Cats with Lice

and YOU'RE a women with children...

and HE'S a short insomiac.....

i am old as time and forever young

i am every song that will stay unsung

the lines on the bottom say do not microwave but i have been microwaving it for 7 years now. i put it away wet and it must have slid off the counter. it broke into 6 pieces. my girlfriend says this is proof a ghost that lives in my house; particularly because it is a black mug with a ouija board design. i think it is proof that i should dry things before i put them away.

i had superglue from an abandoned art project. it took me four days. inspired by kintsugi, i painted the seams golden. it is my first time doing anything like this, and it was more error than trial. i do not have any fancy materials. there is a thick band of gold across the no, so it reads like a diphthong now, N\O. a part of it broke in an almost-perfect peace sign, oddly round.

it will not be watertight anymore, it cannot be a mug. i'll reuse it as a flower pot. it will go on my back porch. it is kind of ugly, really. i didn't do an excellent job.

i spent every minute of this repair thinking about how often i had used it. how many little rituals it has been a part of. it is a big mug, but not a soup mug, which i loathe. it is perfect for two hands to hold. i have used it almost daily, so often that many of the details have worn off. my own skin did that - almost a decade of shared warmth.

none of the times i have told this story has a single person said what do you mean you have a favorite mug. not a single person who has seen the resulting half-maimed piece has said why would you put that back together? not a single person has said this is a waste of time. not a single person has told me what's the point of this? if you want to find a new mug, just use AI.

somewhere someone is probably using AI to draw an image or write a poem, i know that is true. but i think it is also probably true that most of us are going to write and read and draw and dance just because. that the process of doing so is not for a goal or a specific benefit, but because for thousands of years now - when a piece of pottery breaks, we try to fix it. for thousands of years - long before capitalism had any say in it - humans have been doing things just for the experience of it. for the fuck of it. for the love of the game.

ai is not going to win because i cut my thumb while i did it. ai is not going to win because i kept thinking about my all friends who do ceramics, how they're always asking me if i want to join them for a lesson. i was thinking about every person i've ever shared a coffee with. i was thinking about who i was when i bought this mug (graduate student. could barely afford the off-season thing on clearance). i was thinking about how many hands have held this, how many people i've been since.

ai is not going to win because i didn't do a perfect job of it.

my sister-in-law and i recently had a conversation about how one of her coworkers uses Chat instead of reading self-help books. and we both looked at each other about that, the stunned silence of rabbits. "can you imagine?" we said. what's even the point to it.

He is played obviously camp and dramatic, for a start, and there is the aforementioned "hate your hair/not likely/yikes yikes yikes/let me guess you have a great personality" summary dismissal of all his potential brides. Then he spends dinner asking Yzma about Kronk ("so he seems nice? He's what, in his late twenties?") and otherwise being slightly obsessed with him.

Then there is the whole Adventure of Doom with Pacha, him being ever huffy about the Kiss of Life, and then the restaurant gag where Kuzco takes to playing Pacha's fake wife and dressing up in ladies' clothing with great gusto (reinforced by the waitress' "bless you for coming out in public" remark when Pacha says they're on their honeymoon). Then when he is finally de-llamafied, we don't see him paired off with the obligatory girl from the lineup earlier, as might otherwise be expected in a Disney movie. Instead he is still single, but goes to found family it up with Pacha, Chica, Kronk, etc, which dare we remark is a very queer trope.

In short, I have no idea how a Disney movie with no white people (all the characters are Indigenous/people of color), a gay king, cross-dressing jokes, and the most offbeat plot of all time actually ever got made (can you imagine the Family Friendly Mouse doing that today? Let us also talk about Kronk because he is a brilliant deconstruction of both toxic masculinity and the musclebound henchman stereotype.) Other than that this was the Chaos Hour of animated movies in the late 90s/early 2000s, and yes.

Please, read this article if you have some time. This story is wild, and involves directors being pitted against each other Bake-Off style and a shockingly intimate documentary created by the wife of Sting who, himself was heartbroken by the decimation of the songs he wrote for the film including cutting a fantastic Yzma villain song sung by Eartha Kitt that is SO DAMN GOOD but would not ever have fit the more nailed-down Yzma we would eventually come to know and love. It’s so catchy though, I’m doubling up on calls to action but please listen now:

Given 2: Carol Does Not Want Susie in her house. Carol especially does not want Susie touching Dess's guitar.

Given 3: Unlike Kris, who has lived in hometown forever, Susie is new in town. As Noelle says in her blog post, she is the 'newest girl'

Conclusion: Carol doesn't want Susie in her house because she's not part of her perfect past: Susie represents change, and the introduction of new things into an established order.

Proposition: What if Carol's attitude towards change being one and the same as her attitude toward Susie also applies to other people?

I mean, to start with the obvious, Noelle has the worlds biggest most nuclear teen crush on Susie. Noelle is also the one that invites Susie into her house, despite the fact she knows her mom won't approve. Noelle wants to go see the lights of the city one day. Noelle wants things to change, just as much as she wants to be with Susie. But when her mother puts her foot down, she's too frightened to advocate for what she wants.

Similarly, Kris is a huge Susie fan. Hell, a most of their independent moments from the player are them being friends with her! And given their duties to the bunker conspiracy involve them being our vessel, we can say that being with Susie incites them to rebellion. They can't help but long for change. They have always been a different element, the only human in town, and the change to that status quo, the introduction of another outsider, helps them be alright with that difference.

Ralsei is shocked by Susie at first, shocked at her lack of adherence to the way he thought things would go, and is compelled beyond careful sweetness and niceness in order to stop her violence. Compelled to be more Ralsei-like, if you will, as when he takes of his cloak and hat. Then, as she shows her gentler sides, she is what makes him realize things about the nature of friendship. She makes him want to go to the festival with her, to want things he "shouldn't". He wants to keep her from knowing the things he knows, that he believes are unchangeable- but when she tells him she's not gonna let that happen, he believes her. Ralsei believes in change.

You can apply this to lots of people; from Berdly's hostility and disbelief that he could ever like Susie, to Toriel welcoming Susie into her home, to Asgore's almost complete lack of acknowledgment of her.

Me: its just- so interesting to note that throughout ALL of Act 1 that anytime the whole tight knit family is singing or harmonizing, Whizzer is the only one to deviate and hit a Sharp or have his voice noticably stand out. From the first time everyone sings ‘His name is Mendel’ he holds out a belt/flat no one else does- its just so accurate to his character. He is, in every sense of the phrase, the Odd Man Out. He’s the one who was the outsider, the one who initially ‘caused’ this whole epidemic (of course this was really Marvin,) and it shows the whole ‘he wasnt a part of the Tight Knit Family yet. He sings the parts no one else does, hitting notes or sharps or flats and it STANDS OUT. He is meant to be noticed, meant to be seen as an outlier. In ‘I never Wanted to Love You’ you clearly hear his voice, its how much he stands out and is different and is so important! Hes that character! The one Marvin left his Family for! The one who turned his whole world upside down! And his voice emulates that! Then, in Act 2, that leaves. There’s no song in which he outwardly has a Sharp or Flat or Belt no one else has. This is his ‘Full Transition’ into the Tight Knit Family. He’s a part of it now, harmonously a part of the unit and it’s so important to note the change, from Loud and Brash and Hurt in Act 1 to Happy and Whole and Him™ in Act 2. I dont know, I’m just glad Whizzer finally got to have what he deserved. A Tight Knit Family.