Commas and Ampersands

lushreef: craftyjai: ride-the-vibes: This is JASON FYLES and...

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:10:34 +1000

craftyjai:

ride-the-vibes:

This is JASON FYLES and he goes to my university (Newcastle University, North East of England) He is 19 years old, 5’8, ginger hair and slim. He was last seen in the Sandyford area at 2:45am on Thursday morning and has not been seen since. He was wearing a blue shirt, grey cardigan, beige chinos and brown ankle boots. Everyone in uni is so worried about him along with his family and friends. We are coming together as a university to appeal for his safe return. It is thought that he lost his friends on the night out and tried to make his way back by himself. Please, I am begging for you to REBLOG THIS, even if you don’t live in Newcastle, or England. Every REBLOG means that someone else will see his face, they will know who we are looking for, and your followers could be the one to know his whereabouts. Stay safe Jason, we’re looking for you.
THIS WILL NOT RUIN YOUR BLOG!

Local news report

PLEASE. Nobody reblogged my own post on this which I posted an hour or so ago so I’m wondering if nobody will now. This guy is my friend. If I have ever sent you a nice ask or reblogged something of yours and it made you happy for a second (or even if I haven’t; this is about helping him, not doing me a favour) for God’s sake just help now, help to find my friend Jason. You want me to make him human to you?

Once we all grew beans in pots as part of a Biology experiment- the experiment failed miserably and made the whole lab stink, but his was the only bean that grew and he was actually pretty proud about it

He learned to knit as part of a school project where he had to learn a creative skill, and when a couple of people teased him about it he said “gender is a social construct” and carried on knitting like a badass

He loves the scene in The Great Gatsby where Gatsby throws all his silk shirts around and he and I used to giggle over it together

Once I asked him if he had a string of tinsel I could use in a photoshoot and he brought me a big cardboard box full of tinsel and fairy lights because he’s a helpful and lovely guy

He’s HUMAN and he needs our HELP and just PLEASE PLEASE FUCKING REBLOG THIS??? He’s been missing for four days now- when he went missing he would have been wearing his contact lenses and he won’t have had his (very thick) glasses with him so by now he’ll have had to take his contacts out and throw them away and he won’t be able to see well and oh God just please signal boost this

Just fucking reblog this it’s not that hard

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:40:30 +1000

third-star-till-the-morning: carahla: jesusiswhatthisworldneeds...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:20:23 +1000

third-star-till-the-morning:

carahla:

jesusiswhatthisworldneeds:

pinecounty:

necroluste:

J.R.R Tolkien, looking at flowers.

Apparently people hated to go for walks with him because he would stop and look at every tree for like 20 minutes.

I also like doing this so we would probably have had nice walks together

I like to think this is where Ents language came from. He was just simply saying ‘Hi’ to the trees. You can’t blame him it takes time.

I can no longer tell if someone’s knocking at the door/breaking in, or if it’s just that...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:38:27 +1000

I can no longer tell if someone’s knocking at the door/breaking in, or if it’s just that fucking kookaburra slamming itself into all the windows in my house.

I swear, one day I’m gonna assume it’s the kookaburra and then some stranger’s gonna walk in and kill me.

What makes a monster and what makes a man?

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:40:49 +1000

What makes a monster and what makes a man?

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Mon, 20 May 2013 13:20:37 +1000

fitness-love-health: yessssssss

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:40:16 +1000

fitness-love-health:

yessssssss

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Sun, 19 May 2013 13:20:40 +1000

capturedphotos: 8 Minutes of the Earth’s Rotation How I wish...

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:40:20 +1000

capturedphotos:

8 Minutes of the Earth’s Rotation

How I wish our planet’s movement was this apparent while staring at the night sky. It could probably make a lot more people realize just how tiny we are compared to this vast unexplored galaxy above our heads.

This is a stack of 70 pictures with a 5 second exposure each at ISO 3200 and f/2.2.

Photographed by: Paolo Nacpil

Photo

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:20:23 +1000

venrajade: Incredibly useful height chart from Weta. I just...

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:40:55 +1000

venrajade:

Incredibly useful height chart from Weta. I just posted a fic where I reference the Nimoy song that has Bilbo at three foot, but luckily in the movie verse he’s considerably taller than that. Also interesting how they take the actors’ actual heights into consideration. Lots of them are 5”7’!

Valjean: After I suffered 19 years at Toulon, a sentence totally disproportionate to my crime...

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:20:33 +1000

Valjean: After I suffered 19 years at Toulon, a sentence totally disproportionate to my crime...

Sweeney: After I suffered 15 years in Australia, a sentence given despite my never committing a crime...

Valjean: I thought I'd lost all faith in humanity.

Sweeney: I thought I'd lost all faith in humanity.

Valjean: And just when it seemed like I could finally start anew...

Sweeney: And just when it seemed like I could finally fulfill my goals...

Valjean: I was thrown into emotional turmoil at the world's kindness.

Sweeney: I was thrown into emotional turmoil at the world's bad timing.

Valjean: Now I'm hit by an epiphany.

Sweeney: Now I'm hit by an epiphany.

Valjean: I have to become a better person.

Sweeney: I have to kill motherfucking EVERYONE.

ladyknucklesinshape: thehealthylyfe: How to squat...

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:40:58 +1000

ladyknucklesinshape:

thehealthylyfe:

How to squat properly^

You guys can’t imagine the pain I feel when I see people squatting with horrible form at my gym..

Good. I was doing it right yesterday then. All I know is to keep that ass out like you getting ready to twerk or something.

virtualclutter: Hair washing and care int he the 19th...

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:20:41 +1000

virtualclutter:

Hair washing and care int he the 19th century

Hair washing is something that almost every historical writer, romance or not, gets wrong. How many times have you read a story in which a heroine sinks gratefully into a sudsy tub of water and scrubs her hair–or, even worse, piles it up on her head to wash it? Or have you watched the BBC’s Manor House and other “historical reenactment” series, in which modern people invariably destroy their hair by washing using historical recipes?

Historical women kept their hair clean, but that doesn’t mean their hair was often directly washed. Those who had incredibly difficult to manage hair might employ a hairdresser to help them wash, cut, and singe (yes, singe!) their hair as often as once a month, but for most women, hair-washing was, at most, a seasonal activity.

“Why?” you might ask. “Wasn’t their hair lank, smelly, and nasty?”

And the writers who embrace ignorance as a badge of honor will say, “Well, that just goes to show that people used to be gross and dirty, and that’s why I never bother with that historical accuracy stuff!”

And then I have to restrain myself from hitting them…

The reason that hair was rarely washed has to do with the nature of soaps versus modern shampoos. Soaps are made from a lye base and are alkaline. Hair and shampoo are acidic. Washing hair in soap makes it very dry, brittle, and tangly. Men’s hair was shirt enough and cut often enough that using soap didn’t harm it too much and the natural oils from the scalp could re-moisturize it fairly easily after even the harshest treatment, but in an age when the average woman’s hair was down to her waist, soap could literally destroy a woman’s head of hair in fairly short order.

Instead, indirect methods of hair-cleaning were used. Women washed their hair brushes daily, and the proverbial “100 strokes” were used to spread conditioning oils from roots to tips and to remove older or excess oil and dirt. This was more time-consuming than modern washing, and this is one of the reasons that “good hair” was a class marker. The fact that only women of the upper classes could afford all the various rats, rolls, and other fake additions to bulk out their real hair was another. (An average Victorian woman of the upper middle or upper class had more apparent “hair” in her hairstyle than women I know whose unbound hair falls well below their knees.) Women rarely wore their hair lose unless it was in the process of being put up or taken down–or unless they were having a picture specifically taken of it! At night, most women braided their hair for bed. Now that my hair is well below my waist, I understand why!

The first modern shampoo was introduced in the late 1920s. Shampoos clean hair quickly and also remove modern styling products, like hairspray and gel, but the frequent hair-washing that has become common leaves longer hair brittle even with the best modern formulations. (From the 1940s to the 1960s, many if not most middle-class women had their hair washed only once a week, at their hairdresser’s, where it was restyled for the next week. The professional hairdresser stepped into the void that the maid left when domestic service became rare. Washing one’s hair daily or every other day is a very recent development.) That’s where conditioners came into play. Many people have wondered how on earth women could have nice hair by modern standards before conditioners, but conditioners are made necessary by shampoos. Well-maintained hair of the 19th century didn’t need conditioners because the oils weren’t regularly stripped from it.

Additionally, the oils made hair much more manageable than most people’s is today, which made it possible for women to obtain elaborate hairstyles using combs and pins–without modern clips or sprays–to keep their hair in place. This is why hair dressers still like to work with “day-old” hair when making elaborate hairstyles.

There were hair products like oils for women to add shine and powders meant to help brush dirt out of hair, but they weren’t in very wide use at the time. Hair “tonics”–mean to be put on the hair or taken orally to make hair shinier, thicker, or stronger–were ineffective but were readily available and widely marketed.

If you have a heroine go through something particularly nasty–such as a fall into a pond or the like–then she should wash her hair, by all means. This would be done in a tub prepared for the purpose–not in the bath–and would involve dissolving soap shavings into a water and combine them with whatever other products were desired. Then a maid would wash the woman’s hair as she leaned either forward or backward to thoroughly wet and wash her hair. Rinsing would be another stage. The hair would NEVER be piled on the head. If you have greater than waist-length hair and have ever tried to wash it in a modern-sized bathtub, you understand why no one attempted to wash her hair in a hip bath or an old, short claw foot tub! It would be almost impossible.

A quick rundown of other hair facts:

Hydrogen peroxide was used to bleach hair from 1867. Before that, trying to bleach it with soda ash and sunlight was the most a girl could do. Henna was extremely popular from the 1870s through the 1890s, especially for covering gray hair, to such an extent that gray hair became almost unseen in certain circles in England in this time. Red hair was considered ugly up until the 1860s, when the public embracing of the feminine images as presented by the aesthetic movement (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) gained ground, culminating in a positive rage for red hair in the 1870s to 1880s. Some truly scary metallic salt compounds were used to color hair with henna formulations by the late 19th century, often with unfortunate results.

Hair curling was popular in the 19th century and could either by achieved with rag rolls or hot tongs. Loose “sausage” rolls were the result of rag rolling. Hot tongs were used for making the “frizzled” bangs of the 1970s to 1880s–and “frizzled” they certainly were. The damage caused by the poor control of heating a curler over a gas jet or candle flame was substantial, and most women suffered burnt hair at one time or another. For this reason, a number of women chose to eschew the popular style and preserve their hair from such dangers! Permanents were first in use in the 1930s.

(From: http://www.lydiajoyce.com/blog/?p=1022)

peregrint: thesearemydetectivesocks: I just wan’t to help my...

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:40:15 +1000

peregrint:

thesearemydetectivesocks:

I just wan’t to help my friends.

More than anything I wish I could see them again.

But the worst part here is the finality of those first two names. Frodo. Sam. Merry’s a fairly smart hobbit, and one of the more responsible of the four halflings. He’s accepted that he’s probably not going to see Mr. Frodo and his friend Sam ever again. He’s known ever since losing Boromir (or even when Gandalf fell) that not everyone was going to see this journey to the end. Not everyone was going to make it back home. Merry has probably even considered the fact that he himself might not make it back home. But in that third name — Pippin — we realize that out of all the things that Merry has come to terms with, losing Pippin, was not one of them.

Pippin has been in his life since he was a child. And now Merry is realizing he might not ever see Pippin again. And he’s scared. Because whereas he understands the fact that that Frodo and Sam’s fate rests with the fate of the ring, Pippin is a wildcard. Pippin is off somewhere with Gandalf. Pippin wasn’t even technically supposed to leave the Shire for long. (Nor was Merry.) Merry honestly doesn’t know what’s going to happen to his cousin. And it terrifies him.

i’ll just go cry now

Disney Scenery - Hercules pt. 2

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:20:18 +1000

Disney Scenery - Hercules pt. 2

The Field of Celebrant checkpoint 1646.35 kilometres into the...

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:09:35 +1000

The Field of Celebrant checkpoint

1646.35 kilometres into the Walk to Mordor challenge.

14 May, 2013.

The Field of Celebrant was where the fierce Easterlings known as the Balchoth waged open war against a weakened Gondor. With no allies left east of Anduin, Gondor sent the Red Arrow north to the Éothéod, their ancient allies.

When the battle seemed lost, the Éothéod (led by Eorl the Young) suddenly appeared, unexpected by friend or foe. The Éothéod crossed the Anduin at the Undeeps of the river, and broke on the rearguard of the Balchoth. The Balchoth were completely defeated and the Gondorian armies saved. The Éothéod continued their foray into northern Gondor, scattering and destroying all the Balchoth in Calenardhon.

After the battle, the Steward of Gondor gave the Éothéod the entire land of Calenardhon to dwell in as thanks. The Éothéod founded the Kingdom of Rohan there.

Favorite ASOIAF characters » Gendry Waters “Leave...

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:40:24 +1000

Favorite ASOIAF characters » Gendry Waters

“Leave him be,” said the boy with the shaggy black hair who rode behind them. Lommy had named him the Bull, on account of this horned helm he had that he polished all the time but never wore. Lommy didn’t dare mock the Bull. He was older, and big for his age, with a broad chest and strong-looking arms.

The Final Scene of 30 Rock

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:20:22 +1000

The Final Scene of 30 Rock

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Mon, 13 May 2013 16:40:41 +1000