Cowards.

I scare men.







GOOD.

Queen Ranavalona

Rah

Nah

Vah

Lo

Nuh.

Ranavalona III, last queen of Madagascar. She ruled from July 30, 1883, to February 28, 1897, in a reign marked by ongoing and ultimately futile efforts to resist the colonial designs of the government of France.The Merina kings and queens who ruled over greater Madagascar in the 19th century were the descendants of a long line of hereditary Merina royalty, stretching back in oral traditions to such sources as the first human inhabitants.

Ranavalona II, Queen of Madagascar, was lying on her deathbed; the crown was being prepared to pass to the young 21 year old Princess Razafindrahety. On the 13th of July 1883, Queen Ranavalona II had passed into the next life. Her niece was subsequently proclaimed her successor under the name Ranavalona III. Her coronation took place on her 22nd birthday. She was formally proclaimed Her Majesty Ranavalona III, By the grace of God and the Will of the People, Queen of Madagascar, and Protectoress of the laws of the Nation. 

The new queen was described in the American press: “She is a little above the ordinary height and has delicate features, her complexion is a little darker than that of most of her subjects. She appears quite timid and she presides well at the solemn functions of her court.”

As agreed to under the conditions of the earlier Aristocratic Revolution, Ranavalona III consented to marry her prime minister her significantly senior Rainilaiarivony, who had been married previously to Queen Rasoherina and Queen Ranavalona II. The marriage was, of course, purely ceremonial, the couple having to real intimate feeling towards one another (there was doubt if their marriage had ever been consummated).

The French it seemed decided that now was the proper time for annexation. In December 1883, France formally declared war on Madagascar. This war became known as the Franco-Hova War or the Franco-Malagasy War. 

Ranavalona III appealed to the now peaceful America for assistance by sending the then President Grover Cleveland gifts including silk akotofahana cloths, an ivory pin and a hand-woven basket. But the United States took no interest in asserting Madagascar’s independence and seemed to (morally) support the French having recently overthrown Hawaii’s time honored monarchy.

After a series of temporarily successful treaties between Madagascar and France, France launched a full scale invasion of the island. Six-thousand French soldiers lost their lives to disease as they gradually moved inland towards the capital. In September 1895 after nearly three days of being bombarded with heavy artillery Ranavalona III admitted defeat. On January 1st, 1896, Madagascar was formally annexed and declared a French Colony.

At first little changed in Ranavalona III’s life. She still held court and continued to live at the royal palace in Madagascar. But fearing that she would stir rebellion among the people it was decided that the ex-Queen Ranavalona III be deported to Reunion Island, off Madagascar’s coast. Despite France’s best efforts to keep the transferring quiet, a crowd of French onlookers jeered and shouted as the boat docked at Reunion Island, angry at the queen for the loss of French lives during France’s campaign to occupy Madagascar. While on the island Ranavalona III’s niece Razafinandriamanitra gave birth at fifteen to the child of a French soldier who raped the young Princess. The child proved to be a girl, christened in a Catholic ceremony as Marie-Louise in the hopes of appeasing the French. If Ranavalona III were to ever retake the throne, Marie-Louise would become her heir.

After two years it was decided to move the Queen and her household to Algeria. Ranavalona hoped to continue to Paris but was disappointed when she was denied entrance. When she arrived in Algeria she proclaimed in tears “Who is certain of tomorrow? Only yesterday I was a queen; today I am simply an unhappy, broken-hearted woman.”

Luckily Ranavalona seemed to be well accepted among the Algerian elite, being constantly invited to parties and cultural events.

After several years in Algeria she was allowed to visit Paris which she did six times over the course of her lifetime before WWI broke out. Ranavalona III died suddenly May 23rd 1917 in Algeria having never returned to Madagascar despite two formal requests in 1910 and 1912. 

She was buried among her ancestors in her familial tomb in Madagascar. Her niece Marie-Louise was recognized as the Queen’s heir apparent. Having married once and becoming a nurse (being awarded the Legion of Honor for her medical services during World War II), Mari-Louise died January 18th 1948 leaving no descendants and was buried in France.

Source

Pick-up Artists: Women on Women

I had a dream this morning that I was standing with a bunch of girls, waiting for a famous singer to arrive. We were leaning on wall, and a famous female singer comes out of the room we were waiting in front of. She sees one girl, tells her how pretty she is, then tries to kiss her. The girl covered her mouth with her hand before the singer's lips could touch her. She didn't want to be kissed by a woman because she wasn't gay.

The whole thing was weird. I don't know why I dreamt such a thing except that it perhaps mirrors my own sentiment as of late. A few days ago, a very aggressive bull-dyke woman hit on me. She was worse than most guys. She creeped me out, asking if I "wanted to get finger-popped."

This:

+

=

How I felt.

*Sidenote: And who still says "Finger-popped?" I haven't heard that in a thousand years. #yuck

I was grossed out by the experience. If I did wanna get finger-popped, it certainly wouldn't be from a woman who looka lika man. I can only wonder what happened in her life that made her so determined NOT to be feminine. I love my femininity. I would never want to hide or shun it. I embrace my masculine sides, but not in a sexual way.

Or wait, maybe I do a little bit. *TeeHee*

The video below is of a woman trying to pick up other women. Some are shocked, some are like sure, and some play the "I have a boyfriend" card. In any case, not one time did the 'picker-upper' use the word "finger-popped."

Thinking about that gross woman-man, I'm still like

But whatevs.


Ladies, what would you do if an attractive woman on the street randomly stopped you and asked you for a date? (and you thought no one was looking). Would you give her your number? Would you try her out? Tell the truth, no judgments here. In the meantime,

Roll tape! -WTS

52, and Still Working the Streets

It's been said that "pimpin ain't easy."

Well, hoe'in is harder. 

Barbara Terry has been a prostitute for more than 30 years. One can only guess the mileage accrued on her vagillac-cadillac. Disease, shame, fear and just the overall element that would pick up a street hooker, one can only imagine why she chose to stay in that field for so long. No judgment, but with realistic occupational hazards that include dangerous men, rape, murder and jail, surely there must've been safer ways to pay the bills. The good news is that she survived. She was always her own boss, and even managed to buy a house and put two children through college.

Sounds like some damn good hoe'in. 

By COREY KILGANNON

LIKE many single mothers, Barbara Terry, 52, scrounged for baby sitters and leaned on her own mother while raising her four children and working the night shift.

But Ms. Terry is a prostitute who has worked nearly her entire adult life on the streets of Hunts Point, in the Bronx.

“When they were old enough to understand, I would tell them the truth,” said Ms. Terry, whose daughter and three sons are now grown. “I’d say, ‘This is how I’m supporting you.’ For me, it’s a business, a regular job.”

Yes, she said, she was arrested more than 100 times, sometimes landing at Rikers Island for several days or weeks — but that never deterred her from returning to this area of industrial warehouses and repair shops off the Bruckner Expressway.

By day, heavy industrial traffic fills the streets. By night, the traffic comes for other reasons. Years back, this prostitutes’ “track” bustled with working women, and Ms. Terry was front and center in garter belts and high heels and fur coats.

“It was beautiful out here then,” she said. “There was so much money out here, you wouldn’t believe it.”

The area is less active now than in the 1990s, when HBO made its “Hookers at the Point” documentaries, in which Ms. Terry appeared under a street name, Cleo, and flashed a youthful, toothy smile.

Those great teeth are gone, lost to diabetes, Ms. Terry said. She mostly works days now and dresses more conservatively. “Most women don’t make it to my age out here,” she said. “I call myself the last of the survivors.”

While it is impossible to corroborate all the details of an eventful life in a profession often synonymous with drug abuse, violence and tragic outcomes, the Correction Department confirmed that Ms. Terry had been jailed many times for prostitution over her career.

Today, Ms. Terry lives nearby in the Bronx, but she hopes to retire in a year or so to a house she bought upstate, she said on Tuesday at her usual spot on Whittier Street. She had a supply of condoms in her purse, a plastic cup of vodka and orange juice in her hand and a cellphone for steady customers.

Those customers, dates or tricks, can be lawyers, city workers, husbands, fathers or truckers heading in and out of the sprawling Hunts Point food markets.

Then there are the psychos. All the women out here have had friends attacked or cut or dumped dead somewhere. Last year, a man was arrested, and recently sentenced, for terrorizing prostitutes in the Bronx with a razor.

“I’ve survived because God was with me,” Ms. Terry said. “Every Sunday, my mother and grandmother prayed for me out here.”

She has shown younger workers the ropes: how to jump in a Dumpster to hide from the police, and how to stay alive. First, never enter a car with more than one person in it, and never let someone drive you out of the area. Get your money up front — Ms. Terry charges $50 or $100 — and try to work with a buddy.

“You look for weapons, you check the back seat, and you go by your vibes,” she said. “If they look strange, you stay away.”

There have been close calls, like the time a trucker locked her in and tried to rape her.

“I never did drugs and never worked for a pimp for protection,” she said. “What protection? If I’m in someone’s car, about to die, ain’t no pimp in there helping me.”

“I never carried a blade,” said Ms. Terry, who grew up in the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn before her family moved to North Carolina for her teenage years. “My fists were my weapons. I learned to fight growing up with nine younger brothers.”

Ms. Terry said she completed two years of college, training to be a medical lab technician, but by the time she was 21, her husband had left her and she had two children to support. All she knew about prostitutes was what she saw on “Starsky & Hutch,” but she knew about the Hunts Point action and came out on her own. She admits she became addicted to the stimulation of the street life.

“I love the excitement of coming out here and seeing all these beautiful people I know,” she said. “Even my dates are a comfort. This place has made me strong. It keeps you young.”

But she has slowed down. A year ago, she was in a bad accident and was hospitalized with a broken jaw and neck injuries. Her children, two of whom she says she put through college, beg her to get off the street.

“I’m the mother, so they can’t say anything,” she said. “When I’m ready to get off, I’ll get off.”

Not a career I would advise, but some women work hard for the money. A little too hard. 

-WTS

Source 1
Source 2

900 Years Later.. a Kiss

900-Year-Old Coded Viking Message Carved on Wood Fragment Finally Solved..   It Says “Kiss Me”


At the end of the day. Or decade. Or century. A kiss can last lifetimes.. -WTS

Photo by Jonas Nordby via forskning.no

For the past several years researchers have been trying to crack a Viking rune alphabet known as Jötunvillur, a perplexing code dating back to the 11th or 12th century that’s been found in some 80 inscriptions including the scratched piece of wood found above. Recently runologist (!) Jonas Nordby from the University of Oslo managed to crack the code and discovered the secret message etched into this particular 900-year-old object reads “Kiss me.” Via Medievalists.net:

For the jötunvillur code, one would replace the original runic character with the last sound of the rune name. For example, the rune for ‘f’, pronounced fe, would be turned into an ‘e’, while the rune for ‘k’, pronounced kaun, became ‘n’.

“It’s like solving a puzzle,” said Nordby to the Norwegian website forskning.no. “Gradually I began to see a pattern in what was apparently meaningless combinations of runes.”

However, those thinking that the coded runes will reveal deep secrets of the Norse will be disappointed. The messages found so far seem to be either used in learning or have a playful tone. In one case the message was ‘Kiss me’. Nordby explains “We have little reason to believe that rune codes should hide sensitive messages, people often wrote short everyday messages.”

The act of coding secret messages appears to have been a leisure activity amongst the Vikings, as some of the other translated inscriptions turned out to be playful taunts at the person doing the decoding. The story was originally reported on forskning.no. (via Erik Kwakkel, Neatorama)


For further information you can see more the article in an English version on ScienceNordic.

See For Yourself

Take The Oath..

Happy Monday.

Is Having Kids Really All That Great?

I’m currently reading Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores The Truth About Parenting and Happiness by Feministing founder and four-time author Jessica Valenti.

I had been eyeing Why Have Kids? after reading a 2012 Daily Beast review, and am happy to finally sink my teeth into the book.

Nearly finished, I’ve been enjoying the book immensely. Though many of Valenti’s points are rehashed over and over, she lends a thought-provoking read. Whether or not you agree with her observations (she’s had a lot of controversial ones over the years), you can’t help but respect that she’s one of the few who has publicly asked, “Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Now, wait a minute! Is having kids all that it’s cracked up to be?”

As a person who is terrified of having children due to: 1.) anxiety issues 2.) fears of giving up my freedom and 3.) being an only child of divorced parents, Valenti is able to articulate my thoughts and then some about my concerns of becoming a parent. She cites numerous studies showing that individual’s overall happiness goes down after having kids, though she’s quick to point out that it’s not the kids themselves that make people unhappy- it’s due to what modern parenting has become. Gone are the days where people birthed children for extra hands on the farm and instead, as Valenti points out, people are having kids to complete them, to have someone unconditionally love them, and in the fear of making sure this precious product of ours is the most perfect it can be, we stress over every single detail to the point where we neglect ourselves.

I’ve seen this type of parenting firsthand. Mothers who buy their children state of the art strollers, enlist the help of personal chefs to cook organic baby food and who breastfeed or sleep with their babies well past their toddler years (Valenti goes into great lengths about Attachment Parenting).

These are the same mothers I’ve seen have public nervous breakdowns over small details because they are insanely stressed out. Stressed because every single aspect of their child-rearing has to be perfect and when it’s not, everything falls apart. One mom in particular fell to the ground, screaming and crying, when her two year-old daughter tripped on the sidewalk. The two year-old was absolutely fine, but the mother wasn’t. This is the same mother who would grab her child and shield it away from you if you coughed. 

On the reverse side, I’ve seen parents, much like my high school friend Steve, whose parenting I highly respect, who have a hands-on, but relaxed approach to parenting. His 2 1/2 year-old daughter has grown up running around their urban farm, picking up chickens, helping Dad with the garden, running around naked, falling down and getting back up with no fear whatsoever. I will say this: my friend’s 2 1/2 year-old is way more social and thoughtful than the previously mentioned child.

As a childless person it is not my place to judge which style of parenting is better, but all I know is that the children and parents in setups where the children don’t consume every single second of the day AND every ounce of mental space and energy seem much more relaxed, and therefore happy.

Valenti has received criticism for her book, as have the individuals she cites who have also questioned modern day parenting. She speculates that mothers who may have an adverse reaction to what she and others are saying is due to insecurity. Though I did not have an adverse reaction to her words, it did make me think about my own insecurities, my fears of being an anxious mother. Who wouldn’t want their children to be the most absolutely perfect creation on this planet? Who wouldn’t want to feed their kids homemade organic baby food? Who wouldn’t fall apart if they saw your precious cargo fall on the sidewalk? Who doesn’t want to strictly breastfeed? Baby wear? Buy expensive strollers and toys that we know won’t kill their babies?

I highly recommend this read for mothers and non-mothers alike. What I took away from the book is that Valenti is not trying to scare non-mothers out of having children or shun attached mothers, but rather to have us rethink modern day parenting. If we don’t, we’re going to gravely stress out ourselves, our marriages and most importantly, our children.

So, people with kids, tell me: Is having kids worth it?

This is a book review. Feel free to give your answers.

I want kids myself..

Most days. 

On the days where I see a parent struggling not to feel humiliated because of their tantrum-ing child.. 

I do have my apprehensions. "How would I have handled that? Will that be me? What if my kid is an asshole like that kid?"

Stuff like that.

I have friends who wished they'd have waited. I have friends whose lives revolve solely around their children. Children are parents' children, NOT their mates. Sons cannot substitute for husbands. (that's another post though). 

I guess beauty is in the eye of the Baby-Holder.

Expensive childcare, new sneakers, haircuts, little league, dance lessons, backtalk and worst of all,

Helping kids with their "New Math" homework..

Is having kids all that great?

Sourcery

"Jerk Ribs": Kelis

I have to admit, I love looking at her way more than I love listening to her.

At least on this one.

Madonna.

Grace Jones.

Rihanna.

None are great singers but ALL are legendary icons. 

Kelis is no different.

"Jerk Ribs."

I mean, look at this interview. How can you not love her?

Kelis: Why She'll Never Talk Bad About Nas

WTS Loves Kelis.

Fin.