Yeti's Place

 You are the first one to figure out the obvious: Do not chase the cat. The cat is befriendable. Get the cat to trust you, to genuinely enjoy your company, and you can hang out with the cat. You may eventually be allowed to touch the cat. The cat will freely let you take the key.

The amount of friends I had in high school who dropped orchestra or band because they couldn’t afford to rent their instruments anymore? Gross!

The amount of kids who give up on music because their cheap ass instruments sound like shit and they think it’s a lack of talent? Gross!

I’m privileged enough to have people in my life with money who have given me accordions and cellos and keytars to dick around on, but like.

You can pry my ukuleles and melodicas and stylophones and venovas and shitty, ancient, duct-taped-together Casios from my cold, dead hands. “Oh, they’re quirky funnyman instruments.” Fuck you. They’re cheap, fun, and easy to learn.

A kid learning “All Star” on a fuckin’ thumb piano or whatever is still a kid getting into music. If that teenage girl wants to pluck out Twenty-One Pilot’s entire discography on her First Act ukulele from Walmart, that’s wonderful. I can play the Tetris theme on this $40 children’s accordion, and I fully intend to make that everyone else’s problem.

Some tips from the inside, in case they help:

- life has always been pointless. Or rather, we have always been unable to control the relative point-fulness of life. The factors involved in opening the possibilities of who can have a large scale impact where are so insanely complex that they can at best only be pieced together imperfectly in retrospect

- the only thing that has changed is your awareness of this fact. No, seriously. The sun will eventually swallow the planet; at any moment without our knowledge or control the sun could flare in weird ways that will kill us all; etc. There was geopolitical and socioeconomic fuckery as bad or worse going on before: you just didn’t see it. Promise.

- you do what you can with what you have. You do what’s in front of you. Humanity has survived all of this before; it may survive it again. It may not. You can only do what you can: take what lessons exist from the past and apply them.

- sometimes it is just that bad and they are totally out to get you. The question is, what do you do about it?

- almost without exception in human history the answer has been “build community; support the one you have; reach out to connect MORE and to make the world more kind and less hateful than before.”

- recognize you’re trying to tackle god-level problems with a brain originally meant for keeping small proto-fish from being eaten. Treat that part of your brain like a very anxious toddler or rescue pitbull. Give it small measurable victories and successes even if you have to make them up. Make sure it’s fed and watered and has enough rest. Medicate it if you have to - there’s nothing wrong with that. The opposite, in fact.

My friends and I were literally just talking about the reason we love watching Lord of the Rings is that it feels so safe.

My sister hadn’t seen it before and in the scene where Wormtongue is creeping on Eowyn she said she was so afraid it was going to turn into a rape scene before she realized that wouldn’t happen in Lord of the Rings.

We were discussing how wonderful it is to be able to enjoy a series that has a main message of friendship, love, and above all, hope,

All while knowing as we watch it that we won’t have to see these characters we love, especially the female characters, suffer at the hands of excessive and unnecessary violence, specifically sexual violence.

I am so afraid of what it means for this writer to have access to this storyworld.

I want to be hopeful that he will remain true to the innocence of hope and optimism that has always stayed true in Middle Earth, even in the face of great evil.

I want to believe that this will be a show kids could grow up on, the same as generations of kids have on the books and movies before it.

“This is Jeremiah. Jeremiah wore safety goggles while angle grinding. Jeremiah still has his right eye. Be like Jeremiah.”