the "new normal" couldve been respirators & rapid tests & hepa filters & universal basic income & accessibility & caring about other people.........

my father said to me once that one of the things he deeply regretted was not putting music on for his father while he was fading away. he told me that grandpa would just sit in his old armchair in the quiet, and not until after he’d passed did my dad think of how he could have played of his favorite classical music tapes for him so grandpa could listen to something while he still could. i was very young when this happened and not much older when my dad told me this, but it always stuck with me as something important.

my mother died at home in a hospice cot, slowly shutting down over the course of about a week. when she had stopped responding, i remembered what dad told me about wishing he’d played music for grandpa, and i put the radio on her favorite country music station and kept it on for her until she died.

daddy died in hospital. no cassette players, no decent radios. the day after he was brought in, i thought again of what he told me, and i bought a little portable bluetooth speaker. even though he never woke up, was never aware, i played music for him too.

there’s no real significance to sharing this, not really. my motivation is selfish, again: i just want to hope that someone might think of this when their loved one is stuck in silence somehow, and maybe they’ll play music for them, and they won’t have to regret not doing so. i want to hope it helps someone. and i want to hope that someone will remember my dad with me, even in just a “story i read on the internet” way.

my favorite thing about Corporal Carrot is that he’s a romantic hero plopped right in the middle of the greediest cesspit of a chaotic neutral city ever to debase the pages of literature, and yet instead of having his shining idealism destroyed by an uncaring reality, he makes reality embarrassedly put down the weapons and agree to make nice, and then mutter an awkward “Good morning” whenever it passes him on the street.

Fossil sink

at my wedding yes i will have a maid of honour but why stop there. ill give all my maids titles. we will have a maid of hope. a maid of horror. a maid of horticulture. a maid of harm. a maid of healing. and of course. a maid of hogs

Salt of the Earth (1954), dir. Herbert J. Biberman

Say what you want about the 2023 Shakespeare in The Park production of Hamlet, but the choices made in that play WORKED. Having Hamlet wear a black hoodie and camo pants and him dramatically putting his hood up when he was pissed off was inspired. Having Horatio video tape Claudius on an iPhone camera from the side of the stage during the play within the play was hilarious. Having the play within the play be a hip hop dance number that represented the murder!?! Fantastic. Having Ophelia be a singer before she went mad and having a beautiful voice that everyone loved to listen to and then seeing her singing get worse and worse as she got nearer to death?!?! Hamlet pulling out his iphone after killing Polonius to show his mom a picture of his dad compared to a picture of Claudius and angrily swiping back and forth between the two as he said “What judgement would step from this… to this?” The crowd fucking lost it every time. Horatio singing to Hamlet as he died made me fully sob every time. The way they did the ghost on stage was so chilling and I can’t even accurately describe it, you just had to be there. Hamlet being deeply exasperated the entire time was just perfect. Hamlet and Horatio had a secret handshake. Laertes inexplicably carried an acoustic guitar case for much of the play which was very funny but also hit you with the heartbreaking implication that he had used to play while Ophelia sang and he stopped carrying it after she died. It was peak teenage-angst-hamlet and it was so dear to me. PLEASE if anyone has a recording, send it to me.

a little obsessed with the story of how giacomo casanova was sharing a gondola with this random guy who suddenly started having a seizure, and casanova had some medical training so he stabilized the guy until the guy’s physician could be called. and then the physician bled the guy and put mercury ointment on him, which caused everything to get worse to the point that a priest was called to administer the guy’s last rites, but then casanova stepped in and washed off the mercury ointment despite the doctor yelling at him not to. and the guy recovered and turned out to be super rich and powerful and in gratitude bankrolled casanova’s debauchery for years until casanova got himself sentenced to five years in jail for blasphemy. also at one point he got shot through the hand in a duel and doctors wanted to amputate it but he said no it’ll be fine and it Was

"Based on data gleaned from the nearly 10 million military dependents it insures, the U.S. Department of Defense has repeatedly called the evidence supporting ABA “weak,” noting there is no research to determine whether the small number of participants who show improvement — 15% — do so because of treatment or simply because a child has matured. After a year of the therapy, the department reported to Congress in 2019, 76% of 16,000 participating autistic children saw no change, and 9% worsened."

Tiny ninja

To-cat-ata in B by sympawnies

speaking of the scary ocean, in the Salish Sea we have bioluminescence in the summer. It’s not like in movies where the whole sea glows. The microorganisms which cause it only glow when they’re disturbed. On a warm, still night the sea is black until you stick your hand in and shake it around, then it lights up blue.

anyway my friends and I dive at night and it’s really cool to watch someone from above because they look like a celestial being in the water, glowing blue underwater.

what is deeply UNNERVING is when a Very Large creature passes you at some distance, and you know because you see a blue, glowing mass go by and you think well, that’s just not my business.

The haunting ancient Celtic carnyx being played for an audience. This is the sound Roman soldiers would have heard their Celtic enemies make.

this sims 2 ad has like such deep gay energy to it. Like this feels like queer history to me