We're Gonna Hold On

Robust Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa robusta), family Plethodontidae, Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica

Photograph by Piotr Naskrecki

At the end of my rope and it keeps getting longer like some sort of clown handkerchief bit?

EVERYTHING SINGS: a collection l’année terrible, victor hugo / red desert (1964) dir. michelangelo antonioni / unknown / rocket men: the epic story of the first men on the moon, craig nelson / the brooklyn daily eagle, new york, march 7, 1886 / suspiria (2018) dir. luca guadagnino / teaching a stone to talk, annie dillard / red bird, 'summer morning', mary oliver / the overview effect: awe and self-transcendent experience in space flight / jeff buckley / scientific future by valentino bellucci / joe dispenza / rilke and andreas-salomé: a love story in letters, rainer maria rilke / unknown / jwst image of 'cosmic cliffs' / alan ginsberg

omg @slavicafire mentioned!!

Tailor Birds “Sewing” Nests

(via)

Babe wake up, there’s a bird that can sew!

i wanna take a minute and talk about my friend coleman.

coleman and i have been buds for a long time! when we both moved to the same city we achieved a bond that many service workers do: that of mutual discounts. coleman was a barista across the street from where i was a bookseller, and we passed each other as many free/discounted books and coffees as we could get away with. i always felt i had the better deal, however, because while i got cheap lattes i also got a glimpse into what coleman was thinking about and working on.

"do you have any patricia highsmith" he'd text me, and i'd raid the mystery section and think what story is going to come from this? he got very into oskar schlemmer's Triadic Ballet and i started checking any books we got in about the bauhaus for new images and texting them his way, knowing i was going to see it reflected in art someday soon. because the thing about coleman, maybe my favourite thing about him (among many, many things) is the way he will pursue a set of interests and then synthesize them all into a work of art that is entirely new and entirely him and like nothing i've ever seen before.

coleman makes comics. you might have seen his art in steven universe issues, or on tapas, or here on tumblr (like this one, about creating a personal color palette for himself, which literally changed my life). most of them you haven't seen, however, which kills me. i've edited a number of graphic novel pitches for coleman and i can tell you the stuff he comes up with is GOOD. it's weird and queer and earnest and original, all of it, every time. i really hope y'all will get to see some of it someday. but my point is that you can see this one thing right now:

coleman has been working on stone fruits for months and as of january 1st it's updating every day. it's a love letter to newspaper comics and early webcomics. it's about losing the spark of creativity and having to keep going anyway, and queer communities and weirdos and going home. this thing is so lovingly crafted, from the hand-drawn buttons (which change on certain days) to the fact that the website is .net. No element was too small to be considered, and it has been a joy to watch coleman consider them.

i want coleman to find his audience. he deserves it, and so does the audience. read stone fruits.

idk how i missed these very kind words from a friend!!!

stone fruits is an incredibly personal, public vanity project that's a direct response to burn out. its been very restorative playing with a cast of characters that represent all the different ways i've felt about creating and artistic labor over the years.

the site feels like my own personal oasis. the strips aren't formatted for other socials, and it's trash on mobile by design. it's a destination to check out whenever you want to/remember, hopefully echoing a time when you would go to a site and just click around and get lost. idk how "successful" the total package is, but a nice part about shaking the rust off my hands and coming out of burn out is i don't really care!

so much of my brain power over the last decade has been used trying to contort ideas for various publishing houses' catalogues, navigating professional rejection with no agent to shoulder disappointment with, and still finding steam to carry on while working full time. i know it's not a unique experience and a lot of people do a lot more with a lot less! but stone fruits has been a pulpy, healing salve that's reignited a passion to create while also helping me examine my relationship to drawing and my ego.

all that to say! lol it's very heartwarming to know it's touching people, that's all you can really ask for :)

We came across this billboard at dusk in the middle of nowhere. 

Sun Song (1979)

literally obsessed with the design of blobjects

It's like art noveau to me, but inspired by microorganisms instead of plants.

These are possibly the best tags I've ever seen. Tomato schlorpus indeed

These are possibly the best tags I've ever seen. Tomato schlorpus indeed

no no that’s a bop, i love it

“Woman!” cried I, somewhat tearsome,

“Who are you to stand so fearsome

With your wavy locks of auburn hair and eyes of emerald green?”

Quoth the woman, “I’m Jolene”

Let’s see you little punks smash my letterbox now

This reminds me of this guy who used to live on my dad’s street.  

Every time it snowed, the snow plow would take out his mailbox - and only his mail box.  And just to be clear - it was done intentionally.  No one knows why, but the driver of the snow plow would target his box and mow it down.  He’d call the DOT to complain, and would get an earful of excuses that amounted to “not our fault you have a wimpy mailbox.”  

Fast forward to the next winter.  First decent snow starts falling, and every kid is hoping for a snow day.  It was right around 4:30 am that the whole neighborhood was woken up to this loud CLANG and the screech of tearing metal.  My dad made it to the window first and started laughing his ass off.

Sitting out side was one very totaled, and almost ripped in half, snow plow.  And these weren’t little pick-up trucks with a blade on the front, we have these up in NY:

Well, turns out over the summer, my dad’s neighbor got himself a backhoe and sank a steel I beam into the ground in his front yard.  Then he covered it with a decorative wood sleeve and topped it with a brand new mailbox.  When the snowplow driver tried to mow it down it was a bad case of immovable object meets unstoppable force - and the mailbox won.  With the plow firmly impaled on the I beam, it was very clear that the driver had gone out of his way to hit it.  

Naturally, the DOT wasn’t happy, and the neighbor’s reply was simple: “Not my faulty you have a wimpy snowplow.”  They did try to sue him for the damages, but as he had gone to the town, gotten approval for the post and its installation, and made sure everything was up to code, it was thrown out pretty quick.  

And for anyone wondering about the driver…  He was fine.  His job and tighty-whiteys … not so much.

certified iconic post

1972 

When BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) said "you can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it ok. you need to be better" and "all we have are the connections we make" and "I really should've thought about the view from halfway down" and "sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own happiness" and "you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around, you turn yourself around, THAT'S what it's all about" and "things have to get worse before they can get better" and "in real life, the big gesture isn't enough, you need to be consistent" and "if we hadn't met each other until now, we wouldn't be the people we are now" and, my personal favourite, "every day it gets a little easier, but you gotta do it every day, that's the hard part, but it does get easier".

#when I find myself in times of trouble, Charlie Kelly comes to me, speaking words of wisdom...

Softbank emojis. These are some of the first emojis.