there really is a crisis of imagination rn. like it’s visible. this is naturally a consequence of working class people being shut out of creative industries and the complete degradation of what little labor rights cultural workers have had over 100 years. a lot of this stuff going to market is comparable to drinking slimfast shakes that have sat in the car for hours in the summer.
Humans have finally managed to land on Mars, only to find a locked safe buried in the Martian soil. The key is apparently on Earth, but no one knows where.
The galactic council watched on to see how humanity would handle the task, much as they had with several species before. What the test was supposed to show was whether or not a species of violent nature could ever be brought to work together. They finally picked something up, another ship already headed to Mars? Was it possible humans were that clever to have found the key, maybe it was more specialists and equipment to analyze the locked crate to ensure it was safe to open. A few minutes after landing, they got another broadcast from the red planet.
“This is the LockPickingLawyer and today I’ve got something quite special, this locked alien chest. First of all I have to thank everyone who recommended me for the job, I’m honored that you all thought of me. Now let’s get to work”
The council representatives were confused as they started analyzing the translation, before even getting through the name he spoke something haunting
“Normally I don’t say things like this but this lock is quite unique, however with no security pins it will still be quite quick.”
“There we go, a click on 3… “
All the species of the galactic council sat dumbfounded, they spent many galactic cycles refining and perfecting their study and in all their time not a singular race had tried this method. Click after click, even in such an intricate lock the human had only spent around five minutes tampering with it.
“There we go, now while I can’t open this as part of my video I can say that I at least have a clue what the key should look like in case it ever gets locked again. I admire the design choices and the fact that at least it was harder to get open than anything Master Lock has made”
It’s Hurricane Season so I’d like to share some advice as a life-long Floridian who’s experienced a few things. This is going to be directed primarily to people living in areas at risk of blackouts which could last several days.
Preparations
Aside from food, water, and gas, some things you’ll want to make sure you have are flashlights and batteries. Make sure to refill any medications you might need.
Get raincoats in case you need to go outside cause the wind will destroy any umbrellas.. If you can’t get one, take a garbage bag and tear a face hole into it and use that.
Also, get bug repellent, especially mosquito repellent. Mosquitos breed around still water and there will be a lot of still water.
You might want to buy some gardening gloves as well to make the post-storm cleanup safer.
SUPER IMPORTANT FOR SANITY AND SANITATION: get caught up on laundry and dishes. No power means no running water. Don’t make things worse by not having clean dishes or clean clothes to use. While you’re cleaning, change your bed sheets as well. Once you have power, change your sheets again.
Also, download any games, ebooks, shows, etc you can onto any battery-charged electronic devices you have. It will help your sanity when all you can do is wait.
Finally, while you should ideally board up your windows to protect them from debris, make sure at the minimum that all your windows are closed. Wind pressures are going to suck air out of any openings in your home.
Food and Water
First and most important: DO NOT BE A HOARDER!!
Even if your home has no power, that doesn’t mean your local grocery store has no power. You can expect some reduced supply due to damaged supply lines and a spike in demand, but you shouldn’t be worrying about empty shelves. At worst, have the amount of supplies you might need for 10 days. If you normally go to the grocery store every 2 weeks or longer, just stock up the amount you normally would.
Buy more items that are less likely to spoil and don’t need refrigeration. When you have no power, prioritize eating anything which requires refrigeration (milk, cheese, meats) or has a short shelf life (bread).
Demand will be higher in preparation, and supply will be diminished for a bit, but supply issues only become unbearable when people start hoarding.
As for water, you’ll need a surplus since you need water for so much. I cannot stress this particular part enough:
You need water to flush your toilet.
If there’s somewhere with running water you can go when you need to poop, use that whenever possible, but you need water available at home to refill your toilet’s cistern if you don’t have that option (either time, distance, etc).
Make sure you have a supply of drinking water. Don’t go buying every water bottle you can find (See the bit about hoarding), but you should buy more than you might normally use. Instead, gather water through things like your sink or from a hose into any sealable containers you might have . If you have a bathtub, fill it up just before the hurricane. If you have a pool, that’s another source of water. If no debris got in the pool, you can use it for bathing. If you have empty buckets, you can get some additional water during the hurricane by filling them with large rocks or bricks and leaving them out in the open to collect the rain water.
Different water sources will be used for different purposes:
bottled, canned, or other store-bought water: Drinking, cooking, and refrigeration (explained later)
Water in unsealed containers: refill the toilet cistern
Water in a sealed containers: bathing and cleaning (Can also be used for the toilet)
As mentioned with food, supplies at your grocer will be reduced but not necessarily empty. You should be able to buy enough additional drinking water and be able to also use it for cleaning, giving you more water for the toilet. The tip about gathering rain water will only work once. There will likely be no rain for at least a week afterward.
In case you need to evacuate
Keep tabs on whatever emergency alerts are available. Check what your local radio channel is or what sites to check online. Make sure you know how to get to your local shelter, including alternate paths in case a road is inaccessible.
Load your vehicle with anything you might need to bring with you before the storm so you don’t have to spend time looking for them and double checking when every minute could count. Pack some pillows, blankets, and extra clothes just in case. Also include anything you cannot risk losing for school or work like laptops.
Refrigeration
Without power, your fridge is now just a giant cooler and a ticking bomb to being a biohazard. Fill it up as much as possible. Cold air escapes easily when you open it and heat disperses fastest throw the air. Remember how I said you should buy extra water? A fridge filled with cold water will stay cooler longer. Any liquid will do. Fill your fridge with water bottles, soda cans, beer, fruit juice, whatever. As long as it doesn’t spoil at room temperature. Milk can technically help too, but since it spoils you shouldn’t keep much of it and should use it quickly.
Additional things like fruits and veggies will also help. What matters is you want to reduce the amount of empty space and fill it with anything which can keep the temperature down. Put a frozen block of iron in for all I care. Just don’t have a super empty fridge.
If you have a generator
Good for you. You’re not completely without power now. But you need to set priorities on what to use it for. Generators can only supply so much power at a time so you can’t just hook everything to it and expect things to work out.
Top priority is the fridge. Twice a day, morning and evening, plug the fridge to the generator and let it run for two hours to cool things down. Don’t hook up the fridge when you don’t expect to open it (like when everyone is asleep).
Second priority should be charging cell phones, laptops, and anything else like that. Depending on your circumstances, you can charge them at work, from your car, etc so only hook them up when batteries are low.
Third, comfort. I understand this will be stressful, but hooking up your tv and gaming computer isn’t the best idea. If you’ve done what I suggested earlier, you’ll at least have something to watch or do without needing to hook it to your generator. Like with the above electronics, you might be able to find other ways to charge them, but only attach them to your generator when you don’t need to worry about necessities.
Finally for the love of god, DO NOT HOOK AN AC TO THE GENERATOR!!. Air conditioners draw a lot of power, especially once the room is hot. But your generator can only do so much. The AC will kill your power supply really quickly. Use a fan or the AC in your vehicle if you need to cool down.
Also worth noting, if you have an electric vehicle, that could potentially be used as well. I don’t know specifics, but look into that if you own one.
Final notes
This is not comprehensive and I may be wrong about some things.
Please refer to actual expert sources for comprehensive help.
This is just suggestions from someone who has to deal with this every year and has figured out how to deal with the aftermath. Your living conditions may be different so please check how to handle any concerns unique to you.
the official Unreal Unearth track listing per the cd/vinyl covers has each song (or in a few cases, a pair of songs) subtitled with circles of hell from dante’s inferno (and in the cases of De Selby pt. 1 & 2, and First Light, the Descent into hell and the Ascent back out) so uhhh. smth to think on.
‘bread is bad for you’ ‘rice is bad for you’ sorry im not subscribing to the idea that staple grains that have been integral to cultures for centuries are evil. i love you carbs
Make sure you’ve got shelf-stable food and water for everyone in the house, including pets. The rule of thumb is a gallon per person per day. Freeze water bottles if you want cold water.
Make sure you have enough meds!
Make sure you have batteries, candles, flashlights, and a manual can opener.
Make sure your electronics, including backup batteries, are charged. Unplug things you don’t want fried in case of a power surge.
Don’t tape your windows, it doesn’t help and you’ll just be stuck scrubbing goo off of them later.
Put a mug of frozen water in it in your freezer with a quarter on top of it. If your freezer defrosts, the ice will melt and the quarter will sink and tell you you need to throw things out.
Get everything that’s not nailed to a foundation out of your yard. That dead branch hanging on by a thread? Time to get it down (it was probably time to do that three days ago, but now’s better than never).
Park away from powerlines and trees if you can. Rain makes the ground soft and then trees fall over.
Have an evacuation plan to a shelter. Evacuate if they’re telling you to.
If you start to flood, don’t go in your attic. You’ll get trapped if the water rises too high and you can’t hack through your roof. This happened to a lot of people in Texas and Louisiana. Get ON the roof.
Be safe, be well <3
What the fuck?
???? WHAT???
Ngl, “tropical storm in death valley” was not on my 2023 bingo card.
Drainage on our roads is shitty in SoCal, don’t attempt to drive through water deep enough to touch your bumpers and don’t attempt to walk across moving water, water only as deep as your ankles can knock you down and sweep you away.
Predicted wind speeds are similar to strong Santa Anas, so lock things down like you would for that, though keep in mind that yeah the combination of heavy rain and wind leads to more felled trees than just wind.
Take photos of the inside of your home now; flood insurance fucking sucks here and if you’re in a possible flood zone you want as much documentation of your home and belongings as possible in case you need to make a claim.
Freezing water bottles also means you’ve got a lot of ice in your freezer if power goes out, and safe potable water once it thaws, so freeze bottles of water to have something to keep your fridge and freezer cool and store more water regardless of if you want cold water.
Charles Dana Gibson defined the “perfect woman” of the early Edwardian era with his (often wickedly funny, and always beautiful!) illustrations. He regularly lampooned society, and I like to think he’d be good with my interpretation of his famous girl.
This painting was hard to approach, since the S-bend corset of the turn of the century was such a specific shape. And since a fuller bust and hip were fashionable, drawing a fat Gibson Girl is less of a contrast than a fat flapper, say. But I like this one. She’s fierce, and sexy, she colors her hair and rouges her face and isn’t ashamed to admit it. And you’d better believe she’s on the stage. Not the type of girl you bring home to Mamma.
Watercolor and ink on cotton paper, 2013 Anne Lillian
There has been a half-complete version of post on my Dreamwidth journal under a “Private” filter (my eyes only) here since 9 December, 2018,
just waiting for me to get the energy and mental focus to write an
essay outlining all the textual evidence in Act 4, scene 1 (Ophelia’s
“madness” scene). But at this point, I don’t think the required energy
for that will ever come – at least, not for the long essay format.
So I’m just going to post my conspiracy theory Thesis Statement here:
Ophelia did not commit suicide – she was murdered. By Queen Gertrude (probably).
And I can’t help but wonder how this play would be taught and performed if this interpretation were the standard one
Here’s
a bit of a presentation by Shakespearean actor and scholar, Ben
Crystal, on his interpretation of the “To be, or not to be?” soliloquy,
and how he no longer thinks Hamlet was suicidal at that point in the play, either (though he was, earlier on): Ben Crystal talks about Original Pronunciation, 20 July 2017 (it’s at a point about 40 minutes in to the whole thing).
So what if suicide is not a recurring theme of the play? How does that change things?
Reblogging myself already, because my brain won’t let go of it.
Just imagine how classroom discussions, and essays in literary academic journals would go if it were read that Ophelia did not break under the weight of a cruel world, but instead had to be eliminated because she knew too much, and was on the brink of inciting a rebellion against King Claudius (Yes, that’s actually alluded to in the text).
If, while the men of the play were scheming and faffing about, the play pivoted on the actions of a middle-aged woman on one side, and a teenage girl on the other.
Tell us more! Tell us more!
First off – my mistake: it’s Act 4 Scene 5, not scene one. And it opens thusly (lines that merit attention are bolded):
QUEEN GERTRUDE: I will not speak with her.
Gentleman: She is importunate, indeed distract: Her mood will needs be pitied.
QUEEN GERTRUDE: What would she have?
Gentleman: She speaks much of her father; says she hears There’s tricks i’ the world; and hems, and beats her heart; Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they aim at it, And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts; Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them, Indeed would make one think there might be thought, Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
A bit later, Ophelia comes in, singing. Not of flowers, yet, but alternating between a mourning song, and a very bawdy song that a young noble lady of sixteen years should not be singing in public, just in time for Claudius to hear her.
KING CLAUDIUS: Conceit upon her father.
OPHELIA: Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they ask you what it means, say you this: [translation: You want to know what it means? I’ll tell you what it means!]
Sings To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes, And dupp’d the chamber-door; Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more.
KING CLAUDIUS: Pretty Ophelia!
OPHELIA: Indeed, la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t: [Let me finish!]
Sings By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame! Young men will do’t, if they come to’t; By cock, they are to blame. Quoth she, before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed. So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed.
[So here’s a song about a woman having sex out of wedlock because a guy promised to repay her… and then he reneges on his promise because she had sex with him]
And then Ophelia exits, spouting seeming madness, and Claudius says to Horatio:
Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
So Claudius suspects something – whether that’s a suicide watch, or to make sure she doesn’t inspire rebellion – isn’t explicitly stated in text. But in any case, Ophelia’s not alone.
Then, Leartes comes in, leading a mob of commoners, who are chanting that he should be king (see the comment of Gentleman, above). And we have this exchange:
Leartes: Where is my father?
Claudius: Dead.
Gertrude: But not by him.
That, right there, is a single line of iambic pentameter. Which means that Gertrude literally does not skip a beat to defend Claudius before thinking of protecting her own son.
And now Ophelia comes in and sings her “mad flower song.” This Wordpress article outlines the symbolism of each flower and herb (It also spells out specific actions by Ophelia which are not spelled out in the original). The meaning flies right over our heads, but audiences of the time would have grokked it immediately; There’s “Grief” and “remembrance;” there’s also “flattery” and “deceived lovers” and an herb commonly used to induce abortions…
And the next news we hear of Ophelia is that she’s “Drowned herself.” Who delivers this news? Queen Gertrude – with an overabundance of minute detail of the scene as it happened.
Finally, there’s the fact that Ophelia was being hastily buried in the churchyard – even though that was strictly forbidden for suicides. The younger gravedigger thinks that’s because Ophelia was a privileged noblewoman, and getting special treatment. The older gravedigger reminds him (and the audience) that not all people who die by drowning are at fault…
And then I realized that Hamlet had to have the murder plot
revealed to him by the ghost of his father, because he was away at
school, but Ophelia was there at court, the whole time, and could have seen everything going down. But who pays attention to teenage girls hanging around the edges, or worries about what they see or don’t see, amirite?
I do think Ophelia was having a mental breakdown, triggered by grief and shock. But I think it was more of the “loss of situational awareness” and “blind to the danger” variety, instead of “no longer have the will to live” variety.
And that’s my analysis. And I’m sticking with it.
Oh, this is splendid!
*bows*
Thank you.
And then there are these lines from Queen Gertrude, after she agrees to talk with Ophelia, and Horatio exits to go fetch her:
To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss: So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
I’ve always liked that line about spilling something because you’re trying too hard not to (because RELATABLE). But I only just now realized that Shakespeare was putting underlines and circles and arrows around the whole issue of the queen’s quilt (and active role in the whole scheme with Claudius), by making those lines a pair of rhyming couplets, when nothing else in that scene rhymes.
I think the common interpretation of Ophelia has been handed down to us by literary critics and theater directors, who have all been men, and idealized the manic pixie dream gilrl, so they’ve always cast Ophelia as the tragic and doomed version of that.
When really, she was the brightest candle in the chandelier – and had she lived, she might have led the revolution to put her brother on the throne – so she had to be snuffed out.
Okay – I’d like to post a CORRECTION to this paragraph, that I wrote, above:
Finally, there’s the fact that Ophelia was being hastily buried in the
churchyard – even though that was strictly forbidden for suicides. The
younger gravedigger thinks that’s because Ophelia was a privileged
noblewoman, and getting special treatment. The older gravedigger reminds
him (and the audience) that not all people who die by drowning are at
fault…
I went back and reread that bit (which really should be included in the list of evidence thatHamlet is a black comedy – in the script, the two gravediggers are named “First Clown” and “Second Clown.”
Anyway, it’s the elder gravedigger who argues that Ophelia committed suicide, but in the process, reminds the audience that it shouldn’t be counted as such. I’ll just quote that bit:
Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,–mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
So, he’s arguing that because Ophelia went into the water, she must have committed suicide – but we, in the audience, who’ve just witnessed Ophelia’s madness just a few scenes earlier (even ignoring Queen Gertrude’s suspicious behavior), know that Ophelia did not “Wittingly” go into the water, because she was (at the very least) so lost in madness that she fell in accidentally.
Now, I’m not one of those people who stan Shakespeare in everything he wrote (a few of his plays are just hot messes), but here, I do agree that he’s at his peak, with what characters know which, (or should that be which know what?), and telling us the story of what happened, not through some Authorial voice on High, but many different limited points of view.
Reblogging to add a link to this post from @bisexual-evanhansen about re-imagining the “Get thee to a nunnery!” scene wherein Ophelia plays an active role in directing the “stage fight” between herself and Hamlet, and it’s played for laughs.
Because I really think it adds to my pile of evidence that Ophelia was murdered.
That warm, fuzzy feeling when a mutual reblogs a post that you were debating about whether to reblog, yourself.
(Instead, I opted to post something new, to put fresh thoughts in my brain)
But this still deserves to be signal boosted. ‘Cause Ophelia was done dirty. First, in-story, by Gertrude, and then, in the centuries after, when Literature teachers and theater directors shape how her story is interpreted.
As someone who first suggested Hamlet is not a tragedy in my tenth-grade English class (I didn’t know the phrase “black comedy” at the time but yeah, it totally is), I would agree with all this, and IN ADDITION:
I would suggest Ophelia’s murder didn’t start with the drowning, and that it wasn’t even entirely related to Laertes.
So first, we have her song about sex out of wedlock. It’s worth noting that much earlier in the play, when she and Laertes speak right before the “to thine own self be true” speech, there are hints that she herself is already “a maid no more,” at Hamlet’s hand. Now keep in mind the rest of the play takes place over the course of, at a minimum, several months, and:
If that’s true, and if perhaps Ophelia has a Little Problem, that little problem–legitimate or not–is heir to the throne.
So if it gets out that Claudius might have been responsible for the death of Hamlet, Sr–and Hamlet, Jr gives us plenty of reasons to be suspicious even before the ghost appears–then he’s almost certainly going to die at the hands of a mob. In which case Hamlet would ascend to the throne, but–oh, what’s this? Hamlet’s dead? Well, then the next in line is–
–a commoner’s child.
Yikes.
So Gertrude offers Ophelia some help with her Little Problem. All of the plants mentioned in the “mad flower song” could be used, in conjunction with each other, as abortifacients, but there’s one very important thing to note about them:
They have to be very, very precisely measured. Or they can cause sudden severe mood swings, hemorrhaging, excessive bleeding, disorientation, lack of focus, muscle weakness, difficulty breathing, unconsciousness, and death.
You know. As might be implied by “singing small snatches of songs” and laying in a creek apparently unaware you’re doing so and unable to pull yourself out. And, as noted above, Gertrude knows one hell of a lot about this scene; as my high school English teacher pointed out, why didn’t anyone help Ophelia, if they could see her so damn well they could describe the whole thing?
Quick correction. Gertrude doesn’t say that Ophelia drowned herself. She says Ophelia drowned.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, As one incapable of her own distress Or like a creature native and endued Unto that element. But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.
All of her detail was put in defense that Ophelia was taken by the water. It isn’t until the gravedigger that the audience hears the possibility that it was suicide.
None of this necessarily negates the theory, just clarifying what was said.
That’s true (and Thank You for saying it).
But I think it’s significant that you’re the first to point that out, and it only took this post getting somewhere around 3,000 notes before you did.
Which points up a weakness in academic literary analysis: it feeds on itself.
It might have started out as: “Ophelia’s heart was broken, and her mind was cracked, by the cruel rejection from Hamlet, and the shock of her father’s death. And then, she drowned.”
That blurred into: “Ophelia drowned because her heart was broken, and her mind was cracked.”
And we ended up with: “Ophelia was sad, went mad, and so she drowned herself.”
Eventually, that last interpretation is the one that many audiences have come to expect, so that interpretation is the one that gets used by directors when the play is put on stage and screen (and written into study guides for High School English students). And yes. That’s the interpretation that got stuck in my own head. I should have opened this thread with: “Ophelia’s death was no accident!”
My own light-bulb moment came when I realized the “Gentleman” was warning Gertrude that the common people were hearing Ophelia’s “winks, and nods, and gestures” and using them as justification for revolution. He tries to reassure the queen that her words don’t really mean anything.
But I couldn’t stop wondering if Ophelia were “mad” as in “enraged” instead of “mad” as in “delusional.” And then, Gertrude was the last person to see her alive.
ALT
