*air guitar solo*

hellebores in macro [1]

"Oh I'll take this down to the charity shop" said my mother, missing hte part where no sane person is going to wear a clown suit.

"Nah" said I, "Have them dress him in it when they cremate him."

There was a pause and my throw-away joke started to slowly solidify into 'Yeah let's do that'.

A discussion was had with the mortician who had a bit of a worry that the costume would involve giant clown shoes which would prevent the coffin closing.

Luckily it wasn't that sort of outfit.

I told this to my dear friend who immediately envisaged someone trying to close a coffin onto a dead clown, only to have the big red nose go *Sad honk* every time there was an attempt to close the lid.

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real: Nature.com

"I had not touched a cat in 15 years when an orange kitten wandered over to sit with me in the grass one day. I was left without adequate words to describe that experience. It reminded me that I am alive. It instilled in me a raw, unbridled happiness that I had never felt before, not even as a child. 

I have spent many hours with those cats, and still I am amazed at how perfectly they reject everything it means to be in prison. They are playful and unselfconscious, curious and silly, soft and cuddly.

Sometimes it is even more interesting to watch my fellow prisoners interact with our cats. All those hard cases doing hard time melt like butter on a summer sidewalk when they visit the felines, feed them, watch them chase the birds and bees, and when they make toys to entice the cats to play with them. 

I don’t think about the past when a cat hops in my lap. I don’t think of what I should or could have done. I don’t think about courts or life sentences or parole boards. What comes to mind is peace, and a sense that everything is going to be OK. What’s in the past needs to stay there if I want to have a future, if I want to be grateful for today and for the fact that I am no longer the person I once was.

Eye of the Storm, by Harut Danielyan, 2025

Fantastic b&w suminagashi (floating ink marbling) inspired pattern for this great kimono.

Are you going to come out of it with a Klein-level work? No. Dude was bonkers skilled. But I am here to tell you that if you've ever gone to Home Depot and shuffled through paint chips and been like "God, this is such a gorgeous color, I fucking love this color" and then immediately been like "...but I can't imagine painting a wall with it." and bought a can of soul-killing eggshell off-white or what the fuck ever, you absolutely can go pick up a $10 canvas from a craftstore and a $5 sample of that color and just hang 6 square feet of it on a wall and enjoy the fuck out of it.