Nyx's Corner

My HORRIFYING cartoon for this week’s Guardian Books.

Do you ever start bullshitting a paper, and then look over it halfway through and think, ’…Wait a minute, I could be onto something here.’

this is the definition of college.

Literally I was writing a paper on Asian salt water crocodiles, like a simple about them paper for a college class, and I started noticing some inconsistencies in the scientific papers I was sourcing and I accidentally discovered that the crocodile has been misdiagnosed as least concerned on the endangered species list when they should be classified as endangered and now my professor is having me write a formal report to the international Red List to have them reclassified and all I wanted to do was write this paper on an animal I thought was cool and now I’m considered an expert on this species…

this is how it works half of esteemed biologists trip and fall into their specialty while pursuing something else. one lecturer i just went to started as a biochemist researching antibiotics and discovered that crocodiles change colors based on environment and now he has 30+ crocs in his yard for research purposes and he’s just like… “wait… i’m a chemist…”

How did so many people end up with crocodiles on accident?????

you just go into science and after a while, crocodile…

Even without words, we communicate through our eyes.

And some highlights from the notes:

5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

10 years ago, I was watching my Potential and Opportunities dissolve and evaporate in an ocean of cheap gin and expensive whiskey.

But 5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

One of the exercises they had us perform was to imagine ourselves happy, 5 years in the future.

Many of us in that room had forgotten how to imagine nice things happening to them. A few snorted (well, I snorted), finding the notion that we’d even still be around in 5 years grimly humorous.

For about half of us, it was the last stop on the way down.

But I indulged the therapist. I was there, after all, because I did not want to die. So, I imagined myself, 5 years hence.

Happy.

It came to me all at once; an artistic remix on Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, reframed with myself placing food at the table.

Sunday Dinner At My Place, I answered, when it came my turn to share my fantasy. I was asked what food I imagined eating.

It’s not the meal itself, I said, it’s the implications framed around it. Sunday Dinner At My Place means that I have a Place. It means that I have Family that will actually speak to me and friends who actually want to see me. It means money enough not just to feed myself but others too. It means having the time to spare to take the time preparing the meal.

A lot of nodding heads all around me. A struck chord. Many people with no Place, in that place. Nowhere that would lament their leaving.

5 years hence, as I lay down to sleep in my Home, with my Wife and my Son, surrounded by my Art and my Flowers, I reflect.

It was a long road. It was hard. We lost people. So many people. There were long days and long nights and hospital stays. Angry arguments with ghosts. I changed, in ways I never hoped for, or expected. Good ways, finally, for once. Slowly, against the backdrop of a world in chaos, I found my mind.

Sometimes, My Wife wondered aloud, what she did to deserve me. After some stumbling with my feelings, I eventually settled on an answer.

I’m a Rescue.

She gave me a Home.

And, so, I gave her a Family.

It seemed fair

This Sunday, my folks, which whom I have not had a shouting match in years, will come over for dinner. We will cook and eat together. My Friend became My Wife, and she took a piece of me and with it she made Our Son. There will be many hugs, and no violence. Good Things Happened.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t know what the future holds.

don’t give up yet, ok?

It could get good, even.

@hopepunk-humanity

Had a chance to make some little creechurs in a glassblowing studio :>

Princes are from the @zooliminology project!

@elodieunderglass

Babies!

imagining an alternate timeline where shakespeare wrote a play about king arthur. we would be so unwell

yeah cause thou art so well otherwise, tumblr user currently crying about Lancelot

you know what verily i deserv’d this

Instagram : krewkutz

This made me feel really happy ❤️

as a POC I can’t overstate how much I appreciate this, the third one especially who has this look that has lost so much hope, you can see her eyes swell in real time post transformation and it just goes to show that looking good makes us feel good

it warms my heart to see so many reblog this from me, yet unless you’re Black? (with little exceptions) I don’t think you all really get it, so let me really paint the story here.

the thing about Black hair is that it is varied, like incredibly so. some of us luck out and get what we dub “Good Hair”, hair that is normally not as tightly curled and manageable with a little to midrange amount of effort. But many MANY of us have natural hair that is tough and thick, the curls are small, sometimes very tightly wound, it makes brushing and combing damn near impossible on top of other hair care methods. short as well as braided hair isn’t always desired but for many of us we have no choice, it’s just easier to maintain it that way, it is a sentence, not a style.

keep in mind that hairstyle is a statement, especially when you’re Black, your hair says so much about you in this community in particular. we also have the fact that our standard is held against White standards of beauty, and that is a whole different conversation involving privilege, systemic racism, and internalized hatred—like bitch, this has LAYERS!

take the age into account here for all these women, but in this case I’m specifically talking about the third. now, these are all educated assumptions, but you know where those tears are from? she’s had to live with this hair her whole life! and you just KNOW she’s tried everything!—heat, curling, straightening, perms, softeners/relaxers, HUNDREDS of products that make hundreds of promises, and many of these risk taking out the natural oil and proteins in hair which is a death sentence for Black hair. she had given up hope that anything good could ever be done I’ll bet. that transformation did more than style her hair, it gave her years upon years of hope; Listen to Black folk when they tell you, it’s more than just hair.

this man is doing more than hair, he’s changing lives…I just hope he knows that.

and you can see how much good styling helps! These ladies have obviously had some makeup work done as well, but the new styles make a world of difference.

I will forever reblog this. It makes me tear up every single time

Bitch I brought the donuts to this devil's sacrament.

For sale: ship of theseus

Condition: used, like new

thinking about how my old university's automatic email generation gave my friend Andy Ryan the email address ARYAN88

Way, way back in the day, because I am ancient, our university assigned us email addresses you couldn't have changed, which included your first initial, middle initial, part of your surname, and the last five digits of your social security number. They stopped doing that after people kicked up a huge fucking fuss, but...

... I think I'd still rather have that one than your friend's. Damn.

My old job assigned me "cajones" and I had to very, very gently tell them that I could not and would not send professional emails with it because my email would be balls@company.com

I just cackled so loud it scared the dogs.

My mom had a colleague whose name was something like Sara Tan and was given "satan@job.com"

When I was in college, Windows used to leave the username of the last user who logged in in the login form, and a bunch of my friends became obsessed with he username (not the person, just the username) of some poor young woman named (I believe) Sarah M Boomgartner.

The username was "BOOMGASM"

I knew a person called Polly Oppenheimer, and so "poop@uni.com" haunted her till she finished her PhD.

Someone in upper management of a company I used to work for was Sally Odom

Or, according to her signature, sodom.

back in high school I had a teacher named Jim Christie. emailing him at J.Christ@schoolboard.org was always fun

as much as I love portrayals of the sun and moon as a (lesbian) couple, the greeks were really on to something when they said "actually they're siblings who disapprove of each other's life choices"

everything I know about My Little Pony I have learned against my will