KlunkyBoots Stomping Around

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

Tired of normal kitchenware?

Well I've a thing that I must share.

It seems to be a normal fish,

that's destined for a fishy dish.

And yet, it hides a sharp surprise,

disgorging it before your eyes!

My latest, dearest Christmas wish:

The sharpest lad,

What we know is we have found a cache of complaint tablets about him selling low quality copper as high quality, in a site that was probably his own residence. We know multiple people complained he was a cheat. It's entirely possible they were right. It's also entirely possible that he kept these complaint letters as records of people he would no longer do business with, because they had made accusations and threats in order to bully him into giving them free copper. That is an equally valid interpretation of the evidence.

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

the first osprey is the father, the one that comes later is the mother.

ospreys are not eagles, they're ospreys

ospreys only eat fish, that's why they don't register this starling as possible food

the starling got home safely

the starling was not trying to eat the eggs, it was mostly curious and you can see it trying to hop under the osprey every time the osprey tries to sit down again--this is because the starling is still a baby and has the instinct to get under an adult for warmth, even though it mostly has its feathers. this scares the osprey because that is a Foreign Creature near its eggs.

at the end of the video you can see the ospreys starting to turn the eggs. birds do this so the yolk and/or embryo don't stick to the shell of the egg, which is bad for the egg's health.

saw an inspiring video that said you need to have 4 hobbies.

create, consume, cavort, commune

create: bring something to life consume: appreciate the art of another cavort: move your body daily commune: have a community to socialize with

i told you i was saddened - too many people feed wild animals, mistakenly believing “once won’t hurt”. too many people think that wild animals are just bigger/smaller versions of domestic animals - they see a fox running around a house on youtube and think that’s a catdog and i could keep it. i told you that the worst part of working with wildlife was having to take care of the aftershock of this. in my state, any nondomestic animal that bites a human must be put down to check for rabies, even if we are positive the animal is safe. the government just slashed the budget again, no more EPA. around this time every year, we spend hours on the phone trying to rehome creatures that can’t survive in the wild anymore - someone thought a feral animal could be “taught” to be a pet. 

a woman cries to me. the fox in the basket is growling. “i thought it was like a dog,” she says. “I didn’t know it would be this much trouble.”

i told you -  why can’t people understand that care can look different on different bodies. that sometimes love for one thing is not love for another. that it can be selfish to want to hold something that was not meant to be held. the lovely thing is that we have plenty to hold, and each other, and a whole world; but there are things with hearts that should stay in the woods. it’s not yours to touch, is all.

you told me: let people have their fun. it’s one raccoon. it’s one bird full of bread. it’s not that big of a deal. 

much later, long after you had been washed out of my hair and my life and my hurting - i realized you would leave little bruises on me, but hated whenever my lipstick smudged across your cheek. you used to say - i just don’t like the feeling. you would bite my lip until it bled and look down at me and say - marking my territory.