tortoisebear

[tortoisebear]

Please don’t pay for his music.

[tortoisebear]

[tortoisebear]

Remind me later.

[tortoisebear]

“People are inherently terrible” no!!! Have you ever seen a child wait for their friend while they tie their shoelaces? Have you ever known someone who would bring hurt squirrels and rabbits and mice to the nearest vet just so it doesn’t suffer? Have you seen someone grieve? Have you ever read something that hit your heart like a freight train? Have you looked at the stars and felt an unexplainable joy? Have you ever baked bread? Have you shared a meal with a friend? Have you not seen it? All the love? All the good? I know it’s hard to see sometimes, I know there’s pain everywhere. But look, there’s a child helping another up after a hard fall. Look, there’s someone giving their umbrella to a stranger. Look, there’s someone admiring the spring flowers. Look, there’s good, there’s good, there’s good. Look!!!!

[tortoisebear]

The weather is changing, and I am dreaming of Superior again.

It's not always; not even often. But enough that the dreams linger through the day. And it's not the same dream, either, it's different in little ways. Sometimes the beaches are rough pale sand with the treeline far away, retreating from the surf; sometimes it's wave-tumbled round stone, sometimes it's foliated shale, the rocky lakebed teeth chewing up the driftwood;and sometimes there's no beach at all, just the abrupt cessation of forest where the water begins. Always, I am at the shore, and the world is going wrong.

The sky is low and grey and green and roiling, but I don't look up, because there is always something closer, more desperate, that must be dealt with first. Years ago, it was a creaking grey wooden house, warping in the wind and sparking suddenly with fire. Did you know that house fires are loud? They're deafening, like something roaring with hunger, never stopping to inhale. Sometimes the burning house is Vermilion Station; sometimes it's just a twisting old thing that I cannot find the doors to. Usually I am not alone, and I am trying to get someone else out. Sometimes it's a stranger; sometimes it is someone long dead in the waking world.

Sometimes there's a pier, slick wet concrete or smooth-worn wood, old enough that the grain is worn into grooves. The pier juts like a spine out into the lake, and I am running down, yelling into the wind at a ship tossing in the dark waves, unheard over the storm. The ship is sometimes a steel mammoth full of cargo, sometimes a billow of white sails. Always it is just at the edge of capsizing, far beyond my reach. Often, the storm overhead begins reaching down, turning and turning into a tornado, into blinding flare of lightning, into a white curtain of blizzard. Sometimes, over the howling storm, I hear a different rush of water, like some flood is crashing down the Porcupines, heading towards the shore.

And the water is always black and endless, which is how I know it's Superior. Jagged white-capped waves, icy wind and no hint of salt in the air; spray that touches your face like sleet. The dreams are often long, often confusing, always hurried, but they always end the same way.

I am at the edge of the water, looking north, and the horizon begins to bow upwards, as whatever is in the deep water begins to rise, lifting the lake on its back, bigger than a ship, bigger than a city, displacing water but moving so quickly that the whole surface of Superior is bulging upwards, breaking closer and closer to the surface--

(watching on the shoreline, I am not afraid. Fear is what came before this. Now that it is coming, I am only waiting. I am only a witness to whatever comes next)

--and always, before it breaches, I wake.

It is October, and Superior is calling.

[tortoisebear]

I wish age gap discourse hadn't spiraled the way it has because I want there to be a safe space to say "Men in their 40s who date 25 year olds aren't predators, they're just fucking losers"

[tortoisebear]

[tortoisebear]

[tortoisebear]

this guy's beef got old enough to have geology

[tortoisebear]

I hate when an artist gets exposed for being a bad person and people start the narrative “why would you even want to listen to their shitty music” when are we going to be freed from the idea that only good people create good art and bad people create bad art. It just makes it harder for these types of people to be exposed because now you got people thinking “how is this possible, his music is so good!”

[tortoisebear]

imagine: you get your memories back after years of amnesia to find out your whole species is dead and earth doesn’t exist anymore. that the only thing left of your culture is your weird ex and his busted honda civic that barely even works that he stole from the government when he was 13. And he’s been taking members of an alien species for trips in his honda civic and they’re all like “woah it’s so cool” and you get upset because it’s NOT COOL it’s a honda civic, the turn signals don’t even work “wow it can go up hills” yeah OF COURSE IT CAN GO UP HILLS EVERY CAR COULD DO THAT. but they’ve never seen a car before so everything it does is the coolest thing ever. And your ex’s only tool is a fucking screwdriver which is somehow also cool to this dumbass alien species even though it’s a fucking screwdriver so you just look like an idiot screaming about how none of this is even cool it’s actually really shitty but your whole planet is gone so you can’t even prove it but also you’ve had a constant drumming sounding in your head since you were 10 slowly driving you insane. I would become evil too.

[tortoisebear]

[tortoisebear]

Woman at the zoo: Why do they look so sad? 😔

Sign literally 10 feet away:

[tortoisebear]

Do good recklessly!

I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money. 

“A scam” people are fucking wild.  

[tortoisebear]

[tortoisebear]

Anti-voting rhetoric will be the death of the left. Literally.

Not a single fucking Republican voted to protect roe. It was fucking overturned in the first place bc trump got three Supreme Court appointments.

Every fucking thing wrong in this country is almost certainly the result of Republicans being in power. In 2020, Texas cut half of the polling places in black neighborhoods, and doubled them in white ones, regardless of population. It was Republicans bitching about mail in voting, and constantly, constantly fearmonger about voter fraud. Literally, their platform is about making civil rights harder to practice.

Would you like to know why? It’s because Republican politicians know better than anyone that higher voter participation means higher republican loss.

But what do I see from the online left, champions of the oppressed?

“Voting doesn’t do anything, the parties are the same, the system is rigged, etc, etc”

Don’t sit here and tell me you give a fuck about marginalized people if you aren’t ready to march your ass to the voting booth and vote out the party actively stripping their rights away.

Protest, donate, community build, unionize, and vote, vote, vote.

By the time direct action is the only option, it will be too fucking late.

[tortoisebear]

My husband’s job primarily employs adult men but there is one (1) teenage girl and my husband said originally he worried she might be a bit of an outcast but instead every man on the crew was like “huh guess I am a dad/older brother now.”