Oh Man, You’re Right. “Figures 21,22,23 - Sherlock Holmes And Dr. Watson Make A Rather Macabre Discovery

Jeremy January, Blue Monday* edition: Jeremy spreading awareness about Manic Depression/Bipolar Disorder. In this recording he describes the illness to encourage listeners who may be suffering to seek help. He is speaking for the Manic Depression Fellowship, now called Bipolar UK. Another resource is The Mighty: https://themighty.com/bipolar-disorder/. (I linked only to their Bipolar Disorder page, but The Mighty includes stories and information on a number of mental illnesses and other topics.)

If you are suffering, please, listen to Jeremy and talk to someone about your suffering. If you consider yourself well, please be available to listen as much as your personal capacity allows…be like Edward Hardwicke supporting his friend Jeremy by picking him up from the institution and taking him out for a meal and then home for tea. The world needs more friends like Jeremy and Edward!

*The term “Blue Monday” only recently came across my radar; it is a Monday in January (which one seems to vary by source) and is said to be the most depressing day of the year for Northern Hemisphere dwellers.

And to think that the second one was taken after the bizarre charity doubles match with the not-so-friendly rivals Sampras and Agassi. The latter couldn't stop sniping at each other while Fedal just looked on in confusion 🤣

Norway’s general attitude towards preservation is appalling. These are exceptions, not the norm, and those historical buildings will probably be torn down and replaced with industrial complexes at one point.

20 Images Of Norwegian Architecture Plucked Straight From A Fairytale

The Norwegian countryside is strewn with architecture that looks better suited to crown the pages of a fairytale book. More commonly known for its Vikings heritage and fjords, these photographs display a wide variety of architectural styles that have been used throughout the Middle Ages to the 19th century in Norway. Check out the stunning collection below.

Crooked and towering wooden churches beckoning like an old crone’s fingers, winding stone path weaving through a forest, hidden waterfalls and lonely wooden cabins overlooking a vast valley at its base are some of the outlandish homes and architectural designs we have featured in this series. Teetering Stave churches, eerie waterfalls cascading down like a creature with its own mind, wooden homes made in the typical Norwegian indigenous style called byggeskikk have none of the linearity or conformity that modern buildings do, and have whimsical elements that heighten its sense of magic.  

Each of these structures below have a particular way of being set into its own environment, standing out from the elements without obstructing nature. Most of the buildings and bridges and pathways have been built with stone and wood balance the scene it has been engineered upon.

Barn In Valldal

Renndølsetra

Ancient Road Vindhellavegen

Bridge Over Låtefossen Waterfall

Kvednafossen Waterfall In Norway

Old Farmhouses

At The End Of The World, Tjome

Natural Swimming Pool In The Forest

Old House

House In Norway

Fjord Houses

Old Village

Fisherman Hut, Undredal

Bridge In Norway

Rogaland, Gullingen

Lake Bondhus

Small House In Norway

Fairy House In Hunderfossen, Lillehammer

Under The Aurora

h/t: boredpanda

I’m moments from being thrown out of my home (because I can’t pay the rent due to illness) and I want to wrap myself in Granada Holmes and its fandom to ease the pain. 

　the bruce-partington plans 25

I’ve seen more convincing acting in Ed Wood movies. 

I've seen cartoon villains less corny than Misha's Lucifer

Bugs Bunny is making fun of him.

Do they not pay attention to J2 panels because this is like “so……” I love how they’re always rubbing in our faces things we don’t give a shit about. It’s so fucking funny.

I’m confused. What exactly do Cockles shippers believe transpired in what I presume to be a public restroom?  Besides the disposal of bodily waste from whichever orifice needed attention?  

"Cockles coming out of the bathroom together" how does it feel j2 shippers

???

My son is not synthetic

In approximately 9-weeks time I’m going to become a father. This weekend will mark week 29 of the pregnancy, and due to its specifics, labor is likely to be induced around week 38. If all goes to plan, before the end of May I’m going to be solely responsible for the life of a beautiful baby boy. I’m fortunate. In spite of the absurd lies told by society about masculinity, the instinct of fatherhood It’s the culmination of over 18-months of planning, and some extreme good fortune. It is of immense importance to me, it is not an anaemic thing, it is not a subordinate or inconsequential thing. I’m fortunate because for many gay men there is no way to easily realize the desire to be a parent. Unsurprisingly, and contrary to the picture of commodification painted by Domenico Dolce, there is no easy solution for a man wanting to become a father, where the old fashioned way is not an option. There are no uterus shops, no egg banks that we can go to, and in my country it’s even illegal to pay for surrogacy. For many men, therefore, adoption is the only option, and given the complexity of the adoption system, not to mention what was until recently open hostility to gay men, and particularly single gay men, adopting (hostility that Dolce verbalises in his recent contributions), often that option is no option at all. I am fortunate because I have a very close female friend who has spared me all of that, a gay friend who loves and values me enough to want to offer me an opportunity at something I had given up on.

My son was conceived by IVF using donor eggs. For the last 28 and a bit weeks he has been gestating away in squirmy, kicky happiness, and in 9-weeks time he’s going to come into this vast, incredible, complicated world and his entire life is going to be dependent on me. Everything he’s going to need, is going to be my responsibility: feeding and cleaning, nursing when he’s sick, boundaries when he’s acting out; toys, stimulation, education; he’s going to need to be shown how he can contribute to the world, how he can enjoy it, how he can live his life in it. Above all, he’s going to need the unconditional, unswerving love of a parent. And in that, he will be absolutely no different to all of the other children that come into this world, however they are conceived.

Nothing about him, therefore, and despite Dolce’s assertions, is synthetic. He is a real person. He has intrinsic value, and he has value to me, and to his mother, and to his wider family, and to the people who come to be his friends, to the woman or man who’ll one day be his lover. None of that is synthetic. None of that is less just because he was conceived by an egg “from a catalogue” and nurtured in the uterus of a woman who has had no sexual relationship with his father. His conception was no less an act of love, simply because his parents didn’t consummate a romantic relationship. The mere fact that we went to such extremes to bring him into existence is the exemplar of an act of love. Unlike in the case of some children conceived the “traditional” way, no child born in this manner is born for any other reason than love. No child born this way is unwanted, accidental, forced. Who is Domenico Dolce or Stefano Gabbana to say that the act of love that led to my son’s conception is a poorer kind of love, is an unworthy kind of love, is a less valuable kind of love than between a straight man and a straight woman? My love for my son is as fierce as any emotion I have ever felt; it isn’t a second place love. If his mother and I don’t love each other as a straight man and a woman might, what does it matter? I dare say our relationship of mutual respect and friendship will endure longer and be more productive than many marriages, and if anyone doubts the statistical fragility of straight relationships, I invite them to take a look at the divorce statistics for North America and Western Europe, or come spend a day with me in the Family Law Courts.

Western society has come a long way in a short period of time, and being gay doesn’t have the stigma that it used to have. But that doesn’t mean that it’s “easy”. There are still places in the world where they want to murder me just for being gay, places where I’ll be imprisoned, or whipped, or stoned, or hung, or thrown off a rooftop just because of who I fall in love with. There are still places in the West where I’d be called a pervert, or told I was disgusting, or that I was going to hell because God hates gays. There are still far too many places where people would call me “fag” or “homo” to my face, without knowing the first thing about me, except my sexuality. There are places where the majority believe I should never be allowed to have a family of my own, I shouldn’t be allowed to get married, I shouldn’t be allowed to be a father. Places where people think it’s perfectly okay to deny me the most fundamental, primal desires that most (albeit not all) human beings have: to be loved, to love, to have a family, to be a parent.

None of that is okay, but you get used to it. You don’t tolerate it, but you get used to it. After all, it’s a message, in one form or another, that I’ve heard since the day I was born, and sometimes from those closest to me. And, even now, that kind of stupid, evil homophobia isn’t the only obstacle I face. Even now, today, in 21st century Britain, there are obstacles I have to negotiate simply to be a parent, to be a father. Social policies that seek to restrict parenthood to couples, which put a limit on surrogacy and babies born by IVF. Laws which completely subordinate my rights to my son to the good will of his mother: I have no power to enforce the agreement I have with my friend, I have no inherent legal right to my child, in the same way that she has. If our friendship falls apart, my only recourse is the long, prohibitively expensive march through Family Law Courts that are weighed to favor the rights of my friend (regardless of her actual genetic relationship to my son), and which will likely facilitate whatever unreasonable behavior she might possibly choose to indulge. This, the archaic sentiment of a society simultaneously indulging oblique misogyny and explicit hypocrisy. But again, while none of that is okay, it’s something I’m used to, sufficiently used to take a calculated risk, to act on the trust and affection I place in my friend. Homophobia, bizarre quirks of sexism, I can cope with. I’m used to that.

What I find hard to cope with, however, is such nakedly stupid and vicious bigotry from within the LGBT community itself. I would expect such intentionally cruel comments from the usual suspects of the fanatical (“Christian”) right; I would not expect them from two luminaries of the LGBT community. I would not expect such idiotic, consistently disproven assertions as they have expressed: “The only family is the traditional one,” says Dolce. Whose tradition? Biblical tradition? Which one? The traditions in the Gospel? The traditions in Leviticus? Exodus? In Genesis? Or do you mean white European tradition? Then what of all the non-white European traditions that don’t look like yours? What about the countless traditions of countless non-white cultures extant in the world today that look nothing like your concept of a traditional family?  ”A child needs a mother and a father. I could not imagine my childhood without my mother. I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother,” says Gabanna. Really? Firstly, that’s both an argument from ignorance and an argument from incredulity, and therefore a logical fallacy and therefore invalid; and secondly, your beliefs are completely irrelevant to fact. And the facts are these: No reputable sociological or psychological study conducted on children of gay couples (or gay singletons, for that matter) in the last decade, have shown any direct causation between the number or genders of parents and the wellbeing of their children. In fact, and to really put the knife in here, the children of gay parents tend to be, on average, smarter, happier and healthier than those of straight couples. So, not only is the argument invalid as a logical fallacy, it’s also simply wrong in fact. That it is an argument made by those who ought to know better makes it even worse.

And, there can be no argument that Dolce and Gabanna, of all people, should know better. I indulge a stereotype perhaps, but I struggle to believe that they are completely insulated from other gay people in light of their chosen profession; and they are also clearly smart and successful people, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that they should be quite capable of weighing the arguments on both sides, and concluding - as anyone with a brain and a moral compass has done - that the argument against gay families raising children is discredited, amoral garbage, and has no place in civilised society, much less coming out of the mouths of two gay men who should be leading the call for equality. It’s their failure of responsibility that is as unacceptable as the content of their convictions. Rather than using their influence in the public eye to advocate for - or at the very least, to support - the rights of gay families, they have instead given succour to the very homophobia that feeds the various irrational and discriminatory laws that seek to deny queer men and women the right to a family life, a right that should be inalienable for all. I don’t know what informs such convictions, whether it’s gross stupidity or a form of internalised self loathing, and I don’t much care; I do care about the words they have chosen, I care about what they have said about my son, and my family, I care about what message that sends to LGBTQ men and women, girls and boys, the world over; and I care that they have singularly failed to live up to their obligations as gay men with a public platform.

My son is not synthetic. My family is not synthetic. I am not a lesser parent because I’m not in a relationship with a woman, or because I’m - more or less - raising my child alone. How dare you, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabanna, say such offensive, hateful, deceitful, ignorant things about me and my family, and families like ours. How dare you. And how dare you seek to shield yourself from criticism by playing the martyr, by asserting freedom of speech and decrying all who call you on your foul, stupid, bizarre moral illiteracy, as fascists. There’s no fascism here, only the well earned calumny for a pair of ignorant, self loathing men, who lack the imagination or the moral courage or the intelligence to crawl out of their received archaic attitudes to family. You chose to put those words out there, and now you must suffer the consequences of them. That’s not bullying, it’s just quid pro quo.

What the....!? I’m glad I live in a nation where bathing with your children is a bonding exercise and considered a norm (rather than a deviation from the norm). 

(Different anon) Perez Hilton has been taking a lot of hits lately because he posted a picture of him and his child bathing together to make it more fun. Danneel then responded with "it's so absurd! I bath with my daughter everyday, sometimes twice a day(if it's a super dirty day) Saves times and we have fun!" it's on her twitter replies. I think both were asking for trouble with talking about a controversial matter such as that, I don't care about Jessica and Jep, but I can see the anger.

Ah! Okay. I missed that. I honestly don’t understand people getting worked up about bathing with your child. I used to do that sometimes when my oldest daughter was little and we were in a hurry to get somewhere. But tweeting about it is a little bit TMI maybe? I don’t know. Thanks, anon! –Admin N

Upon the release of “Return of the King” in 2003, Viggo made a spontaneous and unannounced visit to Colosseum, the biggest movie theatre in Oslo, on the day of the premiere. He entered the stage, sang and read elvish poetry to the audience. Genuinely cool guy.

*HAPPY BIRTHDAY* Viggo Mortensen (10/20/1958)

“Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is. People lose their capacity to walk, run, travel, think, and experience life. I realise how important it is to use the time I have.”

Viggo Mortensen