There is a child next to me at the clinic I'm doing bloodwork at that is watching ai generated videos of Spiderman farting, without headphones. And I'm trying to keep a straight face but i thought about someone being like oh no it's stealing jobs from real farting spidermen and my composure is breaking
I'm going to tell you exactly the SMELL that came to my brain when I first got to Undermine:
Downtown Los Angeles, summer 1988. When it still had The Smog Problem.
We took a family trip there when I was 8 years old and I can still see and smell that first step outside of the airport SO CLEARLY.
Everything was brown/orange an the most unholy smell of sewage, humidity, diesel, body odor somehow , and a dusty room and was so THICK feeling I could hardly breathe. Plus the fact that smoking was allowed on busses and shit then we got stuck with that: a bus with no AC and some old motherfucker smoking a cheap cigar.
THAT is absolutely the smell and sight combo that hit my brain like a goddamned bullet train when I got to Undermine.
I'm still alive!
My keeper got two kittens in 2021 and while he was at work one of them managed to knock over my entire enclosure, despite it being tied down to a heavy metal stand and the stand being attached to the wall!
Soot was very determined to get me, I guess, and he ripped the mounts out of the wall and toppled the whole thing! Because my original enclosure was glass that...did not end well.
When my keeper came home, he saw the mess and my entire tail on the floor and assumed I was probably eaten--but as soon as I heard him say, "What did you do?!" to the cats (like he couldn't see what they'd done!) I started screaming!
He found me, got me safe and in a different, former snake enclosure, and got me to the vet. They gave me an antibiotic ointment for my tail stump and it eventually grew back. It's not as pretty as my original tail, but it's still nice and fat and it doesn't bother me at all.
I was fine in that enclosure until this weekend when my keeper said something about always being worried he'd forget me out in that room because I'm the last reptile left so he set up an old enclosure and moved me into the main area of the house.
I already like it better than the old place, and started digging instead of just using hides and wrapping myself up in the towel floor of the old enclosure. I also found a bunch of earthworms, springtails, and isopods.
If the cats won't leave me alone at the back of the enclosure my keeper plans to tape black paper over part of it so they can't sit and stare but, so far, they aren't very interested. My vet still recommends I be kept under a UVB light because of how bad my MBD was as a juvenile, and I got a new mercury vapor lamp this time! I can even climb up to bask under it if I want.
The other fixture is a ceramic heat emitter (because my keeper keeps the house at 62F during the winter.) and, of course, there's an under tank heater that's still not quite as warm as the thermostat is set, but it's getting there. The two skulls are to keep the same cat that tried to eat me a few years ago from sitting on the top screen and breaking it.
Yeah, so I still have this guy.
I do want to note that the whole "women are allowed to dress masculine and wear trousers" thing needs to be viewed in its historical context:
People fought for generations to be allowed to dress that way. They fought hard to be allowed to wear pants. Blue jeans were a symbol of feminist revolution. Women were barred from workplaces and schools for wearing them.
This is not some a natural fact that women dressing masculine is less shocking and humiliating. That normalization was fought for and hard-won.
And yet so many people erase the struggles of those people who fought to make that happen and pretend that it's just normal and natural that people don't see women "dressed like men" as ridiculous.
The Marriage of Figaro has what's called a "breeches role" which is a woman wearing men's clothes playing am ale role. This was done partly due to the vocal range requirements, but in many cases it was done comedically. It was risque and sexualized or comic relief that a woman was dressed as a man.
Anti-suffragette posters mock women wearing pants - well they were bloomers and split skirts back then - and mocking more masculine cut styles of clothes. This was meant to portray this as ridiculous.
They mocked the "new woman" in Weimar Germany, lamenting that they were too masculine.
This is a political cartoon from the 1920s depicting a woman in masculine dress deciding which bathroom to use:
Sorry but you're erasing these struggles and flattening history when you say this shit.
Women were killed and institutionalized in the struggle to make this happen. It really fucking bothers me the way it's framed as "people just don't find it as weird when women dress masculine."
Yes they fucking did. Until women and transmasculine people fought for their right to wear what they want. It's normalized because people struggled to normalize it.
And it's not normal everywhere. There are many countries where it's still illegal for women to wear pants. Sudan, Saudi Arabia.
Even in the US, it's forbidden and considered ridiculous in groups like the FLDS, the Amish, and the Hutterites.
We are flattening and erasing the struggles of women when we say these things. I know we're trying to build theory here but you can't build solid theory on a foundation of lies.
When my mom was in school, in the 1960s, you weren't allowed to wear pants to school. You had to wear a skirt. Had to. At public schools, mind you, not private ones. Public school. Regular degular school.
And even up into the 1990s, Disney mandated all female workers wear dresses and skirts, with nylons, to work. I know this because I watched my mom change immediately from jumperskirts to pants as soon as she was allowed, which was NOT until well into the 00s. This was company-wide, it affected millions of workers. And while Disney is well-known for its pavingstone of a dress code book, it's still indicative of what is considered Respectable.
My mom's entire generation, the Boomers, fought to wear pants, to be allowed short hair, to wear comfortable shoes and honestly women are still fighting to be allowed their natural hair and still fighting to be allowed to NOT wear makeup at work.
People existed before you were born and things were different before you were born. Things have not always been the same as they are for you everywhere for everyone. Think outside your own experience for fuck's sake.
My mom told me they were allowed to wear pants under their skirts in winter, but once they got to school, they had to remove the pants.
ppl are rlly trying to defend being on your phone during a movie in the theater what is going on
using your phone in a movie theater is a symptom of long covid
the defense of being on your phone in a movie theater is who cares? by your own admission, you should be paying attention to the movie. so why do you care what other people are doing? you’re meant to be paying attention to the movie.
Anyone defending this was raised wrong and deserves to be publicly shamed about it.
I've also never been so relaxed on social media.
It's not even hard to not get banned: Don't be a drama stirring asshole, and don't be unfriendly.
I've gone a couple weeks without ever seeing a single drama, callout, "this is so problemaaaaatic!" post and it's AMAZING.
The people who do shit like that get banned so fast, and most of them have already gone back to meta's new propaganda arm because they either got banned or just got told they were embarrassing themselves by not being able to act like a functional adult in a society.
The fact that nobody will engage them and just reports them is amazing.
I've honestly just started telling people back on US social media that acting the way they're acting at their big age is embarrassing and while I'm sorry they don't have anyone who loves them enough to tell them their behavior is out of line and embarrassing, they need to stop making it the internet's problem.
That...works oddly well for getting them to shut up, especially since they'll usually respond once and all you have to do is tell them if they're legitimately feeling this triggered, they should step away and go do something to let them get in control of their emotions again.
Reblog daily for health and prosperity
The cauliflower is draining their life energy to stay fresh
It was really bad.
Cartoon from the 1990s:
they're canceling low-income housing here to build a cop city FUCK rhode island man
Dead men can't develop very much.
Just saying....
