Corn Curls

In the chaos and uncertainty around us, there is still so much love and hope.

A few weeks ago, a local international student nervously approached me and asked if I could photograph his wedding reception. We barely know each other — so much so that the only real thing he knew about me was that a) I was a graphic designer and b) he had seen me hold a camera. And the only thing I knew about him was that he came from overseas to study engineering in the U.S.

He explained that his friend (and expected photographer) couldn't make the trip. I sympathized and told him I had a similar situation with my wedding, but then he said something that made my stomach churn.

Almost all his family and friends overseas can't make it. So can't the bride's, as she's studying abroad as well. With the warmest smile, he says while he wishes his family could be there to celebrate, he's so lucky to have great friends who are helping them put on a small reception.

I told him I had it covered and I wouldn't accept payment. Photos like this will be invaluable over time, and I wanted to pay it forward as the volunteer photographer at my own wedding did.

The wedding was this weekend. I cried during it.

His fellow engineering students became wedding planners. A church opened its doors free of charge. Families of local students caught wind of the event and handled the food, learning cultural dishes from the bride and groom's home countries. A mom group banded together to make table centerpieces. A recently married couple donated their leftover decorations. There were almost one hundred guests. Most of us didn't know each other.

It was the most beautiful wedding I've ever seen. Not just because the bride and groom were so deeply in love with one another, but because strangers saw an opportunity to be kind. In a community where hate of anything 'foreign' seems to fester, a bunch of people saw two lovebirds separated from their families, stepped in, and said, "how can we celebrate love today?"

the path of wisdom is sometimes to hire a plumber.

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

I came across it from Anne Lister’s diary, where she says that she would “grubble under women’s skirts” and honestly. The word perfectly encapsulates the fumbling feeling of fighting your way through layers of fabric to reach the promised pussy land.

However the word has been forbidden, reviled from the first moment my beloved heard it. They shuddered and it’s truly one of the only restrictions they’ve ever placed on my vocabulary so I don’t say it. But I do think it, on occasion.

Sometimes the word will pop into my head and I will think it too hard and my wife will turn and glare at me and accuse, “I know you’re thinking it!”

“But I didn’t say it!” I protest. But they’re always right. Even with no context they always know when I’m thinking it.

Today I told my wife, “I shared the unmentionable word with Astrid today and she quite enjoyed it. She repeated it several times.”

They bellowed liked a dying wildebeest and said, “I can go months without remembering that word exists and then it comes up again. It’s so disgusting, it’s what Sméagol would do on the ground digging for worms!”

I was laughing and protested, “It sounds like fighting through skirts, the groping around.”

“No! That is something that happens in the muck and the filth. It’s negative sexy.

“Bet you're gonna take to Tumblr and share it and some people are gonna be like, ‘Oh what a great word! We should definitely use that in our lexicon. Top tier word!’ And you know what? THEYRE WRONG. GARBAGE WORD. GROSS.”

A lot has changed these past 15 years but it’s delightful to see this little cat continuing to zip past every corner of the internet. Happy 15th birthday to Nyan Cat!

This is now your Pokémon Partner. Whatever you would want to do in the Pokémon world, your Result goes with you. It would be your Ace in Battles and/or contests or they might just help you around with your regular Not-Inherently-Pokémon Job or just hang around your house as your beloved Pet. If you really really want to BE a Pokémon than this is the Pokémon you just turned into.