RandomCitizen

in the interest of a normal ask, may we see the Patches?

would y'all still think I'm cool if y'all knew I had a cowgirl tattoo on my calf whose legs I purposely skip when I shave my legs?

“When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all? All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don’t know. Further north, I’d guess. The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly. Damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says. Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy. Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do. It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin. And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.”

Some context: Texas and Arkansas share a corner border. Now, Texas is FECKING HUGE and there are many, many parts of Texas that cannot visit Arkansas overnight, but there are parts where it’s no trouble at all.

Okay.

"The Montana court separately declared that transgender people constitute a suspect class under the state's equal protection clause. In legal terms, a suspect class is a group that has historically faced such severe discrimination that any law targeting them must meet the highest level of judicial scrutiny to survive—the same standard applied to laws that discriminate on the basis of race. [...] The practical effect is sweeping: any Montana law that singles out transgender people will now face strict scrutiny, meaning the state must prove the law serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve it—a standard that laws almost never survive.