Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

PATIENT: Artemus, Princess Heir of Shadow

ALIASES: Unknown

CLINICAL NOTES: ate treat, snuggled, bounced around

PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSIS: adorable, hyper, no clear sign of acute digestive issues

Five down, just gotta track down our wild little shaman Ceejay. He's gonna be the tough one to watch, only one who won't set foot in the apartment.

@JulieSqveakaroo YES. Thank you. It felt like a short about history that had no real depth to its concept of what history actually IS.

It had that stereotype Faintly Liberal White Literary Guy sense of "Gosh, Earth is just so good, it's all good stuff, let's not get into the messy parts." His version of history was so squeaky clean, with all the emotional intensity or skepticism of a guy collecting stamps or matchsticks or dead butterflies something.

And I couldn't get past thinking, "Why the FUCK would anybody do it this way to start with?" Why hire ONE guy? For that matter, what was wrong with all the OTHER histories written on earth? Are we suddenly no longer going to have access to electronic storage? Why was he not an academic? Is this really an engineering or clerical sort of job that needs someone who's just really diligent -- and not someone who will ask the HARD questions? And WHY IS IT A MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE GUY AND NOBODY CARES AT ALL?

The whole thing just felt like it didn't ask any questions, it just kinda came along and asked us to bask in the same warm centrist humanist "Gosh we sure did a magical thing together, didn't we folks!" fuzzies.

And in the process there was one glaring question: "Why do you pick NOW to mourn some of this stuff, just because aliens are gonna wipe us ALL out -- yes, gosh, even the white middle class, how dare they!" Humans have been GLEEFULLY wiping out other humans' history from the first recorded day. Are we seriously supposed to get all sad just because it's happening to the rest of us now?

I just spend the whole time kinda shrugging and going, "Yup. We all end up in the Void, buddy, and some of us get pushed. Did... did it really take you this much of your life to figure this out?"

And there you go. If I had to rewrite this myself... that's what it would be about. Instead of just going over his pretty little collection of disjointed historical moments, he'd stop and REBEL. The process of looking over human history would leave him really unimpressed with human history. Maybe he'd even decide to trash the whole record at the end.

well, peebers is definitely her usual self, i.e., the largest snuggle capacity per pound of any cat on earth

i'm kinda trying to take em each in one by one to observe 'em for a couple minutes, see previous post on their tummy upsets, and so far 4 of the 6 seem fine? still gotta check artemus and ceejay, peebs wasn't into a treat but no big, and sugarfoot was a little sneezy but no signs of lethargy at all so maybe I can worry a bit less...

@LexYeen I am already in a fine position to reciprocate, given the first one's about L Ron. This is PERFECT here, my favorite podcast episode of all time.

https://thedeadauthorspodcast.libsyn.com/chapter-45-part-1-l-ron-hubbard-featuring-andrew-daly

https://thedeadauthorspodcast.libsyn.com/chapter-45-part-2-l-ron-hubbard-featuring-andy-daly

What really impresses me is how much research Andy must have done for this. It's quite difficult to tell Andy's (brilliant) improv from lies L Ron really told, and that's what makes this the mathematically best possble bio of the SOB...

@LexYeen Oh, BTB! I have been meaning to get around and listen to these for AGES, I just didn't recognize Robert's name!

@LexYeen NO. I WANT THIS. <3

@LexYeen Yeah. It's like interviewing Al Capone about Eliot Ness. You might get a SLIGHTLY less than objective evaluation. -_-

Of course, the metaphor isn't quite perfect, given this is Mitch, until Capone's in some pretty advanced neurosyphilis stages. :p

@LexYeen But yeah, I've though it through, and if I ever ended up like Winston from 1984... I'd probably end up screaming "DO IT TO PEGGY" but not after I'd bitten off at least four of my handler's fingers out of sheer spite.

@LexYeen A yeen after my own heart. I have SO MANY outright threats to the gods outstanding and, given the quality of my life, apparently unresponded to.

(It could just be the quality of gods I worship, though. The Jackalope Mother is EXACTLY the kind of lady who would wield supreme power pver all other gods and just... never have it dawn on her there'd be a reason to tell anybody else about it.)

And nobody's gonna tangle with Bast FFS. You'd have to be such an asshole even for a god...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTV7gNpECW0

So... the above is a Sundance-winning animated short about a man asked to chronicle human existence before the world is destroyed by hostile aliens. It came recommended on Boing Boing, and now that I think of it... that might answer the question I'm about to ask all by itself.

I didn't like it. It should hypothetically have pushed all my warm humanitarian buttons. It should not have triggered all my "yes but what about X?!" literalism about a premise. That's not a tendency I usually indulge; I usually am very willing to suspect disbelief and go with the flow.

But I'm very tired after a day of cat stress, tech support at work, and (unrelated) severe headaches. And our dealer hasn't gotten back to me yet. :P So I don't really have the mental energy left to dig into why it didn't work for me. Or why it left me muttering "Yup, that's definitely from the New Yorker" and shaking my head.

Would anyone else care to watch it and speculate on why it bombed so badly for me? I already have some REAL good guesses, but some of y'all know me better than I do...

@kistaro @JulieSqveakaroo My anxiety journal's been an absolute godsend. *nod*

Dammit, found kitty barf on the porch for the second consecutive day.

Found a lot of hair and some grass in the first batch, have not inspected the second and -- yuck -- probably won't, there's not enough left after the rain anyhow.

I guess with six cats there's a huge chance that two different cats ate the same questionable thing, but... now I still can't help being worried one of my babies is out there sick and I don't even have an easy way to tell which one.

We'll keep a close eye on 'em I guess. Nobody's lethargic and I _think_ everybody at least showed some interest in eating this morning?

Fret fret fret, though. D:

I absolutely love finding out the Trump cultist I'm arguing with is a Marine. Because "crayon eater" is one of my very very favorite slurs and it's always a joy to be able to deploy it. ^______^

this morning's attempt at filming a little shempovision failed completely and it's a shame because shemp is the best shemp you will ever meet and he is being quite exceptionally shemp today <3

i hope he would not take offense if i were to say he has Big Dog Energy, just rambunctious and friendly and outgoing. I like to speculate that he was a big dumb friendly working dog or something in his last life, and such a Good Boy that now he doesn't have to do NOTHIN' but cat for a good 10-12 years...

@001zlnv (Exhibit A: Naziism explicitly required sacrifice and martial discipline from its citizens and was focused around a cult of physical power. Whereas Trump couldn't even get out of his seat long enough to get himself a Diet Coke. And I didn't exactly see his followers doing a lot of outdoor exercise. O:) It's a whole different animal a mix of Mussolini, Putin, and a used car salesman, and requires a whole different set of extermination gear. :p )

@001zlnv (*checks my notes here* Wait, check that. I wouldn't call Trump a *Nazi*. I WOULD call him a fascist or at least a proto-fascist. But my standards were a lot more strident than many, in that they were more than "He's a right-winger and I really REALLY don't like him and I seem to have heard Nazis were really really bad." >_< And I know it seems like hairsplitting, but... )

@001zlnv I'm already backing way the fuck outta this thread. XD But yeah, exactly. The differences MATTER and just picking the worst thing off the list out of sheer auxesis and Righteous Anger is just plain *tactically* a terrible idea. I can hate Jack Chick -- saying "he would have been horrified to be called a fascist" is not defending him, it's describing a real distinction. He (like Trump the Kleptocrat, IMHO) was a whole different, if similarly dangerous and ugly, animal.

@hystericempress "Gee, Dr. Forrester! Is that when you knew you were mad?"

"No, Frank. That's when I knew I was a SCIENTIST."

My new go-to slur: "biomass."

It's not only gender neutral, the only demographic group it singles out is "organic beings," a group that conveniently includes every single person I hate! Should be able to keep this one on the Euphemism Treadmill at LEAST til the Robot Wars.