The Penguin-Whale

mysterious stick appears out of thin air............

I am reading Tim Curry’s 2025 memoir, Vagabond

and in it, he not only devotes a chapter to Muppet Treasure Island, but also references this very post

so, to recap

no, Tim Curry is absolutely NOT a Muppet; however

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

if you are in pain within minutes or seconds, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.

if you are in extreme pain, not just "ugh my feet ache" pain but "i am going to pass out" pain, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.

I mean, I can walk just fine, but standing in one spot for like 15 to 20 minutes will leave me in pain for days.

So that didn’t help

Meanwhile document the actual effect the pain/etc has on your life. Document how it impacts your ability to cook; your ability to clean; your ability to clean yourself; your ability to sleep; your ability to work; document all attempts to be more active and how the pain interferes with them. If you have to do something other than just go stand in the kitchen for ~1hr to cook a meal, that's something to write down; if you have to choose not to have a shower because it'll hurt, write that down. If the pain prevents you from going for a walk, write that down.

Every single time you make a decision about what you're doing based on the pain, you document that; every time you have to endure the pain for a necessary activity which then impacts what ELSE you can do, write that down too, with a direct connection.

(Warning: this will probably be depressing as all fuck and you will probably hate it. You are almost certainly ignoring the impact of pain on you way more than you think you are, and having to face it will feel bad in the short run. Very bad.)

And then you bring it either to your new doctor or if you MUST, to your current doctor, and you say: this is how the pain currently affects my quality of life. This is what I would be doing if I weren't prevented from doing it because of the pain.

Say that you would like to find the reason for this pain and you would like them to order relevant diagnostic tests. If they refuse, or hem and haw, ask them to document clearly in your records that you requested this and both that they refuse and their reasons for refusing.

If you must deal with the same doctor, document the concerns you have with the weight-loss drugs, and ask your doctor to be explicit about why she thinks that these risks are worth something that does not directly address your actual concerns. Ask why this is their first line treatment for the rest of what you've described, and why they are more concerned with pushing an overprescribed treatment than actually investigating the cause of your pain and addressing it appropriately based on an evidence-based diagnosis.

got a few requests for a shiny alt of my recent espeon drawing, here it is with the original under the cut :)

Source

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

the first osprey is the father, the one that comes later is the mother.

ospreys are not eagles, they're ospreys

ospreys only eat fish, that's why they don't register this starling as possible food

the starling got home safely

the starling was not trying to eat the eggs, it was mostly curious and you can see it trying to hop under the osprey every time the osprey tries to sit down again--this is because the starling is still a baby and has the instinct to get under an adult for warmth, even though it mostly has its feathers. this scares the osprey because that is a Foreign Creature near its eggs.

at the end of the video you can see the ospreys starting to turn the eggs. birds do this so the yolk and/or embryo don't stick to the shell of the egg, which is bad for the egg's health.

It’s pretty likely that it’s a four digit number, and as there are four digits chosen there, that means that there cannot be any repetition. This mean that there are:

No, no, no. Don’t base your deductions of psychology. Let’s talk chemistry. When you first press a button, there’s more of the natural oils on your skin, and therefore it wears down the numbers on the keys faster. Obviously 0 is the first one, then. Try 0791 first.

The light is green.