Was thinking today about how money is like a rewind button for life. I didn't have it until a year ago, when I finally graduated from medical residency and my salary tripled overnight; I just never had the kind of money that makes these things possible. But now I do, and I can tell you that I don't fear making a lot of the mistakes that used to terrify me. If I spent 5 bucks on a mascara and hated it, well, tough luck, I either don't wear mascara or I wear that one. I couldn't buy shoes online. What if I have to return them? What if I can't get away from work long enough to return them? So I'd buy them in person, walking around and around the store, hoping I'd figure it out if they were going to pinch or hurt me because I wasn't getting a second shot at that money.
I dyed my hair. I'm bored with it now and trying to get the dye out, and I'm not stressed about it, because worst case scenario, I have the money to buy more bleach and more dye and if I need to I can pay for a stylist to fix it.
I bought shoes online. One pair didn't fit. I just gave them away. Easier than returning and the money means something totally different to me now.
I'm doing things I simply would never have done, could never have done, because I have the money to fix them if I make mistakes at these things that are new to me.
It is beyond inhumane that this is what gets people the ability to make mistakes and come back from them, erase them, fix them, rewind. We need to make life easier for everyone, not minuscule increments better for the already very rich.
this is so true. Finally achieving a modicum of success with my small business and reaching a settled point in my financial life where my credit score is high and I have multiple safety nets available is 100% a game changer. If money doesn’t buy happiness, poverty at very least sells it in scraps, shreds, and leavings to every wolf at any door.Â
That tightrope walk, even when you get really, really good at it... it slowly kills you. The physical and emotional stress of it are unreal. Even having the distance from it to be able to contemplate it as anything other than just a brutal reality feels like a privilege to me. Â
Good to know that my maternal family crest continues to read “Yeah, We Just Pretend That Never Happened”!
Now your sims can live in the Ideal Leftist Dwelling
Enter through the nu metal patio
Immediately you're greeted by the ketamine chamber, and pronouns (wasn't really sure how else to represent this)
Off of the kitchen pronouns, through the shoji door is the yoga room
Down the hall(?), the ADHD room and the wokeism bathroom (NO DOORS)
And finally, the sodomy lounge.
đź ‘ the floor plan
This very real, non satire Gerber Life ad is such a perfect encapsulation of 2022 America
Neurodivergence
Someone mentioned how much all children love Mickey Mouse, and I realized that I didn’t, and just started wondering why.Â
Why didn’t I want to watch cartoons? Why did I want to read outdated medical books and draw the same picture over and over? Why didn’t I want to talk to anyone or make friends?Â
Now, why do I only want to watch cartoons? Why do I play the same songs, the same games, the same shows over and over? Why do I isolate and feel like I “can’t talk” sometimes, but other times feel unable to *stop* talking?
Me @ brain:
Who hasn’t broken a promise
left an apology unsaid
a mess uncleaned
Who hasn’t thrown a stone
in a glass house
precariously balancedÂ
on the eggshells of their own denial
We are messy
emotional little beasts
who destroy what we love,
but somehow find a way
to build back stronger
beautiful gilded bowls
mosaics of our own chaos
I have been working on a book of essays
So far, this is my favorite opening line:
My feelings on the matter of the cold ravioli have expanded over the years, like one of those 3D printed houses building itself in slow motion over 30 years. God, those videos are satisfying, until you think about what would happen if your robot house decided to crush you alive. I digress.
genealogy is the wildest shit because you grow up poor in a shitty apartment and then find out you’re descended from like 10 houses of nobility and there’s a SAINT in there
and of course it has zero relevance to your life and you still have to take out the trash and you’re like, 248356830673085620th in line for a tuppence or something but then you see STATUES of your FAMILY MEMBERS that STILL EXIST? Weird weird weird weird weird.Â
Like I can post receipts if anyone even cares
This is my terrifying 11th great grandfather
Hahaha okay so this is dark humor but since this is my yellin’ hill, hear me out (or scroll)
In my whole life, my dad gave me $20, one time, via somebody else. It was 1994 so I was really excited to get $20 because, like, I was ten and that could actually buy some shit ten-year-olds enjoy (chips and a Barbie probably). And I was like, well, see, he cares. He gave me something.
Today I looked at six bags of groceries totaling $250+ and out of nowhere started thinking about how amusing it would be to do a yearly rundown of inflation’s impact on what that $20 was worth.
2022: one third of one bag of groceries
THANKS, DAD!
All I want out of Stranger Things 5 is for Robin to shack up with her redhead lady love and Joyce and Hop to get their happily ever after and Karen Wheeler to have her first orgasm. You just know Ted isn’t getting it done.
1-800-ARE-YOU-SLAPPING
brother john, brother john
Perfect comebacks, but like a decade later
“You lost respect for me? You? Oh my god, I’m crying myself to sleep over it as we speak.” *sips a triple espresso*
If you don’t love languages, hear me out: my telugu friend had been affectionately calling me, a hindi speaker, “gundi” for 7 months. We didn’t realize until recently that the word has two completely different meanings in Telugu and Hindi, and that we both had completely different interpretations of her affection.
In Telugu, “gundi” means “smol/button/round/cute”.
In Hindi, “gundi” means “female thug”
fictional stories involving cloning and the "moral dilemma" of whether a cloned human should be considered a person are so fucking obnoxious to me, like from the earliest possible age it never made sense to me why people would hand-wring about the personhood of a clone. that's just a human being baby, don't be so weird about it
"but do they have SOULS???"
good question but here's a better one, are you hungry for a knuckle sandwich
My favorite rabbit trail to drag the "life begins at conception! The moment the sperm meets the egg, a new soul is created!" crowd down is to start theorizing at length about identical twins, naturally occurring clones that divide... after fertilization. It always takes them off guard and completely derails the rant.
Does each twin have half a soul? Is there one full-souled twin and one soulless twin? Did you know that in a lab you can cut a freshly fertilized embryo in up to eight pieces and they will all develop completely? Would this produce seven extra lab-created soul or one lab-created Lord Voldemort split seven ways?
And then we move on to the opposite problem: what about naturally occurring human chimeras, a pair of fraternal twins that collide and merge into one organism with the DNA of both... after fertilization. Does a chimera have two souls? Two half-souls that don't match? Does one soul kill the other? Both sets of DNA survive, so what determines which soul lives and which dies? Does that make the surviving soul a murderer before it even develops a heartbeat, let alone awareness?
And given that both identical twins and human chimeras are psychologically indistinguishable from anyone else, what does a soul actually do? What are the theological implications, if your theory of soul-at-fertilization requires drastic soul weirdness when confronted with biological reality, but that soul weirdness ends up producing... no effect whatsoever?
Just venting about dadfam stuff
It never stops feeling weird that they’re angrier at him than I am. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t a person who left, he was an idea, just totally absent. It’s hard to be angry at the idea of a person. I don’t know why I always chose to imagine he was good. No one lied to me and told me that he was good. Even now, no one lies to me and tells me that, when it really doesn’t matter and he’s been dead for nigh on twenty years, which is I guess how you know someone really fucked up.
I don’t know how I could ever feel like I missed him, in retrospect. I missed the idea of having a father that was alive somewhere, the potential of a future reunion which, in reality, probably would’ve been rejected or just generally terrible. He was not a good man, and that’s hard to accept, because my mom isn’t particularly good either. Am I doomed to be like them, perpetually unable to stand up to my vices and make decisions that are in my own best interest?
I could bother feeling like someone failed me, but it doesn’t get the ship out of the harbor, doesn’t put wind in the sails. It just gives me another reason to stay in port. I feel very much grown and secure in my own shit and I have a very happy and secure life. I filled in my own gaps.
I can’t hate a dead father I didn’t know any more than I can miss a living father I didn’t know. I cannot conjure any vitriol toward this person. I cannot take it personally. I was rejected as a concept, not a person. It’s like they want me to be mad about it, and I’m not. Maybe because I had a quarter century longer to accept the facts about my patronage, or maybe I am just completely numb to this, but it’s very fucking weird feels to want to know what was good about your father out of pure curiosity only to be told, basically, “nothing”
The America you’re mourning
Did not belong to all of us.
The roast and potatoes,
Apron strings neatly tied,
Father home from the office just in time,
Only poors and drunks in the welfare line
That America was a long con,
A hologram of safety
An excuse for inaction
A validation for hatred
The America you’re mourning
Was built on the backs
Of its Blacks, of its women, of its poor
Who could ask for anything more
Than a culture that rewards whiteness
Sameness
Compliance
You see your dream dying
Some of us were up the whole time keeping watch