Massachusetts RedHead

Sometimes a smile Is all you need, To find flowers From life’s weeds.

This is getting kind of ridiculous.

Whimsical Trompe L’oeil Street Art by David Zinn

Michigan illustrator David Zinn is known for the composition of his quirky site-specific illustrations, which playfully integrate adorable animal figures into the cracks, hidden treasures and abandoned sidewalks of the playground and street. Since 1987, Zinn has been composing whimsical chalk or charcoal work which take us into daily adventures.

(Title because everyone titles their shit ‘humans are weird’ and telling these posts apart is a pain in the ass!) So, saw a post about aliens not being all that great with human swearing. (Wish I’d saved the damn post!) And my first thought was ‘Ah, yes, good! Go with that! That is awesome!” They pointed out that aliens wouldn’t understand swearing such as “Fuck!” or “Asshole!”. I thought “Motherfucker” would be another great one to add to the list. But what about the more um…inventive swears? For example (these are all ones that I use or have heard used):

Human: “Jesus Christ on a crutch!”

Alien: “Where? And how was your deity hurt? For that matter, how did your deity board the ship?”

Human: “Well fuck me sideways!”

Alien: “I do not think that is anatomically possible for either of us…”

Human: “I’ve met some pricks in my time, but you fine sir are the fucking cactus!”

Alien: “Fucking…cactus? Why would you wish to engage in coitus with a dessert plant? Wouldn’t it hurt?!”

Human: “Son of a biscuit eating bull dog!”

Alien: ?????

(Damnit, now I’m on a roll.) But consider some of these other things. What about human name calling? Like, the original post touched on that a bit with the ‘asshole’ comment. But again, what about the more inventive name calling? Children call each other ‘meanie’, ‘poopoo head’, and ‘meanie head’. Those would be confusing enough. Now picture an alien having to deal with adult name calling. Some of my friends have been known to use the following:

Twat waffle

Cunt biscuit

Shitlet

Douchebag

Ass goblin

Fuckwit

Ass clown

Captain Obvious (and their partner, Sergeant Sarcasm)

Butt Munch

Fucktard

Dick face

Shit nibbler (or nibblet)

Cheeky dickwaffle

Pecker head

Dingleberry

Can you picture an alien reacting to THOSE? And what about colloquialisms? What about those stupid sayings that don’t entirely make sense, but we use them anyway? Like, check out some of these beauties, and just imagine the alien’s glorious confusion over some of these:

 Human: “I am dragging so much ass that I am wiping out the tracks behind me!”

Alien: “Human you can’t leave tracks on a spaceship, nor is you posterior currently touching the ground.”

Human: (doesn’t trust some space pirate) “You can shake his hand, but you’ll have to count your fingers afterward.”

Alien: Promptly hides human’s hands, he didn’t know that that space pirate was a finger stealer! Or that finger stealers were a thing! Are their own tentacles close enough to count? Should they be worried? Don’t worry, I will protect your fingers my human!

Human: “We better dock soon, because I’ve got to pee like a motherfucker/ racehorse/ mother racehorse (that last is my families fusion of the two. Dont ask).

Alien: ???? (doesn’t compute) ?????

Human: “I’m so hungry I could eat a (insert large animal or item of choice. Such as ‘Spaceship’)!”

Alien: Races off to warn captain that they need to up the human’s food intake before it eats the ship right out from under them!!!!

Human: “He’s slicker than owl shit!” 

Alien: ?????

Human: “I’m busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest!”

Alien: Gets migraine trying to picture how a human with one leg could kick anything, much less as a competitor.

Human: “Stop running around like a chicken with your head cut off! Your hair is not on fire!”

Alien: Freezes mid-step to stare at human. “W-what?”

It’s basically born of false assumptions; folks were trying to explain how a naturally solitary animal could form such complex social bonds with humans, and the explanation they settled on is “it’s a displaced parent/child bond”.

The trouble is, cats aren’t naturally solitary. We just assumed they were based on observations of European wildcats - but housecats aren’t descended from European wildcats. They’re descended from African wildcats, which are known to hunt in bonded pairs and family groupings, and that social tendency is even stronger in their domesticated relatives. The natural social unit of the housecat is a colony: a loose affiliation of cats centred around a shared territory held by alliance of dominant females, who raise all of the colony’s kittens communally.

It’s often remarked that dogs understand that humans are different, while cats just think humans are big, clumsy cats, and that’s totally true - but they regard us as adult colonymates, not as kittens, and all of their social behaviour toward us makes a lot more sense through that lens.

The like to cuddle because communal grooming is how cats bond with colonymates - it establishes a shared scent-identity for the colony and helps clean spots that they can’t easily reach on their own.

They bring us dead animals because cats transport surplus kills back to the colony’s shared territory for consumption by pregnant, nursing, or sick colonymates who can’t easily hunt on their own. Indeed, that’s why they kill so much more than they individually need - it’s not for fun, but to generate enough surplus kills to sustain the colony’s non-hunting members.

They’re okay with us messing with their kittens because communal parenting is the norm in a colony setting, and us being colonymates in their minds automatically makes us co-parents.

It’s even why many cats are so much more tolerant toward very small children, as long as those children are related to one of their regular humans: they can tell the difference between human adults and human “kittens”, and your kittens are their kittens.

“It’s a hot one today”

“it is..”

“you just bought the property?”

“Yeah..”

Then they leave. Mum is in a mild panic for the rest of the afternoon, she is worried they have plans to come back later and do who knows what, she calls friends from Sydney, she collects all the knives, she freaks out, understandably. Later on we hear the four wheel drive come back the other way through the bush and this time mum puts us inside and says lock the door. The car stops and in the back of the ute are litres and litres of water, in huge tanks from the shops.

These amazing vertical forests located in n Nanjing, China will produce around It’s a good job that these vertical forests in Nanjing, China are going to produce 132 pounds (60kg) of oxygen daily. Called Nanjing Towers, they will be Asia’s first vertical forests.

Called FIRE, this amazing hair color is the first in the world. It changes according to the temperature of its surroundings. In a cold setting, you’ll get stunning raven hair and in a warm environment, your hair will literally turn fire red.