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maryellencarter · 3 years

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So the final cause, if I recall my Aristotle (I was terrible at Aristotelian logic, or at least at what the badly illustrated homeschool textbook said was Aristotelian logic), was that my apartment has been growing irregularly more squalorous for months. Occasionally I would have a bout of energy and put my groceries in the pantry, but for the most part I've been doing well to keep up on the laundry. The proximal cause was... probably the coloring books.

Anyway, this morning I put on pants that were not sweatpants, probably for the first time in months, because going to get vaccinated is a festal occasion and one ought to look one's best. (I put on my cute top with the frilly shoulder straps and the little rosettes, too, since I figured it'd be smart to wear something sleeveless. And my combat boots with the pastel tiedye laces, in case of hiking, which also turned out to be smart. I was decked out.)

So then I went and showed a number of people my ID and my appointment email, and they poked me with a timy needle -- not as small as the one they used in the ER for the insulin that time, I didn't even feel that one, but a very nice thin needle compared to my usual standard of needles, which are the ones they use to try and get blood *out* of you, and often fail when you are me. Then they made me sit down for fifteen minutes in case I took an allergy, and then they gave me a lollipop (I got blue cotton candy, my favorite flavor) and a sticker with a hashtag on it and I left.

Then I got to wend my way back from the place where the vaccinations were happening -- it was a big event on the college campus, since they have a lot of nice big rooms and wide open spaces there -- and it happened I was coming back from a direction I do not usually wend my way from, and I dropped into Michaels. Usually I go to Joann's, because they have fabric, which Michaels doesn't, and Michaels is generally a bit froofier in the sorts of craft supplies they stock at least locally, but the Michaels and the Joann's are right across the street from each other, and I still haven't heard anything about my special order on the floss color that Joann's was out of. Michaels doesn't have the full range of DMC colors, but I took a look and they did in fact have the color I needed.

Then I wandered around some, because Michaels actually does have a bigger yarn selection than Joann's, and I found some Patons Kroy (my absolute favorite sock yarn for feel and texture) in a colorway I didn't loathe, which is *not* something I've been able to find since they stopped making that one colorway with all the orange and black and gray stripes, which I loved dearly and can't remember the name of. So I was like "this will be just the thing for that one lace scarf I was looking at that needs wool yarn in case it has to be blocked to look right", because knitted lace is like that and you can't block acrylic. You can "kill" acrylic but that's different and I'd rather not.

Um. Anyway. Then I wandered around some more, because I get into Michaels so seldom that it's handy to look at what-all they've got while I'm there. Over the past... week or so I have had a sudden bout of wanting to color in coloring books, because that happens to me sometimes; there was an impulse trip to the Walmart way out in the boondocks on the unlit road for Crayola colored pencils, because I decided I was not going to pay eight times as much for Prismacolors.

(The really infuriating thing about coloring books, in my opinion, is that right now you can either find the kiddie newsprint coloring books which are with us always, of course, or you can find "adult coloring books" which are *in-fucking-variably* filled with horses and lions and whales and other large charismatic mammals covered in what look for all the world like quilting patterns. If I wanted to color a rendition of a quilt filled with tiny stripes and polka dots, I'd get some graph paper! And the dots and lines and so forth are so tiny that you can *only* color them with colored pencils, because that's Adulty.)

(Yes, I know they sell coloring pages on Etsy and places. I've been avoiding the print shop for at least a month and a half now, when if I would put the things on my thumb drive and go to it, I could start getting my student loans out of default. I would never wind up printing coloring pages off of Etsy. No, I don't know why. Print shops scare me, perhaps slightly worse than post offices.)

Um. Where was I? So I had gone way far out to the Walmart nobody goes to which therefore often has interesting things in stock, and I had discovered that Crayola still does the glitter crayons I had coveted as a tiny, and they also make double-ended scented markers, which are like the coolest thing ever to the tiny early-nineties child I still am in my heart. So as of this morning, my kitchen counter was completely covered with... things. There was already the sewing machine and the Dr Pepper that doesn't taste like an old shoe, and the peanut butter and the elephant-shaped porcelain wax-warmer, but there had been a narrow slot where I could put a plate and eat my meals -- my only table having been co-opted a year ago by my workstation. Now that slot was filled with various Crayola products and a coloring book with mermaids in it, which at least had a few pages that could be colored partly with markers or crayons, instead of being entirely minced into geometric shapes barely larger than a pencil lead.

SO, what happened after I got vaccinated and found yarn and floss, is that I found out that Crayola still makes the *pearlescent* crayons I coveted even more as a kid. I had gotten one in a little sample pack included with my big 64-box, and it was very precious to me. It's long gone now, of course.

So of course then I bought the pearlescent crayons, and then I bitched at Leia for a while about how I didn't have any coloring books I could use these wonderful crayons *on* unless I wanted to go back to the Lisa Frank newsprint of my youth. (They did actually have Lisa Frank. I strongly considered it. But my tastes have evolved beyond newsprint.)

Then I googled some things, and I found Walmart listing a Crayola mandala coloring book. I went to look for it, and I didn't find it, but I did find a different coloring book with "stained glass" style pictures (sadly not on actual tracing paper, but it occurs to me that if I could source some tracing paper, which it further occurs to me that I haven't seen in years although admittedly I haven't been looking, that I could *trace them* and color them and tape them on my windows like the tacky '90s kid I am), which GLORY HALLELUJAH has spaces big enough to fucking color in!

...Michaels also had neon and metallic Crayola crayons. I might go back. They were 24-packs of each. The single silver and gold crayons from my mom's 64-pack were pretty much only used for Easter eggs in our house, so as not to use them up. I just -- I have a wealth beyond imagining of special effect crayons and markers available to me, and I'm struggling to find anywhere to use them. This seems backwards.

So anyway, then I also found a cute sundress big enough to go over my ass, and then I sat in the furniture section for a while and pondered buying a new table so I wouldn't have to keep stacking coloring books on top of the peanut butter jar in order to eat, and it occurred to me that if I took down my Christmas tree, which I've had up since the Before Times (having gotten it from in fact the same Walmart east of anywhere after all the rest in town were sold out of the particular model), then I would have a space along the back of the kitchen counter where I could hypothetically put a table.

So, because I am a sensible and moderate individual, I bought a thing of string to tie up the Christmas tree branches with, and did not buy a table yet. Then it was time for D&D, so I hurried home and put my vaccination card on the fridge and got into the voice chat and started taking down the Christmas tree.

Then it was five hours later, and I had started konmari-ing the whole apartment in order to have somewhere to store the Christmas tree, and I had discovered that my closet shelf was almost entirely full of empty cardboard boxes, so I had pulled all those out and rifled through them to make sure they didn't contain anything important, and after rescuing three cards from a friend and one glasses chamois, I stuffed most of the boxes in a trash bag, jammed the condensed Christmas tree and all the winter blankets and my air mattress and various other wintry things into the giant box my office chair came in, managed to get that giant box up onto the closet shelf (I have some soreness around my injection site but I honestly don't know if it's a side effect of the vaccination or a pulled muscle from wiggling a very large heavy box into a very tight space over my head), and moved the Goodwill oddities into a midsize box that I think I brought my workstation home in, but they just moved the remaining onsite agents into a much smaller room so I don't think I'm going to be asked to bring my workstation back for a while, and when I do go to bring it back I think the monitors will fit nicely in my washtub.

(I'm giving Goodwill my crockpot. After I forgot the garbanzos in it for three days until the chicken broth started to stink, I decided I am not a person who needs to own a crockpot. Also something like eight skeins of rather ugly yarn because I bought too much for the baby blankets I was making.)

(I'm not sure why I own a washtub. It's bright blue and plastic. It does have a use, which is to hand-wash my weighted blanket in occasionally, as of course you can't put twenty-odd pounds of glass baubles in a washing machine.)

(I certainly did make some life choices that led me here, did I not.)

Annnnyway, so now I have an almost empty three-drawer Rubbermaid dresser, an entirely empty and extremely large Rubbermaid tote (I'm pretty sure I could trap myself in there, but I haven't tried), a mostly empty square ottoman which is also a storage box, and a royal shitton of tiny things like office supplies and party favors that don't *go* anywhere.

"A place for everything" is the really hard part, you know. I achieved it once. Then I moved out of that apartment and have never achieved it again. Once things *have* places, then even if you don't have the spoons to put the peanut butter jar back in the pantry right *now*, you know it has a spot between the Hormel and the Chef Boyardee, and it's way easier than "oh god if I open the pantry there won't be any room and I'll wind up putting the peanut butter under the bathroom sink with the Johnnie Walker Black or maybe over the kitchen sink on top of the Thermacare back wraps."

(You're supposed to store whisky upright in a cool dark place, okay. None of the upper cabinet shelves are tall enough, so I could have put it either directly over the water heater or directly next to the oven. Instead it lurks behind the toilet paper, next to the Clorox wipes and the pre-pandemic Lush bath bomb, which I should... probably use at some point.)

Erm. So then I was pondering what-all storage I would need to source in order to begin having places in which to put things, *findable* places which is the real grail, and -- I think I took a pause to read Dreamwidth and someone linked me a plushie trilobite, okay. I haven't yet entirely decided whether to buy it, but it occurred to me that I definitely have no home for a plushie trilobite, any more than for the amazing Zaeed plushie currently trapped under my cross stitching or the Star Wars Build-a-Bear who was supposed to make Ewok noises until three weeks of freeze-thaw cycle in a malfunctioning package locker did for his electronic squeaker, or the poor American Girl doll languishing inside the ottoman.

So then I was like "we used to have that little net corner hammock for stuffed animals when I was a kid, we never could get it mounted right, but perhaps with fewer cooks that would be a good option". So I googled for one, and all I could find was an assortment of JUMBO five-or-six-foot-long double-deep toy hammocks, obviously necessary to keep your child from drowning in the flood of stuffed animals that have taken over beds in the past thirty years.

(Okay, I was pretty toy-deprived as a kid, the 1980s were not in general what you would call a time of less stuff in American households. Still. I have a twin bed. I can hardly even *find* a toy hammock that wouldn't be bigger than my bed in some dimension.)

So then, it being the aforementioned five hours later with a lot of D&D combined with hard physical labor in the middle, I said to myself, said I, "Hammocks are made out of net, and nets are made out of strings." And by god, if there is one thing I'm better at than another, it is making things out of string. I've never actually gotten around to trying out the whole process of making an actual fisherman's net, which is much more closely related to tatting than to knitting, but I have yarn and most of the possible knitting or crocheting supplies I would need to invent things.

Which, at long last, explains why I have paused to write this halfway through creating a triangular filet crochet toy hammock out of sparkly yellow yarn.

Joann's is having a 50% off sale on plastic storage whatsits tomorrow, but I think I'll probably spend a large part of the day putting office supplies into ziploc bags and hanging them in rows on the wall with pushpins so as to figure out what-all I in fact own.

#i feel like this probably needs at least a few warning tags #but i have no idea what those would be at this point

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planetsam · 5 years

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21 Questions

Tagged by @stagnantnostalgia90; (I think someone else did too but I came across it when my eyes were hurting and it got buried and I’m so sorry!)

Rules simply answer the following 21 and tag 21 people (imma break that one but okay)

Name/Nickname: Sam, if that wasn’t obvious.

Sign: Aquarius/Pisces cusp

Height: 5′2.75″ so I’m very short

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor, my Ilvermorny house is a Wampus. I wanted to be a Slytherin but here we are.

Last thing I googled: “Space Elevator” because I don’t understand the science behind it and I need to explain where they are for ASTRAEA.

Last song I listened to: Call me a Hole (it’s a mashup of Head like a Hole and Call me Maybe)

Song stuck in my head: Call me a Hole

Following: An eclectic mix of fandom things and old roleplaying friends

Followers: Are constantly amazing

Do you get asks: Yes! A lot of amazing prompts, some great questions and some crazy anon hate.

Amount of sleep: Depends on the night I guess, 6-9 hours.

Lucky number : 4, 8 or 3

What am I wearing: Point Break Live t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Also my mermaid tail blanket that my aunt gave me for my birthday.

Dream trip: Swimming with whales in Norway or going to South America/Antarctica again so I can say I’ve been to all 7 continents twice.

Favorite food: Anything with sugar or carb heavy. I’d live on pizza if I could. But I do eat well most of the time, if for no other reason than I’m on a medical weight loss program still.

Instruments: Guitar, Violin.

Languages: English. I also am trying to learn Arabic and it’s a love/hate situation in which I love the language but it’s SO HARD and i had a run of terrible teachers but I’m trying.

Favorite song: The Swashbuckler & The Fair Maiden by Future World Music which is an adventure encapsulated in two minutes.

Random fact: I am an amazing knitter and I joined a knitting group but everyone there throws down with crochet so now I am getting good at that to throw down too.

Aesthetic: You know Howl’s Moving Castle when you go into his bedroom and it’s just a mess of brightly covered chaos with a dramatic person laying on a bed? I’m like that.

i’m going to tag anyone who wants to do it! Once again I don’t know whose comfortable with what but if you want to do it please do and tag me so I can see!

#planetsamcomments

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ddaddsprompts · 7 years

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how the dads handle dadsona caring for them when sick?

🥃 If Robert was grumpy on agood day, he was even worse when he was sick. Honestly, you didn’t even noticehe was sick until you realised you two hadn’t seen or even talked to each otherin days, which wouldn’t have been worrying pre-rehab, but was far from the normnowadays. So you’d gone over to his house and let yourself inside, worried somethingbad had happened. You found Robert in his bedroom, buried under more blanketsthan you thought he owned. And he is absolutely miserable. “Do you want me toget you anything?” He just grunts and turns his head so it’s buried in thepillow. Since he can’t see you, you throw up your hands in frustration and rollyour eyes. “Juice?” He grunts. “Soup?” Same response. “Want me to stab you?”That, at least, got you an amused snort, which was immediately followed by acough. He coughs so badly, you worry he might choke, but then he turns on hisback and glares at you. “Don’t make me laugh,” he grumbles. His voice is roughlike sandpaper. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” Your protest doesn’t seem tointerest Robert one bit. He turns back on his side and pulls a blanket over hishead. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t.” Unsure what to do with yourself, you just standthere, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. Maybe you should leavehim alone, he doesn’t seem to want your company – or any other person’s, forthat matter. Robert is quiet for so long, you wonder whether he’s fallenasleep, but then he turns to look at you again and raises an eyebrow. Youpolitely do not tell him he looks like shit; you figure he already knowsanyway. “About that soup…” His pointed expression makes you chuckle. “Surething, coming right up. Try not to die while I’m out.” He huffs out a laugh andshows you the finger. “Wouldn’t want to do you that favour.”

🍸 You lean against the door leading to Joseph’sbedroom and sink down against it with a quiet sigh. You love the man, youreally do, but god, he’s an absolute menace when he’s sick. It’s a simple cold,but he makes it seem like he is down with the plague. Had he stoppedoverworking himself when the first symptoms emerged, things might have beendifferent now, but he hadn’t, and now he is bedridden and, if you believed him,dying. You run a hand through your hair and brace yourself. You count the facthe hasn’t called for you in the last five minutes a blessing and push open thedoor. “Hey,” you say quietly. Joseph makes a small noise in the back of histhroat and waves weakly. “I brought you soup. It’s in a thermos so you candrink it easily.” He manages a smile and makes grabby hands for the flask. Themoment you give it to him, he cradles it close to his chest. “Thank you,” hewhispers. A second passes. Then, he makes grabby hands again. “Y/N?” Josephwhines. “Can you get me some juice?” Your left eye twitches but you nodindulgingly. “Orange?” He nods and drops his hands again, burrowing them underthe blankets you dropped on him when you first dropped by. “Do you wantanything else? Some more cold medicine? Something against your cough?” Josephshakes his head and turns on his side, looking sleepy and exhausted. “Thankyou, but I don’t need anything. You already did more than I asked for, Y/N. Ilove you.” Warmth floods through your chest. “I love you too,” you say and turnaround to get his juice. As you set your foot over the doorframe, his voicemakes you pause. “Maybe some medicine would be nice after all.”

☕ You gently brush back Mat’s locks from hissweaty forehead and replace the damp washcloth with a new, cold one. His feverhas thankfully gone down from 102 degrees Fahrenheit to 101,3, so you’rehopeful he will be better soon. Carmensita had called you early in the morningbecause her father was sick and needed someone to care for him, and you’d takenthe day off work to do just that. As far as patients go, he is an angel.Whether that is because he’s too out of it to be a nuisance or just how healways is, you don’t know, but you don’t question your luck. You smile when heleans into your touch and mumbles something under his breath that you don’tunderstand, and lean down to kiss his cheek. Mat’s eyelids flutter, then heslowly opens his eyes, looking up at you sleepily. “Hey, baby,” you say, and hechuckles at the nickname. “How are you feeling?” He shifts a little and you adjustthe cloth, making him groan at the cold. “Better.” Even when sick his voicesounds soft and smooth, like honey. “Thank you for taking care of me.” Leaningdown, you kiss his cheek again. Mat turns his head and his lips brush over yourjaw. “Of course, baby. Anytime. Take it as repayment for all the free coffeeand banana bread you always give me.” Mat chuckles and hums. When he startscoughing, you help him sit up a little, offering him a glass of water. He downsit greedily and sighs at the relief it gives him. “Go back to sleep, baby, I’llmake Carmensita something for lunch when she comes back from school.” You stayby Mat’s sides until he’s snoring and though it’s gross, you find the sight ofhim endearing.

🌹 “You didn’t have to come,” Damien says weakly ashe opens the door for you. He looks even paler than he already does normally, afaint sheen of sweat making his skin look grey and sickly. He’s leaning heavilyagainst the door, prompting you to reach out and wrap a steadying arm aroundhis waist to make sure he wouldn’t fall down if his legs gave in. Where yourskin touches his, you can feel him burning up. “Of course I had to, Dames. Ican’t leave you in Lucien’s care, who knows what kind of ideas he might getwhen he’s bored.” Damien chuckles; the sound catches in his throat and beforeyou know it, you’re the only thing holding him up as he coughs violently. He’snot that heavy, thankfully, so you manage to manoeuvre him into bed with fewproblems. You pull the blankets up to his chin and feel his temperature. “Wheredo you keep your medicine?” He gestures towards the bathroom. When you return,carrying everything you could find, he propped himself up with a few pillowsand he is watching you with tired, shining eyes. “If we were living in theVictorian ages,” he says while you check all the labels, “you might haveoffered me a Cigare de Joy. By smoking them you would inhale the coughtreatment, for example Stramonium. Of course—“ He cuts himself off with asneeze and coughs. “—Stramonium causes hallucinations, but it brought genuinerelief for the sick.” You pour some cough syrup into a small cup and offer itto him. “I don’t have any of those handy, so this’ll have to do. Bottoms up.”He returns your smile and obediently drinks his medicine.

🎣 You find Brian curled up in his bed. His faceseems to be locked in a fight with his hair over who can get redder and at themoment, his face is winning. You put down the soup you prepared after Daisycalled you and sit down on the bed next to him. “Hey, babe,” you say softly. Heopens his eyes and shuffles away from you, as far as the bed would let him. “Youshould keep your distance,” he croaks out. “I don’ wan’ to make you sick. ‘scontagious.” You frown and reach out to touch his forehead. No, he doesn’t feelthat hot, it can’t be hallucinations. “What makes you say that?” He looks soupset and worried, if you hadn’t known it was just the flu, you would be scarednow. Instead of answering, he points at his phone. Confused, you take it andunlock the screen. It’s the internet app, still open. You skim over the pagethat is open, your frown getting deeper the more you read. Finally, you aredone and look up at him again. “Brian,” you say, dryly. “Did you seriouslygoogle your symptoms?” Brian snuffles and blows into the tissue. The soundreminds you of ship horns or whales. “Iwan’ed to know wha’ I got, ‘cause it do’n’t feel like the flu.” You see tearsrush into his eyes and the next moment he is full out bawling. Awkwardly, youpat his shoulder. “There, there… it’s nothing serious, Brian, you just have theflu. Don’t worry…” You put aside the phone, making a mental note to ban Brianfrom accessing the internet while he was sick.

👟 How Briar even got your phone number, you have noidea. But you’re definitely glad she did, because there was no way the twinswould have been able to deal with thisalone. This being their father, whois sick, but absolutely in denial. It takes both Briar and Hazel sitting downon top of him to stop him from getting up and even then Craig is still tryingto go to work. “Bro, stop it, I’m not letting you out of bed.” You push himdown again and feel his temperature. He’s still burning up. “I’m not sick,” hesays or rather tries to. It is only through your experience with his collegeself that you’re able to understand his mumbling. “Yes, you are. Craig, comeon, you can’t really believe I’d let you go to work like this.” Craig sniffles.You barely manage to hold the tissue against his nose before he is sneezingalready. “I’m not—“ He coughs and it sounds horrible. His immune system isbetter than any other person’s so when he does get sick, it’s bad. With a sigh,you release the twins from their duties and pull the blanket up to Craig’schin. He doesn’t protest, but that’s only because he is visibly fighting tokeep his eyes open. “Bro… please go to sleep. If you force yourself to go towork like that, it’ll only get worse and last for longer. Please?” When hedoesn’t reply, you look at his face. He’s fast asleep. Finally.

📖 You would have expected Hugo, of all people, torecognise the signs of illness and do the reasonable thing – which was stayingat home and recovering in peace. But no, here he is, already halfway out of thedoor by the time he slips up and sneezes in front of you. You narrow your eyes,take in his shining eyes, the light shimmer of sweat on his forehead and hisred nose, and put your hands on your hips. “Hugo Vega, where do you think youare going?” He, at least, has the decency to look sheepish. “To… work?” Hisvoice is at least an octave deeper than normal and he realises his error whenyou frown at him. “I’m fine, I just caught the cold that’s making the rounds atschool. It’s nothing.” His nose starts to twitch and—he sneezed so loudly theglasses in the cupboards trembled. Before he can try and continue his (futile,mind you) attempts at convincing you, you walk up to him and nudge him, backtowards the bedroom. “That neither look like you’re fine, nor like it’snothing. You, sir, are sick and sick people do not go to work.”“But-““No, no buts. You have more sick days than there are days in the calendar,there are no important tests or exams today, and your school has enoughteachers to jump in and cover your classes. If I missed any other excuse, feelfree to try it, but the answer stays the same. You’re staying at home until you’refeeling better and that’s final.” He opens his mouth to protest, but shuts itagain when he sees your expression. Once you got him to sit on the bed, youpinch your nose and sigh. If sick Hugo is anything, anything even remotelyclose to sick Ernest, you’re in for a long week.

#dream daddy #dream daddy: a dad dating simulator #ddadds #ddadds imagine #dream daddy a dad dating simulator #Anonymous

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion

Mina Gerges has had a rollercoaster few years. Since 2015, when his elaborate Instagram recreations of celebrity red carpet looks went viral, he’s dealt with a fallout with his family, a body image battle, homophobia, and online trolls but has emerged as a body positivity champion and now, one of the faces of Sephora Canada’s new national campaign. Read on for our interview with Gerges about body diversity, LGBTQ representation and more.

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Literally crying in excitement to share that I’m in Sephora’s new national campaign😭 When I was 9 years old, I’d sneak into my mom’s room and wear her red lipstick when she wasn’t home. I went to an all-boys school in Abu Dhabi and had to pretend to be someone I’m not so that I’d fit in and not get bullied more, and I always cherished these moments of joy I felt in my mom’s red lipstick. I think about my younger self, and how much he needed to know that he’d be okay. That there’s nothing wrong with him for being different. That our culture may never understand him, but that he’s so beautiful and nothing’s wrong with him. Fast forward to this monumental campaign – a gay Middle Eastern immigrant as the face of a makeup brand. I’ve been looking at this picture for a week, in awe of the confidence and power that radiate through this image. I see resilience and beauty, shining so bright and unapologetically as an openly gay Middle Eastern man despite belonging to a culture that systemically erases and persecutes our LGBTQ community. Representation matters, and I am grateful to fight for the visibility of our community and share the struggles we face, because we’re still so unrepresented in the media. To think that this can give hope to just one young queer Middle Eastern person that they matter, that they’re seen, and that there’s nothing wrong with them brings me tears. I’m beyond grateful that my first ever campaign is with a brand like Sephora that has always been a safe space for me to explore my gender expression, and that’s so unapologetic and bold about celebrating diversity. To me, beauty is reclaiming my culture from the toxic masculinity that’s so engrained within it, and creating new narratives about what it means to be LGBTQ and Middle Eastern/ North African. To that young, scared, lonely Mina who was always told there’s something wrong with him for being gay, I just want you to know that you’ll be okay, and you’re going to look so beautiful in billboards all over this country one day. Shot by the incredible @leeorwild 🌟@sephoracanada #SephoraPartner

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on Jul 2, 2019 at 4:01pm PDT

Buzzfeed writing a post about your Instagram account is the sort of thing most teens dream about. But for Mina Gerges, then a 19-year-old student at Western University, it was a bittersweet moment. Yes, his cheeky red carpet recreations suddenly had thousands more likes, his inbox was flooded with emails and interview requests, and he’d even gotten a repost from Katy Perry but that Buzzfeed story had another consequence: it outed him to his conservative Egyptian parents.

“We somehow went eight months without talking about it,” recounts Gerges over black coffee at a Toronto cafe. But unbeknownst to him, his parents were Googling him every day, suddenly privy to the secret life that Gerges had been living for months. They’d seen the tongue-in-cheek recreations he’d been shooting in his bedroom with the help of his sisters (looks that included a dress fashioned out of a garbage bag and tinfoil to echo Jennifer Lopez’s outfit at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar party and curtains painstakingly painted to resemble Kim Kardashian’s look for the 2015 Met Gala), the interviews he’d been giving to various media outlets, and even the Arabic news sites that had picked up the story. Finally, several months after that first Buzzfeed post in January 2015, his parents sat him down to talk.

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Yes, those are cheese slices on my head 🧀😂 #MetGala #MinaGerges #RitaOra

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on May 1, 2017 at 8:06pm PDT

“The language barrier made it so difficult to communicate what I felt or to communicate even what it is [to be gay],” explains Gerges. “At the time the only Arabic word for what it means to be gay, ‘khaneeth,’ directly translated to something negative—it connotes being a pervert, effeminate, and is more commonly used as a way of saying faggot.”

Since then, fuelled by the efforts of LGBTQ activists, the terminology has expanded to include words like ‘mithli’ which translates to “same” or “homo,” but the perception of queer people as being sexually deviant is so ingrained in Middle Eastern culture that no matter how hard Gerges tried to mend the relationship with his parents, nothing worked. Hard as that was—and continues to be—it also gave him the motivation to use his social media presence to change the way the Arab community viewed LGBTQ people, and to give them positive examples to look to.

“A lot of what I do now is informed from what I learned trying to deal with my parents,” he says. “I’m educating myself on what it’s like to be queer in the Middle East and what I can do with my platform to talk about this or to create any kind of change. And I’ve found a community of kids who have felt exactly the way that I have felt. I take that back. Not just kids, but older men and younger men, queer women, trans people from the Middle East, who have found similarities in our stories.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

Gerges, who grew up between Cairo in Egypt and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, moved to Canada at the age of 12 with his mother and two sisters (his father came later). In both the countries where he grew up, being gay or even acknowledging LGBTQ people or rights was completely missing from the culture. In fact, he had no idea what the word ‘gay’ meant or even that it existed until someone called him that in high school. To be out and proud may not have been something Gerges ever saw growing up, but even after moving to Canada it was a very narrow version of “gay” that his formative understanding of the term was built on.

“The first time I Googled “gay men” all I saw was images of white, muscular, slim men,” he says. “So I thought that that was the norm.”

In trying to fit that mould as a young man grappling with his identity and sexuality, Gerges went down a spiral of eating disorders and body dysmorphia. He became anorexic in his first year of university, a time when he was not only struggling with being accepted in the gay community “as a plus-size man of colour” but also deeply unhappy studying science, something his parents had encouraged him to do. (He later switched to media studies.) When he began his celeb recreation posts in the summer of 2014, he was already suffering from anorexia.

“The people who may have followed me from the very beginning saw a Mina who was anorexic, at 150 lbs. And when I was in recovery shortly after, I started gaining back some weight and I was happy. But it was hard to find that happiness when I went on social media. I was at the height of my creativity where it wasn’t just drag, it was DIY, it was kind of like the golden age of my work. But all that people could comment about was my weight. I was like ‘I just spent eight hours painting this garbage bag so it can look like a million dollar dress and all you have to say is to call me a whale.’ It broke me. It was one of the worst things I’ve experienced in my life.”

He took eight months off social media between October 2015 and May 2016. During this hiatus, Gerges took the time to heal, using the distance from people’s hateful comments to learn how to love and accept his body. When he was finally ready to return to social media, he made a promise to himself that things were going to be different.

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“I decided I wasn’t going to FaceTune my body anymore. Instead of hiding it I’m going to be so unapologetic about this body and maybe if people see confidence they will be less likely to say mean things. Honestly something as simple as not FaceTuning out stretch marks felt like such a liberating act of protest. And also reclaiming a platform that I was basically bullied off of.”

And that was the beginning of a new chapter for Gerges’ public persona. In 2018 he posted a shirtless picture of himself along with a lengthy caption about why it was “the scariest yet most empowering post I’ve ever made.”

“The feedback was unlike anything that I had ever experienced. It was a lot of people from the LGBT community, not just men, who were sharing with me very similar stories about their struggles with their body image and experiencing an eating disorder. That’s when it clicked for me. I’d felt so alone when I was 19-20 years old but here I was getting all these messages from people telling me they’d had the exact same journey but were ashamed to talk about it. That’s when I was like ‘this is my calling.’ Let’s shift this conversation.”

Last year, Gerges did a nude photo shoot with NOW Toronto for their annual Body Issue. He posted the nude photos on Instagram when the issue came out and lost 4000 followers.

“You see male models who are thin and muscular pose for pictures just like these, or even more scandalous ones, and those pictures end up in editorials and in ad campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and Versace.” But when a body like his is nude, he says, the comments move swiftly from praise to criticism. “That double standard is why we need to talk about body positivity and the fact that bodies like mine, which don’t fit into this beauty ideal, experience the world differently and are treated differently because of it. It was crazy to get the backlash for that when thinner, more muscular guys are being praised for the exact same thing.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“It was a voice that needed to be heard and a story that needed to be told,” says Samuel Engelking, the photographer who shot the images for the Love Your Body issue. Engelking, who has photographed the likes of Margaret Atwood, Ai Weiwei and MIA, says of working with Gerges, “When we first met on set I was immediately taken by his positive spirit and confidence despite the unusual circumstances of the shoot.”

This newfound confidence is what Gerges’ followers are responding to, and he’s seen a shift in the way they interact with him online, even though the negative and hurtful comments about him, his body and his Middle Eastern identity—even from others in the Arab world—do still keep rolling in.

“Giving up my culture as these, for lack of a better word, these haters would want me to, is not an option,” he says. “I refuse to be shamed out of my culture. It is mine just as much as it is yours. Nothing that you can do will prevent me from embracing being Egyptian and being North African. You cannot take that away from me.”

The post How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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technologywearables · 7 years

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HTC Vive and SteamVR review - Hands on with Paris Games Week VR demos

Virtual reality is looking established to be the next big point, yet it hasn't been a fast transformation, or one with a systematic message. Oculus Break has actually been the PC video gaming area's darling considering that 2013 (though Facebook's purchase may take the sheen off that romance), then more recently we've had Sony's PS4-powered Morpheus, the smartphone-based Samsung Equipment VR, as well as the Google's VR-for-all Cardboard viewer. VR headsets are going to come thick as well as quickly over the next year, and also today we reached experiment with the HTC Vive, made in collaboration with PC-gaming leviathan Shutoff under its SteamVR initiative.

Speaking of behemoths my initial experience with HTC Vive was absolutely nothing except wonder causing. Basing on the deck of a submerged ship, I edged towards the prow to look down right into the watery void below. Noticing, or possibly hearing, something over my left shoulder I relied on locate a massive whale had snuck up on me while I was sidetracked. I backed away from it in shock, and after that wondered as this wonderful leviathan slid past me contemporary of reach, its huge and comprehensive eye monitoring me as it went.

Yes, you read that right, HTC Vive not just provides an immersive headset, it also has a place radar, which permits it to track your actual motions as well as create them in the online world. What a lot more it works brilliantly, with both relocating and also transforming tracked with extraordinary accuracy, this allows you go down to your knees then peer out laterally past something in the video game world.

HTC Vive

The HTC Vive actually consists of 3 components, the Vive headset, a pair of place sensing base stations and two SteamVR control sticks, one for each and every hand.

The headset looks high as you 'd anticipate. It's a normal strap-it-to-your-head VR headset which is similar in dimension as well as weight to the current Oculus version. They're both behind Sony's Morpheus below though, with it's clever ring that disperse the weight in a hat-like style as well as leaves the screen simply touching your face, instead of pushed against it.

It's similar inside too, with a pair of 1,080 x1,200 OLED screens, one for each eye, yes you could still go to the pixel grid if you look difficult however if you're not attempting to select openings then it stands up extremely well. These refresh 90 times a 2nd and so provide very smooth comments in reaction to your movements. It has a 100 level field of view, as well as everything looked crisp in the centre of my sight, but tailed off when I aimed to look to the side with my eyes, rather of transforming my head. In this respect though it's similar to various other VR headsets.

The base terminals look more pre-production compared to the headset, being little black cubes with a variety of chips on the front. You put them in opposite corners of your area, developing a square up to 5x5m. Lasers in the terminals are then tracked by the headset, which as you could go to is studded with sensing units, in order to determine its exact placement as well as angle, to a tenth of a level apparently.

Finally you have the SteamVR controllers. These stick like gadgets do not appear like considerably, with a single trigger, a touchpad on the front - which is extracted from Shutoff's Vapor Controller design - as well as an oddly angular head, once more to situate it using the laser positioning. You will not be looking at it like that, as in the digital globe it transforms right into a range of more appealing forms and also devices.

I began off in the white area of the first calibration room. I attempted asking for 'weapons, great deals of guns' yet to make use. Exactly what I could do was produce balloons but shooting on the controller, which would certainly then pump up from the top of the gadget (or instead a virtual representation of the gadget in radiating white). The balloons rose slowly but I can bat them away with the controller, whose activities matched my own to perfection. The balloons flew off as anticipated, the only point doing not have being any concrete feedback as I bopped them.

Cabled up

A few much more enagaing experiences later on, I was absolutely submersed in Vive's virtual truth as well as had actually greatly forgotten the dim space I was actually stood in, somewhere on the just-opened show floor of Gamescom in Perfume. The only snag, literally, was the wire extending from the rear of my head, as I obtained mesmerized in it a few times when stepping backwards.

For VR encounters when resting down it's not a huge problem, but when you're stiring a wire could be a responsibility, so we'll have to see if HTC could think of a means to keep it out the method, if it was strung at waistline height rather than snaking throughout the flooring. The cord exists to link the headset to the heavyweight gaming COMPUTER required making those 90Hz visuals run smoothly.

And that's where Shutoff's participation can be found in with its SteamVR campaign. SteamVR is an overarching name consisting of the present HTC Vive Programmer Version headset we tried, the SteamVR controllers and also the free-to-use SteamVR APIs which let designers reach holds with the hardware.

Job Simulator

Virtual Reality could be rather disorienting in the beginning, particularly when you include the full array of movement offered with Vive, but Job Simulator is a dazzling method to obtain adapted to it. In a world where robotics have actually changed all human works, the 'Task Simulator' allows human beings discover exactly what it resembled 'to work'.

The cutesy animated scenes are basic, do not overwhelm you (unlike the jaw-dropping whale trial, which could be a little scary the very first time you experience it) yet handle to submerse you all the very same. Paris Games Week was the very first chance to experiment with the most up to date Work, a workplace employee simulation.

As with previous demonstrations, this 'experience' is expected to have been envisioned by robotics, so the key-board at your desk only has a 0 as well as a 1 trick, your co-workers are all disembodied CRT displays as well as the copy machine essentially duplicates anything you put right into it. Nearly everything could be interacted with somehow, including the desk toys, staple weapon and also paper aeroplane that will gain you refusing looks from your neighbouring employees. The humour is securely tongue-in-cheek, and being able to dual-wield staplers in rage versus your co-workers will have Office Space fans whooping with delight.

You really did not need a massive amount of room in the demo I played, either, which will make a great deal of individuals with little spaces loadeded with furnishings quite delighted. You're in a workplace cubicle, so a few square feet was all that was needed. It's easy, yes, but it's fun, as well as we've only seen a fifth of exactly what designer OwlchemyLabs wants for the last game, which is a verified Vive launch title.

Dota 2: Secret Shop

The high factor of the trial came at completion when I reached mess around in the Valve-created Secret Store. While the different demonstrations were limited in extent, graphically simplistic and in some cases both, the Secret Store is a delicious dream encounter with nods to Valve's mind-bogglingly popular Dota 2.

Set in a little, weak hut made in the vibrant as well as colourful style familiar from Dota 2 (as well as from most of Blizzard's fantasy franchises too), the Secret Store starts dark. The rotund storekeeper shows up as well as offers a small magical light for you to wield. Using this you can discover the store (which in dimension roughly associates to the location of movement that the HTC Vive permits) and also reduce down in dimension to obtain up close with its details.

We enjoyed in scary as a little crawler, not rendered substantial in our eyes, approached over a desk. We checked out a rack and also were shocked by a substantial toad, and also ultimately the roofing of the hut was swindled by a dragon. It's extremely immersive things and also wonderfully rendered, with lovely, highly-detailed graphics that truly show just what VR could do.

We desired we 'd had an additional 10 minutes with the demo, however we believe that would be possibly enough. That declaration can be made about much of our VR experiences however. There simply isn't really enough content out there yet to convince many people, me consisted of, to component with their money. I 'd strongly suggest you attempt VR offered a possibility but the chicken-and-egg trouble of material as well as users could come to be an issue (though HBO, Lionsgate and also Google are listed as partners).

Can it surVive

HTC and also Shutoff's partnership on SteamVR as well as Vive is looking extremely strong. The hardware is up there with the finest presently offered as well as the motion tracking as well as controllers are remarkably carried out. In a sector where 'following year' has practically come to be a concept, the Vive's fast step from concept to execution goes over. Nonetheless, given that writing this article, HTC Vive has slipped from an unclear 2015 launch, to an obscure Q1 2016 launch (omitting developers).

Timing aside, the inquiry is will there suffice software program to warrant a purchase?

Serious COMPUTER gamers need to be the first targets, as they currently have the sort of Computers needed to supply the Vive with pretty visuals. To day Oculus has made the bigger sprinkle, but with the Facebook purchase, many such players prefer to pick a Valve-supported headset. We assume the Vive will deal with a slow-moving start, partially because of its high entry needs, however likewise due to the fact that numerous will simply wait as well as go to how it tones up to the Oculus in 2016, yet in the future it stands a great opportunity of success. Or as excellent as any sort of VR headset at the very least.

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion

Buzzfeed writing a post about your Instagram account is the sort of thing most teens dream about. But for Mina Gerges, then a 19-year-old student at Western University, it was a bittersweet moment. Yes, his cheeky posts recreating celeb red carpet looks suddenly had thousands more likes, his inbox was flooded with emails and interview requests, and he’d even gotten a repost from Katy Perry but that Buzzfeed story had another consequence: it outed him to his conservative Egyptian parents.

View this post on Instagram

Yes, those are cheese slices on my head 🧀😂 #MetGala #MinaGerges #RitaOra

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on May 1, 2017 at 8:06pm PDT

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“The first time I Googled “gay men” all I saw was images of white, muscular, slim men,” he says. “So I thought that that was the norm.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

Last year, Gerges did a nude photo shoot with NOW Toronto for their annual Body Issue. He posted the nude photos on Instagram when the issue came out and lost 4000 followers.

Photography by Samuel Engelking

The post How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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