Boundless Ennui

And mostly I make jewelry and mandalas. I'm always processing more bones so I always have more bones about! Some do end up with shiny bits but rhinestones have never called to me as they do you!

the moment where a 92yo man (who's undergone countless plastic surgeries to preserve the youthful appearance of a 20-something) approaches a 15yo girl (who has recently gone through puberty, resulting in a mature physical appearance), saying "let us talk as two adults".

it's just so sickeningly sad!

this anime truly has a Lot to say about the forced adultification of puberscent girls. me and ono aren't the same, to be fair, because she helplessly accepts what the society pushes onto her, while i as a kid was Very resistant to the idea of being seen as an adult (mainly in the realm of sexual availability) just because of how my body looked; but the circumstances are very similar.

Granted, it could be that once children are taken from their families for schooling (why are they removed from their families?) no one else really has any news or information about them, then it could be that good ol' Headmaster Pervert (he is such a pervert, just in different directions than one usually sees) just didn't report what had happened to her in favor of just letting her die. In which case how many children has he let die?

Then she isn't even a focus of the story - as she is dying because her body grew too fast the story instead focuses on What's-Her-Face, the killer kid, and she's given much more humanity than Ono ever was. It's such a jarring change and disrupts the flow of the story immensely. I kept yelling at the screen during the festival that Ono is dying so why the hell are we focusing on this other girl??? Why is she being given such narrative weight for no real payoff?????

Granted, the show also adultifies Sanda without ever really examining it. He's turned into his adult form so another child can use him for comfort and he accepts that this is correct - his body is now adult so clearly he is too. Nevermind that he also just saw horrible things and has been suffering the entire time; he's an Adult! He Can Handle It!

Coincidentally, I make queer patches! These facts are completely unrelated. This shop link is here for no particular reason: https://boundlessennui.myshopify.com/

And mostly I make jewelry and mandalas. I'm always processing more bones so I always have more bones about! Some do end up with shiny bits but rhinestones have never called to me as they do you!

I knew a rapist who was an absolute ride-or-die friend to his gamer bros. Like, give the last dollar from his pocket to a friend who got a flat tire, and then turn around and go rape a Freshman that evening.

I knew a vicious child abuser who wept like a baby when her dog died.

The nastiest human being on the planet nevertheless feels obscurely melancholy sometimes, or has high spirits when they step out doors on the first warm day of spring, or has opinions on their favorite TV show and which side the toilet paper should hang on and whether or not the room should be cold or warm when you go to sleep.

We're all still just people. Complex, with fully-realized interior worlds.

None of that will save you from becoming a monster, if you decide to do monstrous things.

Nightmare at Noon

Marion Adnams

Marion Elizabeth Adnams (3 Dec 1898 – 24 Oct 1995) was an English painter, printmaker and draughtswoman. She is notable for her surrealist paintings, in which apparently unconnected objects appear together in unfamiliar, often outdoor, environments.

Processing bones is a thing unto itself. First I have to get all the flesh off, and the "safest" (for a given value of safe) is to macerate, or rot in water. Basically I put the carcass in a container full of water, put a lid on it, and wait. This can take anywhere from months during the hotter seasons to over a year if I start it during cold weather. My wife finds this hilarious as I am by nature an incredibly impatient person who is dedicated to a hobby that can take upwards of a year just for the first step to properly complete.

There are other methods and many of those depend on what space you have. A few other methods are such as dermestid beetles,the most efficient method, but they need specific temperatures and can die off if you're not paying attention, and anywhere they are will always smell faintly of rot. There are carcass cages, which is where you put a carcass in an open air cage for bugs to do their work but that is a very bad idea if you have neighbors within smelling distance. I live in a city so I macerate, which somewhat contains the smell. There are also people who swear by boiling but by and large the bone collecting community is against it - if you do it wrong (it's very hard to do right) you boil the fats into the bones and destroy the bone's integrity so they will only last a handful of years instead of decades.

With maceration once the flesh has rotted off (and you learn to tell when that is) I pull the bones and begin degreasing/whitening. Degreasing is just the bones in water with a degreasing agent, usually Dawn dish soap. When the water gets cloudy that's fats being pulled out of the bones, at which point I pour that water off and add more of the same until the water stays clear or clear enough for me.

Whitening is _not_ bleaching. Bleach destroys bones. It's either hydrogen peroxide (the bottles you get at Costco and such - if it's concentrated then it needs diluting) or water and hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide eats up anything organic that's left in the bones, brightening the color. I pull them periodically and let them dry to see if I'm satisfied with the color, and if not then the bones go back to either degrease or whiten more. I've had some bones that have been in processing for over a year. I refuse to sell greasy bones.

The reason this matters is because fats in the bones can start to rot again over time. The yellow you see in certain bones (once you know what to look for it's incredibly easy to spot) is fat. It can start to smell or attract bugs. Bones worn as jewelry can also absorb oils from skin so now I seal all my bones before I put them into jewelry pieces that will touch skin, such as necklaces.

With all this in mind you can see why I have to stay small. How I source bones means many times skulls don't have all their teeth, which is something folks often want and can always get with farmed animal bones. My bones often have damage from either cause of death (being shot, being hit by cars, an unfortunate farm incident that led to bones that had been savaged by a neighbor's dogs) or I don't have the size they'd prefer or the volume wanted. I don't charge as much as I should considering how long the process takes but I still charge more than folks that farm bones because I have to put in a lot more legwork to find mine, let alone process them.

On the bone collecting subreddits (there are several depending on key words/focus of interest) folks will often post skulls or animal tails they bought at a con or oddity shop and ask if it's ethically sourced. Disregarding the fact that there is no "ethical" sourcing (there's no agreed upon definition of the term, i.e. I consider it ethical if _I_ didn't kill the animal myself, so my friend killing it for me is ethical) if you see a table with, say, ten fox skulls that are all roughly the same size and quality then that person did not source them outside a fur farm - those animals were all raised to the same age/size and killed at the same time; if you see a table laid out with huge fluffy tails in a variety of colors then those animals were all killed specifically for that tail. You can't hope to find ten animals of all the same size/life experience through any other method, nor reliably source perfectly fluffy tails without hunting animals specifically for that or getting them all from a place that breeds for that trait. By the time I find a carcass most of the time the fur is already slipping off - it's a big problem for folks wanting to learn taxidermy. Preserving tails at that stage is a complete gamble, so a table full of them isn't sourced that way.

People will also post bats, either skeletons or taxidermied or preserved in resin, and ask if those are ethical. They never are. Bats are a protected species in many, many countries and where they're not they're incredibly hard to find already dead. They're small and light and an easy snack for whatever finds them first - finding them dead and intact is purest chance. Unless you get a bat from a person you specifically know who you _know_ only does sustainable collecting (the actual term usually used, folks in the know don't say ethical) then that bat was almost definitely captured in a net alongside many other bats and killed specifically for that art piece. This mass killing is a huge problem and is devastating many bat populations. And while I'm ranting (this is me enjoying myself thoroughly - I don't get to talk about all this in detail very often) teeth are another big one. I have entire bags of assorted teeth because as said with maceration teeth come loose or the skulls themselves are already missing teeth when I get them. I don't like the gaps so I pull teeth if a skull doesn't have all of them or replace the teeth with things like stone chips and suchlike, depending on the piece. I have two dog skulls right now where if I want "fangs" then I'd need to pull the teeth from those skulls, leaving them without those teeth. I only get four per carnivore so I have to be careful which I use for what. In order to have a bag of twenty or forty or more of these specific teeth I would have to be mass killing and pulling these teeth from that many animals. That being said you can easily find bags of that many and more of those specific teeth on various sites, especially Etsy.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

You know I tried to find a gif that would be a representation of me staring at you in open-mouthed fascination. I was unsuccessful so you will have to imagine the open-mouthed fascination please.

First: thank you. Never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted receiving this ask when I made my post and as someone who adores learning new and obscure facts I am extremely pleased.

Second: I will admit that on reading your first sentence I thought this might be the return of the tumblr bone-stealing witch and was relieved that this was not the case. Sustainable animal bone sourcing > grave robbing.

Third: Wow… just wow. This was not a thing that I knew anything at all about and I am very glad that I do now.

Fourth: How do you dispose of the water you use for macerating and the stuff that is in it at the end of the process? And I guess also what I imagine to be a whole lot of hydrogen peroxide?

Fifth: Do you ever mix and match teeth? Like oh these look approximately goatish I will add them to the goat skull so there are no gaps? Or do you do things just with teeth?

Sixth: Have you ever gotten a really weird bone?

Answer, the First: You gave me an opening and I lunged for it.

Answer, the Second: Human bones are so incredibly boring, honestly. What with the actual ethics of it (Did this person consent to their bones being sold after death? Were they thinking they'd be used for medical students to study on? Were they a political prisoner who was killed to be sold for their bones?), the red tape of acquiring such correctly (Jesus Christ why would anyone break into a crypt do you know how much processing a human would require???), and just the overall blandness of human bones they just are of absolutely no interest to me. I don't wish to acquire them, I don't wish to sell them, I don't wish to make things with them. So utterly boring.

Answer, the Third: if you aren't in a field you won't know about it. I'm always enthralled when you post about what you do - I don't know a damn thing about it! It sounds fascinating! Please talk for the next hour!

Answer, the Fourth: Nothing in the maceration water is harmful to plants to my knowledge. It's basically lots of nitrogen and rotting matter, so I dig a hole to pour such into. Initially it'll be a lot of fur and skin and ears that come out, and over time flesh will.... dilute? into it and come out when poured as well. I pour it out into the hole, cover it over with dirt, spray it to hell and back with vinegar (kills the smell for a time), and let the plants enjoy the tasty treats. Also the birds are huge fans since bugs will also congregate there to feast, leading to birds having a grand ol' time.

Answer, the Fifth: Not really. The skulls I have are such incredibly different sizes and stages of life that I'd have to break teeth or tooth sockets to fit them in and I just don't care enough. It's not worth the effort - usually if a skull is missing teeth I pull the rest and then do something like dye the skull to put into an art piece.

Answer, the Sixth: Also not really as yet. Animals with things like cancers and the like die quickly in the wild and it's pure chance if bones will remain, let alone if I'll find them. Pets die of such things (leading to fun bones) but getting someone to give me the carcass of their pet is rather a tacky thing to do.

I do have some bones that I keep to play with as stim toys or because I like them (one of my bobcat skulls has healed damage to the skull, so that one stays with me forever, and my farmer let me have the skull of a large dog that died old so there are marks of things like dental disease that's fascinating so it's mine forever) but as said mostly bones are kinda the same from one animal to the next, depending on lifestyle and cause of death.

And because I can, here are some images! Skulls I've got sitting about (my desk is forever covered in bones) and some of my art too. They're under the cut for folks who would rather not see ze bones.

They can make clothes and accessories, they can sell prints or stickers or pins, they can make tiny figurines (I LOVE tiny figurines), they can make dice, they can make something I haven't thought of, their store can even be on Etsy itself, you JUST have to be sure they're a real person who actually makes their own art.

Not, like, fake compliments or randomly giving scrounged up compliments to everyone you pass in the street, but -- say you see someone with an article of clothing you really really like. Cool accessories or a great haircut or something. Tell them.

I told an old woman yesterday that I liked her blouse. It was this super pretty white-at-the-top-floral-at-the-bottom shirt which was really lovely. So i backtracked where I'd walked past her and I said "excuse me - i love your shirt." And this harried, stressed-looking 80-something year old brightened up immediately, and beamed, and then when she and I headed off in separate directions, she had a pep in her step.

This other time I told a woman that I liked her boots. She gave me a company name thats since become my favourite brand of shoes. I told someone else that her scarf was cute and she was like "do you like it? Here, you can have it," and she dropped her scarf in my hands and then got on her train and left. I once saw a woman who had clearly put effort into her outfit that day but was now looking harried and frazzled as she wrangled four children across the road, and I told her that her outfit was gorgeous and she lit up like a christmas tree. I told a gay man that I loved his whole look once and he turned into a smiling, blushing mess as his super delighted and proud boyfriend was like "yea, he DOES look gorgeous doesnt he?"

A lot of men see friendliness from women as flirtation and I know that, but men deserve compliments too. I solve this by clearly being on my way somewhere else when I pause just long enough to say "that hairstyle works for you!" Or "love the shirt."

But that's not where the story goes. Carcer is awful, but he's still a person, and Vimes is still acting in his duty as a policeman, and that means certain rules have to be followed. And so he doesn't execute him on the spot, but arrests him and hands him over to the authorities. And Carcer will probably end up dead anyway—executed—but we as the audience never see it. It doesn't matter. He can't do harm anymore. The happy ending isn't the catharsis of seeing his miserable end, but the knowledge that Vimes stood in the face of becoming judge, jury and executioner and resisted it. And we, the audience, felt the temptation too and know we can and must resist it as well.

Because those books are full of anger at the world and the state it's in. Real, actual, barely-concealed beneath clever puns anger. It's a rage, not the pretty "i'm mad" calligraphied in the page in white ink. It's something like "I'm angry and you should be, too" scribbled in red ink over the pages.

But these books are so kind. So hopeful. And it's not mindless kindness, either. It's not "I'm kind until it's not easy or convenient to be anymore". It's actual kindness from people who are angry but turn that into fierce, deliberate, stubborn kindness. And of course you can despair but you can also turn it into anger and then the kind of fierce kindness that you can change the world with.

These books were so important for me growing up, still are. I literally wouldn't be the same person without them. And I reread Night Watch today, as one does, and the terrible fairness of Sam Vimes struck me. The world is a terrible, unfair place, he said, and I'm not participating in that. I'm not adding misery to it. I'm gonna be fair and I'm gonna be good if it kills me. (the same goes, of course, with Granny. It's about choosing to be good. It's about being good if it kills you. It's about desperately hoping and never letting go)

Hope comes in many forms, and my saviors number in the hundreds. They all added up such that I'm still here despite it all, despite everyone and everything that told me the only peace I'd ever know would be in death .

My best friend in Korea was accidentally made - the friend of a close friend who happened to be near where I ended up. She took me under her wing as a favor to our mutual friend but ended up becoming one of my closest and dearest friends in turn. We have almost nothing in common but took every chance to be together all the same.

In 2018 my living situation was so dire, so full of turmoil and hatred, that I planned my suicide. I knew what I would do and where and wrote such letters as I felt necessary. It just so happened that several months before I'd bought plane tickets to go and see said best friend in Tokyo and I decided to wait until after to enact my plan.

My best friend knew about this. I'd make references to it and she would make faces but not try to talk me out of it. I wasn't in a place where talking could reach me anymore, so she didn't try.

What she did was love me. She took me to various places in Tokyo she thought I'd like and walked with me even when her own body was vehemently against it. We ate and laughed and one day while she was away at work I laid on my pallet in her apartment and cried, cried for how loved I was and how hard it was even still to feel that love.

I abandoned my plans to kill myself that day. The urge has arisen since but never so strong, never in so hopeless a situation. Since then I've lived and now live a far better life than I ever would've dreamed possible.

its a heavy burden, having a heart as big as a city. and heavier still when it loves you back

It turns out a lot of what was happening in my own life was trying to find comraderie with people who weren't curious enough to want to know me, if that makes sense. They had their world and what fit and I didn't. For them it wasn't worth the effort of trying to learn why that might be - they already had enough.

These days I still find groups like that. Ones who hear me speak and then each look to the other with disbelieving smiles, utterly confounded that a person would play with their voice or accents or use words last seen in a Jane Austen novel. Their world is bounded and to see someone hop faun-footed back and forth across it is disconcerting in a way they don't know how to deal with.

I still feel that feeling, though. The little rat wondering what am I doing wrong? I'm doing what you're doing. I'm here in these places with you. What about me doesn't fit? And I don't know if those feelings will ever go away - they were such constant companions for so much of my life. They are the voice of the little girl, the teenager, the college student, the adult. All of us in chorus, begging to know what would earn us love and acceptance at last.

Even still, even in those days of confusion and sorrow, sometimes I would find someone who would hear me reference a song and recite the next lyrics to me unprompted, those would hear my voice dance and add theirs to it. Even if they didn't understand they were curious, wanted to know more about the creature I am and many of them have now been with me in time measured in decades.

My people will never be the complacent, the incurious. It's still a hard lesson to be learning but it's a truth all the same. My people won't be the majority - mine will be those who stop on trails to consider how the branches of trees lace overhead, who are aghast to learn what lead shot does to wildlife, who ask how exactly bones are processed and why it matters.

To that little rat, to the little girl I was, I kneel to be eye level and tell her that, no, they don't and can't love her as she is and that no action of hers will ever change it. So saying to then wrap my arms around her, around the me that was, and reassure her that she is loved ferociously all the same by so many others she has yet to meet. It will be lonely for a time but the times ahead will be filled with love and friends and long talks in the night and steadfastness that will follow her across countries and time.