In flower language? Probably, I think I’ve even reblogged something to that effect. But….most ppl don’t know flower language anymore. No, if you need a true “fuck you” then here’s my DIY official tutorial, the Death Bouquet:
(This is gonna be the least wholesome post I’ve ever written and I am so sorry but I am also laughing while I type this.)
I’ve been railing on Pink Floyd roses a lot for their thorns lately because one has sliced my hand open recently. Get some of those.
Next. Get you some ornamental thorn roses. (I’m not 100% but I think mermaid climbing roses fall into this and are also brutal)
Next. Thistles. Lots of thistles. More thistles than sense.
Next. Dusty miller flower greens. Soft. Weak. Floppy. Clog up your bouquet with these, especially in the middle where they’ll make the stems stick together.
Next. Baby’s Breath. This is your secret weapon. You can’t tell when they’re dead half the time, they’re strong. Too strong. The wrong touch and FOOOOOOF. Tiny leaves and petals EVERYWHERE it’s as good as a glitter bomb.
NEXT. Abandon common arrangement sense. Fillers first, clog the center with fillers. Clog it, make it dense. Stick a rose or two in, but you want at least 70% filler.
NEXT. Hide the thistles. Hide them under the roses. Make sure some of the heads are at hand level. Spray them with water. You want those stems damp and miserable. Thistles harden as they die.
NEXT. The roses. Line this puppy in roses. Ornamentals and Floyds should be along the outside, this bouquet should be DEADLY to put any weight on. Spray them with water. This bouquet should be so tightly packed that your “handle” looks more like a solid mass than anything else.
NEXT. Wrap them in paper. TISSUE PAPER. Thin, weak, damp. Even gardening gloves can’t save your hands now.
NEXT. Be strong, treat the bouquet like a bed of nails. The more evenly spread the weight, the less likely you are to get hurt. You will be tempted to give these roses away in person, but be strong. Your ginger body language will give up the game.
FINALLY. Deliver them. Know. KNOW that your plan has worked, because anyone with any sense will see a bouquet and just FIST it with one hand. Maybe the other will come to support it. But just that. Just the hands. Meeting thorny death. A dozen little needle presses. The paper will be too damp to unravel, to see what has done this. They’ll grab it a few times, trying to learn the secret.
Deliver it with a nice note. Sincere, heartfelt. Make them feel obligated to deep the Death Bouquet. This is where the density comes in. Damp, suffocating, these flowers will mold in secret. They’ll die and their odor will permeate the air. But, because of the nature of the baby’s breath….it’ll be hard to find. Hard to detect. The roses will be sheltered because they’re on the outside, getting air and water. But the center will mold, and stink.
Eventually, they’ll realize it’s the flowers, and they’ll move the bouquet, and POOF, it will shatter, leaves and petals everywhere, releasing a gag worthy odor unlike anything they’ve smelled before.
And that’s how you say “fuck you” with a bouquet.
This was the most amazing read and I need to do this *now*
2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense – if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day – is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.
That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.
The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.
This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS.
“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”
Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera – information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application – and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.
And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”
This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea – a meme – can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”
“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”
Aside the fact that this is one of the best songs ever created in the all world (but I said nothing new) and aside the fact that I always shiver when I listen to it (and that happens every day since it’s number one on my playlist)…
This video is the representation of the only thing that makes me bear humanity: to hear people sing together. If only humans did that instead of everything else.
Déjà Vu – the experience of being certain that you have experienced or seen a new situation previously – you feel as though the event has already happened or is repeating itself. The experience is usually accompanied by a strong sense of familiarity and a sense of eeriness, strangeness, or weirdness. The “previous” experience is usually attributed to a dream, but sometimes there is a firm sense that it has truly occurred in the past.
Déjà Vécu – is what most people are experiencing when they think they are experiencing deja vu. Déjà vu is the sense of having seen something before, whereas déjà vécu is the experience of having seen an event before, but in great detail – such as recognizing smells and sounds. This is also usually accompanied by a very strong feeling of knowing what is going to come next.
Déjà Visité – a less common experience and it involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place. For example, you may know your way around a a new town or a landscape despite having never been there, and knowing that it is impossible for you to have this knowledge. Déjà visité is about spatial and geographical relationships, while déjà vécu is about temporal occurrences. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about an experience of this in his book “Our Old Home” in which he visited a ruined castle and had a full knowledge of its layout. He was later able to trace the experience to a poem he had read many years early by Alexander Pope in which the castle was accurately described.
Déjà Senti – Déjà senti is the phenomenon of having “already felt” something. This is exclusively a mental phenomenon and seldom remains in your memory afterwards. In the words of a person having experienced it: “What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been forgotten for a time, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for. The recollection is always started by another person’s voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as ‘Oh yes—I see’, ‘Of course—I remember’, etc., but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions.”
Jamais Vu – Jamais vu (never seen) describes a familiar situation which is not recognized. It is often considered to be the opposite of déjà vu and it involves a sense of eeriness. The observer does not recognize the situation despite knowing rationally that they have been there before. It is commonly explained as when a person momentarily doesn’t recognize a person, word, or place that they know. Chris Moulin, of Leeds University, asked 92 volunteers to write out “door” 30 times in 60 seconds. He reported that 68 per cent of his guinea pigs showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that “door” was a real word. This has lead him to believe that jamais vu may be a symptom of brain fatigue.
Presque Vu – Presque vu is very similar to the “tip of the tongue” sensation – it is the strong feeling that you are about to experience an epiphany – though the epiphany seldom comes. The term “presque vu” means “almost seen”. The sensation of presque vu can be very disorienting and distracting.
The Chaos Bitches 