troublegoblin

[troublegoblin]

to begin with, the sweet grass by mary oliver, from “devotions”

[troublegoblin]

nothing scarier than being a fan of a fic and then becoming mutuals with the author. like hi shakespeare. big fan of your fake dating au

[troublegoblin]

Wow.

[troublegoblin]

if you like a piece of media that is good eventually youll more or less run out of things to say about how good it is but if you like a piece of media that is objectively pretty mediocre but also somehow deeply compelling thats how the demons get you

[troublegoblin]

I like that we’ve kind of cycled back to the early 90s TV’s fearful attitudes about technologies

Like yeah, X-Files, I wouldn’t get into an elevator run by AI either, good call in 1993, you nailed it

[troublegoblin]

“Babel” by Cildo Meireles (2001)

[troublegoblin]

[troublegoblin]

what they don't tell you about making friends is you gotta be a lil annoying. you gotta push past the fear of "what if they don't want to talk to me" and simply ask someone how their day is going, send a meme. you cannot connect to people if you're both just awkwardly waiting for the other to start.

[troublegoblin]

If megan thee stallion was on veggie tales she'd be a green onion called megan thee scallion

[troublegoblin]

contrary to popular belief not everyone has an innate sense of internal gender or care to have one or seek a name for it, some people go their whole lives without questioning their occupation in one of two gender roles, but for some people, if pressed, they don’t feel that internal sense of ‘i am a woman’ or ‘i am a man’, and in that case i feel the switch over to transgender vs cisgender relies on active identification of a gender other than the one they were assigned. if someone’s like ‘idk dude I just work here’ then that’s valid

[troublegoblin]

can u hold this? (places my face delicately between your palms)

[troublegoblin]

being a symbolism enjoyer should humble you because at the end of the day no matter how eloquently you articulate it youre essentially saying "i love it when things have meaning"

[troublegoblin]

DONT use glasses, youll become dependent on them to see!!!! #WARONDRUGS #OVERPRESCRIPTION #CORRECTIVELENSADDICTION

[troublegoblin]

"I have feelings for you too."

[troublegoblin]

Clarice Lispector, from An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Pleasures (trans. Stefan Tobler) [ID'd]

[troublegoblin]

my most toxic trait is i fucking love work gossip. i play neutral not to be the bigger person or take the high road but to hear slander and hearsay from every side. two coworkers complained about each other to me in the same afternoon and i nearly blacked out from the rush

[troublegoblin]

this is a performance of Wallace Shawn's play The Fever. you can read along to the full text here. it's a remarkable piece expressing the horror of one's complicity in Empire. I found it extremely articulate about the maddening experience of seeing the blood in everything, and articulated well from the perspective of someone who is actively being served by this system of blood. there's an excerpt often shared from this play about receiving a copy of Das Kapital in a brown paper bag and reading it, only to have horrifying and lifechanging revelations. I think the quote is very good but I don't think it does the gut-wrenching horror and pain of the full text of the play justice. I'll attach below, instead, a different excerpt:

I'm doing whatever I possibly can. I try to be nice. I try to be lighthearted, entertaining, funny. I tell entertaining stories to people. I make jokes to the janitor, every single morning, to the parking-lot attendant, every single morning. I try to be amusing whenever I can be, to help my friends get through the day. I write little notes to people I like when I enjoy the articles they've written or their performances in the theater. When a group of people at a party were making unpleasant comments about advertising men, I steered the conversation to a different topic, because my friend Monica was feeling uncomfortable because her father works as an advertising man. The bunk is empty, except for the book, but the pages of the book run with blood as I pick it up, soaking my clothes, spilling over the floor. There's still the preface—everything that happened before I was born. The voluptuous field that was given to me—how did I come to be given that one, and not the one that was black and barren? Yes, it happened like that because before I was born, the fields were apportioned, and some of the fields were pieced together. Not by chance, not by fate. The fields were pieced together one by one, by thieves, by killers. Over years, over centuries, night after night, knives glittering, throats cut, again and again, until the beautiful Christmas morning we woke up, and our proud parents showed us the gorgeous, shining, blood-soaked fields which now were ours. Cultivate, they said, husband everything you pull from the earth, guard, save, then give your own children the next hillside, the next valley. From each advantage, draw up more. Grow, cultivate, preserve, guard. Drive forward till you have everything. The others will fall back, retreat, give you what you want or sell you what you want for the price you want. They have no choice, because they're sick and weak. They've become "the poor." And the book runs on, years, centuries, till the moment comes when our parents say the time of apportionment is now over. We have what we need—our position well defended from every side. Now, finally, everything can be frozen, just as it is.

There's a panicked, Mad quality to this play -- it's appropriate and correct, I think, that it's titled The Fever. It feels feverish in its rage, its grief, its utter visceral horror and bitterness and appropriate self-directed disgust at the prospect of benefiting from this machine of blood. I really recommend people give it a read or a listen (or both!); I found the above performance very striking; and I recommend this piece especially to those also in the imperial core. Art of this kind is not theory nor is it equivalent to theory; that is not its purpose; but it can be another powerful and radicalizing force. It is not a comfortable text; it does not offer cheap platitudes about Goodness nor does it afford the listener who might be complicit in the same machinations any amount of gentleness or comfort in this fact. Personally, I find that fact a rare and valuable piece of artistic conviction, even if it should be something that we should be able to expect from so much more art, even if it is still not enough and so little in the face of atrocity.