The Whatever Stand

Our town (~9,000 people) has a couple garages, but there's a big one on the main drag. My family has been going there for decades. I drive past it every day.

There used to be a huge pine tree on the corner of their lot, but last year it became a hazard and had to be taken down.

Shortly thereafter I drive by and see they've hired a guy to chainsaw sculpt the stump into a bald eagle.

Birds own my heart, but nationalism makes me twitchy. I withhold outright condemnation of the eagle, but I'm skeptical. (The original owner—an objectively Good Dude—sold the business to a younger couple a few years ago, and I don't have any knowledge of their whole deal.)

Then it turns out someone on staff is really into making costumes for the eagle. Every holiday. Every month. Stuffed turkey, witch costume, menorah headpiece, bunny ears. These people love to dress their bird.

The changing of the eagle suit becomes a source of joy every time I drive through town.

Until June, when the eagle is bare.

Now look, maybe I'm expecting too much asking my garage to celebrate Pride. But this is a small town. Every time I drive by that stupid eagle—this thing that has previously brought me so much joy—I feel hurt. I feel reminded that there are plenty of people in my liberal bubble who don't consider my community worthy of celebration. I drive to work, I feel bad. I drive home, I feel bad. The eagle is mocking me.

Then my A/C quits working.

So I book an appointent to bring my car in—and realize what I have to do.

I pick all this up at a thrift store for under ten bucks. I print the shirt with some weird heat-transfer fabric crayons I find in a cupboard. I loop gold elastic around the sunglasses and pray they'll fit on the eagle's head. (It is also important to draw your attention to the price of the feather boa.)

(Nice.)

My reasoning is thus: if I show up with a complete costume ready to go, someone will have to look me in the eye and say "We don't believe in that," at which point I'll be finding a new garage. But if they let me dress the eagle, then people in town get to have the joy I've been missing since the start of the month.

I listen to a lot of hype-up jams on my way over. I hate confrontation. I also don't wanna have to find another garage. I want to believe that this decision isn't actively antagonistic, but I'm not particularly hopeful.

I talk through the A/C issue with the guy at the desk, hand over my keys, then take a deep breath.

"Who's in charge of the eagle?"

"Oh, that's all Dylan. Second bay from the end."

I walk down the row of hydraulic lifts and find a disarmingly smiley middle-aged man pouring fluid through a funnel. I introduce myself and explain that, since the Pride parade is this Sunday and the eagle seems to be missing a costume, I have taken the liberty of making one myself, and can I get his blessing to go put it on?

Dylan grins this absolutely giant grin and goes

"Oh hell yeah."

So that's what's up now.

"Hey also: thanks for making that costume for the eagle. People can be touchy about it, but the guys love what you did. And it’s so smart to put "Love is love" on the shirt. Because we’re all for the LGBTQ community, but of course there's people who come in here who aren't. And what are they gonna do? Disagree with something like that?"

I admitted I’d been nervous to ask about it, and we had a laugh, and then he told me they actually have a monthly budget for the eagle now. There’s a spreadsheet full of holidays and everything.

things that are terrorism:

allegedly shooting a healthcare CEO whose company generated more pure profit (not revenue, profit) in a year than the GDP of 94 countries, exclusively by denying coverage to people who pay for it

a 42-year-old mother of 2 using the wrong combination of 7 words during a heated conversation with a call center employee at a health insurance company who was in the process of denying her health coverage.

things that are not terrorism:

mass shooting in a Black church to incite a race war

going to a BLM protest specifically to kill protestors

a neo-nazi running over a crowd of people, killing a woman

targeting and killing 23 latinos in an el paso, texas walmart

killing 12 people in a theatre, shooting 58 others, rigging your apartment with explosives

a QAnon groyper killing 7 and shooting ~50 at a 4th of July parade

killing 3 people and shooting several others at a Planned Parenthood in defense of the unborn

stalking someone relentlessly and then killing them and their child despite months of the victim making police reports

any one of the 1,200 murders committed by US police yearly, the vast majority being minorities

tightening your border while ~100 immigrants (including children) drown every year in the Rio Grande

United Healthcare killing an unnknowable number of elderly people by using faulty AI to deny medically necessary coverage

Aetna killing a woman by refusing to cover her cancer care

Blue Cross killing a 6-year-old by denying her appendicitis surgery

Cigna killing a 17-year-old child by denying her liver transplant

the pharmaceutical industry killing half a million people with opioids in the name of producing revenues in 2023 that rivaled the GDPs of countries like Spain, Mexico, and Australia.

the United States killing 45,000 people a year because they can't access health coverage

hate exercising and realizing i've let go of a lot of anxiety and anger because i've overturned my fight-or-flight response.

hate eating right and eating enough and eating 3 times a day and realizing i'm less anxious and i have more energy

hate journaling in my stupid notebook with my stupid bic ballpoint and realizing that i've actually started healing about something once i'm able to externalize it

hate forgiving myself hate complimenting myself more often hate treating myself with kindness hate taking a gratitude inventory hate having patience hate talking to myself gently

hate turning my little face up to the sun and taking deep breaths and looking at nature and grounding myself and realizing that i feel less burdened and more hopeful, more actually-here, that i am able to see the good sides of myself more clearly, that i am able to see not only how far i have to grow - but also how much growth i have already done & how much of my life i truly fill with light and laughter and love

this was a long undertaking but i’m beyond excited to post what i believe is the most comprehensive daemon-finding quiz to date, featuring 34 categories of animals and over 320 total possible outcomes! from insects to owls to seals to wild cats, you’re sure to find a unique result that fits your personality.

tag or comment what your daemon would be! :) mine’s a cocker spaniel!

this is pretty heartbreaking for me since this was the first big quiz i ever did and i can’t edit it anymore because ex.co is on a subscription-only basis now — all of the links to the sub-quizzes were removed, i’m guessing ex.co doesn’t allow links in results now. a real bummer because it breaks the quiz. :(

for anyone who’s still taking this, attached are all of the subquiz links!

- Domestic dog - Wild dog - Domestic cat - Wild cat - Reptile - Primate - Amphibian - Raptor - Owl - Flightless bird - Waterfowl - Perching bird - Equine - Deer - Musteloid - Mustelid - Bear - Insect - Arachnid - Rodent - Rabbit - Bovid - Pinniped - Fox - Viverroid - Antelope - Caprine - Marsupial - Swine - Xenartha - Eulipotyphla - Serpent - Cavitave - Bat

The office immediately split into two factions over it. One says that if anyone falls in the spike pit it's their own fault for being so stupid and not watching where they're walking, so we should remove the sign. The other says that the sign is an insult, there shouldn't be a spike pit in our office at all, and having the sign up like that is just normalising the existence of the spike pit, so we should remove the sign.

Katniss: He hates hates hates her for being the same as him. He can communicate with her because she is the same as him. He's her mentor, of course he cares about her. He should be a father figure to her but he's too stunted by his own trauma so they exist like teenage allies in the never-ending arena which is a victor's life. He wants to keep her safe but she must also be a pawn in the rebellion. She makes him make promises he cannot keep. She is all that he could have been and he is all that she might be.

meanwhile, webfishing has no crafting, no survival, no item breakage, no stamina meter, no food meter, no jumpscares... the physics-defying out-of-bounds void area doesn't beat you over the head with the creepypasta shlock and mostly just exists as a fun convenient hangout spot to catch basically every fish in... and best of all there's insane griefing potential (meowing/barking, punching people into the water to drown them, playing guitar badly, drawing stupid shit all over the ground at spawn) yet zero consequences for actually getting griefed. if someone drowns you it literally does not affect you for longer than like five seconds.