Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Also I spent a good chunk of the last hour composing a Guerrilla Ontology reading list for a woman seeking help deprogramming her QAnonized boyfriend.

It left me feeling like a foot soldier or a spy, in a good way. It also reminds me how uncommon it is that I've had the intellectual grounding needed to immunize myself, and how much of that is wrapped up in *incredible* undeserved emotional and socioeconomic privilege.

Thanks mom and dads. And special thanks to my childhood mentor Barb, her stacks and stacks of Games Magazine logic puzzles, and her iron-willed devotion to calling out my youthful bullshit, <3

Shemp had it explained to him at great length this morning that he was being a butthead last night. He seemed sufficiently contrite by cat standards, in that he did not respond in any way at all.

Just to make sure he got the message, I unleashed my absolute cruelest punishment: trapping him in the Mysterious Netherdimension between the screen door and front door for ten seconds and laughing at him.

(He fits in perfectly comfortably, remains calm, and generally has not actually figured out he's trapped by the time we give in and let him go. It's just SUPER funny to watch. :) )

Periodic reminder that I keep a health and anxiety journal and it is one of the best ideas I've ever had.

Every false COVID scare, every political anxiety, every weird ache and pain and heart flutter, it all goes in.

And I go back every so often to annotate it with the results. Page after page of "nothing happened... everything fine... Shemp did NOT apparently die in a ditch somewhere... no, it was NOT cholera."

It's unbelievably comforting, having objective evidence of all the times I was not, in point of fact, doomed. I just can't recommend it highly enough, especially these days.

Maybe the possum on the porch (who ended up being pretty harmless) riled them up, or maybe *I* riled them up by introducing Arthur to the Jingly Man with a (jealous?) Shemp still present, but the kitties were right bastards tonight and I got scratched (mildly) four times. >___< Shemp even growled for the first time I've ever heard him, while most uncharacteristically picking on poor Arthur (who was also being a dick).

That's it, motherfuckers, it's time for the ultimate punishment. 10% reduction in your scritch rations.

@001zlnv @anthracite Just hanging! We stared back and forth for like ten minutes until I determined it really wasn't interested in harassing our cats. Looked it up on the Opossum Society website and apparently they are pretty chill and will just move along if hassled.

@Phorm @anthracite You're the only one to propose actual lyrics though <3

oh my god i wasn't gonna bother linking but at 1:16 it turns MAGICAL at x0.25 and i want to harness this power for myself somehow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKzRGcozrKg

@zx3 lol stupid canids 😼​

Frank Zappa's "Father O'Blivion" holds up remarkably well at 0.25 speed. Heavy as fuck, kinda wish I could play guitar so I could record a cleaner (less distorted) version.

@Phorm @Djinnanigans@dragon.style Get your ass in this bottle, fox. You've recruited enough genies in your lifetime that even if somehow you HAVE lost your credentials, TFing you right back is *trivial* for us. <3

I feel so civilized. I'm sitting here in a socially distanced cafe, drinking what I'm calling an "Arnault Palmieri": half black tea, half San Pellegrino Limone e Menta soda.

Now that I know how, I'm thinking of installing one of these in Peg while she's asleep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhyqQ51RO6Q

Arthur... er... most likely has a XX chromosome pair!

We had been trying to, er, keep our noses our of the kittens' primary sexual characteristics, but they're all kinda prone to waving them in front of us whether we like it or not, so we've got 2/4 of them pegged now. :p (Penumbra has "boy" bits.)

We are of course NOT changing their name, and until I receive further information directly from Arthur I am assuming their pronoun preference is still "hey, kitten!"

=^______^=

@mawr This is why mine are on the top two shelves of our bookshelf! ^_____^

(this post inspired in part by flashbacks to watching the trinity broadcast network back in my adolescent fundie says, and only just today getting the big mental picture of just how new all this conservative delusion and deceit isn't)

they just don't have the USSR or Isis to pick on anymore and the whole con falls apart if they don't find someone new to play folk devil for them

i won't even get into the lack of novelty of nature trying to kill us, you are all hoopy froods and have probably caught onto that fact by now :>

still, my heart goes with you, 2020 is still a piece of shit, and fuck would it be nice to be able to start hanging out in cafes again

i even miss the bodily fluid reek of bourbon street :(

our "interesting times" aren't the result of a curse or a calendar year or bad karma or our lives being a bad tv show or whatever the fuck the wacky meme du jour says

it's the cumulative result of bad social decisions, it's called "basic cause and effect," and we had it coming

@chimerror Absolutely true; only quibble is that it's objectively more fun to say "döner kebab."

@anthracite the you-est goddamn thing <3

#moodsnapshot #whamcity #codecs #alanresnick

(source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dwLs9juzWw)

@frameacloud don't blame me, blame columbia records