why did no one tell me quantum computers looked like that

what the fuck

This was a very cool day 💜 (Duet with tiktok user kinya)

i got my isbn today for the book. 8 months to go. my mom and i were talking about what the next steps are. i was eating trail mix, standing on one foot, phone tucked into my ear.

"yeah," i said. "the problem is that tumblr as a market is like, not something that can be studied." there's this weird wave of nostalgia and affection for this place that came up over me: how lovely we avoid consumerism. okay, it sucks as a creator. but also? keep stickin' it to 'em.

my mother made the sound at the back of her throat that i also make, the one that means i've got an idea. "you should figure out some kind of reward for presale amounts. maybe you give out poems or a mug or a signed book or something. would your followers like that?" my mother is sweet, and kind, and i have no idea how to explain on this website you can buy someone crabs.

i put more m&ms down the hatch. i had to speak through peanuts and almonds. "if it passes 25 thousand i will print the book out in its entirety and eat it live on camera."

"oh god. no, you don't have to do that." she was anguished. "just tell them that you'd love them to read it, and that they've inspired you to write. you got started on that site, and they helped you keep going. raquel, you love these people. the community? you talk all the time about the other writers and artists and whatever else. tell them that you're hoping for their support, they'll come through."

"no," i assured her. i discovered i had dropped an m&m, but an ant had already found it, so it belonged to him now. i will let his little life have a surprise blue treasure in it, too. "i'm gonna fuckin' eat the book."

i'm having some car trouble, and i called my mom. she's babysitting my dog.

for the record, i don't want fame. i want to rot in my best friend's yard and complain about the economy. i think all writers should be kept in a jar and fed a diet of scary lamps, foggy roads, and like, spooky leaves.

"i don't want to market it," i whine to my mother. "I want people to find it by tripping over it in a bog. i want it to be like, appearing in their backpacks at a moment of great need. backpack-based distribution system."

"not everyone has a backpack. some people have purses. totes." she makes a good point here. sorry to the purse and tote enjoyers.

i close my eyes. "it takes 5,000 copies to be on the new york times bestseller list." that is an insurmountable number. i am an internet poet. i am not a big celebrity, and i am very, very, very old for tiktok. i also didn't write anything actually fun, like dragon porn. (my bad. next book?)

while she's replying the text comes in, and there's something in my brain like bacon grease frying. when i was 7 this was a dream. when i was 17 this was a dream. this is real and happening, and it feels fake somehow.

i don't hear the rest of what she is saying. i am googling can i eat paper or will i actually die. (you can, to both. for the first time in my life i regret being cuban, as this prevents me from being a WASP.)

i read the text again: body's a bad monster hit #1 on amazon last night. a prospective agent once told me queer people talk a lot about supporting artists, but they don't actually buy anything. another one called it never putting money where their mouth is.

thats great! i will be putting my mouth where the money is. and i will be eating this fucking book.

It is near 3 in the god damned morning and I am losing my mind.

who keeps making these weirdly specific videos of cans of junk food exploding in lava while circus music plays in the background?

It is near 3 in

the god damned morning and I

am losing my mind.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

You're a dumbass who the fuck says something like that

a few months ago my friend called me and told me she was moving back up near me from 7 hours south in the middle of nowhere and asked if i would help her because she couldn’t move the furniture by herself and the town was so small there was no moving company (there were actually only 5 or six businesses in the whole town including both restaurants) and she had no one else down there to ask. 

And even though money is pretty tight for her, she told me I could name my price if I would help her, because it was so far away.

I told her she was a dummy for thinking i would take her money but that i would accept the traditional helping-a-friend-move price: a meal (i know she would feel wrong about herself if she didn’t do something for me in return, that’s just how she is) Tradition suggests pizza and beer, we opted for enchiladas and a margarita.

we crashed on the floor of the empty place and left back north in the morning - when we got back to the city three more friends met us at her storage place (the place she was moving into wouldn’t be vacant for a couple months) and we started to move all her stuff up to a storage room on the THIRD FLOOR (because large city storage places be like that)

we had just taken the first box out of the truck when the (only) lady working there walked by and told us they closed in an hour and twenty minutes, and she couldn’t stay even a little late because she had to get to her other job.

One hour twenty minutes. To completely un-jenga a large uhaul and re-tetris it back into a similar sized room on the third floor.

We all just, shared a look, took off hoodies, and got the fuck down to business. 

It was actually.. I still cherish look we passed around. The tiny eyebrow quirks and chin nods. The eye glints. The bigger breath we each took as we prepared to kick it up several gears. That moment of wordless connection, when we all just silently agreed that we were damn well going to do the impossible and didn’t even waste the time it would take to say anything, just got to it.

And we did it too. Finished with exactly two full minutes to spare. And then we all went for dinner and drinks to celebrate. And my friend’s friends that came to help? Two of them were acquaintances/friends of mine already. Like I lived with one for a year a decade ago sort of thing. But this experience? Brought us all closer. Made myself a new friend too.

And the friend i helped move? She and I are closer than ever because of it.

When i left our storage success diner to go home, she asked me again if I was sure i wouldn’t take any money.

I said “I ever tell you when I was 22 I went down to Hollywood to try that scene out? Anyway ten months later, when I just couldn’t do it anymore, and needed to come back, I called one of my best friends and said i can’t do this anymore i need to come back. You know what he said? He said: I’ll be there tomorrow. Not how much will you pay me, not what do i get out of it, not will you be able to cover my gas, just: I’ll be there tomorrow. Okay? You’re my friend. If you need help, I’m going to be there”

If helping someone move ruins your friendship, you’re doing at least one of those two things very wrong.

Reblogging for the last line

girl typing a very specific question into google search bar, scrunching her face as she takes time to make sure she hasn't made any spelling errors, hitting enter, shaking her head as google only presents her with unhelpful websites that don't answer her query at all, moving her cursor back to the search bar and clicking on it so she can carefully write 'reddit' at the end, hitting enter again, sighing with relief as she finds a link to a reddit post asking the exact question she needed answered posted in a subreddit for a very niche topic, finally moving her cursor to click on the link, wondering why she didn't go straight to the subreddit earlier, only to be met with a deleted comment with a reply from the OP stating 'that was very helpful, thanks', sighing with frustration as she moves her cursor back to the search bar so she can copy the link and paste it into the wayback machine,

Replace "reddit" with "reveddit" in any reddit url to reveal deleted or removed comments. If the comment/post was deleted too quickly after it was posted, it may not pull it up, but it works most of the time

girl after reading a post on tumblr dot com with a reblog by user impossiblepackage, moving her cursor over to the url of the aforementioned reddit post, using her mouse to highlight the word “reddit”, typing out the word “reveddit” in its place, hitting enter, waiting with bated breath as reveddit loads, finally content as the deleted comment is displayed in front of her eyes containing the information she sought for so long.

Idk if anyone here has been paying any attention whatsoever to the Drake vs Kendrick beef but I am losing my mind over this comment

No literally I'm always so suspicious of people who refuse to listen to rap cause it is SUCH a diverse genre of music so like wdym you don't like rap. I'm all for preferences and all that but when people say they don't like rap as a whole like 9 times out of 10 they're just racist lmao

why is it that someone gently saying "hey hey whoa" while another person is crying like the most intimate and comforting thing

horse intimacy

REBLOG if you are old enough to remember what a VCR is.

went to a discussion led by elliot page earlier today and there were many good things said but at one point the other presenter asked him "what's a cool thing about yourself that has nothing to do with being trans?" and he said "uhh this is all I've got going for me" and then paused before adding "if anyone has three oranges, I can juggle"

Damage prediction on pears during transportation.

bad and naughty children get put in The Pear Wiggler to atone for their crimes

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

It's pitchfork time for the fossil fuel industry. Shareholder economics is killing the entire planet for the wealth of a few.

I’m sorry if this is how you found out