the classic blue and green budgies, a well known and beloved household pet, but what if i told you this is not simply two budgies, but one unique little bird?
it’s twinzy! the chimeric, ‘half-sided’ budgie! this is Truly, a Very Important Bird of the Moment (video)
In Heraldry, “The Pelican In Her Piety” is the attitude of a pelican wounding her own breast with her beak to feed the blood to her chicks. She is the rare female animal in heraldry and iconography, and is an inversion of the phoenix, who dies selfishly and eternally, forever alone. The pelican in Western folklore is female and ancient, and while she is associated with sacrifice, she does not necessary die from it, and she performs the sacrifice if her young are starving or wounded.
Figure 1. The Pelican In Her Piety. Nobody involved in this embroidery had ever seen a pelican.
By feeding her children the blood from her breast, she can actually resurrect them from literal death. In medieval times she was conveniently associated with Christ, who gave his blood in sacrifice to “resurrect” his “children.”
Now the significance of the pelican is mostly forgotten, though you may notice her in pieces of art history around Europe.
Figure 2. More pelican, more piety.
This Kate Beaton comic shows Elizabeth I of England and her famous quote about having the heart and stomach of a king. The “albatross” thing is a joke that Kate Beaton made because it’s funny.
Figure 4: The Pelicans in the Tomb of Horemheb Know Something.
Figure 5: British WW2 pelican poster depicting a mother pelican in her piety, but the nest is actually a solder’s helmet [x].
Personally, I think the mother pelican would have been a better Metaphorical Animal for resurrection/protection than a shitty phoenix in Harry Potter, especially as you could pick up on lovely resonance from that frankly stupid Lily Evans plothole. If the ~*~fancy magic of a mother’s sacrifice~*~ can spontaneously shatter an evil wizard’s soul, but the mechanism is fundamentally ignored thereafter, then what was the fucking point? Surely anyone who sacrificed themselves in love during two great wizarding wars – and there were many – would have simultaneously protected their loved ones from harm while destroying their attackers. Even Narcissa would probably have done it if she had been guaranteed to protect Draco and kill Voldemort while doing so. You have all this ~*~magical love~*~ that turns every family into a war-ending bomb but nobody bothers to do anything about it. They’re all faffing around with Christ allegories and noble self-sacrifice and And all they ever do is fawn around their silly phoenix and have an Order of it, when the whole time.
But nobody really gets tattoos of pelicans.
Figure 6: the Order of the Pelican. think about it
The noble, mythological aspect of the pelican has very little do with pelicans in real life. Like wolves/lions and other Romantic and Charismatic Animals who are elevated in human folklore but ridiculous in private moments, pelicans are incredibly silly and awkward animals.
I have petted them. And it was good. Their faces are leathery and they are silly. They have no nostrils. Everyone should like pelicans more.
Figure 7: I hope this has convinced you.
Counterpoint.
Pelicans are nightmare birds
*thumps fist on table* THIS IS A FURTHER ARGUMENT FOR THE POTENT SYMBOLISM OF THE PELICAN
Helpful person: links don’t work on your tumblr
Me: FINE
Different helpful person: would you consider fixing your tumblr
okay according to google, the pelican represents jesus christ, the blood represents … saving, and the babies represent the adopted children of God
i’m still lost on why the fuck a pelican, objectively one of the most fucked up birds on the planet
who looked at this and said “yeah, that’s motherfucking jesus christ, the son of god himself. im’m gonna draw it ripping open its own neck now”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Catholicism is a hell of a ride.
(for more fun, check out St. Agatha, who walks around with a pair of tiddy on a plate, or sometimes just the one! Or St. Bartholomew, who carries around his own flayed skin. Or St. Lucy, who also has a body part plate, only this one has her own eyes!)
A pelican was chosen because it was believed that pelicans LITERALLY DID THIS. They literally believed pelicans pecked holes into their chest and fed the blood to their babies.
White supremacists are dangerous, immoral, and disturbing, but they are not “insane,” “crazy,” or “mental.”
The intersections of mental health, disability, and race are profound. Be a radical copyeditor and help your friends understand that mental health-related terms should not be metaphors or insults AND that white supremacists are not aberrations or rogue actors in an otherwise racism-free society.
[Image description: graphic using speech bubbles to illustrate that when people say “insane white supremacists,” “these KKK marches are crazy,” “the USA has gone mad,” and “racism is a mental illness,” what they are really saying is “people with disabilities are abnormal,” “people with mental health conditions are dangerous,” “racism is irrational and isn’t current reality,” and “racism is caused by individuals, not systems of white supremacy.”]
“The reason a certain kind of person loves talking about ‘mental illness’ is to draw attention to the big bold scary exceptional crimes and treat them as exceptions. It’s to distract from the fact that the worst crimes in history were committed by people just doing their jobs—cops enforcing the law, soldiers following orders, bureaucrats signing paperwork.”
“Christopher Petrella and Justin Gomer have pointed out that conceptualizing racism as a ‘disease,’ a ‘mental illness,’ or a form of ‘deviant behavior’ is a way of painting racial inequity as ‘simply the sum of the actions of individual bigots,’ leading to the idea that ‘racial justice can be achieved by “curing” those individuals.’ It is dangerous to presume that racism can be eliminated by dealing with a few ‘bad apples,’ because individual actors are not the perpetrators of racism—white supremacy culture is.“
Hello!!! I know I haven’t been very active lately, and a lot of the reason is because of this guy right here. This is my cat, Andy, who is only ten months old and very, very sick and getting worse every day! He’s stopped eating, chewing, and drinking (only weighs 4.46 lbs, we have to syringe feed him), he has stopped walking (merely rolls/flips around), he can’t even make it to the litter box, and overall is no longer the happy, healthy, active kitten we once had. It’s heartbreaking to see one of your best friends go through something they deserve so little, especially when you don’t have the means to help him.
The doctor has recommended an MRI/brain scan, which alone could cost $2,000+, money we simply don’t have after already having
spent thousands on medical bills for him to only have gotten worse, due the doctors not knowing what is causing these symptoms. It would mean the world to me and my family (especially little Andy!!) for even a few dollars, or even just a reblog to help spread the word! It would make me extremely grateful, and thank you for even taking your time out to read!!
If you want, we have set up a gofundme with more details about the situation: gf.me/u/cbyv37
Thank you again!!!!
UPDATE: i posted an update on the gofundme but I will post it here as well. Andy’s eye is doing very badly, had ruptured/swollen up with infection. He may need to have it removed. Currently, the doctors are not considering surgery or euthanasia and want to go ahead with the MRI, fearing he doesn’t have an infection on his brain/spinal chord or possibly even meningitis. Every little hit of support would help us greatly so we can help Andy as soon as possible, and hopefully have him feeling better. Even just continuing to share this would mean the world. Thanks!!!!!!
so it’s official, my eldest has been diagnosed with autism
there’s a lot of talk about different supports that I will be able to access, it’s all in the air at the moment, I’m still processing
basically I’m ‘well, now we know for sure and can direct our efforts appropriately’
part of me is worried about these ‘social skills classes’ though, I follow enough autistic people to know that these programs can be sketchy, I don’t want him to be abused
I’m trying to respect his sensory issues, which at this point are – needs something for noise as needed, doesn’t like how lotion feels on his hands but he’ll let me put it on him (dermatitis), he needs a new bed probably because the loft bed is squeaky and he doesn’t like it, doesn’t like hugs so when he does hug me, it definitely feels like he’s doing me a favor
he has dysgraphia, so we need to work on fine motor skills and his gross motor needs work too
baby steps, though
I need to get both my kids Alphasmart Neos, they really like the ones the program has
any one have any suggestions how to help him wash his hair better, I dunno, he’s 13 and touchy about the subject
Re dysgraphia: “working on” motor skills isn’t likely to do much. If the bit of his brain that does that doesn’t do that well, then practice won’t make much difference.
With stuff like handwriting, he probably already practices it lots, and any extra practice (even like an hour a day) isn’t going to make a significant difference if there’s already 3-4 hours of writing built into the school day.
Even large improvements aren’t likely to bring his handwriting up to “typical” levels. The 3 requirements here are 1. speed, 2. legibility and 3. endurance. If you can’t write at a reasonable speed, readable to most people, for long periods, then you haven’t reached the minimum standard for handwriting.
My handwriting is either illegible, slow, or painful. I can choose one out of the 3 requirements. So I get a computer in exams, and I can take notes on a laptop. Being pulled out of lessons to practice handwriting for hours on end made no difference, accommodating me so that my handwriting didn’t affect my exam results did.
Re: hairwashing: It really depends what the issue is. If it’s sensory, depends what the specific sensory issue is. Could also be difficulty adjusting to how fast your hair gets greasy during puberty. Dry shampoo might be useful. Explicit instructions on how you’re supposed to do it (eg. lathering) might also be needed, we sometimes miss stuff.
Agreed on the dysgraphia. My handwriting is bad, but I have a note taker accommodation in college, and I get on fine.
Re: hairwashing, etc – it definitely depends what the issue is and in that regard, thirteen is probably old enough to start developing some good self-awareness and self-advocacy as an autistic person. So I would encourage him, even though it might take a while to emotionally adjust to being newly diagnosed, to explore his being autistic and take ownership of the experience. There were so many things I had difficulty with, that I really didn’t understand why, (showering being one of them), that once I was diagnosed and explored all the things about autism from other autistic people, I was able to figure out and change for myself. Plus, it is an embarrassing subject to talk about with your parent at that age, so even if you know you are having trouble, you are likely to want to figure it out on your own. So if he can become even more familiar with things like sensory issues and executive dysfunction, and ways other autistic people have dealt with these things, he can begin the lifelong process of navigating being autistic on his own self awareness and strength, and advocating what he needs.
This is going to sound silly, but I suggest you ask your kid if it hurts
when he writes, and if he says yes, how much writing it takes for his
hand to start hurting.
Handwriting problems in autistic people may be because of physical problems in the hand, not mental stuff. Hypermobility is really common in autistic people for reasons that aren’t well understood, and one of the things it can cause is loose finger joints that lead to poor control of the pencil and severe pain when you write – which autistic kids often think is normal, and which screws with your handwriting.
I never complained to an adult because I assumed writing hurt everyone and I didn’t want to whine, got marked down in grades for illegibility all through K-12, and was diagnosed with a physical disability in college. Now I get a laptop in all of my classes. Right after I was diagnosed, I told my sister – who was at the time almost thirty years old and in the hospital after delivering her second child – that handwriting isn’t supposed to hurt, and she was shocked. She has the same condition.
If this is the case with your son, practicing more may result in worse handwriting, because the problem is that the motions of handwriting put too much stress on fingers. There are braces that can help (I use Oval-8 splints when I have to do something like draw a diagram or write a check) but much of the time it may be better to avoid having to hand write in the first place.
Wait, writing might hurt because of a physical problem?
Like, I was aware that it wasn’t normal, but I just assumed it was a side effect of the motor control issues? I mean, I do write mostly from my elbow, which makes my writing kind of huge. Yeah, I do fine motor control from my elbow. Really good at it for short periods of time though, apparently elbows are better than fingers for that???
And yeah, this is a thing that needs to be established. Like, pulling a kid out of lessons to make them do a boring thing, and pulling them out of lessons to make them do something painful is a distinction teachers should be aware of.
I get aches in my hand and spreading up my arm when I try to handwrite for more than 10 minutes or so.
Yeah, if you’re autistic and handwriting hurts it’s very likely it’s because of hypermobility.
Hypermobility/EDS type III is a connective tissue disorder where, basically, your joints aren’t held together very well by your tendons and soft tissue, so they just kind of slide around and you have to exert a lot of extra effort moving around. It’s associated with joint and muscle pain that starts at some point in adolescence/early adulthood, fatigue and a variety of other more obscure problems that don’t affect everyone with it.
The diagnostic criteria for hypermobility are the Beighten criteria. It’s unclear whether hypermobility and EDS type III are actually different things, although I’m personally of the opinion that they aren’t; the major difference in who gets diagnosed with what is perceived severity and whether you have problems other than joint pain. Both are very, very commonly comorbid with autism, and nobody really knows why. In the US, both are generally diagnostic by geneticists; I’m not sure about other countries.
Finger joints that bend backwards further than straight, bend ninety degrees back from the hand, thumbs that can touch your wrist, etc, can be signs of hypermobile finger joints that would cause handwriting problems. If you lean very far into the paper or put your head down on your other arm while you write, that’s another sign some people display – it’s an attempt to seek more support.
Ring splints and Oval-8 splints can help (I use oval 8 because they’re what my OT specialist had and they’re cheaper) as can chunky pencil grips, slanted desks and adjusted grips, but honestly, if you have significant handwriting problems that don’t go away with splinting or other adjustments it’s probably better to just arrange your life so you can usually type. Repeatedly stressing hypermobile joints in ways that cause pain can cause worse damage over time.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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