To George, the First Space Monkey

Hi, I'm Allie! I like lipstick, microorganisms, and the Boston Bruins. NSFW-ish, sometimes.

[achillesinhighheels]

[despazito]

Niu Lai has not made its way onto tumblr yet so I guess my anglophone ass has to make a post about it

[despazito]

Low-budget ‘Niu Lai’ emerges as a surprise hit with its ‘disaster-level’ animation, grabbing millions in China as curiosity rivals Nolan’s ‘

This movie is currently a huge meme in china. It came out of nowhere and inexplicably got a theatrical release, looks like ass, was animated completely by the director and his mother, and took several years to make. "Niu Lai" translates roughly to "The bull is coming" and apparently the film has several other allusions to stock market puns. The Chinese stock market coincidentally had an uptick the day of its release which added further fuel to the meme fire. After going viral Niu Lai began to actually turn profit at the box office, theatres unprepared for Niu Lai mania (the creators did not distribute any promotional material) had to improvise DIY posters:

Niu Lai has now been pulled from theatres.

[starship-goldfish]

Good news: Niu Lai was only pulled from cinemas its hometown, because "the film’s poor quality could harm the city’s image." The rest of China is still screening it.

[pangur-and-grim]

he’s such a disturbance

[little-shake-for-the-ben-man]

I like how fucked up and loud his climbing is, really adds a certain nasty feeling that he normally evokes

[homunculus-argument]

Pharmacy waiting section should have a soundproof thunderdome where people whose medication withdrawal causes aggression can go beat the shit out of each other while waiting for their prescriptions.

[prokopetz]

Magical girl parody where the magical girls and the big gross bug monsters have mutually agreed that they don't actually want to fight each other to the death, and every episode is some reverse Scooby Doo bullshit to keep the Queen of Darkness from figuring out what's going on.

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

[luetta]

canaries were used in coalmines due to their incredibly hard beaks, they could break through stone as well as any pickaxe

[justnoodlefishthings]

The way people demonize seagulls is actually unreal. Almost all of their natural habitat has been destroyed (almost all coastal areas have been developed, destroying natural sand dune ecosystems) and they're doing their best to adapt. They're literally just trying to survive. You're in their home. The vitriol some people have for these gorgeous sea birds just because they're not shy about snatching food if you're not cautious is insane

[thebaconturner]

Seagulls live in post-apocalyptic scarcity, where all their natural habitats and food sources have been decimated by humans. The fact that they get all Beyond Thunderdome when we eat food at them is very much our fault.

[necronatron]

I think... I never shared this here. I could be wrong, but I am unsure.

[great-and-small]

Texting the ecologist friend after she gave birth to ask “on a scale of kangaroo to spotted hyena how bad was it”

[alterac]

Hold on I need to look something up.

[talesfromtreatment]

You are going to regret that. My preemptive condolences.

[naamahdarling]

Fancy's first time trying fresh catnip!

[heathcliffbot]

08/13/2026

[goodluckclove]

This is the funniest fucking comic in the world to me. Everything about it is perfect. I love that it came out in 2026. I love the concept of a Dank Blimp being presented as if it’s an established concept and a coherent single-panel punchline. I love that this has all the makings of a boomer humor Kids-These-Days comic, but is executed with a non-euclidian sincerity.

I saw this last night and proceeded to spend the next hour looking up other newer Heathcliff comics and just absolutely losing my shit over them.

[hymneminium]

The Heathcliff man-eating giant comics are so good

[hymneminium]

It's common for newspaper comic characters to have a gimmick, like how Garfield hates mondays and Ignatz Mouse throws bricks and so on. And readers can tune in at any point, so each episode has to both set up the pattern and confirm it. It's funny even if it's your first time but if you've seen it before then you also get the joy of recognition.

So then Heathcliff has a "man-eating giant" character whose gimmick is that he eats human flesh, and the comics lay out that he eats human flesh and he doesn't eat anything else and the humans fear for their lives:

But of course you never see him eat any mans. It has this almost koanic quality

[heathcliffbot]

11/05/2025

[hymneminium]

The Garbage Ape is a folkloric figure made up by the cats to explain where garbage comes from. Joe Stork brings babies, the Sandman puts rheum in your eye, the Garbage Ape puts garbage cans on the sidewalk. Heathcliff cares about garbage because he’s a cat that eats out of the trash as made explicit in other comics. For trash day the Garbage Ape puts the garbage cans on the sidewalk and then the garbage men come to empty them. The only difference is that the garbage men are real. The cats don’t know the actual reason for either the appearance or the disappearance of their snacks so they made up the Garbage Ape to balance it out. There’s nothing confusing whatsoever about this comic or about the concept of Garbage Apelings.

[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.

[dark-magician-girl-meets-world]

This is certainly true, but it's important to note that the fundamental act of a Heathcliff comic strip is for a character to remark on the fact that the symbol has overtaken the reality. The meat store invites the existence of a meat container, which invites the meat tank (tank both the vehicle and the bowl) which invites the enthusiasm of children for powerful mechanical objects. However, the gesture of the strip is not complete until the human identifies the irregularity which has occurred and states it aloud for us. The human does not question it, but they do name it. "Children love the meat tank"

It's important that Heathcliff is not the one speaking. Heathcliff is the character who dives the furthest into symbols, but he does not have a voice to speak of them. He is the avatar of the symbols and he is only spoken about. We must imagine the speaking characters in Heathcliff strips as the rebellious voices of the material crying out against the tyranny of the symbolic. At every moment once we've stepped into the treacherous world of Heathcliff, we are at risk of being pulled away by the tides of free association and similarity. However, the voice calls us back. It shows us when we have slipped too far, names the distance between us and the particular and specific which we have nearly lost. Symbols in Heathcliff are powerful; they can take you almost anywhere they want to go, but that power can be revoked simply by identifying what has happened. By explaining it. Heathcliff reassures us that the physical can win out, if only we are wise enough to perceive and to speak it, against the encroachment of the symbolic. Once we stand together and name the world truly, Heathcliff is merely a cat.

[segamascott]

[nattousan]

it was not on wheat...

[nattousan]