My body decided to walk the walk of my self-labeling talk. I’m an AMAB genderqueer person who never touched the ‘mones, but a few weeks ago I started growing a left titty. I was worried it might be the cancer so I got it mammogram’d, but lo, it was merely a healthy tiny amount of breastness happening in there. Shame it isn’t a pair, but what’re you gonna do?
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It’s the Youtube Walkout! The 10th through 13th we’re supposed to avoid watching youtube videos. They’ve dropped some fucking egregious new terms of service, promising to delete any channel they deem commercially unviable. Since the videos disproportionately affected by this are producers of LGBT and progressive content, you know what this is really about.
Honestly, it feels like Blizzard’s ability to glide on by wholesale political and societal condemnation by waving around shiny video game trailers – together with their own virtual monopoly on internet video – has them feeling like they can get away with murder. In this case, the murder is anyone that might offend the censorious authoritarian regime that rules the Chinese market.
I’d link to some good videos on the background of this issue, but NOPE. Fuck that. In solidarity with all oppressed peoples and against these fascist ass-tonguing corporate monoliths, DON’T LOOK AT YOUTUBE until the 14th!
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There’s been a lot of very smart essays on the reasons evolutionary psychology is pseudoscience. It’s still happening because EP jackoffs are still crappening. But for this cat, it boils down to one simple ass question every scientist or intellectual worth a shit asks themselves: How could I be wrong?
It’s possible somebody involved in EP has asked this question, but if so, they didn’t answer it honestly. Or their imagination is broken. If you’re going to pose as a thinker, think on this earnestly for just a few minutes and you’ll get answers. The world is complex as hell and there are a million ways any given idea you can conceive could be false.
I’ll show you how easy this is. I could be wrong about this thesis because I haven’t studied the scientific method since high school, and maybe the words I’m using in a vernacular way mean something different to True Science Boyz. I could be wrong because I’m underplaying the importance of feeling confident in one’s ideas during scientific exploration, that I’m opening the door to a paralyzing level of doubt. I could be wrong, but nuh. Get real.
The holes in EP are glaring. They’ve been pointed out in great detail by detractors and handwaved by proponents with no real consideration. Guys, they’re doing the work for you that you should’ve done for yourselves. They’re telling you how you could be wrong. If your magazine-friendly science is going to have foundations this flimsy, at least have the intellectual honesty to point it out in the footnotes. Last sentence on every EP article should read, “Or this could be a total ass-pull that is only convincing because of our cultural biases.”
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Most animals, down to the single-celled level, are looking for an angle – an advantage on surviving and thriving. It works differently at different levels. A protozoan with a light sensing organelle uses some kind of chemical binary decision making to guide it to food or away from danger. A more complex animal gets more options – up down left right open or close your mouth. Nurturing animals angle to give their offspring advantages, laying those eggs in a caterpillar, whatever.
Why are humans so useless at doing the right thing on a mass level? At helping the flourishing of the entire species? It’s only natural to look for an angle, and we’re all doing it. But our behavior is so complex we might not even notice what we’re doing. There are those who convince themselves it’s cool to do obviously malevolent things. But the rest of us have our angles too.
In government and business, we diffuse responsibility so no one person can be blamed. Then we get that little leg up. We don’t have to be told by a mastermind or sinister cabal. We just have to want to do well for ourselves in our jobs. If that means harming someone to make your performance metrics look better, eh, it’s just one person, one time.
Just one little law bent or rewritten to help out your cousin’s business. It can be selfless – just do one person a favor and put two million at risk of lead poisoning. Maybe nothing will happen. You could get lucky. That contractor who was trying to do well for his business told you as much. The supposed high quality components are overpriced, the cheap stuff could last fifty years, you never know.
Animal instincts are killing us all. But we’ve never been able to stop. Maybe at an individual level, but en masse? It might not be possible. Ian Malcolm annoyed me as much as he annoyed John Hammond. “This level of control you’re attempting, it’s impossible.” I don’t like to believe that. Chaos seems like nonsense, like magic.
And yet. Global ecological collapse is out of the bottle, on a rampage. Nobody who was in a position to do anything about it could bring themselves to fight that instinct. They angled. Will they change their stripes now? Doesn’t seem like it. Even if they did, will it make a difference?
Humanity is the King of Anglers. But you can only steal so many advantages before you’re stealing them from yourself. Capitalism is a man eating his own legs and not noticing it until he’s almost dead. It’s a shame being a skin cell on this demented man, unable to affect the grisly scene. Being human is a real trip.
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I have a less than average concern for how I look to passersby and tend to sit on the ground when I’m waiting for the bus. In the war against homeless humans, a lot of stops don’t have benches, so I’m down in the dirt, sitting with my legs pretzel’d. That puts me close to the small details of the environment – the tiny stones in the concrete, odd-looking weeds moss and stray plants, crumbs, garbage, insects. One time I saw the circle of dust being blown away from a wasp’s wings, as if it was a tiny helicopter. I wonder how many people notice these things.
This morning I had a dream I was in some kind of half-assed boot camp for work. It was in or around an antique church. At one point we had to swim in this heated pool. I was able to swim despite not having that skill in real life. There were ducks swimming underwater near the surface, big fish in the depths. After we got out I saw an automated stand selling posh ice cream cones and wanted one, but the alarm woke me up.
I get to work and there are two cars in the parking lot. Ask one person and tell the other the news. The freezing temperatures last night caused a power outage. We’re supposed to wait for a call at ten AM or check our work’s inclement weather line to find out if we’re going to come in later at all. I could have gone to the mall to wait til ten, but it was less walking and less waiting to just get on the bus home instead. Turned out to be the right call because work stayed cancelled.
While walking to the bus, I saw lots of robins chasing each other through the trees, making cute squeaks. I should clarify these are American/fake robins, so picture a thrush. When I sit on the icy concrete next to the frosted grass, I see crows out in the street poking at I don’t know what. One of the crows bounced back to the curb a few paces from me, nervous of traffic.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen bird breath, but it’s a thing. When the weather is cold enough and the bird is big enough, you can see their breath as surely as your own. Warm blooded, after all. I’ve only ever noticed it on crows, and then rarely. Whether it’s because they’re small or because weird bird respiration keeps their breaths short or thin, even on a snowy day, you can’t always see a crow’s breath. Just when they’re taking a deep one.
This crow on the curb was puffing out so much vapor that when it had its beak tilted down, I saw the vapors break over the concrete. It was like a fantasy creature using its ice breath attack. It was also occasionally sneezing, which was adorable and sad. The sun crested the east side of the valley about then and I wondered if one of those was a sun sneeze – where a temperature shift in your face tickles your nose.
Well, I have the day off, so that’s one three day weekend soon to be followed by a four day weekend. I know I need the practice at work so this isn’t great on that level and undercuts my appreciation of this luck, but I do hope to enjoy myself.
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You get used to a cat being a presence, like any given movement or patch of appropriate color the right size in your peripheral vision could be the cat. Walk in the room, dark spot on the bed. Did you leave your t-shirt there or is it your black cat? Your eyes adjust, it’s the cat.
When I get tired I get minor hallucinations of movement. Might be something to do with the floating debris on my eyeball that I can see well due to nearsightedness. I see that stuff sliding by and my eye chases after it, imagines a more substantial source to the motion.
So sometimes I see a movement, not dark enough to be my alive cat Hecubus, and forgetting her recent passing, fills in my deceased cat Momo. She’s ghosting about my room, animated by the frailty of human senses and endurance.
This coming week is the most likely yet to cause me to flame out of my new job. Every day I work there I feel like my brain is being taken apart and put back together. My chest is hollow and my arms weak. I might find it easier with less direct oversight. With fewer interruptions from someone trying to catch my mistakes, I may be able to relax into things more. Or without close supervision I might get flustered with difficult customers and get shouted down, broken like a dog.
This weekend is half over and too fucking short. The shit we’re expected to do for the right to not be homeless, amirite peoples?
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…or Darby O’Gill and the Goodbye Momo
content warning: animal death, dismal feelings
A long time ago film companies had studios. There are vestiges of this arrangement, but as exploitative and sheisty as the studio system was, it had too much overhead for modern capitalism. They had to go. Once upon a time, though, Disney was in a system where they had a film studio and a sense of obligation to use it. It was just how things were done. Get a studio, use it or lose it. So they cranked out some really bizarre little films for a few decades, like The Absent-minded Professor and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Did they do Herbie the Love Bug and The Parent Trap? The Shaggy DA? I think they did.
Eventually the production values dwindled until there was nothing left but made for TV fare. But back in the halcyon days before pomade quite fell completely out of style, they made a goofy Irish-sploitation leprechaun movie called “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.” Now it’s mostly used in clip form to show Sean Connery singing romantically a few years before he became James Bond. But believe me, it’s an entire-ass film. I saw it on TV when I was a child and a few things stuck with me.
Darby O’Gill catches a leprechaun king and tries to be smart about his wishes. But something (karma?) something, his young daughter was going to die, and he had to use his last wish to take her place in hell. The leprechaun king lets him off the hook and they live happily ever after. But it was a bit dark for small children.
I remember him yelling “The BawnSHEEeee!” when the spectres started appearing, and that Death wasn’t a guy with a boat. He had a flying horse-drawn carriage. Maybe it influenced Jowling Kowling Rowling’s thestrals. I just remember that element being pretty spooktacular. Translucent horses show up and you get inside, resigned, nowhere to go but beyond that veil.
About 5:20 AM today, my sickly old cat Momo woke me up making these rhythmic choking sounds. I knew she was going to die real soon. I had been intending to schedule her to be put down on Saturday – after my work week and a little more time to keep her company, say goodbye. She’d been given subdermal hydration and an appetite stimulant to prop her up for a little while, but apparently her various lethal afflictions had a different agenda as goes the timeline of this.
So I roused my boyfriend’s mom to drive us to the emergency veterinarian, where we knew they would be ending her pain. It was dark out and the closest emergency vet was a few towns over. We went this way and that, through dark pre-dawn valleys, highways, freeways, and winding hillside roads. Along one such road we had to slow to not hit a raccoon. It was leaning into the road with one very human-like hand on the ground, ghostly and silver, teeth slightly bared, eyes glowing.
We all draw our own standards as to what constitutes respect for non-human animals. Cultures and religions factor into it, take away some of our choice, but at the end of the day we know what we want to do. Some people want to kill raccoons on sight, thinking about their overpopulation and menace to domestic animals, their spread of rabies. Or they just like killing for fun, because they’re gross creeps. Me and my ride are not the kind of people who want to kill a raccoon, so we gave it a chance to stay on the side of the road like a good boy.
We were on a mission to ease the suffering of an animal, our minds wracked with sympathy for her, locked in a box with some towels, on the back seat as it sloshed this way and that in the hilly terrain, who knows what happening in her abdomen. The dark chaotic ride, the silver goblin on the roadside, the boxes within boxes. I was put in mind of Darby O’Gill and the carriage of Death.
We were the carriage of Death, as we had been on a similar night a few years ago when Mochi was dying. He’d been in horrible condition and was screaming in pain as much as he was able. When I found out it was gonna be over for Momo soon, I thought she had at least a little more time, that it wouldn’t have to be like that. I was wrong. Maybe she was in less pain? Her heart rate was slow, temperature low.
Anyway, I feel like shit for having guessed wrong on her expiration date. My boyfriend said I should be with her and I said I’d see if I could try. But when we got there she wasn’t making noises anymore. I didn’t know if she was alive. They said she was, but wasn’t tracking on anything. Even so, I also feel like shit for not looking into her eyes as she went. Or at least facing her with eyes closed. Cats like that. I just wanted them to let her go as quickly as possible, so I didn’t go there.
My boyfriend and I got Momo and Mochi about a year after we moved in together, if that. Now they’re both gone. And I got to be one of the sad coachman for both those rides into the abyss. Then it was straight to work for a full day of crapola. I’m dead like the studio system. Good night.
Inktober with me? Last year when I did Inktober the results were really weird. But it’s a case of garbage in garbage out. I wanted to do the official Inktober prompts because I wanted to be official. But they were lazy and uninteresting, so at the same time I did the mythology prompts. My boyfriend said I should do legitimately Halloweenish content, and helped me generate a much better list of prompts for this year.
So, anybody interested? You do a drawing a day. Traditionally that was ink, but I really don’t care. You can do cosplay photography if you like. Each day of October there’s an iconic horror movie monster to draw. And below that list, a cloud of art styles you can use to spice up the image. One plus one. Will you draw Jason Voorhees in a rococo style? Dracula as a dog playing poker?
THE INSTRUCTIONS:
Take the iconic horror movie character and render them in an art style you choose from the Style Cloud! When an iconic monster has a group (such as Lost Boys), you can choose your fave. When there are multiple movie depictions, you can choose your fave.
When a certain artist is named, they are just a stand-in for their style or spirit. You can make take Kazuo Umezzu for Junji Ito, Lucian Freud for Egon Schiele. Some categories are inclusive enough, you could range Hannah Barbera from Scooby Doo to the Flintstones. Or choose a style not on the list.
Ghanaian Poster Art Urban Art Rap CD Art Outsider Art Looney Tunes Rococo Roman Dirge Robert Crumb Hernandez Brothers Daniel Clowes Saul Bass Gibson Girl Winsor McCay Popeye Stoner Art Hanna Barbera Caricaturist Tumblrized Furry Art Disney Art Mascot Pee-Chee Harry Clarke Dictionnaire Infernal John Tenniel Struwwelpeter Klasky Csupo Max Fleischer Spongebob Squarepants Tim Burton Batman: The Animated Series Cartoon Network Stevens Universe Rage Comics Egon Schiele Surrealism Chuck Tingle Cover Romance Novel Cover Jack Kirby Rob Liefeld Garfield Strip Comics The Far Side Sailor Moon Pokemon Alfonse Mucha Yoshitaka Amano Cave Art GrecoRoman Statuary Faerie Art Pop Art Kitsch Cubism Mannerism Impressionism German Expressionism Americana Hieroglyphics Ukiyo-e Hindu Art Mesoamerican Art Paracas Art Bayeux Tapestry Illuminated Saint Art High Renaissance Noir Comics Dr. Seuss Little Golden Book Patrick Nagel Lisa Frank Airbrushed Van Goosebumps Cover Jack Chick Audrey Kawasaki Junko Mizuno Junji Ito Keith Haring Louis Wain James Audubon Mad Magazine Rumiko Takahashi Nintendo Castlevania Joshua Timbrook Jhonen Vasquez
If you want to participate, link to your art below!
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I went from working the most physically difficult job I’ve ever had to the most intellectually difficult job. Learning so much it hurts. Also the second most emotionally difficult job I’ve ever had, and it’s a close second. I may well flame out within a month or two, though I’ve been in training since June. But if I survive, it’s the quickest road to the best money and job security I’ve ever had. Of course, those stakes also raise the pressure.
I’ll blog more actively again when I get over the hump, or after I flame out. So in one or two months, or no sooner than eight, I think. I am still doing some odd creative things. If they go well, I may post them here. Just keep the expectations low and you won’t be disappointed, haha.
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WOOOOOOOOOOOO California just outlawed private prisons! Some are talking about how this affects ICE detention centers, and sure that’s important, but this is fucking huge for human rights even beyond that issue. Public prisons are underfunded overcrowded dangerous messes, private prisons made those factors worse by bidding their way to the bottom of the barrel, feeding people moldy scraps and letting them die of horrific diseases. Shame this phase out plan is gonna take nine years. Now if they can just outlaw prison labor too – or at least restrict the scope of it to public works instead of a corporate slave industry – we might really be getting somewhere.
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