rdreamwalker:

asilookatthemoon:

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog.

I feel like I’ve been preparing for this image all my life.

The internet is over, everyone can go home

It’s just as beautiful as I always imagined.

My life is complete.

Life is over as we know it

Considering one in nine Americans work in, for or in stores ranging from the corner grocery to big box behemoths, this should be great news. And it would be – if these jobs paid anything resembling a living wage. But all too many of them don’t.

Actor Tom Cruise might have described Wal-Mart as a “role model” at last week’s annual shareholder meeting, but that’s only true if your definition of success is simply keeping people off the unemployment rolls.

If, however, you value things like a middle class salary, the potential for upward growth, or even something as basic as predictable and reliable work hours, the increasing importance of retail positions to our national economy is nothing to cheer about.

This week’s two-day strike by janitors against Target stores near the company’s Minneapolis corporate headquarters is just the latest evidence that that one of the United States’ fastest growing job categories is less than lucrative for a growing number of its workers. Among their issues: they are paid $8.50 an hour.

The Target janitors are not alone. Limited strikes against retailers ranging from Wal-Mart to Simply Fashion have taken place across the country over the past several months. In New York City, a 2012 survey by the Retail Action Project found that half of retail workers – the men and women who stock shelves, fold clothes, assist customers with their questions, ring up the sales and mop the aisles after the doors have closed for the day – earn less than $10 an hour. According to the progressive think tank Demos, the average cashier earns $18,500 a year, while a salesperson brings home a princely $21,000 a year.

If you are wondering how people get by with these wages, there is an easy answer: they all too often don’t. The Retail Action Project’s report discovered that a third of the retail workers they studied were receiving at least some form of public assistance from the government to help them get by. Many lacked health insurance.

“Some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” — Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes (via larmoyante)

Lucy Liu for The Edit (May 2013)

qinni:

“ I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it. Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you.”
- Excerpt from the Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

Done in watercolor.

_{My Sketchbook Project | My deviantArt}

aliciaaadanielle:

particleb0red:

(Credit: hxdbzxy via Shutterstock/Salon)

shouts out to them

It’s okay to have feelings for boys and girls. It’s okay to be attracted to both. It’s okay to be attracted to both and have more feelings for one. It’s okay to not be sure. It’s okay to be confused. It’s okay to think you’re one thing and then realize you’re another. You should be told that it’s okay. You should be shown that it’s okay.

So why do I write bisexual characters? Because there are still people who tell me not to, and I don’t think that’s okay. Because some people warn me that it might piss off my fellow lesbians, and I don’t think that’s okay. Because my bisexual friends feel under-represented in fiction, and I don’t think that’s okay.

fairytalesfor20somethings:

The Three Little Pigs each tried different methods for finding a job after college. The First Little Pig perfected his résumé, the Second Little Pig applied to every place he could find, and the Third Little Pig opened another pint of Ben & Jerry’s and cried watching old Nicktoons.