Spinning Yarns

"Oh, not you as well, Brutus!" in that voice is the best translation of 'Et tu, Brute?' I've ever heard.

oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”

hello, fellow apes

[Image transcript: porch. The group had been day-nesting and sunbathing when I contacted them, but upon my approach they nervously retreated to obscure themselves behind thick foliage. Frustrated but determined to see them better, I decided to climb a tree, not one of my better talents. The tree was particularly slithery and, try as I might, no amount of puffing, pulling, gripping, or clawing succeeded in getting me more than a few feet aboveground. Disgustedly, I was about to give up when Sanwekwe came to my aid by giving one mighty boost to my protruding rump; tears were running from his eyes as he was convulsed in silent laughter. I felt as inept as a baby taking its first step. Finally able to grab on to a conveniently placed branch, I hauled myself up into a respectful semislouch position in the tree about twenty feet from the ground. By this time I naturally assumed that the combined noises of panting, cursing, and branch-breaking made during the initial climbing attempts must have frightened the group on to the next mountain. I was amazed to look around and find that the entire group had returned and were sitting like front row spectators at a sideshow. All that was needed to make the image complete were a few gorilla-sized bags of popcorn and some cotton candy! This was the first live audience I had ever had in my life and certainly the least expected.]

imagine some freakish not-a-human alien THING has shown up out of nowhere and is trying to get into your office building to study you. but it has no idea how to get past a revolving door. it tries for three hours. by the time it finally understands the concept of a revolving door and squeeze into the building everyone in the office is crowded into the lobby to watch and call helpful suggestions. it’s conclusively determined that the alien is definitely not a threat, except maybe to itself.

"You can't love others/nobody else can love you until you love yourself" isn't strictly true, but people say it because the thing they're getting at that IS true -- which you can roughly summarize as, "if you commit to being a complete unchecked void of self-loathing, you will inevitably alienate people who love you" -- sounds even meaner.

Migraine sufferers will be like "it's not like I'm disabled or anything, it's just that if I do any of these normal everyday things other people do all the time, my head explodes. But I'm fine honestly, as long as I avoid doing anything ever and my environment and the weather never changes, then my head explodes a little less"

why go to the grocery store or to a restaurant when you can just get food delivered why go to the mall when you can get same day shipping on amazon why go to the library when you have kindle why make art when there’s ai why go to the cinema when you can stay at home and watch netflix. we are in a loneliness epidemic btw

the loneliness epidemic was invented by BIG SHIT to sell you more SHIT

Also… caring about being the hottest person anywhere is sooo vapid and uninspirational to me. why are you surveying yourself like that? how are you caged when you have the key??? Time 2 Open That Cell Girl. Free Yourself…

like john berger said “a woman must continually watch herself. she is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. from earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. and so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. she has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....one might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. men look at women. women watch themselves being looked at. this determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. the surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”