Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@JulieSqveakaroo @Austin_Dern

@chimerror I am not generally a big sports fan-- but I used to have the best time watching the Celebrity Sureshot skeet tournaments at 3 am on ESPN.

@chimerror espn ocho

@balinares This is the smartest point about this topic I've heard all week.

@LexYeen With my recent need to ponder and commit Cat Crimes, this fact has VERY much dawned on me recently. >:D

@anthracite YES

@spottyfox And of course the Boobie O. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_monocular_O

@spottyfox You've seen THIS gorgeous mutant, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiocular_O

@spottyfox So yeah: "restless leg syndrome." *nod*

@spottyfox You know SOME jerkass would go and take that as a straight question. It might as well be your friendly neighborhood Martian. :D

Here's your answer, fishbulb.

I can not begin to express how grateful I am to have an anxiety journal these days. It does miracles.

I just dumped all my current concerns into it -- Mom being by herself here in Ohio, my busted (but not that badly it looks like) ankle, Shemp's been AWOL for a couple days again, Roe v Wade about to go down.

And I can't speak for anyone else but it really really works for me. These things will still worry me, but I don't have to RUMINATE about them. I don't have to feel like if I don't juggle them in my head constantly, I'll let something slip.

And I've kinda tricked my brain into feeling I've done something about them. "What are you complaining about? They're on THE LIST now. That's standard procedure. Everything is going according to plan."

And maybe some or all of these things will still turn to ruin. Sooner or later one of them has to. But now, after nearly five years of keeping this journal, I have a mountain of evidence that, nah, odds are good it's fine. The TRUE disasters have come a lot less often than I worried, and all of them have just kinda... sunk into the waves of time.

I'm not good but I'm OK and having a *strategy* for being OK in this day and age is important and fuck. Again, can't guarantee it'll work for you, but I recommend it very highly.

@Austin_Dern "The Finnish are a curious and inscrutable people."

@Austin_Dern i will bet 💰​ to ​ that this exact scenario has happened at least once

probably in florida

my third parting shot so far:

"It turns out that the difference between the Empress* of Mars and the Empress of Mars is a big enough stick. Humans are so fuckin' predictable."

@DrSagan Yeah. That's a place it could go and the sheer unfathomable awfulness of it is a good enough reason for it to figure in every one of our plans. We have a moral duty to try to keep That from happening again.

But hit me up sometime for the story of the college RA I had who was mixed-raced and from Capetown -- during apartheid. (Short version: we naive little Americans assumed his life was constant violence, degradation, and persecution. He kind of laughed and pointed out, um... Capetown ain't like the rest of SA. It was a lot like I imagined Seattle or NOLA would be in Right-Wing Authoritarian America: absolutely jack shit would ever get enforced.)

And rrreal quick, an addendum now that I'm out of Ranty Tiger Mode and a little more reflective:

I'm NOT condemning anyone for saying they personally are too tired and hurt to fight back right now. The last few years have been Big History punching us in the face repeatedly and even after be braced for it for 30 years even I'm still shocked how fast and brutal it's been.

It is OKAY if you can't, and it's OK if you're scared. I'm sure as fuck not going to stop loving you, especially when you're an innocent victim in all this who never ASKED to have to be brave on top of everything else.

I'm talking the Left At Large here. I wanna fight. We're gonna need a lot of people to help. We're not gonna need EVERYBODY to fight all the time. We *can* take turns. :)

I am just dropping a little bombast in the hopes some tiny bit of my own hope -- and fury -- is contagious. If we ALL cave, yeah, your fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I HAVE to speak out about it.

But I'm not mad you're scared. I'm mad those motherfuckers scared you and I am about ready to pick up The Imperial[1] Beatin' Stick and go chase them down. And I'm just sayin' "right here, right now, who the fuck's with me."

I love you, and I think one particular you who's been hurtin' knows who "you" is. You stay home and rest where it's safe. Aunt Kitty got your back.

OK, she got your back in a largely rhetorical way. She hasn't QUITE figured out yet how to administer this beating that her tigery heart sings out for. And her idea of "fight" will probably mostly involve a lot of time in the Imperial Archives lookin' at how our ancestors ate evil humans in the past. 😼​ I'm really more of a strategist than a warrior.

But you fetch me a neck and I know where the fangs go.

[1] yeah fuck you solar concilience i am the ACTUAL FUCKING QUEEN OF MARS AND WOE BETIDE ANYONE WHO OBSTRUCTS ME

(also pretend i delivered a big rant using terran evolution and the incredibly ability of life to speciate and adapt to hostile environs as a metaphor for what we're about to go through, and that it was really really clever and you were all v impressed)

(if the tardigrades and the Inuit can live in the shit they live in so can we and we are how many times more adaptable than these sheltered ignorant mentally calcified religious fucks?)

@Aradia When I'm in a better position to deal with this stuff, I should have a look at how PP is reacting to all this. I can't IMAGINE they did not have Plans A through R (for Robert) for this eventuality.

Well. This aged poorly.

Outie for real now. Sorry if I did any psychic damage, but... yeah, there are gonna be a lot of mindworm experiments in the next couple years. Brace yourselves for the telepathic feedback.

We got a PLAN up here on Mars. 😼​

What it really boils down to is that I GENUINELY, sincerely don't get what is supposedly so special about the right-wing that we are not capable of wielding the exact same power -- even if our alleged leaders are far too blinkered and ossified to do it themselves.

The main difference I see is that they have embraced the old "frog in a butter churn" metaphor and DON'T EVER LET REALITY STOP THEM. They don't give up. "They Have God On Their Side." They sit wherever they like and act like they belong there, whereas leftists... pussyfoot and I'm getting tired of it and all the conflict-aversion.

We could have that power. You just have to pick it up and use it. Dammit.