Once again I am

I used to read a webcomic where the main character was both, don’t remember the cause of it but I do remember it wasn’t supposed to be something that could happen. I think the vampire bite woke the dormant lycan genes, and some other supernatural bull crap made it possible to become a hybrid instead of just dying because of the earring natures.

I know it was a typo and you meant warring natures, but it is too late I am already parsing out earring styles for vampires vs werewolves

lol, yes a typo I didn’t catch because of ADD brain being in a hurry. I can see it now, a yin yang of a wolf and bat fighting.

Oh, I actually found that comic, https://shiftersonline.realmscapes.net/

Once again I am

I used to read a webcomic where the main character was both, don’t remember the cause of it but I do remember it wasn’t supposed to be something that could happen. I think the vampire bite woke the dormant lycan genes, and some other supernatural bull crap made it possible to become a hybrid instead of just dying because of the earring natures.

I know it was a typo and you meant warring natures, but it is too late I am already parsing out earring styles for vampires vs werewolves

lol, yes a typo I didn’t catch because of ADD brain being in a hurry. I can see it now, a yin yang of a wolf and bat fighting.

Once again I am

I used to read a webcomic where the main character was both, don’t remember the cause of it but I do remember it wasn’t supposed to be something that could happen. I think the vampire bite woke the dormant lycan genes, and some other supernatural bull crap made it possible to become a hybrid instead of just dying because of the earring natures.

There was a murder case in Ireland where the killer and the victim had had burner phones (they were in a secret relationship). Both Nokia, the old school ones.

The killer dumped them in a deep, very muddy pond that often froze over, had a ton of plants, fish, and algae, and the mud was very runny/could theoretically get into cracks easily.

Anyway those phones were down there ages. I can’t remember exactly how long, I’d guess a year or so. Police finally recovered them. They consulted data retrieval experts.

I kid you not, when they learned they were Nokias, they recommended just letting them dry out then trying to power them on.

Sure enough, those babies flashed right up. Like nothing had happened.

Truly indestructible.

Above is true, by the way. I’m pretty sure they refer to the murder of Elaine O'Hara. The phones were found in a reservoir and had been there for little over a year.

The ADHD and autism crossover function where you thoroughly overpack for trips

not because you are bad at organization and planning and control but, rather

you know the unpredictability of the world and the possibility of the arising of Conditions or Circumstances which change which outfits or clothing items you can wear, including being two days out on your trip and your electric meat deciding without warning that most of what you brought if now illegal

So your overpacking is self-knowledge and planning for control in the uncontrollable

that is a thing right that’s not just me?

Not just illegal clothes but also, too many fidgets, book for reading that will not be read, book for writing/art that will not be used, many tech and all the chargers. Maybe even your pillow and blanket because the one there might be “wrong”.

Really depends how long the trip because sometimes I can tell myself “I’m going on an adventure and sometimes that means discomfort but the overall balance is worth it” but three weeks with the wrong pillow is NOT worth it and if I didn’t bring a good one I’d have to buy one.

I think the only time I haven’t overpacked for a trip was when I flew to Florida and only took a carryon. Had enough clothes for the trip, but realized when I got there that I didn’t bring some needed stuff, and had to make sure it all fit on the way home.

Herschel Has Discovered Tool Use. Again.

In january of 2021, deep in the throes of pandemic psychosis, we acquired a Corgi Puppy.

I would like to go on the record that we did not get a Corgi because they're cute. We got a Corgi because they're criminally brilliant and enthusiastic working dogs that were bred to bully cattle, which is the exact temperment a dog living in a house with three ADHD adults should have. Herschel does commit a lot of crime, but he also does his appinted service-dog job of "make everyone wake up, eat meals and go to bed at a reasonable and consistent time" extremely well, as well as his bonus jobs of "Keep the squirrels the hell out of the garden" and "Yell every time the cat does something". I didn't actually ask him to do that last job but it has helped in the "teach the cat to stay the hell off the stove" area.

But even with having a whole pack of humans another dog, and a cat to manage, this pales in comparison to his genetic capacity to manage several hundred sheep or cattle across the fields of Wales, and thus, Herschel has decided on further intellectual pursuits to occupy himself, namely, speedrunning the early phases of human tool use and terraforming.

I realized he has the brains of an entire hunter-gatherer tribe shortly after he got fixed, and within 24 hours and still dpey from anesthesia, he'd figured out that his plastic cone could be used to monopolize the water bowl and his favorite chew toys, and within a week, had learned how to carry three toys at once while leaving his mouth open by tucking the toys behind his enormous ears and under his chin. He also figured out that he could wiggle the cone to rest against his shoulders, and started using it as a shovel by literally running the bottom edge into the ground. But that wasn't making holes effeicently enough, apparently, and I ended up watching him figure out how to rotate the cone around so the two pieces of overlapping plastic were under his chin, then use his chin and the stairs to the deck to pinch both ends into a much more efficient V-Shape that let him gouge huge strips of dirt up in seconds. The anthropologists and animal behaviorists in the audience may recognize this as Tool Creation, a behavior normally only seen in higher primates, crows, and some parrots. Once a hole of suitable length, depth and temperature had been achieved, he very carefully rolled the cone around so the digging side was over his head and the smooth side under his chin, and splooted into his hole to cool his little tummy and stitches off. It was at that point that I realized that I was going to have to teach him how to garden, or he was going to teach himself.

He no longer has the cone (He was beginning to experiment with it as a battering ram), but his morning ritual is now "Wake everyone up at 8AM by screaming, locate everyone in house and jam my nose up theirs to make sure they're alive, go outside and scream at the squirrels. Now that Yard is Secure, go get Fun Parent who has hopefully taken their meds by now, and supervise them while they rifle through the plants (this is apparently KEY to their mental health), eating any pest animals Fun Parent points out, chase squirrel AGAIN, go inside and get Breakfast cookie." and BY GOD if we deviate from it there will be much screaming and destruction. If I am not home, it has been reported that he walks round the garden beds and sniffs the plants in the order I usually check them in before he will agree to come in. He doesn't quite know what the deal with the melons is, just that they need to be checked.

But we're out of the labor-intensive parts of gardening and now into Harvesting Season, and this is a bit boring except when I give him snap peas right off the vine, and he has decided to work on the complex physics problem that is Doorknobs.

And last week, he had a breakthrough.

Sometime in 2020, my mom sort-of taught her horrible crime herding dog Arwen how to open the back door so she could let herself out as she pleased during the day and stop interrupting Mom's Zoom calls. Arwen is a Kelpie, which means she's about 60lbs with full-length legs and horrible monkey paws that are one joint away from being hands, so when Arwen wants to open the back door, she sits up, leans on the door for purchase/to push it, and uses her terrible crime hands to *push* on the knob until it turns. She can pull the knob open by pawing and catching it on her toes, but she's 11-13 years old now and has mild arthritis, so she prefers to catch it on her central pad instead. She taught Charlie, the other equally brilliant but less criminally inclined dog, to do this but he doesn't like to go outside alone, so he rarely does this.

Herschel, ever the observant student, immediately tried copying them, but even though he is actually tall enough to reach the knob, his toes are just too stubby to get a decent grip on the knob, pushing or pulling, and the first few times, gave up and sat down to scream until one of the fullsize dogs or humans came to open the door for him.

Last week, we were up at my parent's again, and I watched him hunt around the living room until he found his slightly-sticky orange rubber ball (It's clean, it's just a kind of rubber that's always a bit tacky), carry it across the house, stand up on his hind legs at the back door, put the rubber ball on top of the gap between the knob and the wall, and then push down on the ball, which caught the doorknob and turned it for him, thus opening the door. He let himself out, had a merry time yelling at the squirrels, came back in, stopped a few feet inside the door, went back out, grabbed his ball, and brought it back into his kennel, a place he can leave toys if he doesn't want the other dogs playing with them.

This means he somehow worked out how doorknobs work, how fucking levers work, and that his orange rubber ball specifically was the one that would work (none of his other toys are the correct size/texture), that he'd need that ball specifically to open the door again, and yesterday he did the same trick with the bedroom door, so he knows that the rubber ball/skeleton key can be used on all doorknobs, not just that one.

I wonder if I can teach him to sweep.

___

If you want to fund Herschel's research into Tool Use and/or get me therapy for the ensuing chaos, please feel free to donate to my Ko-Fi, or get further Dog Content by subscribing to my Patreon.

I can't believe I wrote this and then forgot to include a picture of the little man for a solid 24 hours:

Behold, my Crime Tube.

It's two and a half in the morning and I have no words or brain capacity to process the joy I feel right now, so I'm going to reblog it and look at it again later.

Thanks for reminding me about this post because The Crime Tube has bullied me into doing a garden this year, with the kind of patient positive re-enforcement and blatant emotional manipulation that would make a dog trainer or Hannibal Lecter would admire.

I wasn't planning on doing a garden this year because we just moved house, had an extremely expensive plumbing event and I got spayed this spring, so I had neither time, money, nor core muscle fortitude for starting a garden this march, which is usually when the beds have to go in if you're trying to establish a garden out here. But we have had an extremely wet spring so everything's running a bit late and I was on the fence about starting a little one, and put some of the plastic bins from the Pandemic Patio Garden out to see what kind of sun exposure they'd get.

Once sighted, Herschel realized that A Garden was a possibility and started on a campagin of psychological manipulation.

Herschel loves the garden, because he likes green beans off the vine but more than that, the garden attracts squirrels to the yard and his bloodlust has been left wanting of late. He also loves activities and I think was maybe a little sad that he wasn't getting to do his morning patrol of the yard with me this year.

So he stopped going out in the mornings.

He clearly wanted to. Charlie, who very much likes having his little helper dog around, wanted herschel to come out too. but instead, Herschel would run to the far end of the house where he can still see the back door, and watch me.

...he wants something. I try offering a treat. Nope. I try calling Charlie over and heaping attention on him, something that usually makes Herschel's jealous little ass hustle on over. Nope. Still waiting for something. I put my shoes on. ZOOM. Ah. My presence is wanted outside. I step out with them. I step back in. Herschel stops MID-PEE to turn around and come back in, and stands at the far end of the house. I go back out. Morning yard activities resume as normal.

He continues this nonsense of running away from the back door until I put on my shoes and go outside with them, and immediately stopping what he's doing if I go back inside before some internal metric of his is met for the better part of a week.

Then it's herding me outside, and jumping on me for attention, running nine feet away, stopping, and looking over his shoulder at me, which has previously been established as his "Are You Following Me? Please Follow Me." I follow. He has shown me carrion instead of just eating it before and I gave him a whole piece of turkey about it because that was VERY good behavior and I am eager to re-enforce it. Instead, he patrols around the plastic bins, doing a "Follow Me?" check every few feet.

Yesterday I returned from the nursery with 70% off annual plants for a mini-garden and not only were there extreme yard zoomies of excitement, I got three toys piled on my foot as a reward for the desired gardening Behavior.

Now, This is the kind of behavior I got and trained Herschel for- Herding dogs are good at remembering load-bearing rituals like "Take your meds" and "It's time for food!" and other stuff my ADHD Brain struggles with. So I'm very proud of him.

...I just didn't realized this memory and enforcement behavior extended all the way to "IT'S TIME FOR THIS ANNUAL BEHAVIOR I'VE ONLY SEEN TWICE BUT IS APPARENTLY CRUCIAL AND I WILL BE A LITTLE ASSHOLE AND ALSO FLAGRANTLY DOG-TRAIN YOU TO DO IT, BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU TEACH ME THINGS".

Great job, little Crime Tube. I got extra green bean plants for you.

(A new, much more serious player has joined the table for a session. His barbarian, hearing tales of a heroic party, is beginning to think he may have the wrong house.)

Fighter: Yeah, he expected a bunch of epic adventurers, but we’re just two idiots in dragon pajamas having a drinking contest.

Wizard: I’m a dragonborn wearing dragon pajamas.

There is,,, a lobster. On the way

There is a lobster somewhere in the facility but we don’t know where

This is not a joke btw I was supposed to receive and acclimate a lobster today but I waited around in the lobby for an hour before finding out that the Lobster Deliverer went around back and gave the lobster to the aquarist and he went out on a diving trip without telling anyone where he put the lobster. There is literally a lobster here somewhere and we can’t find it. Lobster location unknown.

Update he put it in one of the lobster traps tied to the pier. Which is fine, that’s where it was gonna go anyway until we set up its display, but I would’ve preferred to acclimate it before plopping it into the ocean. But the hooligan has been contained. There will be no surprise lobster attacks today.

Update 2 here is Thee Lobster

if you ever need a creative pickmeup remember that the administrator in tf2 was just this random disembodied old woman voice who announced match info in the game

but then a young lady did a fan design of her for kicks on her blog and da account full of fanart, and valve loved it so much that they bought the character design from her, and they eventually hired her to draw official tf2 comics for them, and now the administrator’s this big developed character through multiple oneoffs and arcs and stories in the canon and the fan is now an inhouse comic artist working ft for valve

you never know where your artistic and fandom passions will take you, if you love it and exercise your creativity in fun interesting ways, you never know what could come out of it

Out of curiosity, I went out to find Makani’s original fanart. Here it is:

And here’s her first official appearance in the comic, made only one year later:

tf2 heritage post

I know the Star Wars extended universe treats “spice” like it’s this big scary drug, but I kind of like to imagine that it’s basically just space weed, and the only reason Han got in trouble with the Imperials over Jabba’s cargo is that he was evading import tariffs.

If we’re just looking at mentions in the original trilogy, is there evidence it’s even a drug and not something you put on bland food to make it taste like something? What if Han was just carrying a cargo of like cilantro, mint, etc, none of which grow on Tattooine and are thus highly expensive and heavily taxed commodities?

I am fully prepared to believe that the infamous Han Solo ended up in a life-or-death vendetta with the most notorious crime lord in the galaxy because somebody didn’t want to declare taxes on three thousand kilos of cilantro.

Every who pays a certain amount of attention to Star Wars knows this story already, but I was lucky enough to hear it recounted first-hand last year, so I’m gonna give it yet another retelling.

So The Husband and I were at Sci-fi Weekender (a British based annual Sci-fi and Fantasy convention) last year, and one of the guests that year was Kevin J Anderson, one of the very notable Star Wars Expanded Universe writers. During one of the events, a quiet little interview in a cafe on the event site, he fielded a question from an audience member about what it was like to write for a franchise like Star Wars which often had lots of cooks working on one broth, and he had the following to say (wording recounted as best as I can from memory):

“So in one of my stories, Han Solo, he, he travels to this asteroid planet called Kessel, which is where a lot of Spice comes from, these Spice Mines of Kessel, and I got to really describe the effects of this Spice, this terrible drug and the addiction and all this and before publication I get this call, I get this call from the lawyers, and they say “Kevin, you say in this story that Spice is a drug, you can’t say that, you can’t say that Spice is a drug”, and I say “What? What do you mean it’s not a drug, of course it’s a drug”, and they say “Han Solo used to smuggle Spice, and you cannot, let us be clear, you cannot imply that the Hero of Star Wars used to be a drug dealer”. And I just stood there, at a loss for words, and I eventually said “So what is it then?” and they said to me, very sternly, “It’s a food-additive”. Now, now obviously this is ridiculous, and I won’t back down, and they won’t back down, and none of us will back down, and the book is very close to getting pulled, which I don’t want because I worked hard on it and they don’t want because they already paid me the advance, and eventually, with this great air of superiority they say “OK Kevin, we’ll take this to the top. WE’LL TAKE THIS TO GEORGE”. And they go to all this trouble, this was a long while ago when such things were not so easy to arrange, they go to all this trouble to set up a conference call with all of them and me and with George Lucas and they say “George, Kevin is trying to say in his new book that Spice is a drug, it’s a food additive, tell him it’s not a drug, George”. And there’s this long silence on the other end of the line and eventually George says “It is a drug, though. It’s, it’s a drug, it’s a food-additive? What? Of course it a drug, it’s space heroin, what else would it be? What?” And that was then end of that.“

I just remembered my second Pride, where I made different flag themed daisy chain bracelets/necklaces to hand out. I need folks to understand something:

They were free.

They were fucking free.

They were maybe ¢60 of acrylic yarn each at the most, and the whole ziploc bag of them took 2 hours max.

Three people gave me sad eyes until I took their money.

Someone who was clearly the mom friend of their group made me take a $5 and gave a 10 minute pep talk.

At least four more people insisted on getting change to pay for the, once again, free bracelets.

In spite of all these shenanigans, the absolute best was this one person who I can only describe as, “queer surfer dude who looks like a boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend.” I can remember nothing of the outfit, only the impeccable vibes. I did the same thing I did with everyone else, explaining the bracelets were free, and they nodded along as they took the last 6 strand rainbow bracelet. As soon as they had it on their wrist, they pointed at something over my shoulder and, like a fool, I looked.

Next thing I know, they’re running off cackling, yelling, “YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME!” and I’m holding a fucking $20. I had to stop at least two people from chasing them, cause they thought the person stole something, and then they tried to give me money cause they thought it was funny seeing me flail over people being Too Nice.

That was the year I got reverse-robbed at Pride. I hope everyone out there is having a good time and, in particular, that queer surfer dude is out there still causing benevolent chaos.

Some better pictures of the leafkerchief. It’s made of a plain green cotton, with facings in a much lighter weight cotton, and after I sewed and turned all the points right side out I topstitched as close to the edge as I could. The inner edge of the facing is hand sewn with a slipstitch, and the veins are painted on.

I got a lot of questions about this, so I will do a blog post about it, and will include a pattern diagram!

Alrighty, the blog post is up and I drew my pattern out on an inch grid so you can scale it up and make your own!

Finally finished making a video tutorial!

it's not "am I good enough to do it?", it's "do I like it enough to be bad at it?"

Because what you do at first will always be crap. But crap makes good compost.

Hypnotic papercut kimono (furisode? uchikake?), created by paper artist Mamiko Tenkawa from shoji paper.

Artist had already made this one in the past:

A bar called “The Alibi” that’s notorious for being just that.. an alibi. Often packed with ex-cons, the customers of The Alibi adhere to a silent, but strict, code: If they say they were here, we saw them. They’ll always back an alibi, no questions asked.

I’ve actually seen a bar called The Alibi in real life. On the sign, under the name, it said “We saw you here!”

thinking about a twilight princess that’s just the princesses