River

like, what other song can make that claim?

The crowd cheering after the first stanza when they realize what they’re all doing

So many people audibly ‘doing the guitar parts’… like ya do

The sheer number of voices joining the rediculous falsetto (thanks, Roger)

How they all start jumping at the ramp-up “so you think you can stomp me”

There’s good reason why, nearly fifty years after the height of their career, Queen is still considered one of the best bands of all time ever.

Okay. You’re back? Welcome back. Unless you’re a trained singer, you probably can’t do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places where–if you’re singing all the parts–you’re just up and down the scale too damned fast. I’m saying this as a trained singer and I can’t do it. I always crack on “magnifico” and “leave me to die,” and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.

Okay. Now that we’ve established that, I want to talk a little about singing as a chorus. One of the things a lot of people learned during the pandemic is how hard it is to take twenty people, all in different places, and stitch them together to make a single coherent song with perfect pitch and timing. You’re all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if you’re all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says “Soon” a moment before everyone else on “soon may the Wellerman come.”) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is for–to get all of you onto the same tempo so you’re starting and finishing at exactly the same time. This is a thing that normally only happens after at least several days of practice, and it is an important skill that must be taught. You’re not just born knowing how to do this.

I do not know how many people at that Green Day concert were trained singers. But I do know there is no way in hell all few thousand of them were a single group–they showed up a few at a time, maybe even flying solo for the night. Now go and listen to the video again. Listen to the ends of verses and the pickups. They’re fucking crisp as hell. Everyone is starting and ending at the same place. Not even a single note off. (And yes, you can hear when it’s a single note off, even in a crowd that big. A handful of people would be enough to throw it off.) And while a few in the crowd may be off-key, so many more are on-key that the cumulative effect is of the song being on-key. This isn’t even the band they’re there to see.

They don’t just know this song, this technically-difficult song, this long and complex song by a completely different band. They know it perfectly. They know it down to the fucking note. They know it so well that they did it in perfect synchrony, without a single chance to practice.

In the back. 

And the front.

The Road Goes Ever On embroidered by seejor.

“After 100ish hours of work, I’m so happy to say this beast is done!!

For the most part, I had an idea that I thought would be cool, drew it up, and transferred it to fabric (here’s the hoop pre-stitching). Prior to this piece, I’d only done florals – some from patterns I bought online (Namaste Embroidery) and some of my own design – so really I just wanted to see if I could embroider a dragon. I hadn’t been embroidering long but was feeling ballsy.

So that’s the pattern… as for color choices: the mountain, clouds, fog, and trees were entirely a product of I’d bought a bunch of floss I thought was pretty and kind of went together and figured why not give it a try. I love how the mountain came out. The gold for the text was my favorite gold I’d worked with in a sunflower piece (I have an entire floss organizer of just shades of yellow because of that piece, so the gold pieces pretty much just followed). Smaug’s colors and pose in general were inspired by an illustration of Smaug Tolkien did that I’ve always loved.

Process in general: I kind of made most of it up as I went along. I knew what effect I wanted in various sections and if I couldn’t figure out a way to make it look the way I wanted with stitches I knew, I’d go googling. The pile of gold Smaug is on is all seed stitch (I don’t know if it’s technically seed stitch, but that’s what I’m calling it) and literally caused me to set this piece down for two years.

- the implement I used to transfer the design was a Sakura Gelly Roll white pen. In a pinch, the gel ink can be removed (like when I edited out the two other mountains)

“I’m a therapist and keep this poster in my waiting room, apparently it’s saved a few lives.”

I don’t like the phrase “a cry for help.” I just don’t like how it sounds. When somebody says to me, “I’m thinking about suicide. I have a plan: I just need a reason not to do it,” the last thing I see is helplessness.

I think your depression has been beating you up for years. It’s called you ugly, and stupid, and pathetic, and a failure, for so long that you’ve forgotten that it’s wrong. You don’t see any good in yourself, and you don’t have any hope.

But still here you are: you’ve come over to me, banged on my door and said, “HEY! Staying alive is REALLY HARD right now! Just give me something to fight with! I don’t care if it’s a stick! Give me a stick and I can stay alive!”

How is that helpless? I think that’s incredible. You’re like a marine: trapped for years behind enemy lines. Your gun has been taken away, you’re out of ammo, you’re malnourished, and you’ve probably caught some kind of jungle virus that’s making you hallucinate giant spiders.

And you’re still just going, “GIVE ME A STICK. I’M NOT DYING OUT HERE.” “A cry for help” makes it sound like I’m supposed to take pity on you, but you don’t need my pity. This isn’t pathetic. This is the will to survive. This is how humans lived long enough to become the dominant species.

With NO hope, running on NOTHING, you’re ready to cut through a hundred miles of hostile jungle with nothing but a stick, if that’s what it takes to get to safety.

All I’m doing is handing out sticks.

I did an illustration for Trans Day of Remembrance today at work.

Our little community contains so much anger and grief, but it's because we love each other so fiercely. We remember our dead because their memory keeps us stubborn.

Dispite their reputation, cats are very very socal creatures. Cats do the equivalent of this for you when they sit in front of your laptop and put their arms on the keyboard or put their paw on your phone while you're using it. This is their love language, it's how they show that they like you and care about what you care about. They don't understand why you care about it but they're trying.

This plush bird was sealed within the frozen barrows of Pazyryk, Siberia, for more than two millennia, where a unique microclimate enabled it to be preserved. The permafrost ice lense formation that runs below the barrows provided an insulating layer, preventing the soil from heating during the summer and allowing it to quickly freeze during the winter; these conditions produced a separate microclimate within the stone walls of the barrows themselves, thereby aiding in the preservation of the artifacts inside.

This is just one of the many well-preserved artifacts that have been found at Pazyryk. These artifacts are attributed to the Scythian/Altaic cultures.