Let the fun. begin!

You’re wrong.

After a year, you notice that there are more people in your life. Your job isn’t solely populated by your boss, the secretary and the janitor who killed your best friend five years ago (which you can’t remember). Now there’s a woman named Mary-lee in the cubicle next to yours and a man named Gonzalez who works in a whole other department. Your company only had one department last year. Now it’s got two.

You stop shouting quite so much and you stop feeling the need to smirk every time you see someone making a fool of themselves. Your words are more reasoned now, more natural, and you find your conversations lasting longer with your new coworkers and neighbors. Your city grows, suburbs springing up overnight. The trees start losing their leaves in the fall and it’s not always night time when bad news arrives.

Your eyes aren’t orbs anymore, they’re just eyes.

When you run into your estranged brother in the hall of your apartment building, you wait for the ridiculous explanation for why he’d move in with you. Maybe every other house in the city is full? Maybe he didn’t know you lived there? Maybe it just “be like that sometimes?”

Turns out he’s not moving in. The woman he’s dating lives two doors down and he’s just as surprised as you. Small world.

Yes, it’s a bit contrived. Yes, it’s a little out of the blue. But, you realize, that’s how stories go. Sometimes they’re out of the blue. Making the out of the blue seem normal? That’s the mark of a true storyteller.

They’re getting better, you realize, watching your brother walk away. A lot better.

They’ve been writing your life everyday. You don’t know why you didn’t think about that. Of course they’re getting better. Through plot struggles and unpleasant writer’s block, they’ve stuck with you and your story.

Through everything, every shred of doubt, every shiny new idea, every criticism, they’ve stuck with you. They’ve worked hard to build your life around you. They’ve put in the time to get better, to give you better dialogue and a brilliant place to live and an exciting life.

They’ve grown for you.

it’s facial reconstructions of prehistoric humans!!

like, look at this part-homo sapiens, part-neandertal man from well over 30,000 years ago:

doesn’t he just look like a dude you’d wanna hang out with? like he probably washes dishes in the kitchen with you, and has excellent weed

what a charming fellow. what stories he probably has to tell. i’d definitely go shoot the shit with him on Contemplation Rock after i’d finished my day’s work carving a bone flute for the autumn hunting ceremony, or whatever

people have been people ever since people first became people, i tell you what

they all had lives and histories and families and friends and dumb gossip and games they played and total bullshit in which they believed wholeheartedly

they all argued about the nature of the world, and of themselves

they all sang songs

they all drew pictures

they all buried their dead in graves, and they buried their dead in graves well before they did a lot of that other stuff. they buried their dead with flowers, with panther claws, with the bones of animals they’d killed, with the bones of family members who had died at the same time or earlier. they buried their dead with their arms folded across their chests

they fell in love

they took care of their old and their sick and their disabled, even when it cost them

I love the kid in the last picture a lot- they look like a kid, just a little kid who’s done some mischief and is trying not to laugh about it.

I also adore their Lucy- they’ve struck a wonderful balance between the falling angel and the rising ape.

And their Turkana boy- there’s something precious and wistful in those eyes. 

But my favorite has got to be their reconstruction of H. floresiensis.

Artists uses light and shadows cast by everyday objects to complete his artwork.

and i just stand there for a second because this thing is like thirty years old and has never rung or even been used from what i know

but eventually i answer it thinking maybe something’s wrong with the elevator?? it’s an emergency phone it’s probably an emergency??? i dunno

except i shit you not it’s a telemarketer 

a telemarketer that’s as confused as i am when i finally interrupt him mid-spiel to inform him he has the wrong number and then interrupt him again to explain further that “uh, no, seriously, this is an elevator phone. i’m standing in an elevator. talking to you. on the emergency phone. i really think you got the wrong number”

“oh,” says telemarketer guy.

“yeah,” i say.

there’s some mutually-confused silence.

“so, this is my stop,” i say. “i gotta go.”

“oh,” says telemarketer guy.