Ava: Don't kill me, I have a wife!

A FBC: You think I care about that?

Ava: No, this isn't a plea for mercy. It's a warning.

A FBC: What?

Beatrice: READY TO DIE?

guy who is not necessarily nonbinary but also not NOT nonbinary. guy who doesnt fit into the binary-nonbinary binary. if you will

hate it when I call myself a girl and then someone goes "you're not a girl you're nonbinary/agender" and it's like. I am whatever I say I am. freak. I am a girl I am a little guy I am the man of the owl. I am nothing. I am everything. do not presume to know me in anyway I do not know myself

three fun and sexy facts about me: 1.) i have a slight fructose intolerance which manifests itself mostly in me getting violently ill whenever i eat garlic. 2.) i have “delayed phased sleep disorder” aka my body wants to sleep during the day and stay up at night. 3. i am extremely sensitive to sunlight and cannot be in direct sunlight for more than like five minutes without getting burned or overheated.

extra bonus fun and sexy fact: the one and only time i stepped foot in a catholic church, someone spilled hot coffee on me and i got a bad burn on my chest and had to leave before the service started

unrelated: i think i might start taking classes to become a phlebotomist 

wait i gotta google something

yeah this is funny

STILL ON PATROL

I learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”

?????

There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:

THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU

anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice

There’s definitely something ominous about that—the implication that, one day, they will return from patrol.

Actually, it’s rather sweet. I don’t know if this is common across the board, but my dad’s friend is a radio op for subs launched off the east coast, and he always is excited for Christmas, because they go through the list of SoP subs and hail them, wishing them a merry Christmas and telling them they’re remembered.

Imagine a country whose seamen never die, and whose submarines can’t be destroyed…because no ones sure if they exist or not.

No but imagine. It’s Christmas. A black, rotting corridor in a forgotten submarine. The sound of dripping water echoes coldly through the hull. You can’t see very far down the corridor but then, a man appears, he’s running, in a panic, but his footsteps make no noise. The spectral seaman dashes around the corner and slips through a rusty wall. He finds himself at the back of a crowd of his cadaverous crew-mates. They part to let him through. He feels the weight of their hollow gaze as he reaches the coms station. Even after all these years a sickly green light glistens in the dark. The captain’s skeleton lays a sharp hand on his shoulder and nods at him encouragingly, the light sliding over the bones of his skull. The ghost of the seaman steadies himself and slips his fingers into the dials of the radio, possessing it. It wails and screeches. A bombardment of static. And then silence. The deathly crew mates look at each other with worry, with sadness; could this be the year where there is no voice in the dark? No memory of home? The phantasm of the sailor pushes his hand deeper into the workings of the radio, the signal clears, and then a strong voice, distant with the static but warm and kind, echoes from the darkness; “Merry Christmas boys, we’re all thinking of you here at home, have a good one.” A sepulchral tear wafts it’s way down the seaman’s face. The bony captain embraces him. The crew grin through rotten jaws, laughing silently in their joy. They haven’t forgotten us. They haven’t forgotten.

I am completely on board with this. It’s not horrifying, it’s heartwarming.

Personal story time: whenever I go to Field Museum’s Egypt exhibit, I stop by the plaque at the entrance to the underground rooms. It has an English translation of a prayer to feed the dead, and a list of all the names they know of the mummies on display there. I always recite the prayer and read aloud the list of names. They wanted to live forever, to always have their souls fed and their names spoken. How would they feel about being behind glass, among strangers? Every little thing you can do to give respect for the dead is warranted.

I love the idea of lost subs still being on patrol. Though if you really want something ominous, let me say that the superstitious part of me wonders: why are they still on patrol? If they haven’t been found, do they not consider their mission completed? What is it out there that they are protecting us from?

@boromir-queries-sean

 There’s been something in the water since we first learned to float on it.  Not marine life, although there’s more of that than we’ll ever know.  Not rocks and currents and sand bars and icebergs either, although they’ve all taken more than their share of human life.

But something deeper.  Something Other.  Something not natural.

Sailors have always been superstitious.

Not one of them described it right.

You don’t hear about it so much now that we don’t lose ships anymore, really, not like we did at the height of the sea trade when barely an inch of ocean floor didn’t bear some wreck or other.  And better ships and GPS and weather satellites have all played their part in that.

But we have protection now that we didn’t before.  They don’t interfere with war and battle, even on behalf of what used to be their country, or with rocks and weather and human stupidity.  Those are concerns for the living.

But the Other Things, the Things that shouldn’t be there - They can’t get to us now without a fight.  It’s a fight They haven’t won in a very long time.

As long as we remember them, as long as we call out to them - not very often, just once a year will do - they will keep protecting us from the Things that go bump in the deep.

More than fifty submarines, Still On Patrol.

I love everything about this, but it’s the last bit that made me say “okay now I’ll reblog it.”

COLD WEATHER TIPS FROM SOMEONE WHO LIVES WHERE IT’S COLD:

I always see posts about layering clothing, but there are so many more creative ways to help keep you warm if you don’t have a lot of warm clothes. But first, a note on layering clothing:

-Your underlayer is your WICKING layer. That means it is a layer specifically to absorb the moisture your body produces. DO NOT USE COTTON AS A BOTTOM LAYER. Use merino wool if possible, but other good substitutions are nylon, polyester and rayon. 

-Your middle layer is for insulation. You want AIR POCKETS in there, NOT tight fitting clothes. This is where you want to put your fluffy sweaters, your fleece, down, fur, flannel, or vests. If you do not have these, you can substitute with multiple layers of long sleeve shirts.

-Your outer layer is for keeping the cold away from your body. If you do not have a jacket, you can put on your thickest piece of clothing and then a raincoat over it. Windbreaker if you have one. 

ALSO

-Jeans are the absolute worst at holding heat. Use only as a last resort. 

-You can’t really ever have too many layers on your feet. Alternate tucking your layers of pants into your layers of socks to keep your ankles warm!

-Wear a hat OVER a hood if it will fit! This will keep your ears warmest.

TAKE OFF/OUT ANY AND ALL JEWELERY/PIERCINGS

-If you have a medical bracelet, DO NOT REMOVE IT. If you can, tuck a layer of clothes between it and your skin.

NON-CLOTHING TIPS:

-Raid your recycling. Gather all cardboard boxes and break them down so that they are flat. Put them on the floor to add more layers between you and the cooling house. Newspaper will also serve the same purpose.

-In an emergency, you can also layer newspaper between clothing layers. Don’t worry about looking stupid if you’re staying warm.

-If you have a tent, set that sucker up in whatever room you have decided to stay in. Stay in it and keep it zipped shut as much as you can, but do NOT cover the vent at the top. You can put the rain fly up, but make sure there is circulating air for you to breathe.

-You are probably not going to feel very hungry at times. DO NOT STOP EATING OR DRINKING. Digestion produces a lot of body heat and the food will give your body energy to keep itself going.

-The best foods are heavy and full of carbs and proteins. Eat nuts, eggs, pasta, meats, and beans. If you are on a diet, now you’re not. If you’re vegetarian… bulk up on those pastas and nuts.

-Try not to sweat. If you are finding yourself getting damp, take off the outer layer just until you start to cool slightly. Then redress! Your bottom layer should dry quickly, and being wet is dangerous.

-On that note, STAY ACTIVE. You are probably going to want to hunker down and snuggle up, but that will make your muscles cramp. Every 15-20 minutes do something that gets you up and about. Walk circles in the room, do a couple jumping jacks, stretch, whatever. Just enough to move some blood around your body. Don’t get sweaty or out of breath, it’s just a little movement.

-CHAPSTICK. ON YOUR LIPS. ON YOUR NOSE. ON YOUR EARS. ON YOUR KNUCKLES. Don’t let your extremities get dry or cracked.

SIGNS OF HYPOTHERMIA:

-Uncontrollable shivering -Slurred speech -Confusion or memory loss -Dizziness or lack of coordination -Inability to be woken from sleep

CHILDREN AND INFANTS!!!! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.

-Children WILL get colder before you. Make sure they are properly bundled up.

-If you need to breastfeed, put a blanket over the both of you and wait a few minutes for the air to warm before removing or shifting your clothing.

-DO NOT COVER AN INFANTS FACE. ESPECIALLY WHEN SLEEPING. Keep them tucked inside your own clothes when possible. As close to your heart and stomach as possible. 

-Put chapstick on children’s cheeks and clean their face often if they are crying or wiping at their nose. This will prevent cracked skin and irritation.

-Make sure your children are staying as hydrated as you! They are going to fuss and not want to drink cold things, but they NEED liquids.

SIGNS OF HYPOTHERMIA IN INFANTS AND TODDLERS ARE DIFFERENT:

-Shortness of breath  -Cold, red skin -Lethargy or listlessness

Finally:

CHECK ON YOUR NEIGHBORS. CHECK ON CHILDREN. CHECK ON THE ELDERLY. STAY SNUGGLED. STAY SAFE.

Hey guys, I am boosting this again for winter 2022/23 with Texas and New England in mind. If you haven’t heard, the energy companies for these areas in particular have expressed that they may need to conduct rolling blackouts throughout the winter due to energy shortages. We are also expected to have a very cold winter.

It’s important to get your chimneys inspected if you have a wood stove/fireplace/ect to make sure they are clean and safe. Store wood an appropriate distance from the heat source.

If your power is out and therefor the water as well, and you HAVE to flush that toilet, you can take the top off the tank and pour some in before each flush. DO NOT waste your drinking water on this. Use a bucket of water from a pond or run the bath and fill up a bucket beforehand. Do not use pool water. I haven’t looked into what chlorine would do to a septic tank/public water supply but I assume it’s nothing good.

If you have questions about the blackouts, I suggest calling your energy provider (I need to do this too) to see if they have more information or a schedule of when they might need to start implementing shut downs.

Buckle up and bundle up, everyone. Be safe 💜

Wear a layer under your jeans. Denim, when it gets cold, doesn’t keep that cold away from your body. The old mountaineer’s saying is “Denim kills”, because so many people lost in the mountains are found dead from exposure when wearing only one layer and that layer being only cotton denim when the temperature dropped below freezing all night, especially when it is wet. as OP said, wear layers. Wool is the best because even if it is wet it retains the ability to keep heat in the body. Wear a hat – a lot of heat escapes through the head – and if you can manage it, gloves as well as socks.  If you knit, you can make your own; if you know someone who knits, see if they’ll knit for you, swap skills so you make your fantastic soup and you get gloves and/or socks.  Fingerless mitts are also surprisingly warm.

Do all you can to stay dry – it is much harder to get yourself back to warm if your clothes have gotten wet.

Signal boost.

gotta admit, I'm impressed with their dedication to the bit

ppl are so annoying “you can’t paint ur bedroom pink you’re an adult” i did not spend my entire life waiting to grow up and control my life to paint my bedroom beige

I had a sales woman in furniture store try and tell me not to buy a hot bubblegum pink loveseat because she wanted me to “think about the future”

Bitch, I am thinking about the future. I already got a hot bubblegum pink couch at home and now I need a loveseat to go with it.

when I first bought my house, I announced my decision to paint my bedroom purple. I had wanted a purple bedroom for thirty damn years, you fucking bet I was gonna have one now. My friends decided, for some reason, that I meant what one of them referred to as “14 year old girl purple” (through what’s wrong with the colors a 14 year old girl chooses, I don’t know, even if they’re not what I want as an adult). They didn’t believe me until they saw the color on the actual wall, even thought they helped me pick out paints. My mother, meanwhile, decided to get worried that if I painted my bedroom a “dark purple”, it would be “depressing”. As if, with an entire house to live in, I would spend all my time in the bedroom, which I wanted to be dark because I would be sleeping in there. In the damn dark.

I had like one, maybe two friends who were all like FUCK YEAH YOU PAINT IT WHATEVER COLOR YOU WANT, PURPLE BEDROOMS ARE AWESOME.

But when they actualy saw the finished bedroom, every single one of them was like, “Oh yeah, that’s really pretty.” (Well, the ones who supported me from the beginning were more like WOOHOO.)

And the moral of the story is: Fuck ‘em, please yourself. Either they’ll come around, or you can safely ignore every question of taste they opine about for the rest of time.

This applies to other adulting activities, too. When I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to have a wedding cake made of doughnuts. When I got older, I figured that I would be “mature” about it and get a traditional cake, which the older adults approved of. Now that I’m 25 and facing the possibility of actual marriage in the near future, I’m just like “marriage is a social construct but it comes with tax & insurance benefits, so just give me that goddamn doughnut cake.” If they don’t like it then they don’t have to come to my wedding.

https://xkcd.com/150/

I would like you all to view my office. I’m thirty and my rainbow room is awesome, people can fight me

I’m thirty and my first big furniture purchase was a custom coffin shaped coffee table that opens up and is lined with purple crushed velvet. I would have loved it at 13 and I love it now. Growing up doesn’t mean you have to abandon what makes you happy.

GROWING UP DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO ABANDON WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.

This is honest to god the funniest thing I have ever seen in my entire life

This 1️⃣ goes out to all the horny 💏 couples out there who are thinking 🤔 of getting rowdy 🔞 this 💌Valentines💮 day evening: 👍 👎DO ❌️ NOT👍 👎 If you do your child 🧒 will be born 👏 a ♏SCORPIO♏ Now, why ❓️ don’t ❌️ we like Scorpio's♏? For starters, “Scorpio” has 7️⃣ letters 🔠. 7️⃣ letters 🔠: 7️⃣ deadly ☠️ sins ✝️ 🙅‍♀ Now, what are the 7️⃣ deadly ☠️ sins? Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy 👏👏 Envy is associated with the color GREEN 💚 What else is green 💚? Marijuana. Just 1️⃣ more pothead in the world 🗺️. LAME. Now where is pot 🍲 legal? Canada 🇨🇦, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Alaska, airplane ✈️ bathrooms if the pilot’s 👨‍✈️ chill. And where can 🥫 planes ✈️ take you? California 🕶. And what’s on California’s state flag 🚩? A BEAR 🐻. Your child 🧒. Is gay 👨‍❤️‍👨.

Its me qtip don’t listen to them boy put me in your ear

this is in my top 10 favorite tweets of all time along with this one

every time i eat one of these fucking things my soul goes away and i become a mafia boss smoking a fat fucking cigar pondering the next sap on my hit list

u guys will watch anything wtf is wednesday

its tomorrow innit?

happy wednesday is tomorrow innit tuesday

i think grossness is a vital aspect of life btw and we all experience it and i think its important to represent in art and i think oversanitization of popular media is 100% our downfall. things are gross and disgusting and yucky and thats life we cannot deny ourselves this

I keep thinking about this in the context of caring for my ageing patients. No one TELLS them, before they’re old, how things are going to change, or why. No one talks about the loss of elastin, and how that doesn’t just affect your skin looking old, but also how it heals. No one warns them that their skin will become paper-thin if they live long enough, incredibly fragile and easy to tear. Just “hurr dur wrinkly!!!”

No one tells them their bowels are going to lose strength and coordination, so it gets more and more difficult to have bowel movements. No one warns them about obstipation, much less bowel obstructions. I have a saying I repeat often in clinic: “Proper pooping prevents problems!” I say it because it makes people chuckle, because it destigmatizes needing to poop. Everyone poops. And it turns out pooping requires both a complex network of nerves to create peristalsis, and stools soft enough to move through the bowels, and I have watched more than one elderly patient die because their bowels stopped working right.

No one talks about hemorrhoids, so I have patients coming in terrified by blood in their stools–and listen, blood in your poop is definitely a good reason to see a doctor; if you’re over 50 and you haven’t had a colonoscopy, get one. It’s the best health screening we have evidence for, in my opinion. Colon cancer is a bitch. But more commonly, people have bloody stools because they have either hemorrhoids that are bleeding or because they have an anal fissure after straining on a hard bowel movement. Do you know what a hemorrhoid is? I didn’t, until I was well into medical school. Everyone has them. They’re venous columns that surround the rectum and anus. Internal ones can bleed; external ones can itch. Most people will get them eventually. Be kind about them.

Everyone is going to have trouble peeing if they live long enough. Men can’t start, women can’t stop. Because people with prostates will often have benign enlargement of the prostate–it’s not cancer, but it gets bigger–and the urethra, the tube that lets urine leave the bladder, goes through the prostate. Bigger prostate = compressed tube, less flow. Meanwhile, people with uteruses have much shorter urethras, which means that when we lose that beautiful collagen and elastic, we also lose it in the two sphincters that help us keep from leaking urine, and so we leak urine. Especially when something triggers an increase in intra-abdominal pressure, like a sneeze or a cough or a laugh.

All these things people are taught to be ashamed of and embarrassed about–they are so common. They’re normal parts of having a human body and doing the things one does with a human body. Poop trouble? Welcome to the club! People have been writing about their cures for constipation for as long as written language has existed. Listen, you are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone. And that means that when someone else has a gross problem, you must be kind to them, because that is going to be you. There will be a day when you have diarrhea, because viral gastroenteritis spreads like wildfire every winter. There will be a day when you cough a huge glob of mucus comes out, because mucus is a natural defense mechanism and kind of miraculous but also nasty. Every gross thing a body can do, yours is likely to do, if not now then later.

Be kind.

to add on to this post that i absolutely agree with:

when we deny the grossness of our bodies, it also allows us to weaponize normal gross body things against marginalized people.

for example, Jessie Gender on YouTube has a video in which she calls out the way people will describe gender-affirming surgeries with the most disgusting terms possible in order to further stigmatize trans people, despite the fact that you could use the same tactics to describe any surgical procedure, really.

i’ve also definitely seen grossness weaponized against fat people. thin people get so weirded out about us having to “wash under the folds,” as if they don’t wash under their armpits and (hopefully) their butt crack. but no, basic hygiene is gross when it’s a fat person doing it, i guess.

and though i don’t have as much knowledge about this in terms of race, i’m sure people of color also have their basic bodily functions stigmatized moreso that white people. i know we (white ppl) get super weird about Black hair maintenance, for example.

i really think the solution is to accept that the human condition is being disgusting a little bit sometimes.

Every person need to be taught disability history

Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.

Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”

Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.

Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.

Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.

Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”

Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.

Teach about us.

What does your regret taste like?

i cheerfully tell people i'd rather regret saying yes than regret saying no.

this is a good rule of thumb when you have dug the grave. when you have shoveled entire years of your life into the mouth of mental illness. when you have watched your future dissolve, cotton candy in water, fizzling into mist. is there a way to quantify what exactly it took from me? the true amount (in pounds? ounces?) of what i missed.

so far from the earth, i saw my own body warping in this hideous fashion. how is it that someone can wear all that numb like an anvil and still go about their day? i would have let a tusk rip me hollow and still called myself stable. i wasn't an emergency, i was a fracture. the way ice cracks beneath snow. i deleted myself, turned my spirit into granules.

wayside child. standing by the side of the road, almost killed by the oncoming blow. mouth full of road rash and sand and bacitracin. mouth full of what never made it home. mouth full; body plucked chickenbone empty. like if you close your eyes you start feeling like you're falling.

someone asked me recently - would you rather live with your depression or your anxiety and without hesitating i said oh absolutely my anxiety. i know her, and she absolutely tries to kill me. she tears my hair out, rips all my nails off, makes me panicky and sick.

but depression stood there, her jaw so open, sticking her tongue out for the rain. she watched me, in the gutter, begging her for a hint of my life back. around me, splintered, were the other wonders i had gathered, gathering dust and gravedirt. she turned those yellow eyes at me so soberly and yet i still knew she was laughing. she toed them over into oblivion. mine, she said. mine, before they're yours.

to be sitting there, watching the world spiral so gloriously out ahead of me, the carrot before the donkey. to have it within my reach. to let it slip out of my fingers, almost happily. gently. to touch it without taking. nothing technically stopped me. if i had just gotten up, i could have eaten my fill. i sat at a banquet and starved and still felt like - ah. oh well.

blistering on the tarmac. never been hit, but already roadkill.

one thing about me is that i will buy a beverage