mishmeaw

[mishmeaw]

saw a tiktok of a mother taking her very tiny daughter to an art museum and she’s just walking around going “whoooa” “woooaah” to everything but then they got to a marble statue of a nude woman lying on her back and the girl points and goes “mommy🫵” and i just immediately welled up with tears and all the comments are just laughing about it and of course it’s funny but how are you not insanely moved by the way art connects everyone on earth from a centuries-old sculptor to a toddler in 2023

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its crazy how nobody has ever been as objectively beautiful as danny john-jules in red dwarf and nobody ever will be again

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Lord Pembleton

He's 18 feet long

[mishmeaw]

So I made this giant Wooloo. And he’s a ball. Hand for scale 😆

Added banana for scale

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How I join skeins

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Happy Birthday Ruckus!

We have reached a full circuit of the sun since my son was forcibly evicted from the uterus!

(0 to 4 weeks):

(4 to 8 weeks):

April 9th: The day I gave in

(8 to 12 weeks):

(12 to 16 weeks):

(16 to 20 weeks):

5 months:

6 months:

7 months:

8 months:

9 months:

10 months:

11 months:

A Ruckus has been raised!

[mishmeaw]

Kis

[mishmeaw]

Took the dog on a walk and she finds this really good, strong fox scent. And she's having a great time sniffing and tracking this fox, really focused, nose to the ground.

And we know it's a fox, because about 6 feet ahead of us on the path is the fox, and she's following its exact trail. The only reason she didn't see the it was because she was too busy sniffing.

oh my god I LOVE dogs

[mishmeaw]

Hmmmm hm. Okay. Worldbuilding/story idea.

One million years after humanity disappears, octopi and ravens have independently developed sapience. And one day an octopus child and an elder raven meet at the edge of the ocean.

Where is your mother and father? asks the raven. I have no mother or father, says the octopus, blushing pale. All octopi are children. Once we’re grown, we will mate and we will die. It is the first and the last thing our mothers tell us.

But that’s horrible, says the raven. It’s not all bad, says the octopus. We play, we hunt, we make games for ourselves in the deep. Yes, but who remembers your songs? the raven says. Who passes down your stories?

What is a story? the octopus asks.

And the raven thinks about this question. And finally it says: A story is how you remember things in the past. It is how you know where you come from, and what happened before you were born. A story can be a warning, or it can be advice, or it can be a silly joke told to make you feel good. Someone remembers the story and tells it to the next generation, who remember the story and tells it to the generation after them.

And the octopus thinks about this answer. And finally it says: Can you tell me a story?

And the raven tells the octopus a story. And it’s a good story. And the next day the octopus returns and asks for another. The next day it brings its octopus friends, and the raven brings its raven friends, and many stories are shared on the edge of the ocean.

Months later, the octopus returns to the raven. I am grown, it says. I am returning to the sea to find a mate and lay my brood. I will not be coming back. I’m sorry.

I will miss your company, says the raven.

I have one thing to ask you, says the octopus. In time my children will come to the edge of the ocean. I would like you to tell them a story I have made. And when they have stories of their own, I would like your children to remember them and pass them down to my children’s children.

Of course, says the raven. What is your story about?

And the octopus thinks, and says: It is about an octopus child and an elder raven who meet at the edge of the ocean.

And this story has been passed down to this day.

[mishmeaw]

I guess while I have everyone's attention:

[mishmeaw]

Babylon and the Duck of Butter

I have a gift for falling in love with random objects. One time, my aunt got me a little rubber chicken, and whenever I squoze it, a little egg thing popped out. Very silly. Except that chicken became something like my best friend. I carried it with me to school, and I kept it with me in my pocket, and whatever social hazards there were about Being The Guy Who Got Stressed Whenever His Rubber Chicken Was Missing were far outweighed by being The Guy Who ALWAYS Had a Rubber Chicken On Him. There's a lot of comedic opportunity that comes with always having a good prop on your person.

Of course, the chicken did eventually. Explode. And such was my grief that I did not eat for 36 hours. This was very stressful for many people. Mostly my mom. I was a very strange child to work with. She took parenting so incredibly seriously, and then I'd pitch her these curve balls like refusing to eat for a day and a half because my rubber chicken died. No parenting book tells you what to do when that happens. You just have to feel it in your heart.

A less tragic story of an object that I fell in love with was a large, foam toad that I found in a trinket shop. The toad was the size of a very large grapefruit. Much too large to carry with me to school (thank god) but enough that I could move it around the house, to keep me company during my solitary pursuits. If I was reading, the toad was there, and if I was tinkering with legos, the toad was there, and even when I slept, I would wrap the toad up in layers and layers of blankets, and then spoon it. I did this until the rubber coating on the foam started to wear out, and the foam started to get brittle and break down and leak this repulsive yellow powder. Then I simply put the toad in the playroom and would consult it on matters of great importance. Eventually I stopped doing that, and someone took the opportunity to dispose of it. Not sure who. By the time I noticed its absence, too much time had passed for me to actually be sad. As an adult, part of me thinks I would have maybe liked burying the toad, but part of me also thinks I might have refused to part with the toad, which would have resulted in it leaking more repulsive yellow powder into the house. So I understand why that decision was made. 

I want to state that this does not happen often, and it does not happen on purpose. I don't choose to fall in love with random objects. And it's always a little bit embarrassing when it happens. 

Which brings me to my wife. 

Before meeting my wife, I did not often go to places with crowds. I didn't really think of it as avoiding them - those places just didn't seem fun to me. But she liked those places, and I really liked her, and being with someone who really likes something can kind of sell you on liking it too, so I'd take her to places and watch her Visibly Enjoy the Fair and go: Alright. The fair is pretty sweet.  

Which is a thing that happened. After fourish months of dating, I took her to the fair. And she fell very visibly in love with a large series of quilts, and she stayed near them for a while, which she thought was very embarrassing, and I got to pretend to be understanding as an outsider, because I thought it would be much more impressive than also being the type of person that would fall in love with a quilt. 

Do not do this. The gods punishment for my hubris was that the room next to the quilts was full of butter sculptures, which was an entirely new thing to me, and I immediately fell embarrassingly in love with all of them. It was like the biggest, sappiest non-sexual crush you've ever had, but not only did the other person not recipropcate, they could not, because they were made of butter. I actually got yelled at for pressing my face against the glass, which is fair, but also, I hadn't realized I was pressing my face on the glass, I just started leaning forward because after approximately 30 minutes of staring wistfully at a cow made of butter my legs got tired. And I think I should be given some grace for that.

Anyway. My wife was very patient with me taking more time to look at the butter sculptures than the average person might spent at the Louvre, and she also felt much less embarrassed over falling in love with a quilt, and we had a good laugh about it on the ferris wheel. 

A few weeks after that was my birthday. And I don't know what I expected, exactly - but I did not expect what she did. 

Dear reader, she made me a butter sculpture. Of a duck.

She picked a duck, because our first kiss was at a Japanese friendship garden. It was our second date, and she'd made up her mind not to do any kissing until the third date, but as we sat on the grass, a duck walked past me, and I'd just seen the hold-duck-gentle-like-hamgurber meme,

so I sort of impulsively reached out and snatched it. I honestly didn't think it would work. I don't know who was more flabbergasted, me or the duck. But we looked at each other, and then I looked at her, and then she looked at the duck, and she looked so incredibly envious that I assumed that must have wanted the duck so I just handed it to her.

It turned out she was actually envious of the ability to just grab a duck as it walked by, but she accepted the duck and stroked it a few times before releasing it. (She also made up her mind to kiss me in that moment, which was very nice.)  

Anyway.

She made me a butter duck of my own. Obviously, I fell in love with it immediately. I cleared out all of the freezer-portion of my mini fridge, and I put the duck in there, and for the next several months, when I felt sad, or lonely, I would open the door up and spent some quality time. Just me and my duck.

But this is, of course, not the end of the story. 

Because.

After several months. 

The mini fridge died. 

I really didn't use it that often. It was mostly my duck storage container. But one day, I walked by it, and it struck me that it wasn't humming. So I opened the door, and it was just. Far, far too late. The duck was dead. Dead dead. Turned into a foul-smelling slime dead. 

I cried. I did. After the rubber chicken thing, I thought I had changed, but I had not changed, and the unexpected death of my butter buddy left me pretty shook. I texted my then-girlfriend now-wife about how sad I was, and she actually came over to help me say goodbye. We didn't even bother scraping the duck out of the mini-fridge, we just said our goodbyes to both and threw them together in the nice dumpster behind the chapel, because it seemed appropriate to put it in God's dumpster. And it did actually help quite a bit. I certainly did not go 36 hours without eating again. 

And that was, for some time, the end of the butter duck. 

However. Three (or four?) years ago, for my birthday, my wife was looking around thrift stores. And she found something interesting. 

The original butter duck had an odd pose. She'd sculpted it laying flat, intending to raise it up later. But the butter was less flexible than she thought, and she was afraid of cracking it so she left it down which left the duck with a very elongated, very in-motion appearance. And she found a brass statue of a duck in the same, running posture.

It wasn't the original. But it was oddly on the nose. It was a yellow brass, it had the same strange posture, the same crude little face feathers. 

I think it was $3, but it remains perhaps the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. I got very choked up when I unwrapped Butter Duck, The UnDying. 

Pic provided.

[mishmeaw]

this puppy currently being fostered by a rescue i follow makes me feel like. like. i don’t know. she’s a bug

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reblog to bap prev with your paw

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Discussing baby’s future