here, on this blog, you do not need permission to slip into my asks. just do it. even if we haven’t interacted before. even if you’ve sent 10 already. send me more. i love getting asks (in character or out of character) and yeah, i’m slow as fuck, but i promise you i will get to them. have at it, fill my inbox with memes or impromptu starters or just tell me how your day is going. it really doesn’t matter. just go ahead and do it. i promise, i don’t get annoyed seeing the same people in my inbox, actually it makes me happy because yAY MORE INTERACTIONS. so just do it.
No, Mr. Horse, don’t worry, I certainly don’t have a Plinko down here! What I do have is this lovely cask of wine, specifically for horses, Amontillado in fact! Exquisite vintage.
I know you’re not supposed to be in this hospital, but if you’ll just follow me down this corridor—no, that’s not blood on the floor, it’s color theory, I’ll explain it later—I can bring you to this cask of wine that is certainly NOT a plinko machine—
we can take the Eeby Deeby - no, no, I promise it's not going to Gay Superhell - look, Eebders Deebeorg was an outlier adn should not have been counted
hnnnnngg I’m trying to get blorbo into my plinko but the eeby deeby I bought from the copper merchant who as it turns out was EXTREMELY disreputable (who is he, to treat me with such contempt?!) is dummy thicc, thicc enough to block the Suez Canal in fact, and the eebert of the deebert is so scrimblo bimblo it keeps alerting the horse
I wish wizards were real so bad imagine coming out of a wal mart and seeing some guy with long robes and a big hat in the parking lot surrounded by wacky particle effects screaming some shit like "By the moon and the starlight, by the shield and the sword, I summon to me, my Honda Accord!" And then just getting into his car and driving off
One of the kids I’m babysitting rn just asked me, “Miss Amy, can I tell you a secret?” and then informed me that his brother does not have blood anymore, because they saw a doctor take it
Today’s secret is “if I carry too many things, I die,” and he definitely, for sure did not tell me that specifically because I asked him to pick up his jacket moments beforehand
Overwhelmed! When the five year old learned that I’m having a bad day today, he immediately asked me to take him home so he can “get us a snack and help with whatever you want to do today.”
The three year old has offered to carry all the backpacks into the house, despite his former statements re: dying if asked to carry his own belongings
Today the two year old stole the headphones I always wear, put them on upside down, and ran away yelling “hi Babydoll!” over and over, which is in fact how I greet him. I did not come here to be roasted by a toddler
I recently put a purple streak in my hair! The three year old says that he loves it. He says he loves my brown hair too, because it’s beautiful. I feel very loved and I am going to bake him cookies about it
Hi! This may actually be the last update on this post because I’m moving cities soon, but with that in mind I have some things to add:
The five year old and the three year old both have separate imaginary friends with the same name, which is Speed. They differentiate between Speeds solely by saying “my Speed” or “his Speed.” Yes, it does get confusing
The three year old’s Speed has a tragic backstory! His childhood home got destroyed by a meteor when he was very young. He also has some level of magical power, which he uses to resurrect himself whenever he dies, which happens often, sometimes at the three year old’s hand
When I asked the three year old about his Speed’s resurrection powers, he told me that yes, Speed does knows how to come back to life; Speed does not, however, enjoy coming back to life (because he knows that he will die again, over and over)
Their dad is a general contractor, which means that all three toddlers have a really intense relationship with building blocks and also a working knowledge of construction law, which means that I (an attorney) do live a life where every once in awhile I ask a five year old if he’s building skyscrapers and he tells me no, they’re not zoned for commercial
Last time I babysat for them, the three year old let me know that they have a new member of their household! Now I did assume this had something to do with their very pregnant mother, but I was wrong— the new member is a third Speed who belongs, of course, to the two year old. His Speed does not, to my knowledge, resurrect
Their baby sister was born two hours after that :)
nothing makes me more insane than the phrase "selling your body" btw. like was i not also selling my body at every other job i've had where i had to be on my feet all day, lifting boxes, working in a warehouse, etc. why is it that sex work is uniquely labeled as "selling your body" while every other job is sorted into another category, no matter how much that job might have a physical impact on your body. lmao.
if you told vin diesel fast and the furious you were gay he'd be like "Some people like driving stick…some people like driving automatic…what matters is you cross the finish line.." and then he'd rev up a dodge challenger and drive through a building and kill 16 people
no but i'm so disappointed bc i finally went to a proper physio massage therapist a month or so ago, and as nice as she is and as nice as the massage was (nice enough that i actually went back, even tho) it's not actually helping as much as the relaxation massage that a different therapist gave me like five months back. what. do i have to do. to get somebody to turn my muscles into jello.
The words you're looking for specifically is deep tissue specialist.
my sister in law specializes in deep tissue and it's honestly a touch unsettling if you don't know what to expect, but by god, you will not have a muscle in your body that hasn't turned to pulp. she has massaged the inside of my back before through my belly, and it was weird but felt great.
no but i'm so disappointed bc i finally went to a proper physio massage therapist a month or so ago, and as nice as she is and as nice as the massage was (nice enough that i actually went back, even tho) it's not actually helping as much as the relaxation massage that a different therapist gave me like five months back. what. do i have to do. to get somebody to turn my muscles into jello.
The words you're looking for specifically is deep tissue specialist.
my sister in law specializes in deep tissue and it's honestly a touch unsettling if you don't know what to expect, but by god, you will not have a muscle in your body that hasn't turned to pulp. she has massaged the inside of my back before through my belly, and it was weird but felt great.
around when I first started dating my boyfriend i bought myself this novelty blanket that looks like a photorealistic tortilla because I am SUCH A SUCKER for novelty shit. when he saw it in person for the first time his eyes lit up, which should have been a warning sign for the indignities to come.
so he’s a first responder and his day shifts start obnoxiously early as far as I, a pampered corporate asshole, am concerned. almost invariably when he’s at my place there will be an alarm at an hour that is downright unconscionable that will make him wake up and roll out of bed to get ready and will simultaneously make me burrow under the pillows grumbling about how surely nobody actually NEEDS their lives saved this early in the morning, after which I will promptly attempt to go back to sleep
he is a clever man and he knows this is when i am most vulnerable to attack.
every single time we do this dance, he quietly dresses, packs up, goes about getting ready to leave, and then when i have juuuust fallen back asleep, he returns with the tortilla blanket. He finds it no matter where I have hidden it.
He then creeps silently up to my side of the bed and uses his superior speed, strength, and reflexes to wrap me up in it incredibly tightly while i am still dazed and sputtering, so that i cannot move my legs or arms and am reduced to humiliating halfhearted magikarp flops that do not deter him from at least attempting to kiss my forehead.
then he goes to my bedroom door, opens it, then pauses, turns around, looks at me, the soft human filling of the facsimile of an enormous burrito he has just constructed, and says in his best romantic lead voice “I’ll see you soon, beans.”
you cannot understand how devastating it is to my ego that i am beans.
oh also sometimes he takes a snap of me flailing in my tortilla prison and then sends it to me only after he has left my apartment building and has gotten into his car
this means in practice that i get a snap notification just when i have managed to free myself, and i open it up expecting some cute shit… and then I have to relive the indignity all over again but with the additional burden of knowing just how hilarious this all looks from his point of view
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
Every single house is pastel with white trim and a white picket fence with the family's name on it in a handwritten font. The streets are paved with red bricks and lined with palmettos, and families bicycle past. The streets are clean, the lawns manicured, the sidewalks pristine.
Soon after we arrive my friend says as we walk, "God I wish I could live in a place like this. Imagine having the money to live in a place like this." I reply, "I don't actually know for me...it's gorgeous don't get me wrong, but there's no grime, you know? Where's the grime? I'd feel uncomfortable. It feels like there's not a dive bar for a hundred miles."
We reach the town center, which is a wide square lined with shops on one side, food trucks on the other. We have a lovely time looking through the shops, though I start feeling kinda weird, and I'm not sure why. Probably the extreme cleanliness of the area is making me feel off-kilter. And the surreal feeling of walking through areas I recognize from The Truman Show only adds to the weirdness.
We go into a clothing store, and it's crowded with people who appear to have stepped out of a Land's End catalog. It sells boring tshirts, shorts, and sundresses in whites and blues, all needlessly expensive. Employees walk through, refolding already-pristine shirts. So perfect. "Anyone buying from here is so rich they can probably smell the poor on us," my friend jokes, "that's why they have so many employees refolding things, it's to fix anything we brush against." "Or even breathe on!" I add.
We continue on to the grocery store where, in the movie, Truman finds Marlon stocking the vending machine and first tells him he suspects his world is wrong. I buy some pasta salad there to eat for lunch (all the cafes are quite expensive), and we find a place to sit and eat. As my friend finishes up her food, I write a postcard to my sister, telling her about my trip overall and my day in Seaside, describing the town as 'vomit-inducingly picturesque.' (It has been weeks since my visit and she still has not received that postcard)
Lunch done, we decide to walk down to the beach and have a swim. And I realize something about the surreal feeling. "Weird question," I say to my friend, "have you seen any non-white people here? Am I imagining that?"
She pauses. "The lady cleaning the bathrooms?" she asks.
"No I mean vacationers. Guests, customers. Other than you, I haven't seen a single one who wasn't white."
"...No. I haven't either."
And now that we see it, we can't unsee it. It's a wealthy area, so I had been expecting it to be pretty white, but the fact that there is not a single nonwhite person who isn't working a service job feels so gross. It's as though the place is somehow still segregated, like we have stepped back in time, but not to the fun, fake, rock-n-roll-and-soda-parlor-nostalgia version of the fifties, but to the real racism-and-repression fifties.
It is so fucking weird and sinister. I feel I have stumbled into another realm. All these people giving us sideeye, riding around on their golf carts in their pristine $45 seaside-branded tshirts, taking pictures of the perfect houses all lined up in perfect rows. A whole town of Meryls wearing lulu lemon.
We walk on. It's hot, and a swim is exactly what we need. Surely they can't ruin the ocean. I myself am extremely excited to swim, because now that we've spent a few hours among the pompous populace, I want to piss in their perfect ocean more than anything in the world.
We walk along behind the beachfront bar patios that line the beach toward the access point, and the ocean looks so blue and inviting. Although the hedge growing between us and the dunes is strangely tall. "Huh," I think. "It's weird that they'd grow it like this, it blocks the view for everyone sitting on the patios."
We arrive at the boardwalk, and there is a man standing there. He says "Hold on! Do you two have a beach access pass?" I look at him in disbelief. It's a public beach, but the sign behind the man says you have to rent a beach chair to use the beach, and it's $35 per person. We glance at each other, turn wordlessly, and head back to town.
I seriously consider trying to sneak onto the beach somehow, because at this point I am very invested in the idea of pissing in their ocean, but I realize that with the tall hedge it would be nigh-impossible.
We went home after that.
So many reviews for Seaside on travel websites mention how they love to visit Seaside because they feel transported, they feel it reflects a "simpler time" or a "peaceful life." It's been weeks and I can't stop thinking about my experience. It really drove home how...complicit people can be in their own ignorance. A lot of people want to live in that perfect bubble, and especially if they have the money, they can maintain that barrier. It reminds me that part of the reason I often have trouble persuading these types of people is because they simply do not want to be persuaded. They're so proud to be the place where The Truman Show was filmed, but I rather doubt they really think about what it means that they live on a movie set, in a surreal dream.
Honestly visiting Seaside was a 10/10 unique experience. I would highly recommend it as a place to go for a couple hours if you're gonna be nearby and want to feel like you've been kidnapped into The Truman Show and/or your brain has been put in an easy bake oven. It's like a zoo for superrich WASPS. We had a really good time loudly making fun of how insane it all was, invading their little paradise with our riffraff energy. Treat it like an excursion into the jungle; you're gonna have to park a half mile away minimum, and bring all your food and water with you so you don't have to buy anything. You don't want to give them any money. They have enough.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time I go to the panhandle, I will be going to the nearest free public beach access to Seaside, and I will walk to the Seaside area of the beach, and I will piss in their ocean.
ohmygod this is so embarrassing but i accidentally trapped your lich girlfriend in an umbrella. yeah no it’ll be awhile. yeah i erased all memory of her. sorry
