maculategiraffe - Tumblr blog

[maculategiraffe]

watching a mediocre horror movie and it occurs to me that while I have come to really appreciate the horror genre and there are some movies that I really like that are also very scary, I really dislike movies that seem like they are trying to scare me

like there's a big difference between being told a good scary story, and a movie using a bunch of cheap tricks to make you feel nervous and uncomfortable. just like there's a big difference between being told a sad story and someone trying to make you feel depressed and miserable. that's what pisses me off about like. silly jumpscares and dumb gore effects and soundtracks that go EEEE EEEE EEEE all the time. like do you mind not poking me in the ribs asking if I'm scared yet. I'm trying to watch the fucking movie

[maculategiraffe]

This is routine stuff for us librarians, too. This is a good one- I like these kinds of requests.

[maculategiraffe]

Headstone for a pet dog named ‘scum’ - Hyde Park Pet Cemetery, c. 1881.

[maculategiraffe]

Our boomer trait is gonna be that we cannot recognise deep fakes or AI, I'm calling it. We're going to be like "wow did you see this???" And our grandkids are going to look at the 12 second hologram we show them, shrug and be like: "blinks are too regular."

[maculategiraffe]

i don't want to be angry any more. let's look at prairie gardens and tapestry lawns :)

don't cry, future is beautiful

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a scientist and an icon

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here’s a fun new way of responding to anon hate, just post this pic

[maculategiraffe]

Assume ideal conditions. 'Robot body' is loosely defined and can mean whatever you want it to mean. Inside a computer? Sure. Fully articulated android body? Yeah. A toaster? Why not? The idea is that it's a fully mechanical/robotic body, whatever that means is up to you.

[maculategiraffe]

[maculategiraffe]

“do you really wanna be on that medication for the rest of your life :(?” yes actually I would love that. I know what I’m like off it

[maculategiraffe]

My specialty at work (eg, what I tend to get thrown into) is wrangling clever but extremely poorly behaved children. (The children are adolescent, but children nonetheless.) They tend to be boys. They tend to have ADHD. (It's possible that the focus on the clever rules out the ADHD girls, who have cleverly developed better masking skills by adolescence.)

The current bright and terrible-on-purpose disaster, A, is aware of the ADHD diagnosis but has apparently been told nothing about the disability. So a lot of our conversations go like this:

Me: Well, I'd ask you why you decided to start making richly detailed but extremely inappropriate jokes during class, but I'm pretty sure the answer is that someone started yelling at you for doing it before you realized that you were.

A, leaning backward, looking concerned: Are you following me?

Me: Yes, that's what I do with the spare time I don't have during the day, follow aggravating children around. We have so few of them here.

A, put out either because I've called him aggravating or because he's not special and aggravating: Sarcasm isn't very nice, Ms. T.

Me, sarcastically: I'm so sorry. Maybe you looked at the work first, thought boring, and then decided to be an enormous brat.

A: You can read minds?!

--

Me: Clearly we need executive dysfunction strategies for you, because if we don't get in front of it you'll be an adult who sits on their sofa for forty minutes yelling at herself to do the dishes and never does them.

A, trying to politely muffle laughter: Are you doing all right, Ms. T?

Me: Out of dishes, but fine. What's working in your classes? Your Literature grade is good, why are you doing the reading?

A looks left. Right. Up. At his phone.

Me: ... You aren't doing the reading, are you? The other kids ask questions because they don't understand it, and you figure out what it has to be about from the answers and never read.

A: Are you in my Lit class??

--

Me: Okay, look, ADHD brains are weird, and we tend to get them from our families, so these -

A, immediately: My dad.

Me, derailed from my drug interaction speech: Yeah, okay. When your dad has coffee, does he get calmer?

A, backing away: You're stalking my whole family now?!

[maculategiraffe]

I notice in your baby nephew stories that baby refers to himself as "Ba". Is that actually what he says or do you change it because you didnt want to give out his name? And if not, does he refer to himself as "ba" as short for "baby", or some version of "me" or as some version of his name?

good question! yes it's actually what he's saying. he's been calling himself "ba" since he started calling himself anything. but "ba" was also the first syllable he used regularly at all, like he also used to call the cat "ba" and fire "baba." he definitely knows his own name (and can recognize it when it's written down, and pick out the letter of the alphabet it starts with as "his" letter) but when he talks about himself it's always, like, "ba eat ba supper, put on ba pajamas, go night night in ba room." so like. I don't know if he's calling himself "baby" (I don't call him "baby" in real life, but his mother does sometimes, like often when he says "mommy!" she will respond "yes baby?" and she will do things like when she has coffee she will fix him a little mug of warm milk and say "mommy is having mama bear coffee and [baby] is having baby bear coffee") or if he just decided that since "ba" is the easiest syllable to say anyway he's just going to keep using it for himself. we'll see what happens as his phonemes and syntax continue to develop!

[maculategiraffe]

one more baby story. he was sitting in his booster seat and steve pushed the chair he was in closer to the table but he miscalculated and kind of squished the baby up against the table. and the baby said very calmly with his chin tilted way back "oh no. daddy zcoot ba too far"

[maculategiraffe]

baby was eating mac and cheese and he had the cheese sauce all over his face and my sister said "you want me to wipe your face buddy?" and I said "or you just want to revel in your cheese sauce?" and he said happily "ba REVEL" and stuck another fistful of noodles in his face

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Me: I should write something

me : … or I could spent 78 hours straight making a miniature library with a working LED chandelier

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the baby was playing with his little wiffle ball bat and he made as if to throw it at me and I was like "oh buddy wait. that bat is a hard thing. and remember we don't throw hard things. especially at people. because what can happen?"

and he thought about it really hard and then he was like "eh bode"

and I was like "what?" and he said "eh BODE" and flung his hands wide

and I said "explode?" and he said "dzyeah :)"

and I was like "...sure. yes. because they can explode."

then we pelted each other with (soft) fabric vegetables and then vigorously cleaned the imaginary tomato juice off each other's heads with a dish towel. good times