Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Here's my image gallery from yesterday's trip to the Center for Puppetry Arts. Summary: lots and lots of animal puppets and rare Henson memorabilia. I might caption them later.

https://imgur.com/a/WW9MKio

@Leucrotta Yeah. Are you familiar with the Alan Berg incident? Ugly, ugly stuff. People act like this shit is all new, but it's just more brazen and has a bigger megaphone. >_<

Been watching Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio in the background while I work. It's exactly what it sounds like, adapted from a one-man play about a shock jock who's tilting towards an angry nervous breakdown on the air, over a failing country and a failing personal life.

It's weird. The politics in it were too intense and depressing for me to ever make it all the way through before. Now? Nothin'. The callus has gotten so thick and all the problems they're talking about have gotten to be so normal...

But I take a certain amount of relief from it. This movie was made in 1988, for crying out loud. We've made it thirty years with the kind of racist losers, trolls, and health crackpots portrayed in this film—and somehow managed to push gay marriage, a television renaissance, and open public discussion of democratic socialism past this cretin parade, even as its ranks have swollen.

Plus, oh my god, this film is a memetic gold mine. I think I'm gonna get about 40 ringtones from it. :) Some real gems about the high cost of freeze peach, too, especially if you let it rot in the gutter... Totally worth watching *if* you don't mind a quick, highly educational jog through an ideological sewer. But I have the requisite tolerance for sheer assholery, so maybe you're better off just letting the big mean kitty watch it for you. :)

Also, seriously, HUGE HUGE HUGE anti-Semitism CW for this film—the real-world radio host it was based on was murdered by Christian Identity loons. >_<

@Austin_Dern (Fave = sympathy and a "right on" about the tendency of well-meaning techies to dogpile people here. :> )

Sorry for the emotional overspill last night. I've been trying so hard to keep all that on the down-low, but my emotional reserves were already low and that episode of She-Ra just broke me a little.

Doing okayish today. Really not looking forward to the Greyhound trip tonight—it'll put us at the Atlanta bus station at 11 at night. But I've done the freakin' NYC Port Authority at 2 am, alone, so it's nothing I can't handle.

Peg and I are at the Ebrik Coffee Room, giving each other some much needed space. It's a nice place, with a second floor for the dragon to perch on.

I have developed a massive platonic crush on the head barista, who is radiant with Black Nerd With Dreadlocks Energy and has been *incredibly* kind and cheerful about our touristy bumbling and incoherence this week.

I drove Peg half-crazy with my jokes about how I don't necessarily want to pounce him, I just wanna... drive around the country in a van with him and solve Spooky Coffee Mysteries together, and talk for hours about left-wing politics at 2 am.

I'm worried about our future in NOLA, but I'm really looking forward to getting home. The boost I'll get if we go inside and everything's just fine will probably be worth it all. I can't wait, and dare not hope too much, to get back to a normal-ass work schedule.

Of course, that's not going to happen, because my trip home to Ohio is scheduled for a week from now. And I blew all my time off while fleeing the storm. *sigh* I'll get through it.

Just got through "Promise," the one where Adora and Catra have to run together through a maze of holographic memories of the two of them as happy kids—right after Catra betrayed She-Ra good and hard.

Obviously, big feels there. Big "how the fuck did Seattle go so wrong and how did my sisters and I end up hating each other" feels.

And you know, we all try to cast ourselves as the hero. When I finished, sitting there reeling from the ending, I reflexively tried to put myself in the place of Adora, the one who got betrayed.

But nah. Appropriately enough, I guess... I was Catra. I was always second best. Kristy would say her money and status didn't matter, but... over and over, in subtle and unsubtle ways, they did.

She was generous to a fault to me, maybe a little too generous. If it was easy to give me something, she gave it. If it was difficult, she gave it, and she told me it didn't matter... but it did. It always did. And she could be so damn critical of me, doings things like cutting me down for my lack of financial knowledge, not remembering *I had never had her kind of money, nor the promise of an inheritance like hers, in my damned life*. And the guessing games, trying to get her to show my one way or the other if it was really true, that I should trust my hunch that she lost all patience and respect for me ages ago, drove me to madness and fury.

It felt like there was not a damn thing I could do to be important to her. The only things that seemed to go down on my permanent record were the mistakes. I could get anything I wanted there except for her love, her interest, or her forgiveness.

And one day, after we fought... I scratched her. (Metaphorically, of course. Loud and tantrummy though I could get, the only one I really ever offered any violence to was myself.)

Just like a damned ungrateful cat. Like an ungrateful, scared, starving cat who was starting to feel more like a pet than a friend. To be fair, that stupid bunny batted at my tail one too many times. I was tired of her using her intellectual prowess, her superior composure and presence of mind, and her stubbornness a a wall of force against me. I was tired of being told I had to come at her with facts and reason to get taken seriously, and then told I was playing too rough when I called her bluff and took her up on it. It was going to end up in tears sooner or later.

And you know what?

I'd still throw her the damned sword. I'd probably push her out of the way of a falling rock. But just like Catra with Adora... it would be to get back the hell out of my life as fast as possible. I want her to be happy, healthy, and way the fuck out of my path.

But if she ever comes back to take away any of the things I've earned, since I lost her dubious protection and proved—despite her best-intentioned, most-stifling attempts to protect me—I could make it on my own... Yeah. I might be tempted to just let her fall. She's just lucky Martians have a sense of noblesse oblige that Catra doesn't. I'll be happy enough to just give her the Cut Sublime* and pretend we never knew each other.

MUSICAL SELECTION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbb5mSomdV8

* The Cut: https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/the-cut-the-ultimate-final-social-weapon/amp/

@001zlnv 2+ hour.

Hmm.

Catholic?

So yeah, we went to the Center For Puppetry Arts in Atlanta. It was... an intensely bittersweet experience for me. Still pretty verklempt.

Henson nostalgia was the toughest, of course, but I got some gorgeous photos for you folks which I hope to post—and/or hand off to Peg for her blog—maybe when we get back.

Just... so many traces of things it felt like we've lost. It took a while to pick myself up and remind myself all these things have *legacies* that will be here as long as humanity is.

@chimerror I still remember Mr. T Ate My Balls and Hatten Ar Din. I feel like such an... elder.

Yup. I think I've officially been culturally assimilated. Love my dragon, love her town.

@coyohti Thank you for sharing that extremely vindicating and comforting anecdote. 💖

Next motherfucker who says a WORD to the effect that New Orleans should no longer exist is gonna see how my ancestors used to do shit in Bengal. And I'm not talking about flood management— though it is gonna look like a very sudden, very sharp monsoon went through their midsection.

Never mind the fact it's 2019 FFS, and at worst we're gonna be the first among many. They should be looking to us for ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO when the waters come for them, especially if they live on the coast... And if I have to take much more of this callous bullshit, my answer's gonna be "tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

These people will cluck their tongues over the "naturalness" and even "hubris" of NOLA, without sparing a moment to think about how the typical American city is one good disaster away from starvation at any time. We're ALL hanging by a thread of human ingenuity.

I put these cretins in the same category as people who wail about how gene therapy is "against nature" but have no problem with, say, getting a heart valve or a bottle of pills when they're the ones in trouble—neither of which, to the best of my knowledge, was foraged in some verdant meadow.

In summary, the mountain cats are coming to drag away your bones. I might be a little nicer to each other if I were you, humans.

Voice of a generation, here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAH4zGd_W1s

Honorary Martian if I ever saw one. You tell 'em, kid!​

#RAWRRAWRRAWRRAWRRAWR

@zx3 I'm turning away 99% of all "while you're there you gotta see" advice, 'cause honestly I just wanna slouch in the hotel room, order Indian food, and get really good at Into The Breach... but I gotta admit, that's the first one I've seriously considered. Did you know how big of a soda nerd I am? :D I guess it depends how far it is from downtown, 'cause we're just too beat to take any long trips on the local transit. Peg's already probably gonna force me to go to the puppetry museum (which is largely Henson so will probably actually be a real good time), so... we'll look into it! You definitely got my attention. :D Thanks for thinking of us!

​i ate a very large amt of sausage gravy this morning and am v v v pleased about this

@001zlnv @anthracite More like a pancake printer, honestly, but it's still kinda funny. :D Wait, I have a phone now! I will see if I can get you some footage tomorrow morning.

Haven't gone for a full update, but it does look like the lower river forecast last night was the correct one, and in terms of the levees, we are probably well outta the woods.

Still a LOT OF FUCKING RAIN, but last Peg checked we were one of the lucky spots that still had power, Barry is veering in a course that ain't _too_ awful for us, and we have a porch that's much taller than the max 25" scenario.

At the very least, I can look forward to seeing my plushie friends again and giving them a massive apology/heroes' commendation...

@mawr It's 2019 ffs. Medium purists can lick my neural jack. :) If it goes into your brain and it's words, you "read" the novel for all reasonable intents and purposes.