barks into the void

molly

[undying-princess]

knowing how it tends to go with male authors and their wives it was probably marge who wrote the odyssey

[important-cat-pics]

[thethirdromana]

Just learned this absolutely delightful bit of etymology:

During the 15th century, the English had an endearing practice of granting common human names to the birds that lived among them. Virtually every bird in that era had a name, and most of them, like Will Wagtail and Philip Sparrow have been long forgotten. Polly Parrot has stuck around, and Tom Tit and Jenny Wren, personable companions of the English countryside, are names still sometimes found in children’s rhymes. Other human names, however, have been incorporated so durably into the common names that still grace birds as to almost entirely obscure their origin. The Magpie, a loquacious black and white bird with a penchant for snatching shiny objects, once bore the simple name “pie,” probably coming from its Roman name, “pica.” The English named these birds Margaret, which was then abbreviated to Maggie, and finally left at Mag Pie. The vocal, crow-like bird called Jackdaw was also once just a “daw” named “Jack.”  The English also gave their ubiquitous and beloved orange-bellied, orb-shaped, wren-sized bird a human name. The first recorded Anglo-Saxon name for the Eurasian Robin was ruddoc, meaning “little red one.” By the medieval period, its name evolved to redbreast (the more accurate term orange only entered the English language when the fruit of the same name reached Great Britain in the 16th century). The English chose the satisfyingly alliterative name Robert for the redbreast, which they then changed to the popular Tudor nickname Robin. Soon enough, the name Robin Redbreast became so identified with the bird that Redbreast was dropped because it seemed so redundant. 

[chaoticgouda]

I’m sorry milord, but the peasants are nailing erotic artwork of you and your court jester to the church doors again

[fieldbears]

and the ship name, squire? what is the ship name

[artemis-in-space]

“… Kinglebells, m'lord.”

[brockdavis]

Recently, while staring far too long at a potato chip, it occurred to me that the ridges could possibly be used to create a lenticular effect. So I got out some chip dip (and the smallest paint brush I have) to test it out. I started with a simple 2-frame illustration of a football and a basketball, then I painted a little sour cream and onion dip bird. 🥔🕊️

[knownhag]

From my bestie in Thailand. The second sign went up hours later

[radfemart]

I appreciate the sentiment but I don't get all those "we made it to the longest night of the year! the light will start returning soon! it's all uphill from here & we're halfway there!" posts because like. Oct-Dec is the easier half of Winter. Jan-Apr is way harder. there's no big holidays or decorations, everyone is kind of over the whole Cozy Hygge Sweaters & Cocoa vibe so they're just tired & restless instead, and the whole thing is so drawn out & uneventful that it feels like it lasts 10x longer

[radfemart]

the cold season Oct-Dec:

the cold season Jan-Apr:

[szyszkasosnowa]

But then:

"We are nearer to Spring  Than we were in September,”  I heard a bird sing  In the dark of December. 

[mylordshesacactus]

So my family has a Gay Pirate Plate.

Stay with me.

We do not know how the hell the Gay Pirate Plate was first acquired. This being a point of contention is actually pretty plot-relevant; the saga of the Gay Pirate Plate began with my grandmother and her sister, who, for some ungodly reason, both BADLY wanted the Gay Pirate Plate and believed it to be rightfully theirs.

I should back up, firstly, to establish: The Gay Pirate Plate is the cheapest, tackiest, ugliest plate in existence.

It is in no way a collector’s item. It is physically impossible for it to complement anyone’s decor, because the colors in it are garish. It’s just a ceramic plate with a gay pirate painted on it, and the painting is, this cannot be emphasized enough, extremely bad.

(How do we know the pirate is gay if he’s just posing on a plate? Listen. Fully 100% to stereotype, but he is. He is gay. There’s an energy. That pirate is a flaming homosexual. That pirate has sex with men and does it frequently. That pirate is fucking gay, all right, he just is.)

Anyway. The point is that this is an extremely cheap and ugly plate with a poorly-executed painting of pirate on it who is like a nine on the Kinsey scale.

My grandmother and her sister fought a blood feud over this plate for their entire lives. It would be on the wall in my grandma’s house, and then her sister would visit, and then it would be gone. She’d visit her sister and the plate would be on the wall and her sister would pretend it had always been there. She would steal it back, hang it up, and, when her sister visited, pretend it had always been there. This continued for DECADES.

When the sister died, the Gay Pirate Plate lived triumphantly in my grandmother’s house. And then my grandmother died. And my aunt, who had lived with her and been her carer throughout her life, rightfully inherited their house.

We visit my aunt after the funeral and stay with her for a week or two.

Me, my sister, and our dad. Her brother.

The three of us look at each other. We don’t say anything. We studiously avoid making eye contact with the Gay Pirate Plate mounted proud and ugly on the wall. We notice one another studiously avoiding looking at it. We notice one another noticing. We say nothing. We come to a silent consensus. We pack up to leave. We get in the van. Our aunt comes out to say goodbye. I loudly announce I need to use the restroom before we leave. She obviously stays outside to continue talking to my dad.

I take down the Gay Pirate Plate, stuff it under my oversized sweatshirt, go outside, and get in the van. She happily waves goodbye as we drive off.

Two days later my dad gets a phone call that opens with hysterical laughter and “You FUCKING ASSHOLE did you seriously STEAL THE PLATE–”

Anyway. The gay pirate plate lives in my dad’s house currently.

But he’s trying to get me and my sister out to visit him. And plate mounts are cheap.

[mylordshesacactus]

The rules of Gay Pirate Plate are simple by the way.

The plate must be clearly and openly displayed in a place of great prominence whenever it is in your possession. When it is not in your possession, the display piece must remain in place. This is where you would put your gay pirate plate, IF YOU HAD ONE.

No active steps may be taken to prevent the theft of the Gay Pirate Plate. That goes against the spirit of the game, as does attempting to hide it.

The plate MUST be stolen and cannot be gifted or removed with permission. Should you witness attempted theft of the Gay Pirate Plate you are required to intervene and return it to its place.

Every time your sibling successfully absconds with the Gay Pirate Plate, you must respond with indignant fury, as if you have not also repeatedly and blatantly stolen the Gay Pirate Plate.

[mylordshesacactus]

WOE

PLATE BE UPON YE

[mylordshesacactus]

STATUS UPDATE

I texted this image to my family at around 2am their time last night and woke up to appropriately indignant messages about theft, betrayal, etc.

[saintjosie]

nothing could have prepared me for how gay the gay pirate plate was

[moonrisetowers]

?

[dragons-and-cake123]

[lonely-dog-song]

i love when a cat looks up and its head is a funny shape

[brucebocchi]

[zipstick]

tbblobnoern tuesday

[aperture-laboratories-official]

tbblobnoern tuesday

[asharomi]

tbblobnoern tuesday

[countably-infinite-rats]

tbblobnoern thrusedy?

[paradoxinabottle]

tbblobnoern thrusedy.

[the-real-gmail]

tbblobnoern saturday?

[mothsandfoxes]

tbblobnoern sabturburbturbtay

[oddpossumcreature]

tbblobernoern stuedeyay

[regardintemporel]

Barbara Kruger - Untitled (Business as usual), 1987

[xalatath]

It is IMPERATIVE that you don't confuse these two. You WILL regret it.

[anteregem]

Some fanart of this ancient figurine! Also got commissioned to draw her hanging out with a friend!

[charlottan]

turn up that fucking hurdy gurdy

[ineskew]

“I think there’s a rich ream of horror, from The Haunting of Hill House to Ghostwatch, that delves into the idea that certain places can simply go wrong – and once these bad environments have been established and ostracised by society, they can’t be exorcised. They simply keep accruing power through the individual stories that play tragically out in their shadow.

“I mention a real-life example of that kind of bad architecture in one episode; the Pope Lick Bridge in Kentucky, a place that looks and feels so sinister that it developed its own local folklore about a goat-man who attacks people who stray too close to the edge – and which has ended up resulting in deaths as visitors peer over the side trying to get a peek at the monster.

“I find this kind of stuff fascinating, because it plays into my own paranoia about environments, and my dislike of ghost stories with explicably human antagonists. Like David says in the first episode, people aren’t frightening. Places are frightening.

“If I’m sitting alone at home on a dark and stormy night, and I glance nervously up towards the bedroom doorway, my fear is not that my house is being haunted by a spirit called Mabel who died in the 19th century at the age of fourteen and is constantly seeking her favourite teddy bear… because all of these details both humanise her and make her ridiculous.

“My fear is that there will be something standing in the doorway, because the doorway is where things come to stand.

“Because unoccupied spaces, in our imaginations, must find something to fill them.”

— Jon Ware, from “The Saturday Interview: ‘I Am in Eskew’ podcast”