I’m Moments From Being Thrown Out Of My Home (because I Can’t Pay The Rent Due To Illness) And I

Jeremy January, Blue Monday* edition: Jeremy spreading awareness about Manic Depression/Bipolar Disorder. In this recording he describes the illness to encourage listeners who may be suffering to seek help. He is speaking for the Manic Depression Fellowship, now called Bipolar UK. Another resource is The Mighty: https://themighty.com/bipolar-disorder/. (I linked only to their Bipolar Disorder page, but The Mighty includes stories and information on a number of mental illnesses and other topics.)

If you are suffering, please, listen to Jeremy and talk to someone about your suffering. If you consider yourself well, please be available to listen as much as your personal capacity allows…be like Edward Hardwicke supporting his friend Jeremy by picking him up from the institution and taking him out for a meal and then home for tea. The world needs more friends like Jeremy and Edward!

*The term “Blue Monday” only recently came across my radar; it is a Monday in January (which one seems to vary by source) and is said to be the most depressing day of the year for Northern Hemisphere dwellers.

Same. Absolutely gutted. Horrible, hollow feeling. I'll just take an extended break from tennis after this.

Could not believe what happened. I will need a lot of time to recover from this.

Looks to me like Jensen is leaning backwards to address Singer, and is not having a “private conversation” with Misha. Angles can be misleading. 

Jensen & Misha “private conversation” vs J2 private conversation. Just sayin’. ;)

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RIP Omar Sharif (1932-2015) - The Egyptian star of classic epics Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965) died today at age 83. His film debut was in Devil of the Sahara (1954) and from there it took 21 more movies until he rose to fame as Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia, role that earned his first Golden Globe and his only Oscar nomination. The 2nd Globe came for the title role in Doctor Zhivago, and by that time he was already established a movie star appearing with Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck in Behold a Pale Horse (1964), with Sophia Loren and Stephen Boyd in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Ingrid Bergman and Shirley MacLaine in The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965). Later on, he starred in Genghis Khan (1966), The Night of the Generals (1967), Funny Girl (1968), Mackenna’s Gold (1969), Juggernaut (1974), The Tamarind Seed (1974),  Funny Lady (1975), Bloodline (1979), Inchon (1981), Green Ice (1981), Top Secret (1984), Beyond Justice (1992), 13th Warrior (1999), Monsieur Ibrahim (2003) - winning a Cesar for his performance, Hidalgo (2004) and most recently Rock the Casbah (2013). He was also an accomplished World-class bridge player, and of that he said “I’d rather be playing bridge than making a bad movie.”. 

They were affectionately referred to as "The Nike Twins" back in the really old days 😆 I'll ser if I can find the truly terrifying faceswap manip someone made.

Remember when once upon a time they shared a clothing sponsorship so they get to have extra 'involuntary' hang out times in Nike events aside from the ATP promotions, council meetings, matches, and oh the 100 TIMES THEY NEED TO SEE EACH OTHER DAILY??

I hope you realize that in real life, Satan is merely using you for his sick and disgusting sexual fantasies and the worst thing is, is that you're not even aware of it and you're enjoying it. He likes to toy with the minds of both men and women when they should horrified and disgusted as to being used and abused in such a way. Angels and demons may do this to people, but never the Lord as he doesn't abuse his children. I hope 1 day you'll be able to seek him out.

1. This hardly english and I am not sure I understand it all. Angels and Demons do what now?!

2. How do you know what I do and do not believe? I never speak religion on Tumblr. My friends knows but it is not something I shout to the public cause I rather not be haunted by religious nuts aka you. 

3. Why are you preaching to me? What did I do to derserve a long speech about the “real” Satan? I don’t write Lucifer fics!

Have a nice night anon and go preach somewhere else. I do not need saving!

My son is not synthetic

In approximately 9-weeks time I’m going to become a father. This weekend will mark week 29 of the pregnancy, and due to its specifics, labor is likely to be induced around week 38. If all goes to plan, before the end of May I’m going to be solely responsible for the life of a beautiful baby boy. I’m fortunate. In spite of the absurd lies told by society about masculinity, the instinct of fatherhood It’s the culmination of over 18-months of planning, and some extreme good fortune. It is of immense importance to me, it is not an anaemic thing, it is not a subordinate or inconsequential thing. I’m fortunate because for many gay men there is no way to easily realize the desire to be a parent. Unsurprisingly, and contrary to the picture of commodification painted by Domenico Dolce, there is no easy solution for a man wanting to become a father, where the old fashioned way is not an option. There are no uterus shops, no egg banks that we can go to, and in my country it’s even illegal to pay for surrogacy. For many men, therefore, adoption is the only option, and given the complexity of the adoption system, not to mention what was until recently open hostility to gay men, and particularly single gay men, adopting (hostility that Dolce verbalises in his recent contributions), often that option is no option at all. I am fortunate because I have a very close female friend who has spared me all of that, a gay friend who loves and values me enough to want to offer me an opportunity at something I had given up on.

My son was conceived by IVF using donor eggs. For the last 28 and a bit weeks he has been gestating away in squirmy, kicky happiness, and in 9-weeks time he’s going to come into this vast, incredible, complicated world and his entire life is going to be dependent on me. Everything he’s going to need, is going to be my responsibility: feeding and cleaning, nursing when he’s sick, boundaries when he’s acting out; toys, stimulation, education; he’s going to need to be shown how he can contribute to the world, how he can enjoy it, how he can live his life in it. Above all, he’s going to need the unconditional, unswerving love of a parent. And in that, he will be absolutely no different to all of the other children that come into this world, however they are conceived.

Nothing about him, therefore, and despite Dolce’s assertions, is synthetic. He is a real person. He has intrinsic value, and he has value to me, and to his mother, and to his wider family, and to the people who come to be his friends, to the woman or man who’ll one day be his lover. None of that is synthetic. None of that is less just because he was conceived by an egg “from a catalogue” and nurtured in the uterus of a woman who has had no sexual relationship with his father. His conception was no less an act of love, simply because his parents didn’t consummate a romantic relationship. The mere fact that we went to such extremes to bring him into existence is the exemplar of an act of love. Unlike in the case of some children conceived the “traditional” way, no child born in this manner is born for any other reason than love. No child born this way is unwanted, accidental, forced. Who is Domenico Dolce or Stefano Gabbana to say that the act of love that led to my son’s conception is a poorer kind of love, is an unworthy kind of love, is a less valuable kind of love than between a straight man and a straight woman? My love for my son is as fierce as any emotion I have ever felt; it isn’t a second place love. If his mother and I don’t love each other as a straight man and a woman might, what does it matter? I dare say our relationship of mutual respect and friendship will endure longer and be more productive than many marriages, and if anyone doubts the statistical fragility of straight relationships, I invite them to take a look at the divorce statistics for North America and Western Europe, or come spend a day with me in the Family Law Courts.

Western society has come a long way in a short period of time, and being gay doesn’t have the stigma that it used to have. But that doesn’t mean that it’s “easy”. There are still places in the world where they want to murder me just for being gay, places where I’ll be imprisoned, or whipped, or stoned, or hung, or thrown off a rooftop just because of who I fall in love with. There are still places in the West where I’d be called a pervert, or told I was disgusting, or that I was going to hell because God hates gays. There are still far too many places where people would call me “fag” or “homo” to my face, without knowing the first thing about me, except my sexuality. There are places where the majority believe I should never be allowed to have a family of my own, I shouldn’t be allowed to get married, I shouldn’t be allowed to be a father. Places where people think it’s perfectly okay to deny me the most fundamental, primal desires that most (albeit not all) human beings have: to be loved, to love, to have a family, to be a parent.

None of that is okay, but you get used to it. You don’t tolerate it, but you get used to it. After all, it’s a message, in one form or another, that I’ve heard since the day I was born, and sometimes from those closest to me. And, even now, that kind of stupid, evil homophobia isn’t the only obstacle I face. Even now, today, in 21st century Britain, there are obstacles I have to negotiate simply to be a parent, to be a father. Social policies that seek to restrict parenthood to couples, which put a limit on surrogacy and babies born by IVF. Laws which completely subordinate my rights to my son to the good will of his mother: I have no power to enforce the agreement I have with my friend, I have no inherent legal right to my child, in the same way that she has. If our friendship falls apart, my only recourse is the long, prohibitively expensive march through Family Law Courts that are weighed to favor the rights of my friend (regardless of her actual genetic relationship to my son), and which will likely facilitate whatever unreasonable behavior she might possibly choose to indulge. This, the archaic sentiment of a society simultaneously indulging oblique misogyny and explicit hypocrisy. But again, while none of that is okay, it’s something I’m used to, sufficiently used to take a calculated risk, to act on the trust and affection I place in my friend. Homophobia, bizarre quirks of sexism, I can cope with. I’m used to that.

What I find hard to cope with, however, is such nakedly stupid and vicious bigotry from within the LGBT community itself. I would expect such intentionally cruel comments from the usual suspects of the fanatical (“Christian”) right; I would not expect them from two luminaries of the LGBT community. I would not expect such idiotic, consistently disproven assertions as they have expressed: “The only family is the traditional one,” says Dolce. Whose tradition? Biblical tradition? Which one? The traditions in the Gospel? The traditions in Leviticus? Exodus? In Genesis? Or do you mean white European tradition? Then what of all the non-white European traditions that don’t look like yours? What about the countless traditions of countless non-white cultures extant in the world today that look nothing like your concept of a traditional family?  ”A child needs a mother and a father. I could not imagine my childhood without my mother. I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother,” says Gabanna. Really? Firstly, that’s both an argument from ignorance and an argument from incredulity, and therefore a logical fallacy and therefore invalid; and secondly, your beliefs are completely irrelevant to fact. And the facts are these: No reputable sociological or psychological study conducted on children of gay couples (or gay singletons, for that matter) in the last decade, have shown any direct causation between the number or genders of parents and the wellbeing of their children. In fact, and to really put the knife in here, the children of gay parents tend to be, on average, smarter, happier and healthier than those of straight couples. So, not only is the argument invalid as a logical fallacy, it’s also simply wrong in fact. That it is an argument made by those who ought to know better makes it even worse.

And, there can be no argument that Dolce and Gabanna, of all people, should know better. I indulge a stereotype perhaps, but I struggle to believe that they are completely insulated from other gay people in light of their chosen profession; and they are also clearly smart and successful people, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that they should be quite capable of weighing the arguments on both sides, and concluding - as anyone with a brain and a moral compass has done - that the argument against gay families raising children is discredited, amoral garbage, and has no place in civilised society, much less coming out of the mouths of two gay men who should be leading the call for equality. It’s their failure of responsibility that is as unacceptable as the content of their convictions. Rather than using their influence in the public eye to advocate for - or at the very least, to support - the rights of gay families, they have instead given succour to the very homophobia that feeds the various irrational and discriminatory laws that seek to deny queer men and women the right to a family life, a right that should be inalienable for all. I don’t know what informs such convictions, whether it’s gross stupidity or a form of internalised self loathing, and I don’t much care; I do care about the words they have chosen, I care about what they have said about my son, and my family, I care about what message that sends to LGBTQ men and women, girls and boys, the world over; and I care that they have singularly failed to live up to their obligations as gay men with a public platform.

My son is not synthetic. My family is not synthetic. I am not a lesser parent because I’m not in a relationship with a woman, or because I’m - more or less - raising my child alone. How dare you, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabanna, say such offensive, hateful, deceitful, ignorant things about me and my family, and families like ours. How dare you. And how dare you seek to shield yourself from criticism by playing the martyr, by asserting freedom of speech and decrying all who call you on your foul, stupid, bizarre moral illiteracy, as fascists. There’s no fascism here, only the well earned calumny for a pair of ignorant, self loathing men, who lack the imagination or the moral courage or the intelligence to crawl out of their received archaic attitudes to family. You chose to put those words out there, and now you must suffer the consequences of them. That’s not bullying, it’s just quid pro quo.

Very well written. As a fellow Northern European, I recognize these sentiments all too well. We have a conservative government right now, but by US (Republican) standards they'd be regarded as moderate, even centrist. There's a part of me that wants to laugh at Trump, because he's like a cartoon villain, but the laughter gets stuck in my throat at the thought of him actually coming to power, and what it means in a wider context – if he's able to amass this support, what does that imply about USA as a nation? And what will the consequences be? Comedian David Mitchell described him well: "He’s built a campaign from gaffes alone. It’s like he’s found a way to make an incredibly strong suit of armour entirely out of chinks."

Those of us who can’t vote in the US presidential elections, but who are nevertheless indirectly but significantly affected by it, like to laugh at Trump. We like to point across the Atlantic, and shake our heads in incredulity that such an odious man, promoting such regressive, insular, arbitrary, hateful politics, could possibly be in the running. After all, there is nothing in the mainstream politics of north western Europe that is so far to the right as the current Republican Party; and if there was, we would write them off as fascists and consign them to whatever ugly, unpleasant, occasionally problematic hole they currently inhabit. We most certainly have anything like Trump. These two things - the horror show that is the GOP, and it’s caped, befanged arch villain, in what we consider a peer Enlightenment nation - inform our amusement and ridicule.

But it’s really not funny. There’s a reason why, in this part of the world, Trump’s politics would be considered the borderlands of fascism. It’s not just the breathtaking xenophobia; it’s all the rest, the savage economic politics, the poor hate, the homophobia, the weird obsession with guns and religion (which we just cannot comprehend), the warmongering, the sexism, the willingness to abandon the poor and the sick to poverty and death. And these are not simply cursory instincts, but deep, abiding, utter and as severe as it is possible to be. Trump is the figurehead of this movement, a movement that has significant numbers right across the US. This is not a tiny, unimportant fringe movement. This is a political movement that has a serious chance of winning the White House.

That’s not funny. That’s not something we should roll our eyes at. It’s terrifying, because it indicates that the problem lays not with Trump, but with some intrinsic quality of American culture. The most powerful nation in the world, the leader of the free world, a principal defender of Enlightenment values, is seriously considering handing the levers of power to a political movement that at its best an uncaring, truth hating, autocratic plutocracy and at worst a savage, illiberal theocracy.

None of us should be indifferent to that. We certainly shouldn’t be laughing.

I just said this to ahillmadeof42dogs , but I decided to also make a post. Honestly sometimes it really does feel like the writers are ruining the show on purpose. I think it’s more likely that they just don’t care at all, and are doing whatever will bring in the most viewers in their opinion. Which duh, it’s a business, but the lack of deference to the integrity of the story and characters that were set up for 6+ is still insulting and sad. Supernatural has lasted so long because of it’s loyal fanbase, overhauling the show is a big “fuck you” to that fan base.

Losing the blue collar Americana vibe, brightening the show, subtly changing up the wardrobe, giving them apparent endless funds, as we never see them hustle or scam. Ripping the boys apart, having Dean nod along to a song about Mary’s death, taunting us with the fake samulet and then immediately getting rid of that too, the boys staying separate even when they leave the bunker, Dean doing “Bitch” “Jerk” with everybody except Sam, now someone random dude being allowed to call Sam “Sammy”? Switching out urban legends for fairy-tales and straight up fiction (Oz). All this shit on top of the lack of scary villains and general OOC-ness? What’s left of the original show?!

The RNA intern who actively stans Fedal every chance they get deserves more mention. 👍Not all heroes wear capes.

Okay folks today has been a mess, let's put it all together in one place

Roger tweeted about suggesting ATP/WTA merger around noon bst

Rafael replied this (because they're married and they think as one)

Rafa's museum obviously ships Rafa and Roger and supports whatever pursuits they have

Apparently these merger talks have been happening since January, when Rafa Roger power couple brought it to ATP. The new chairman Gaudenzi seems to support the idea (as per Stan/Chris Evert insta coctails)

It's all been secret and should have stayed secret but Roger's incorrigible

So basically we're in the middle of a tennis revolution, god bless comandante Federer!

Meanwhile its been announced that Björn Borg's son Leo will start training in Rafa's academy

On the unrelated news the newly outed anti vaxxer Novaxx D. will have a chat on insta with some pink crystals/vegan guru, so there's that.

Also comandante Federer tweeted me again, we're basically besties at this point.

What a trip