brainstorming and spastic banter
Why Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind of Makes Me Angry
So this video started going around my facebook today, with about a dozen of my female friends sharing the link with comments like, and “Everyone needs to see this”, and “All girls should watch this,” and “This made me cry.” And I’m not trying to shame those girls! I definitely understand why they would do so. And I don’t want to be a killjoy. But as I clicked the link and started watching the video, I started to feel a slight sense of discomfort. I couldn’t put my finger on why that was, exactly, but it continued throughout the whole thing. After watching the video several more times, I have some thoughts…
Dying right now.
I cannot believe this got so many notes. But this is the continuation.
(via sexualassumptions)
“What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And
you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are — underneath the year that makes you eleven.
Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and
needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.”
Sandra Cisneros (via nogreatillusion)(Source: arpeggia, via nogreatillusion)
“Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.
Do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away.
Let people call you crazy for the choices that you make.
Find limits past the limits.
Jump in front of trains all day
and stay alive.
Just stay alive.”
- The Mountain Goats, 2012
MOTHERFUCKER.
(via robdelaney)
Suspect Dies In Police Car After Cops Ignore Calls For Help
“Back in July of 2011, Derek Williams (pictured gasping for air above) was struggling to breathe while in the back of a Milwaukee police vehicle and pleaded with cops to help him. But cops did noting to aide the man whom they arrested on suspicion of robbery. He died in the car minutes later. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that it took ten months of negotiations and requests to secure the dashcam video of Williams’ final moments…”.* Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur, and Ben Mankiewicz break it down on The Young Turks.
*Read more here from NewsOne.com: http://newsone.com/2054318/derek-williams-dead-milwaukee-police/
npr:
An NPR audience poll to select the 100 best young adult books coughed up 75,000 voters and just two books with non-white protagonists. Even a winning writer complained. Kill the judges? No, the enemy is us. Book editors ask for a solution.
via When A Popular List Of 100 ‘Best-Ever’ Teen Books Is The ‘Whitest Ever’ : NPR Ombudsman
Photo: iStockphoto.com
16-year-old Shania Gray murdered before she could testify at rape trial
A Texas man accused of raping a 16-year-old girl used social media to lure her to a meeting, abduct her from her school and drive her to a river, where he killed her to keep her from testifying against him, police and a family spokeswoman said.
The man insisted in a jailhouse interview Monday that he only wanted to talk to the teen and prove his innocence but said he was overcome by “demons” once they were face-to-face.
Franklin B. Davis, 30, of the Dallas suburb of Irving, was charged with capital murder Sunday in the death of Shania Gray. Gray was last seen alive Thursday afternoon at Hebron High School in nearby Carrollton. Her body was found Saturday in a secluded area near the Trinity River.
Carrollton police say Davis confessed to arranging a meeting with Gray under false pretenses, driving her to a trail near the river and shooting her twice with a .38-caliber pistol. According to an arrest affidavit, Gray fell into the river and called Davis by his nickname: “Why, Wish?”
Davis told police he then stepped on her neck until she stopped breathing, the affidavit said.
Carrollton police spokesman Jon Stovall said in an email that police believe Davis killed Gray because she was about to testify against him.
A spokeswoman for Gray’s family, Sherry Ramsey, told The Dallas Morning News that Gray met Davis when she babysat his two children. Ramsey said that later, after the teen declined many requests to babysit, Gray told her grandmother that Davis had raped her.
The crime was reported to Mesquite police, and Davis was charged with four counts of sexual assault of a child. The trial was scheduled to start next month.
Ramsey said Davis had warned Gray he would kill her if she told anyone about the assault.
According to an arrest warrant, Davis contacted Gray through social media and pretended to be someone else in an attempt to get information about the sexual assault case. Davis then used a pre-paid cellphone to set up a meeting with Gray at her high school on Thursday.
Davis told WFAA-TV in a jailhouse interview that he tracked Gray down because he wanted to prove his innocence in the sexual assault case.
“I needed to get some kind of evidence, some kind of proof myself to show I did not have sex with her and that she’s lying,” Davis told the television station. He said he didn’t intend to harm Gray but was overcome in the moment.
“I was fighting demons,” Davis told the station. “It was like a different person was in me. It wasn’t me.”
Davis told authorities that Gray was surprised to see him but got into his car when he told her he wanted to talk to her about the sexual assault case. He said he then drove her to the remote area.
Stovall said police believe Gray was killed within an hour after she was picked up.
