I MISS LIVEJOURNAL ICONS AKA BLOG JEWELRY. I MISS WHOLE COMMUNITIES DEDICATED TO MAKING THE MOST INTERESTING 100x100 PIXELS EVER. THE ART. THE PRETTY. THE VARIETY.
I miss custom mood themes that I either installed or made myself because nobody was going to make it off that semi-obscure manga I liked. I miss the tag cloud that looked nice on your blog layout. I miss being able to do a Read More but only on specific parts of the post, so I could put the stinger of the post outside the cut, too. I miss threaded comments to have actual conversations with people.
And most of all I miss being willing to pay $5/month for 100 icon avatars to choose between because it was an entire artform to make 100x100 pixels for people and then each post or comment to choose the exact right one for the occasion.
It was an art form, a brilliant way of communicating, and I miss it terribly.
I still have most of them, tho.
Gay pants
LOL HAHAHAHA gay pants that was me I still have *all* of the .psd files
There’s someone on ao3 who, as of a few months ago, still uses an LJ icon I made at least 15 years ago as their profile pic and every time I come across one of their comments I smile.
Iceland is fucking bizarre my name change made the news
Like just @ me at this point I’m literally the only person in iceland (and very possibly the world) who has the first name Lauf
(Article title reads “Lauf and Birningur in group of new names in the name register”)
No one lives here so now two of our biggest news outlets are vagueing about me lmao
Hmm you’re right. Correction: two of our biggest media outlets are talking about me specifically because they are obsessed with me
This morning I showed up to work and my boss was like “congratulations :))” and I was kinda confused so asked her on what and she said “your name, I heard about it on the radio”
So far I have counted two online articles and apparently the radio is also talking about my name change so I’ll keep you guys updated when I’m on national tv or something
With a little legwork we can make more people on Tumblr see this than the entire population of Iceland.
Have you no love for him?
Updated for tumblr news formatting
It’s not <3 but that’s ok
Eyes on the prize besties
Yes you can lol
Or at least on android you can
Yoooo exactly 90.000 notes damn also idk what’s happening either
Actually now that I have my phone switched to Icelandic for once I just noticed that on spotify “liked songs” is now “lækuð lög”
My first thought was “oh but that’s kinda lazy since ‘læk’ is just borrowed from English” (it’s literally just the English word 'like’ but with Icelandic spelling)
My second thought immediately following that was “shouldn’t it be 'líkuð lög’ instead?” (Since 'lög sem þér líkar við’ is a bit of a mouthful)
The flaw here is that “líkuð” is not a real word in Icelandic, even though in this context it feels like it should be. If it were a word though, it would be a different form of the word “lík”, which means corpse.
So, corpsed songs. I guess I’m more okay with using the word “lækuð” now, even if it does feel a bit lazy.
The guy who taught me Icelandic at HÍ is Danish, and has recently become an Icelandic citizen. Because of this, his name also made the news because he wanted to change the spelling of his Danish last name to the Icelandic spelling. So now I technically kinda sorta know two people whose names made it to the news in Iceland.
Do you even live in Iceland if your name hasn’t made the news at least once
Actually yeah. My other Icelandic teacher is Serbian, and since she (at least unofficially like as an artsy poet’s pseudonym) uses the Icelandic versions of her parents’ names as her last names, I think she’s also made the news. The news might have been more about the poetry than the name, but yeah. Getting into the news in Iceland apparently isn’t that hard.
I’ve been in the news like 7 times at least it’s really not that hard
Things I’ve been in the news for include but are not limited to:
Just kinda going places tbh. Going to Germany for a thing, visiting someone’s workshop etc.
My brother getting really into knitting when we were kids and they let me be part of the interview
Helped set the Icelandic record for the biggest group dance when I was like 10 (we danced to Gangnam Style)
Went missing and they put out a thing about it so people could help find me (the truck driver who found me told me he’d heard about a missing kid on the radio and knew my name from there)
Name change (yay)
Idk I donated to charity once and that made the local paper
I think this happened when I was 10 years old but anyway here’s a couple things you need to know for this story to make sense
My grandma hates horses.
I really loved horses back then (still do, I’m just less obsessed with them now)
I was on a very high dosage of zoloft relative to my tiny gremlin body and one of the side effects of that was that it removed any sort of apprehension or ability to make rational decisions. When I got bad ideas I just immediately did it without giving it a second thought.
So anyway my siblings and I didn’t know this but our mum was kind of entering a new relationship at the time, it was only their third date so she didn’t want to introduce him to us just yet so in order to see him without any of us knowing yet she asked our grandma to take us with her for an afternoon to our great grandparents’ cabin in the countryside. This was completely fine and we’d been there a bunch of times before and it was always pretty fun so I was fairly excited. On the way there though I spotted a herd of horses standing pretty close to the road not too far from the cabin so as soon as we got there I decided to tell my grandma that I was gonna go for a quick walk to get some fresh air (she totally knew I was gonna go find the horses lmao) and she was okay with it since I knew the area pretty well and it wasn’t far away.
Anyway I get to the point where I thought I saw the horses and they aren’t there. F, but what can you do? I did look around a little bit more and that’s when I spotted another herd of horses (or maybe it was the same one, idk) off in the distance standing in the middle of a field.
At this point I was excited again and while I was a little hesitant to leave the road I figured it would just be a quick trip back and forth so no real harm done. Besides, it’s a field, how hard can it be to find the road again?
Apparently very hard because once I was about halfway across the field to where I’d seen the horses I looked up (I’d had to keep my head down for most of the trip so I wouldn’t trip since the ground was very uneven) and suddenly the horses weren’t there anymore. At this point I admit defeat and turn around except as I’m walking back I’m not finding the road either. I was totally fucked and I knew it.
After thinking it over for a bit I decided to just pick a direction and walk until I reach a road. Idk how long I walked for but I did eventually find one but I had no clue where I was and there was very little traffic around so I figured I’d just walk along the road for a bit until, idk, something happened. After a while I came to a stop and wouldn’t you know it, there was a herd of horses there.
I had already accepted that I had no clue where the fuck I was and help probably would not be coming any time soon (in my child brain I was like “ok so it takes 24 hours for someone to officially be declared missing so I guess I’ll just hang around here for a day and hope someone finds me sooner rather than later”) I also figured I would be easier to find if I stopped moving so I decided that the best course of action was to just stay there with the horses.
It wasn’t too bad all things considered, time did go by a bit quicker when I had the horses there for entertainment. They were very calm and gentle and I even laid down to rest with them for a while. I did spot a building in the distance at some point and decided to make my way towards it hoping to maybe find someone there or at least get some shelter.
Unfortunately since there was a lot of wetland around this area (the horses were fenced off from it) I did fall into a mire and had both of my legs submerged in mud up to my knees. This was when my survival instincts really kicked in since I knew damn well that past a certain point I wasn’t getting back out of there alive. Thankfully there was some tall grass surrounding it that was much more firmly rooted so that gave me something to grab onto and pull myself free. (Idk how I managed to not panic tbh, I was essentially facing everyone’s childhood fear of falling into quicksand. I did lose both of my shoes in the process of getting myself out but considering I had just avoided possibly the worst way of dying out in the wilderness I was okay with that)
After that I made my way back to the horses and just kinda chilled out waiting for someone to rescue me. Eventually a truck driver spotted me and asked if I was the missing kid on the radio (I, stupidly, went “I don’t think I’ve been declared missing yet” as if there was some other missing child matching my description in the area. He knew my name though so I got in the truck and he drove me to the next farm.) After talking for a bit he told me those were his wife’s horses and I told him they were very well tamed. I remember he paused for a bit and then said “none of them are tamed yet”
Eventually the police picked me up and drove me to our cabin, where I was met with pretty much my entire extended family anxiously standing outside. This was how I met my step dad after he had accompanied my mum there for support, covered in mud and stepping out of a police car after apparently having dropped off the face of the earth for five hours.
After this my zoloft dosage was significantly lowered by my psychiatrist. I also got cool new shoes (they were purple)
Also turns out you are officially declared missing wayyyy faster if you are a small child and at risk of, idk, falling into a mire or something.
So you just speedran every Whimsical Childhood Adventure all at once huh.
That’s a pretty good story Lauf but we’re gonna need more than that to get to 300k. Let’s have the knitting story.
I’m crying. Here’s a photo of a sailor from the Götheborg watching over the little sailboat in tow:
From the story:
We repeatedly emphasized that we were aboard a small 8-meter sailboat, but the response was the same each time: “We are a 50-meter three-masted sailboat, and we offer our assistance in towing you to Paimpol.” We were perplexed by the size difference between our two boats, as we feared being towed by a boat that was too large and at too fast a speed that could damage our boat.
The arrival of the Götheborg on the scene was rapid and surprising, as we did not expect to see a merchant ship from the East India Company of the XVIII century. This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it? The Götheborg approached very close to us to throw the line and pass a large rope. The mooring went well, and our destinies were linked for very long hours, during which we shared the same radio frequency to communicate with each other.
The crew of the Götheborg showed great professionalism and kindness towards us. They adapted their speed to the size of our boat and the weather conditions. We felt accompanied by very professional sailors. Every hour, the officer on duty of the Götheborg called us to ensure everything was going well.[…]
This adventure, very real, was an incredible experience for us. We were extremely lucky to cross paths with the Götheborg by chance and especially to meet such a caring crew.
Dear commander and crew of the Götheborg, your kindness, and generosity have shown that your ship is much more than just a boat. It embodies the noblest values of the sea, and we are honored to have had the chance to cross your path and benefit from your help.
“Our destinies were linked for very long hours” is just knocking me out.
I know a lot of folks don’t understand the danger but a Black woman and a Trans woman becoming unhoused is a death sentence especially with multiple illnesses. A death sentence. In the deep south. 100 degree heat advisories and highest crime rate in the country. A death sentence.
This is urgent. Black women need your help. Trans women need your help. Lesbians need your help. Disabled women need your help.
We need help with rent after multiple setbacks and it’s now 2 days late.
Please help if y'all can. I didn’t reach goal for my birthday a few days ago. Rent is due today. I have more repairs to do on my car after the $400 ones. I have 3 more appts the next 2 months. Please. I have seen fundraisers from cishet white couples reach 3 times the goal in half the time.
UPDATING THIS URGENTLY!!! I WAS IN A CAR WRECK. INSURANCE WILL COVER MOST BUT THE POLICE ARE TELLING ME I’LL NEED TO COVER THE FIRST $500 OF REPAIRS. THIS IS URGENT. PLEASE HELP.
UPDATE: my car is a total loss, I’ll have to buy a new car. I don’t know how I’ll do that or get to work. Or pay rent. I’m drowning.
Yall I still need help! No donations in abt 5 days! While all the processing is going I still will have to pay my next payment on my totaled car, get my tag for my new car and pay rent.
Raise your hand if you have a very visceral understanding of why people might have gone a bit unhinged in the 1920s after living through a succession of natural, unnatural, political and man-made disasters for several years in rapid succession
ALT
