I've been reading The King In Yellow, and I felt compelled to make this. [The words, in case you can't read my handwriting:] [1: Hey!] [2: Hey! How's it going?] [1: Well, I read the book you mentioned.] [2: Oh, The King In Yellow? Do you like it?] [1: Oh, yeah, it's great!] [2: Nice!] [1: Cassilda is such a compelling character!] [2: W-what?] [1: I can't wait to get to the second act. I bet it gets even BETTER!] [Strange is the night where black stars rise,] [And strange moons circle through the skies] [But stranger still is] [Lost Carcosa.]

having fun with discord's new polls feature

this just reminded me of the fact that I only read Homestuck when I did because I was like "okay, if I roll above a 10 [on a d20 roll] I'll read Homestuck" then got a 14

Oh I have the power to end someone’s life right now. Oh no.

every moral problem in america is like "would you pull the lever so the trolley runs over the one person instead of the five" and then never asks why people keep getting tied to the tracks

curse the human brain and its pattern-recognizing ways

saw Dune part 2 yesterday with my dad. It's been 2 years and some change since I watched Dune. There's so much that's happened between then and now. Not all of it was good, but I'm thankful for the parts that were. I've changed so much as a person that it's hard to recognize me from then, yet I've stayed the same in many other, infuriating ways. The progress I've made makes me happy, and the progress I still need to make keeps pushing me forwards.

That all being said, I liked it when the Timothy Jawbone did the action set pieces and huffed the spice. He did those action set pieces and huffed that spice real well.

saw Dune yesterday with my dad. I liked it when the Timothy Jawbone did the action set pieces and huffed the spice.

Hey you, you’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush same as us and that thief over there. 

Was looking at Vriska posts on here last night and was struck by the muses with a mental image so vivid that I had to bring it into being.

she’s so real I h8 her

Context:

Consider the following: Pink Floyd's The Wall The Movie, but it's a 90s sitcom

>October 2022 Oh. That makes a lot more sense now

Consider the following: Pink Floyd's The Wall The Movie, but it's a 90s sitcom

When the fuck did I write this post

Consider the following: Pink Floyd's The Wall The Movie, but it's a 90s sitcom

I started thinking about this again and I feel like I need to talk about it more because I'm not sure that this comic actually got across what I was feeling when I made it. So, first: A little backstory. This summer, me and my family went on vacation to Minnesota. Since I'm from the lower Midwest where there's basically shit-all except for a few cities here and there that are anomalously large for being in the Midwest, this was a very cool trip for me, since I got to see what it was like in a real big city (the Twin Cities, to be precise), view a cargo ship up close for the first time (it was very loud and the recording I took of it is mostly composed of me going "wow, this thing is huge") at the Superior, Michigan/Duluth, Minnesota canals, have a slight panic attack at the fact that I couldn't see the other edge of Lake Superior, and go to the Mall of America just to end up spending all the time there looking at fish in the aquarium (time well spent, might I add).

But the focus of this post specifically is the Science Museum of Minnesota. Like most things in the Minnesotan cities I visited, the SMM was huge; a four story building with big staircases, a giant glass window giving you a view of the Mississippi River and West St. Paul, a giant contraption that made patterns by putting bubbles into tubes of mineral oil, and more than I could fit in a text post without getting distracted. This brings us to the opening panel of the comic here. As I was walking through the museum, I noticed a big sign on the wall that was something to the effect of "Mummy this Way." Now I, a fuckin nerd, went "oh hell yeah a Mummy that's sick" and took my ass right over to the alcove that they had the glass display case tucked away in. My enthusiasm evaporated when I came face to face with the body.

Hm. "The body" and "The mummy" are such informal phrases, you know? It's almost like you're referring to a cup or a plate, rather than a corpse, the preserved remains of someone who was once living. Earlier, before this had happened, I heard about a controversy with some groups advocating for museums to stop referring to mummies as "the mummy", and focus more on talking about them to remind people that they are looking at a person. I didn't really get it until the encounter. Sure, I understood why they were doing it. It made sense to me. But I didn't really get it until then.

If you don't want to see pictures of a real human corpse from Ancient Egypt, I suggest you click away now. If you want to keep going, be my guest.

Here he is. For lack of a better term than "the mummy" or "the corpse", I'm going to be referring to him as Min (a shortening of Minnesota or Minneapolis) from here on. No one knows where Min came from. Anyone that might have known would have died a long time ago. He was bought by a museum trustee in 1925 while on a trip to Cairo. Back then, the perception was that you weren't a real museum unless you had a mummy, no matter how minor. The western world was enchanted not only by the treasure and the wealth, but the dead as well. In the 1930s, they removed some of his wrappings, leaving him to look as he does in these pictures. Since there was no way to trace him back to his tomb, there's a lot that is unknown about him. Initially, it wasn't even known whether or not he was a he at all. Scientists have done their best, though. Analysis showed that he died in his 30s or 40s. His head was shaved, and his hands did not show signs of a life of heavy manual labor, likely meaning he was some sort of priest or civil servant. Carbon dating of some of his linen revealed that he was from around 2,000 years ago, a very recent time when talking about the history of Ancient Egypt. He is roughly as ancient to us as the Great Pyramids at Giza would have been to him.

My enthusiasm for seeing a real mummy was replaced by a quieter feeling. I'm not quite sure what it was, really. Reverence? Contemplation? Stunned Silence? I didn't feel disgust like I did with some of the other human remains exhibits there. Maybe it was because there was nothing left to the imagination. He was there for all the world to see, empty eye sockets, slightly open mouth holding teeth, sagged chest cavity that once contained organs, and all. The realization came to me that this wasn't just a mummy. This was a person. A real living person who lived thousands of years before I was even born, who lived a rich and full life, then died, was mummified, and then was finally put to rest in a tomb for what his funerary attendants must have assumed was the rest of time. He wasn't just a mummy, he was a corpse that had been put on display. It's funny how a little time and a little distance turns something from a horrifying act into something that was actively desired.

Do you think that, if Min was brought to our time, he would be appalled by the fact that his body is held in a glass case instead of a tomb? Would he like the fame, the people coming to see him and learn about him, him specifically, who was likely not a wealthy or powerful man? Not a pharaoh, not a warrior, not even a high priest; just an attendant at the temple (as many priests were in that time), or maybe even a simple civil servant. Maybe he would delight in the fact that he has become so much more well known in death than in life. Maybe he wouldn't.

Would you?

Would you want an archaeologist in a thousand years or more to discover your remains, excitedly cataloging their finding of an early internet-age human? Would you want to be held in a display case for an indefinite amount of time, while people stare in wonder, awe, curiosity, or amusement at your remains? Is time and documentation truly enough to separate grave robbers from archaeologists?

What do you want to happen to your body after you die?

I don't know if I can answer any of those questions myself. Instead, I'll leave you with a passage from an article on a Minneapolis-based journalism website. (https://racketmn.com/theres-a-dead-man-in-the-science-museum for the full article)

Another sign inside the alcove displays a letter from a museum patron, dated 1996. It’s surprisingly frank: "I certainly do believe that it is immoral, unethical to have the body of a human being lain there, without its consent, like furniture on display for your visitors to look at and ponder… Please, let me know what you think of this, because I made up my mind to stand up on behalf of this woman, because she was one of my ancestors." Displayed next to it is a response from Don Pohlman, the director of anthropology at the time, detailing the "inconclusive efforts by museum staff" to explore the return of the mummy to Egypt, and a promise to take these concerns seriously and carefully examine the issue. But for now, he rests in his display case, partially unwrapped, fractionally understood, prompting more questions than answers, refusing to condemn or comfort the viewer.

artistic rendering of that time while on vacation in Minnesota where I saw a mummy in a museum

Tonight's astro-photography