yearning for the night bus

Keeping yourself as cool as possible isn't being weak or wimpy. It's protecting your capacity to think and move well if you need to.

You might feel tired, really thirsty but still having dry mouth, it just doesn't even occur that your mouth is dry even if you're drinking water or fruit juices. Also, heat makes you much more suggestible and agreeable because you think the other person makes sense. That's why heat is used for prison suppression.

So if you are out and someone else looks weirdly tired, or is slurring a little in the day, or takes a few seconds too long to answer or the answer is something "automated" when it shouldn't be, ask them to stay in air conditioning. See if you can get them a drink.

Simple commission for @riftlands of their sphinx character, Sloane, and her adopted tiefling son, Gwyn! That looks so so comfy, i’m so so jealous of his Sphinx mom!

Here’s the new 24 hour comic I drew this year!  This one is called THE KING’S FOREST.  cw: blood, violence

Our deck table had been showing its age already when the wind caught the umbrella and cracked it. I wanted to replace it with a mosaic table because I’d been enjoying that art form recently. But I couldn’t get one the size I wanted so I got creative.

I spent a few weeks looking for tile and figuring out a very loose design concept. I started by picking a limited set of tile shapes and a color palette.

Once the tiles arrived I had a piece of cement board cut to size for the base and I experimented with different motifs until I settled on a selection of floral shapes that gave me plenty of variety to fill space without locking me into one repeating pattern.

And then I was off! I basically doodled my way around the table, attaching tiles and rocking out to the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack.

Once the florals were done it was time for the background…

Over 3,800 1cm glass tiles make up the not-design part of the design. It went pretty quickly though because I just had to fill the space, leaving room for grout.

Once I had the tile done, my husband assisted with disassembly and reassembly. We used the legs off the original table for this one (waste not).

One huge bucket of black grout later…

She is finished.

Henry the Fifth

- ALWAYS encourage others to do their best.

- NEVER talk about people behind their back.

Antony and Cleopatra

- ALWAYS check your produce for pests. [They liked this one so much made a rap about it.]

- NEVER count your chickens before they hatch.

Hamlet

- ALWAYS act decisively

- NEVER tell your girlfriend to go to a convent and become a nun [Oh boy they REALLY liked this one]

Romeo and Juliet

- ALWAYS collect all the important information before making an important decision

- NEVER bite your thumb at us, sir. [They enacted this scene in the original language a lot, except they swapped every “sir” for “bro.”]

The Merchant of Venice

- ALWAYS pay your debts.

- NEVER judge based on appearances, because “all that glisters is not gold.”

The Tempest

- ALWAYS try to forgive others.

- NEVER be a colonizer. [Yes, a middle schooler said this]

Midsummer Night’s Dream

- ALWAYS stay on forest trails

- NEVER fall in love with an ass. [They were excited about this one for obvious reasons.]

Twelfth Night

- ALWAYS stay in touch with those important to us

- NEVER read other people’s mail

Macbeth

- ALWAYS wash your hands. [One of the girls performed Lady Macbeth’s entire Out Damn Spot monologue at the end of the semester]

Yeah, I was re-reading the Tempest like “hmmm will they even understand the subtle themes here… this might be a cut-and-dry magic story to them.”

Kid 1 (known intellectual): Wait, Prospero is like… a colonizer to the magical creatures. He showed up on their island and enslaved them.

Kid 2: Enslaving people is bad! Is Prospero a bad guy?

Kid 3: But Caliban is bad! He wanted to kidnap Miranda.

Me: Yeah, it’s kind of hard, isn’t it? Just like how in real life most people are a mix of good and bad.

When it comes to stuff like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, I’ve found it’s usually way better to think to yourself ‘I don’t want to be’ than ‘I’m not’.

My credentials on this topic are that I have decades of lived experience as a chronically ill disabled psychiatrized person, and also that I have read hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of words of medical studies, research articles, legal frameworks, human rights initiatives, essay by activists, advocacy organization platforms, and the history of disability rights.

Your credentials are that you are a Person Who Thinks They Knows Stuff.

We are not the same. Your opinion is irrelevant to me, because the degree to which you possess less information than I do makes it laughable that you would have anything new or of value to add to this conversation.

The degree to which this is my area of expertise makes any discussion we have about it which does not first acknowledge the disparity in our levels of expertise inherently disrespectful to me as a person.

And you can't even tell, because you are so ableist that you don't see my experience as expertise to begin with.