cascadianights

[cascadianights]

“I would die for my kids” your children want an apology

[cascadianights]

You serve no one by draining yourself of all your energy, not yourself, not your friends and family and not your job/education. It takes so much longer to recharge and get well again, than if we take care of ourselves as we go. So please recharge, rest and listen to your limits and your needs. You and your well being is important. 🌸

[cascadianights]

i can handle one (1) Event™ per day. whether it be a phone call, an appointment, trip to the grocery store, play date with a friend, etc. only one, that's it. any more than that and i am Stressed

[cascadianights]

You will come to Chicago prime and you will like it

[cascadianights]

[cascadianights]

California Dreaming by Miriam Shimamura

hand embroidery

[cascadianights]

The secret to gluten free baking is that the bastards don’t put enough xanthan gum or other binders in their gluten free flour and you should add your own. Add like 1/4 tsp of xanthan gum to your baked goods aight it’ll be better and most grocery stores these days have some in the baking aisle.

[cascadianights]

terrifying jmage

[cascadianights]

You can't just casually mention garlic cock man and not tell the story that's against the law

Are you sure you know what you’re asking of me? Are you sure? Well, okay. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. This post is long and contains description of genital injury.

So as you’ll know, I worked three and a half long, hilarious years at an NHS sexual health and contraception clinic. I loved that job, and packed it in because the Tory cuts to the service meant running it became hideously untenably stressful, but that’s a story for another time. 

One of my duties at the clinic was to take phone calls. Patients liked me on the phone because I have a nice voice and I’m basically completely unflappable, and they felt happy to tell me things. A vital skill in the wang biz.

One day, a man called. This was not unusual.  “Hello,” he said. “I need to see one of your nurses about my, er, my chap.”

“Righty-oh sir,” I said, “are you experiencing any symptoms that you’re concerned about? It’s just a yes or no kind of question.”

“Well,” he said, and I instantly felt a dark and terrible energy pulsate down the phone.  “Well… sort of. But, uh, it’s not symptoms of anything, it’s just…”

I would come to regret what I said next. “Is everything all right, sir?”

“Well.”  There was a pause. I heard fidgeting.  “I got a yeast infection.”

Phew, easy peasy. Yeasties are easy to fix. I sounded reassuring and buoyant. “Well that’s nothing to worry about, sir - if you don’t want to get anything over the counter from the chemist, we can-”

“No, no, that’s not the problem. Listen -” he sounded serious. “Listen, I’ll just tell you what’s the matter, and you’ll see what I mean.”

This is where, whenever I tell this story, I like to ask the listener to play a little game with me. The game is “Where Would You Tap Out?”  I’d have already tapped out by going to the chemist and getting some Canestan.

“I didn’t want any chemicals on my chap, so I decided to go for a home remedy.  Internet said garlic was good for yeast infections, and I’ve got a lot of garlic, so I figured that’d be all right.”

I made sympathetic noises.  Home remedies for yeast infections are normal, and garlic is actually quite effective.  “Oh good,” I said.

“I wasn’t sure how much to use, but I figured, I have a lot of garlic usually, so I minced a whole bulb.”

The dark energy wafting down the phone intensified.

“I packed it all over my, you know, knob, made a poultice.  Packed it all over the head, like a hat.  But, uh, I wasn’t sure how to keep it on..”

I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want to scare him off by sounding judgemental.

“..so I just duct taped it all on. Wrapped duct tape all round it.”

Still with us?  Tapped out yet?

“So er, that worked, kept it on nice and tight, and I left it on over night.”

Over night. All night with your cock mummified in garlic paste like some sort of fiendish chicken kiev.

“But, uh, when I took it off the next morning, well… garlic is…”

“Caustic,” I said, before I could stop myself. “Garlic is caustic.”

“Yeah! Yeah, it is!” he said, sounding cheerful that I, too, understood the Way of Garlic.  “So I unwrapped my dick and, well, it looked kind of like… melted.”

I sat, silent, on the phone. Already I’d missed 6 other calls, watching them sail by on the other line while this saga unfolded. 

“So I figured,” he continued, the terrible juggernaut barrelling unstoppably through this phallic disaster, “I should probably exfoliate it.”

“Exfoliate,” I echoed weakly.

“Yeah,” said this abject human disaster, misinterpreting my echolalic expression of horror as hearty encouragement.  “So I had a look around the kitchen -” he was in the kitchen for all this “- for anything I could use and got my brillo pad-”

For anyone not in the UK, that’s what we call one of these:

I must have betrayed myself and given a gasp of horror at that point, because he quickly reassured me - “No, no, no, it’s okay - it was a new one!” before going on to describe scrubbing the affected area to remove the alkaline chemical burn that he’d inflicted on his poor, blameless cock.

“So you want to come in because of… this?” I said, assuming he would want a new dick by this point.

“Oh no, no -” he said, jovial again. “No, it’s all fine - it just, my knob’s gone all… well, it kind of looks camo print now.  I was wondering if you could do anything about it looking camo print.”

No, sir. No, neither we nor anyone else can do anything about your camo print garlic cock mistake.

[cascadianights]

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.

[cascadianights]

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.

[cascadianights]

[cascadianights]

kink but make it about a young witch trying to solve the mystery of her neighbor's missing cat in a small village in the alps

[cascadianights]

props to stem people wtf! i can bullshit my way through any english essay because literally u just have to say stuff. but for stem paper u have to say stuff AND it has to be true. wack. 

[cascadianights]

Was at the art museum earlier and i have a new favourite painting