Real question: did backpacks not exist in the 70’s?
I think they were just poor
The backpack started on the west coast and migrated towards the east pretty slowly between the late 60s and early 80s. They were originally intended for hikers and other outdoors-y types, and were marketed at hiking retailers, but one of them happened to be connected to a university in Washington. Since it was so rainy over there, people started using them for books, the idea caught on, spread, and eventually backpacks became a necessity as opposed to a novel idea.
confession: in the Russian alphabet, the letter х is pronounced like a hard h so whenever I see a phrase like “Sorry for your loss xoxo”, instead of hugs and kisses my brain always briefly interprets it as "Sorry for your loss HOHOHO" like some jolly Santa Schadenfreude laughter there
let’s stop seeing sex as the biggest thing you can do to show someone you love them
everyone knows that the real way to show someone you love them is to find them a really cool rock. not a diamond. just a neat rock that you think they will enjoy
Not a rock THE ARKENSTONE
Why just one rock Why not three Why not the silmarils
Cléopâtre-Diane de Mérode was a French dancer of the Belle Époque. She has been referred to as the “first real celebrity icon” and the “first modern celebrity”. She was also the first woman whose photographic image, due in particular to photographers Nadar and Léopold-Émile Reutlinger, was distributed worldwide.
In co-ordination with Neo Monster Island, Godzilla Fans United, Ghost Godzilla, Godzilla Inspiration, Gamera, and Mothra fb pages we are taking a break to share a mental health day awareness post.
Does this have anything directly to do with Godzilla? No, but we feel that it’s important for us all to step back and do some self care. If you were looking for a sign…we need you to know that you matter. You are valid. You don’t have to shoulder the worlds problems, especially your own problems that are overwhelming. You aren’t the only one who has felt like this. There are people with shared experiences. It is okay to ask for help. It is a sign of strength and good character to do so; please reach out if you need it.
Arrived at work this morning, checking messages and then I go into the Swedish newspaper “Aftonbladet” to discover to my horror that a person I wrote about in an earlier post has been shot dead in a gang related incident.
Einar, the so called Swedish wunderkind of mumble-rap, has sadly left the earth too soon in the suites of a lifestyle I wasn’t sure was real. His song text as far as I understood it was at one point about drugs and criminality, but in a way to make people open up their eyes that even “blonde” swedes end up at the wrong end of the stick and wanted to make a change to their horrible world they were living in. Problem was, nobody listened.
He took the wrong turn
And if nobody listened, Einar didn’t make a change that he could have done to make his life safer, but decided staying in the same area and start flashing his jewelry, watches and the most idiotic thing of all, a bulletproof vest with the LV logo draped all over it. It seems he didn’t take the threats seriously and just mocked the people. By flashing he pissed people off, no matter if he is in a gang or not. But the worst thing he could have done was to talk about things he has never done (wrote about this in my previous post about a year ago.) or experienced. As the saying goes in the rap-circles, especially in the “gangsta-rap” genre, you don’t talk about things you’ve never done or try to imagine. It’s about being REAL and not fake. He made statements that made him into a mytho-maniac and a target at the same time, which is the worst situation to be in. He could have changed his life as soon as he had his big hit, but he decided to stay in the poor neighborhood and in the misery for those living in a lower-middle class standard. This could have been avoided if he didn’t think about himself, but helping his parents, use that money to get into a university or whatever. But with him, the money was just a way for him to get what he wanted and making himself again a target. I thought the touring would kill him for his inexperience, but the inexperience caught him where he ended, with a gun he never fired, but imagined, the false image becoming the disrespect that triggered the killer to “straight” it all out. From my point of view, these rappers behave like 3-year old toddlers with no reasoning skill, who cannot share a toy with others on the playground or to play fair. And now this will go above the rest of us musicians to try to clean ourselves up from this bad image.
Music & Drugs – The Myth
Another misconception are that musicians are using drugs on and off stage because people think they are doing it for the cool factor. From my point of view, I’ve never gotten drunk, I’ve never smoked and I would never in my wildest dreams consider drugs as a way of me becoming on the top of my game. Drugs don’t enhance my musical skills. I don’t think drugs could ever enhance my skills at all, but it could definitely change my perception of the world around me, but that’s not really a reality right?
I remember that back in the 50 to the early 90s, musicians and drugs was like “common”. Miles Davis, we all know he was addicted to some substance, but not as a music-booster. It was just as a sleep-denier during the nightly tour-bus rides which in the end messed up with his system in the end. But on stage the closest thing you would find near him would be a cigarette or 2nd hand smoke. But he was always “crisp” and clear-headed during the gigs. The drugs was just a support with all the stress and extended “safety” in case the bus-driver would fall asleep behind the well.
More and more bands today has started a cleaner lifestyle. We all remembered Nirvana, but we could see right away the stoned eyes of Kurt Kobain. The sole focus was on him and gave the illusion that the rest of the members did the same. However, I’ve felt Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stoneage has always managed to be clean even though the music is gruff, cool, punk-ish and experimental, still has structure of a comprehensive mind. For me, he has become the image every music group should display, happiness in music, interacting with fans and give the world the hope and community through his work with this amazing girl who challenged him to a drum-off during the pandemic. It brought me tears to my eyes because I thought to myself: -”Are we there now where music does not need to be stigmatized with guns and violence and not connect it to music and console-games as the common denominator?” I felt that we have reached a peak once he managed to come up with the brilliant idea of a “free concert for everyone who gets vaccinated”.
1 Gun, Several gunshots, 1 Murder
Sometimes I wonder if Sweden has any laws at all. How can people or teenagers get access to firearms in a country where only the police and the military are allowed to have for self-protection purposes? Sure, we are not as bad as the USA when it comes to gun-violence, but for me this is a big issue. Sweden must do something to make all of this shit relevant and deal with it together with raising the taxes, increase pay for people in the public sector and to let peoples savings for the future in form of pensions not to be messed with.
Gang violence have increased heavily in the last 15 years after I left Sweden. When I did hear about people getting killed in the beginning it was mostly by stabbing with knives. 5 years later guns started to become frequently in Swedish murder cases, hard to solve. Public shootings started in the last 3 years outside nightclubs and daily shootings at people sitting in cafes just to have small talk, having their days ruined and traumatized by these maniacs.
But it takes 1 gun, several gunshots to create 1 murder. The motive was obvious in this case, suspects are already on the police’s radar. The question for me has been “why?”. Anyone who did it is someone we already know, another gang, another rapper. And Einar was about to give his eyewitness account against that gang-member in court just a few days away from today. But he got silenced for tempting and flipping off the same rival who already has been in jail, awaiting a real prosecution for kidnapping and other cases of violence and even murder.
Sometimes I wonder if Sweden works at all. Read in the papers that a rape victim got 20 000 SEK in compensation while the rapist claimed he was treated unfairly, getting 840 000 SEK in his case. This is insanity, not fair. I just get horrified that people can be so blind to reason. The RAPIST should be thrown into the darkest hole without any compensation. Why is this so hard for the Swedish legal system to dodge and find some idiotic loophole when the evidence are piled up against him and he still walks away like a winner? Special case, my ass.
Paranoia is my friend
This is what I have to deal with while I go back to my country every time. Paranoia is my friend. It all starts at the airport. When I get through those doors, lots of people are waiting and even scoping out targets that they’ll try to mark and call to people waiting at the other end to ambush them. I do the only psychological thing that does bite; I look them in the eyes, standing tall, not bending over with my heavy backpack. I want them to know that I see them and it is pointless to try to even hustle me. I also decide to walk where there are cameras and security personnel around me to make it hard for them to even consider ambushing me. But that’s the thing, once I am in Sweden, I never switch off. I am in “observer” mode from the moment I land until I leave. Exhausting, but it has saved my life countless of times just to look the part.
People living in patterns feel “safe”
This is where the problem lies. When you have a schedule, same routine you start switching off your brain and not considering that nothing else where you are could turn into a war-zone with just a single bullet being fired. Most people freeze in shock, can’t move because they are STUCK in their pattern. Sweden is considered safe, but once you walk to an area and you start to see gang “colors”, or people in large groups looking the same. Sweden has become soft and it is time we start solving the problem with GUNS. Again it took another death and nobody has changed an iota about this issue.
You are comparing a verse which says a woman may as well have short hair if she doesn’t cover it to verses ordering women to cover every inch of their bodies in order to not tempt men into “harassing” them and to lower their gaze at all times – 24:31 and 33:59. Aisha narrated in Abu Dawud 32:4092 that Muhammad said when a woman reaches the age of menstruation she may only show her face and hands. Abu Dawud 2:641 Muhammad said the prayer of a woman who has reached puberty will not be accepted by Allah unless she wears a veil.
Can you name a Christian country that enforces capital punishment against women who unveil, unlike Islamic countries?
Can you name a priest that says in the words of Australian clerik Taj Din al-Hilali, “unveiled victims of public rape invited their attackers and deserve to be jailed for life as“if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it.” These scripts prove why
Islamist lawyers can gladly state that “when a girl walks about like that, it is a patriotic duty to sexually harass her and a national duty to rape her” and why Muslim immigrants are admitting they rape Western women for not dressing properly and why a refugee to Sweden was obligated to beat his 14 year-old sister with a baseball bat for refusing to wear the veil.
Council on American-Islamic Relations scholar Jamal Badawi explains that the hijab is “a command of Allah to Muslim women” and it should be “the duty of the state” to enforce it. The leading Sunni institution in the world, Al-Azhar university, made it clear that the veil is compulsory for Muslim women and it’s not open for debate. Iman Wasim Fayed
at a mosque in Washington
said “if your woman wants to remove her hijab, wants to walk on the streets, wants to do whatever she wants, she’s destroying the family structure and disobeying her husband. What do you do? First talk to them. Then put them in time out. But if they insist, then you hit them. Be gentle so you don’t let the blood come out of them.”
I wonder where he got that idea from? Oh maybe, verse 4:34 which reads “Men are in charge of women by right of what Allah has given one over the other. So righteous women are devoutly obedient. But those wives from whom you fear arrogance – first advise them, then if they persist, forsake them in bed, and finally, strike them. But if they obey you once more, seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever exalted and grand.”
Sahih Muslim 4:1038 Muhammad says a man’s prayer is invalidated equally by the presence of a woman as it is a dog or donkey. Ishaq 593 shows Muhammad handed out slave women as party gifts. Verse 33:50 shows young women and slaves were only allowed to offer themselves to Muhammad, nobody else until he decided if he wanted them or not.
Sahih Muslim 8:3309 shows Muhammad married Aisha when she was just six years old and he was 50. Her father first refused until “the Prophet” explained to him that he had no choice as this was the rules of his new religion. Sahih Bukhari 4:232 shows the little girl would have to wash semen stains out of his clothes, which left wet spots when he went to the mosque for prayers.
Sahih Bukhari 62:58 tells a story of Muhammad looking up and down at a woman who was offering herself to him and decided she was too ugly for him, so he traded her off to another man.
Sahih Bukhari 6:301 shows Muhammad would pass by women and tell them to seek forgiveness as the majority of them are dwellers of hell and said “I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. The deficiency is evident in two women being equal to the witness of one man and women can neither pray nor fast during her menses.” This is also told in Sahih Bukhari 2:28 where Muhammad says, “I was shown the hell fire and the majority of its dwellers were women who are ungrateful.”
Abu Dawud 2155 shows Muhammad telling his soldiers to pray and ask Allah to take refuge from the evil of women.
Tabari VIII:117 shows that after Muhammad and his men raided farms and killed or captured the men, they would capture farm wives and then distribute them among themselves as sex slaves.
What is the Jesus equivalence to any of this, exactly? Could you imagine Jesus doing any of the shit Muhammad pulled? This is the problem with treating religions equally, they aren’t equal, to criticize the fundamentals of Islam which very clearly are still inspiring millions of Islamists today does not call for equal criticism of another religion for the sake of it. The problem with Islam is, unlike Christianity, Islam is forbidden to evolve with the times and reform itself, so while we can say the two religions both are historically bad, only one is still inspiring its followers today to carry out jihad against the infidels and treat women like dogs. I’d be anti-Christianity too if it remained in the second century as Islam has or if it was founded by a blood-thirsty pedophile warlord whose actions of slaying anyone who mocked his made-up religion continue to inspire terrorists today.
