Hey everyone, so you know organizations like UNICEF and whatnot that allow you to buy the kind of gifts where you donate mosquito nets or something in a person’s name? Well a lot of those organizations will let you donate vaccines, as it turns out. Like, right now on UNICEF’s site, providing 100 polio vaccines to kids in need is 19 USD. And I’m not saying you should buy it and then send a card to an anti-vax relative saying you’ve provided lifesaving vaccinations in their name, but actually that’s exactly what I’m saying
Rest stops on highways are liminal spaces where the veil is thin and nobody can tell me differently
Explain
The explanation is that liminal spaces are in between places that bridge Here with There, so in fairy tales we often have the Fairy Ring, the Forest Clearing, the Sudden Misty Foggy Forest, the Bridge, the River, graveyards, in some cases
We also have a ton of american urban mythology around famous roadways and sites off the sides of roads
Archetypes like these occur to mark the places in the world where the veil goes thin and humans can have extra-worldly experiences, out of the ordinary way of living
So why wouldn’t transient spaces like rest stops where everyone is just passing through from one place to the next, never stopping for too long, not be a liminal space where spirits frequent, too
Especially since nobody would know if they were real or not
Ok but this speaks to me
I always feel like something isn’t quite right at rest stops
I once slept though three gas stations on a road trip, and the second the car started to slow to turn into a rest stop, I was basically wide awake.
My mom and I were on I-90 in a blizzard once and pulled off at the first exit we could find. Turns out that if we’d gone even a mile further, we would have happened on a 49-and-counting car pileup, and that 90 was closed for MILES. How we found an unblocked ramp was a matter of great debate, but where this gets weirder still is that at the bottom of the ramp was a closed truck stop and an open church full of teenagers–they went for youth group, the blizzard started, and they were stuck until the snow stopped. They fed us leftovers from their potluck dinner, prayed with us for safe travel, and when the snow let up they saw us on our way.
Three days later–Sunday–we were traveling back and decided to stop at that church to thank them. We found it thanks to the truck stop, but this time it was the truck stop that was open and the church that was closed. Neither of us remembered it looking so decrepit on the trip down, and granted we saw it first at night in a snowstorm, but you’d think we’d have noticed the boarded-up windows. So we asked in at the truck stop.
The church had been abandoned for ten years. And yet I still had one of their youth group programs under my sun visor, very clearly labeled for the previous week.
To this day I’m sure we crossed dimensions somewhere on I-90, and that’s how we stayed safe. You could tell me it’s because the truck stop was a liminal space and I’d 100% believe you.
I don’t mind when this post goes around again because sometimes I get stories like this
We don’t have rest stops like this in the UK. We have motorway service stations. And they have high street shops, only miles from anywhere, only accessible from the motorway. It’s as if the high street shops are all on a little trip away from their home town and this is as far as they got.
I had to go to a hospital miles and miles away from my home in Japan because the one in my town wasn’t equipped to run the tests I needed. So a friend drove me since the train would have taken hours, and we had to go through these dormant fields on a mostly dirt road. Nothing for miles as far as you could see except for grass and a river. Not even houses or anything. So, at some point as the sun’s rising, her car stalls. Right next to a soda vending machine. In the middle of a field. With no discernible power outlet or power lines or anything. But it’s on. No cell phone reception, either. We pop the hood and I look around, but neither of us know anything, and we’re worried because we haven’t seen another car or bicycle or scooter in ages.
We think we’re going to be stranded for a long time, so she buys a couple of canned coffees and we sit down in the car to drink them, and suddenly, the dash lights blink back on. We turn the car on, and it’s fine.
We get on our way, a little weirded out, and I say, “I’ve had a bizarre feeling the whole time we’ve been driving here. It makes sense now.”
And she says, “yeah, I’ll bet there was a spirit there. It wanted an offering, and then let us go. My mom said that can happen where there aren’t any other real shrines or temples around.”
So our liminal space demanded ￥400 before letting us through.
It’s absolutely hilarious how tumblr has been taken off the apple store because of the wild shit on here. Yahoo really thought it was stepping into the social media market by obtaining this trash.
Yahoo execs when they found out what they really bought:
Can I just say, as great as Venom and Eddie’s relationship was, I appreciated Dan and Anne’s. Dan didn’t fall into the jealous new boyfriend category. Not once did he mistrust Anne about Eddie, showing he was totally comfortable in that relationship and trusted her totally, he was so nice to Eddie instead of telling him to stay away from Anne. It was a healthy relationship dynamic (despite Anne’s possible remaining feelings at the end) and I appreciated it and Dan as a character
Update: I forgot to add, Dan had his priorities right like when he told Anne they needed to talk about what was going on and she said there was nothing going on with her and Eddie and Dan was like ‘no we need to talk about the weird parasite thing that’s unknown to medical science obviously’ and I appreciate that he was focused on the right thing
I think part of what made the Venom movie so palatable to me was the whole situation with Dan and how it was handled as if everyone involved was a Decent Adult Person instead of the heteronormative caricatures we’ve come to expect. Just by being written the way he is, Dan makes my queer ass feel so much safer in indulging in this fandom, and I love him for that!!!
I was prepared for a boatload of second hand embarrassment at the restaurant scene but it was wonderfully resolved when Dan was like “Yes this is my girlfriend’s ex behaving inappropriately in a restaurant but also he’s obviously visibly unwell and I’m a doctor so can we all please calm the fuck down so I can get him to a hospital.”
They’re trying to erase the existence of the rape victims of Japanese soldiers in World War II because they think the reminder of their crimes might make Japan a little bit cross
Duterte, the absolute coward, is more worried about women criticizing him than actually honoring the women this country needs to remember
one of the v. important things the movies missed about ron is just like, how down to fight he was at all times. like not even duel just he was always ready to physically beat the shit out of people who insulted his family or friends and WOULD if no one stopped him.
there are so many points in the books where its just casually dropped in ‘and so Harry and/or Hermione had to physically restrain Ron’ usually from Malfoy but if Harry or Hermione weren’t paying attention it became ‘and so Ron punched Malfoy in the face’.
Like, Ron cursing Malfoy for calling Hermione Mudblood wasnt just a one off thing like every time he did that in the future when Ron was there it was like ‘ron had to be stopped from ending Malfoy’s life’ just thrown in there. Same for any other severe insults.
My absolute favorite instance of this is in the first book when they’re just watching a Quidditch game and Malfoy just starts bothering Ron and Hermione during it and is finally like ‘man its pretty funny how the Gryffindor quidditch team is recruited based on pity like y’know Potter has no parents, Weasley’s brothers have no money they should include Longbottom for having no brains” and Ron just flings himself at Malfoy and starts punching him and rolling around under the bleachers and Neville is like “uh shit i guess i better fight CRABBE AND GOYLE BOTH AT ONCE so they don’t go after him” (very underrated moment of courage from Neville he knew he had no chance but he just went for it honestly almost more impressive than confronting Voldemort in book 7)
and they’re just fighting for like twenty minutes and Hermione doesn’t even notice because she was so focused on tuning Malfoy out and watching the game and when its over she looks around like “where’d ron go” and then later its mentioned “Harry sees Ron and his face is covered in blood and he’s like “GOOD JOB WINNING THE GAME HARRY I GAVE MALFOY A BLACK EYE SO WE BOTH DID GREAT THINGS TONIGHT oh btw i have detention for a week and neville’s unconcious but they say he’ll be fine”.
DustAndFundamentalists 