Goblin Brain

When I turned 17, we ordered a cake at the grocery store for my party, as we’d done many times before. If you wanted something written on the cake you’d write it into a section of the order form. We requested, very simply, “Happy Birthday Courtney”. When we went to pick it up the day of the party, this is what we got.

The bakery employees had absolutely no explanation for this. The order form, attached to the box, very clearly did not contain any of those extra names. Whomever had done the writing was no longer in, so there was no one to ask how this had happened. The fact that the name ‘Juan’ is misspelled bewilders me to this day. (I’ve never seen ‘Miley’ without the E, either, but it’s believable that someone might spell it that way.) Did this cake slip in from an alternate universe where I’m one quarter of a set of Hispanic quadruplets? Dyslexic Hispanic quadruplets, maybe?

This cake became the focal point of my party. At least two of my friends regularly called me ‘Courtney Mily Jaun Pablo’ for years to come. My siblings and I still reference it sometimes, eleven years later. It is probably the funniest thing ever to occur at any birthday celebration of my life, and may well remain so for the rest of my days.

No One Like You

now, it took us a while to realise it meant "(there is) no one like you". at first, we all parsed it as a botched "no one like(s) you"

Textiles + math + modernism in 1970s handicraft trend. This how-to-booklet by Elisabeth Hellmann was published in Germany in 1975.

My new and absolutely normal i swear obsession is hand routed, or otherwise free-form, circuit board layouts.

okay

don't ask

generational

ink and watercolor sketch on 5x7" cold press with digital edits

beginning: wow, this is great! I love hiking! why don’t I do this more often?

halfway up: why did I do this? why does ANYONE do this? I hate this. this is pointless. how am I not even close to the summit yet? no view could possibly be worth this miserable, interminable slog. I need to do more cardio.

at the summit: wow, this is great! I love hiking! this view was totally worth it! what a beautiful thing it is to be alive and on top of a mountain right now. I am perfectly at peace, breeze blowing, birds singing, nice crunchy apple and delicious salty trail mix, all is right with the world.

halfway down: why did I do this? why does anyone do this? ow my knees. :( ow my ankles. :( ow my feet. :( how am I not back down yet? I don’t remember it being this long on the way up.