Biiirrrddd!!!!
Is anyone else sad when they hear modern Kermit and Miss Piggy speak? Their voices will never be the same as I remembered… just imitations :(
I love the K-cup thing. I use a Keurig machine, but with the refillable cups. I switched from my 12 cup coffee maker because I was cutting down on my caffeine intake, and didn’t want to be tempted to make a ton of coffee all the time. I do like the part about cutting down on water waste. I can feel even better about my choice to use the Keurig machine.
every AAA includes at least one line that reminds me of why i love you so much and this time it was “actually I saw this and thought of myself”
I am crying. Just in case that wasn’t clear.