Where to find day laborers in Asheville?

RavinDaveR · 2012-05-22T14:00:23.544103+00:00

Craigslist? The local colleges? What kind of stuff do you need done?

worried_needanswers · 2012-05-22T13:46:16.252672+00:00

He doesn't like those women more than you. Pornography and relationships are entirely separate things. Do you really wish you were married to, and building a life with, the male leads in movies you might watch? I mean, realistically? Or is watching a fun movie with an attractive male lead just something that boosts your mood and makes you feel happy for a bit?

We all do little things for ourselves that make us feel good. Porn, films, fantasy, food; these things are just boosts for our dopamine triggers, basically, and they're perfectly healthy (in moderation, of course). Just because my "me time" might involve eating donuts doesn't mean I'd rather eat donuts than be with my husband.

Mahkittahkakes · 2012-05-22T00:49:00.521901+00:00

Get thee to the Pinterest. Google newsprint roses. You can make bouquets out of all kinds of things--buttons, yarn, lace, ribbons, fabric, beads, feathers. And you can make great centerpieces out of all kinds of things.

I pinned a bunch of ideas for stuff for a friend's wedding plans right here.

godsgift5406 · 1 day

"O rly? I once dated/banged a dumbass, and I swore never again, but hell, you're pretty hot for an idiot."

godsgift5406 · 1 day

Cue suspicious glances. "Y'all fum up Nawth?"
"No, ma'am, I'm from here. The same town you're from."
"Oh." More squinting. "Ya parents fum up Nawth?"

Nope. They're just a couple of well-read people who understand human nature in the wider world and wanted us to get ahead of where we started in life, so they encouraged our natural curiosity and desire to learn and also, along the way, taught us to enunciate clearly.

I've been accused of being many things that I am not by people without the power to be other than they are.

sweet_sassy_molassy · 4 days

An interesting idea occurred to me while reading this article: if a book depicts a nonwhite character on the cover, is written about nonwhite characters/a nonwhite main character, and is written by a nonwhite author, will it be considered a "niche" book? Is it more likely to be seen as having a very narrow target audience or very narrow distribution possibilities? I.e., will the reaction be, "Oh, that's a book for black kids; white kids don't need to read it/wouldn't be interested in it/it's too specific for white kids to identify with it?"

If so, why doesn't the public adamantly assert the reverse? Is it generally accepted that books with white main characters, or mostly white characters, have a broad appeal? Or that any kid could identify with some part of that character's personality or experience?

aspeenat · 4 days

Wow. She's pretty amazing, and she's definitely my new executive role model.

eroverton · 4 days

But the reverend had a point – black people shopped at Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, and a multitude of places. Why not carry goods for them and integrate the cosmetics aisle?

I cannot express thoroughly enough my frustration with going to a regular store--even one in a mostly-black neighborhood!--and finding not a goddamn thing I can use. More often this happens with cosmetics, but still, it's an idiocy of the highest level to have a teeny-weeny section with a limited selection of products for a group who might very well be some of your biggest customers.

On the flip side of that coin, I find myself gravitating more heavily toward retailers who do offer a better selection. I will go out of my way to get products at my Target, even if they are higher in price, because they carry not only an expanded selection of ethnic hair-care products, with a range of consistencies, aimed at a range of needs, but because they carry more than one line specifically for multi-ethnic hair.

rubeandthemachines · 4 days

The way I see it, these expressions are part of our lexicon and linguistic patterning. No one actually believes they're preventing demons from entering the body when they say, "Bless you" after a sneeze. And, in fact, most people are ignorant of the origin of that phrase; it's just the scatter of phonemes you use to respond to that situation. Shit, just watch people scramble to figure out what the correct response is when the bodily exhalation of another person is ambiguous (was that a sneeze? A cough? A hiccup? WTF do I say?) and you'll see how weird the cultural phenomenon of responding to these things at all is.

Back to the point, I think we're so far removed, mentally, from the origins of these phrases that most people really don't think about them at all. They're verbal memes, more or less, which, to me, are about on par with other slang; "Thank god," has no more impact to me than, "For shizzle."

I do occasionally run across people who do dwell on these things ("I'm not lucky, I'm blessed!"), and when I do, I make a more conscious effort to steer my language toward realism (I'm not lucky or blessed to have gotten that job, I'm happy that the person I was trying to persuade recognized my skills, hard work and dedication). But other than that, I let it go.

CMGangstaRap · 4 days

This is something that is quite striking to me as well; it's the full reason why I have not yet, and will never, tell my Black grandmother that I'm an atheist. I can explain my reasoning to the other members of my family; they could follow my logic and understand it and accept it. My grandmother literally would not understand me if I tried to explain it to her.

bitch_please · 6 days

I wish I had asked for more help planning it. I didn't want to go through the "hassle" of having other people jump in and get me off-track with a ton of their ideas and insistence, so I did most of it myself.

It stressed me out so badly. I had a huge blowout fight with my fiance the week before the big day, I barely slept, and although the event was beautiful and I enjoyed it immensely, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been running on empty. Plus, I got really sick on our honeymoon and had to spend most of it sleeping.

Delegate the shit outta that planning.

DatWhiteBoy · 9 days

Sometimes Minecraft makes me really dizzy.

Planthater · 9 days

Love it! What did you use on your lips?

cookupastorm · 9 days

I've had people go apeshit over my break-and-bake cookies. All I did was put them on the damn pan and have a good grasp of my oven's idiosyncrasies. Timing is something that can be genuinely difficult for people to figure out, but all it takes is an oven thermometer and a little practice.

cookupastorm · 9 days

Even worse are the excuses. No one is born knowing how to cook; no one is born knowing anything. We all had to go through a learning process. If, however, you don't have the patience or attention span or attention to detail to learn how to, I don't know, make pancakes or boil pasta or some shit so you can independently feed yourself, you might be a bit of a moron.

Besides, there are books and websites and videos and all kinds of crap that will show you, step-by-step, in the simplest of baby terms, how to do all the things you need to know. You literally just have to follow directions. Granted, your oven might throw you a curveball every now and again, but there are all kinds of websites that address that shit too. There's no reason not to know how to make two or three simple things.

TheMentoMan · 10 days

Come on over any time! :) We've got some good stuff, too. I haven't even seen all the U.S. has to offer (it's a big place!), but I'm always amazed at the beauty of it whenever I do travel. There's such geographical diversity here; I highly recommend our national parks. And our state fairs, for that matter; I think the North Carolina State Fair is a pretty good display of some of the interesting bits of Southern culture.

TheMentoMan · 10 days

Funny, I have been identified as black by others, and treated poorly as a result, for most of my life. Also, considering the history of this country, I sincerely doubt that anyone here is 100% black.

But let's just keep marginalizing multiracial and multi-ethnic people, instead of us working together to address a host of systemic problems that negatively affect both of us. Let's deny our kinship. Let's keep telling multiethnic people that they "don't count" and that their experiences aren't valid.

6foot2eyesofblue · 11 days

Oh man. >_< I've been there. I almost cried when my white husband told me my satin hair bonnet reminded him of The Joker. He didn't mean anything by it, and honestly, I see the connection.

Buuuuuuuuuuut. When you've spent your whole life being teased and called names and having attention constantly called to your hair as a way of letting you know that you're not pretty, and will never be pretty (even if you are), it can give you a complex.

Second note. Black girl hair, when exposed to water, particularly chemically-treated water in pools and hot tubs, expands. It curls up really tight and develops a lot of volume and gets really dry. I'm willing to bet money that many of us have been teased particularly hard for our pool hair. Extensions, on the other hand, are never made out of black girl hair, and don't have the same reaction.

TheMentoMan · 11 days

Always happy to answer an honest question. :)

The situation with the black community and Christianity is very complicated.

When slaves were brought to the Americas, they were forced to adopt Christianity, basically; a lot was done to get rid of or destroy the home cultures of the Africans who were imported, and forcing a new religion on them was just one step. As such, it was a survival mechanism.

Within the Christian mythology narrative are many tales of slavery, and overcoming bondage, and of freedom, including the promise of a better life after death, which appeals to many oppressed people. So I can see how it gained ground. Also, I'm of the opinion that the denial of education to successive generations of slaves aided in the deepening of faith traditions.

During the periods following Emancipation, the churches did create a sense of community, and the traditions of church charity and communal spirit still do allow the black community to provide services and relief aid that the government does not (or will not).

This is one of the reasons why the church has such a strong hold right now. In impoverished communities, the church is basically the only service provider. Churches will take up collections from their members to help individuals in the community; they will help pay an electricity bill so that the service isn't cut off; they will help get school supplies for children; they will send members around with meals for the elderly, the ill, or for anyone else experiencing a hard time; they will offer "counseling" for people experiencing hardships (although, in my opinion, this does more harm than good); they will rally around families who have a loved one in prison, and provide services to try to help men who are just out of prison. They are often the only organization people can turn to for any kind of help.

As educational and economic opportunities have declined, and social or government assistance has failed to offer balance, the black community has increasingly flocked to the church. It does offer many people a sense of community and belonging. And a lot of people also hate it. There have been many debates on this in the U.S., and it does get brought up that Christianity is a "slave religion." There has been, and continues to be, a movement towards Islam as a response, and some people, particularly the educated, are finding interest in more traditional African religions, like Yoruba.

Personally, I think that, despite its provision of services, the practice of Evangelical Christianity, and sometimes fundamentalist Christianity, in the black community does a lot of harm, especially with regard to addressing mental health issues. Mental health issues are highly stigmatized, and people who need genuine help are instead told that they have a "bad spirit" or "evil spirit" on them and they need to "get right with God" and all their problems will go away. But praying, exorcisms, and other rituals do nothing to address chronic depression, schizophrenia, addiction, PTSD, and a whole host of other very real illnesses experienced in huge numbers by the black community. "More Jesus" or "raising your kids in the church" is not going to address teen pregnancy rates; "keeping the faith" isn't going to stop domestic violence; the slut-shaming that goes on in churches isn't going to stop rape.

And, of course, if a black person in the U.S. declares himself or herself an atheist, it can lead to complete cutoff from the community, in an environment where the community itself already feels isolated and vulnerable. /r/BlackAtheism has a lot more discussion on this topic.

TheMentoMan · 11 days

As a fellow multi-ethnic, multi-cultural girl, I identify with how you feel!

To answer one of your questions here, racism is still out of control in the U.S. Maybe not so in-your-face that someone will break into your house and hurt you if you move into a white neighborhood, but that kind of stuff was happening all over the place not so long ago. Our history here is even more messed up than what we're taught in school, and the more I learn about it, the more messed up it seems. And the fact that it's just left out of our history curriculum makes it feel like there's still an organized legislative effort to make sure that non-whites stay second-class citizens.

There was a time, just after the end of slavery and Reconstruction, when black communities were working toward independence; buying land and building their own institutions and businesses and growing an economy. But the response to this was an age of rampant domestic terrorism in the 20s and 30s, which was supported by new laws that took away any chance that blacks had to even feel safe. Some of these were known as the "Jim Crow" laws that created racial segregation, which was brutally enforced with imprisonment, violence, and murder.

Eventually moves were made, during and after the Civil Rights era of the 50s and 60s, to create prosperous safe havens in black neighborhoods, where blacks could live, work, and own businesses in the areas where they had been pushed. But in the 60s and 70s, programs of "Urban Renewal" sought to create greater prosperity for cities by "renewing" areas affected by "blight," which most often were areas where blacks lived. This led to the demolition of inner-city black neighborhoods; homes and businesses were just bulldozed by the thousands, and neighborhoods were broken up and relocated to temporary housing projects ("The Projects" that come up so often, linked with or referred to as "the ghetto," when discussing black folks in America).

Chances at prosperity and sense of place were destroyed; government welfare and drugs came in, followed by the War on Drugs, which has disproportionately penalizes blacks, leading to high incarceration of black men and a subsequent removal of many of their rights as citizens, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and crime that keeps them in "the projects" and "the ghetto."

And, speaking of, many of these housing projects are reaching their expiration dates as structures, and a second wave of Urban Renewal is about to hit. In my city, several of the housing projects are slated for demolition in the next few years; the families who have lived in these substandard conditions for generations are basically being kicked out with nowhere to go, and the property will likely be bought by developers and turned into shopping and attractions owned by whites. And since the services these families depend on to survive have been cut by conservative politicians who want them cut even more, and offer nothing to replace them other than, "Get a job!" (despite the fact that many of these people do work several jobs just to make ends meet), I have no idea what's going to happen to them.

That's one bit of perspective on the climate in America that makes race such a loaded topic.

TheMentoMan · 11 days

No disrespect, but it's this kind of attitude exactly that can make some of us mixed chicks feel really shitty. A lot of us get pressure to be "black enough" even while we're getting hit with racist crap from white people who do assume we're black, and it can make us feel like we're just not welcome anywhere when we're struggling to even make sense of where we stand with our own families. This kind of preoccupation with qualifying divides minority folk against each other, and it doesn't help anyone.

PatNatural · 11 days

Wow! I love your website! The look and organization are really great, the products look good, and your logo is awesome! Also, I love your fashion profile! You are so beautiful, and your sense of style is clearly amazing!

Other than the debate on natural hair, do you think there are other special style challenges that Carribean women have to face? I think that in the U.S., Afro-American girls have a hard time feeling like they are beautiful, or accepting how their skin, hair, and bodies are naturally. We have a lot of politics surrounding our looks, too--your comment that it's hard to get a job without straight hair reminds me a lot of some of the things I've had to deal with.

gaussiansurface · 11 days

In preparation for my upcoming journey to math degree land, I've started putting together a bunch of style stuff by season. I've got some spring and some summer stuff that might help you out.

Natural fibers are going to be your best friends. Cotton and linen, particularly. If you want to look put together, cardigan-style, without the heat of a cardigan, try using an all-cotton button-down shirt instead. When it gets to be 90-degrees-with-a-jillion-percent-humidity where I live, one of my favorite things to do is get a cotton or jersey maxi skirt and wear it as a tube dress with a cotton jacket or button-up shirt over it. Add a couple of cotton tanks, with maybe some lace or other embellishments, and a few pairs of shorts, and you'll be set for a lot of different looks.

Patterns can also give you versatility - a plain print (gray and white stripes, for example) will pair with ALL THE COLORS! and allow you to wear one staple item with a ton of different outfits. Also, don't forget that you can change the look of an outfit completely with your accessories.

And hop over to /r/FrugalFemaleFashion. They got the hot tips.

NotMyOtherName · 11 days

After almost two years of working either menial retail or chillin' at home, during which I experienced full-blown quarter-life crisis, I've started experimenting more with inexpensive/comfortable yet stylish clothes and fun makeup and hair. I got an edgy haircut and started hanging out at /r/MakeupAddiction more often, and I've incorporated a bunch of style tips from Pinterest and Polyvore.

I've got a bunch of jersey dresses that I wear around the house sometimes, which have become kind of a staple. They feel like yoga pants, but hot damn if I don't look a little dressed up. Also, just layering a couple of things, like a lace-edged cami with a cute graphic tee, can make me feel a little more put-together without sacrificing comfort. And playing dress-up with my makeups makes me feel like the princess of the fun castle. These are things I do for myself, and I've noticed a definite boost in my mood and motivation when I do them. My husband keeps telling me that I am beautiful and sexy in my 3x hoodies, but he goes all knock-kneed and word-fumbly when I put on my comfy dress :)

wishbee · 11 days

When I was 20 years old, I mediated my parents' divorce after 22 years of marriage. They had never been happy together but had been trying hard, and failing hard, to "make it work" and "stay together for the kids."

I know how you feel.

I'm not entirely sure what to tell you, except to keep going to any available counseling. Maybe try and get your whole family to do a couple of sessions? When my family actually sat down and had a talk with a counselor, it brought up some ugly truths my parents had been ignoring as hard as they could for years; it wasn't pretty, it wasn't fun, and it did send them into divorce proceedings faster, but goddamn was that better for them, and for us, than them staying together and continuing to traumatize our family every day.

I was angry with my mother for a long time for what I saw as her "bad behavior," but since then I've come to understand her, and my father, a lot better as separate people. These situations are never as simple or black-and-white as people make them out to be; even if something seems obvious, when you get mired in a situation yourself, you can begin to see how difficult it is to make the obvious choice.

I am glad to report, though, that both of my parents are much happier and much better people now. For the first time in my life, I've actually seen them both be consistently happy for long periods of time, and it has improved them on every level. I know it's weird to say, but I feel like I have real parents, a Mommy and a Daddy like everyone else, for the first time in my life. My mom has gone from my worst nightmare to one of my best friends. We're still working out the kinks as a family, but I'm confident now that we can actually be one.

Which is to say that these things can come out all right in the end, even if getting there is hell and it seems like the end of the world at the time.

multirachael

TROPHY CASE

multirachael

TROPHY CASE

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