I’ve saved literally a couple thousand+ dollars and a shit load of time by cutting my own hair.
Buzzed is easy mode if you’ve got the head for it (definitely NOT a good look for everyone, so proceed with caution).
Actual styles are doable by feel / with a double mirror setup, but that ofc comes with a learning curve, and it WILL look janky until you get a feel for it.
I spent $30 on an electric clipper over 15 years ago - paid for three haircuts since then, which were all mandatory purchases in basic training. Easily the best $30 I’ve ever spent.
Also, super short hair takes like two drops of shampoo per shower, so if you go the buzzed route, you’ll save a lot on hair products too.
I will second this. YouTube can teach you step by step how to cut your own hair. I’ve been doing it for years, and currently have a fancy asymmetrical one side buzzed cut that I do myself. The learning curve is going to result in you looking awkward a couple of times, but the amount of time and money saved over the years is tremendous.
Thirded. June of 2020, the cheap clippers were already all sold out, so I bought a really nice set of clippers at an inflated price. But since I used to pay about $20 every month for a haircut, they paid for themselves fast. And now every time my partner cuts my hair, its like money going into pur pocket.
I'm sorry you're going through that. I was there just a couple of months back and found some really good deals on heaters at my local thrift store. I found a plug-in radiator for $7.99 and a couple of small space heaters for about $5 each, which really made a difference.
I feel you. This is the second winter we’ve only been able to heat one room to at least 18C, and that’s not warm enough for my disabled ass. My electric throw blanket is on 24/7 though and is incredibly efficient - it costs less than 25p a day. I would highly recommend one if you can manage the upfront cost. Also wrist warmers are highly underrated imo - cheap, you can knit/crochet them yourself, your fingers are still free for touch screens and they seem to keep me warmer than just a hat alone. Wishing you more comfortable times ahead, friend.
Yes. Rock-and-roll is an embellishment of blues, which was the spooky music of black people. Blues and Jazz were both topics of moral panics. Elvis himself was the segway, being famous, popular with young folk and had sexually explicit hips. He also brought blues to the television, so everyone could catch the beat.
The 60’s music revolution of London and the electric guitar secured the place of Rock. It was here to stay with the first yeah! yeah! yeah!
So was ragtime, though while we associate rag with Scott Joplin (who was quite black) I haven’t explored rag to know if it was regarded as black, but it was absolutely colonial and anti-monarchy and regarded as vulgar in Europe.
But also so was classical romanticism which broke all the rules of baroque and classical (the stuff sponsored by and patronized by aristocrats). Romanticism came with the Pianoforte (The Piano) which allowed a player to be more emotionally expressive with key velocity changing the tone of a note (and volume) but it was also about breaking the old rules. Getting mathematical. Bringing accompaniment instruments to the forefront. Making the audience feel feelings! The affrontery.
Infamously Paganini was such a good violinist, the church believes he bargained with demons to gain his skills (fiddle lessons for souls!). He was denied a sanctified buriel for fifty years based on this assumption. His caprices are used today as bravura pieces in violin contests.
Back to the present, angry gangsta rap killed the Satanic panic regarding metal (which mostly leaned into the Satan thing). Rap isn’t Satanic, rather it is purely furious, knows the hood was dealt a bum deal for centuries and is mad as fuck about it, and on the verge of riot and revolution. And all the pearl-clutchers wish we could just go back to when metal was calling on Satan.
Now we have the internet, which means we can look up where the music we like comes from, and as much as they clutch pearls, we know that they always are annoyed at poets speaking truth to power or challenging the norms. And what we listen to today will be classic in a generation, and quaint.
As long as there has been popular music, there have been people who say it is evil. Many classical composer where consider controversial. Mozart’s Leck mich im Arsch (Lick me in the arse) aside, anyone who challenged the status quo was considered “evil” but many.
In rock and rolls case, I would say no it is not inherently racist, and it has nothing to do with drums. But I can see how you could draw that conclusion because pre-Elvis rock and roll was considered “race music”. However, that fact that record companies found success with white washed versions of it, would indicate to me that they didn’t consider rock and roll itself evil. Of course, there were always those who hated it no matter how watered down Pat Boone tried to make it and considered it evil. But that’s no different than really anything that goes against the status quo.
As the 60s rolled on, there were minor conflict between rock and roll and the church. Most famously, John Lennon saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. In the late 60s bands like Black Sabbath were seen as evil, but I don’t think that applied to rock and roll as a whole. However, into the 70s with bands like Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, Kiss, and then the emergence of punk, more people started thinking of rock and roll in general as evil.
Then comes the 1980s. The Reagan years. Where you have the rise of the Moral Majority, the Satanic Panic, and PMRC, which loved to label things as “evil”. Make things us versus them. I don’t think it had anything to do with the actual music. It was more of the anti-establishment messages and decadence that was associated with the rock and roll lifestyle. It didn’t help that many bands purposefully adopted satanic symbols for shock value.
But, in true 1980s fashion instead of talking to their kids, boomer parents just labeled it as evil and forbid it.
Maybe don’t use highlighter markers on your monitor?
(But seriously, it’s no different color than other comments in this thread for me. Maybe it was a “new” post for you when you wrote that and the rest weren’t?)
Go start appreciating art. I don't mean pay thousands for paintings. I mean go to poster shops, art galleries, craft fairs, etc. if you find something that you really like, you can probably find a print that is a decent price.
Or just start looking for pictures online of places you went to vacation. Flickr was good for this, if that's still a thing. Yes, you could print big versions of your own photos - but why when there's someone out there that probably took a better picture with a much nicer camera. Just get that photo printed on a metal frame or canvas sheet and hang it on the wall.
Just to add onto this, I managed to get a print from a famous artist for around $25 and frame it simply for around $35.
This was pre-pandemic, mind you, so it may not be that inexpensive now, but look around and ask for a framing quote at a Michael’s or better, local frame or photo shop, if you have one nearby.
Or you can always become the person with the nicer camera taking better pictures.
There’s something really satisfying about seeing your own pictures hanging on your wall. Ones you’re really proud of though, not just any old picture. I have 4 printed so far and plan to add another few next year.
But that’s really beside the point. I second your art though. Support local artists and find something you really like. It won’t be something mass produced, and quite possibly is one of a kind
Yeah we’ve picked up some pieces from craft fairs and sadly they’ve just been gathering dust because we could never decide where they “fit” best. I like more moody/atmospheric art so it’s not always the aesthetic we want in like the living room for example. Will definitely look into this more!
A few of the best books I've read I just didn't finish because I didn't want that closure on the story.
Plenty of bad books. Didn't finish those either. But, they'd usually get put down sooner and not really thought about, later.
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