finally, a section on this site for my deranged ramblings
11/19/2023 - so tired
it's progressively getting colder and darker and i don't know how people can handle this. every second of every day i am so so tired. the only thing that wakes me up a little bit is being able to ride my bike and go outside, but soon it'll be too cold to even do that without my eyes getting too cold and dry. i went out today and had a good time even though i was really groggy the whole ride and it was hard to think. i climbed a tree that was growing horizontally over the river and i just sat and watched the whole dead brown leaves in the mud. they weren't disintegrated at all. it reminded me of how lake superior is too cold and remote to have bacteria or animals that decompose things on the bottom, so everything that's dies and sinks just never rots. you have corpses of 100-year-old sailors that look like they sank yesterday. but on the shore of the river, i could see the leaves that fell already crumbling and integrating into the soil. i walked past a spot where i found a snake two years ago, but i didn't see any other snakes. somebody had put up antifascist posters and spray painted radical transgender stencils onto the footbridge. i feel like the world is going through a changing period. activists at my library unfurled a list of murdered palestinian children in small font over the third floor railing. it reached all the way to the lobby tile. but i talked to my brother and he says he doesn't feel like he should have an opinion on it since he's not "personally involved" (?) and my dad nods in agreement whenever the radio talks about how israel is bombing hospitals because hamas is in there. i want to be the one unfurling posters and yelling chants. but it's hard to even do the things i enjoy this time of year. i went to my friend's birthday party last year and all her friends were so normal and knew themselves. the whole time i felt like i was throwing darts at a target while blindfolded. am i supposed to say this? if somebody smiles, does that mean i said the right thing? if they're not smiling, does that mean they hate me? i feel like such a loser it's a wonder i manage to do anything. i miss my friends who went to college. i need to stop whining about things. but i'm just so tired i can't mentally handle anything right now. i need to remember that i wasn't like this two months ago. as soon as it gets warmer out i'll defrost and feel normal. maybe i'll even take an art class and learn to drive. i want to draw so bad but i don't have any good ideas (too tired to think of them). just so i'm not a complete downer, i'll list some good things:
- i got a chest binder. my gender is weird and i don't feel like getting into it but the binder makes my appearance match what i look like in my head. it makes me feel nice and i like how clothes fit me when i wear it.
- i got this tea from trader joe's (the winter wake up blend) and it is so damn good and extremely warm. i can feel the warmness in my chest for like two hours after i drink it, it's so cozy and tasty.
- i had indian food earlier today and watched the first three episodes of the new scott pilgrim show. butter chicken and garlic naan combo purified my soul i'm fs going to heaven if god turns out to be real. i loved the scene between kim and knives where they played music together it was so beautiful and life is so kind.
- i've been watching videos about club penguin recently and they make me feel so nostalgic
- i volunteered at a food bank yesterday and it was frustrating seeing the quality of food that gets donated but i'm glad i could help people.
- this is the first black friday that i have money i'm gonna indulge so hard
that's it for this blog post. baiii
10/27/2023 - trying to wrap my head around the current israel-palestine thing
i've hardly been following news on the israel-palestine conflict (for lack of a better word where i'm at right now). the news is terrifying, i know israel is beating gaza into the ground, but i'm scared to take any solid stances because i might be wrong. i'm writing this partially because i know it's a historical moment, and partially to collect my thoughts on the subject. i'll be googling questions i have as i collect my thoughts throughout this essay to get a better picture. i just don't know what i want. i know i'm in a bubble. i know i'm not hearing all the information i could, but in the decades-old history of this whole thing, how could i? my dad is taking a hard neutral "it's too complicated and both sides are bad" stance, and i feel like that's wrong. by taking a neutral stance, you're automatically taking the side of whoever's strongest. there's no such thing as "neutral". he's just a very well-read person, so any objection i have feels like i don't have a chance to not feel lost by his response. news stresses me out, so i've been hearing most of my information off recommended posts on twitter. writing this, i sound pathetic. i know what's right. i just watch the videos and read about what's happening and i can feel myself start to freak out. like, how could this happen while everybody's watching? i just can't believe that anybody could see what's happening and not agree that what israel is doing is fucking horrible, no matter what hamas is doing back at them... i feel like i'm missing something important that justifies why the the us government isn't Freaking The Fuck Out right now. i know i'm extremely priveleged that i can kind of turn a blind eye because i'm uncomfortable.
at the same time i worry! obviously a cease-fire is necessary. thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced and utterly traumatized from israel's indiscriminate bombings. they claim to be targeting hamas, but there's no way that's the truth. israel has always hated palestine (and vice versa, though i'm not going to act like the mutual hatred is equally justified) and they're taking the opportunity to fucking ethnically cleanse the land that doesn't belong to them. surely hamas soldiers aren't hiding under every single building in gaza? israel has no need to bomb consecutive blocks of the city if their goal is just to get rid of hamas soldiers. it seems to me that, to the israeli government, "palestinian" and "hamas" are synonymous- and they both reside under the umbrella of "animal". trust me, what hamas did on october 7 was disgusting, and just to cover my bases i'll make it clear i will condemn all antisemitism right now. (the us senate just passed a response that claims that all pro-palestine protests are acts of antisemitism. what a joke.) hamas has scarred israel's people with that act of savagery. but that doesn't mean that israel can strike back against uninvolved palestinian civilians tenfold.
i think some people have this cognitive dissonance because it's missile strikes instead of gunshots. like, just because israel isn't doing the exact same things hamas did on oct 7, their violence is less evil. the people in the gaza strip can't sleep for all the noise and fear the missilies create. they can't rest. parents write names on the bodies of their living children so they may recognize them when they're dead. isn't that tragic? over 7,309 confirmed dead and we still can't decide what's right. it's fucked up to suggest, knowing the suffering the people of gaza are going through right now. but i think the fear is that, if the bombardment stops, hamas will be able to regroup and invade israel again. my completely unqualified opinion is that i just don't think that's likely. with the heightened military presence focusing on palestine now, i don't think it's possible for hamas to do what they did again. israel overpowers all of palestine, not just hamas, in every single capacity. for example, they have the iron dome, which protects israel from hamas' missiles. of course, palestine has no such thing, hence the extreme loss of life. right now gaza is under siege- no electricity, water, or fuel. they're running on fumes. this is not how you weed out terrorists. this is how you jump at the opportunity for genocide.
i think part of what's making people like my father so unsure about which side to choose is the government's disgusting shilling for israel. we (the united states) are directly promoting this genocide (i think i've figured out where i stand by typing this blog post. i'll call it what it is now.). we're diverting weapons from ukraine to israel- completely forfeiting any claim we could've made that we are the protectors of the free world. suddenly, biden distrusts the gaza health ministry, despite the united states having deemed it trustworthy enough to cite from in the past, and the death toll being confirmed by other organizations that are opposed to hamas. i just don't understand why. from what i can tell, the united states and israel have had an extended political relationship. i guess i can't be surprised that once again, my country is on the wrong side of history. i would've thought it was at least partially for profit, but biden is trying to allocate billions of dollars to funding this war. what do we have to gain in exchange for our lost humanity? i have no clue. if you have an answer, i would genuinely love a comment on my neocities profile with a (link to) a reason. i'm going to bed now, it's late.
10/24/23 saurr busy
it's been a while since i last made a blog post. i really want to get back into the habit of writing more about what i've been up to, so it doesn't all melt together- i just finished my first quarter of my high school year, and for a reflection assignment i had to list one thing i did and was proud of during that quarter. i sat there for about five minutes trying to think of something! eventually i landed on "staying on top of my homework"- it's true that i've been better at turning things in this school year, but that's kind of a lame response. so, here i am back at da blog.
as soon as school starts my memories just turn into a haze. my focus is split between so many different things and it makes me so exhausted. i got a part time job at a panera, too- it's only three days a week, but i go to work straight after school, so i'm out of the house with no downtime for 14 hours straight. it sucks, but my coworkers are chill and i finally have money to spend on generally useless things that make me happy without feeling guilty, so that's nice. there are no paid breaks, it's only $13 an hour (nowhere near a living wage in my area- i'm not independent but that's just insulting), and i get terrible hip and back pain from standing on tile floors all day, but i've been stealing sandwiches to make up for it.
speaking of technically useless things that make me happy- i've been indulging and buying all kinds of things. i bought myself a gorgeous black skirt with velvet and lace detailing, and a sweater with a design based on hohokam petroglyphs. i spent an obscene amount of money at an indie comic invention- i got some gorgeous comics, prints, an enamel pin, and a roll of washi tape. indie art just hits so different it's insane. i recommend looking for smaller art conventions near you. i've been buying washi tape because i've been hoping to get into physical journaling- i've been writing a commonplace book, which is a journal to write down and reflect on quotes i resonate with from books i've been reading. to encourage writing more often, i spent a lot of money buying stationery (some hyperspecific, like a smooth foam-textured eraser; some general, like a pen with jiji from kiki's delivery service on it) from jetpens. a higher quality pen, even if it's only 5 bucks, is a real game-changer for me when handwriting. i also spent money on a fanmade witch hat atelier acrylic standee and the preorder for eternal ephemera, a witch hat atelier fanzine. remember what i said about indie artists?! fanmerch hits the mark more often than official merch for me... some official wha merch just dropped today, actually, and it was all kind of mid. for a long time, i never asked my parents to buy me anything. it just made me feel bad, like what do i need all this stuff for?! it feels really nice to have my own money to spend on things that make me feel good.
i'm finally 18 now, which means i can vote! catch me on nov 7 voting in the name of weed and abortion 💯 i'm the blue-hair-and-pronouns "liberal" that conservatives are scared of
tech week is next week! i'm so excited to see how the show turns out, but not looking forward to staying at school til 10 for a week :( i genuinely love doing the lightboard though. theater is so cool. i like being around theater kids because they're without shame. i don't get along with all of them personally but i like to observe. call me the tech booth lurker. i'm worried that this stress-week might kick off a winter Mood... i had crazy bad mental health for months, beginning at this time last year. i'm still not sure if it was because of the lack of daylight or stress from ap art. guess i'll see! i'm looking forward to finding out which one it is, because i hear the days are short in the netherlands and i really want that to be a viable college option. lately i've been really feeling like i need to get out of this country (the united states). usamericans have this crazy individualist culture that's really just a pattern of loneliness, and i don't know if i'm mentally strong enough to break that... i worry sometimes. well, i worry all the time, but you know what i mean.
6/25/2023 - why would you do it any other way
i'm currently in part 2 of my vacation, amsterdam: where everyone is tall and beautiful, and the maximum legal size for a dog is 25 pounds. additionally: the architecture is beautiful (new and old), the public transportation is beautiful by merit of its efficency, the canals are beautiful, even the graffiti is beautiful! i'm being real on that last one, all the fully-colored huge tags (idk what they're called) along the train line and freeway are gorgeous.
i think the part of this city that had the greatest impact on me is the robust public transportation. there's a tram line, a bus line, and a train line. if you don't want to ride any of those, the city (along with the rest of the netherlands) has incredible bike paths. at any given moment while you're on the street, you can see more cyclists then people in cars. there are so many bike add-ons i could've never imagined. baskets, saddlebags, wheelbarrows for items, wheelbarrows for children, baby seats, adult seats, windshields, bag-holders, etc. being in this city and thinking back about my home in the us makes me want to pull my hair out. i think a lot of my problems come from not having enough independence outside as a child. here, kids can ride their bikes wherever they want without fear they'll get run over.
i'm writing down all these amazing things about this country because i legitimately see no downsides to anything here compared to living in america. because of my european dual-citizenship (thanks mom!) i can go to any college in the eu for a more reasonable price than anything back home. i would genuinely love to live here. i visited a couple of colleges in nearby cities, and wageningen university really stood out to me. to my future self: do not settle for america! other countries have it so! much! better!
an unordered list of all the other things i love here: the nutrition scores on food packaging, the wonderful selection of grayscale birds (coots, jackdaws, blackbirds), the internationality of it all, the corner stores, the good bread, the large sidewalks, the quiet streets, the ecofuturist architecture, the street markets, the unabashed environmentalism, the straightforwardness, the legalized prostitution (not something i'm interested in personally, but just healthy for everyone), the tolerated soft drugs, the previous two being centralized (red light district) around a massive church, and to top it all off most people here speak english so i wouldn't feel totally alone until i could become fluent in dutch. i'm attaching a picture of a building that drove me insane when i first saw it (and still see it) because it's so cool and not at all what i thought AMSTERDAM, the 700-year-old city would look like. it's rich people housing, but it's not extremely ugly like what i'm used to.
(okay, the painting bike lanes thing in that last paragraph was a little bit of an oversimplification... listen to this episode of 99% invisible for the incredible true history of bikes in the netherlands)
6/17/2023 - i love the museum
i'm a couple days into vacation, currently in ireland. did you know the area of ireland is 4x smaller than that of ohio? i say we should just absorb ireland like an amoeba in agario. just kidding, ireland has had enough colonization over the past 7 centuries.
i went to the national museum today and saw a lot of cool artifacts, including some bog mummies. all three were murdered, and one was desecrated a second time by a peat harvesting machine. i guess it makes sense. people don't normally go into bogs as they have such difficult terrain, so it's understandable that on average more people would get murdered than die some other way in a bog. none of the bodies were complete. two were missing their legs, one was just a torso and arms. the hands on the last one mentioned, the old croghan man, were remarkably well preserved. he was remarkably tall for the time, his fingernails were neatly manicured, and his diet consisted of plenty of meat. his nipples had been sliced off, which symbolically meant that he could not become king. (in ireland, it was a sign of respect to suck the nipples of a king? freaky shit.)
was he woken suddenly? was it dark out? was he, still in his bedclothes, blinded by the torches of an angry mob? did he call for help? did his shaky breath fog the wet air in front of his face when his killer approached? when the blade was raised, did he raise his arm in defense? did he die when he was stabbed in the chest, when he was sawed in half, or when they cut his head off?
bogs held great significance to ancient celtic religions in ireland. however, when his corpse was laid in the wet marshy soil of the bog, nobody there knew how long his body would be preserved. what's left of the croghyan man is torn and desecrated, likely because his citizens held him responsible for a terrible harvest. of everything he was accused of to fail his kingdom in this way, and of all the things they did to him, it's incredible that only his hands survived untouched. it's almost like the bog is saying: "look how broad, clean, and soft he was. look at how he lived and died."
was he actually ruling irresponsibly, or was he just blamed for the fickleness of weather? maybe i should stop trying to find meaning or poetry in a human's death. i think history and not knowing brings great empathy. all i know about him for sure is that he died and all that's left of him is flesh and bone, just like i have. i'll probably be forgotten even more than he is.
i'm enjoying my time in ireland. it has some absolutely fascinating history. read more about bog mummies here. i might not keep the site updated as frequently since i'll be busy. as i'm writing this entry, i realize how messed up this website looks on any computer that isn't mine. i'll work on fixing that once i get home. bye!
6/9/2023 - musclegirl mania
i've been lifting weights for the past ~week and a half and thoroughly enjoying myself. as a completely non-athletic internet addict who's been allergic to sports and working out my entire life, this is surprising even to me. there's something about using your body as a machine and measuring it's power and progress through statistics that's pleasing. like, a week ago i couldn't do 5 sets of 8 reps of bicep curls with a 7-pound dumbell with my left arm, but now i can do that much with 9 pounds. (i specify my left arm because i discovered i had a strength disparity between the left and right side of my body. most people have this, where the dominant side of their body is a little stronger than their non-dominant. my strength baseline for my right arm is more around 12 pounds. initially, there was a five-pound strength difference between my left and right arms!) it almost makes me a little sad that i'll be going on vacation in a couple weeks... my weights :(
lifting weights has given me a lot of time to think. and what do i think about while lifting weights? lifting weights, of course! like, i went to the gym to lift weights exactly once. all the women in the gym were on the treadmills/bikes. all the men in the gym were using the freeweights/weight machines (except for one guy, who was SPRINTING on a treadmill for like 20 minutes straight. looked like he was training to hunt tigers with his bare hands). when i moved from the treadmill to the freeweights, i was the odd one out. one guy around my age was even openly staring at me while i was minding my own business?
obviously it was split up like this because of traditional beauty standards for men and women- the "ideal" man is big and strong with a lot of muscle mass. the "ideal" woman is small and skinny. lifting weights builds big muscles, cardio burns a lot of calories, hence the divide. in movies and video games, women with a lot of muscle mass are usually also incredibly masculine. (not that i'm complaining! long live beautiful butch women.) in real life, i've known men who are insecure of their own skinniness. why does the ideal body for women mean a failure of traditional masculinity for men, and vice versa? both skinny and ripped body types serve people just fine in the modern era where physical strength isn't required for survival. it's almost like gender is a social construct and that traditional gender expression emphasizes stark contrasts between genders to make gender-normative people more comfortable in their own gender identities... now if only ripped conservative podcasters who are obsessed with masculinity and make fun of other men for being "soy" could grasp this simple concept that hits so close to their personal interests. i think people should shoot for the body type that makes them feel the healthiest and most confident.
circling back to characters in movies and video games, i wish there were more women who were totally ripped in popular media. i saw a tiktok the other day that really gave me an epiphany about this. it was a guy standing ominously over his set of weights with a spiderverse theme playing in the background, captioned "coming back from the theater with new weightlifting motivation,"- playing on miguel o'hara's absolutely CRAZY physique.
it got me thinking, where's the widespread musclegirl motivation?! off the top of my head, i can think of zarya from overwatch (rip lmao) and noi from dorohedoro. if you can think of any others, leave a comment on my neocities profile. i NEED more musclegirls. we need musclegirls EVERYWHERE. we need musclegirls to be the next big thing. i think noi is gonna be my muscle inspiration. she's got similar gender expression to me, which i really love. playfully murderous bastard who wears baggy masculine clothing, but can also appreciate and wears more feminine fashion. this is what i need to look like ↓
i guess i'll have to make the musclegirls myself. my oc nora is kind of a musclegirl, but she's also a robot and not that bulky so idk how much that counts... will get back to you when i design more. ciao!
6/6/2023 - smog
yesterday my dad was driving me to the movie theater to see the new spiderverse movie (which was very good btw) when he pointed at the trees along the highway.
"does it seem smoggy to you?" he asked.
something did seem off to me. i'd looked down a long, wide, road earlier that day and saw the trees, not more than a couple miles away. they looked gray and far-off, like the street's asphalt was encroaching upon them, pushing them further with every passing day.
"there are wildfires in canada," my dad explained. i was working out in my garage today and all i could think about was the smoke. i stared out of the open door at the neighbor's tree, which stood tall in a desaturated haze. we really are just little animals clinging onto the lichen that crusts the ball of rock we call earth. can we not see a common struggle between ourselves and every animal we displace? were it not for the technology of modern life, this yearly smog from california or canada or wherever else would be significantly shortening the lifespan of every one of us. carcinogenic wildfire season smoke would be a risk to all of us if we lived naturalistic lifestyles and spent most of our time outdoors like our ancestors. at the same time, toxic runoff from our roads and lawns poison our waterways, snuffing out wildlife. the modern lifestyle isn't exactly something we can (or should? still undecided on this incredible hypothetical) roll back on, but maybe if the average person learned more about nature and our native environments, our society would have some more compassion for nature.
sometimes i feel like the average ohioan doesn't know or care that this land is naturally a grassland in addition to a deciduous forest. i remember a few years ago watching the news with my family. there was a story about how they were going to build a new amazon warehouse near where we live. they showed footage of where it would be built- a sprawling field filled with tall grass and flowers. 12-year-old-me, overly sympathetic to nature and wildlife by most people's standards, said: "what about all the animals?" my dad replied: "what animals? it's an empty lot."
today i was walking to my therapist. there was no sidewalk, but there were huge machines pounding fresh blacktop onto the old, cracked, road. two men on cars with massive wheels, each wheel nearly as tall as me. they drove up and down the road and compressed the blacktop. about 8 men piled on the end of a tall, steaming dumptruck which poured hot asphalt onto the street. a man walked beside the truck, yelling directions and waving an orange flag. as i struggled to not fall into a ditch on the side of a road, the street beside me steamed and crackled. the hot steam filled my throat and tasted horrible. it looked kind of like a fun job, though i worry that none of the workers were wearing masks with all that smoke going around.
6/3/2023 - goatlings and grades
after several months of grinding, i've finally saved enough sugar stars to buy a goatlings crown account. my quest to never spend any money on a video game is going steady. anyway! here are some of the goats i've adopted with the increased goat slots.
p2p has the monster treats ad and is named after my love of piracy. what can i say, physical data storage is a passion of mine. uniteddairyfarmers has the milkling ad and is named after my favorite ice cream chain :) with summer finally starting to heat up it's thematically relevant to my life.
i have fond memories of walking to the nearby united dairy farmers near my old house when i was a kid. it was really shitty and run-down and they had to play classical music through the loudspeakers to prevent drunk people from brawling outside at night. the original location got gentrified quickly and was bulldozed + rebuilt with soulless luxury condos built on the upper floors. the old location was ugly as shit but at least it had a windowsill to sit on and music to listen to while you ate your ice cream. i don't wholly accredit my hatred of modern luxury condos with my old udf, but they are a maddening reminder of what happened to my old neighborhood (gentrified + all the local culture and restaurants replaced with chipotles and other chains.) my goatling lives with my original udf in mind.
my act retake date approaches... i've been studying but i still feel like i won't do much better. not that my original score was bad at all (a 30 composite), but ideally it'd be a bit higher so i can get more scholarship money. whatever, if everything goes terrible i'll make good use of my dual citizenship and find a school in the EU to attend for $3000 a year. that is, if i can even figure out what i want to do in life. i think human society is severely fucked up and we were never meant to know what an "atom" is, never mind figure out how to build a machine as deranged as a ""car"". if it were up to me, i would go all christopher knight on you people.. sayonara you weeaboo shits