Halfmoon's Blog

Absent: preoccupied 

Agonized: as if in pain or tormented

Alluring: attractive, in the sense of arousing desire

Appealing: attractive, in the sense of encouraging goodwill and/or interest

Beatific: blissful

Black: angry or sad, or hostile

Bleak: hopeless

Blinking: surprise, or lack of concern

Blithe: carefree, lighthearted, or heedlessly indifferent

Brooding: anxious and gloomy

Bug eyed: frightened or surprised

Chagrined: humiliated or disappointed

Cheeky: cocky, insolent

Cheerless: sad

Choleric: hot-tempered, irate

Darkly: with depressed or malevolent feelings

Deadpan: expressionless, to conceal emotion or heighten humor

Despondent: depressed or discouraged

Doleful: sad or afflicted

Dour: stern or obstinate

Dreamy: distracted by daydreaming or fantasizing

Ecstatic: delighted or entranced

Faint: cowardly, weak, or barely perceptible

Fixed: concentrated or immobile

Gazing: staring intently

Glancing: staring briefly as if curious but evasive

Glazed: expressionless due to fatigue or confusion

Grim: fatalistic or pessimistic

Grave: serious, expressing emotion due to loss or sadness

Haunted: frightened, worried, or guilty

Hopeless: depressed by a lack of encouragement or optimism

Hostile: aggressively angry, intimidating, or resistant

Hunted: tense as if worried about pursuit

Jeering: insulting or mocking

Languid: lazy or weak

Leering: sexually suggestive

Mild: easygoing

Mischievous: annoyingly or maliciously playful

Pained: affected with discomfort or pain

Peering: with curiosity or suspicion

Peeved: annoyed

Pleading: seeking apology or assistance

Quizzical: questioning or confused

Radiant: bright, happy

Sanguine: bloodthirsty, confident

Sardonic: mocking

Sour: unpleasant

Sullen: resentful

Vacant: blank or stupid looking

Wan: pale, sickly

Wary: cautious or cunning

Wide eyed: frightened or surprised

Withering: devastating

Wrathful: indignant or vengeful

They’re sitting there like “what’s next on the docket. ah yes, the job interview for the diversity hire”

and then she kicks down the door and the first words out of her mouth are “THE REGIONAL MANAGER IS WORKING FOR A CULT OF BILLION-YEAR-OLD MACHINES TO WIPE OUT ALL LIFE IN THE GALAXY, THIS WAS REVEALED TO ME IN A DREAM”

great news! that just straight-up doesn’t happen.

tarantulas can live for well over a decade, and female tarantulas can expect to breed multiple times before they finally kick it! and since there’s always the expectation of there going to be a new clutch of eggs in the nest every year, there’s no benefit in getting rid of the frogs that will keep those eggs safe.

a female columbian lesserblack tarantula will treasure and protect her frogs until the day she dies, and then those frogs will go into the care of whichever of her daughters inherits her burrow! it’s an eternal cycle. a cycle of frog.

the scorpion came upon the frog on the riverbank.

“friend frog,” said the scorpion, waving its little pincer things in an emotive fashion, “would you carry me across? the river is wide, and I cannot swim.”

the frog was a kindly fellow, and hesitated, thinking it over.

now, this story could have progressed as it normally does, into a very sad and rather ham-fisted metaphor for the nature of the human experience, but luckily for both the frog and the reader (though not for the scorpion), our story is interrupted rather abruptly here by the sudden appearance of a ginormous fucking spider popping out of the bushes and making short work of the scorpion.

“Ribbort,” said the giant fuckoff tarantula, delicately wiping some scorpion off her huge terrifying spider fangs, “there you are! I was worried. you know better than to wander off into an allegory like this. come home, the children miss you.”

the frog, whose name was Ribbort, shrugged his damp little shoulders. indeed, some metaphors just can’t be accurately applied to the natural world, due to the enormously complex and often unexpected web of relationships between living creatures in any given ecosystem, and that is the way of things.