~Mr. Winkles's Dance Studio~

Grace is joking around with a selectively violent creature that can rip his soft squishy body apart in an instant!

But it’s also a lot of fun to hear Weir talk about all the stuff he wants to include in a possible sequel, like the fact that eridians can have several conversations at once even with the same eridian. He imagine Rocky and Adrian bickering in one conversation while having a nice conversation at the same time that slowly turns into a fight and all of a sudden they’re yelling at each other in two conversations about different things.

He also says they have terrible spacial memory because they can see everything around them all the time thanks to their echo location so to them it’s crazy that humans can only see in one direction but still remember what’s behind them and even what the last room they were in looks like. Apparently eridians mostly just remember that the room exists and that it has the computer in it but if you asked them where the computer is placed in the room they’ll struggle to give a precise answer.

And Rocky got scared when Grace hugged him because eridians don’t have a concept of expressing affection with physical touch. To them it’s only neutral or violent because thanks to their hard shell they can’t really feel much. They only use it to move each other around or to break through their prey’s shell to get to the soft insides. So in their inter-species friendship only Grace would feel any desire to touch Rocky. It makes it very cute that Rocky joins in on Grace’s hugging ritual. It’s purely for Grace’s sake.

there’s sixteen Colorado counties that their most searched was “wolf furry”, plus thirty-odd counties (not counting either Arapahoe or any of the ones marked here as “Insufficient Data”) which may well have had plenty of searches for “wolf furry”, just fewer than for whatever they’re labeled here

and “skunk furry” searches in Arapahoe County outnumbered “wolf furry” searches in the entire state of Colorado

Today this woman called our information desk and said, “my son’s band is playing tonight. I want to come see him, but he never answers his phone…..I want to be there. Have you heard anything about his band?”

And I felt so bad for this lady but I’m not in the music scene around here so I had to tell her no, sorry.

Five hours later, I’m hiking and run into a group of guys setting up for some outdoor performance, and as I watch them unload the drums it hits me.

“Hey,” I said, “are y’all in a band?”

They said yeah and smiled and I told them “one of your moms called today. She wants to watch you play, but she can’t get a hold of you. Call your mom.”

And they all pulled out their phones and started discussing whose mom it probably was as they presumably dialed their own.

And now, unless we meet again and recognize each other, that’s who I’ll be forever to those guys–some mysterious courier for mom-messages who came out of the woods and told them their mom called.

I didn’t even tell them why their mom called me. Who am I to their mom?? Nobody even asked. They just took my word for it and called their mothers.

Last week I was at a meetup where I was the only transfem. I checked the groupchat when I arrived and there was a message from the organiser: "We have a newcomer called X, can you look out for him if you get there first?" I located X, introduced myself, sent a message to the chat say, "I have located X," and continued to talk to him until the organiser arrived. When the organiser arrived, she was not happy with me. It turned out my phone had autocorrected, "I have located X," to, "I had located X," which the organiser interpreted as me passive aggressively telling her that I had already done the thing she was asking about. Her conclusion: I was unreasonable and aggressive in responding to her reasonable request. My explaining what had happened didn't convince her otherwise.

A different occasion last week: in a local trans groupchat, a trans man sent a link to a drag event happening in our town. A few people said they were already going, some said they might go. Then a trans woman replied saying, "Thanks, but I don't really like drag." Her tone was immediately called into question. Her words were assumed to communicate: "I think you are a terrible person if you like drag," even though she never said that. Several non-transfems who had never even heard that drag might not be universally-beloved by everyone were upset to discover that fact. A trans woman simply saying she didn't like this thing became A Big Deal.

Meanwhile, at a different event again, a trans man told a group that he was straight and attracted to women, but he wouldn't feel comfortable bringing home an "AMAB woman" (yes he actually said that). It was quickly brushed over, and after he had left even trans women tried to defend him by saying "he probably didnt realise people would be offended" etc etc. In contrast to the examples above, he is not even aware that anyone was upset by what he said, never mind worrying about what consequences he might face.

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team.