paniniwitharugula

[paniniwitharugula]

"why are you on your phone all the time" my frands :) hope this helps!

[paniniwitharugula]

male gaze is not 'when person look sexy' or 'when misogynist make film'

death of the author is not 'miku wrote this'

I don't think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts

death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it's utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn't mean 'i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot' - it may in fact often mean 'this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn't intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it's worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it's there.' it's important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it's important to be able to tell the difference.

male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn't mean 'finding a lady sexy' or 'looking with a sexual lens', it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it's important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can't get a grip on male gaze beyond 'sexual imagery', you're really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.

[paniniwitharugula]

This morning I came downstairs to discover that the dogs have invented a New Crime.

My husband get up very early for his Real Adult Job, and feeds Charleston (Black-and-cream Sighthound mix, mostly leg) and Herschel (40lb cardigan welsh crime tube), then lets them out into the fenced yard before he leaves.

I get up at the same time but take longer to boot up, so the dogs frolick about and discourage the local tree rats from lingering about the property while I get dressed/brush my teeth/try to not be psychologically crushed by The Horrors (TM)

Now it's pretty normal for me to find Herschel doing a high-speed yet startlingly efficient MC Hammer Shuffle on his stubby little legs around the base of the large honey Locust tree we have in the middle of the yard so he could keep his face pointed directly up the trunk at something in the canopy, because this his how he tries to herd squirrels.

...but Charlie is usually nearby, cheerfully play-bowing and encouraging the squirrel to come down, nothing bad will happen-!

This time Charleston is nowhere in sight.

I go outside to investigate and Herschel pauses to tackle me about the kneecaps as a greeting before returning to the tree.

Charleston is not behind the garden bins, nor in the side yard.

I am growing concerned, when I hear a telltale guilty scrape of claws above me.

Charleston is on the roof.

I shuffle out to the middle of the yard, until I can make eye contact with him.

He looks down at me, cheerfully wagging his tail, clearly anticipating praise for being such a clever boy.

I at least know how he got up there.

My house has a deck built off the second floor with a set of stairs leading up to it, and a large honey locust tree grows next to it. Part of the roof is easily accessible with a small hop from the deck.

The deck has only a minimal amount of railing ad the roof has none, so I blocked off the stairs with a board that was too high for Herschel, an inveterate explorer and criminal, to jump, but not Charlie.

I didn't worry about this at the time because Charleston is, in fact, The Best Dog In The Universe, and understands that even though he *could* easily jump various barriers, it would be *impolite* of him to do so.

Charleston is Extremely Polite and thus almost never commits any crimes.

...Almost Never.

Charlie has exactly two vices, which aren't even vices because his ancestors were bred for millennia to do these two exact things.

The first is that he is HIGHLY leash aggressive when I'm present (We were both attacked by a St. Bernard the first day I had him and Charlie has decided Strange Dogs Are Not Allowed To Approach Me)

The Second is that he has the Prey Drive From Hell.

He has chased bears and bulls with full murderous intent.

He almost got me arrested because he cut his leash to chase a pronghorn antelope in front of a park ranger.

It is only for the sake of my saftey and pursuit of prey that he will break the rules.

Today, he has his nemesis cornered

Charleston isn't clever the way Herschel is. He's never really explored using his toys as tools, whereas Herschel speedran the early stages of hominid tool use as a puppy. Arwen was a logistical sort of genius who managed to terraform my parent's yard into Rabbit Thunderdome.

Charleston's genius is... psychological.

If the Squirrels see both dogs, they run for the fence, but if they only see Herschel, they run for the tree.

Charlie is much better at tracking and guessing the route his prey might go, so Charlie runs for their preferred escape route of the tree instead of chasing them.

The squirrels compensate by running for the fence, which is farther away in general, but they have a head start on the dogs.

At Some Point, charlie managed to work out that if he stays in the shadows under the deck, the squirrels won't see his mostly-black body, especially when Herschel charges into the sunlight and catches it on his white ruff.

Charleston realized, long before I did, that there is only the ONE branch that overhangs the roof, and therefore if a squirrel runs up the tree, it only has ONE way out of the yard.

The real genius was combining all of the above into the realization that he could let Herschel charge the squirrels, run through the under-deck shadows and up to the deck and roof while the squirrels are distracted, and plant himself on the roof where the squirrels HAVE to land without them seeing him until it was too late.

-And so we stand this morning.

Herschel at the foot of the tree, preventing the squirrel from running back down and heading for the fence

Charleston square in the landing zone on the roof, at the ready

The squirrel paralyzed on the branch between them

...and me, only sort of awake and realizing that I'm probably the dumbest mammal here.

I need to figure out how to disentangle these beasts without anyone getting maimed. Charleston has the blood of his ancestors baying for the flesh of his nemesis in his ears. Herschel is dangerously close to figuring out how to get on the roof himself. The squirrel is contemplating some truly dire Maneuvers, including dropping out of the tree and assaulting me to buy time.

I haven't even had my coffee yet.

"Charleston." I say with a very aggravated sigh. "That's not where dogs go."

Charleston whimpers.

He has Disappointed (TM) me.

A fate worse than death.

He starts to walk back to the deck, but as he takes a step to leave, so does the squirrel, and he is pulled back by millennia of instinct.

This will require. Delicacy.

or delicacies.

"Stay. I'll be right back." I tell the dogs.

I go back into the house, and retrieve The Best Treat.

The Cat's Wet Food.

Both dogs crave this Most Forbidden snack with an irrational passion, and it is usually both out of reach in the cat tree AND defended by Mochi, who rules the dogs with an Iron Paw.

I return to the yard, and open the can in full view of both dogs.

"Charlie?" I call. "Do you want Wet Food?"

He is halfway down the stairs before I can finish the question.

Herschel switches his orbit from the tree to my person, and I have to shuffle to avoid tripping over them as we go back inside and the squirrel flees.

None of this is the new crime.

I go out with them later to pull Yet More Thistles, and a few minutes in, I hear a little 'huff' from Charlie.

I look up, and he's standing on the stairs, paw up to indicate he's going to jump over the barrier board and go right back up there.

You know.

...Unless there is wet food to be had.

The children have figured out how to commit extortion. I text my husband.

They're so smart! Do you think we can set them on the jackasses across the street? My husband asks, ever the practical man.

I'm going back to bed.

---

I'm a disabled writier who makes my living tellng stories. if you liked this, please consider giving me a Ko-fi tip, or pre-ordering the Family Lore book of stories on my Patreon. Thank you!

[paniniwitharugula]

honestly darth vader should’ve clocked leia as his daughter when she went “I don’t have the death star plans! I’m on a diplomatic mission 🙄” right after he SAW her ship leave with the plans. because that is 100% some shit clone wars anakin would’ve pulled

[paniniwitharugula]

well look who it is. my old friend. the conses of my quences.

[paniniwitharugula]

Settles down on your dashboard gingerly and with a big heaving sigh

[paniniwitharugula]

astronomy club sent up a weather balloon w a gopro in it last friday. put in three packs of fruit snacks so they could have a giggle over eating fruit snacks that had been to space.

balloon went up into inner space, about 90,000 feet. came down right near the dinosaur park. a few physics teachers drive out to get it, crack it open on the way home to start watching the footage.

fruit snacks are missing.

multiple sources confirm that fruit snacks were put in balloon and sealed in with duct tape. physics teachers check entire balloon. no fruit snacks.

physics teachers watch footage. all 7 hours of it. right in the middle of footage, there are about 8 minutes of visual and audio static when balloon is in orbit. no other interference with balloon recorded.

conclusions: ???????

[paniniwitharugula]

Complete List of Things Vic Michaelis Has Usurped From Sam Reich;

1. His home security system

2. His house

3. His literal wife

4. The Entire Company of Dropout.

[paniniwitharugula]

Lark and Bower / Sarah Ward - 2020

During lock down, without a loom or studio, she started stitching small woven patterns by hand, using leftover yarn and a lot patience. What began as a way to keep going became a way of working.

Now, even with her full studio back, she still creates these tiny, time-consuming pieces. They're not made to be worn or sold fast, they're made to be seen, to remind us that weaving is an art, not just something for clothes. She uses waste yarn, old stock, and plant fibers to avoid adding more to the pile of fast fashion.

via @arthunter.me and @larkandbower

[paniniwitharugula]

if grug honest grug a bit of a faggot.

[paniniwitharugula]

it was nice seeing you at the devil's sacrament

[paniniwitharugula]

It’s water over the bridge

[paniniwitharugula]

Everyday I wake up and think about FDR’s second bill of rights

[paniniwitharugula]

[image description: photograph taken at night of a glass-front building. Its sign reads, in plain black text on a white background, “Go As You Please Funerals, Tel. 0191-236 9797” Behind the big shop window stands a golden sarcophagus. end I.D.]

[paniniwitharugula]

omfg i went snooping and yalll. im.

i think that caitvi kinktober thing shifted to a new blog name. calling it nsfw month now

and im looking at the rules and this change and im CACKLING

THEY LITERALLY TOOK THE KINK OUT OF KINKTOBER AKFKFGKGKHK

moved it to november. this is so fuckin funny to me

[paniniwitharugula]

After System Collapse and Rapport, I can't help thinking about how completely and utterly insane ART and Murderbot's first meeting was from ART's perspective.

UplandGatewayOne, the station where they met, is ART's home station. In Mihira and New Tideland's system. Which is deeply anti-corporate. SecUnit even notes at the time that there aren't any security or bond companies there, so nobody should be looking for escaping SecUnits. Iris and Matteo, for all the anti-corporate missions they've been on, have never even seen one, which means Perihelion most likely hasn't either. They're not deployed on transit rings except in GrayCris-paying-to-murder-people situations, and when they are, it's a big deal accompanied by a lot of alarms and screaming and panic.

And one just kind of strolls across the private docks without setting off the weapons scanners. Wholly unnoticed.

So there was already no legitimate explanation for a SecUnit being here. That's point one. Which means it has to have an illegitimate reason.

And ART's paranoia is easily on par with Tarik's, generally speaking. Even though it's never encountered a SecUnit before it has to be aware that this could be an attack by a corporate. Except the SecUnit's got no drones, no additional weaponry, no armor, and it's wearing cargo pants and a hoodie. Which would seem to suggest that it's supposed to be mistaken for a human -- okay, maybe that explains how it got across the transit station a tiny bit? Not really. But at least it accounts for the lack of screaming.

But there's no point in it trying to pretend it's a human now, if this is the prelude to some kind of attack. It's not like ART is a passenger transport, and these are the private non-commercial docks. It can't get on board without trying to hack the lock, and it can't get too far from its handler without frying itself, so it has to do whatever it's doing before ART leaves the transit ring. Whatever attack is coming, it has to be soon. Like, right now, soon.

And it just pings ART directly.

Not even... trying to hide its presence as a potential hostile MI a little.

That is... possibly the most stupid prelude to a code attack it could have made? And if it had been trying to pretend it was human to persuade ART's crew (who aren't even here anyway) to give it access to the ship, it just blew its cover. What the hell is its human handler thinking? They're really bad at this.

And then it asks for a ride--which, again, is hilarious if it thinks it can gain entry that easily--wait. What the fuck? It's offering several hundred hours of entertainment media as a trade.

There is no human handler.

ART doesn't even have to check the governor module at that point. No human would imagine that transports watch television. Possibly, no other bots besides transports would know that they do, because transports are famously not-communicative. Nobody could have instructed it to say that. The only way the SecUnit itself could have gotten the idea that this approach might work is if it tried it before and it was successful.

Okay, so what we know for sure is: This SecUnit is a rogue, and it talks to transports.

And apparently it's hitchhiking?

This raises so many more questions than it answers.

Where the hell did it come from? How did it get across the station without setting off any alerts? Why was it chatting up transports before now? How did it even get several hundred hours of entertainment media downloads? And why the hell would any sentient being, let alone a rogue SecUnit, want to hitchhike to RaviHyral? A crummy little moon which has nothing on it except for mines.

ART's explanation of, "I was curious about you," for letting Murderbot on board is the understatement of the millennium.

This is the equivalent of a frigging walrus ringing your doorbell.

[paniniwitharugula]

the other day i was telling my partner about my new coworkers and the spirit moved me to start inserting characters from Piano Man