idk, really

Once I was doing fieldwork with someone from Europe and said “careful, there’s a rattlesnake over there.” And she rushed over like I’d said there was a quetzal.

I said “Ma’am please, we’re three hours from a hospital!” and she said

1.) I don’t understand how that can be

2.) But I’ve never done fieldwork from a car before (!!!) so I’ll take your word for it.

3.) Did you just call me ma’am? Like a cowboy?

We drove through the Los Angeles megacity together — and at one point were stuck in traffic.

“Heeeey”, she said, like someone gently broaching a topic I should have noticed, “Why does the lane next to us have diamond shaped symbols on it?”

That is! A subtle and friendly way of asking why we’re sitting in traffic when there’s a carpool lane Right There! I laughed and pulled into the lane and started driving.

Unfortunately. That isn’t what she was implying, she was genuinely asking. So we were stuck in traffic, she asked about what was clearly a breakdown or emergency access lane, and I laughed and started driving in it. She was Alarmed.

“Hello! Excuse me! We can’t drive in this lane! No one else is driving in this lane!!”

“Oh! I should have said — this lane is for people with more than one person in their car.”

“That is RIDICULOUS. You are lying. You are lying about what this lane is for and we’ll get arrested! (ma’am it’s fine but if it weren’t it would be more of a “ticket” situation) we’ll get a “ticket”! (Ma’am again it’s fine but were it not I alone would get the ticket) because that IS NOT the purpose of this lane. That is a RIDICULOUS lie.”

“I’m sorry, I should have said — I thought you were being subtle about my oversight. Please observe the carpool sign.”

“I don’t know what a carpool is and I don’t believe you.”

“How about you look at all the cars stuck in traffic and see how many have more than one driver, and if there are at least five I’ll get back into the traffic jam.”

“FINE!”

(With dawning horror) “none of these cars have more than one person in them.”

“I know.”

“None of these cars have more than one person!!”

“If you weren’t here I’d be right there with them.”

“OK but there was no train to where we needed to go.”

“There’s no train to where they needed to go either.”

“HOW.”

Later that day:

“I know McDonalds and Burger King sell Burgers, but what does Wendy’s sell?”

“Burgers”

“And Sonic?”

“Burgers.”

“Jack in the Box?”

“Burgers.”

“In’n’Out?”

“Look, It’s burgers all the way down.”

She hopped off a plane, went camping on Catalina with her husband and his lab, and then I showed her a rattlesnake, dragged her through heavy brush, took her (food) shopping in Beverly Hills, illustrated American car dependency and love of burger, and threatened to shoot someone trying to break into our hotel room. (I did not have a gun) She speed-ran the US American experience in eight days.

I really haven’t had to pretend to have a gun that many times!

We were staying in a cheap hotel, she was coming out of the shower wrapped in a towel. Someone shoulder-slammed the hotel door and popped the lock open and started fumbling with the security chain. I snarled “GET AWAY FROM THE DOOR, I HAVE A GUN.” and the person left.

She was WAY way WAY more concerned about me traveling with a gun (ma’am I do not have a gun) why would I SAY I had a gun if I couldn’t back it up? (Ma’am to get him to stop trying to break in) But why would he THINK I had a gun? How would that even work? Please tell her where I keep the gun. (Ma’am I promise there is no gun.)

The debate continued through my call to the front desk and our packing and being protectively escorted to our car by a young man who I could absolutely take in a fight. (“What is she mad about?” “I told the guy I had a gun.” “Smart! Maybe you should get one if you’re gonna travel like this!” “Haha yeah” “So why is she mad?” “She thinks I have a gun.” “WHY WOULD SHE LIE ABOUT HAVING A GUN?!?!”)

It doesn’t help that my day to day commitment to the bit is HIGH so it’s reasonable to assume that I’m not always being totally honest.

the-buzzard

That European woman has the survival instincts of a newborn

neph3lee

That European woman grew up and lives in a place where she never has had to worry about being too far away from a hospital or not being able to afford healthcare, never been in a culture where having a gun was normal, likely knows that having a gun on you makes it more likely to be harmed in a physical confrontation (because the people in front of you will not hesitate to escalate the violence) or even be harmed BY your own weapon, and has never experienced a motel. I can easily imagine being in her shoes and thinking in the moment "oh my god I thought this only happened on scripted TV shows like NCIS or Law and Order, I'm going to die right here right now". She doesn't not have survival instincts, she has logical expectations of safety and comfort given that she thought she traveled to a first world country, and even has a guide.

I love this post, I think it's terrific writing, well paced, and really funny story. It's also genuinely concerning and frightening that this shit would just seem like, normal, to anyone who isn't on TV for a special documentary.

indigosfindings

im obsessed with the world of donkey kong, where the "barrel" is an abstracted, functionless object that seems to just manifest in the wild

played sims 4 for the first time and one of the married cis men had a desire to try for baby with his cis husband. i accidentally pinned it and could not unpin it. trying for baby is physically impossible. I tried to use cheats to give him a viable womb in create a sim but it wouldn’t let me do so retroactively. so I thought, maybe if they adopt the want for pregnancy will go away, and had them adopt a toddler daughter. but then the try for baby desire did not go away. since they now had an unwanted adopted child I tried to remove the toddler from the household, thinking this would send her back into the ether. it did not. instead she wanders the neighborhood like a feral cat. i thought the social worker would come and take her back so someone else could adopt her, but I guess there is no social worker in sims 4. so now the neighborhood is haunted by a smelly miserable baby that has no home but cannot die and everyone who sees her is uncomfortable. fucking omelas scenario.

no one is feeding her but every time she gets hungry she simply produces a carton of milk out of the ether and drinks it

gremlin-pattie

OP— do ctrl+shift+C and type “testingcheats true” and then “cas.fulleditmode” into the bar, then go into CAS and change one of the sims to be able to get pregnant. mpreg is possible ALWAYS

thanks. the womb installation worked.

adrenalinevan

I'm sorry, this was dune mpreg the whole time and you never thought to mention? Iconic.

statistical-distr-of-polls

it wasn’t relevant to my journey

thegirlwiththemooglehat

I follow this lady on instagram who rescues cats, and i have been thinking about this video for literal months. behold the transformation of this wretched little beast

(x)

whatsallthisnow

I could not have anticipated that transformation if you had told me ahead of time

trans-seraphim

i always click the "track package" button as soon as i get the email. "oh boy i wonder where my package is!" warehouse.

softieskywalker

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

david-talks-sw

I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.

comebackali

#as I always say: lucas was making a samurai film and a ww2 flying ace film and a western film and adding laser swords#because he fundamentally LIKED samurai films and dambusters films and westerns and 40’s adventure serials#but disney are making a ‘star wars film’ and adding nothing because it already had laser swords and they have nothing else to say#xerox of a xerox baybeeeee (via harrietvane)

sumblebee

when i was a kid rummaging thru my mums cd collection to steal Good Stuff i accidentally stumbled across one called ‘songs for bonking’ which was coloured awful negative neon picture of ppls feet on top of each other in a bed and ALL the songs were like fucking ska punk

sumblebee

cool it was worse than i remembered

musicmoreweirdthangood

OP this is not ska punk

zareblogalogalog

grendel-menz

burning food is an inherited trait

ivveg

This one is super cute and positive and I enjoy the sentiment, BUT am I the only one who feels blood bond based trust is arbitrary? I just feel the weight of Hollywood’s family values here. It’s dated. The moment you realize that meaningful connections is something we make, not something pre-assigned by ancestry, the world gets bigger. In the comic above, the supporting cast could easily have been your friends or found family or pets or whatever. Why ancient relatives? Why this idea of an over-centuries-unbroken blood bond? There’s zero value in it except for royal affairs and throne struggles, and that’s not really relevant, is it

grendel-menz

When I was making the comic I was thinking about my own life and family. My mom’s side of the family has been through a lot. Colonization, immigration, gang violence, poverty, drug problems, other things that are more sensitive… but it resulted in my mom being raised by and around people who didn’t look like her, didn’t act like her. I remember being a kid and thinking I was very ugly and unnatural – there were so few people in the family who looked like me, so who was I to look to when I didn’t want to feel strange? It’s lonely, and in more ways than the physical.

I just got to meet my biological grandmother and her family at 24 after searching for them and trying to meet for years and years. I learned my cousins and aunts all bite their nails like me. They’re short like me, they’ve got teeth and wide faces like mine. They’ve got some of the same internal struggles I do, and even if they suck just as much as I do in managing them I still got to talk about things with people who understood.

I think there’s things ancestry is important for beyond the lineages of royal families. I come from a colonized people. My ancestors survived massacres and centuries of violence. I am proud to be here because it means they survived, in at least some small way, through us now. I think a lot about how scared they were that they wouldn’t.

I think it’d be hard to find someone who thinks friendships and found family mean nothing. This is just me offering another perspective, I guess. Life’s really complicated, you know?

ivveg

Thank you for your reply. Oh god. Here on the internet it is easy to feel like you’re shouting into a void - will someone even hear? - and so you shout less thoughtful than you would have in real life. But now I got an answer, so there is a real person there! And so I re-read my shouting and see it is kinda harsh, especially considering the background context you provided.

I did not take that perspective in consideration; I reacted solely from my own perspective. For me, disregarding ancestry is liberating, (although I do love my family a lot), because after being “someone’s” kid, brother, whatever, during much of my upbringing, I get to be my own now. Your perspective on this topic shines a light on a side of this I did not fully understand or was aware about, and, as some people in the messages have rightfully let me know, it’s because I’m privileged to not feel the need to consider it.

You really didn’t need to teach a stranger on the internet a lesson in cultural perspectives and humility, but you did, and I’m thankful. You exposed a blind spot, thank you.

Your comic is beautifully done, I honestly hope you make more

grendel-menz

Oh this is so nice, and it makes me really happy that you read it. I know family and who we are within it and outside of it can be complicated and difficult to think about, haha. We’re all learning all the time, thank you for hearing me out! I hope you’re doing alright.

slightly-sigilant

fallen london has so many things going on that you can't really boil it down to having An Singular Theme, but if I were to try and isolate some of the major themes of the setting, they would be:

love can move worlds

you must change to live; to live is to change

even the strangest, lowliest things are beautiful and important

wiionme

enyafans4communism

fuck, marry, kill: the wound that won’t heal, the past you can’t undo, the ghost that keeps returning

FMK - In order

The wound, the past, the ghost

The past, the ghost, the wound

The ghost, the wound, the past

The wound, the ghost, the past

The past, the wound, the ghost

The ghost, the past, the wound

Variation I forgor/bald/vanilla extract/results

Voting ended onMay 17

astraltrickster

#kill the wound so it heals at last #marry the past because you can't change it anyway #fuck the ghost I guess? hope he's cute #not the obvious answer everyone's giving but the one that makes sense to me

ddeck

there's like a thousand ways for a shower to work and you wouldn't even imagine half of them until you have to take a shower at a new place

listen i'm not advocating for exotic animals as pets, but i really just feel like cheetahs are probably different

i feel like we need to give them another shot as housebeasts

this is a critter who wants greenies and then to take a nap on the couch next to me, and i KNOW it

cheetah in House perfec t size for put inside! inside very Soft and Comfort cheetah sleep soundly put cheetah in House. Put Cheetah In House. no problems ever in cheetah in ho use because good Happy and Satisfy for human where sleep. House yes a place for a cheetah put cheetah in house can trust cheetah for giveing good love to humans in house. friend cheetah

justasmidgx

I mean, as someone who as worked in a zoo, this is fairly true.

Obvious disclaimer that you shouldn't have wild animals as pets.

But like, cheetahs are the only large cats that keepers will do free contact with. Hell, even most small cats don't get free contact. (Because small cats can be VICIOUS. They'll have a baby pallas cat wearing thicker gloves than when handling an owl. Because small cats can just be vicious.)

Like I think the only other cat at our zoo where I've seen free contact with was servals? Because I know they've used servals in shows to demonstrate their natural jumping ability. But I know servals can sometimes have a mean temper as well. Meanwhile they'll do the cheetah run and afterwards put the mic by the cheetahs and it's just like an engine with them purring. It's fascinating to watch when the message in every other large animal is "no free contact because it's dangerous even when they're born in captivity".

Legit if any wild animal could be adapted to a pet it would be cheetahs lmao. Only problem is they can be skittish and very anxious and that's why they're often raised around dogs in zoos to gain confidence.