by Ada Limón

When the doctor suggested surgery

and a brace for all my youngest years,

my parents scrambled to take me

to massage therapy, deep tissue work,

osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine

unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,

and move more in a body unclouded

by pain. My mom would tell me to sing

songs to her the whole forty-five minute

drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-

five minutes back from physical therapy.

She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered

by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,

because I thought she liked it. I never

asked her what she gave up to drive me,

or how her day was before this chore. Today,

at her age, I was driving myself home from yet

another spine appointment, singing along

to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,

and I saw a mom take her raincoat off

and give it to her young daughter when

a storm took over the afternoon. My god,

I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her

raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel

it's about the inefficiencies of web and code dependencies but highlights a few funny ones

(alt text is included for each image)

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

So there's an alien research station in space. Humanity's worst attempts to destroy it amount to a bear turning over the trash can. Aliens occasionally abduct people and return them with a clean bill of health and an ankle bracelet. It takes them forever to figure out those bracelets are screwing with their data because humans who carry them are curve-wreckingly popular.

Disaster strikes somewhere, I dunno, Japan, and there's an uptick in abductions, but of people stuck in collapsed buildings, and yeah the giant octopus tree that looks straight out of Call of Cthulhu is scary but it's also using tech you can't even comprehend to find survivors and teleport them out of the rubble. You see humans with absolutely 100% deadly injuries wisked away and a good number of them even return. There is now a new consent form specifying if rescuers can take you to the aliens, because they will probably try to save you but if they can't your family will never get your body back. You decide if your life or your body is more important.

Little by little, pragmatism wins out. The aliens aren't attacking, but they ARE abducting and doing weird tests. But the survivors mostly return unharmed with a Big Mac in hand and a weird piece of tech. There have been less valid excuses to miss school. The aliens are clearly researching humanity just as much as we are researching them, and until communications are established this status quo isn't the worst.

Ofc, then one of them actually attacks. Knocks the statue of liberty clean off. The military starts to deploy fast, and even wounds the attacker a lot, but before they can shoot the second missle it bounces. And it turns on the shooter. Every military person in the attack dies, suddenly and through means you cannot comprehend. The other aliens whisk the attacking one away. Construction materials appear as if in apology, but that's it.

The attacker was a hooligan who thought destroying wildlife was fun, and ran into something they can't handle. But even if the bear is perfectly within its rights to defend its territory, the ranger will atill have to shoot it to save the stupid brat, and hope the idiot learned their lesson.

But the bear is still dead. And the forest critters who had just started getting used to the ranger are now having second thoughts.

But the abductions continue. There are no hooligans for a while. And what else can you do? This is your home, but if the invaders really want to take it, what can you do?

So you try to stay out of their way, if you are in some serious trouble and your chances are already less than 50/50, maybe you seek them out. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they don't.

And sometimes the abductees catch glimpses of something that looks like it might have been human once, but eyes and skin all wrong, speaking incomprehensibly, and rubbing its head on the alien's 'knees'.

THE REVIEWS ARE IN!

Bartholomew

Dolores

Norman

Harold

Magnolia

Names that are normal for babies but weird when you're old:

Maddison

Tanner

Skylar

Mckenzie

Logan

Names that are normal for old people and normal for babies:

Elizabeth

Mary

Michael

Finnegan

Peter

Names that are weird when you're a baby and weird when you're old:

Radish

Kerosene

Australopithecus

Anthill

Hegemony

Names that are weird when you're normal:

Balthazar

Romulus

Clandestia

Persephone

Kremulon

Names that are normal when you're weird:

put your TV on channel 2 so the VCR will work

open up the clamp shell case that held the VHS that has that satisfying crrlikkkkkk

put in the movie

gdi it has to be rewound

press STOP and then rewind because its so much faster that way

start the movie and it takes a few seconds for the movie to actually start cause you rewound to the VERY beginning

FBI will get you if you illegally distribute or exhibit this movie

and then. because you forgot that movies are always so much louder than TV

COMING SOON TO OWN ON VIDEO AND DVD

QUICK LOWER THE VOLUME LOWER THE VOLUME LOWER THE VOLUME OH FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay crisis averted.

although. these ads are kind of quiet. a little hard to hear.....

better turn up the volume...