alonewildbird

[alonewildbird]

my brother was making fun of me and our other brother for having the same haircut, and we were immediately like "what the fuck are you talking about? you had this EXACT SAME haircut like a year ago. this is your haircut too. jackass." so we start arguing back and forth until our mom stops us and says "come here." and she brings out her ID from when she was a teenager and... its the same haircut.

[alonewildbird]

so i went to plaid pantry and i got my grape soda and whipped cream and i was on my way back when i saw a dog across the street from me. i looked over and another dog walked up to it and i was like “nice, double dog”. i kept walking and a minute later i saw a third dog and i thought wow these dogs look like big foxes. oh wait they’re coyotes. but no one else on the street was acknowledging it? so i figured i was just Too High. Then a couple minutes later, a big truck full of kids pulls up beside me and starts waving at me so i take my earbuds out and someone says “dude, you know there’s a pack of coyotes following you?” if being hunted by coyotes in downtown portland on the way back from getting munchies isn’t Northwest Gothic idk what is

[alonewildbird]

Why are you lgbtq+? wrong answers only GO

#parents named me violet.

[alonewildbird]

“no rapping tonight"

why?

"you rap about arthurian knights everytime, it's embarrassing"

ok

[after one beer]

uh oh y'all i go into a trance a lot

[alonewildbird]

i hate american election years because i have to hear so much more about that country. too many americans on this site for my liking

[alonewildbird]

if you’re ever in the position to choose between giving up and accepting defeat, and actually trying to fight the ancient unkillable god that is about to peel apart reality like a string cheese, remember this: scientifically speaking, you might as well give it a shot!

1.there were trees at the beginning of the world! there were trees so long ago that they predate bacteria that causes wood to decay. when a tree fell, it would lie there in stasis and there wasn’t any way of breaking down wood xylem on a molecular level in that way.

2. it seems obvious to say, but wood eating bacteria are literally incapable of comprehending what they’re breaking down. It’s just not information conciously available to a microorganism. they don’t know what they’re deconstructing, where it came from, bacteria have no way to even fathom the existence of a tree as a concept.

3. Regardless of the facts above, the world we live in today is a world where wood inevitably decomposes

it is worth fighting the unkillable god no matter how pointless it seems. it is worth taking the risk even though youre trying to accomplish something impossible. the reality in which you live was also once reality in which trees didn’t rot. You live in a reality that allows for existence before the possibility of destruction. you live in a reality where uncomprehending microbes break down matter that is so far beyond the scope of their comprehension that it feels comical to specify something so obvious. you live in a reality that occasionally allows unshakeable physical truths to be altered with no warning.

It is worth fighting the unkillable god because trees are so old they predate the source of their destruction, and it still did not spare them. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because bacteria rots unthinkingly, because there is room in our cosmos for destruction without comprehension on the part of the destroyer. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because now and then reality retracts the promise of immortality without fanfare, and when that happens there is no mercy for the ancient. the unmaking is not softer for the desecrators ignorance. for all things, existence is endless until the exact point where it ends.

so you might as well try to kill the unkillable god. it doesn’t seem likely, but at the beginning of the world, trees didn’t rot. so you never know! you never know

[alonewildbird]

Imagine your brother is getting his ass kicked in the polls so you want to run as a candidate alongside him for moral support. To get Mom's permission you make up a lie about "God told me to run for office," and she doesn't believe you but says "Go ahead," because she thinks you're kidding. Then you somehow win, and your mom tells everybody about your fib, and now whenever you win a battle nobody wants to hear about your actual tactics because they assume you just cribbed the answers from God.

Polybius says this happened to Scipio Africanus.

Upon [Scipio's mother] consenting, as she never dreamt he would venture on it, but thought it was merely a casual joke...When the news suddenly reached his mother's ears, she met them overjoyed at the door and embraced the young men with deep emotion, so that from this circumstance all who had heard of the dreams believed that Publius communed with the gods not only in his sleep, but still more in reality and by day...Now it was not a matter of a dream at all, but as he was kind and munificent and agreeable in his address he reckoned on his popularity with the people, and so by cleverly adapting his action to the actual sentiment of the people and of his mother he not only attained his object but was believed to have acted under a sort of divine inspiration. For those who are incapable of taking an accurate view of operations, causes, and dispositions, either from lack of natural ability or from inexperience and indolence, attribute to the gods and to fortune the causes of what is accomplished by shrewdness and with calculation and foresight.

(Polybius, Histories, 10.2)

(I strongly suspect "LOL did Jupiter give you the answers again" was an in-joke among Scipio's friends that got taken out of context by people with no sense of humor, i.e. Cato the Elder.)

[alonewildbird]

at my wedding yes i will have a maid of honour but why stop there. ill give all my maids titles. we will have a maid of hope. a maid of horror. a maid of horticulture. a maid of harm. a maid of healing. and of course. a maid of hogs

[alonewildbird]

I have solved the problem of the aunt/uncle portmanteau

[alonewildbird]

“I think Christopher’s translations are generally adequate. But he made one mistake which is worth describing because it was deliberate and because it illustrates a fundamental difference in outlook between the translator and his author. “Polly Peachum’s Song” tells how Polly behaved to her suitors before she met the right one, Macheath. In each verse, a boat is mentioned. Polly and one of the suitors get into it. In the first two verses, the boat is cast loose from the shore, and Polly adds, “But that was as far as things could go.” In the third and last verse, however, the boat is “tied to the shore,” when she has got into it with Macheath. Christopher found this incomprehensible, because he took it for granted that the proper poetic metaphor for sexual surrender would be the casting loose of the boat. So, quite arbitrarily, disregarding the meaning of the German text, he transposed the lines and had the boat tied up in the first two verses, only to be cast loose in the last verse when Polly is possessed by Macheath. No one protested. The book appeared with Christopher’s version of the poem. It was only when Christopher met Brecht for the first time, in California about six years later, that he had his misunderstanding corrected. Brecht told him mildly, with the unemphatic bluntness which was so characteristic of him: ‘A boat has to be tied up before you can fuck in it’”

— Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind I doubt I will ever read a funnier anecdote than this one. 

#translation

[alonewildbird]

To Zionists, Zionism comes before Solidarity

I've been remembering the time my "progressive" or at least liberal Jewish community had a rabbi come in to tell us that BLM was dangerous because it didn't support Israel, and on no condition should we support it. He said, (paraphrased) "It's important to oppose police brutality and racism in America, but as Jews, we have to stand by Israel, and we can't let any progressives challenge its legitimacy." And everyone just nodded along. I didn't know much about BLM and wasn't much of an activist then. And so I, like the others there, treated this rabbi like a fountain of knowledge and swallowed the propaganda I was fed. I didn't join any demonstration led by BLM, because BLM was against the Jews. I didn't go to pride because pride was also against the Jews (someone had made a social media post about no Israeli flags being allowed).

This rabbi could have told us to march in solidarity with Black Americans and still be quietly zionist, and people would have done it. They would have been shitty allies, but they would have shown up at a time when that particular city was really struggling to mobilize. Jews are taught to be skeptical of progressive causes, and thus, of the people that these causes are fighting for. Astroturfing orgs like Zioness convince members that pride orgs, BLM, etc. are all out to get the Jews. And they convince these ignorant Jews to stick with these pseudo-progressive Jewish orgs that are actually anything but.

This was in 2017. I've learned to use my brain since then. I've wanted to write about this particular incident for over a year, but I don't know if I have more to say other than "this was fucked up, huh" because it's not unusual for synagogues and community centers to host speakers like this, speakers who use the language of Jewish community and Jewish trauma to make sure Jews never listen to any voices that aren't Zionist. I remember exactly where I was sitting in that room, but I doubt anyone else there has any memory of it at all. The others who attended may have been disappointed that this great rabbi did nothing more than repeat (racist) talking points they had already heard and believed.

It's a hard story to expand on because stuff like this is so commonplace in the American Jewish world. I once studied with a different "social justice rabbi" who described illegal Zionist settlements in the West Bank as "peaceful villages where we coexisted with the Arab residents." He proudly names the settlement where he was ordained on his website, describing it as being "in Israel." This was another rabbi who taught me to keep progressive causes at arm's length--best to stick with the (right kind of) other Jews. Proudly talking about his time in a settlement, all while arguing for raising the minimum wage and stopping police brutality. And now he's partnering with progressives all over the state as an educator. These people clearly don't know the racism he pushes. Or they turn a blind eye because Zionism is the one racism that (some) progressives will accept.

Don't let that be the case in your communities. Don't let Zionism go unchecked and unchallenged, even if it's from a respected religious leader.

(The American "progressive orthodox" world has really been showing its ass of late. The progressive-ish group Torat Chayim Rabbis, known for its statement against conversion therapy, has been doing PR for the occupational forces on its Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ToratChayimRabbis)

[alonewildbird]

“fish don’t even know theyre wet” and? you don’t even know youre luft (air equivalent of wet)

[alonewildbird]

Wait a second: cuckoos are nest parasites. Do "cuckoo" and "cuckold" share a common root?

Huh. Apparently the etymology of "cuckold" is literally something along the lines of "cuckoo-lord".

[alonewildbird]

"Sorry I have a boyfriend" is of course a time-tested and reasonably reliable no-fault rejection strategy. But what many tacticians may not realize is it has an even more powerful counterpart, the preemptive boyfriend name-drop. This is when a conversation with a stranger veers into high-alert territory and you make up a guy named Raphael (my boyfriend) who you mention due to his extremely-relevant interest in the current topic of conversation.

[alonewildbird]

[alonewildbird]

Here's a key part of the transfemme experience that is very overlooked: when you don't pass, people don't actually see you as a man, or treat you like a man.

[alonewildbird]

wait do you guys actually carry purses/bags everywhere you go i really need to know

#i've been getting better at not taking my backpack everywhere with me Just In Case #which realistically usually means wearing my jean jacket or cargo-type pants for the pocket space