A Blog

ID #1: An illustration of Brutha, a fat young man in plain robes, holding Om, an old tortoise, who is shouting "AUTISM BE DAMNED MY BOY CAN HEAR THE WORDS OF GOD." End ID.

ID #2: An illustration of Brutha's silhouette (which is filled with the texture of burnt paper) standing out in the night time desert. A fountain of imagery containing text, scientific illustrations, maps, ect., are radiating from a flame coming from his head. End ID.

my review of Small Gods is I like Brutha and his loud mouthed annoying old peepaw

these two drawings get to live together bc i think the juxtaposition is funny

I was thinking of making myself a T-shirt with a little logo of my favourite handheld console

I thought maybe you could help me in my quest. I've made two bookmarks for a friend with watercolors. One of them is a small fox looking at fallen leaves flying above his head, as if he were mesmerized by them. And I've been trying to find a good quote to accompany it on the back of the bookmark, but I haven't been successful so far.

I'm looking either for a poetry excerpt (my bookmark is 1/8 of an A4 sheet of paper, so nothing that would be very long [like a full sonnet haha] but I still have some space) or a quote of any kind, in French or in English, both are fine.

Would you have any that would make a good fit? Maybe an autumn-y one?

[I don't want to influence you, but for example, for the second one which is a sky at almost-dusk-time with a washed-out blue sky and soft pink clouds, I have a quote from one of the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery:

"In daylight I belong to the world, in the night to sleep and eternity. But in the dusk I'm free from both and belong only to myself."]

Much thanks, and scritches to your various animals :)

Handmade watercolour bookmarks are such a nice idea for a gift, I love it <3

I vexed myself thinking about your request because I learn poetry by heart so often, or small book excerpts, but when someone asks me to dig up a topical quote my mental library is suddenly empty. I wish I had a tag system for my brain.

I vaguely remember an Alfred Desrochers poem the first stanza of which was "Le vent est froid, le ciel est gris, la terre est rousse / L'automne est revenu par septembre apporté / Et les arbres, devant la mort du bel été / Pleurent des larmes d'or [?quelque chose?] sur la mousse." And something by Francis Jammes about "ces jours qu'empourpraient les agonies solaires de l'automne" but no recollection beyond that...

I also remember some meager excerpts from "Matin d'octobre" by François Coppée, "A travers la brume automnale / Tombent les feuilles du jardin / [???] / Une blonde lumière arrose / La nature, et dans l'air tout rose / On croirait qu'il neige de l'or."

And one of my favourite poems by Marie-Claire Bancquart, "Je marche dans la solitude des livres", "Beyond the garden, beyond the moment at hand, are the fallen shells of chestnuts, the fire of leaves in the mist..."

And a verse by Ernest Dowson that went "And are we not better and at home / in dreamful autumn...? "

Maybe a couple of lines from this e.e. cummings poem? What my brain retained of it was "the glory is fallen out of the sky, this is the passing of all shining things"...

(if a fox could write autumn poetry I think it would sound like this poem. "no lingering no backward-wondering straight glad feet fear ruining lead us into the serious darkness...")

I also like this sentence by Elizabeth Coatsworth, from her book Personal Geography: "The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn’t ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know."

Anyway, love the idea of handmade illustrated bookmarks :) It reminds me of a calendar I made for a friend years ago, I wrote a little poem for each month and illustrated it. One of the poems was about having a snail friend:

There’s a wonderful Welsh poem about a fox called Y Llwynog, by R. Williams Parry. I think the last lines are especially beautiful:

Unhurriedly and without fear he went

And it was done: beyond the ridge red fur

Flashed for an instant, like a falling star.

In the end, I decided to go with this translated Welsh poem because I found it really beautiful in many ways and because the fox is an important detail of that bookmark.

...also, I forgot I could have a very tiny handwriting without even trying that hard, so in a misguided attempt at wanting to make sure everything would fit on the back, I ended up with a bunch of free space and thus turned it into a multilingual bookmark by adding Matin d'Octobre by François Coppée (who was unknown to me but I really enjoyed his poem, so thank you Madame Hedgehog-Moss 🍁)

And as I'm pretty sure the recipient of this gift does not use Tumblr, here is how it turned out to thank you all for your input :)

[ID: a digital illustration of a fluffy, lanky dog frolicking, facing to the left. It’s tongue is out. It is white with brown spots, and runs on a stylized background with blue hills and a bright yellow and orange sun. There is a a blue border with stars at the corners. End.]

October 8th is National Salmon Day! For this region, you can find Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River.

I was an animator on this film, working for a year and a half on it (if any of you guys were wondering where I'd gone). While we were making it, we kept asking each other what the reception for this odd, special movie would be, and joking about it going to the Oscars. Lol can you imagine!!

Fast forward two years, and here we are.

At the Oscars.

Absolutely wild.

Please DO talk about it more! This movie had a minuscule budget compared to the other Oscar nominees; it's traditional 2D animation in a world where 3D has taken over; it's kid-friendly but not FOR kids; and it's SILENT.

SILENT! Not one line of dialogue. And the amazing scriptwriting and animatic work made it not just entertaining, but exciting and absolutely heartbreaking. My first day at the studio they made me watch the animatic, and even in that rough state it made me emotional. I had to hold back tears two or three times. And I did my work from that day on fully believing in this project.

Everybody I met there--background artists, character designers, producers, animators, clean-up artists, all through to the guys at compo, color key, edition, music, the skater girls who served as reference for Robot's and Dog's dance and more things that I'm definitely forgetting--showed a huge world what a passionate little team can do. I am SO proud of all of us.

This movie is weird, it's unique, and even coming from a very biased person, it's a freaking treasure and deserves all the praise it gets.

australia was colonised according to the myth of terra nullius (or empty land). ever since the very early days of colonialism, the land has been framed as something untameable and unliveable. this has justified acts of violence against the first peoples here, in that they are seen as non-people. it has justified the destruction of sacred land in the goal of making australia look more european. (an example: our capital city contains a man-made lake that is now nothing better than a fetid carp pond. it’s disgusting and unnatural). basically, the idea of “taming australia’ has justified endless harm

image id under cut bc it wouldnt fit in alt

*can also include those with active libidos who just choose not to sleep with anyone, but theyre a bit more likely to find out via masturbation whereas someone without probably won't feel the need to explore what's going on there as much

@excessive-vampires hey of course<3 i know it fuckin sucks to deal with so anything i can do to help others with it ill do my best

with that i saw your reblog earlier and was working through forming a response so i just wanted to say firstly im really sorry youre stuck in that situation and that your doctors treated you like that, secondly im not sure if you wanted advice on working around that so if not feel free to disregard all of this but if yes:

firstly dilators - if the issue is:

> not knowing what to get - i got the intimate rose dilator set off amazon and my physical therapist made happy noises when i showed her so they get two thumbs up, id estimate the smallest one is abt the size of a pencil

> they would open your mail and get angry - see if you have any friends nearby who would be willing to let you ship it to their house and then pick it up in person

> if they found it in your room they would get angry - try to think as far outside the box as you can on hiding spots. like say an old pair of boots buried in your closet or something, what are the chances of them checking somewhere like that yknow?

> worried theyll catch you doing it / no lock on door - i usually wait until my housemates are entirely gone or 100% certainly asleep before dilating, its not a noisy activity on its own you go really slow. and even if that means you can only do it once a month, thats ok, like i said any progress is good progress. when i first started out working on it p young i literally couldnt fit much of anything at all and would just occasionally toe the line like every few months, and even that slowly got me to the point where i think shortly after graduating highschool when i ordered the dilators i was able to do the first size after like a week

if none of those solve it and dilatings not a possibility thats def unfortunate but not the end of the road. as for the rest of the exercises none of them involve material stuff so they should be pretty easy to do discreetly if you want (except the massage thing but theyd have no reason to suspect its pelvis involved as the tools used are used for regular massages too lol, and failing that you can still do it with your hands its just not as ideal). so with that here's a rough breakdown of the exercises im supposed to do, and again this is just the general stuff so i cant tell you how many days a week you would do these. and also disclaimer that i very much am not a medical professional, just regurgitating what i remember of the instructions from my doctor. anyways!

kegels:

breathe in through nose 2 seconds, out through pursed lips 2 seconds while squeezing, release and repeat 5 times

then

take slow steady breaths drawing them down into your stomach rather than your chest, do these continuously independent of kegels. pattern is squeeze for 5 seconds, release 10 seconds, and repeat that 5 times

do one set of each of these standing, sitting, and laying down flat on your back with pillows under your knees to elevate your pelvis. originally i was supposed to do all of that eight to ten times a day but that rapidly evolved to "whenever i can remember to in whatever position i happen to be in right now" lol

the abdominal/inner thigh massages are primarily intended as a cupping exercise but you can also use a Gua Sha tool if the cups hurt (like me, they pull my stomach hair so i got one also off amazon, its the shiny metal rock shaped like a paint pallette. for the cups this one looks closest to what she had and you just squeeze it then place on your skin so it creates a seal, release the bulb to create suction, and then slide it around as described below), or she told me the thigh part can also be done with a massage gun. but essentially you just make sweeping motions around your abdominal region, if you start at the bottom on one side you sweep up around your bellybutton on that side to the top and vice versa, if you imagine your stomach in quadrants you wanna spend abt 3 mins going over each corner. then you also wanna do the cardinal directions and just sweep from the outside towards your bellybutton, also 3 mins each (i do not do these in any particular order truth be told im truly just rubbing a slimy rock around on my stomach lol). inner thighs are similar, you just sweep up towards your pelvis. and use massage oil/lotion/something otherwise itll get uncomfortable and chafey, ESPECIALLY the silicon cups my skin hurts just thinking abt that lol

for stretches she told me -

1 minute daily: priformis figure 4 stretch, deep squat stretch, half kneeling hip flexor side bending stretch, supine hamstring stretch with strap, happy baby pose, and adductor butterfly stretch

10x pushup-y things daily: prone on elbows stretch

i googled all of those real quick to make sure those keywords lead to diagrams or guides that looked mostly right so those should be a p good rough guide

the breathing exercises are just more of the stomach breathing thing, you lay down with one hand on your stomach and one on your chest and just concentrate on taking deep breaths without the chest hand moving for a couple minutes

if you had to pick just one of these though i would primarily go for the kegels, for the first month that was the only thing i remembered to do every now and then and id still made a fuckload of progress by the second appointment, theyre entirely undetectable by anyone around you so you can do them whenever and wherever you want, and as far as i know theres not really any way to do them wrong or like. overdo them? worst thatll happen is youll get too tired to keep doing them and the result will be ... you relaxing, so thats also a win lol

another tip is if you cant get dilators but still want to go that route and can fit your pinky: put it in until it starts to hurt and no further, even if thats only a single centimeter and just chill there until it relaxes, focusing on deep breaths and releasing tension in the area (also make sure youve gone to the bathroom prior so you wont get scared of relaxing too much and tense up bc that can hurt a lot w something in you if youre not prepared). itll feel like it never will but i promise eventually it will chill, even if that time is another day youll still have made progress. if you do get it relaxed though then you can try for a little deeper, again stopping as soon as it hurts and waiting for it to adjust. one thing that can help is directing sustained pressure down towards the bottom of your pelvic floor, it will hurt some but in a different way like a really intense backbreaking massage does, and as such will also steadily drive the tension out. vaginismus is lowkey your pelvic floor being one big muscle knot anyways so yknow lol. also if its not going well dont force yourself to continue forever, like give yourself a 15 minute timer as a goal but allow yourself to tap out whenever you need. and conversely if you make it to 15 mins and find youre still feeling fine you can choose to bump that up, the world is your oyster

for bowel health she recommended i get a magnesium supplement, the brand she recc'd is CALM specifically the raspberry lemon flavor, you just mix i think a teaspoon of it with however much warm water you want so if you dont like the taste you can just take it as a shot like i do, or she said adding it to tea and stuff is fine too, and you just drink that before bed every night. its not prescription or anything you can get it at costco or again amazon (all of these companies certainly have their own websites you can order direct from but i am broke as fuck so we do what we can lol)