half a page of scribbled lines

When I turned 17, we ordered a cake at the grocery store for my party, as we’d done many times before. If you wanted something written on the cake you’d write it into a section of the order form. We requested, very simply, “Happy Birthday Courtney”. When we went to pick it up the day of the party, this is what we got.

The bakery employees had absolutely no explanation for this. The order form, attached to the box, very clearly did not contain any of those extra names. Whomever had done the writing was no longer in, so there was no one to ask how this had happened. The fact that the name ‘Juan’ is misspelled bewilders me to this day. (I’ve never seen ‘Miley’ without the E, either, but it’s believable that someone might spell it that way.) Did this cake slip in from an alternate universe where I’m one quarter of a set of Hispanic quadruplets? Dyslexic Hispanic quadruplets, maybe?

This cake became the focal point of my party. At least two of my friends regularly called me ‘Courtney Mily Jaun Pablo’ for years to come. My siblings and I still reference it sometimes, eleven years later. It is probably the funniest thing ever to occur at any birthday celebration of my life, and may well remain so for the rest of my days.

No One Like You

now, it took us a while to realise it meant "(there is) no one like you". at first, we all parsed it as a botched "no one like(s) you"

In the sunfish’s defense!!!!!

- France abolished the Code Noir 2 months ago. That law project that said hey you can enslave, mutilate, kill, cross breed, etc. black people at will bc they're not people they're property ? Yeah. Abolished 2 months ago. We are in July 2026.

- the last human zoo closed its doors in 1994 in France due to social pressure. Not bc they were running out of business, no. Ppl still visited that place until it closed its doors. No, it was bc (black) French people were fed up. That human zoo was specialized in displaying black (presumed Congolese) people in fake huts in enclosures, for white entertainment.

- now while this might no longer be the case, when I was growing up, I went to a French school (as in. It was an international French School w the French flag n all) and the way we were taught French geography was that France has the biggest and largest access to the sea in the world. And they'd show us a map of France and its colonies around the world. It's all occupied indigenous lands. I don't know if they still teach that. I hope not. But they absolutely did until I graduated high school in 2017. Again, I write this on July 21st 2026, for the record.

A Lake in Pomerania, Poland

Amsterdam

Athens

Bac Son Valley, Vietnam

Barcelona

Bern

Cape Town

Central Park, New York City

Chicago

Dubai

Dubrovnik

Giza Pyramids, Egypt

Mali, Maldives

Mangroves in New Caledonia

Marina Bay, Dubai

Maze at Longleat, England

Meskendir Valley, Turkey

Mexico City

Moscow

Namib Desert, Namibia

Niagara Falls, U.S.A.

Paris

Rio de Janeiro

Seattle

Shanghai

Terraced Rice Fields, China

Tulip Fields, The Netherlands

Vancouver

Vatican City

Venice

The iconic 1980 Kate Bush photoshoot for the single art of “Babooshka” was captured by her older brother and frequent artistic collaborator, John Carder Bush. Taken in June 1980 to promote the leading single from her third studio album Never for Ever, this visual session perfectly mirrors the song’s themes of deception, dual identity, and marital alienation.

scrapbooked the hell out of his newspapers

put on a hat that was too big for him 

giggled

cried because lestrade was nice to him

got all sappy and romantic by smelling a rose

let a puppy lead him on adventures

“impish mood”

lit his pipe with an ember from the fireplace because he thought it looked cool

told a guy he was giving him secret government documents and then gave him a book about bees instead

Was offended that Watson doesn’t praise his skills as a housekeeper

Waived his fee if his clients are too poor to pay him

Made hot chocolate to wake Watson up on a cold morning

Danced around and bowed to imaginary friends

‘Flushed up with pleasure’ when being praised

Wouldn’t explain how he comes to conclusions because he was worried Watson would think he is ordinary

Grabs Watson’s hand when he’s frightened

gets dressed up and masks in shit for a breakin (the watson-description one) like holmes it’s a break-in not a date

to be fair it might be both for him

goes up to watson when he is first meeting him and essentially drags this complete stranger over to look at the cool Science he just did

doesn’t know that the earth goes around the sun at first (study in scarlet)

watson’s reply, verbatim: “But the Solar System!” I protested. (study in scarlet)

rips on fictional detectives, calling one “a very inferior fellow” and the other “a miserable bungler”, “in an angry voice” at that (study in scarlet)

deduces too much about watson’s older brother and makes watson sad (sign of the four)

is sexist -> a woman outsmarts him to be with the person she loves -> stops being sexist (scandal in bohemia, that’s the plot)

when watson tries to go to give the king privacy, he “pushe[s] [him] back into [his] chair” and says they’re a packaged deal (bohemia)

IN THE ADVENTURE WHERE HE COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD says “journeys end in lovers’ meetings” which to be fair is a quote from shakespeare and isn’t to watson but HOLY HELL

shakes the hand of a baby

shoots a patriotic slogan in the wall cause he’s bored

threatens to whip a guy

gets hobbies (medieval pottery, miracle plays, Buddhism of Sri Lanka…)

pestered watson about how watson wrote the stories and made it all romantic (true) until Watson said “Try it yourself, Holmes!” (canon), so he did, and promptly says that Watson is “an ideal helpmate” although he had at the time “deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone” like DAMN

plays music at weird hours

kept his tobacco in a Persian slipper

shoots up the wall with a patriotic slogan for no reason whatsoever

retires to sussex to keep bees which is just idk really freaking cute