It's Akilah, Obviously!

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enchanted-dystopia — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:09:37 -0400

My Favorite Subway Games

enchanted-dystopia — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:34:41 -0400

1. Dead or Asleep? This one is lots of fun early in the morning and is better with friends. Find a person who appears comatose and decide whether or not that person is deceased or just sleepy. Let’s be real though, no one wins if the person is deceased.

2. Find the Duracell Battery - You can exchange Duracell Battery for “rat” if you want an easier game, or “cell phone” if you want a more challenging one. While waiting on the train platform, choose the tracks on which your train will be arriving and look for a Duracell Battery. There may be more than one, but there is always at least one. The first one to find it, wins! (Or play alone, for personal gratification).

3. How Much Longer? - Self-explanatory (Bonus if you’re waiting on the G Train). Try to predict how many more precious moments of your life will be wasted because of “Train Traffic” or “Lost Signals.”

4. Will That Kid Catch the Hat during “Showtime!!!” - If you’ve ever ridden an MTA train, chances are good that 3-to-5 kids with a boom box have shouted “It’s showtime!” and started dancing and doing tricks. The best, most challenging trick involves having a hat on the shoe and kicking it behind the back and onto the head. I have yet to see a kid complete this trick, but I feel like they wouldn’t attempt it if it was completely impossible. Wagers start at 50 cents, but you can’t exchange money until they get off the train or else they’ll think you’re donating to their cause.

I think I’m going to be appending this list every so often to keep it interesting.

xoxo,

This started off as a fashion blog, but then I realized my fashion taste could be described as...

enchanted-dystopia — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:34:00 -0400

This started off as a fashion blog, but then I realized my fashion taste could be described as “a few years ago at a midwestern forever 21.”

How do you manage with your hair? I'm not trying to be funny or anything, I am genuinely interested on how you keep your hair looking so poofy.

enchanted-dystopia — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:52:13 -0400

You’re in for a treat. The secret to my hair’s poofiness lies in 3 easy steps:

1. Sleep on it. Always. Forever. Dent it.

2. Never brush ya curls unless you just want puffiness, rather than poofiness.

3. Boing curls when feeling any human emotions whatsoever.

Hope that helps!

As spokesperson for my race, I answer your question, Tumblr,...

enchanted-dystopia — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:10:06 -0400

As spokesperson for my race, I answer your question, Tumblr, regarding How Black People Feel About Spring.

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Photo

enchanted-dystopia — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:40:04 -0400

How did you make your name tag for the end of your posts? I would LOOOOVE to get one. I am going personal haha

enchanted-dystopia — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:57:59 -0400

Hey! you won’t believe this, but I actually just wrote my signature on a piece of white paper, took a photo of it, increased the contrast like whoa in photoshop, and then colored the heart in poorly with a paintbrush. Glad you like!

Beauty Things I Will Never Understand

enchanted-dystopia — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:53:10 -0400

under-eye makeup run and why my eyelids can possibly be sweating it off.
lipstick, lip liner, and making your lips look like doll lips, like how?
concealer vs. foundation and the combination of the 2.
perfecting cat-eye makeup.
why anyone needs to draw on their eyebrows.
plucking vs. waxing and why anyone would ever choose plucking over waxing.
how to not smudge my nail polish no matter how long I wait for it to dry.

A living nightmare

enchanted-dystopia — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:22:19 -0400

whydoihaveablog:

After a few drinks at the after party, I went to the bathroom in the bar. I peed (I’m sorry you just read that with no warning, but this is important to the story that you know what happened) and then I flushed the toilet. And nothing happened. And I tried flushing again. And nothing happened.

And as I stared at my face in the mirror as I washed my hands, I wondered if I could just stay in there forever. I don’t want anyone to see my pee ever, you guys. I don’t want that to happen for them and especially to me. I just think everything like that should be hidden and we should never talk about what the process of our organs and their products and secretions like, ever.

When it became evident that I couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever because I left my phone with friends and I can’t spend more than 20 minutes alone without access to the Internet, I decided that I would leave the bathroom and briskly walk away without making eye contact with the next person in line.

I opened the door, prepared to bolt, and was instead stopped by the nicest girl who said really nice things about my piece and so I said, “Oh, okay, thank you, and I’m really sorry about this, but the toilet is broken and my pee is in there. It’s just pee though. That’s evident. I’m really sorry about all of this, but it’s broke and I don’t know how to fix it and I’m just really sorry.”

Anyway, now Akilah and I are Facebook friends and I’m really looking forward to the day I can become a human who understands how to be a person.

Oh hey! This did happen. I am the very same Akilah. And her piece was lovely and I am likewise embarrassed that I accosted this incredible human lady on her way out of the bathroom, but it needed to be said, so the mutual embarrassment and excitement has spurred great potential for IRL and otherwise friendship. New York City at its best.

Why Even Do Serving Sizes Exist?

enchanted-dystopia — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:29:12 -0400

As I stood in my dimly-lit kitchen this morning pouring a bowl of cereal—Frosted Mini Wheats and Raisin Bran (cereal mixologist, coining the term)—I couldn’t help but notice that to have only 1 cup of cereal would be an unreasonable request when even the mini-est of wheats command too much space and volume. Like maybe 6 mini wheats fit in a cup, are they nuts? Why even do serving sizes exist?!

This is a rhetorical question as obviously serving sizes were created by male scientists who have no concept of the energy needed to combat environmental and emotional factors.* If they understood these factors, we would no longer have serving sizes, and scientists might run the risk of looking bad because some humans are like bunnies and will eat themselves to death if there isn’t a numerical explanation to deter them from doing so.**

Any reasonable person knows that the serving size for tortilla chips, chocolate bars, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch is “until you hate yourself,” but what about the outside factors that affect the actual serving sizes?

Environmental Factors:

Perhaps all of the clean moderate-to-small-sized dishes are dirty or inaccessible and all that’s left are those behemoth Thanksgiving plates at the bottom of the dish pile. How dumb are you gonna look if you don’t pile more food on to compensate for the additional land area?
You put salsa in a bowl because the jar it comes in is too small for dipping, and now you have too much salsa for the chips you planned to eat and putting it back in the jar is essentially double-dipping to a terroristic degree.
All those breakfast bars you bought at that great sale that one time are about to expire and if being from the South taught you anything it’s that letting food expire is a character flaw.

Emotional Factors:

Maybe you’re a huge Scandal fan, and Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant are screaming back and forth about how much they love each other even though it is inconvenient and unfair to the 1st lady and you need to finish that pint of ice cream for it all to make sense.
Maybe one of your friends doesn’t watch Scandal so you can’t recap it with them and now you have to talk to some spaghetti about it.
Maybe Scandal is going on one of those mid-season hiatuses and now you’ll have to watch something else at 10pm on Thursdays.

*It is possible that the environmental factors could be avoided by transitioning into adulthood and buying more dishes/washing the ones you already have. And it is also possible that maybe watching a less thrilling, evocative series on TV could remedy your desire for bad foods. Anything is possible.

**Math deters most people from proceeding further in most areas of life. Use it for manipulation.

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We Brunch Hard: Black Swan in Bed Stuy

enchanted-dystopia — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:03:00 -0400

Back when I had cable//YouTube was slow at catching shows going up online, I’d watch a lot of random BBC shows. There was this one show featuring this old English lady, Gillian McKeith, where she would break down the door of some unsuspecting chubby Londoner and put them on blast for eating crappy food. I mean, “crappy for you” food, not food that necessarily tastes bad.

Well last weekend I went to Black Swan with my best friend Tiffany for brunch, and I got one of the notorious dishes from the show, “The Full English” which is essentially every kind of farm animal, eggs, white beans with some red sauce that deceptively resembles baked beans, and some toast. Granted, I didn’t come close to finishing it, but it was AWESOME. This place has never disappointed me (2 am drunk fries, thank you), but brunch here is spot on. Tiffany got:

Egg’s Benedict (egg’s benny for short, y’all) and she agreed that it was totally worth every penny—and it didn’t even cost that many pennies!

So if you are ever around Clinton Hill or Bed Stuy and you wanna munch on something tasty, I think Black Swan is a must.

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Guysssssss, this is my favorite thing of the last few days! Me...

enchanted-dystopia — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:24:35 -0400

Guysssssss, this is my favorite thing of the last few days! Me and Shannon do a CoffeyChat episode about TUMBLRRRRRRRR!

Reblawg if ya love it.

New Yorkers Aren't Rude... They're Late

enchanted-dystopia — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:11:56 -0400

politicalsubversities:

April 27, 2013
Akilah Hughes - Guest Writer

Imagine waking up before your alarm, getting ready, and leaving 5 minutes before the designated up and at’em time. You’ve got a spring in your step, you can stop for coffee before getting into work, and your boss won’t have any additional reasons to yell at you today.

Imagine, then, that you miss your first train by 10 seconds. This train comes every 5 minutes, so maybe you’ll make it right on time…

You don’t.

The train doesn’t come for 25 minutes. After boarding the train, you hear the conductor announce that the train is now “express” and will be skipping your stop and going about 5 stops ahead of your transfer.

Shit.

You finally make it back to your first transfer when you are met with a similar fate: another 10 minutes of waiting for any sign of life (other than rats) on the tracks. The train shows up, and it is full beyond capacity, and to your chagrin, no one emerges! You have to wait for the next train…

Yes, seriously.

Another 12 minutes pass and you can finally board the train to the next transfer, where you will be held at every turn for “train traffic.” How can there be “train traffic” if you are stopping for an extra 3 minutes at every station?

FUCKKKKKK.

This is the harsh reality almost every day for millions of New Yorkers. Imagine, then, how polite you’d be if in addition to being super late for wherever you’re headed, a tourist decides to stop in front of you in the middle of the sidewalk to take a picture of a building that will be there in 5 minutes once you’ve passed. This is the plight of the New Yorker. I’m sure in the early days of NYC people were sweeter and more hospitable, but over time they could no longer fake their amusement at your incessant need to pull out a map or stop to talk to the characters in Times Square.

So the next time you think, “God these New Yorkers are so rude!” —Have a little empathy.

…

Akilah is a 23-year old hot mess studying improv at UCB. She’s sometimes a Barack Obama Tribute Band and other times a blogger at Its Akilah, Obviously , vlogger at Smoothiefreak , and @kiwirabbitfru on Twitter!

I’m just A-ing some Qs I received on Tumblr. If you asked...

enchanted-dystopia — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:17:43 -0400

I’m just A-ing some Qs I received on Tumblr. If you asked me something, maybe I answered it, and if I didn’t get to it, I’m sorry! Let’s do this more often!

buzzfeed: Einstein the fish got a new lease on life after his...

enchanted-dystopia — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:36:58 -0400

buzzfeed:

Einstein the fish got a new lease on life after his owner made me him a life jacket that allowed him to float properly after he was crippled.

(.gif via)

Here’s some daily cuteness that I bet you weren’t prepared for.

Hey guys, look at my hair. It’s red. And straight. And so...

enchanted-dystopia — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:21:40 -0400

Hey guys, look at my hair. It’s red. And straight. And so different than anything I’m used to ahhhhh.

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My Insta-Life, Insta-Lately: 1. Wandering the streets of...

enchanted-dystopia — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:45:35 -0400

My Insta-Life, Insta-Lately:

1. Wandering the streets of Bed-Stuy looking at apartments for my friend who is staying here this summer!

2. Window shopping in SoHo.

3. Small victories in correct spelling at Starbucks.

4. Feeling all crafty and pinterest-ing by planting some lavender in my apartment.

5. Welcoming back my good old fro.

6. Wishing I had eaten those pretty pretty macarons in Williamsburg.

7. Needing more patience and going for the Mr. Softee ice cream for dinner on free-dip day at Ben & Jerry’s.

8. Long walks on graffiti’d streets with a special someone.

enchanted-dystopia: Veda, Day 11? Being Bougie and shit.

enchanted-dystopia — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:02:58 -0400

enchanted-dystopia:

Veda, Day 11? Being Bougie and shit.

Adulty Things: Morning Alarms and Waking Up

enchanted-dystopia — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:57:00 -0400

I am not a morning person. As you can see by my alarm titles, I have luke-warm messages of encouragement or vague threats to entice myself to get up. I just can’t do it! If I have to be anywhere before noon and I am not getting picked up by a car or cab, suffice it to say I’ll probably be late.

I guess I always assumed that hating mornings would change as I got older. In elementary school, waking up was hard because it was still dark outside when the alarm went off. I remember for about a solid month, my sister Lanie would throw our pet rabbit on top of me and it would claw me awake because otherwise I’d hold up the whole house.

High School was the same issue // the internet and texting were a thing so I couldn’t get to bed at an early enough time not to be a zombie. Luckily for me, my school gave up our dress code pretty quickly after I started there, so “sweatpants, chillin with no makeup on” was my go to look.

College empowered me to schedule classes in the afternoon and only on two days a week. Let’s be real: I slept more in those 5 years than I did in my entire formative years as a baby. I would have a class at 11, nap through lunch, class at 1:30 and then 3, and then nap til 7. I actually avoided the freshman 15 solely by sleeping through most designated meal times at food service.

Which brings me to now—-oh terrible adulty now. I want desperately to wake up with a spring in my step. I have a friend who wakes up and immediately starts writing, and drawing, and planning, and generally being too good at adulthood. I hit snooze for roughly 1.5 hours before I emerge from my blankets and wander to the bathroom at a snail’s pace. I sit on the toilet for an extra 25 minutes after I’ve done my duties, just lamenting the bright overhead lighting and the germs I will encounter on the train at any minute. Maybe getting a more annoying alarm would wake me up, but I can’t be certain, and “Africa” by Toto is relaxing enough that I don’t punch the closest noun available when it interrupts my dreams.

Are there any suggestions you might have to make getting up easier for me? Do you have any skill sets you thought you would have gained as an adult that just never seemed to materialize? Lemme know.

Body Shaming or “In the Way” Shaming? It’s VEDA episode 9 (VAEDA...

enchanted-dystopia — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:23:51 -0400

Body Shaming or “In the Way” Shaming? It’s VEDA episode 9 (VAEDA episode 2) and we’re talkin bout Wait Watchers, the photographic editorial by Haley Morris-Cafiero.

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