Big Fat Mareanie

i would've fucked so hard as a court jester in ye olde i would've jangled my balls and done a little dance and sang my silly tunes i'd be so good at my job. alas i have to be on tumblr instead which is like a poor imitation of it

bells. i meant bells

don’t do this to me

No disrespect but I think one of the weirdest and most unnecessary comments that I still see almost every other day on tumblr is the one that always goes more or less like "I am utterly repulsed by this thing but I understand it's still valid and you're valid for liking it!"

I know people mean this as a positive but it's really kind of a net zero addition. Oh you hate the thing I like but you decided I'm allowed to be different anyway, wowee wow thanks for your generous charity !!

Chalk is squids road.

i have not stopped thinking about this goodreads review for a MOMENT since i read it. it pingpongs in my head at all times. yesterday i walked into the kitchen and i realized i hadn't washed the pot from the night before, and said coldly, "the work of a sad little man who needs to see the ocean." unreal. i know i am changed.

I hear the words "bichon frise" and my brain spends an uncountably long moment frantically overturning every memory I have, desperately trying to remember what foreign luxury car brand I have to pretend to care about in order for this conversation to go favorably. After my every mote of knowledge about cars has been thoroughly ransacked and I am on the verge of failing this social interaction, a smudged sticky note flutters into view that simply says "small white dog."

bitch on fries? that lil white thang?

The very same.

when people say "ok but x bug has no benefit to nature" I bet they can't even name 5 facts about the bug they're shitting on. so how could they Possibly know what its function is in the environment and if it's "useless" or not

wasps being the perfect example, I still get people saying "oh bees are cute and pollinate :) yay. but WASPS ARE EVIL and they don't contribute ANYTHING!!!" and it's like buddy. wasps pollinate too. they also control spider populations. they do a lot of great valuable things. but even if they didn't, they're still worthy of being here. I see SO much hatred toward wasps and I wish people would try to learn a little more about them.

I'm mainly talking about paper wasps here because these are common ones we run into in daily life and most commonly deemed "aggressive". but wasps have body language. and if you learn to read this language and learn how to properly act around them, things will go a lot better for you! wasps can be curious creatures and they may come up to observe you, especially if you're wearing something brightly colored. this can be startling for sure, but my best advice is to just be still, DO NOT SWAT or wave your arms. try to just back away or sidestep so it loses interest and leaves. swatting is just gonna make them feel as if they are being attacked and increase your chances of being stung.

many stings happen due to unfortunate but accidental circumstances. unknowingly getting too close to a nest, stepping on a wasp on accident, one getting stuck in clothing, etc. I got stung once while gardening, went to pull a weed and the wasp was on it, so I grabbed her without knowing and she stung me because she was scared. this doesn't mean "oh wasps are AGGRESSIVE and EVIL" it means you stumbled into an unfortunate situation where the wasps felt threatened and defensive. instead of being like "FUCK all wasps" go forward trying to learn about common nesting areas, be wary of holes in the ground, wear gloves while gardening, and if you do have to be around a nest, try not to make a lot of noise. if the nest absolutely needs removed, call a professional.

i had a paper wasp nest next to my front door for about 5 months and the only aggressive thing they did was go \!/ when i was being too annoying with my camera.

Now the next generation is building a nest near the same spot and they continue being perfectly polite polistes :)

pictured are guards doing the warning stance \!/ and a satellite nest filled with fat and happy grubs showing how close they let me get.

I understand this, but what about ticks? Do they serve any purpose?

the natural world will make so much more sense to you when you stop trying to make animals have a “purpose.” thinking about animals having “jobs” is a good teaching tool up to a point but I don’t think it’s stressed enough how harmful it is to believe certain organisms could disappear without consequence because they are “useless.”

from our human perspective, we can come up with relationships between organisms that cause things to happen in ways that we can arbitrarily define as “good” or “bad”: ticks redistribute nutrients “locked up” in mammalian bodies, feeding spiders and birds that could never hope to take down a whole deer; ticks spread disease that weakens or kills animals, reducing pressure on those animals’ food sources; etc. but those relationships don’t happen for a “purpose.” they just happen. and evolution has shaped environments with ticks in them to account for the presence of ticks and other parasites. I’m not saying that every environment is dependent on ticks, just that they are part of everything, and that’s enough.

we can’t let our selfishness dictate what animals we deem “useless” or “valuable.” I ask, useless to whom?

what “purpose” does the Devils Hole pupfish serve? they exist in a single puddle in Nevada and if they did go extinct it probably would have no effect at all on the rest of the natural world. but I think many people would agree that it would be a shame if they disappeared—that’s why we’re trying so hard to protect them. they matter to people because they exist.

what “purpose” do domestic cats serve? they provide comfort to humans and kill billions of animals every year, placing some species in peril. if they went extinct, countless endangered small animals would be saved—and humans would be sad. because of how much cats matter to people, we’ve allowed them to erase entire species.

what “purpose” do ticks serve? they suck blood, but some suck only rhinoceros blood, or tortoise blood, making those species in peril of extinction because their hosts are in peril—what to do about those? does their parasitic lifestyle make them less worthy of life than the pupfish? more common species transmit diseases, feed other animals, and maybe do lots of other things we just don’t know about. we don’t know what would happen if they disappeared. it’s impossible to make a consistent definition of an animal’s “purpose” without bringing selfishness or changing what that purpose means. just let animals exist to exist, please