sometimes I don't give Past Me enough credit. every day I go into a frantic frenzy looking for my lost tablet pen only to find that Past Me placed it in a very logical safe place (nightstand) instead of leaving it in an illogical place (bed sheets) like Current Me would do

I love the ppl who think if someone doesn't die dramatically right in front of them, gasping for breath, then they didn't die. 60% of ppl die at home, Marvin. And the second most popular place to die is a hospital. And then the bodies go to a morgue or funeral home or refrigerated trailer or crematorium or mass grave on Potter's Field. The bodies aren't stacked in the streets bc that's not how we do things, ya walnut.

C19 is not "just like the flu," and I can't believe this is still a conversation anyone is having. The 18/19 flu season claimed 34,157 lives in the US, and we're currently up to 132,000 for C19. We've had 2.93 million confirmed cases of C19, vs 35.5 million symptomatic flu cases last season. According to my calculator, that means a 4.5% death rate for C19 and a .096% death rate for the flu. So we've had 4x the number of confirmed deaths, and a symptomatic person with C19 is almost 47x more likely to die than a person with last year's flu strains. How is this comparison still being made? Just stop. The horse is dead.

Laying next to it is the Death Counts Only horse. Bc C19 is not a coin that lands on either death or the sniffles. It's a spinner and there are all kinds of prizes that matter just as much, and maybe more. Some ppl end up needing lung transplants. Some have permenant lung damage that is closer to COPD. Some have neurological issues, either from the virus passing the blood/brain barrier and wreaking havoc, or from a stroke. Some have autoimmune issues. Some are sick for months and lose their jobs. And anyone who sees any kind of treatment gets a 'Merika-sized medical bill. That alone is a serious issue, especially since the hardest-hit demographics are already poor. All of those ppl are (eventually) counted as "recovered." The idea that "recovered" means "all better, no big deal," is wrong. "Recovered" can mean unemployment, organ failure, permenant disability, chronic illness, and massive debt. Those are also things that matter.

You do not know if you're an asymptomatic carrier. That's what asymptomatic means. Like the guy who comes to work and says his kids are sick, and he's not sick at all, but then Sara in reception gets sick with the same thing. Maybe you're not the guy. But maybe you are. And unless you're getting a swab jammed up your nose, you'll never know. So taking precautions is the responsible, mature thing to do.

Social distancing and masks are both necessary bc they don't have the same results. Masks keep your spit at your face. Social distancing keeps your spit from contacting someone before it settles. Social distancing is great on a walk down the street. Your spit doesn't touch anyone before it drops, and it drops on the curb, in the sun, where no one is gonna touch it while it's still viable. Masks are for close quarters, where social distancing isn't possible, and communal spaces. Even if you could social distance in the grocery store, your spit is settling on objects inside of that 6' bubble. Groceries. Your spit is landing on groceries, that someone is gonna touch and take home. That's pretty gross to think about, even when the bugs going around are ones our bodies have seen before and are fairly ready to fight off. But that's not what we're worried about rn. So keep your spit to yourself.

And yes, masks help keep your spit to yourself. Pull your t-shirt over your mouth and exhale. Humid, right? That's your spit, baby. Every little droplet that you feel is a droplet not going out into the room. And that means the stuff inside the droplet is staying put, too. (And no, keeping your spit to yourself doesn't make you sick. You can't give yourself an illness you don't already have, bud.) See, viruses are smaller than the weave of fabrics. So are lots of yeast spores and bacteria. But they aren't floating out of your face on little Mary Poppins umbrellas. They're inside droplets of spit. The more spit you keep, the more bugs you keep. Is it 100%? No. Nothing short of a hermetically sealed plastic bubble would be. But it is better than not controlling your spit at all. "All or nothing" is for kids.

"Every man for himself" is for kids. "If I don't see it, it doesn't exist" is for kids. "Not touching you, can't get mad" is for kids. "I'm not doing it just bc you're making me" is for kids. "Haha, look at the scaredy-cat" is for kids. Don't insult yourself by pretending you don't know any better. Put on your grown-up pants and a mask.

Welcome:

I am unaccustomed to being a woman without voice or sight. Ever since I learned the art of object permenance, later, speech, I was a performer: I demanded to be seen and heard. A tiny girl who was somehow the biggest in the room. Something happened to me in recent years, something that maybe I can speak about in this space (I suppose we'll get to it later), but now it seems I have too many words for the average social media account. I feel words flow out of me now. I sleep next to a few things: a dog, a record player, a stack of books, and the keyboards and journals in which I write these words. It's very possible that nobody cares to hear them, but it's so important that I get them out. I have a lot of pent up essays about mothers, heartbreaks, assaults, traumas, and the myriad problems that can make a brain go sideways. I have decided to spit out the demons that changed me and silenced me. I've also decided to speak about the joys that saved me. This space is a way of improving my creative and visual writing. I would like it to function as a safe space for me to accept feedback. If you've been invited here, it's because I value your opinion. Perhaps this is my first step in getting back to a process that fed me so much when I was younger. I felt so guilty for forgetting, but any therapist will tell you that there is no productive space for guilt.

Jenny Slate wrote "who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?" She meant it in a romantic sense, my Mediterranian sensibilities mean it in this one: if you would like to read my words, it would fill me with the same satisfaction as making a giant pot of pasta and having friends surrounding my dinner table, drenched in sun and candle light. That is to say, it would be my favorite.

Welcome to this space. It's a brand new baby at this point: a little project. Maybe I can hear your words, too. Maybe I can put them here.

Footnotes: This project is named after my three favorite smells and dedicated to my Aunt Mary, she of the sun and sand, who has encouraged me to write since sending me a desk set my freshman year of college. Thank you for always encouraging me. This space is for you.

The first post will follow shortly.

This space will consist of original images and writing, but anything under the "likes" tab is inspiration. I understand that this format is very 2011, but I still have my tumblr from about a million years ago. I'll give the link on special request (hahahaha). PLEASE, if anybody has a better suggestion regarding platform, let me know.

I love you all for reading and caring this much.

Weirdass Real Cis AF Conversation going on downstairs

"Oh my daughter's wedding yeah i want the girliest dress yeah she loves girly stuff. Like even when she was a baby she'd always wear frilly petticoats."

Like..umm.. You put her in those clothes...?

Serioudly she was on about how she bought a whole fancy old fashioned petticoat for a literal one year olf including frilly knickers, and how THE DAUGHTER IN QUESTION said she didnt want to raise her own kids so heavily gendered from such a young age as she was, but the mom was like "oh just wait til theyre born and you see them! You'll totally understand! Mommy instincts blablabla!"

Like wow i've never seen talk of these certain type of baby underwear instincts before. Seriously man that must be so uncomfortable for a literal one year old in a diaper to have frilly scratchy stuff everywhere?? And like an eight layer petticoat she cant even run around in?? Like if you're really insistant on only buying stereotypically feminine clothes you could just go to the actual baby clothes aisle and pick up something pink? Man it must have been hell for the mom too, to get all that stuff off every time a diaper needs changing!

And then seriously how can you say 'oh my daughter liked that and my son would never like that' when theyre both too young to even say their first word? Of course theyre gonna wear whatever you put on them, they cant exactly fight you off! They dont even have object permenance or a concept of what dresses ARE, let alone the social implications of fashion and gender roles! I just wanted to interrupt and be like "oh your son doesnt like it? So you've let him try it? And you've let your daughter try other outfits too?"

And It doesnt really bloody sound like the daughter liked being dressed that way as a kid if she argued with you about doing it to her own kid. And she was all laughing about "oh lol my son was always covered in sick instead of his clothes, he'd always pull them off haha Boys Amirite". Dude your kid is just a nebulous blob of vague comprehension of the world. Both of them would be running around being 'little terrors' if both of them could run! And serioudly thats just how much babies HATE clothes at first, they dont know why they have to wear a thing around their neck and chest or why its bad to take it off. Can you imagine how much more fidgety a kid would be in the most over the top petticoat nonsense? And not being able to crawl or run or play because she's not allowed to get stains on the stupid thing?

Ugh man i wore a frilly petticoat like that when i was a kid up to around age 6 or 7. Because it was all i had and my parents decided what i wore every day. And i didnt know that some things were 'girly' or 'manly' let alone that i was trans yet! Well i mean i guess i kind of still was me but i didnt know to feel bad about it cos i didnt know boys couldnt wear this or girls had to wear this. I just had no feelings on it except that it was annoyyyyying to wait thru all this long process of putting it on each morning and i'd fidget like hell. And then it was uncomfortable and i just had to get used to it because i thought ALL clothes were just as bad? I liked how the skirt fanned out if i ran but i hated that i wasnt supposed to run in it. And i still tried to run around and climb trees and roll in the grass and hide behind the sofa and make forts and be a "little terror" even when i kept getting told off for "ruining" my good clothes. And i think thats where i started my general hatred of shoes cos those fancy dress shoes were so tight and cut up the back of my feet. I'd take them off as soon as my parents werent watching! And theyd all swear that i "loved" having my hair tied back in a ribbon even though i'd cry about people tpuching and pulling my hair and then keep conveiniently losing the ribbon by the end of the day. Seriously bad parents will just make up a personality for you and never bother to actually ask you! Like i mean i dunno of this lady is a bad parent just cos she believes in kinda exaggerated gender stereotypes, but my parents did and yeah it reminded me of they who were very much not good :/

OH MAN LOL its funny looking back on how my parents were ~so concerned~ at my ~sudden phase~ of hating dresses and choosing to wear "boy clothes" literally AS SOON AS I LEARNED THERE WERE OTHER OPTIONS. And they still chose everything i wore so i'd just have to go for the least feminine of the bunch and like ignore half of the closet until they got the hint. Imagine like entire years of slowly getting slightly more neutral clothes until eventually i had one singular t shirt. Still with care bears on it. And as soon as i actually got to choose my own clothes i was totally off on the me train! "What has caused this alarming new trend out of nowhere?" Asks zero memory mom, who was complaining about the same damn thing every time i did anything non girly for the last decade. Also they complained that i was "less vibrant and happy and didnt run around like you did as a kid" despite the fact they friggin punished me for running around and not being a demure young girl :/

And then there's the whole subject of how all babies regardless of gender wore frilly smocks and bows in victorian times. It was still considered unmasculine for a grown man but it was like in an "immature" sense. It was called the breeching of the child, i think? That age when you get old enough to start wearing pants, it was treated as a lil life milestone celebration. There's loads of other stuff like that of our ideas of masculine and feminine clothing switching sides throughout history! Baby blue was considered the primary feminine colour for a long time, and pink was just considered a shade of manly red. High heels and tights were both invented as male fashions,and you see LOADS of regency era men wearing them in portraits! They only became degraded as a women only thing because crossdressing women would wear them and society had a homophobic transphobic panic and decided to abandon the trend. And over time it was all forgotten and the idea morphed into a 'ultinate symbol of straight femininity' just like it was the ultimate straight masculinity before...

So yeah lol sorry i just overheard a very stupid excuse for why imposing super over the top gender roles on a kid is ~totally good~ and i just went off on a brain thought train about the whole subject. I guess im still a bit upset from the whole transphobic mess yesterday and im probably judging this lady a bit too harshly.

Crit shits: HAHA! THE CREWNIVERSE! YOU WRETCHED FOOLS! I SEE YOUR GAME, YOU DISGUSTING PHONIES! NOTHING YOU DO WILL EVER SATISFY ME PERSONALLY, SO CLEARLY YOURE ALL LYING FOOLS WHO STEAL IDEAS FROM FANS AND CANT WRITE! I HAVE THE OBJECT PERMENEANCE OF A CAT!

Me: why do you guys talk like if the living embodiment of Imposter Syndrome and a super villain had sex and had the most whiny baby ever

Bargain Box Wands

below is my homebrew list of humorous but possibly useful wands, with some magical effects taken from wild magic lists. In the game I'm GMing, these can be found in the clearance bin of a wand shop, with only the price and physical description of the wand, and the players have to buy them and use them to see their effects. Anything that effects another person gets the chance to roll a will save. You are more than welcome to use these in your game, but please think carefully before including them, as there is a chance your players can find a loophole and tear apart your game. These should be primarily for fun, and probably aren't for serious game. ---------------- Blueish green iridescent peacock wand - gave a third eye that allowed caster to see auras (alignments) for 6 seconds. Might be false. Peach colored wand - gives the target permentant horns / antlers of GMs choosing Guacamole colored wand - makes the taste of drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. The higher the caster rolls on a 1d20 the worse the taste is Twisted wood in a braided wand- gives the target a random hairstyle, the less they want it the sooner it will disappear a opal wand that has a toothy grin carved into it- gives the target cat fangs, giving them a bite attack of 1d4. Fades in 1d6 hours Crystal frosted wand- make a 10ft sq area snow and little baby snowmen come out to help you, they also call you dada Black grey ombré wand- creates a 20x20 ft fog cloud in a random direction Obsidian wand- takes a photo of what the caster is pointing at and prints it out Cotten candy pink fading into pastel blue- target turns into a baby for 1d10 rounds. Pink, black writing "RATZ"- summons 1d100 rats around you. They are not controlled by you Black, grey writing "BATZ"- turns the target into a bat for 1d6 rounds. 10% chance of also turning you into a bat for same amount of time A maroon knotted wood wand with three orange feathers tied to it- summons a random god, they may or may not respond A light colored wood with metal coiled around it- the target becomes illiterate for 3d4 days Pitch black wand with a glowing red crystal at the end: target is suddenly aware the next person they tell their name to will instantly attack them Navy blue wand with little pink elephants painted on the side- target hallucinates for 1d12 weeks A partially leather bound wand with a small hilt, with a flat sharp metal rod for 2/3 of the wand, and you know what it's a knife, its a fucking knife wand- summons a random knife object. (Object with a knife taped to it, E.G. a knife fish, which is a fish with a knife taped to it, or a knife gun) Silvery grey dragon hatching horn, with small grooves in it- Everyone in the party hears an announcer voice in their head, announcing what they are doing and critiqueing it. Lasts until combat is over or 1 hour, which ever comes first. It then gives a synopsis of what happened Radio antenna that you have to stretch out before you can use it- caster's arm stretches out (up to 50 feet) to bitch slap the target. Deals 1 dmg Olive green branch- random person polymorphs into something that rhymes with their name, or is a pun of their name Copper wand with a hollow copper hand at the end- Target becomes mute for 1d20 hours. Purple wand with three eyes, the two outer closed and the center eye open- The dm gives you three pieces of information (dm chooses what it is about), two are lies and one is the truth A gradient dark brown to pale flesh tone wand, with black markings scrawled across it- target gains one tattoo, of dm's choice. The target experiences all the pain of getting a tattoo at once, but the pain is completely gone by their next turn A blue wand with childish yellow stars on it, like a cartoony wizard hat- caster swaps all their spells with the target. If you do not have spells, you swap your feats for their spells or feats instead Black wand with completely transparent crystal for the center 1/3- random body part of target becomes invisible, permanently. Only works on each person twice This wand has the aesthetic of an angsty 2003 teenage garage band- freaky Friday !!!1!!! Caster switches bodies with a random creature nearby, DM can choose or leave it to the dice. Is reversed in 1d8 rounds An uncomfortable shade of beige wand- Target's face turns into that of Nicholas cage's for 1d20 minutes A charred husk of wood- a random object within 40 feet of the caster shrinks Slightly translucent brown wand, with the tip a creamy color, and little lighter brown spots throughout- changes what ever the person is holding into a mug of beer. The person gets a will save to resist it A dark green wand with small runes that is slightly sticky: reverses your alignment for 1d6 days (e.g. Lawful good would be chaotic evil). The person can then choose to keep it or revert back. Cannot be used on an unwilling person more than once A white wand with blue horizontal stripes, and three holes cut out- you turn into paper for 1d6 rounds. From head on you are nearly invisible (seeing as you are paper thin) but you are highly vulnerable to fire and your weapons do no damage, except to rock Light yellow wand with brown ends, and brown spots- one random person around you (including yourself) falls over Two rusty orange wooden wands, bound together by a chain- creates a doppelgänger of the caster, who can communicate telepathically with the caster. I roll to see the doppelgänger's alignment and if they will help your group or cause you trouble. HP of 2 A wand completely covered in soft creamy down feathers- random item in target's possessions sprouts wings and flies away. If the item is grabbed the wings disappear Ten twenty sided dice, all glued together- target suddenly has a vision of the players sitting around the table. They hear who ever controls them saying the action they just took, and starts describing them hearing the controller describing them hearing what the controller is describing them hearing what the controller is describing them hearing... then their sight flares red, and the vision ends. Roll a will save for how they take this info Slightly transparent white wand, with golden glitter in it- Caster can see ghosts for 1d4 hours. Ghosts may be friendly, neutral, or aggressive. Orange wand with darker orange stripes and a white underside- Target smells of catnip, and nearby cats will casually swarm around them for 1d6 hours A sky blue wand with a internet explorer symbol carved into it- After using it, the sound of an action preformed by someone in the next round will be delayed for 1d4 rounds. The caster chooses which sound, and it has to be something they know is coming (e.g. A teammate telling them they will clap next round) A oak wand with a carved sad dog head at one end, and has the words "god damn it Sarah McLachlan" painted on the side- Target begins crying for 1d4 rounds. Roll 1d20 to see how badly they are weeping. A fucking rad lookin glow stick-for 1d20 days the target becomes a living glowstick. Any time they get injured the area around it begins to glow a neon color, like cracking a glowstick. A shimmering black twisted wood wand with a quartz crystal at the tip- Random person in area can now only speak in rhymes for 1d4 hours. A wand made of malachite carvings of spiders, snakes, and wasps all intricately layered-Target gains 1 phobia of GMs choice (players wishes can be considered). Can only be used on the same person twice. A rubber chicken on a stick- the wand spews out 1d10 x 30 feathers up to 30 feet. Doesn't cause any damage. A vial filled with clear liquid, with a button on the side of it- The liquid becomes a random magical potion, good or bad. GM can choose or leave it up to fate. A boring ass black wand- User has X-ray vision for 6 seconds. GM can decide when an object is too thick to see through. A soft grey wand with buttons 0-9, with each of the buttons also having 3 letters, like a flip phone- player can take a few moments to type a message to send to anyone they know who has a blank piece of paper available (journal, scroll, etc all work). The message then appears on the paper, and the sender can decide if it makes a notification sound or not. Depending on the length of the message, it takes a different amount of time. For 3 characters or under it is a swift action, for 10 characters or under it is a standard action, and for 20 characters or under it is a full round action. There is a maximum of 100 characters available per each use. An extremely old yellowed wand, with a wine colored leather hilt. There is a ominous feeling to this wand- the target/s (can target up to 5 people) and the caster are transported to a different world, that of a common story book of the GMs choosing. They must try to make it to the end of the story alive to escape. The people may change species / gender, but they will be able to communicate to the others. (Some story ideas: Charlotte's web, the tale of peter rabbit, Charlie and the chocolate factory, green eggs and ham) A sea foam green wand with little fishes painted on the sides- Target grows gills for 1d6 minutes. Can breathe underwater and in air. Roll 1d20, if 20 you also grow a little dorsal fin, shark tail, and connective tissue between fingers and toes to allow you to double your speed underwater. These modifications are now permenant. This wand appears to be a bone from a human ribcage. Curious.- Target forgets their name and profession for 1d6 hours. Player to the right decides what they think their name and profession is. If the wand is used on a NPC, they still know what they are currently doing (trying to kill the players for example). With NPCS the gm can choose which player to pick the new info, so it isn't always the same person. A carmine pink metal wand with a large crystal ball at one end- tells you one thing you missed in a situation 24 hours or more before.