pixellated

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.

Don't tell me you still fancy yourself a princess! Good God, child, look around you! Or better yet, look in the mirror!

He does this mostly by framing the protests as a conflict between freedom-loving protestors and jackbooted thugs over the soul of America and by painting ICE's victims as martyrs who were killed for no reason and whose names must not be forgotten. Then he pairs the idea of fighting for the soul of America and these newfound martyrs with protecting immigrants and continuing resistance (the refrain of the song is "We'll make our stand for this land/And the strangers in our midst").

This song is also the most overtly political and contemporary of his works. While his most famous song, "Born in the USA," is a critique of how the US military exploited the working class by shipping them off to Vietnam and left them broken and abandoned after their return told through the eyes of a victim of this exploitation, its catchy refrain was enough to give Conservatives a chance to claim the song as patriotic, but his new anthem, "Streets of Minneapolis," does not and is, instead, nakedly and starky about what its about.

You run away from what you're afraid of, then it owns you.

I'm reminded of President Obama's inauguration.

Despite people's fears (Fox, looking at you hate machine), people like Mamdani represent the want for change, the want to try something. Anything.

This is the point! That we are supposed to try to make progress and make things better for our lives, together.

I'm reminded of all the made up hate for Obama. I had a family member seriously tell me that I should get ready to wear the burka under Obama. And the comments online are already sounding the same for Mamdani.