Waiting for Stardust

Because my comics have gone around the internet, many people have asked if I’ve “gotten better yet”. The answer is a firm NO because that’s not how post-viral illness triggered by an infection that causes organ and brain damage works. Please consider your behavior and who you are leaving behind.

Check out the People’s CDC here where they provide weekly updates on the COVID situation in the U.S.

ID in alt text and below!

ID: a 10-image black-and-white cartoony comic.

The 1st image is titled Pandemic Year 3 and dated January 2023. The drawing shows a masked boy with fluffy hair, Joey, surrounded by unmasked people. The text reads: At some point, the people around me decided that the price of me staying alive — a few small inconveniences for them — was too high. In image 2, Joey sits at a table with his drawing tablet looking concerned. The text reads: The world, many loved ones included, is actively hostile to me continuing to live. How do I cope with that? I don’t have the answer. I’m just really alone.

Joey, stressed and frightened, clutches his laptop. The text reads: And I mean really alone. A figure on the laptop screen says: High-risk people will take care of themselves. Joey yells: How?

This image is split into two panels. The first one reads: How do I keep myself safe when the store, work, and school, is a death trap? For each word, a triangle displays that maskless environment. The second panel shows Joey’s sad face in a Zoom window. The text reads: I’m taking my final semester of undergrad online to the displeasure of many.

Joey lays face down in a pillow. The text reads: If you’ve been following me for any time, you know I got Covid in February 2020 at 19 years old and have become disabled by long Covid. Everything smells and tastes like rotting meat, I can’t keep anything I eat down, and I’ve started randomly fainting after years of dizziness.

Joey is shirtless and masked and hooked up to an EKG. The text reads: I’m one of millions of Covid survivors for whom re-infection is much more dangerous. Not to mention everyone who was already high-risk.

Joey lays on the couch and looks at social media posts where people are posting photos of themselves maskless in crowds. The text reads: The general public is very happy to isolate high-risk people from society if it means never having to think about us ever again and continuing with the actions that kill us. That’s eugenics, by the way.

This image is split into two panels. The first one shows Joey laying down, clutching his heart, and crying. The text reads: And it’s not just the people who don’t see us. The second panel shows Joey looking disheveled. The text reads: The cognitive dissonance is unlike anything I’ve seen. A speech bubble says: Are you sure you won’t do indoor dining?

Joey holds his hands lovingly under his face and raises his arms. Hearts are around his head. The text reads: If you’re here with me and isolated from the rest of society while being continually told that your life doesn’t matter and that you’re crazy, I see you. I love you. You’re not alone.

the woke left: young and fashionable. visible tattoos. often enjoys matcha, lavender flavoring, oat milk, and cold foam. pretty decent customers.

sweet old man: drinks very sweet iced lattes, pays in cash, puts all of his change in the tip jar. sometimes orders hot coffee and i get scared that his shaky old man hands will spill it and he'll get burned but that has not yet happened and god willing never shall.

evil old man: only wants drip coffee and declares it ridiculous that any other form of coffee exists. some variants only want americanos and these variants are even scarier. watch out.

sweet old woman: might need her daughter's help to order but is very bubbly and open to trying new things. compliments baristas freely and frequently.

evil old woman: does not want coffee and only wants sweet tea or soda. will not tip even if she spends three hours in the shop repeatedly asking baristas to fetch things for her.

errand husband: either stiltedly recites an order to you or shows you the order in their texts/notes app. needs to step out of line and make a phone call if you ask any follow-up questions.

grindset girlie: always wearing scrubs, an apron, and/or a name tag. orders the exact same thing every day and knows the exact change she'll need to pay for it. her regular order is both extremely caffeinated and extremely sweet.

#mamabear: is actively wrangling two to four children while ordering. order changes repeatedly because the children cannot decide if they want a muffin or a cookie or apple juice or chocolate milk etc. for some reason these women are always wearing an article of clothing or carrying some personalized item that says "mama" on it.

schoolchildren: band of two to eight adolescents hanging out after school. extremely indecisive but generally quite polite and tip well.

amnesiac in love: grown adult who needs their partner to tell them what they like. gets asked a question about their own preferences and turns to their partner to answer for them. generally acts like a shy child looking to their guardian for behavioral cues if you try to interact with them and only wants to talk to mommy i mean their wife.

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

proud as she should be

quotes taken from the source

it's not fair that twitter's phm tag has a rocky emoji so i stole him for you all