Eurasian Red Squirrel/ekorre. Värmland, Sweden (April 25, 2021).

Gute Sheep/gutefår. Värmland, Sweden (April 24, 2020).

Terrace paddies in North Vietnam [Shortlisted in National Geographic Photo Contest 2015] by Quynh Anh Photography on Flickr

continuing my research into "what is the most bullshit thing you can call a 'book'", i present: one sheet of paper and three pinback buttons.

pretty excited by these, i've wanted to do a turkish map fold zine for a while and the little case is cut from the same sheet of paper so the whole zine can be printed on one 8.5x11 page. i'll have these at seattle art book fair at washington hall next weekend!

look, was this towel ““worth mending””? debatable. did i however have fun applying my silly little patches to the hole in it? yes. :)

kinda funny that my body hair is just like every other aspect of me in being poised precisely between 'will get funny looks' by hegemonic standards and 'pfft, you think that invisible shit counts?' by counterculture ones

Spangle-cheeked Tanager

javier.chaves.photography

on principle opposed to describing art i dislike as ‘masturbatory’ because even though it’s an alluringly contemptuous word to sneer it’s impossible to reconcile with my pro-masturbation stance

and this is where i'm reminded of an unrelated conversation i had a while back, in which i was expressing a desire for better data on things like the actual correlation of pelvic width to assigned gender (coming as i do from a narrow-hipped mother and wide-hipped father), and the friend i was talking to was like, why even cede that ground, though? like, even if wide hips are generally a Woman Thing, well, (a) there's nothing wrong with Woman Things and (b) i thought we'd established that gender isn't sited in the body? and at the time i was like, fair enough! and let it go, because i agree with both those points—but i was never entirely satisfied with how the conversation had gone, and my thought process today helped clarify for me why: because wanting better data about actual quantifiable things that we tend to just handwave with (cis)gendered assumptions isn't, actually, about wanting to validate my gender by establishing that i got my hips from my dad or whatever; it's about the fact that letting gendered stereotypes gaslight you about the actual reality of the world we inhabit makes you—me—a sloppy, stupid thinker!! and like. i aspire to be compassionate. i aspire to be consistent. but—by the god i don't believe in—i aspire, maybe above all else, to be precise.

so i’m friends on strava with Baby Sister’s extremely sweet, extremely earnest nerd-jock boyfriend, right, because i’m trying to Behave Welcomingly towards the partners of important women in my life despite being, if we’re being honest, the world’s most defensively shriveled social prune, and today that normally-very-incidental fact rubbed my nose hard in how much sexism i still gotta unlearn—

so i went for my stupid dinky little run, right, and dutifully logged it, and found myself looking at my dash or activity feed or whatever they call it over there, and realized Baby Sister’s bf had also just been for a run, which had taken him about the same amount of time; but the thing was, i’d actually run, like, 15% longer than he had, it was just that my pace per mile had also been, like, a minute and a half faster than his. which was really startling to me, because i absolutely reflexively assumed that a tall mid-twenties cis guy, who i know for a fact cycles and rock-climbs on the reg, was going to be a faster runner than me, a medium-height estrogenized couch potato!

and like, obviously i have no idea what relationship this kid's pace today had to his actual capacity, and also quite frankly in my experience running is a sport where, sure, your fitness matters or whatever, but it’s also just radically easier the less you weigh?? so i’m not particularly priding myself on a (decidedly non-elite) pace that has a lot less to do with my current fitness level (rusty) and a lot more to do with currently being underweight bc i’m bad at feeding myself bc adhd. but it just feels like. pretty fuckin telling that i was so taken aback!!

cracked open the glossaire érotique (1861) and was immediately floored by the very first word in the dictionary being "abailardiser" (verb). definition: "to leave someone in the state the canon fulbert left abailard" (castrated)

OH my god i just spent. literal HOURS cleaning out the fridge and dutifully emptying out even the extremely gross forgotten containers of things into the compost instead of just trashing them unopened. (i have adhd. i don't want to talk about the chicken. it was a bad time.)

anyway yes any other approach would have eaten at me so do i really deserve praise when ultimately i was just saving myself from the bitter reproaches of my own conscience. probably not. however i still want one gajillion neon star stickers because like. HOW conscientious of me. HOW viscerally gross a task. ugh. augh. etc.

AND then i changed the slipcovers on my armchair and started a load of laundry before flopping so. in conclusion i am positively WREATHED with the odor of sanctity atm and i'm making a post about it bc unfortunately due to the aforementioned faulty brain wiring i have a hard time accessing the appropriate Triumphantly Accomplished reward-feeling, so. public self-praise it is!