Monday | 23. June 2025
Howdy, howdy! I've done it again, oopsie... Still, happy Pride Month! I finally made bracelets with the Keith Haring shrinky dinks I made, like, 2+ years ago:
I'm going to send them to some friends from Discord (along with some other crafty stuff :3 ). Also, I technically went to my first Pride... but I got the time wrong, so missed the actual parade. :/ The park it was at also double booked, so everyone kinda just sat around until the no kings protest started (which I was also planning on going to, so it all worked out, I guess).
There were some very good, touching speeches from local politicians, community volunteers, refugees, etc, but it was also just a bit weird how aggressively centerist all the speakers were ("Remember, your conservative friends are fighting the same fight you are, they have the same values you do," etc). I guess that's a good message overall, but I feel like this was explicitly a left-leaning crowd, so it just feels bizarre to make sure the conservatives who literally are not in the room with us feel included, idk. And also, the first guy to speak said something about "No Kings, but YAASS QUEENS!" and it might actually be the cringiest thing I have ever heard -- it's just so inauthentic and forced.
That's not really what I'm here to talk about today, though! I haven't been able to make sense of my thoughts recently. So much is going on around me; mentally, locally, in the world... and so, I'm going to try and off load some of this onto this site in an attempt to organize everything, like a digital commonplace book / binder.
My uncle died suddenly last week. The day before, he was getting his car repaired; asked my aunt to pick him up and they spent the day together. Then he didn't show up to work. My other uncle (his twin brother) went to investigate and found him in his bed, phone beside him. A Facebook post at midnight, and never woke up...
Family members fly in from around the country to look at pictures, share memories, enjoy each other's company.
A humid night, crossing miles of gravel roads on the way home. A lightning bug splatters against the windshield, a glowing splotch that quickly fades.
The first thing clients see when they walk into the office: a bay window of all sizes of containers and textures of greenery and flowers. My boss (S)'s office has more, still. They seem to gather here like stray cats.
She "technically" doesn't know much about them: doesn't know what they're called, hasn't obsessed over gardening manuals or anything like that. And yet, under her care, they flourish all the same.
A matter of intuition? Simply "listening" to the plant and its needs? Going with the flow of life and adapting as needed?
"Y'know, when my sister was your age, she was already married with three kids..."
My coworker, D, was talking about how she's been meaning to start gardening again. She was in her basement, looking at the shelves stocked with jars of various types of homemade jams and tomato sauces from years ago and thinking about the prolific garden she left behind at her old house. She misses it.
My personal experience with gardening is limited to Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon. Many silly questions ensue, she was very nice about it and thoroughly answered everything, gave tips, etc. Among the sticky notes littering my desk:
good starter plants: tomatoes, green beans. basically grow themselves! things like strawberries, raspberries take years to mature try to get the seeds in the ground before Mother's Day
A routine check-up followed by an unexpected phone call. D stumbles into the boss (her sister)'s office as if in a stupor. Softly spoken conversation and intermittent sobs. She finally slips out the back door without a word…
After months of being medically not allowed to drive after her seizure, my sister decided she wants to go on a solo trip to California. She feels trapped. She wants to move to another city. She wants to see the world.
My parents are not happy. She's almost thirty -- I think she should be able to do whatever she wants.
Surgery last week, back to work on Monday. She doesn't want to wallow in her thoughts.
I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue. I bite my tongue--
I went to a little botanical park, Mother's Day weekend. They happened to have a plant sale going and I bought this little inch plant on impulse. <3
I'm worried my bedroom is too small and dark for her to thrive…
"I think I want to start a garden! Can we go buy some seeds? I wanna try being more spontaneous, so I was thinking--"
"No, if you're going to do anything, it will be done exactly as I say."
"..."
"Why haven't you done anything yet? You're the one who brought it up in the first place. You're so lazy and ungrateful!"
"We're at a casino -- drink and have fun like a normal person, dammit!"
"Why are you so quiet? Why do you have such a blank face? Why do you never leave your room? Why are you always in such a bad mood? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out. I wanna move out--
[It might be cringy to express my emotions like this, but I just wanted to let off some steam...]
And, so, a stress relief Oddish plush!
I guess she’s not really that exciting, but I mostly just wanted something to do with my hands…
Her main body is stuffed with the little plastic beans in a small mesh bag, so she has a decent weight — the first time I’ve actually tried that. It’s pretty satisfying to feel them under the fabric. And her leaves are sewn felt sheets, like usual, with wires inside for poseability. Finally tried sewing on button eyes and they really are so cute!
I originally wanted to make a Vileplume, but was unsure how to go about making that petal shape / if I had enough material. In the future, I do think the answer here for more specialized shapes would be to crochet it…
Additionally, while I'm here, some drive-by media reviews:
episode: Black Mirror (s7e3: "Hotel Reverie")
An actress (Brandy) is recruited to try an experimental new method of "modernizing" old movies: they create a virtual world populated by AIs inspired by the characters, then send an actual person to recast a main character with nothing else about the movie changing. This is explicitly set up to be pandering; Brandy is a black woman who is to replace the white male lead. Needless to say, an interracial lesbian couple (in a Hayes-era movie, no less) would've been a Pretty Big Deal, but the characters are programmed to not realize that she is not in fact the generic white man from the original and nothing else is changed.
Over the course of “filming,” they hit a few problems and the story doesn’t proceed as it should, eventually culminating in a software glitch that causes the world to freeze à la the Futurama episode "Meanwhile," with only Brandy and the female love interest (Clara) being free. Despite her initial disbelief, Clara eventually understands that she’s just a character in a movie, played by an AI of an old actress (Dorothy)… and one thing leads to another and they fall in love, having all the time in the world to talk and get to know each other. Until…
Sure, it's a remarkably convoluted, borderline nonsensical set up and admittedly quite tropey, cliché, but honestly, I actually really liked it! I'm still just such a sucker for any kind of time shenanigan trope, and especially angst on top of that. <3
spoilers
When the glitch is fixed, a lifetime of love gone in an instant… Brandy being willing to go to jail to cover for Clara / Dorothy, even if it means Brandy can never go back to the real world… All she wants is to be able to stay with Dorothy, in any way possible, even if she doesn't remember her and what they had together in this timeline… 💔🥺
Still, question: When the fourth wall is broken and Clara / Dorothy becomes sentient, does she actually see Brandy for who she is? I feel like that was very unclear…
I don’t know, I guess I’m just very easy to pander to… I don’t necessarily think scifi has to make sense. Like, famously, there are a bunch of Twilight Zone episodes that just dig into bizarre scenarios to hit a certain emotional punch, I think this is basically following in the same tradition, y'know?
book: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (dnf @ 64%)
Basically a series of vignettes and / or streams of consciousness pieces surrounding a woman (Miri) trying to cope with her wife (Leah) "coming back wrong" after a mysterious submarine expedition incident and reminiscing about their past. A metaphor for some kind of PTSD?
I started this a very, very long time ago and I think I'm just going to officially give up, this is not being finished. It’s an interesting enough concept, but I just think it’s way too long, honestly -- when I say that, I don't mean *literally* long (it's, like, only a bit over 200 pages), but I think it would’ve worked much better as a short story than a novel, if ya know what I mean. Experimental writing is fun in small doses, but when it gets much longer, I feel like I'd prefer a bit more of a pay-off / structured approach, idk.
That said, the writing itself is pretty fun -- like how Miri follows a forum where women roleplay as grieving wives of astronauts and they all get into fights about who has it worse with her fake husband lost in space, etc. It's kinda just something you have to be in the mood for, I think.
book: Looking For Alaska by John Green (dnf @ 20%)
This is the most recent book picked out for that monthly book club I've been going to, chosen for the prompt of "banned books." I have never actually read anything by John Green, I've just seen the memes about him on Tumblr… And, frankly, I hated every second of this and I'm throwing in the towel here, too. I am just *not* in this demographic, to the point that it feels inappropriate to rip it apart.
…but I will briefly, anyway, just to satisfy my internal hater: I feel like John Green was trying too hard to make the characters ~cool~ and ~quirky~ and ~edgy~ or whatever the fuck. Like, when "The Colonel" was introduced and he just starts reciting the names of countries in alphabetical order unprovoked, all I could think of was the one baby from Family Guy who wears a suit to a birthday party and talks like Alan Alda:
Victor [into a tape recorder]: "Idea for a novel: guy who loses his blankie, goes looking for it, finds it in the kitchen… I amaze myself; that's genius, that's unbelievable. I don't know where I get it from."
Every character and character interaction is like this. I can't do it, I can't take this seriously.
It did send me into a deep dive, though, looking into the depths of the "#girlblogging," "#coquette," "#this is what makes us girls," etc tags on Tumblr. Interestingly, you also see teenage boys on r/books talking about how much this book means to them, as well, how much they related to the characters' thoughts, emotions, actions, how it got them through tough times, etc. Ultimately, I guess it makes sense; teenagers are at that stage in their lives when they desperately are trying to figure out how they fit into society, trying to define themselves…
finally, a fanfic: "There Was Peace Unknown" by uoltage (JJBA: Jolyne/Hermès)
A cute little fic taking place in an AU where the ending of Stone Ocean didn't happen. Jolyne and Hermès (as well as Emporio, who they have basically adopted) go on a road trip, trying to put their lives back together. <3
The HTML on this page is embarrassingly even more spaghetti-y than usual, unfortunately, but I thought it was a neat format to mess around with! Initially, I was trying to use flexbox for this, but I found that CSS grid allows you to have more control and create more dynamic layouts. I think that this would be really cool to incorporate in future art galleries / poetry, etc!
