#or maybe he is

[nanawaffles]

*looks at Sam Hazeldine* Sam... buddy... what are you doing??????

[avvanont]

Sillys

[notsocheezy]

Brain Curd #238

Brain Curds are lightly edited daily writing - usually flash fiction and sometimes terrible on purpose.

“My father was a good man.” That's the sort of thing you'd expect someone to say to open a eulogy. “My father was a good man…” It's popular to say because it's so bitter to speak ill of the dead, isn't it? You can't say, “My father was a bad man,” and so you don't.

So it's decided, then. My father was a good man when he poisoned me against my mother. My father was a good man when he put the weight of his world on my shoulders. My father was a good man when he screamed at me that it was all my fault. Yes, he must have been, each and every time, because “my father was a good man.”

My parents divorced when I was young. He did not hesitate to tell lie after lie about my mother, but she always took the high road. Always followed the rules. She had custody. I was hers to lose. But he threatened to leave me forever, and I loved him, for he was my father. So I followed his instructions. I became ungovernable and my mother gave in, gave me what he wanted.

I moved in with my father when I was thirteen. We went homeless two years later. His pyramid scheme of subletting was kicked out from under us and we landed in a room at the church. For a year, I went to school on weekdays and did manual labor on the weekends, all the while he sat in his folding chair and watched YouTube videos about guns and vaping. I, the teenage child, was the one of the two of us saving up for a security deposit on our next apartment. And whenever there was a price to be paid, I was the one paying it.

The few jobs he picked up, he'd lose within a week, maybe a month - either for being lazy or for being abrasive. I continued working through injury while he complained that someone “disrespected him” by explaining what a banana was. And I patted his back and told him I'd have quit too. Because “my father was a good man.”

Various family members on my mother's side took me in for my remaining two years of high school. I bounced around, cramped and crowded, a charity case, each time burning more bridges at his command, always doing what he thought best, only to fail over and over to convince him I was on his side. And I was on his side because “my father was a good man.”

“My father was a good man” when he found out I wasn't who he wanted me to be. “My father was a good man” when he followed me home, howling at the top of his lungs at nine PM that I was an embarrassment, and that I'd sabotaged him out of spite for his crime of telling me like it is. “My father was a good man” when he knocked my bicycle to the ground and kicked it against the curb, when he picked it up again and slammed it on the pavement. “My father was a good man” as he wandered the cold streets while his daughter sobbed into the bathroom floor.

My father knew how to make me laugh, sometimes. My father was my best friend. My father loved me so much that he swallowed every ounce of empathy and kindness and innocence he could squeeze out of me. Yet despite his best efforts, I am here, I am queer, I am alive and I have more courage in the hair I pluck from my chest than he ever had in his whole bloated, decaying body. That was always the fundamental contradiction of trying to be loved by him. “My father was a good man…” until he wasn't.

I don't know what he was. A good man, a bad man, a complicated man. A man who hated me, a man who was jealous when I spent a moment away. A man who took my affection for granted and withheld his. A man who ruined his life, dragged me with him, and had the gall to tell me he only wanted what was best for me.

Whatever sort of man he was, whether or not his body truly lies in that casket, I can tell you what has been my truth for years: my father is dead.

Please comment, reblog, like, and follow if you enjoyed - I'd love to know what you think! See you again tomorrow.

[clonerightsagenda]

I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went "well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?" and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that's more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.

[razzafrazzle]

Just Checking In! (aka Something About Red Triangles)

[inkskinned]

it's extremely critical that you see the photo of the perp walk for luigi mangione as being propaganda. i've seen so many people wave it off and instead fawn over his looks. and trust me, i know it ended up being kind of pathetic and weird - but please don't brush it off as a "modelling opportunity" for him. it's a fucking terrifying message the police are sending.

i want to make a few comparisons here, in case you're not from the US or familiar with why the perp walk thing is something to pay attention to. just to set the groundwork for why this is a purposeful, unusual, and cruel act by the nyc police - for why this is not a common occurrence and for why that matters.

the prosecution alleges the show of force is due to the charge of "terrorism." for comparison, in june 2015, tsarnaev was found guilty for the boston marathon bombing, which killed 3 people and injured hundreds. his actions are considered to be an act of domestic terrorism. i have spent the last hour looking through google for pictures of similar to mangione's perp walk - and so far, i have found zero. i also just do not personally remember a moment like that, despite living in boston at the time.

they allege that luigi is a stone-cold killer who carried out a longterm plan, making him particularly dangerous. again for comparison: in nyc, recently cory martin was found guilty of the killing of brandy odom. the murder was planned and premeditated to steal insurance money. and yet no staged perp walk. why didn't her life matter enough for a "show of force"?

but mangione gets paraded by a veritable army of police officers as if he is a rabid animal. for a single citizen who allegedly killed one other single citizen, the "largest perp walk ever" occurs.

so what is the "strong message" that the mayor and the police were trying to send here? the mayor speaks as if mangione is already convicted of terrorism. there is a very thin number of people who feel threatened by the CEO's death. none of us felt like mangione needs to be under massive armed guard.

the message is that you shouldn't resist. they are trying to "make an example" of him - that if you behave badly and kill a single rich person, you'll be treated as if you killed hundreds of people. you will be treated worse than a man who was found guilty of terrorism. you will be considered guilty without trial. the message is that the rich are a protected class, and you cannot touch them without massive punishment. they are trying to prevent a revolution by showing dominance and force against you.

the message is that the police are a puppet of the wealthy and that the law is not equally applied across class disparity. it is "some are more equal than others." it is "one life is more precious than another."

the show of force wasn't for luigi. it was for us. it was a warning. they are trying to remind us who is really in control.

[teaboot]

Sometimes I think a lot about my mom's cat

My mom's cat is a common domestic shorthair we found on the side of the road as a kitten

Regular cat, not a maine coon or one of those massive breeds. His mom was smaller than a loaf of bread

But in a sort of a Clifford The Big Red Dog situation, he grew super fast, and really really big, and took a super long time to stop growing

Worried that she was overfeeding him, she eased back his portions, but he stayed a massive round baby

When he started having kidney problems, she took him to the vet.

The vet took a look at him and said, "holy fuck, what are you feeding him", checked the nutritional listings on his chow, and told her "Yeah, maybe he's reacting badly to the amount of grain in this, try a meatier diet"

So my mom wound up special-ordering this specific high-protein prescription cat food made of like. Kangaroo meat or some shit that cost like sixty bucks a bag

And, as typical act two in an episode of House, he somehow got worse on the fancy specialized stuff that was supposed to be Primo Athlete Olympic Feline Blend

Like. WAY worse. His guts were inflamed and his kidneys were shutting down and he was all sore and HE WAS STILL HUGE, just miserable and sad

So shetook him back to the vet, where they had to help him pee (he was apparently close to bursting and had some kind of blockage too) and went "Yeah no this is NOT normal and we don't know what's going on, we're gonna do some tests but in the meantime you should go back to what he was eating before, at least that wasn't actively killing him" so she did

And he still wasn't great, but he also improved

And so they take his blood and do an ultrasound and a couple g's later she gets a call back like "this is gonna sound crazy, but we want you to put him on a low-meat diet. Just the least amount of protein and iron and shit. We need you to find the grainiest, filler-iest dollar tree kibble available and give him some of that bad bad shit"

And my mother is a woman of science. So she did

And he GOT BETTER

His energy picked back up, inflammation went down, he started drinking normally again, got back to pissing like a fuckin champion

And so it turns out that out of all the random ass freeway bonus cats we possibly could have scooped out of a ditch, WE got the one-in-a-million freak of nature with a SPECIFIC genetic defect that means a paleo protein free range diet is essentially poison and he THRIVES on cheap ass garbage

Like. He medically NEEDS junk food

I dont really understand how that works, but i cant argue with results.

If we had four of him, they'd outweigh my mom. And he's FINE

Also blind, but that's unrelated

Im not using him as a symbol or a metaphor or anything. I just keep catching myself thinking about my mom's Big Fucking Cat

[swan2swan]

Whoever conceived and animated this moment, I hope they're doing well and thriving. This is S-rank romance stuff here.

[windwenn]

Been re-watching gravity falls for the summer

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the thing about Professor Utonium is he didn't accidentally create 3 daughters, he purposely created 3 daughters who accidentally have superpowers. the sugar, spice, and everything nice was intentional, only Chemical X was an accident

this guy became a girl dad on purpose and I am so proud of him for achieving his dream!

[trekkerac]

Ford "Icarus didn't flap hard enough" Pines

[eydilily]

(look at what i have to offer) — this is the spider's nest.

[ideas-ideasideasideas]

Batman gives each of his Robins a different code to use when they’re in trouble and need immediate extraction. He promises that when they call, he’ll drop everything just to get to them, come hell or high water.

Jason, during his time with the League, shares his code with Damian, to be used “only in the direst of circumstances, when you have exhausted all other options.” He doesn’t know if Bruce will answer, given how fractured their relationship was before he died, but it is better than nothing. Every tool counts when they live such dangerous lives.

Damian uses it exactly once, and Bruce, who still feels the loss of his son like a yawning chasm in his chest, responds to it even though he knows it can’t be Jason because Jason’s dead. What he finds, instead of Jason, is a boy in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-small feet, with a face that Bruce sees himself and Talia in, requesting asylum from a grandfather who wishes to possess his body. Bruce doesn’t question how this boy who is so clearly his son knew the code. Talia al Ghul is resourceful and places family above all; the code is not beyond her abilities to discover, and she is not above using Bruce’s desperate love for his dead son to ensure that hers does not meet the same fate.

Bruce takes Damian in, because of course he does, and since Jason is dead he allows Damian to keep using the code. After all, it’s not like Jason is alive to use it, right? If someone uses the code, there’s no one it could be but Damian, right?

The next time the code is used, Bruce traces the location to Gotham even though Damian was supposed to be in Bludhaven visiting Dick. But whatever happened that resulted in Damian being in Gotham can wait, because he has already failed one son and he will not fail another, his son is in trouble and he needs to get to him, he needs to—

What he finds, instead of Damian, is a boy (just eighteen, too young, but also too old, but also he will always be a boy to him) in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-large feet (when had he gotten so big), wearing the face of his dead son.

(Who, maybe, just maybe, may no longer be so dead.)

[tuttle-did-it]

David Tennant for Prime Minister, please.

edit- Since this is getting so much attention, edited to include descriptions of screenshots.

This woman has lost her fucking mind.

Jo, are you okay?

[humming-fly]

I love how Gerald was trying to keep Shadow from spoiling anything about the future meanwhile literally everything Shadow says and does around Maria is the biggest death flag ever

[spidertroupeart]

the jokes write themselves