OKAY CAN SOMEBODY EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THE FUCKYOU SHIP A PACKAGE OF COOKIES TO A FRIEND WHO LIVES IN NEW JERSEY, ONLY TO HAVE IT NOT GET THERE ON TIME BECAUSE IT SOMEHOW ENDED UP IN GUAM?
I JUST
GUAM?
IM CRYING REAL TEARS MAH DUDES THE COOKIES ARE IN GUAM
KATIE TRIED TO SEND US COOKIES OUTTA THE GOODNESS OF HER HEART AND JUST
“OHHHH THESE COOKIES WERE SUPPOSED TO GO TO NEW JERSEY, PHIL? I THOUGHT YOU SAID
12/27, 8:37PM CT
ITS STILL IN FUCKING GUAM
12/28, 12:18PM CT
THE COOKIES ARE IN HONOLULU GUYS THEY ***FINALLY LEFT GUAM***
12/28, 10:22PM CT
THE COOKIES ARE FINALLY ON THEIR WAY TO NEW JERSEY
also as a bonus visual here’s a rough approximation of these cookies’ journey
how the FUCK did this blow up and get so many notes
SO FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES, @homebeccer@phantomrose96@cupcakecreeper AND I WANTED TO KNOW HOW MUCH IT WOULD ACTUALLY COST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO INTENTIONALLY SEND THESE COOKIES FROM TEXAS TO GUAM TO NEW JERSEY AND???????????????
AND
IT’S
IT’S
IT’S NOT AN OPTION IT’S NOT AN OPTION I CAN’T I-
I COULDN’T EVEN HAVE SENT THESE COOKIES TO GUAM EVEN IF I’D HAVE TRIED
Cant believe we uncovered the Guam Cookie glitch folks
isn’t that the guy with the long white hair from final fantasy
no your thinking of sephiroth,
a sephora is an angel belonging to the highest order of angels
No you’re thinking of a Seraph
A sephora is a second year college or high school student
No, you’re thinking of sophomore. A sephora is when you use your phone to take a picture of yourself.
no, you’re thinking of a selfie. a sephora is a calm breeze.
No, you’re thinking of a zephyr. A sephora is one of those Greek vases with the two handles and the pictures.
You’re thinking of an amphora. Sephora is the web browser you have to use on iOS devices.
You’re thinking of Safari. Sephora is an informal term for the seven-week period of counting the days between Pesach and Shavuot in the Jewish calendar.
You’re thinking of Sefiras. Sephora is a bright blue gemstone best known for combining with Ruby to create Garnet and lead the Crystal Gems, training Pokemon, and/or assisting Steel to fight against time’s intrusions into our realm.
No, you’re thinking of sapphire. Sephora is actually a part of a flower; it protects the flower in bud and supports the petals in bloom.
No, you’re thinking of sepal. Sephora is the wife of Moses, who lead the Israelites people out of Egypt.
No, you’re thinking of Tzipporah. Sephora was an ancient Greek poet who inspired a lot of lady-lovin’.
No, you’re thinking of Sappho.
Sephora is the youngest of the five Marx brothers.
No, you’re thinking of Zeppo.
Sephora is the Heimdall’s sister.
No no no guys, you’re thinking of Sif. Sephora is a venereal disease that turns your brain to swiss cheese, going so far as to destroy external features like the nose. Famous gangster Al Capone suffered from sephora.
No, you’re thinking of syphilis. Sephora is that radiant feeling you get when you have found perfect peace and happiness.
No, you’re thinking of euphoria. Sephora’s a fucking makeup store you dipshits.
Only blogging because this is my favorite tumblr post and i can never find it when I need to.
pro jobseeking tip: never answer these surveys honestly
also a tip: if they have a question like “Everybody steals from work sometimes” answer “disagree.”
I found this out when i was working as a hiring manager and the company i worked for started instituting these tests for managerial hires or promotions. My boss and I were promoting someone and she failed the test because she answered that question as “slightly agree” which in the results tells them that she is someone likely to steal because she believes everyone does it. When we asked her about her answer, it turns out she picked what she did because she’s cynical and does assume that people steal but didnt agree with them doing so. she almost sued the company for not promoting her based on that but chose to leave instead. We lost a good employee because corporate decided these tests were a good way to screen for “good” employees.
tldr these things are poorly designed, ambiguously worded, and structured in ways that are designed to eliminate people because the intention of the questions is never made clear. these tests are evil.
this sounds like an ableist disaster for people who aren’t neurotypical and who struggle with reading signals
When I went to get diagnosed with ADHD, the neuropsychologist couldn’t figure out what was going on, because on paper I’m apparently floridly psychotic. No, the questions are imprecise, and I am hyper-literal and extremely honest.
“Do you often see things that other people do not see?” Yes.
The question I was answering: “Are you especially observant?”
The question the test was actually asking: “Are you having visual hallucinations?”
“Does your environment ever have special messages for you?” Yes.
The question I was answering: “Does the sudden sight of a rainbow during a bout of doubt and self-loathing make you feel as though the world is trying to cheer you up?”
The question the test was actually asking: “Do you believe that your toaster is trying to convince you that the neighbors are spying on you?”
Five years later, I bombed a psych eval for a park ranger job for the same sort of thing. Tread carefully, darlings.
^^^^ that is actually such a huge issue with diagnosis!!!! and I’ve thought I didn’t experience symptoms for ages that I actually clearly had all along because of things being phrased super weirdly and confusingly 😦
Yeah, this is why this kind of thing in job apps needs to be illegal. A lot of discrimination is well hidden.
And this is why McDonald’s never called me after I applied
Fuck. This explains why I’ve failed all of these fucking things.
My sister said to answer these as if you were a really passive person who relied on management/authority to tell you exactly what to do/think.
Protip: my Dad is a hiring manager at Home Depot and he told me the system they use (with the stupidass pointless 500 question quiz) is designed so it filters out people with neutral answers. Several months ago I applied for numerous jobs, each of which required their own dumbass tests. To save time (and my sanity) i would click the “sometimes” or middle option for nearly every question unless it was serious. Nobody every called me back. Hell only 1 of the 8 places i applied to even messaged me back saying “thank you but we have gone with someone else”. Your applications wont even get seen unless you “pass” the quiz.
So when all yall do fill out these dumb things be sure to pick strong yes or no answers. Never “maybe” or “slighty agree/disagree”
Thank you for that, cause I do that a lot. Like I legit feel neutral on some of those questions. Tumblr with the life hacks
It’s really bad for someone who isn’t neurotypical because often, these questions do contain language meant to filter us out.
For me, I tend to notice the ones meant to filter out people with ADD, like myself. For example “do you have trouble focusing on one task” or “do you like to move around.” My normal answers to these would be “yes, but I have it under control” and “of course, no one can sit still for hours”. But corporations read them as “do not hire”
It’s a bunch of BS. So I answer them like a yes man from office space. Works pretty well.
The real irony of the people who make jokes about being triggered is that they tend to idolize the military/veterans as if combat related PTSD isn’t a real thing that also has triggers. Y’all make fun of the people you call hero’s when you’re making fun of the teenagers with PTSD from non-combat related issues, you can’t separate the two.
Most of the people making fun of triggers are making fun of all the bullshit “”“triggers”“”, as in the people calling a mild uncomfortable feelings triggers.
The problem with making fun of a trigger is you genuinely do not know whether they are ‘mildly uncomfortable’ or if that is a thing that is genuinely causing severe anxiety, depressive episodes, or stress responses. Most of the “““““bullshit”““““ triggers I’ve seen being made fun of are actual trauma survivors who have their trauma associated with something unusual or strange. Because the thing that triggers their PTSD or panic is odd, people, not unlike yourself, are writing them off as “whiny babies” or “triggered sjws” or call their trigger bullshit because they cannot understand the association.
For examples: Sirens are one of my triggers. When I hear sirens I get an immediate panic response. This was due to being in an active war zone as a child (The response is significantly worse if it is an air raid siren or sounds too similar to an air raid siren.). If you didn’t know I was in an active war zone though, it might seem silly to see an adult panic and attempt to get to a safe place because an ambulance, fire truck, or police car went past them.
I have a manager who is triggered by the presence of police. Specifically police, other uniforms are fine (i.e. security in the mall does not set off her panic response). Her trigger is severe, if a police officer talks to her, she starts panicking and sobbing and cannot control it. This is because when she was young, two police officers threatened her repeatedly and psychologically abused her for 6 hours while they tried to find out where her brother was (yes, this was illegal. Her parents were not home at the time, and were unaware she was alone as the brother in question was meant to be watching her). If you didn’t know that story though, it might seem silly to see an adult woman burst into tears and have a panic attack because a cop said ‘hi’ to her.
I have seen posts by an abuse survivor talking about how the sound of a garage door triggered them, due to abuse by a parent. They associated that sound with the abuser returning home and the abuse beginning. The sound became a trigger because their mind associated it to that. I saw another post by a rape survivor talking about how she was triggered by the sight of eggs because she made eggs for her rapist after he’d raped her. Her mind associated eggs with the trauma due to the two being connected at least in her mind.
Brains are weird. Trauma doesn’t make sense. The point is, YOU do not know if someone is ““““bullshitting”“““ or not. You do not know how someones trauma associated itself with something odd, which is something trauma really does all the time and making fun of trauma survivors because you don’tunderstand the association between their trauma and the item that triggers their ptsd or anxiety is absolutely wrong and absolutely hypocritical if you think any other form of trigger is acceptable or okay. You don’t get to decide other peoples trauma triggers. They didn’t even get to decide them, and to tell someone that you’re okay to make fun of them because what upsets them doesn’t make sense to you is absolutely not okay.
I should note too: Phobia’s are real triggers too. People have panic attacks when exposed to their phobia’s in the wrong way. I need certain pictures tagged because I am absolutely terrified of heights, which is a pretty common phobia. People can have serious phobia’s to everything and anything though, and there are things I am not afraid of that others are that may seem strange to me, but to them are very real and very frightening. Just because it seems odd to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t still real to the person experiencing it.
This post needs a zillion more notes. As a Complex PTSD sufferer I truly hope that people will someday stop policing others’ triggers and health problems as if they have a single clue.
Just BACK OFF and let people LIVE.
And PTSD has ALWAYS had odd triggers, this isn’t just a modern thing. My grandmother couldn’t do anything with the reservoir on the back of a toilet because when she was nine, she was gangraped. When her attackers were in their stupor, she took all of their guns and put them in the reservoir of their toilet, and ran through the street naked until someone helped her. Having to put the weapons she KNEW they were going to use on her behind the toilet stuck in her mind, that was what became a trigger for her brain- along with being unable to go outside in her bare feet ever again.
One of my closest friends is triggered by someone touching his hair, because one of his stepfathers swung him around by his hair and smashed him into things. Now any time someone touches his hair, he gets so badly panicked he just vomits on the spot.
And then you have people with conventional ptsd triggers like me- it’s hard for me to see blood and violence in certain contexts. Oddly, it’s fine in video games, but in movies or TV shows- ESPECIALLY if it’s suicide- it triggers me. Because through my suicide prevention work, I’ve WITNESSED suicides, so as a result it triggers my ptsd.
Brains are strange and unpredictable in what they associate a situation to, and what becomes a symbol of trauma. But it’s not anyone’s job to gatekeep the subject, because it does absolutely no one any good. When someone says something triggers them, you need to respect it. And you also need to respect that triggers can generate different responses. My grandmother would get quiet and skittish when triggers. My friend vomits when triggered. I get enraged and frustrated when triggered- an unconventional response to a conventional trigger.
Some people cope so well that they only get ‘uncomfortable’. I’ve even seen one person who would get a ‘high’ because their body would try to release a shitload of dopamine in response to it, and then they’d crash. Shit’s weird, and all you can do is respect what someone says about their own boundaries.
Also, there’s a common misconception that trigger warnings are always about avoiding the trigger. That’s just not the case. A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare. I’ve heard it compared to the fact that people can get used to and tune out a noise like a smoke detector beeping if it happens in a regular and predictable way. But random, unpredictable beeps cause immense psychological distress to almost anyone if you are forced to listen to them long enough. Letting people know a trigger is coming often helps mitigate the reaction.
I was once asked to please tag cats. And I was like “Oookay, bud, I’ll try, but like, ¾ of my life IS cats, so I can’t promise anything…?” Because that just seemed really weird to me.
And then, even though they didn’t have to, they actually wrote back and said, basically, “Hey, the reason I’m asking is because I had to witness people torturing cats in a situation I couldn’t escape, and now I just … can’t.”
Oh shit.
So I said “Hey, holy fuck, I’m sorry. Do you need me to tag all cats, or just housecats? What about cartoon cats? I just want to help you out, friend.”
And again, even though they didn’t have to, they came back and said “Cartoon cats aren’t too bad, but what I really can’t handle is seeing kittens.”
Fucking … fuck.
And I’m not gonna lie, that fucking hurt and chilled me to read. Just … the story there. I don’t want to know it. It makes me sick just imagining it. So I now tag for cats.
It’d be easy to say “It’s stupid to be triggered by kittens.”
But, uhh, I really don’t think that situation is “stupid” at all. I think it’s fucking tragic. And that person had the guts to ask, knowing that they might get made fun of for it, and then they were even kind enough to explain, and I’m grateful to them because it taught me something I intellectually but did not yet viscerally understand.
A healthy person, or even just someone with different triggers, can’t understand the significance behind triggers. And triggers can be really fucking weird or even seemingly inappropriate.
So I got to make a choice. I could say “If you can’t handle cats, seriously, I’m not the blog for you.” Understandable, I suppose. Or I could say “JFC that sucks, and the rest of the goddamn internet is flooded with untagged cats. Maybe … maybe I can do this one thing so that they will feel safe reading my blog? Maybe I have the power to actually … help a little?”
And obviously, I made the latter choice.
Here’s another thing.
Recovery is a process, and eventually a lot of people move away from needing trigger warnings. They are a helpful tool to protect yourself during a certain stage of healing. That healing might take a really long time, and it might never be complete … or … it might only be necessary for a few months or years.
So you aren’t “coddling” people by tagging for [x thing you think shouldn’t be a trigger], you’re enabling them to engage on their terms. Engaging on your own terms is literally the only way to make progress, therapeutically, so asserting that trigger warnings hinder progress is just not factually a correct statement at all.
You personally may choose not to tag for anything, and that’s fine. You are absolutely allowed to run your personal space however you want, and people shouldn’t bug you about it.
But what you don’t get to do is decide what a “stupid” trigger is (hint: there isn’t one, there’s only fucked up situations that leave fucked up scars) and whether or not someone is experiencing severe or mild discomfort. You can’t know that. Their reaction isn’t even a good guide to how they are feeling inside. They may seem only mildly uncomfortable. You don’t see them losing their shit later because something hit them way worse than they thought it would, and they thought they were okay at the time but … hahaha, nope.
I guess … a lot of people seem to think that there’s this whole category of “special snowflake” people wandering around saying “I know how to get sympathy and validation: I’ll ask a total stranger to tag for cookware because I’m ‘triggered’ by spatulas!” Just as if that’s liable to elicit the kind of validation truly lonely and desperate people need.
Or maybe … maybe they think there’s all these people who are so unacquainted with “real” pain or fear that they think their mildly uncomfortable feelings about Furbys compare to, and this is so often the example used and I think that is so wrong, combat vets who can’t handle fireworks.
What it comes down to, it seems like, is trying to extrapolate a story from the trigger so that you can say “Stop crying, you don’t have it that bad!” Which is ridiculous. As someone above pointed out, triggers can seem nonsensical even within the context of the instigating trauma. I remember the eggs post. The things that stick with you about trauma are not always just the things you expect. You can’t actually guess anything about a trauma from a seemingly inexplicable trigger beyond “Wow, fear of paintbrushes, plastic cups, and raisins … I bet that’s a story.”
And if that story that they imagine doesn’t match what they think is a “valid” trauma narrative, then they feel justified in dismissing it. Completely missing the fact that there’s no such thing as a “valid” or “invalid” trauma narrative, because trauma is a really strange and subjective thing. Also completely missing the fact that it’s not okay to try to make that judgment to begin with.
A lot of people seem unwilling, for some reason totally alien to me, to make that empathetic leap and say “Okay. I don’t need to know more. I believe you.” They want to police other people’s experiences. And that’s just one of the worst impulses of humanity. It’s really nasty, and it gets applied in so many horrible ways to mental illness of all kinds. It needs to stop.
Ultimately, it costs you nothing to be cool about it. It costs you nothing to take what people say at face value, or to believe strangers and not comment on their mental health issues. It costs you nothing to say nothing, even if you don’t believe them. Because you are inevitably going to be wrong, and why risk making yourself look like a clueless, deliberately oafish asshole?
I’m really confused as to why this is an issue, except certain segments of the online community take great pleasure in being critical of other people’s attempts to cope, because they have invested a lot of their self-image in being “smart” and “discerning” and “no-nonsense” and “not gonna be fooled” … and they really enjoy tearing down people who are saying “these things are unfair” or “these things are hard for me.”
“You aren’t really hurt/traumatized/oppressed!” is a truly unpleasantly common thing to hear these people say. Often they will even say it outright. Other times, it comes across indirectly.
It’s not at all surprising for anti-feminists to also be anti-trigger-warning, and I think this is probably why. I know it was the case for me for a very long time. Then I kind of … grew up, I guess? Enough bad shit happened to me and to people I know that I acquired sympathy. And realized that, actually, my own traumas have left me with some pretty weird issues, things that make me uncomfortable but which other people are unlikely to consider inherently threatening. So I had no room to judge.
It’s sad, because it’s actually a whole lot less effort to believe people when they talk about their experiences than it is to sit there, smoldering with disdain and resentment over the person who really can’t abide milk, of all things, and asks that it be tagged for.
If you’re angry about trigger warnings and are lashing out about it, just … go ask a mutual friend for a hug or something. Go do something self-affirming. Because the trigger warning thing is not about you or for you. You might as well spend your energy doing something nice for yourself. You’re lucky not to have to wrestle with a fear you very well know is ridiculous. Enjoy that and move on. Don’t waste your time thinking about how many people are wrong to feel the way they feel. Just let it go.
I also want to emphasize something said above:
A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare.
This is huge.
I can engage with my triggers.
I can do it voluntarily on my own terms, and the effects can, depending on circumstance, be pretty minimal.
I can do it with warning on someone else’s terms, and depending on circumstance I can be mostly okay to messed up but still mostly functional.
Or I can do it without warning at all, and depending on circumstance, fall apart a little, or a lot.
If given control of the situation, I can get away with a “yuck” feeling and then move on. If not, I may need medication to bring me down. It can fuck me up for a couple of days if I was not allowed to choose when/how/whether to engage. If I am, hey, wow, look at that, I’m mostly all right.
This is not evidence that it’s not that bad. Like with a lot of illness, disability, and mental health stuff, just because I can do it sometimes doesn’t mean it’s okay all the time.
This is how these things work. Period. This is actually what recovery from trauma looks like, this is how it works, this is what you have to accept if you want to accept that any trauma at all is valid.
It really is a useless endeavor to try to draw conclusions about someone’s trauma from whether or not they ask for, use, or need trigger warnings.
And tbh, even if they come right out and say “I don’t have PTSD, I just hate seeing pictures of dogs, I’m so triggered lol”, that’s them being horrendously disrespectful of mentally ill people. It’s not an excuse to then be even more disrespectful by using that to draw conclusions that allow you to dismiss the very concept of trigger warnings as stupid.
There are people who fake entire illnesses, okay? Who lie about having cancer or whatever. But we don’t take those people as evidence that people who have, you know, actual cancer must be lying and pretending to be special snowflakes.
Mohamed Bzeek knew that. But in his more than two decades as a foster father, he took them in anyway — the sickest of the sick in Los Angeles County’s sprawling foster care system.
He has buried about 10 children. Some died in his arms.
Now, Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for a bedridden 6-year-old foster girl with a rare brain defect. She’s blind and deaf. She has daily seizures. Her arms and legs are paralyzed.
Bzeek, a quiet, devout Libyan-born Muslim who lives in Azusa, just wants her to know she’s not alone in this life.
“I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” he said. “I’m always holding her, playing with her, touching her. … She has feelings. She has a soul. She’s a human being.”
Of the 35,000 children monitored by the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, there are about 600 children at any given time who fall under the care of the department’s Medical Case Management Services, which serves those with the most severe medical needs, said Rosella Yousef, an assistant regional administrator for the unit.
There is a dire need for foster parents to care for such children.
And there is only one person like Bzeek.
“If anyone ever calls us and says, ‘This kid needs to go home on hospice,’ there’s only one name we think of,” said Melissa Testerman, a DCFS intake coordinator who finds placements for sick children. “He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it.”
Typically, she said, children with complex conditions are placed in medical facilities or with nurses who have opted to become foster parents.
But Bzeek is the only foster parent in the county known to take in terminally ill children, Yousef said. Though she knows the single father is stretched thin caring for the girl, who requires around-the-clock care, Yousef still approached him at a department Christmas party in December and asked if he could possibly take in another sick child.
This time, Bzeek politely declined.
Bzeek is a quiet, religious man who wants his foster daughter to know she’s not alone in this life. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
:::
The girl sits propped up with pillows in the corner of Bzeek’s living room couch. She has long, thin brown hair pulled into a ponytail and perfectly arched eyebrows over unseeing gray eyes.
Because of confidentiality laws, the girl is not being identified. But a special court order allowed The Times to spend time at Bzeek’s home and to interview people involved in his foster daughter’s case.
The girl’s head is too small for her 34-pound body, which is too small for her age. She was born with an encephalocele, a rare malformation in which part of her brain protruded through an opening in her skull, according to Dr. Suzanne Roberts, the girl’s pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Neurosurgeons removed the protruding brain tissue shortly after her birth, but much of her brain remains undeveloped.
She has been in Bzeek’s care since she was a month old. Before her, he cared for three other children with the same condition.
“These kids, it’s a life sentence for them,” he said.
Bzeek, 62, is a portly man with a long, dark beard and a soft voice. The oldest of 10 children, he came to this country from Libya as a college student in 1978.
Years later, through a mutual friend, he met a woman named Dawn, who would become his wife. She had become a foster parent in the early 1980s, before she met Bzeek. Her grandparents had been foster parents, and she was inspired by them, Bzeek said. Before she met Bzeek, she opened her home as an emergency shelter for foster children who needed immediate placement or who were placed in protective custody.
Dawn Bzeek fell in love with every child she took in. She took them to professional holiday photo sessions, and she organized Christmas gift donation drives for foster children.
She was funny, Bzeek said during a recent drive home from the hospital. She was absolutely terrified of spiders and bugs, so much that even Halloween decorations creeped her out — but she was never scared by the children’s illnesses or the possibility that she would die, Bzeek said.
The Bzeeks opened their Azusa home to dozens of children. They taught classes on foster parenting — and how to handle a child’s illness and death — at community colleges. Dawn Bzeek was such a highly regarded foster mother that her name appeared on statewide task forces for improving foster care alongside doctors and policymakers.
Bzeek started caring for foster children with Dawn in 1989, he said. Often, the children were ill.
Mohamed Bzeek first experienced the death of a foster child in 1991. She was the child of a farm worker who was pregnant when she breathed in toxic pesticides sprayed by crop dusters. She was born with a spinal disorder, wore a full body cast and wasn’t yet a year old when she died on July 4, 1991, as the Bzeeks prepared dinner.
“This one hurt me so badly when she died,” Bzeek said, glancing at a photograph of a tiny girl in a frilly white dress, lying in a coffin surrounded by yellow flowers.
By the mid-1990s, the Bzeeks decided to specifically care for terminally ill children who had do-not-resuscitate orders because no one else would take them in.
There was the boy with short-gut syndrome who was admitted to the hospital 167 times in his eight-year life. He could never eat solid food, but the Bzeeks would sit him at the dinner table, with his own empty plate and spoon, so he could sit with them as a family.
There was the girl with the same brain condition as Bzeek’s current foster daughter, who lived for eight days after they brought her home. She was so tiny that when she died a doll maker made an outfit for her funeral. Bzeek carried her coffin in his hands like a shoe box.
“The key is, you have to love them like your own,” Bzeek said recently. “I know they are sick. I know they are going to die. I do my best as a human being and leave the rest to God.”
“I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” Mohamed Bzeek says. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Bzeek’s only biological son, Adam, was born in 1997 — with brittle bone disease and dwarfism. He was a child so fragile that changing his diaper or his socks could break his bones.
Bzeek said he was never angry about his own son’s disabilities. He loved him all the same.
“That’s the way God created him,” Bzeek said.
Now 19, Adam weighs about 65 pounds and has big brown eyes and a shy grin. When at home, he gets around the house on a body skateboard that his father made for him out of a miniature ironing board, zooming across the wood floor, steering with his hands.
Adam studies computer science at Citrus College, driving his electric wheelchair to class. He’s the smallest student in class, Bzeek said, “but he’s a fighter.”
Adam’s parents never glossed over how sick his foster siblings were, and they told him the children were going to eventually die, Bzeek said. They accepted death as part of life — something that made the small joys of living all the more meaningful.
“I love my sister,” the shy teenager said of the foster girl. “Nobody should have to go through so much pain.”
About 2000, Dawn Bzeek, once such an active advocate for foster children, became ill. She suffered from powerful seizures that would leave her weak for days. She could hardly leave the house because she didn’t want to collapse in public.
The frustrations of her illness wore on her, Bzeek said. There was stress in the marriage, and she and Bzeek split in 2013. She died a little over a year later.
Bzeek chokes up when he talks about her. When it came to facing the difficulties of the children’s illnesses, the knowledge that they would die, she was always the stronger one, he said.
:::
On a chilly November morning, Bzeek pushed the girl’s wheelchair and the IV pole that carries her feeding formula into Children’s Hospital on Sunset Boulevard. She was wrapped in a soft pink blanket, her head resting on a pillow with the stitched words: “Dad is like duct tape holding our home together.”
The temperatures had been bouncing up and down that week, and the girl had a cold. Her brain cannot fully regulate her body temperature, so one leg was hot while the other was cold.
On the elevator, her face glowed bright red as she coughed, her throat filled with phlegm, screaming for air. People in the elevator looked away.
Bzeek rubbed her cheek playfully and held her hand, waving it playfully. “Heeeey, mama,” he cooed in her ear, calming her down.
For Bzeek, the hospital has become a second home. When he’s not here, he’s often on the phone with her many doctors, the insurers who fight over who’s paying for it all, the lawyers who represent her and her social workers. Any time they leave the house together, he carries a thick black binder filled with her medical records and pages of medications.
Still, Bzeek — who had to be licensed through the county to care for medically fragile children and receives about $1,700 a month for her care — is not able to make medical decisions for her.
Roberts entered the exam room, smiling at the girl’s frilly socks and brown dress with fall-colored leaves.
“There’s our princess,” the doctor said. “She’s in her pretty dress, as always.”
Roberts has known Bzeek for years and has seen many of his foster children. By the time this girl was age 2, Roberts said, doctors said there were no more interventions to improve her condition.
“Nobody ever wants to give up,” she said. “But we had run through the options.”
But the girl, who is hooked to feeding and medication tubes at least 22 hours a day, has lived as long as she has because of Bzeek, the doctor said.
“When she’s not sick and in a good mood, she’ll cry to be held,” Roberts said. “She’s not verbal, but she can make her needs known. … Her life is not complete suffering. She has moments where she’s enjoying herself and she’s pretty content, and it’s all because of Mohamed.”
Mohamed Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for the bedridden child. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Other than trips to the hospital and Friday prayers at the mosque — when the day nurse watches her — Bzeek rarely leaves the house.
To avoid choking, the girl sleeps sitting up. Bzeek sleeps on a second couch next to hers. He doesn’t sleep much.
:::
On a Saturday in early December, Bzeek, Adam and the girl’s nurse, Marilou Terry, had a celebratory lunch for the child’s sixth birthday. He invited her biological parents. They didn’t come.
Bzeek crouched in front of the girl — wearing a long, red-and-white dress and matching socks — and held her hands, clapping them together.
“Yay!” he said, cheerfully. “You are 6! 6! 6!”
Bzeek lit six birthday candles in a cheesecake and sat the girl on the kitchen table, holding the cake near her face so she could feel the warmth of the flames.
As they sang “Happy Birthday,” Bzeek leaned over her left shoulder, his beard gently brushing the side of her face. She smelled the smoke, and a small smile crossed her face.
Barristan Selmy from Game of Thrones opens a random episode for no apparent reason and with no explanation
Arin scream-sings Circle of Life in a public place
The fucking ads are the stuff of nightmares
Rob Schneider comes on Game Grumps after Arin completely rips apart his tv show for a full episode
Arin opened a set of 10 or so episodes with monologues about following his twitter, cooking your own food, that he’s really a bat portraying the character of Arin Hanson, that his editor is too handsome, he wants to sell out to Wendy’s, and then hits himself as hard as he can with a plastic bat. This is giffed but not commented on.
Chris Pratt likes the Super Mario Galaxy playthrough, confirms he is a melon with his name written on it.
Arin assembles what looks like a several hundred person mob to go to a random Wendy’s in Ohio, because he wants to sell out to them but they won’t return his tweets.
They’ve got a fucking TV show coming out with the guys from Rick and Morty? Why is this not mentioned more?
L o v e l y d a y f o r c r i c k e t
Arin and Ross abused the ‘give a free ride get a free ride’ code on Uber by sending theirs out to 3.5 million people. Reportedly, Arin now has over 800 free rides.
Ross and Barry sold their pokemon fanart in an art gallery.
Seriously the fucking ads? In one of them Barry is turned upside down while Arin growls in a corner and then time-lapse punches Barry into a wall, and this is an advert for Lootcrate
Dan repeatedly hit a two pound gummy bear against a table to try and remove its head
A professor of theoretical physics quit his fucking job to do the show
For all the folks out there who don’t read/don’t have access to the Steven Universe content outside the animated show, I’ve compiled some notable bits of story that you may not know from the comics and books! The creators have suggested that the comics and whatnot are “Level 2 Canon,” meaning you can consider them canon unless they contradict the show. So we have reason to believe these bits are applicable to our understanding of this world!
[Up to date with content up to August 18, 2016.]
FROM THE BOOK TIE-INS
Jasper, Amethyst, and Steven are all identified as Quartz Gems in The Guide to the Crystal Gems. Pearl is listed as a Pearl, Peridot is listed as a Peridot, and Garnet’s type isn’t indicated as anything but “Fusion.” We still don’t know if Ruby and/or Sapphire are considered to belong to any overall “type” of Gem class. (In real life, rubies and sapphires are both corundum, but given Ruby is a common soldier and Sapphire is a rare aristocrat, I doubt Homeworld designations for them would put them in one group together.)
Colors are sometimes inconsistent on the television show because the lighting is so dynamic, so the specifics being laid down in the Guide to the Crystal Gems is nice. Pearl’s hair is pink (not orange or peach). Steven’s shirt is pink, not red. Amethyst’s hair is pale lavender, not white.
All of Rose Quartz became half of Steven, according to the Guide to the Crystal Gems. She “wanted to experience birth,” and when she gave up her physical form, she integrated all her “information” with the DNA of Greg Universe to produce a real human child that was as much from her as he is from Greg.
Amethyst “experiments with male forms,” as per the Guide to the Crystal Gems’ “fun fact” about her.
The Guide to the Crystal Gems identifies Lapis Lazuli’s weapon as “water,” Peridot’s weapon as “Modern Gem technology,” and Jasper’s as “Helmet and Gem Destabilizer.” Alexandrite’s is, simply, “all of them.”
The Fusion section of the Guide to the Crystal Gems (narrated by Garnet) includes the interesting factoid that Fusions manifest partly as an expression of the fusers’ effect on one another. What they are, but also what they inspire each other to be. Cool!
Opal represents a peace that Amethyst and Pearl don’t often feel on their own. It causes her to be a little forgetful. [Guide to the Crystal Gems]
Rose Quartz’s manifesto, as stated in the Guide to the Crystal Gems, is as follows: “Fight for life on the planet Earth, Defend all human beings, even the ones that you don’t understand, Believe in love that is out of anyone’s control, And then risk everything for it!”
According to Live From Beach City!, the Steven Universe music book, Steven can’t whistle. He says so during a whistling lesson comic that accompanies the song “On the Run” in the book.
The book What In the Universe? has been criticized a LOT in reviews because it claims to be a trivia book with 300 facts but mostly just tells us stuff we already know from the show, with really no new information. But some of the phrasing gives maybe new info, such as the following:
The book outright states that Gems “don’t really feel” the heat or the cold. We already knew they aren’t generally damaged by extremes, but suggesting they don’t really feel it is new.
A page about Garnet’s future vision suggests she tends not to talk about it to other people “because it weirds them out.”
Rose’s Secret Armory is pictured on one page, and though no one in the show has called it this, the caption referred to it as “a trophy cave.” It was never suggested anywhere that the weapons and armor stored in this cave were “trophies,” so that might be a new perspective for us.
A page about Rose Quartz’s sword says Steven is “not quite ready to make it his.”
The book Postcard Power, which on the surface looks like just a collection of art you can mail, has a bunch of intriguing captions, some of which reveal specifics about history. According to some of the cards, Beach City was founded in the early 19th century, the “Garnet punches a shark” photo was taken circa 1800, and the “Comet” performance by Greg Universe was considered his “final performance.”
Also in Postcard Power, a couple more Crying Breakfast Friends are explicitly named. We already knew Sniffling Croissant and Spilled Milk because they were mentioned in “Reformed,” but one postcard gives names to Blue Apple, Sad Waffle, and Remorseful Pear.
The show Li’l Butler had “over 168 episodes, including several two-part specials.” [Postcard Power]
The duck on the billboard we see in “On the Run” (captioned “Sea Ya Later!”) is apparently the “official Beach City Duck.” [Postcard Power]
A map of Beach City released in Best Buds Together Fun (though distributed in high resolution on the Internet long before) reveals
some interesting features of Beach City. It has references to old docks that were destroyed, which roads go into
Beach City (SR 13, I-95, toward 1A), and plenty of locations both
familiar and unmentioned in the show. The peninsula Beach City is on in
Delmarva is bordered by Rehoboth Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Steven’s “favorite food” is identified as fry bits in Best Buds Together Fun.
Garnet has unexpectedly elegant handwriting. The Gems’ signatures are displayed on a certificate at the end of Best Buds Together Fun, and while Pearl’s loopy cursive and Amethyst’s blocky capital printing were predictable, Garnet’s slightly tighter, fancy cursive is an interesting touch.
And in the Mad Libs activity book, there are at least a dozen inconsistencies that explicitly contradict show canon, so I doubt we can extract anything we can trust as new information, but one page says Garnet loves to surf. Well, that makes sense, since we did already know she was a Really. Good. Swimmer.
FROM THE COMICS
In the short “Vacation” [Steven Universe comic #1], a Gem that Pearl bubbles refuses to go back to the temple when she tries to make it do so. So apparently that can happen.
In the short “Birthday Bake-Off” [Steven Universe comic #1], the Gems are embarrassed to find that they forgot to get a cake for Steven’s birthday, and attempt to bake him one. Amethyst fails because she figures lumping a bunch of candy and sweets together and sticking it in the oven will make something edible, and she is quite wrong. Pearl goes the other direction by trying to scientifically construct a cake that includes the right nutrition, but she doesn’t understand that humans can’t obtain iron from, say, bolts cooked into a cake. Garnet’s cake is the winner, as it is edible and perfect-looking and … made entirely of frosting. (Which Steven likes.)
For the record, as we see Steven’s fourteenth birthday in the episode “Steven’s Birthday,” we assume he’s been thirteen in episodes 1 through 73 (or may have been twelve for some of the first few episodes). But some people mistake “So Many Birthdays” as a birthday episode for him for some reason, even though it’s about a birthday party substitute he throws for the Gems. And dialogue in “Nightmare Hospital” suggests Steven and Connie have been hanging out for about a year since “An Indirect Kiss,” so he probably had an unmentioned birthday somewhere in there. Maybe the comic birthday in “Birthday Bake-Off” is his thirteenth!
In the “Bike Race” short [Steven Universe comic #2], the Gems are worried about Steven being in a bike race because he might get hurt. Pearl admits determination might be important for his training, and Amethyst says if he gets hurt it’ll be no big deal because he’ll just reform. Garnet adds that they don’t know if he can come back like they can if he dies. It’s interesting that according to the comic they don’t know if he’ll stay dead.
In the “Taxi” short [Steven Universe comic #4], Steven is hiring Lion out to do transportation errands for Beach City residents. Onion enlists their services to take him to a flowery meadow, where Onion turns a turtle right-side-up after it was stuck on its back. That was it. (???)
Also in the “Taxi” short, Jenny hires Lion to take her to the movies, and Lars is with her. Ooh. And Ronaldo is flipping out about kale and manganese, while Mr. Smiley says he’s missing a coffee date. (With who?)
In “Taxi,” Halloween is explicitly mentioned, as the Gems are watching a cooking show with a Halloween recipe on it and they comment on it. No official holidays have been shown to exist in the alternate world of the Steven Universe TV show, except for New Year’s, and a creator has said these holidays don’t exist.
In the “Doppelganger” short [Steven Universe comic #4], Ronaldo is convinced that Garnet is secretly a model because he sees a model that looks like her in an ad. Funny how her ACTUAL identity as an extraterrestrial superhero is less intriguing to him than the possibility that she might be a secret model. Steven claims to not be able to see the resemblance.
In “Library, Part One” [Steven Universe comic #5], Steven says Beach City doesn’t have a public library because a “slug thing” happened and now they don’t. (This appears to have been contradicted by the episode “Buddy’s Book,” where Connie and Steven go to Buddwick Public Library and it is heavily implied that it’s in Beach City.)
In “Library, Part One,” Pearl gets sick because she absorbs a corrupted Gem that’s embedded in a book into her Gem. She actually sneezes and coughs up objects and becomes ill (and is of course disgusted by this). To cure her, Steven and Garnet have to go inside her Gem and get the book out. The inside of Pearl’s Gem realm is full of slightly askew columns, rose bushes, and doors.
In “Library, Part Two” [Steven Universe comic #6], Amethyst describes Pearl’s Gem space as “kinda like a wallet but more infinite.” Steven also describes the inside of her Gem space as beautiful. Also, when Garnet and Steven are inside, Pearl can hear Garnet yelling and asks her not to be so loud.
In the “Steven-less!” short [Steven Universe comic #5], Amethyst’s mission adventures have left her stuck shape-shifted as a cat. Nothing we’ve seen so far in the show suggests Amethyst could get trapped in any shape-shifted form, but perhaps it’s possible!
In the “King Hotdog” short [Steven Universe comic #6] (also called “Hot Dog King” in a different set of credits), Amethyst wins a hot dog–eating contest, and Mayor Dewey crowns her King Hotdog for eating 226 dogs.
In the “Storytime” short [Steven Universe comic #7], Connie and Pearl spend some time together bonding over literature. Pearl is impressed that humans can tell stories along the lines in Connie’s book, but when she starts identifying with the protagonist and the story doesn’t go how she wants it to, she screams that Connie is telling lies. It’s interesting because this appears to take place before they started sword-fighting together, and highlights a similarity between the two of them: they both get fixated on their own interpretations of literature, like Connie did in “Open Book.”
In the short “Mean Look” [Steven Universe comic #7], a Gem monster they’re fighting can shoot teleportation beams. So Lion isn’t the only creature that has the mysterious ability to travel without Warp Pads.
In the short “Mean Look,” Onion is featured eating popcorn. Many viewers of the TV show believe Onion doesn’t eat at all, but they’ve forgotten the one time he was depicted eating in the show was his first appearance: “Bubble Buddies.” In that episode … he was eating popcorn. So clearly popcorn is a thing for Onion. (In this comic, Onion becomes furious when a monster knocks his popcorn out of his hand. Considering how often he himself has ruined others’ food, this is peculiar. Don’t mess with the popcorn!)
In the short “Opal’s Day Off” [Steven Universe comic #8], Steven convinces Opal to stay fused by claiming there are important missions at Funland. Very similar to the quarrel that broke up Alexandrite in “Fusion Cuisine,” Opal eventually unfuses because she is conflicted over whether she should eat the hot dog Steven offers her. (Obviously, when Amethyst and Pearl are back, Amethyst eats hot dogs.)
In the short “Universe and the Moon” [Greg Universe Special #1], there is some heartwarming bonding between Greg and Garnet. He suggests the Gems are wise and experienced and she must know everything, and she disagrees, pointing out that she does not understand humans. When Greg replies that *humans* don’t understand humans, she concludes that maybe she does know everything then. It’s interesting seeing Greg express a sort of longing and envy about everything the Gems have seen in their long lives.
In the “Now In 3D” short [Greg Universe Special #1], Steven goes to see the 3D Cookie Cat movie with his dad and the Gems. As per usual, Amethyst’s mischief wrecks things and Pearl goes full MST3K on the movie’s plot. The conflict surrounding Garnet is that she’s blocking everyone’s view behind her because she’s so big. (She also has 3D glasses that accommodate her third eye! Where’d she get those??) Garnet folds herself up in the seat to try to be smaller, which is odd since she could theoretically shape-shift to be less in the way, but in the show she does this too–preferring to scrunch into and squeeze through spaces that are tight for her instead of shape-shifting to make it easier. Also, Lars complains about “Garnet’s giant head,” which is a little surprising because except for Vidalia, Connie, and Greg, humans generally don’t even seem to know the Gems’ names and rarely acknowledge that they exist. I guess Lars and Sadie know who Garnet is!
In a short addition to Volume 1 of the trade paper collection for the Steven Universe first-run comics, Rebecca Sugar offers a scene of Steven’s comic books getting destroyed because the Gems were fighting a shape-shifting monster that took the form of Steven’s comics. They decide to make it up to him by drawing him a new comic. The comic-making roles were as follows: Pearl wrote the comic, Amethyst drew it, and Garnet colored it!
We know Steven lives in Beach City, but place names and geography are a bit murky in the show. We see Steven, Greg, and Garnet going to Keystone during “Keystone Motel,” and Keystone is described as “the next state over,” but the name of Steven’s state is not explicitly spoken in the show as such (in “Same Old World” Steven only refers to being familiar with “the Tri-State Area”). The state name is, however, mentioned in a few other places, like Ronaldo’s blog, some book tie-ins, and the comics.
Steven’s home city of Beach City is in the state of Delmarva. It shows up as a postal abbreviation on a flyer in the “Open Mic” short from Steven Universe comic #3 (it’s postal abbreviation DV), and it’s also on a license plate in the story “Traffic Cones” from the Steven Universe Volume 2 graphic novel (it’s one of the extra stories in the compilation), and in that same story Steven also mentions Echo City. The word “Delmarva” and abbreviation “DV” is also seen in newspapers outside the Big Donut and on the window of the Big Donut itself. It is also explicitly referenced in Postcard Power and Best Buds Together Fun in addresses and on maps.
On Ronaldo’s blog, the city Charm City is also mentioned. And Empire City was mentioned in “Story for Steven” and flown over in “Same Old World” in the show. Other city names with beach themes are rattled off in “Same Old World,” including Surf City, Sea City, Aqua Town, and Bayburg. (With Ocean Town being mysteriously destroyed, mentioned in “Political Power.”) By the same token, we also know of Kansas, where films are made, because of Jamie’s mention of it in “Love Letters.” The United States is still the United States if we can believe what’s printed on their money. And Japan probably exists (but is maybe called something else?) since Connie says a Japanese word in “Winter Forecast,” and Germany exists under the same name because in “Drop Beat Dad” Sour Cream suggested “80% of Germans” make a living DJing. A place called “Dhawar” probably exists as well as that name was on an airplane in “Steven Floats” and Dhawar is a real place in India.
Garnet has never eaten anything in the show, even though Greg claims in “Keystone Motel” that “Garnet likes to eat sometimes.” (She is implied to have sipped a soda during “Secret Team,” but we see her actively avoiding food that’s in her possession during “Beach Party” and “Back to the Barn.”) In the comics, though, Garnet has eaten food twice. The first time, it was ice cream (in “Doppelganger,” Steven Universe comic #4). The second time, it was marshmallows (in Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems #1).
Steven doesn’t go to school in the show, but in Too Cool for School, Steven and Pearl make references to him being homeschooled. He does very well on his exams in the school arc and partially credits his education with the Gems, which suggests he is getting one off-screen. [Too Cool for School, Original Graphic Novel #1]
Connie finally gets some friends who aren’t Steven in Too Cool for School. She gets inducted into the Junior Safety Patrol with some unnamed children who like her. [Too Cool for School, Original Graphic Novel #1]
Garnet and Pearl used to scare Amethyst with a story about a Glass Ghost to make her stop wandering off. It took her centuries to get over it. (They believed it was just a story, but they got the story from Rose.) [Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems #1 and 2]
Onion might sleep with his eyes open. This is unclear, because it is in a fictional representation of a story Steven is telling, illustrated with characters from the show (Garnet as the babysitter sporting her “Chille Tid” design, Amethyst with her baby form from “So Many Birthdays,” and Onion as … Onion). But at one point Steven narrates that the children are sleeping, over an image of Baby Amethyst snoring away and Onion staring creepily at the ceiling. [Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems #1]
Garnet declares that she enjoys her sleeping bag because it’s “like a hug for your whole body.” It’s canon: Garnet likes hugs. [Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems #1]
While discussing scary stories in Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems #4, the characters bring up mummies, vampires, and Frankenstein’s monster as potential antagonists. Interesting that Frankenstein’s monster is specifically mentioned (by Pearl), since that indicates that the novel by Mary Shelley exists in the SU world.
I’ll try to add to this as new book tie-ins and comics come out, but I can’t update reblogs obviously, so if you want it in your resources for anything, make sure to favorite or link the original post, not a reblog!
i had a dream about fucking… vampire discourse on tumblr like;
“reminder that blood sucker is a slur”
“vamp-born-vamps are valid if u got bitten later in life you’re not part of the vamp community”
“support vamps who drink human blood, support vamps who drink animal blood, support vamps who drink animal and human blood”
“half bloods who are human presenting don’t belong in the community”
fantasy tumblr would be fucking insufferable
god can you even imagine
“If you only have two legs you’re human-passing and don’t belong in the fantasy community”
“What about satyrs?’
“You can wear shoes”
“Just a reminder that if you appropriate mermaid culture you’re a piece of shit”
“Actually we don’t mind because a lot of our culture comes from humans”
“Shapeshifters aren’t valid because they can be human if they want”
Oh my god it gets worse and worse
Listen Sweaty 🙂 🙂 🙂 Bigfoots and Jersey Devils aren’t REAL mythfolk 🙂 🙂 You r just confuused humans :)))
stop fetishizing incubi
stop fetishizing incubi
stop fetishizing incubi
stop fetishizing incubi
stop fetishizing incubi
stop fetishizing incubi
ONLY
👏FAIRIES
👏CAN
👏MAKE
👏FAIRY
👏RINGS
Why the FUCK did no one tag me in this
Werewolves are still werewolves no matter what form they’re in. We don’t stop being werewolves when we’re in human form, we don’t stop being werewolves when we’re in wolf form. Stop werewolf erasure!
Listen, I’ve been in a committed relationship with a selkie for over ten years. I can tell you that whole hiding-the-pelt-thing is total bullshit. If he wanted to leave he could, I am not holding him hostage. Please, stop spreading this hurtful misinformation.
Support veelas who dance naked at the crossroads
Support veelas who seduce random townspeople
Support veelas who take shepherds as lovers
STOP SLUT SHAMING VEELAS!!!!!!!
friendly reminder that “ghost” is a term reserved for noncorporeals. if you’re semicorporeal you’re a poltergeist. stop calling poltergeists ghosts.
destroy the idea that zombies “need” to eat brains
some zombies can’t eat brains due to physical conditions that make them too weak to gnaw through the skull
Ranty-Ramblestein's Tumblr Import 