Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@chimerror H E L L O T E

had a big ol' italian-style mutal bitch session with mom, about damn near every topic on earth, from the general suckiness of the DNC to the staggering selfish idiocy of my
stepsister to the enduring golden-girl awesomeness of my niece

mom is still full of piss and vinegar and her sterling sense of humor is untarnished. she's gonna be ok i think. at least until the next shoe drops. *shrug*

meanwhile my throat is getting scratchy and i'm very nervous... could easily be the fact my parents smoke and the household reeks, or lingering vaxx effects, or just the usual sinus fuckery, but... yeah. would NOT appreciate the irony of being the one to bring omicron home.

God dammit my niece tested positive. And she's the SMART one who actually got vaccinated and did everything right. Now she's in tears because she 'ruined Christmas" and mom is a mess because there's nobody to eat all the food she cooked.

They'll be fine. They'll do Christmas in a few weeks. I just... I kinda... this is why I hate Christmas, you know? It's just a bunch of opportunities for tragedy as people get their hopes up to unrealistic levels.

Just... dispense with this useless pseudo-Christian residue and VISIT YOUR FAMILY AND HAVE A GOOD TIME AND TELL THEM YOU LOVE THEM. Assuming you even like them-- otherwise DON'T.

I hate this. I absolutely hate it. Christmas has almost completely transmuted into "my yearly chance to see how poignant and tragic my family is as it circles the mortality drain."

Mom needs me. Otherwise, I'd be on the next plane.

"Rationalist" is one of those words that it's really helpful to see in a Twitter bio, because they're always for guys you'd never have realized are rational just by reading their actual tweets.

"show me in 50 characters or less that creativity does not define you"

yeah, at this point i'm definitely here to see my mom off, protect peg, and see the cats thru as long and as good of a life as we can offer them

the moment i am free of that, hopefully not anytime soon, i am going either need to be restrained or combat trained, your choice >_<

because it's gonna be real hard to convince me not to just Take A Few Bastards With Me

seriously, it's bad, and it really is everything

passing reference to Vampire The Masquerade: nauseous loathing of the gothsnob elitism inherent in the slang terms like "lick"

passing reference to HexLatex drones: nauseous loathing of the sameness and perfunctory Joiner nature of it all

trying to watch old 80s cartoons: nauseous loathing because i can't forget all the executive meddling that went on and how it permanently scarred our culture going all the way back to the fucking Hays Code

twitter: violent nausea at twitter

trying to look at pictures of cats: heartsick terror because cats are sick and unhappy sometimes

talking theology with an old and near Actual Feed The Poor And Love People Type Christian friend: nauseous loathing at being reminded of the furry anglican priest wannabe piece of shit who he used to argue with and all the damage he did, fuck you scott

madison cawthorne ranting about a definition of "communism" that only exists in his head and would also apply to Ming the Merciless and Adolf Hitler: i just want to see him die

earth: can we just agree on a doom and get this shit over with? my whole family is dying off and peg and i are doomed anyhow

sometimes it feels like there are precisely one (1) dragon, six (6) cats, and one (1) elderly dago lady between me and going postal

i read far too much news and social media and am doing the existential equivalent of projectile barfing right now

i feel utter nausea about the world i'm in and the people in it and the things they value

it feels like the only non-palliative cure would be to beat a Proud Boy to a bloody pulp *immediately* after catching him say "you know communism has never worked" for the 700th time

@CorvusRobotica YES. The more off-kilter from real world causality a neo-noir is, the more I like it. Like, Inherent Vice (both the novel and film) is my perfect noir. Same with The Long Goodbye, or the Fargo TV series. David Lynch too, of course. Ideally, Noir is NOT about worlds that make existential sense. :)

This is also making me wonder if I should go pick up some Janwillem Van De Wetering detective stories and see how they've aged -- I was obsessed with them when I was a teenager.

Sky Atlantic's Landscapers is a really interesting show and I'm probably the only person here who would give the faintest shit about it. :) It's... slow. It's like a Joe Pera murder podcast. If you know who the hell that is, it might actually be worth seeing. :)

It's about a doddering middle-aged couple that's completely confused and harmless except that they probably, and perhaps justifiably, killed their parents.

But it's the formalism that's really doing it for me. I haven't seen a show less dedicated to realism since Legion, though it also reminds me of some of the impressionistic scenes from Only Murders In The Building.

It's... ponderous but feels oddly lighthearted. It's a postmodern dissection of a superficially (and perhaps genuinely) very sweet couple with a very big problem. Big CW for parental abuse issues after Ep 3 or so.

@CorvusRobotica And I think the reason is just that it's so much more thematically rich than most American noir, there's usually some undercurrent of politics or social issues and not just a "whodunit" about the Stigmatized But Fascinating Outsider Group Du Jour. It reminds me pleasantly of old Columbo episodes-- it's not about the crime, which is frequently laid straight out for us all, it's about the people involved.

@CorvusRobotica I'm thinking more TV and film than novels, but I really enjoyed The Bridge and The Killing... But I might have conventional tastes and an unusually high tolerance for copaganda/procedural dramas. Plus the fact that par in America is utter garbage like NCIS. :)

@xinjinmeng @anthracite Nah, trust* the changeling. This one tastes like my dragon.

@anthracite Yeah but Noelle(s) and N'Kenge have your back. I instructed them specifically to guard you while I'm gone. <3

@CorvusRobotica Seriously, Scandinavia has all the really good noir these days...

@anthracite Granted, that's probably mostly Cleveland and Columbus I bet? Very different population density game here, though I still don't intend to let anyone but my parents breathe much around me...

Home safe in Ohio!

@JulieSqveakaroo @anthracite Not unless you count lingering booster shot side effects! :)

Hey, folks. Lyft for the airport leaves in 20 minutes. Will be in Ohio until the 26th with questionable bandwidth (but lots of spare time). Getting up from snuggling Peg was one of the hardest things I've done recently.

Still have that dark, deathy, doomy reading from Dawn on the mind. Every deal I've done since has been much more benign, so I've chosen to take it as Dawn fretting over her steptiger traveling without having gotten the booster. (I think the side effects have finally cleared up, wasn't too bad, SUPER glad I got it.)

But yeah, feeling pretty attached to life, such as it is right now, and if this whole post does turn darkly ironic... I love you all a lot and have had a great time, please take care of Peg (and through her beneficence, the cats) and tell the world of my weird, stupid, horny deeds. <3