#weirdcore

[hazyhhh]

[luckkparker]

On Physical Media

When my nan first showed signs of Lewy body dementia, it became obvious that she would need to be moved from her single-story brick home in Fairlight into an aged care home — one with round-the-clock supervision.

It started with collapses in the supermarket. Then came the hallucinations — bugs crawling on the walls of her hospital room — and finally, she began confusing me for my mother. They never had a great relationship, so when I went to embrace her — in that clinically mangled bed — the rejection felt all the more saddening. She spoke to me, believing I was my mother.

“Make sure the kids get $100 from me. I know they’re worried about me.” I cried in that moment — an automatic response — a mixture of ego and a fear of mortality. “I didn’t realise you cared for me this much, Fran.”

A family meeting took place shortly after.

My father, his three sisters (at the time), and his brother discussed money, facilities, and next steps. This was two days after Christmas, 2023. By April, I was told that, as the only person in our family over the age of 18 and without full-time employment (ouch), it would be my responsibility to sift through every item in her bungalow and decide: What was sentimental? What was donatable? And what was trash?

I had inadvertently been training my whole life for this moment. My mother was a spring-cleaning fanatic. Like clockwork, once every three months throughout my entire childhood, I would be tasked with auditing the value of the objects in my possession — having to concretely prove how my pink bubble CD player added to my happiness and thus deserved the 30cm² of space it occupied in my bedroom.

How morbid — years of unknowingly prepping for the eventual collapse of my poor nan’s mind.

September rolled around. The cardboard boxes were ready — as were the jumbo reinforced black garbage bags. I thought I was ready too. How naive.

I started with her chestnut TV chest. 152 vinyls, ranging from Scottish choir hymns to Talking Heads. 65 VHS tapes — every Disney princess I wanted to be, now covered in dust and cockroach dung. Every single PG and G-rated film produced between 1999 and 2009 — the last year I had a sleepover in that single-bed room, adorned with nothing but flannel sheets and a strangely attractive portrait of Mother Mary on the bedside table.

I was sorting through the physical remnants of my childhood, unaware that my nan had curated every like, dislike, and fantasy of my youth. Now I was faced with the impossible task of determining the worth of my memories.

Keep, donate, or throw away.

Her living room, now devoid of most of its furniture and décor, began to flicker with projections of times gone by. I could see my brother and me cuddled up to her on the couch, laughing hysterically at our Pa’s flatulence. This fragment vanished as quickly as it appeared, only to be replaced with another. I saw my nan picking out a CD from her ridiculous collection to play as we tended to her rose garden, which surrounded a clay statue of Mary. Just as I saw my six-year-old self jump in the air at the sound of Mika, surrounded by deep reds in bloom — the vision faded. I was left staring at a now bone-dry garden and a lonely Mary, stained with white bird crap.

What could’ve been accomplished in a day by my mother — unsentimental and practical — was stretching into weeks for me. My father had to stage an intervention.

“Hi, cookie girl. I know this isn’t easy. Carmel’s a hoarder, after all, but we don’t have a lot of time left. We need to sell the house so we can pay for her care.”

My father was right. My nostalgia was delaying the truth: my nan wasn’t going to get better, and these things had no place in our lives anymore.

We hadn’t owned a media player of any kind in eight years, for Christ’s sake. Stan, Binge, Netflix, HBO Max, and Prime now housed my childhood — all for $69.97 a month.

I eventually finished sorting through my nan’s house — every item accounted for and distributed to its proper place. I did, however, keep three things for myself:

An LG 220K20D TV

An LG V8824W DVD & VCR player

Shrek 2 on DVD

A challenge to build my own media collection. A tribute to my nan.

-- Luckk

Nothing like holding my love

[fehck]

[moechu]

Moechu presents... Weirdcore pngs! ~ do not credit me! this request is for @hwizou

[allthatispeculiar]

[mother-2-is-home]

Y'all really need to sign this if you want to keep your freedom rights.

This is not going to help children, it's going to make issues like online gr**ming and extortion worse.

This will also silence lgbtq+ content, women's health and safety content, and legal SW. Please help keep the internet free and safe.

Sign this petition

Hey guys something fucking bad happened

KOSA/the kids online safety act has been reintroduced into legislature after it passed Senate last year and then got snubbed. It is not unlike the bill that just passed in the UK a few weeks ago. If you don't want what happened in the UK to happen here, now would be a good time to vocally oppose it.

Here is a petition that can be signed by Americans. Attached to the petition is an easy tool that allows you to call and leave messages for your representatives. I have already done so. You can also email your representatives by searching for their name, most have message submission boards as well. This thing died once, it can die again.

Please sign/share the petition and contact your representatives.

[moon-fence]

[pc98-rom]

[godlyyuty]

it’s like if a human had a jacket of multiple other people’s hair

[fuwungi]

shrimp bracelet 🍤

[ejgto]

[pngblog]

[churchofthemimic]

you're safe here. Mimic loves you.

[technological-existentialism]

[cybergrapeuk]

House flipping :(

This is an ArtFight attack of Toytoise by @polymerclay!

*ignore the typo in the character ID. It's 6618899 without the F!