I kinda miss Fantasia. <:] <3 And love that I can still watch it on VHS instead of paying Disney money to watch it again.

Lucid dreaming would be nice.

Firearms appear a lot in my dreams, long before I started playing shooter games. Not sure what's up with that.

Also whoever claimed you can't feel pain in dreams is full of bull. And I've lost count of how many times I've died in dreams. Mostly, though, my brain seems to enjoy tormenting me with some of my worst fears in my dreams. Fun shit, really. Most of it belongs under several layers of trigger warnings.

i'd 100% look into being a therapist as a job, but i'd need qualifications.

uuugh.

even being a secretary requires qualifications!

My dreams are usually at least a little bit lucid, but that means that I have a tendency to have some part of the back of my mind realize "wait a minute, that's not realistic" and a few seconds later something bad happens. ^^()


The qualifications for being a secretary in most fields are basic computer proficiency (you have to know how to use MS Word) and a typing speed of at least 60 words per minute.

The medical field is different because those secretaries are exposed to patient information and most countries have very strict laws concerning how that's supposed to be handled. (I'm very familiar with the US's laws from both sides of the desk.) Fortunately it's not that hard to learn -- most of it seems like common sense once you've heard it. You can take the courses for pretty cheap; I've seen them in the $15-$25 range.

eUe
Feel stupid for askin' but,...do you pronounce it, sec-a-tr-ee?
instead of sec-ret-terry??

sec-re-tary, i think.

sort of hard to put it into text.

Espy, you're looking very spiffy!

Pain is definitely something I've experienced in dreams..
My father used to get mad because for a while I couldn't tell when I was dreaming and when I was awake so I put sticky notes all over the house saying, "Are you dreaming?"

I've always woken up before actually dying, but I've been through some awful pain in dreams :(

Lucid dreaming, I think, would be great.
I could stop a nightmare before it happens and that would be amazing!

Thanks. First background that I’m... actually kind of attached to.

it's a very nice background.

i need to figure out a better avatar than this one tbh.

Espy's Avi looks really huggable and I don't know why. o-o
I mean no offense, I'm just weird. <x/ I think I like the color combo, and the overall backdrop, but also the scruffiness. <x'}

Also, currently in my theatre department's green room, hangin' out alone before class starts, and I think I scared someone into not coming all the way in here. <x'D They just poked in and then went out.
I'm sorry frightened student! I can't take my hat and scarf off!

tw for mild mention of blood / unsanitary. (no, it's not toilet stuff, more towards acne stuff.)

I was listening to Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold on repeat for a few hours while I made this avi.

It's a nice avi!

Ah, there's a logic I can get behind. /x] It goes perfectly.

Specifically, this cover.

I always see self-checkout signs at the store, but no mirrors.

Speaking of old cartoons I've been watching old Disney animated shows on Disney+ :3

I haven't gotten to cartoons yet. So far I've watched lizzie mcguire and a movie that I don't remember but will probably come back once I start scrolling through again

abolish capitalism.

Unfortunately, it turns out that while capitalism is woefully flawed, regulated capitalism is the best way humanity has found in 100,000 years of history for effectively managing limited resources. Other schemes are either even more inefficient, even more imbalanced, unsustainably fragile, or some combination thereof. The main reason capitalism works is that it takes advantage of the very thing that causes other models to fail -- the inherently selfish nature of animal instinct. Literally every other model fundamentally depends on trusting at least one other human being to not exploit the system.

It turns out that there is a model that's more efficient, less wasteful, and capable of being more fair and more supportive of the needy. That model is tyranny. A dictator is able to make decisions that no self-interested population would be able to consistently commit to, and by virtue of being in control of all of the assets said dictator would be able to distribute them in the best possible manner. Of course, the disadvantage is that it depends on the dictator being benevolent and just. We as a species actually have pulled this off a few times in the course of history, but the finite lifespan of humans prevents this from being long-term sustainable because eventually the allure of power is going to produce a dictator that acts in his own self-interest instead of the best interest of the people.

Even in the best case scenario, anyone opposed to the central authority is going to be at a disadvantage compared to those who support the central authority, and such imbalances breed the kind of unrest that leads to revolt. Similarly, fairness (distribution of assets to those who need it) and justice (distribution of assets to those who deserve it) are opposed to each other, so as long as individual citizens have different needs, different desires, and different abilities to contribute to society, there will always be some group that feels disadvantaged and dissatisfied.

Unregulated capitalism, of course, suffers from the flaw that someone possessing a sufficient critical mass of assets is capable of becoming a dictator. This is why no successful economic system has been unregulated. Regulations give representatives of the public the power to place limits upon agents to mitigate abuse and ensure certain fundamental necessities are fulfilled. It's not perfect, but it's long-term robust -- it might be slow sometimes, but its very nature gives people who are dissatisfied a mechanism to correct things.

I tried sake today.
<w< that is all.

Did you try it hot or cold?

Hot sake! -W- Was really warm.

I once mentioned to my parents that one thing I’d planned on trying ASAP once I hit 21 was sake, and my mom just reached into the fridge and brought out her bottle of cooking wine.

...okay, sure, I guess that IS sake, but.

x'''D your mom is rediculous

nice avi, merskelly!

i have tried WKD before. more towards soda than sake.

the thing with capitalism is that it allows people to go homeless, children to go without parents and people to go hungry. that shouldn't be happening in the slightest.

hell, it's actually cheaper to house homeless people in empty houses.

Thanks yous.
<x}

Also, first drink I had at 21 was white wine. It tasted like a doctor's office and was not pleasant. <x'}

yeah, the point of drinking isn't to enjoy the drink but to have an experience. enjoying alcohol comes later when you've built up a tolerance and have established a social circle around it(like wine tasting and clubbing)

Yehh. Adults are weird. <w< The more and more I go into the adult world, the weirder it gets. <x}

just children who technically know better XD

I can't express just how strongly I disagree with this.

The point of drinking is supposed to be to enjoy the drink. If you're doing something you dislike for the purposes of having an experience and establishing a social circle, you're doing it wrong. That is an unhealthy way to approach ANYTHING because it normalizes the bad parts and it opens you up to peer pressure. Taking this approach to something notorious for inhibiting rationality compounds those problems, because you aren't fully your normal self when you're having this experience.

The reason my relationship with alcohol is as healthy as it is is specifically because I drink the things that I enjoy. I don't drink because the people around me drink. I don't drink because I like feeling drunk. This means that I don't have to tolerate drinking disgusting swill; I'm not desperate enough for the experience that I'll take the cheapest thing I can get my hands on. If I put it in my mouth and I don't like it, I won't keep going, so even spending a penny on something I don't like is a waste of money -- if I'm going to drink, I'm going to drink something good.

If you're the kind of person to enjoy clubbing, you should enjoy clubbing without having to get drunk. If you only enjoy it when you're drunk, then the alcohol is encouraging behaviors that you would normally avoid; this should be a warning sign.

If you want to participate in a wine tasting, it's true that you should already understand your limits. But social circles surrounding these kinds of events aren't about the act of drinking. They're about the appreciation of the artistry that goes into a fine product.

that's a cute sentiment but it's also a very personal one that flies in the face of recorded history -shrugs-

...Recorded history is full of people doing things for the wrong reason.

hahaha, i can agree with that wholly x''D

No, it really doesn't, and in fact it's only been in the last 50-60 years that modern American drinking culture has shifted in that direction. In the Western world, the idea of going out to get drunk as a recreational activity in its own right (as opposed to doing so as a way to relax from work or to escape hardship) is comparatively novel in the history of human alcohol consumption. In the Middle Eastern and Western worlds, what recordings we have on the subject from ancient, classical, medieval, and renaissance cultures all unanimously agree that drunkenness is a state to be avoided, a sign of someone who lacks fortitude (whether physical or moral fortitude varies by culture).

The use of alcohol grew since its discovery in prehistoric times because its antimicrobial properties made alcoholic drinks safer than many non-alcoholic drinks. (Of course without modern medical understanding, they didn't understand why, but they clearly understood that people who drank fermented beverages were healthier than those who didn't.) People clearly understood drunkenness and sought to avoid it, mixing their drinks with water in order to retain the benefits and extend their supply while still being able to consume enough to stay hydrated while working.

It wasn't until the 1800s that things started to shift, as industrialization led to an increase in free time but also an increase in stress levels, modernization led to a decrease in the need for alcohol as a preservative and sanitizer, changes in religious practices reduced its religious significance, and new developments in medicine led to alcohol being prescribed for just about everything. Drunkenness at this point was still considered a social ill, something that people should avoid, but the change in schedules and habits introduced the western world to alcoholism as a disorder -- people didn't understand what caused alcohol addiction and the new practices around using it, and especially it wasn't understood what made some people more susceptible to it than others.

This rise in alcohol-related problems that no one had ever seen at scale before is what brought about Prohibition in the United States. Much can be said about the backlash effects that came about during Prohibition, but it was the widespread introduction of legal drinking ages that is the root cause of modern American alcohol culture. Before about 1881, most states didn't have age-based restrictions on who could consume alcohol (but many had already enacted state-level prohibition), and of those that did it was often "parental consent" or an age as low as 16. In the ~30 years following the end of prohibition, every state established drinking ages between 18 and 21, and in 1984 it was federally standardized at 21.

This correlated with the introduction of "teenager" as a social concept. Prior to the 1920s, people between 13 and 19 were basically just small adults, expected to be productive members of society. The introduction of the automobile led to the standardization of high school as an institution. By the 1960s, the idea that 13- to 18-year-old people were not in fact adults but a separate stage of life had become universal.

These two facts together led to a paradigm shift: Being able to drink alcohol correlated with other life events like being able to drive a car or being done with school and being able to work. It became part of the idea of becoming an adult. Sneaking alcohol in advance of legal permission was something that had never been a problem before; now, it had become one of the forms of daring transgression that the new teenagers saw as a way to buck authority and establish identity. Likewise, celebrating one's newfound ability to drink alcohol was something that simply never could have happened prior to the introduction of drinking age limits.

The fact that American-style party drinking didn't start being an issue in Europe until the late 1990s/early 2000s provides a contrasting point of evidence. Europeans by and large didn't develop the same hang-ups about alcohol consumption that Americans did until globalization made American culture as dominant worldwide as the American economy had already become. Children were exposed to sensible alcohol use from a young age; it wouldn't have been a transgressive act for a teenager to try a beer and turning 21 wouldn't have been a specific reason to celebrate with intentional drunkenness. Getting intentionally stupid pass-out drunk just for fun wasn't a social phenomenon.

But if you were born in the United States after around 1980, you would have never known that kind of world. By the time you would have been old enough to know about alcohol in any reasonable context, the idea of going to a party just to get drunk was part of the standard social lexicon. Whether you thought that sounded fun or if it sounded stupid is beside the point; you still knew that was a thing that people did and the world around you didn't seem to be opposed to it. You saw it on TV. You heard about it from your friends. You saw it featured in advertisements.

Yet for as normalized as the idea has become, for as hard as it might be to imagine otherwise, it is in fact a new idea.

:T I think I'm going to go visit my fish dad for a while this year and next year. Might be a good idea to finally figure out how to pull myself together a little bit more. ^~^; It's easier up there with little distraction, better snacks for my body, peace n' quiet and, >U> best of all,
I don't have to do the dishes all of the time.~

you are conflating drunkeness with having a social experience. i cannot debate with you as you do not even know what the conversation is even about(you also make a lot of bad-faith claims that show you were just playing around on wikipedia and don't really know what you are on about)



heck, not having to do dishes sounds grand~ *sweats a little thinking about the dirty dishes that sat in the sink all night* take me with you?

cackles somewhere in the distance

trans rights though

also it's legal in the UK for minors to drink, provided they're in a private place and under supervision. at least, i'm pretty sure.

hahaha, i do that too x''D i just ignore that divider and lump it all together, haha