The Preservation Files: January 2019

Thursday, January 31, 2019

preservation of sharktopus

(originally published June 18, 2011.)

(originally seen on): anaceofkidneys

PRIDE SHARKTOPUS.

Inspired by matokah's Theme Thursday poll.

ETA: flags, clockwise from center: gay/queer (rainbow), ally (black and white striped with rainbow A), asexual (black/grey/white/purple), bisexual (magenta, lavender, blue), pansexual (magenta, yellow, blue), genderqueer (lavender, olive, white), intersex (pink, white, light blue, pink, white, pink), transgender (light blue, pink, white, pink, light blue).

^&^

Well. Now I finally know what the black/grey/white/purple flags I’ve seen mean.

But what, no leather pride flag? Surely he could hold that between his ferocious teeth?

preservation of Lithium Picnic

(originally published June 18, 2011.)

It strikes me that for all the fetish photography that shows women being tied to things, the really extreme bondage-gear set-ups--like this one--just don't work with harmless girls.

You chain the pretty ones, you bind the pretty ones, sure--tie them to trunks, beds, furniture, walls, floors, each other...and we all know, that's kind of the point.

But get-ups like this suggest something else entirely. This, you do to dangerous girls, girls that bite, girls that scratch, girls that will fight back. You immobilize the ones who strike out. You gag the ones that know the crushing strength of their own jaws.

Willing, not willing, these are abstract concepts at this point. If there's no fight in her eyes, she'll look like a doll. And this woman is not a doll.

Photographer: Lithium Picnic. Model: Apnea. All Rights Reserved, ©2006-2019 Lithium Picnic.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

preservation of piercings

(originally published on June 17, 2011.)

(originally seen on) toutpourlamour

^&^
The white lace with those steel curves.

preservation of Warren

(originally published June 8, 2011.)

"Dance like you're stamping on a human face forever, love like you've been in a serious car crash that minced the front of your brain, stab like no one can arrest you, and live like there's no such thing as God."

~Warren Ellis

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

preservation of protesting

(originally published on June 8, 2011.)

When she has a point, she has a point.

preservation of angry

(originally published on June 6, 2011.)

Had to post this. It’s been making me giggle every time I come back to the link.

Monday, January 28, 2019

preservation of full disclosure (two)

(originally published May 28, 2011.)

(inspired by this

preservation of full disclosure (one)

(originally published on May 28, 2011.)

I don’t match up 100% to this. Thinking honestly of making one that more accurately reflects me. But I believe in a lot of it, and it’s a great, honest statement as it stands.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

preservation of waiting

(originally published on May 22, 2011.)

preservation of Tarot

(originally published May 22, 2011.)

(originally seen on) fuckyeahparanormalphenomena:

Tarot Cards are is a pack of cards (most commonly numbering 78), used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe. The Tarot is believed to be used as spiritual pathways.

To get some, here is how you do it. I have 2 sets so far!

-You must have them giving to you as gift only! You cannot buy your own cards.

-You cannot read yourself. You must practice on a family member or just anyone, but not yourself.

-If you want to charge your cards you can put them under your pillow when you sleep to let your cards get the feeling of you or buy charge stone/energy stones.

-Don’t let anyone handle your cards unless you are giving someone a reading.

Types of cards:

-Angel cards

-Oracle cards

-Regular Tarot decks

My cards:

-Tarot of the Sweet Twilight

-Mystic Messenger

(originally seen on) graveyarddirt:

#LOL

^&^

First off, they’re older than that. Some decks go up to 78, some have more, some have less. There are decks that only contain the Major Arcana, some contain both Major and Minor.

Originally, the Tarot was developed less as a fortune-telling device and more as a method of secret communication between learned men and mystery schools, keeping a low profile. Over the centuries, the supposed ‘prophecy’ behind the cards was layered in.

You don’t have to have the cards given to you only. Buy the ones you like. See what resonates with you. Remember, Tarot uses thematic visual language cues; if you don’t understand on a visceral level what the pictures mean, you won’t be able to work with that deck.

You can read yourself. You can read your family. You can read strangers off the street. You can read for money or for gifts or for the hell of it. It’s all practice.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

preservation of poetic imagery

(originally published May 22, 2011.)

(originally seen on) lamortdesamants:

if you are hunted, at least it means there is a pursuer. there is someone that follows you. you are the temporary sigh in the dark as the candle flickers out. all that is left is the soft whimper of an owl flying overhead. the leaves rustle in my ribcage. i am waiting for my chance to run from him.

^&^

Oh, my. "The leaves rustle in my ribcage". What a line.

"I am waiting for my chance to run from him." What if we don’t want to run?

preservation of haunted mirrors

(originally published May 18, 2011.)

(originally seen on) jabarbar:

Wtf

^&^

And this is why I’ve never trusted mirrors.

Friday, January 25, 2019

preservation of flaws

(originally published May 18, 2011.)

"I myself am entirely made out of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
~Augusten Burroughs (via savvylikeyeahhh)

(via theonewithouteyebrows)

preservation of knitting

(originally published May 14, 2011.)

(No idea where this comes from. But imagine what the pattern looked like.)

Thursday, January 24, 2019

preservation of grave relationships

(originally published May 12, 2011.)

(originally seen on) polarbearprince:

The Mummy, 1932

^&^

Well, that’s not the average opening line, but it'll do...

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

preservation of sweetness

(originally published May 9, 2011.)

(originally from: hoodoothatvoodoo)

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
~Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)

preservation of distance

(originally published May 7, 2011.)

No; if anything, you have to find more reasons to retain the friendship aspects, because intimacy seems built into the net. Intimacy, flirting, and falling in love--those things are easy. Staying in love, that can be tricky. Once that first flush is gone, then it's time for the interchange of ideas, for digging deeper, for really getting to know this person you may never even meet in person.

Of course, the rewards for that are innumerable, and well worth the risk. (Though I don’t see a lot of difference between long-distance relationshipping and in-person relationshipping. I know others aren’t like that.)

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

preservation of the past

(originally published May 7, 2011.)

A very wise friend of mine, relating words from a friend of both of ours who had passed on, told me she had described me once thusly: "She's not poison," she’d said, in response to comments from friends. "She's poisoned."

There is truth to that statement, hard and heavy truth, but still, the words linger, given scope and presence possibly beyond their intent by the identity of the speaker. If I'm not poison, entirely, if I’m simply poisoned, instead...how do I go about draining the poison? How do I balance toxicity with the health I hope for (mental, emotional, physical, supernatural...take your pick here, really)? Can I heal enough to not be toxic to those around me in future?

Or is it instead part of my nature, now? Bitter with the sweet, hurt with the joy...am I a scorpion, not a butterfly? How would I know?

preservation of communication

(originally published May 5, 2011.)

Perpetual complaint. If I know what I did wrong, maybe I can fix it. Or maybe hearing it means I can stop sooner next time, when making the same mistake.

I can’t do anything if I don’t know what I did first.

Monday, January 21, 2019

preservation of pausing to think

(originally published May 6, 2011.)

I do find it notable that this one features a keyboard...

preservation of courage

(originally published May 5, 2011.)

^&^

Keep going.

Sunday, January 20, 2019

preservation of brokenness

(originally published May 4, 2011.)

^&^

It's true. Broken people hide. They've had to.

preservation of Howe

(originally published May 2, 2011.)

"Adventures, no matter how dark or disturbing, are meant to be shared."
~James Howe (via delicatelybruised)

(via hoodoothatvoodoo)

Saturday, January 19, 2019

preservation of Oscar Wilde

(originally published on May 3, 2011.)

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
~Oscar Wilde

preservation of bad advertising

(originally published May 2, 2011.)

(originally seen on) monkeypants:

"caring dads always lube" via retrotrend:

^&^

Yeah, um…in retrospect...BAD AD.

Friday, January 18, 2019

preservation of intelligent kink

(originally published May 2, 2011.)

"It’s worth noting that claiming that there’s something broken in submissives — or in submissive men — amounts to an argument for etiology, yet there’s no consensus on why we have the kinks we do in the BDSM community, and no answer at all from the research, what little there is. There’s a plain inconsistency between sometimes very smart and well-informed people knowing and saying that there’s no available answer to why we do what it is that we do, and then saying (usually among our own) that we know why subs are subs.

"This gets personal for me. I can’t tell you why I have the kinks I do, but I can tell you what I get out of bottoming. The challenge, the difficulty, the trust, the violation of gender and social norms with a partner, all amount to one thing: a site of tremendous intimacy, a shared physical end emotional journey where I am vulnerable to and connected with my partner...like jumping off a cliff. So that’s my answer.

"What these prejudices amount to is a normalizing and centering of the experience of the dominant in The Scene. One way this is apparent is by the overrepresentation of tops or dominants among presenters. Presentations tend to be about skills, often bondage and painplay skills, and there’s a perception that it’s easier for the top to teach these skills. I don’t entirely agree with that perception, but between the overrepresentation of men among tops in The Scene, and the tendency for tops to do the teaching, that means that male tops to most of the talking. As one of Weiss’s informants put it: “[Janus is a] het male dom group. Every single presentation I’ve ever been to, every class I’ve ever taken...across the board, het dom male.” (Weiss at p. 241 n. 14.)

"Maymay tells a story about presenting with a partner somewhere: he’s a bottom, and his partner started out by singletailing his back. And then the audience expected her to stop and start explaining what she had shown. But instead, Maymay, the bottom, started explaining what she was doing, as a top, and what he was doing, as a bottom. It’s a paired activity. It makes perfect sense that the bottom can explain skills for a paired activity. Topping a singletail scene means knowing something about both how to top it and what to expect from the bottom, and vice versa, but the ingrained expectation that tops teach skills was so great that the audience kept looking at the top, expecting her to take over."
~Domism: Role Essentialism and Sexism Intersectionality in the BDSM Scene, via maymay

preservation of the throne of bone

(originally posted on May 2, 2011.)

Same thing for this one. Where is this quote from?

(A-ha! Thanks to winneganfake, we have an answer! Yay!

(And yeah, that explains why it sounded so familiar.)

Thursday, January 17, 2019

preservation of Disraeli

(originally published on May 1, 2011.)

"Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for truth."
~Benjamin Disraeli

preservation of Hunter S.

(originally published May 1, 2011.)
(originally seen on) badacresswithbadhabits:

"Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain."
~Hunter S. Thompson (via lilacskin

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

preservation of H.G. Wells

(originally published May 1, 2011.)

"Moral indignation is usually jealousy with a halo."
~H.G. Wells

preservation of pink

(originally published on May 1, 2011.)

I want to live in a world where little girls are not pinkified, but where little girls who like pink are not punished for it, either. We can certainly talk about the social pressures surrounding gender roles, and the concerns that people have when they see girls and young women who appear to be forced into performances of femininity by the society around them, but let’s stop acting like they have no agency and free will. Let’s stop acting like women who choose to be feminine are somehow colluders, betraying the movement, bamboozled into thinking that they want to be feminine. Let’s stop denying women their own autonomy by telling them that their expressions of femininity are bad and wrong.

Antifemininity is misogynist. What you are saying when you engage in this type of rhetoric is that you think things traditionally associated with women are wrong. Which is misogynist. By telling feminine women that they don’t belong in the feminist movement, you are reinforcing the idea that to be feminine and a woman is wrong, that women who want to be taken seriously need to be more masculine, because most people view gender presentation in binary ways. This rewards the 'one of the boys' type rhetoric I encounter all over the place from self-avowed feminists who seem to think that bashing on women is a good way to prove how serious they are when it comes to caring about women and bringing men into the feminist movement.
~S.E. Smith, "Get Your Antifemininity Out of My Feminism" (via squintyoureyes)

(originally seen on) morbidfashion:

FUCK YES.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

preservation of ratings

(originally published May 1, 2011.)

(originally seen on) blackmagickopera:

"Do you think that your 16 year old daughter hasn't masturbated already? Like, do you really think there's anything in that scene that this chick hasn't already tried when the lights go out at night, or in the bathroom, or in the tub, or with the shower head or something like that? I'm telling you, man, I'm not teaching this broad anything new. If I were to create a rating system, I wouldn’t even put murder right at the top of the chief offenses. I would put rape right at the top, and assault against women. Because it's so insanely overused and insulting how much it's overused in movies as a plot device, a woman in peril. That, to me, is offensive, yet that shit skates."
~Kevin Smith (director) on the ridiculousness of movies about sex receiving NC-17 ratings while extremely violent movies get by with R ratings (via phillip-gallagher

-I will never pay to see another Kevin Smith movie ever again but goddamn do I love this.

(originally seen on) morbidfashion:

He’s absolutely right about the ridiculousness of it–that, and the fact that in that dividing line between sex and death, death always wins out as the lesser moral crime, somehow–but why never pay to see a Kevin Smith movie again?

preservation of Jeanie

(originally published May 1, 2011.)

(originally seen on) fer1972:

Genie goes on Bender! via x-ray delta one

^&^

I still adore the fact that they wanted her to run around in harem pants and a little bolero jacket, but good gods, they couldn’t show her navel, the horror!

Monday, January 14, 2019

preservation of fear

(originally published May 1, 2011.)

"Make the time to be scared of more interesting things."
~Merlin Mann

preservation of SETI

(originally published May 1, 2011.)

"The whole thing is much larger, and you really need to see it. Especially the bit about how much people spend on Starbucks. Yegads.

"John made this because of SETI having to mothball the Allen Telescope Array, and I strongly suspect because people were trying to say there are better things to spend money on. I'll tell you, I think that argument is a crock. First off, it's a false dichotomy; we can afford to do more than what we need to survive. And moreover, there is always something better to spend money on, yet we still seem to be able to justify (or rationalize) the way we spend the money we do.

"In the United States alone we spend five times as much on tobacco products as we do on the entirety of NASA. How's that for rationalization? And what we spend on NASA is much, much more than we spend on SETI (7500x more, actually). And we don't spend enough on NASA, either."
~Bad Astronomer Phil Plait on the Seti Infographic link

(via eddieatthegov)

(via michaelk42)

Sunday, January 13, 2019

preservation of WTF

(originally published Aprille 28, 2011.)

Um, yes. That be a foot.

But does that be her foot? Though that would explain the expression...

preservation of Emilie

(originally published Aprille 27, 2011.)

"What I was always told, literally word for word, a million times was growing up in my life--this just tortured me every day--was, 'You are not what is important. You are literally a vessel for the music of some a person has been dead for some hundred of years. You are meant to keep your individuality out if, because it’s not about you.' I'm just too wildly independent and selfish for that. Fuck yeah it's about me, because you're dead and I'm not and I'm the reason why anybody's getting to hear your fucking music. And guess who would have agreed absolutely? The guy who wrote it. They would have never had a problem with that."
~Emilie Autumn

Saturday, January 12, 2019

preservation of Mae

(originally published Aprille 20, 2011.)

(originally seen on) importantpeopleee:

"The curve is more powerful than the sword."
~Mae West

Always have been.

preservation of argument

(originally published Aprille 20, 2011.)

"The day the antigay marriage advocates speak out against legalization of divorce as vehemently as gay marriage is the day I'll consider the sincerity of their argument that government should protect the sanctity of marriage."
~Kristen Bell (via samuraifrog)

(via vovat)

Friday, January 11, 2019

preservation of Medium

(originally published Aprille 19, 2011.)

"I just had the weirdest dream."
"Of course you did. It’s a day that ends in y."
~Joe Weber to Patricia Arquette, Medium

preservation of geisha

(originally published Aprille 19, 2011.)

There are so few geisha left in the world, and so many who look towards the style, at least, if not the discipline behind the life.

What will happen when there are no more geisha? Will people continue what they believe are the practices in other countries? Will it fall into various spins on 'vintage fashion' and expire from global memory?

Thursday, January 10, 2019

preservation of outer terror

(originally published Aprille 15, 2011.)

And you don’t want to tangle with the guy who invented Cthulhu.

preservation of information

(originally published on Aprille 15, 2011.)

So-called "dead drops"--ninja-installed, offline file storage for uploading and downloading–--are showing up in at least one major city in the US. While this could go national--global, even--without much of a hitch, I think the main article's right in that there are two big barriers to this kind of "service" being reliable: the first being black hats who’d upload virii to the drives just for kicks, and the second being electronics exposed to weather.

Still. Think of the possibilities. Tap a panel in a library and have it recess and expose the data port. Coffeehouses with USBs glued at the base to the bottoms of counters. And why not make this semi-mobile, too? Work in letterboxing to the drop system, make them more 'treasure hunt' oriented, give people good, solid reasons--beyond simply eyes-free uploads and downloads--to maintain them and maintain access to them.

Fascinating idea, however it goes.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

preservation of water

(originally published on Aprille 13, 2011.)

My eye keeps moving over this photograph, wondering how it was taken. Was she under a shower? Leaning into a wave? How, exactly, did she end up under this deluge, and not be dripping wet?

(Note from the Editrix on republish: this may have been taken by Patricio Suarez?)

preservation of Vina

(originally published Aprille 8, 2011.)

Oh, I admit, in the sixties makeup was not an advanced science, and we've come a long way...but, considering later developments story-wise, it created great epic subtext. The Orion conglomerate, vicious, predatory tribes of space pirates, where the men are honored in battle and the women are sold to the highest bidder, versus the Klingons, aggressive, structured clans of warriors, where women and men fight and die. Think about the conflicts that would create, when the cultures collided--in battle, on waystations, fighting for one colony world after the next.

And these slaves: tribally-minded, owing no loyalty to their own race or any other, skillful dancers, seductive poisoners, as lethal as they were lovely...some barely had enough education to speak, were very nearly feral. Others, at least in some stories, rose quite far in assassination and stealth ranks.

But it all started here, with one actress liberally daubed with green body-paint, wearing gold-painted bangles and a polyester snakeskin dress.

(Note from the Editrix on repost: This is Susan Oliver, who played Vina.)

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

preservation of Lovecraft

(originally published on Aprille 6, 2011.)

Really, if you track out most faerytales, they’re much the same…

preservation of sorrow

(originally published on Aprille 8, 2011.)

"People talk of sorrow as if it is soft, a thing of water and tears. But true sorrow is not soft. True sorrow is a thing of fire, and rock. It burns your heart, crushes your soul under the weight of mountains. It destroys, and even if you keep breathing, keep going, you die. The person you were moments ago dies, dies in the sound of screaming metal and the impact of one bad driver. Gone. Everything solid, everything real, is gone. It doesn’t come back. The world is forever fractured, so that you walk on the crust of an earth where you can always feel the heat under you, the press of lava, that is so hot it can burn flesh, melt bone, and the very air is poisonous. To survive, you swallow the heat. To keep from falling through and dying for real, you swallow all that hate. You push it down inside you, into that fresh grave that is all that is left of what you thought the world would be."
~Laurell K. Hamilton, Blood Noir

Monday, January 7, 2019

preservation of Oregon Trail

(originally published on Aprille 7, 2011.)

Wau. Oregon Trail was harsh.

preservation of antlers

(originally published Aprille 3, 2011.)

From Lovechild Boudoir, in specific, the Love Among the Ruins tie-on bustle.

Model: Bam Bam Blue. Photography by Yukidoll.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

preservation of witches

(originally published on Aprille 3, 2011.)

(originally seen on) vintagegal:

“Depart Pour le Sabbat” by Albert-Joseph Pénot 1910

^&^

Actually, she doesn’t so much look as if she’s flying, as just…hovering in midair. But I’m not picky.

preservation of Old London

(originally published Aprille 2, 2011.)

(originally seen on): turningpagesover:

Spitalfields Life - The Ghosts of Old London

^&^

Originally I had simply liked this, but it deserved a revisit, after visiting the link. Well worth your time to click and read, and ponder.

Saturday, January 5, 2019

preservation of misanthropy

(originally published Aprille 2, 2011.)

"If you feel like screaming, tearing your hair, and rending your garments over ignorance, incompetence, semiliteracy, and the curious pride so many Americans take in all three, you have Tourette's Misanthropy. If you want to take slothful, rude, careless, unpunctual people by the lapels and shake them until their teeth rattle, you have Tourette's Misanthropy. If you get the urge to kill when you hear plangent elegies about 'babies having babies' in the inner cities, and then open a woman's magazine to find an interview with a famous movie star about the joys of her unwed motherhood, you have Tourette's Misanthropy. If you spend the evening snapping and snarling at your spouse because your newspaper contains an op-ed calling Martin Luther King’s plagiarism 'textual appropriation' and 'voice merging,' you have Tourette's Misanthropy. Don’t worry about it, don’t feel guilty about it, and for God's sake don't waste your money on a psychiatrist to find out what’s wrong with you, because there is nothing wrong with you. Remember, you are right, and they are wrong."
~Florence King from With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look At Misanthropy (via Brian M. Clark)

preservation of brains

(originally published March 31, 2011.)

"I think when you sit alone with your brain too much, your own brain starts to rebel against you."
~Christopher Titus

Friday, January 4, 2019

preservation of Agatka

(originally published March 27, 2011.)

(originally seen on) agatka-alt-model:

Photographer: N Maxwell Lander

Clothing by: Betty Monroe Designs

^&^
Maybe this is an indication of current mood or something, but when I first saw this, my thoughts went Love the girl. Love the sofa. Viscera on the walls?

preservation of milk

(originally published March 27, 2011.)

(originally seen on:) hoodoothatvoodoo:

Mickey Milk.

^&^

Um...is this just me? I am taking the text to a very wrong place.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

preservation of reaction

(originally published March 26, 2011.)

Generally true, too.

preservation of Penn

(originally published March 26, 2011.)

"The world is out of its mind with stupidity and the worship of stupidity."
~Sean Penn, in The Accidental Activist, via nevver