YOU ARE THE BEST!

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Classroom Culture, Authority, and Data’s Use in Defiant Youth

This upcoming week I have an interview at this awesome company up in Providence, that uses design-thinking to innovate business modeling. At least that’s my interpretation of it. I’ve looked at a bunch of firms that do this sort of work but I’m incredibly drawn to this one in particular, and it’s because of their emphasis on social impact and transformative agency.

And–best of all–I’d be focusing on education!

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Educating the Ignorant on the Majesty of Ursula, Sea Witch and Gay Icon

Growing up, I thought Disney’s The Little Mermaid was about Ursula. I thought the movie, though oddly focused on that emaciated red-headed hoarder*, was actually a film about a business-savvy octopus lady’s dream of political conquest, and the unfair regulations she was forced to overcome. **

*(This isn’t thin shaming so much as it is a response to Ariel’s most famous frame, in which she is grotesquely disproportionate. This is compared to the rest of the movie, where the animators did not render her a bobble head).

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April is LGBT Month! #LGBTApril

Fighting Dreamer

Laura (of Laura Plus Books) and Cayce (of Fighting Dreamer) are doing this great thing called LGBT Month this April (#LGBTApril), and I’m participating!

I mean, I guess I’m always participating, because every month  is LGBT Month for me, but it’s more fun to do these sort of things when people are making cute banners for you, and when you’ve got a tribe bristling with restless inspiration and do-good vibes.

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The Importance of Gay Heroes That Don’t Die

Brokeback Mountain

There are many tropes. Busty, blonde damsels. Brittle, brunette mistresses. Feisty, red-headed warriors. Alternatively: White-Male-Hero-With-Somnolent-Eyes-Yet-Aerodynamic-Cheek-Bones vs. Anything. Or the ever-plotless vengeance against a villain with no real motivation for villainy save an inscrutable need to inconvenience Our Hero. We know these tropes well. They’re practically family. If one came to your door and asked to come in, you might check for a judicious nod from your mother, but you’d open that door.

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Useless Magic

So a while ago I was brainstorming useless magic powers with a friend (this has since turned into a discussion topic between multiple friends of mine, a trend of which is as simultaneously enchanting as it is distressing). I thought I’d make a list of my favorites here, you know, because I’m compulsive and delusional and think this will add value to the internet. Feel free to leave a suggestion or six!

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Ryan vs. New York City: A Story of Trash, Bingo, and Self-Assuredness

(No, I’m not in the photo. I’m taking the photo. Stop creepin’)

I spent the past few days in New York and I wasn’t in complete agony!

Now, before I go further, I want to reject the notion that I blindly despise NYC because I went to school in Boston. Honestly, I’m shocked you’d even go and make that assumption. It really makes me questions how comfortable I am talking with you. What other prejudices are you projecting onto me? You, my reader, are probably a very paranoid and miserable person.

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Book Review: Proxy by Alex London

Alex London’s Proxy is probably one of the coolest concepts I’ve encountered in a while. I feel like most dystopian societies resemble one another in their foundation of a oppressive system, but rarely am I as captivated by a dystopia as I was with Proxy. Reading this book was an act of investigation, not only because I wanted to find out what happened next but because the world of Proxy is created with such vivid detail, and with such sound world-building, that it feels nearly tactile. There are some coercive plot devices that make the book feel a tad unstable, and sure, I wasn’t really swayed by either the romance or the twists, but these are easy to overlook when the rest of Proxy was so good.

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16 Essentials for Succeeding as A Writer in 2014

1. Crippling Self-Doubt Cutely Coupled With Billowing Anxiety

2. Wool Socks (trust me)

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Ryan vs. The Driveway: A Story of Love and Underdog Triumph

I feel like the best way I can describe the weather of Connecticut right now is that it is essentially behaving like I behave on a bad date: abysmally, in the hopes of scaring off company without actually having to put in the effort of articulating a dismissal. It’s almost as though Connecticut (and yeah I guess these other states up here) is actively trying to confront humanity over the long-ago idiocy that spurred us to colonize this far north.

Read moreRyan vs. The Driveway: A Story of Love and Underdog Triumph