HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWAP!!!!!!!!

♒ January 23rd: Hunk, Adam Hagenbuch.

I was a busy little bee in the Studio last week. Here's a peek at my biggest projects!!

Happy birthday, Marsha P. Johnson! (August 24, 1945)

An influential figure in the early LGBT rights movement, Marsha P. Johnson was born in New Jersey to a working class family. Johnson first began dressing as a girl as a young age, but chose to suppress her desires and identity for many years due to bigoted harassment. After graduating high school, Johnson left home for New York City, where she finally allowed herself to come out. She began performing as a drag queen and frequenting the Stonewall Inn. She was involved in the Stonewall Uprising, though denied accounts of being one of the leaders of the rising, and continued to play a major role in the gay rights movement afterward. Johnson organized with the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization which sought to provide food and shelter to homeless LGBT youth. Unhoused herself for much of her time in New York, Johnson often relied on sex work in order to get by. In 1992, Johnson's body was recovered from the Hudson River; she had evidently been murdered in a hate crime. The police ruled her death a suicide despite the evidence against this, and Johnson's friends and allies fought for years to have the case reopened and investigated as a homicide.

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!!!!!

FUCK YOU CAESAR!!!!!! 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

The Starry Night over the Rhone at Arles, 1888. Oil on canvas.

Vincent van Gogh's birthday is today, March 30th. If he were still around, he would be 171 years old.

Colour block animals!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY PALE AND TEMPLATE!

♍ August 26th: Muscle Man, Daniel Montoya.

Every Christmas my uncle gives us all a calendar he's had printed with the best photos he's taken every month of the previous year, and he puts all the usual holidays in it, but because he's a huge nerd (affectionate) there's also stuff like this:

Last year it was the birthdays of long-dead relatives he'd been researching, and I recall previous years having notable events in mountain climbing or arctic exploring history.

I love the calendars and look forward to them every year.

Happy Birthday Rintarou!!

Happy birthday, Edward Said! (November 1, 1935)

A highly influential Palestinian academic, author, and activist, Edward Said was born in Jerusalem to Christian Palestinian parents. After receiving his education, Said began a teaching career at Columbia University, and would also teach at institutions including Stanford and Yale. A prolific academic, Said also contributed editorially to publications including the Arab Studies Quarterly and as the president of the Modern Language Association. Said is best known as a cultural critic through such books as Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, the former of which, his best-known work, laid out his critique of European and American perceptions of "the East," and those perceptions' link with imperialism and colonialism. He also advocated for the Arab and Palestinian perspective on the issue of Palestine, and from 1977 to 1991 Said served on the Palestinian National Council, where he critiqued the Oslo Accords for not establishing an independent State of Palestine. He died in 2003 in New York City.

"Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice."