Quality Trash

the annoying thing about adhd is that like, most of the symptoms you can’t even argue are “evolutionary flaws” or “chemical imbalances.” literally it’s just that it’s not good for lining somebody else’s pockets. being “distractible” helps people notice predators or juicy berries out of the corners of their eyes. hyperfocusing on a task until it’s done is literally exactly in line with what an alleged persistence predator would need to do to actually follow through on hunting other animals. there’s so many little things that are obviously beneficial to have outside of a fucking factory assembly line

NEUROLOGICAL DIVERSITY IS AS IMPORTANT TO SURVIVAL AS GENETIC DIVERITY, and OUR CONCEPT OF DISABILITY AND NEURODIVERGENCE IS BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF OUR OWN MAKING

When I lived out in the woods and spent my time herding sheep and hunting bullfrogs, nobody gave two shits that I walked around barefoot and said whatever popped into my head out loud.

My hyperfocus and poor sense of time made me a hard worker, my compulsion to sort and organize random crap kept the property clean, and my special interest in native flora and fauna meant I could go out into the woods thanksgiving morning and come home with all the pricy mushrooms and herbs we couldn’t normally afford otherwise.

Who cared that I was awkward? There was nobody around except the occasional customer or temp worker, and those kinds of interactions could be entirely scripted.

Who cared that I dressed funny, had frizzy, dry hair, talked flat, and ate raw onions? Who gave two shits that I built forts out of scrap metal and twine? How did it matter that I passed time running in circles over old truck chassis’?

There were no bright lights, no packed-in crowds, no huge collections of shouty, screamy, smelly people. Nobody stared at me for more than a few seconds. Nobody critiqued my body language.

I was a bit odd, yeah, but all I knew was that I was smart and creative and better than other people at fixing problems.

I went damn near fifteen years out there not even suspecting I might be autistic. Nobody even thought to bring it up.

Now I’m in the city, and I have a hard time going into the middle of a store. I hate the mall. My eyes hurt. Ambulances and fire trucks and cars with bad brakes go by and I cover my ears and nobody else does. I’ve been told I come off as “quirky”.

My question is, though, if an atypical person is in an environment that suits them, can anyone tell?

Most folks only know who’s blind when the lights are on. If the sky went dark tomorrow, we’d have no idea.

Imagine all of the insufferable oscar bait quarantine movies that are gonna come out in a few years, about a husband and wife forced to stay home together, and slowly learn to actually love and appreciate their spouse.

One of the Important Scenes will be where Husband watches Wife idk fucking eat an entire can of olives and goes “I- I didn’t know you liked olives” and she’s like “Yeh I love them” *insert obnoxious slurping eating noises to prove she is a Relatable Female Character.*

And then cue dramatic melancholy music while he sits and thinks about how his job is actually meaningless in the face of the fact that it’s prevented him from learning more about the woman he married all those years ago.

There’s a bunch of scenes where they look pensively at each other from the doorway. They start off quarantine sitting on chairs on opposite sides of the living room. As the days progress they move closer and closer. By the end of the movie they’re next to each other on a love seat.

It’s about two upper middle class white heterosexuals. He works at a bank and she runs an etsy shop making tiny idly jewelry. Their neighbor is an Eldery Likable Black Man who offers them sage advice talking over the fence of their backyards. He of course eventually dies of the virus, leaving his two neighbors to learn and grow from the experience- and to treasure what really matters in life.

It makes 10 Bazillion dollars and several high brow movie critics talk breathlessly about how it accurately and beautifully handled the emotional and social struggle of life during the pandemic.

Husband is played by like Leonardo DiCaprio or something. Wife is a slim blonde actress who is 20 years younger than him, even though in the move their characters somehow went to high school together. Black Neighbor Killed Off For Character Development is played by Morgan Freeman. The movie is touted as one of the most Important Films Of The Decade.

Yep. That’s The Movie. IMO there also will be Elderly Heroic Asian Woman, owner of a grocery store, speaking bad English,  suffering but Performing Heroic Acts for the community, even the asshole racist who will eventually reform, cue tears. 

The whole film just flashed in front of my eyes.

God they live in Brooklyn don't they

The more insanity crops up the more I start getting predictions for the near future:

I fucking love libraries man like I’ve been chilling in my college library and randomly pulling out books and today I looked at one called “medieval sexuality” and it was talking about how monks thought they should never have sexual feelings or get erections ever and there was a quotation from the account of this one monk who wrote about how a woman had to stay with him one night because she was like travelling or something and the sight of her made him so horny that during that night he had to stick his hand in a candle flame to distract himself from how horny he was and also at least one monk wrote about having homoerotic dreams about Jesus

kids these days need to open a book and be scarred for life by some obscure historical fact that they could have easily gone their entire lives not knowing

*Opens book*

*takes 3000 Psychic damage*

*closes book*

“Neat!”

all the tom nook benevolent housing provider vs exploitative loan shark discourse fails to acknowledge one crucial fact, which is that he is a small and fat little creature

so?? that finale huh???

Donations.

I’M DEAD

Fun fact: if you know your feline body language, you’ll notice that the lynx is deferring to the housecat. As far as these two are concerned, the housecat is the higher-ranking cat.

OH MY GOSH

It’s because the cat is that lynx’s mom

BIG STRONG DAUGHTER

Realistic Pillows Sculpted from Blocks of White Marble by Håkon Anton Fagerås

Please no–

:)

things you can do while quarantined:

you ever get pissed off by somebody’s mindset? like damn.. you really think like that?

I may not be hip, but I am on Twitter

What a year March has been

it’s still march???

This one is called “The Unseen”.

It’s an old comic from The Secret Knots archives, only now I gave it a tumblr-friendlier format and fixed a couple of little things here and there. I made it in a sad time, a story I told myself to make me feel better and I think it worked.

I still like it. I hope you like it too.

New Secret Knots comic

For more clickbait comics see also

If this comic gets to 100K notes I’ll make a sequel.

update: here it is.

What Isabelle has been doing while waiting for you to upgrade resident services.