an unaccustomed shape

Mouse, aged 3.5, has been requesting The Book Of the Earthworm as their toilet book, although I abridge it as I read aloud - maintaining interest and speeding the process up. This was summarised as “earthworms are slimy,”

“WHAT,” barked an outraged Mouse.

“earthworms are slimy.”

“Earthworms NOT slimy,” Mouse said carefully.

“If you touch one, you’ll find they are slimy.”

“Mummy,” Mouse said, needing some clarity, and betraying a faint concern; “earthworms is turn into pepperoni?”

“What?”

“Earthworms is salami? If you touching an earthworm, and it is turn into pepperoni?”

So, collecting this knowledge:

Sometimes a mouse can hear things wrong, or somethings a word has two meanings, like chicken (bird) and chicken (meat), or knight (fighter) and night (time).

Pepperoni and salami are similar

If earthworms are salami, they must be enough like pepperoni for Mummy to understand what Mouse means by it

This is distressing, and doesn’t sound RIGHT, but it’s sensible enough to question further (salami DOES have some earthworm-ish qualities)

But what I’m getting at here is the Mouse-ear soundscape of the world. When grownups are blathering on and the word “chicken” floats past, you have to scramble to work out if they mean your pet or the food.

It’s okay to attack your meat with a knife and fork, but not okay to attack your pet, even if they are the same word. You are not allowed to put ketchup on the “pet” category of chicken, even though it is THE SAME. You can put both things in the compost when finished, but only one event is Death and therefore Sad, and the other is Mouse Why Did You Do That To Your Dinner; Now We Can Only Feed It To the Earthworms. When your chickens die, they don’t come back, but the chicken you didn’t eat at dinner mysteriously presents itself again as lunch. Chicken is food, but not “chicken food”, which is apparently the pellets you feed to chickens. (Despite sounding very similar, chicken pellets and chicken nuggets are not the same thing at all.) Chickens quite like eating chicken meat; it’s impolite for humans to bite pets. Eat your chicken / be gentle with your chicken. Okay, you can play with your chickens / Don’t play with your food. Sometimes chicken is a pet, sometimes food, sometimes cowardice, sometimes an abstracted flavour of instant noodle. Yes, they’re the same thing, but they’re not the same THING - Mouse is three and sees right through that argument.

The world is terribly complex, and often seemingly hypocritical; and learning other complex things at the same time - English; decorum - is a bewildering task.

[Image: First image is Anthy in her Rose Bride dress, bangs covering her eyes as she frowns. Second image is Miki playing the song he wrote. Third is Saionji practicing kendo with Touga in the background. Fourth is Juri gasping while clutching at her chest where she keeps her locket. Fifth is Nanami, spying on Touga as he embraces a girl. Sixth is a young Touga, letting a young Utena’s hair run through his fingers. Seventh is Anthy’s pained expression as she is impaled by swords. Eighth is Utena, desperately pulling open the coffin with her beaten and bloody hands. Final image is a thin beam of light falling on Anthy inside the coffin.

Text: We had given up all hope, and were casting about for other things to give up: dreams, aspirations, and then, digging further, anticipated muscle pains, pre-grief for loss that hadn’t happened yet, post-grief for losses long ago, and further still, until we were ready to give up that shifting, shivery spark that is our human heart itself. But then…but then…!]

if you want to exercise more, it's always assumed it's because you want to be skinny

if you want to eat better, it's always assumed it's because you want to be skinny

like a lot of the time the reason chronically ill people gradually experience worsening symptoms and pain is because theyre unable to move their bodies without limitation or agony. the loss of muscular tissue as a result of illness should be cause for serious concern but nobody gives a fuck because theyd rather focus on being skinny. like, physical therapy can literally save people's lives.

we should be using research on muscular development to create appropriate exercise routines for people with limited movement or energy, that matches their limitations while helping mitigate or at least slow muscle loss. or making physical therapy cheaper and more accessible. or advocating for bed and housebound people to make exercise more accessible. literally fucking ANYTHING.

It's the Royal Academy of Art Young Artist's Summer Show. One of my favourite exhibitions of the year. Like. Not only are the older kids insanely talented, the younger ones' artist statements will just punch you right in the face.

Jeffrey is my cat and he feels like my heart

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

And then tell me how many Jewish people in the last week you've interrogated about Israel, and how many Americans in the last week you've interrogated about bombing Iran, stealing Venezuela for some fucking reason, federal courts' continuing tyranny over tribal lands, ICE's concentration camps, police violence, the rampant horrifying abuse of children detained and in psychiatric facilities, and the President's ongoing crypto scams and pardons that have earned him billions from foreign government officials.

Now remember: Americans are actually citizens of America. Jewish people are citizens of wherever they're citizens of, which is only sometimes Israel.

Did you also know that these misdemeanors can sometimes be predicate crimes, meaning: they're misdemeanors the first or maybe second time, but after that they become felonies that carry much more jail time and are prosecuted in federal court?

Did you know that prosecutors federal court can use uncounseled (didn't have an attorney) prior crimes as reasons to enhance charges, elevate misdemeanors to felonies, and worsen sentencing guidelines?

Did you know a challenge to this practice went to the Supreme Court? That every single justice thought it was okay? That Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote the court opinion for it? (Weirdly, that only Clarence fucking Thomas's concurrence even challenged the reasoning?)

Why don't we care about this? Why isn't this news? Why do tribal lands get federal court and federal jail time and not roads and schools and god damn electricity?