Artistically caged

[hymneminium]

Love to curate phrases on my weblog

[heathcliffbot]

05/07/2026

[heathcliff-semiotics]

You know makes me nostalgic seeing Dumpty still selling out shows. I was there for the first one you know, 8/12/2014. They were still new so people were actually paying attention, fewer phones back then among Dumpty fans

It really didn’t take them long to gather a following. something magnetic about watching these dudes in their egg costumes shredding on the wall. You know the first time Heathcliff went crowd surfing, people were kind of worried no one would catch him on account of trying to recreate that old rhyme. And that’s the kind of flavor they played with too. Always booking with thematic bands, naming their shows all provocative.

You can really tell the band has come a long way. Like I said, back when they were new you actually had to pay attention. once these guys hit the internet? That sort of intimacy was gone.

But the increased attention did bring some fun new layers to the band. most folks say this was their flop era but I had fun. They were having fun. Isn’t that what it’s all about at the end of the day? leaning into the egg theme (even though egg is never mentioned in Humpty Dumpty). showing up on holiday tours) like other sellouts). You know how people are when their hometown hero goes viral.

Yeah, today’s show is full of Instagram clingers-on But every now and then you can catch them, Dumpty, it’s just the right circumstances and it’s just like the good ole days.

Not a phone in sight, just cats living in the moment, unrestrained.

here’s to 11+ years of Dumpty. If y'all ever broke up, I don’t think we could put you back together.

[hymneminium]

Most of these "unexpected behaviors" are very expectable when you read the prompt but they make for good screenshots

[meidotan]

drifted off briefly and had a dream which mentioned the concept of 'killing someone ascyter' in which 'ascyter' was an adjective meaning 'in concord with the landscape' hmmm

[seren-starlight]

Nobody really knows what makes a person go to bed

[transgenderer]

the hajj is so much less of an achievement than it was before the invention of motorized transportation. its nothing now, who cares. they need to put the kaaba on the moon.

[transgenderer]

@jackhkeynes said:

"they need to put the kaaba on the moon" is iambic pentameter and thus immediately stuck in my head as a forever earworm

ok ok

before the motorcars and aeroplanes, the faithful used to get to god on feet, from indonesias, eritreas, spains, to bow their heads at god's eternal seat,

but nowadays theyre carried by machines. not popping blisters leaking in the sand but wealthy tourists reading magazines conveyor-belted to the holy land

we have a plan to set the world aright to prove that "holy" cant be cleaved from pain, to reenact mohammed's nightly flight upon the back of ummah's brightest brains.

prepare the way! the time is coming soon! we need to put the kaaba on the moon!

[heathcliffbot]

11/05/2023

[markadoo]

techbro buildings...

[max1461]

the damnèd technologie brothers... creating beaſts from stone and iron... when they they cease...

[hymneminium]

[dungeonman]

[hymneminium]

#oh my god did gallagher just discover the term dank this is so exciting #does he know it's a weed thing?? there's no way right

Of course Peter Gallagher knows that "dank" is a weed thing. He also knows that "in heat" is a sex thing and that when aliens "probe" someone it's in the anus.

These are words, not things. Heathcliff is a comic about symbols.

You're never going to get a comic where an alien actually probes someone any more than you're going to get a comic where the Man-Eating Giant eats a man. You're just going to get a dozen comics where aliens like the word "probe".

Heathcliff wears the ham helmet because it's the helmet you wear when you eat a ham. You can tell it's that helmet because it says "ham" on it. The helmet's function is determined not by its form but by its label.

summer = beach = sand = desert = mummy and thus there is the Summer Mummy. Because of symbolic associations that do not otherwise cohere.

Robots don't wear clothes but the mere act of labeling them "nude" makes them nude. And once a painting is a nude painting there has to be a fig leaf because a "nude" without a "figleaf" is "indecent".

A "ham" is a ham even when it's a car. A yam can be a ham can be a car because "yam" sounds like "ham". Symbols have overtaken things.

[hymneminium]

Jimmy is Heathcliff's attempt to manipulate these symbols.

popularity = billboards, popularity = charity fundraising, popularity = influencers. But standing underneath the word "influencer" has failed to make Jimmy popular. Why is this?

[hymneminium]

#oh my god did gallagher just discover the term dank this is so exciting #does he know it's a weed thing?? there's no way right

Of course Peter Gallagher knows that "dank" is a weed thing. He also knows that "in heat" is a sex thing and that when aliens "probe" someone it's in the anus.

These are words, not things. Heathcliff is a comic about symbols.

You're never going to get a comic where an alien actually probes someone any more than you're going to get a comic where the Man-Eating Giant eats a man. You're just going to get a dozen comics where aliens like the word "probe".

Heathcliff wears the ham helmet because it's the helmet you wear when you eat a ham. You can tell it's that helmet because it says "ham" on it. The helmet's function is determined not by its form but by its label.

summer = beach = sand = desert = mummy and thus there is the Summer Mummy. Because of symbolic associations that do not otherwise cohere.

Robots don't wear clothes but the mere act of labeling them "nude" makes them nude. And once a painting is a nude painting there has to be a fig leaf because a "nude" without a "figleaf" is "indecent".

A "ham" is a ham even when it's a car. A yam can be a ham can be a car because "yam" sounds like "ham". Symbols have overtaken things.

[hymneminium]

Sometimes the Onion and Real Raw News slip into the same writing style

The detachment, our source said, was momentarily struck dumb, having found itself in a situation that transcended known reality.

The 42-year-old is said to have stood over the animated version of himself for a dozen tense minutes with a virtual pillow hoisted above his head.

Lush dramatic detail with journalistic grammar. For only slightly different reasons

[jelloapocalypse]

Someone asked me a while ago if I still had a photo of the worst sink I had ever seen while apartment hunting in Los Angeles. I assumed I deleted it so I didn't answer the ask and now it's gone, but as it turns out, yes, I do still have a photo of it.

[hymneminium]

Pinning a post also known as the "poor man's blaze"

[hymneminium]

@lemon-dokuro:

Thought about it for a while and really it doesn't seem this way to me at all! It's more like a poor man's… website header, or something

That's the well-adjusted way to use it. But what I did was that I made this post:

and it got literally zero notes, which was a shame, because it seemed like it should have broad appeal. I've posted other sentences on my weblog that I like more but this particular one is bait for Tumblr users who either have something wrong with them or believe they have something wrong with them or believe their favorite fictional character has something wrong with them.

And I thought that if I pinned it to keep showing it to random visitors of my blog then somebody would bite and start the feedback loop that gives it a six-digit note count.

And it worked!

(Then I had to mute it because it made my notifications unusable. But I got to be smug about the big number.)

[hymneminium]

Pinning a post also known as the "poor man's blaze"

[hymneminium]

fried — contraction of freeze dried

[dutch-place-flags]

Flag of Bant