I ATE A BIG BAG OF FACTORY REJECT SEEDS UNTIL A HEALTHY FLOWER UNFURLED IN MY CHEST …
I MISTOOK THE SENSATION FOR LOVE AND DIED.
It's Wet Beast Wednesday
cmon kid... we've gotta go save Wet Beast Wednesday.... TWO!
Last week I accidentally took an edible at 10x my usual dose. I say “accidentally” but it was really more of a “my friend held it out to my face and I impulsively swallowed it like a python”, which was technically on purpose but still an accident in that my squamate instincts acted faster than my ability to assess the situation and ask myself if I really wanted to get Atreides high or not.
Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.
Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.
You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.
As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.
Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.
This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.
A blender is roughly the size and shape of a human baby. Cradling one in your arms satisfies a primal need. A month ago I was permitted to hold an infant for the first time in my life, an experience which was physically and psychologically healing. I felt an echo of that satisfaction holding my friend the blender, and the thought of parting with it felt even more ridiculous than bringing it with me to hang out on my friend’s bed.
i think we should abolish the term middle east
like i know ive said this before but it is so incredibly eurocentric because its literally a reference to its relative location to europe. and because this definition is so alienated from its actual geographical context you have people genuinely believing the middle east somehow transcends continents and doesn’t exist in asia. there are so many disputes over which countries are middle eastern and which aren’t because the entire thing is an imprecise way of grouping different cultures together by white people who think we’re a monolith anyway and this could all be avoided if we just use the term southwest asia and break free of europes influence over brown people.
its not funny but i do think about it a lot
Yeah I don’t get this.. glad I don’t have kids. I mean what are you supposed to say?
it’s about the context. if a kid feels bad about doing something, they are unlikely to do it again unless they feel like they have to or if they don’t know another way to get it done. children are just small humans; they don’t like feeling bad/guilty/etc. any more than anyone else does. so if a kid comes forward and says ‘I did this bad thing and I feel bad about it’ and you scold them for doing that thing that they already feel bad about, then you are effectively just scolding them for coming forward. if the kid already feels bad, they don’t need an adult to tell them they should feel bad. in reality, the kid was probably coming forward about it because they wanted the adult to explain how to make it right, or how to do it properly.
Thank you, this helps. I like kids but being autistic sometimes it’s confusing because here in don’t know what the script is.
An appropriate script could be:
- Telling the kid that it is very brave of them to come forward and admit that they did something wrong.
- Having a conversation to find out why they did the bad thing. Sometimes there’s an underlying reason that needs to be addressed like ‘I’m worried the other kids think I’m not cool enough so I broke a rule’ or ‘I was mad at my sister because she called me fat so I broke her toy’, etc. These conversations might be more important than the bad thing.
- Telling the kid that we all make bad decisions sometimes and while we should try not to do that again, making a bad decision doesn’t mean we’re bad forever.
- Telling the kid that the best way to feel less bad about it is to try to make things right. Did they secretly take mom’s piece of cake? Maybe we can go bake a new piece of cake together and give it to mom. (The point here is not to make the kid really produce something of equal value to what they stole/broke/etc. A child often can not do that. The point is to practice what fixing the damage you have done looks like).
- Finishing the conversation with supportive words and maybe a hug, depending on the child and your relationship to that child. Above all the goal is making sure the child leaves the conversation feeling happy that they chose to come forward and committed to doing so again if they mess up in the future.
happy disability pride to the people with memory issues and brainfog. who can't answer when they started experiencing symptoms, when they started their meds, what they did last week/yesterday/this morning. happy disability pride to the people who miss appointments because they forgot, especially really important appointments. who are told to get their results or follow up on an appointment and never end up doing it. the people who would benefit immensely from reminders or someone writing things down for them, who try or are made to try and all the organisation tips in the world won't help them remember them when they need it
work is disabling; disability is class-enforcing. adjust ur ideological paradigms accordingly
Can someone elaborate?
sure!
work is disabling
- physical labour is a literal strain on your body. historically this has been a given of certain forms of labour, eg, even before the official recognition of disability, mine workers in many parts of the world received disproportionately high wages compared to other jobs because it was understood that your body would break down by the time you were 40-50 and you wouldn’t be able to work anymore. the high wages were for supporting you after that, but they were only present where unions had been able to force this demand on bosses; there’s a reason mine working has historically been a common form of slave or indentured labour. this example is an obvious one (and one i wouldn’t want to rely on for various reasons) but if you’ve worked stocking supermarket shelves, or cleaning, or as a barista, or as a farm labour, you will know that being on your feet for hours on end, the repetitive movements required to complete tasks, the strain of constant attention, these all take their toll
- work environments are stress inducing and long term stress has both physical and mental effects. it can change how you approach other people, how you regulate your emotions, how you relate to social settings. stress can produce strains, it can produce headaches, it can produce tightness in muscles that are can cause injury
- when you need to work to provide food, rent, clothing for yourself, you are not as able to protect yourself from health and safety risks. you are more exposed to disease and to other health risks, depending on the job, and you are less able to effectively rest and recover, thus increasing the likelihood of long term complications
disability is class enforcing
- being disabled is expensive. simply getting healthcare at all can be prohibitively expensive for many people. this is not even to mention mobility aids or other specialised equipment. you may have to spend more on specialised diets or accommodation. you may need to hire personal assistants or other forms of labour to complete certain tasks for you
- there are less jobs that you are able to work. you are less likely to be able to work long term. you are less likely to be able to work longer hours, and your partners may also have to work shorter hours to care for you. you are more likely to be forced into precarious employment or onto benefits which, which available, are pitifully small
- you are more likely to face job discrimination and more likely to face housing discrimination. the housing you are able to get is likely to be more expensive
- you are more vulnerable to abuse, either domestic, or in public, or by the state. this is increasingly the case if you are Black or a migrant or a woman or trans or homeless, etc, and it’s increasingly the case the more poor you become
this is not a complete list, it’s just what i could think of off the top of my head (and i just woke up too lol). i hope that clarifies some of the factors i am thinking of here. feel free to ask if there is anything that is unclear
what is art about? blood. what is love about? blood. what is hate about? blood. what is sex about? blood. what is history about? blood. what am i about? blood. what is blood about? idk ask a biologist i guess
hi, biologist here! blood is about gay sex