Mysterious Radio Signal

in which i dissipate into the internet forever. 

“La sirena y el pescador,” Elisa Chavez.

Hey all! This poem is part of my chapbook Miss Translated, which I produced in a limited run as Town Hall Seattle’s Spring 2017 artist-in-residence. The main conceit behind this work is that to accurately portray my relationship with Spanish, I have to explore the pain and ambiguity of not speaking the language of my grandparents and ancestors. As a result, these poems are bilingual … sort of. Each one is translated into English incorrectly.

and something about…blood? and transformation?  oooh yikes.  she didn’t want legs in the spanish version did she.  and it was a painful process.

I’m also 95% sure Cal is from some irradiated version of Night Vale and that in his universe, he survived the atomic blast, but his wife (and so many other people) didn’t. That would explain how discombobulated and physically deteriorated he is. He’s basically living in a post-nuclear-holocaust timeline.

On a character level, this last episode did something I always love when this show does, which is remind us that Night Vale is actually a pretty fucked up place to live. Like, these people form their own communities, they stick together and are there for their friends, they use love and art and science to carve out a place in their fucked up world. But their world is still very fucked up and there are people who want to get out, who want to experience time normally, who want to live somewhere they aren’t under threat constantly. And that’s totally understandable. It’s also ultimately not helpful. I think it can be both.

Bf: Is there a tinier Night Vale under tiny Night Vale?

Me: Is there a bigger Night Vale over the big Night Vale? 

Today the Department of Awesome Parenting salutes French anime artist Thomas Romain, who lives in Tokyo where he collaborates with his sons on a project called Father and Sons Design Workshop. First Romain’s sons put their imaginations to work and draw original characters, such as cloud and plant people, steampunk doctors, towering kaiju, mecha, and warrior serpents. Then Romain uses his professional level skills to turn those characters into polished designs, not missing a single little detail created by his kids.

Head over to Bored Panda to view eve more of the Romain family’s fantastic characters. Follow Thomas Romain on Twitter to keep up with their latest collaborations.

rest stops on highways

trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic

schools during breaks

those little beaches right next to ferry docks

your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep

the lighting section of home depot

A lot of these places are called liminal spaces - which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.

The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context - we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep - all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease. 

That the oldest of the Millennials are 36 years old.

In fact, some charts have them ending as early as 1995.

So if you were born between ‘95 and 2000 you could be either a Millennial or Gen Z.

A cat can jump up to five times its own height in a single bound.

The little tufts of hair in a cat’s ear that help keep out dirt direct sounds into the ear, and insulate the ears are called “ear furnishings.”

The ability of a cat to find its way home is called “psi-traveling.” Experts think cats either use the angle of the sunlight to find their way or that cats have magnetized cells in their brains that act as compasses.

One reason that kittens sleep so much is because a growth hormone is released only during sleep.

A cat has 230 bones in its body. A human has 206. A cat has no collarbone, so it can fit through any opening the size of its head.

A cat’s nose pad is ridged with a unique pattern, just like the fingerprint of a human.

If they have ample water, cats can tolerate temperatures up to 133 °F.

A cat’s heart beats nearly twice as fast as a human heart, at 110 to 140 beats a minute.

 Cats don’t have sweat glands over their bodies like humans do. Instead, they sweat only through their paws.

The claws on the cat’s back paws aren’t as sharp as the claws on the front paws because the claws in the back don’t retract and, consequently, become worn.

Cats make about 100 different sounds. Dogs make only about 10.

Researchers are unsure exactly how a cat purrs. Most veterinarians believe that a cat purrs by vibrating vocal folds deep in the throat. To do this, a muscle in the larynx opens and closes the air passage about 25 times per second.

A cat almost never meows at another cat, mostly just humans. Cats typically will spit, purr, and hiss at other cats.

A cat’s back is extremely flexible because it has up to 53 loosely fitting vertebrae. Humans only have 34.

Some cats have survived falls of over 65 feet (20 meters), due largely to their “righting reflex.” The eyes and balance organs in the inner ear tell it where it is in space so the cat can land on its feet. Even cats without a tail have this ability.

A cat can travel at a top speed of approximately 31 mph (49 km) over a short distance.

A cat’s hearing is better than a dog’s. And a cat can hear high-frequency sounds up to two octaves higher than a human.

A cat’s brain is biologically more similar to a human brain than it is to a dog’s. Both humans and cats have identical regions in their brains that are responsible for emotions.

Writing down the story: