Curator of Stupidity

the girls...

suneater

Green pot with plant    -   Elena Climent , 2020.

Mexican, b. 1955-

Oil on linen on bord, 8.5 x 11 in.

and a bed of heather to rest my head | print

acrylic gouache clovers on a wood slice

fragment of god found on an abandoned flickr account

(confidently) no, that's a self-tolling bell. it tolls automatically, signifying nothing for the hearer. why

hey girl I picked you an information bouquet for your mind vase

I'm convinced that every cat has a Weird Game that it likes; your duty as the cat's owner is to discover what its favourite Weird Game is.

One of the most common question types this blog gets is some flavor of asking if Weird Games are okay. The people writing in are always very concerned for their pet’s safety and welfare (which I applaud) and often looking for an explanation of the behavior (which I have zero ability to give). This speaks to how common it is for cats - and other pets - to enjoy Weird Games.

This video is a great example of the best way to tell if a Weird Game is a thing your animal actually likes: let them initiate! The cat is being carried in a weird way when the video starts, but then immediately runs back to the designated “game spot” and asks for it to happen again. If you’re not sure if an animal likes an interaction - be it petting or a Weird Game - just stop, and see if they actively re-engage. If yes, you’re good to go!

Obviously, physical safety is an aspect of Weird Games too. The cat in this video apparently likes being carried upside down, which could injure it if it happened too much. But what we see is that their person supports the cat very securely, moves slowly, doesn’t go very far, puts the cat down on a soft and easy to reach surface, and doesn’t let the Game go on for too long. The cat also isn’t being held tightly and could clearly get free / ask to be put down if it became uncomfortable or wanted to be done. That seems like a good way to make that Weird Game safe to me (vets, please feel free to correct me here). If you’re worried about if a Weird Game is safe, ask your vet! You’ll make their day and get some useful information.

my cat likes to be put in a big IKEA bag and swung around in it. I know it's his choice of weird behaviour because he climbs in the bag if he sees it. and every few swings I stop swinging to check on him ad then he yells at me until I keep swinging. except for when he's bored where he jumps out.

But the biggest clue that he likes it and it's not just my idea is that I would have picked less of a fucking arm workout.

sometimes I wish I had ed sheeran’s phone number just so I could call him up and say SIMILES ARE GENERALLY ONLY WORTHWHILE IF THEY ADD SOMETHING TO AN IDEA. RECOGNISING THAT 2 THINGS CAN HAVE A COMMONALITY IN A VERY VAGUE WAY DOES NOT MEAN IT’S USEFUL TO REFERENCE IT. SEE: FACES CRUMBLING LIKE PASTRIES. IS SHE A BAKER? DOES SHE ENJOY A GOOD CROISSANT? IS THIS REFERENCED ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE PIECE? IF YOU ANSWER ‘NO’ TO ONE OR ALL OF THE ABOVE, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200 OR A BRIT AWARD.

ok so i thought i put this in DRAFTS not QUEUE, and let’s pretend I did because i have so much more to add. So many thoughts. One thing I was really lucky to have, as a writer, was one teacher who took everything I wrote very literally – not as a reader, he was a very smart reader, but as an editor, just to make me question whether the language was any good. So if I said someone’s face was crumbling like pastries, he would go: like, breaking in half? How do pastries crumble? What does that look like? How does a face crumble? What does that look like? Is it the same verb? And I would go, Not Really, my face crumbling like the face of a person who has just been called out by her thesis advisor. And then I would use a different word. (I would use completely different words, every word in that line would be different because it’s a shitty line.) MY POINT IS, WORDS MEAN THINGS. I see this in a lot of bad poetry that is going for a Siken vibe. If you say something like “I wanted to use him like the blood under my nails,” that’s fine if you’re 14 because it’s important to have a phase where you just put words in rows because they sound cool. But at some point, as an adult who wants to make words, you gotta stop and think: WHAT ARE THESE WORDS!!! WHAT DO THEY MEAN! How does one “use” the blood under their nails? Use it as what? As paint? As cuticle cream? As a snack? There’s a reason your deep weirdo creative brain put those words together, and if you can figure out what the reason is, then you can figure out what words you ACTUALLY MEAN with your, you know, language centers. Your deep weirdo brain is a wonderful gift and you couldn’t create without it, but half the time it just barfs out stuff that makes no sense, even to you. That’s why you need to LOOK AT IT and SEE IF IT’S INTELLIGIBLE.

So that’s my #hotwritertip for today. Take everything you’ve written very literally and see if it becomes super dissonant/distracting, and if it does, then find some words that don’t. GET IT TOGETHER, FANCY NERDS!!!!!

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

deeply unlikeable and unpleasant female characters are actually so important for the ecosystem and also as a good litmus test over if a person is Weird about women or not

elon musk told jkr to calm down help fkfbkr

imagine being such a shit person that elon musk tells you to get a hobby

i hope they both kill eachother in real life <3