81 posts
Pastpossum - Decidedly Ambivalent - Tumblr Blog
Due to a sad and unfortunate incident two days ago, blue jays now follow the cat around and scream at him. Sometimes they dive at him.
It wasn't even his fault and he didn't do anything. He would have, because he is a cat, but he didn't. He was just there. The real killer was a snake, and he has a witness.
motivation
People keep chickens and bees and plant gardens and sure, maybe it does end up saving money (not bees, keeping bees is not saving money) and give them a hobby but in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy there is a scene in which "Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying, “Blood…blood…blood…blood…” and I wonder if keeping chickens and growing vegetables is quietly the equivalent of counting to computers, but applied to the current American agribusiness/food system.
achievements
I was reading through someone's voluminous therapy records for work yesterday and the therapist had a section about goals/objectives (the software probably required that) and the only goal listed was "become emotionally stable" and that just seems like asking a lot for anyone. Maybe they should include some goals that would be more within reach, like "don't use cocaine this week" " don't bite anyone unless provoked" or "keep your clothes on in public". I can only assume the client does not see and is not told the goals because knowing that you have failed or are failing to achieve your one goal of emotional stability does not strike me as a helpful thing.
sage
I don't believe in astrology but I do know the basics of it and I cannot keep myself from reading things that are maybe supposed to be funny. So today I saw a thing of "astrology signs as spices", and for Pisces it had sage, noting that it was "weird as fuck and pretty much only used for magic". And I mentally said "also sausage". Then I thought about a specific ex of mine, who was kind of batshit insane, and also a Pisces. And wow, that one kind of fits, especially with the edit.
cat show
midnight
me: if I fall asleep right this minute I can get five and a half hours of sleep before I get up for work
12:15 am
me <staring angrily into the dark>
12:30 am
me <finally starting to drift off a little, still angry>
12:45 am
my cats: IT'S TIME FOR A RODEO! WE'RE GONNA HAVE WRASSLIN' AND RACIN', RIOT AND RUMPUS! WE'LL DO A SPECIAL HALFTIME ACROBATICS EXHIBITION ROUTINE AND CONFIRM THAT GRAVITY STILL WORKS! THEN IT'S BACK TO CHAOS AND PANDEMONIUM WITH RUNNING AMOK IN A BARREL-RACING GRAND FINALE! YEEEEEE-HAAAAAAW!
me: FML <pulling pillow over face>
Dog sculptures turned golden from tourists petting them throughout the years
time lapse of all the birds yesterday
watch the weather with your cat
Very little sleep the past couple of days and that in short, separate chunks, because the older dog is sick with some kind of stomach trouble and has repeatedly woken me up desperately needing outside (she has now been given canned pumpkin with Fortiflora, yogurt to come, fingers crossed). When I have slept, dreams have been vivid and detailed. One yesterday morning included an ominous, jangly song about "Watch the weather with your cat" complete with a little of the music video, which showed a standard issue gray tabby face looking at a CRT TV (I could even see the slight curve of the glass in the screen). So if any up and coming musicians are looking for a way to not become rich and famous, there you go.
Kind of wish I remembered a little more of that.
Thanksgiving
A reddit thread today made me stop and think there really needs to be some kind of grim action movie called JAMESTOWN, taglines including "where it all began" and "forget what you were told in school". It would show the terror of crossing the Atlantic in tiny wooden boats to an unknown shore, the kinds of desperate, stupid, or insane people who would take that bet, the inevitable and understandable Indian attacks, the disease, the starvation, the cannibalism, the arrival of the tobacco brides, the beginning of chattel slavery. Of course the only possible plot I can imagine would be the plucky orphan trying like hell to survive and get on the next boat home.
Pretty certain this would be loudly denounced as anti-American and unpatriotic from certain circles. But it is obvious why schools and society focus on the Mayflower and Plymouth, because who wants to try to explain that shit to a fourth grader?
loss
I still hope Mark Zuckerberg gets fleas. And maybe has a small bug crawl into his ear.
I would much rather have my shit back, though.
supportive
Dear facebook, meta, whatever you are today:
Sorry about the voodoo doll. I don't really believe in things like that but it seems about as likely to help me get through and get an answer as my many, many attempts to contact support through the links you have so carefully hidden on your site have been. I didn't need my account to apparently self-destruct; you didn't need any funny stuff with little poppets with ear trumpets and pins and needles and candles. But here we are.
Yeah, the person posting isn't the customer and the grocery store doesn't care what the potatoes think, but what happens when they can't get potatoes any more?
Update: I never got through to any kind of support, and did lose about 2/3 of what I had posted there, and nearly everything since 2016. I hate Facebook so fucking much. I hope Mark Zuckerberg gets bedbugs for the rest of his cheap-ass life.
Squirrels get thirsty, too. He got some strong toes.
Party crash
Last night I dreamed that I had ordered a bike part (I don't bike) and hadn't gotten it, so thinking it might have been delivered to an old address I went back to the apartment I lived in 25 years ago and wandered into what seemed to maybe be a small gathering of gods or something there. One randomly hugged me and they were mostly nice to me, except one kept threatening to pick me up and cuddle me so that he could hear me better.
I don't think I found the bike part, though.
misdirection
Two of the past three nights it has felt like I had someone else's dreams, someone maybe very unhappy or worried. Someone had died, someone I didn't know, in a dream full of people I didn't know, and the not-me supposed to be dreaming was very sad. The next night the first person dreamer, who again was not me, was attempting suicide. Very strange and knocked me off balance the days after it happened. Last night, at least, I was back to my own dreams about people I knew with a first person dreamer who was actually me in a dream that was only normal-dream weird and not particularly unhappy.
Anyway if anyone is missing these dreams I saw them but have no idea how to send them back home.
dead ends
Oooh, another idea for a book that I will never ever write.
In the early years of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (or some similar morally dubious but notoriously inquisitive and scientifically/experimentally minded figure) sets up a supernatural system of protections for the new nation, possibly already including plans/provision for a ghost army. Years later, the emergence of the United States military cemetery system has been incorporated into this structure. Many years after leaving the service, a dead soldier is interred in a military cemetery, and finds themself recalled to duty in a spectral military operation.
Cheshire cat
Would be cool for someone (not me) to get a Cheshire cat tattoo, knowing the yellows and oranges may/will slowly fade out over the years leaving the outline and a smile drawn in bold black.
somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert
Somewhere in the vicinity of Greensboro, NC there is a big billboard by the interstate that says
THIS IS
MAGA
COUNTRY
and there must be something really wrong with people down there. How has no one managed to sneak up at night and change "MAGA" to "BAT" yet?