@seaglassandeelgrass / seaglassandeelgrass.tumblr.com
watched this for the first time when i was 14 i think? it saved me
Knew what this was before I clicked and had to watch the whole thing again.
If you haven’t seen it, now’s your chance!
ten years later still get shook
The universal urge--young and old--to pretend you're the one conducting
my dog was sleeping backstage and wandered out during the encore to sing with the band (via)
text pulled from linked reddit post:
This was back in 2016 at a theater in Little Washington, Virginia with our bluegrass band Walker’s Run. Jackdog was as good a hound as ever was, and loved nothing more than to sing. I couldn’t find anyone to watch him during this little weekend tour so just brought him along. His bed was backstage and I guess someone didn’t shut the green room door after we got called back to play an encore. We started the tune (Hangman’s Reel) and after about a minute I noticed everybody in the audience pulling out their phones to take pictures. Then we looked over and saw Jack had found his way out to the stage. He looked at us, looked at the audience, and then let her rip.
Jack was a rescue, and I suspect he had been abused as he was very scared and completely silent when we met. He stayed that way for a year, not barking, howling or so much as whispering. A few months after I got him from the pound in Rockbridge County, Virginia where the kennels are full of abandoned hunting dogs, we moved to the Central African Republic where we lived for two years. We spent a lot of time alone together there as I slowly got him to trust that the world could be a loving place.
One night I was playing guitar and when I picked up a slide and played a little run Jack for the first time made a sound. He had heard the howling sound of the glass on the steel strings and emulated it, nearly note for note. I was thrilled, and jam sessions became a nightly thing. From then on, from Africa to Washington to finally home in the Blue Ridge, anytime we played music Jack would join in. He became not just my best friend, but my ever present musical partner.
Jack was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and given six months to live. He outlasted the prognosis by two years and finally passed on in the Fall of 2020. His spirit is very much alive in the music. I have a guitar with an engraving of him on the headstock, and a few of his ashes inside so he’s still always singing when we play.
If you wanna see some more of Jackdog in action, you can check out the little “Jack” story link and the older posts on my Instagram (which is mostly now just astrophotography): @brennangilmorephoto.
I don't know what you all are complaining about, the Napoleon movie looks great.
I had forgotten about this brillant ad 🤣🤣🤣🤣
i watch baseball for the side quests
A short comic I made about my experiences as a seasonal worker, and the way places change you.
A first-hand account (originally from a Salon.com message board circa 1999) of a woman whose two primitive-type dogs – a Basenji and a New Guinea Singing Dog – found an elk carcass, holed up inside it, and refused to leave it.
An assorted list of my favorite excerpts:
It’s brilliant, and I am so glad it exists on the internet.
@why-animals-do-the-thing please tell me I can laugh at this
Yes, yes you can. Sometimes living with dogs is not graceful - this is a great example.
I hadn’t read this one in YEARS! Still hilarious!
Since reading old message board archive format is more than most people want to wade through, here is 1) just the main story without message board clutter and 2) her letter of validation, in a format easier to read. I have eliminated the comment thread which, while funny, is nowhere near this funny - you can read it at the link above.
AnneV - Okay - I know how to take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat? This is not, unfortunately, a joke.
AmyC - Um, can you give us a few more specifics here?
AnneV - They’re inside of it. They crawled inside, and now I have a giant incredibly heavy piece of carcass in my yard, with 2 dogs inside of it, and they are NOT getting bored of it and coming out. One of them is snoring. I have company arriving in three hours, and my current plan is to 1. put up a tent over said carcass and 2. hang thousands of fly strips inside it. This has been going on since about 6:40 this morning.
AmyC - Oh. My. God. What sort of carcass is big enough to hold a couple of dogs inside? Given the situation, I’m afraid you’re not going to be create enough of a diversion to get the dogs out of the carrion, unless they like greeting company as much as they like rolling around in dead stuff. Which seems unlikely. Can you turn a hose on the festivities?
Ase Innes-Ker - I’m sorry Anne. I know this is a problem (and it would have driven me crazy), but it is also incredibly funny.
AnneV - Elk. Elk are very big this year, because of the rain and good grazing and so forth. They aren’t rolling. They are alternately napping and eating. They each have a ribcage. Other dogs are working on them from the outside. It’s all way too primal in my yard right now. We tried the hose trick. At someone elses house, which is where they climbed in and began to refuse to come out. Many hours ago. I think that the hose mostly helps keep them cool and dislodges little moist snacks for them. hose failed. My new hope is that if they all continue to eat at this rate, they will be finished before the houseguests arrive. The very urban houseguests. Oh, god - I know it’s funny. It’s appalling, and funny, and completely entirely representative of life with dogs.
Kristen R. - I’m so glad I read this thread, dogless as I am. Dogs in elk. Dogs in elk.
AnneV - It’s like that childrens book out there - dogs in elk, dogs on elk, dogs around elk, dogs outside elk. And there is some elk inside of, as well as on, each dog at this point.
Elizabeth K - Anne, aren’t you in Arizona or Nevada? There are elk there? I’m so confused! We definately need to see pics of Gus Pong and Jake in the elk carcass.
AnneV - I am in New Mexico, but there are elk in both arizona and nevada, yes. There are elk all over the da*n place. They don’t look out very often. If you stand the ribcage on end they scramble to the top and look out, all red. Otherwise, you kinda have to get in there a little bit yourself to really see them. So I think there will not be pictures.
CoseyMo - “all red;” I’m not sure the deeper horror of all this was fully borne in upon me till I saw that little phrase.
AnneV - Well, you know, the Basenji (that would be Jake) is a desert dog, naturally, and infamous for it’s aversion to water. And then, Gus Pong (who is coming to us, live, unamplified and with a terrific reverb which is making me a little dizzy) really doesn’t mind water, but hates to be cold. Or soapy. And both of them can really run. Sprints of up to 35 mph have been clocked. So. If ever they come out, catching them and returning them to a condition where they can be considered house pets is not going to be, shall we say, pleasant.
CoseyMo - What if you stand the ribcage on end, wait for them to look out, grab them when they do and pull?
AnneV - They wedge their toes between the ribs. And scream. We tried that before we brought the elk home from the mountain with dogs inside. Jake nearly took my friends arm off. He’s already short a toe, so he cherishes the 15 that remain.
Linda Hewitt - Have you thought about calling your friendly vet and paying him to come pick up the dogs, elk and letting the dogs stay at the vets overnight. If anyone would know what to do, it would be your vet. It might cost some money, but it would solve the immediate crisis. Keep us posted.
ChristiPeters - Yikes! My sympathy! When I lived in New Mexico, my best friend’s dog (the escape artist) was continually bringing home road kill. When there was no road kill convenient, he would visit the neighbor’s house. Said neighbor slaughtered his own beef. The dog found all kinds of impossibly gross toys in the neighbor’s trash pit. I have always had medium to large dogs. The smallest dog I ever had was a mutt from the SPCA who matured out at just above knee high and about 55 pounds. Our current dog (daughter’s choice) is a Pomeranian. A very small Pomeranian. She’s 8 months old now and not quite 4 pounds. I’m afraid I’ll break her.
Lori Shiraishi - Bet you could fit a whole lot of Pomeranians in that there elk carcass! Anne - my condolences on what must be an unbelievable situation!
AnneV - I did call my vet. He laughed until he was gagging and breathless. He says a lot of things, which can be summed as *what did you expect?* and *no, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog.* He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home. Thanks, Lori. I am almost surrendered to the absurdity of it.
Lori Shiraishi - “He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home.” So he can fall down laughing in person?
AnneV - Basically, yeah. That would be about it.
AmyC - “No, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog.“ Oh, sweet lo*d, Anne. You have my deepest sympathies in this, perhaps the most peculiar of the Gus Pong Adventures. You are truly a woman of superhuman patience. wait – you carried the carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside?
AnneV - “The carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside?” no, well, sort of. My part in the whole thing was to get really stressed about a meeting that I had to go to, and say *yeah, ok, whatever* when it was suggested that the ribcages, since we couldn’t get the dogs out of them and the dogs couldn’t be left there, be brought to my house. Because, you know - I just thought they would get bored of it sooner or later. But it appears to be later, in the misty uncertain future, that they will get bored. Now, they are still interested. And very loud, one singing, one snoring.
Lori Shiraishi - “And very loud, one singing, one snoring.” wow. I can’t even begin to imagine the acoustics involved with singing from the inside of an elk.
AnneV - reverb. lots and lots of reverb.
AnneV - I’ll tell you the thing that is causing me to lose it again and again, and then I have to go back outside and stay there for a while. After the meeting, I said to my (extraordinary) boss, “look, I’ve gotta go home for the rest of the day, I think. Jake and Gus Pong are inside some elk ribcages, and my dad is coming tonight, so I’ve got to get them out somehow.” And he said, pale and huge-eyed, “Annie, how did you explain the elk to the clients?” The poor, poor man thought I had the carcasses brought to work with me. For some reason, I find this deeply funny. (weekend pause)
AnneV - So what we did was put the ribcages (containing dogs) on tarps and drag them around to the side yard, where I figured they would at least be harder to see, and then opened my bedroom window so that the dogs could let me know when they were ready to be plunged into a de-elking solution and let in the house. Then I went to the airport. Came home, no visible elk, no visible dogs. Peeked around the shrubs, and there they were, still in the elk. By this time, they had gnawed out some little portholes between some of the ribs, and you got the occasional very frightening glimpse of something moving around in there if you watched long enough. After a lot of agonizing, I went to bed. I closed the back door, made sure my window was open, talked to the dogs out of it until I as sure they knew it was open, and then I fell asleep. Sometimes, sleep is a mistake, no matter how tired you are. And especially if you are very very tired, and some of your dogs are outside, inside some elks. Because when you are that tired, you sleep through bumping kind of noises, or you kind of think that it’s just the house guests. It wasn’t the house guests. It was my dogs, having an attack of teamwork unprecedented in our domestic history. When I finally woke all the way up, it was to a horrible vision. Somehow, 3 dogs with a combined weight of about 90 pounds, managed to hoist one of the ribcages (the meatier one, of course) up 3 feet to rest on top of the swamp cooler outside the window, and push out the screen. What woke me was Gus Pong, howling in frustration from inside the ribcage, very close to my head, combined with feverish little grunts from Jake, who was standing on the nightstand, bracing himself against the curtains with remarkably bloody little feet. Here are some things I have learned, this Rosh Hashanah weekend: 1. almond milk removes elk blood from curtains and pillowcases, 2. We can all exercise superhuman strength when it comes to getting elk carcasses out of our yard, 3. The sight of elk ribcages hurtling over the fence really frightens the nice deputy sheriff who lives across the street, and 4. the dogs can pop the screens out of the windows, without damaging them, from either side.
AnneV - What I am is really grateful that they didn’t actually get the damn thing in the window, which is clearly the direction they were going in. And that the nice deputy didn’t arrest me for terrifying her with elk parts before dawn.
AmyC - Imagine waking up with a gnawed elk carcass in your bed, like a real-life “Godfather” with an all-dog cast.
AnneV - There is not enough almond milk in the world to solve an event of that kind.
.
Authentication:
The Validity of the Dogs in Elk Story
[Rob]: Since publishing the pumpkin version of the Dogs in Elk story, I’ve received dozens of e-mails from people curious about the story’s validity. I’ve also received e-mail from AnneVerchick, owner of the “real” dogs in elk.
I’ve never seen the dogs myself, and I’ve as yet to see a picture of the actual event, but here are some snippets of what Annie had to say. She sent me this 10/28/99:
Hi, Rob - This is AnneVerchick, owner of the dogs in elk. The pumpkin carving is lovely, and, on a smaller, more vegetative scale, really pretty faithful to what was one of the messier experiences of my recent life.
Thanks, and take care. Annie
.
After a couple of e-mail volleys, I finally mustered up the nerve to ask Annie to attest to the validity of the story. She wrote back:
Rob,
Sure, I can attest. I mean, I can tell you that it really did happen. I can ask a couple of people who stopped by to admire the whole scene to get in touch with you, or give you their email addresses and phone numbers.
Does that help at all? I think that it’s easy for me to lose track of how atypical my dog experiences are, in some ways, because like everyone else, what I compare the world to is my experience.
The thing about the dogs in elk thing is this - with the dogs I have, especially Gus Pong, who is a New Guinea Singing Dog, and a complete freak of primitive dogdom, dogs in elk is in some ways a fairly minor event, in that it involved fewer people than usual. Sharing a house with a very primitive, deeply attached and wildly inspired animal has led me into all sorts of situations I never anticipated as a pet owner.
How dogs in elk began is a little odd, without considerable history - ignore now, if you’re not interested. Gus Pong is a New Guinea Singing Dog - currently, they are classified as a subspecies of Dingo, but what they look like is a cross between a German Shepherd and a Shiba Inu. And he is an incredibly fussy eater. In the highlands, they live as semi-pariah dogs in the villages, and their primary use is for hunting. So, after being unable to find a commercial dog food that he would eat at all, I contacted local game processors and butchers. I lucked out. I found a really nice guy who was willing to give me (since game can’t be sold) trim and bones, which turned out to be something Gus Pong (and my other two dogs, Jake and Stella) thought was just fine. You can see, I am sure, where this is going. They had a rich texan come in, and shoot his tags, and not want the meat. So they did a really rough field dress, and called and asked if I wanted to come pick up about 100 lbs of slabcut elk and so forth. I said sure, and mistakenly put Jake and Gus in the car before driving up. Well, they got out of the car (One of slider windows was cracked, which I didn’t realize) and you know the rest.
The original chain of posts begins here: http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?14@@.ee90352/1317 which is in TableTalk, a forum at Salon, an ezine that added a webcrossing forum to it. That’s why I am so astonished that it made it all over the web - and really all over. My mother has gotten multiple copies from friends, asking if my dogs are *really* that out of control.
Take care, and let me know if you’d like to speak to someone other than me who was there.
Annie
here’s a compilation of different people driving box trucks into a low bridge over and over
It’s worth knowing a few fun facts, courtesy of 11foot8.com:
The guy who runs the website (and owns the cameras) says he sees a lot more trucks pull up to the stoplight, look at the warnings, and turn off onto the side road, but about once a month, someone hits the bridge.
the penske business is probably sick of this shit
Art Car with singing fish and lobster
The above caption egregious omits that the fish and lobsters are singing Bohemian Rhapsody.
the redwall feasts bot 🥰😭🥺
okay, that story about your roommate and the spaghetti squash sounds intriguing.
okay this story falls under the ‘sarah is bonkers & has to make everything she does way more difficult than it should be’ category of life decisions
so this happened when i was an undergrad, & i lived in an apartment with this other girl in the same town my parents live in, which was actually an ok setup because i could borrow their car & get free food without having to listen to my father snore or play james taylor’s christmas album. my mother belonged to this farming co-op thing where she’d get a bunch of weird ass veggies & stuff once a week from local farmers (& i grew up in arizona so like. sometimes it was weird shit). & i often got all the extra weird food my parents didnt want to bother cooking because i was a poor college student & didn’t complain about it.
so one week my mom picks up her veggie order & gets this giant monstrous spaghetti squash, its HUGE. my mother HATES spaghetti squash for whatever reason. hates it. naturally she offers to give it to me & i’m like ‘yeah ok sure’ & she’s all ‘sarah i can walk you through how to cook this but i don’t want it in my house i hate these things but tell me if you need help cooking this’ & i’m like ‘MOM i can cook a fucking squash it’s fine i’m 20 years old’
& i become VERY DETERMINED to cook this damn thing because my mother had implied that i didn’t know what i was doing & was helpless & just floundering my way through life. how cooking a giant evil orange oblong squash was gonna prove this i can’t tell you but that’s what i thought. i think i wanted to demonstrate that i was RESOURCEFUL and HEALTHY and ATE ADULT FOOD SHE DOESN’T LIKE.
naturally it was NOT FINE.
i bring the damn thing home & decide it’s too big to really do anything with so i’ll cut it open before i cook it because that’ll be easiest. i DID NOT read any directions on how to cook a spaghetti squash because i was determined to DO IT MYSELF LIKE AN ADULT WHO EATS SPAGHETTI SQUASH AND NEEDS NO HELP FROM NOBODY.
so i pretty quickly realize that i’m pretty unable to actually cut the squash open. it’s massive & has a thick rind & i can’t get a knife into it. i spend probably twenty minutes sitting on my kitchen floor with the squash in my lap trying to stab it with every knife in the kitchen & i can’t even get it fucking started. if i’d owned a fire ax i probably would’ve taken a fire ax to it. & naturally the situation evolves from simply a test of my adulting abilities to a TEST OF MY HONOR AND STRENGTH. I’VE GOT A 4.0 i tell myself I CAN OUTSMART A SQUASH but i can’t because i can’t cut it open. i have a bit of a meltdown at this point because my self worth, which is fragile & bewildering on a good day, is being torn to shreds by a stupid fucking orange gourd.
the logical thing to do at this point would have been to give up because i’m not all that wild about spaghetti squash anyway but i CANT ADMIT DEFEAT I HAVE TO OWN THIS STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!
so i decide to stick the squash in a giant pot & boil it for a while until it gets soft enough to be cut open. brilliant. i’m a genius. i’m so pleased with myself. everyone in the entire world could have told me this was a bad idea. if i’d called my mother to ask for her help she would have probably had a heart attack but i didn’t do that because i’m DETERMINED TO WIN.
so i stick the damn thing in the biggest pot i have, put it on the stove, & feeling very pleased with myself go to take a nap because i’ve fought a battle that i am winning
my roommate gets home maybe an hour and a half later, drops her stuff off, sees me sleeping on the couch and walks into the kitchen. and naturally, as soon as she walks into the kitchen the vegetable bomb that i planted in a pot of boiling water on our stove goes the fuck off which is what happens when you put a large round semi-hollow object in a pot of very hot water so steam builds up inside and then forget about it. so roommate walks into the kitchen
and the squash TAKES FLIGHT.
because, surprise, when you let an incredible amount of steam build up inside something shaped like a bomb it will BURST A HOLE IN THE SIDE AND FLY INTO THE AIR LIKE A RED HOT GOURD PROJECTILE
it sounded kind of like someone firing a cannon in our living room so i wake up thinking someone is SHOOTING AT ME, vault over the couch screaming to see the squash launch out of the pot of water straight up into the air. it misses my roommate’s head by maybe a half a foot. she screams and i scream and we both hit the deck and the squash smacks into the ceiling and then to the ground, splattering squash insides all over us and the floor.
needless to say i had a lot of apologizing to do because i almost murdered her with dinner, & i then had to tell my mother that i’d completely failed in making my point about being mature & self sufficient, but had discovered that spaghetti squash work really great as weaponry if the situation ever arises.
i think she laughed at me for forty five minutes.
so there you go, that’s the story about how i almost accidentally committed squash bomb homicide
BEST FOOD STORY.
That is truly. The most brilliant way to fuck up a squash I have ever heard. <3
If “Squash Bomb Homicide” isn’t an indie band name, it darn well should be.
today i am thinking about what we leave behind. in the store, on all of the bath mats, someone has drawn a heart or left a handprint. in the pen aisle, each page of the test paper is covered in names and little drawings and fuck covid and over and over again - hello hello hello hi hello. on the street i live, three houses have perfect hopscotch lanes carefully transcribed with rules and everything - jump here! now do a spin! graffiti of a deer on the side of a building, names scrawled into setting concrete. initials carved into park bench seats. In the bathroom, in silver sharpie - i hope you’re okay out there. i love you, you’re beautiful, keep trying. geocached tubes of trinkets, jackets left out in case somebody needs it. a note on my windshield - closed your door it was a little open have a great day and stay safe! my friends and i, fully grown adults, build a sandcastle on the edge of the ocean.
inside of returned schoolbooks. inside of little secret pockets. hi hello hello hello. what a beautiful calling. you and i are in different times, and will never meet, but here is the greeting i’d owe you. if you never get to see this person, what do you say? hello! i love you. be good out there. be safe.
excerpt from “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay (transcript under the cut)
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?
the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.
and the I Have Seen the Top of Clouds essay:
The only thing we can say for sure is that we will die, but we will die having gone so far above our primordial ponds and primate forests that we saw the tops of clouds.
have different starting points but all reach a similar conclusion, which might be, quoting the first post, “It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried.”
Dr. Katherine (Kay) Fowler-Billings was an American naturalist and geologist. She is commonly known for being one of the earliest female geologists. In 1926 she dressed as a man to join a geologic expedition. She mapped >500 square miles of the Laramie Mountains alone in 2 Summers. She fundamentally changed our understanding of the Rockies.
She did not know how to use that gun.
#she also has a degree in making my stomach feel funny
Wow I really do have a Type don’t I.
