#country bus

[sadclowncentral]

(grabs you by the shoulders) you have to make room for new experiences in your life. you have to go through the unpleasant work of leaving your comfort zone, even if just for a few minutes at a time. because if you don't, your brain will trick you into stagnation. you will start to believe that the world can barely fit you in it. but that's not true. it's the opposite way around. you can fit the whole word inside of you. your task is only this: to welcome it with open arms

[thefloatingstone]

Appleseed PDA montage to save you from reading endless pages of unimportant politics that don't amount to anything

also because I have nothing better to do, I'm bored, I'm moody, my gaming laptop is still broken so no BG3, and it's too late at night to start drawing after doing animation clean-up all day.

[uwhe-arts]

at the bus stop . . . | uwhe-arts

[offdensen]

[thenegativitypit]

Seriously, I swear to god, if I see even ONE of y'all fuckers who were bitching about Biden's age this morning spreading even one little conspiracy theory about Harris I will burn you in a frying pan like the egg I made for dinner

I will cover you in french fries and put you out for the seagulls

I will become a motherfucking animorph and tear you apart with my fucking claws

GET BEHIND HER WITH EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT, BECAUSE THANKS TO Y'ALL SHE'S THE ONLY THING LEFT STANDING BETWEEN US AND FACISM

[beautiful-basque-country]

In Elantxobe (Bizkaia) the town streets are so narrow there's literally no room for the bus to maneuver its way out, so it can only arrive to this little square, be mechanically turned around, and then leave to follow its route. Basque inventiveness! [x]

[anotherwellkeptsecret]

To a Stranger: Prologue & 1-5

This comic is based on a true story--about how a lonely waitress by day and artist by night crosses paths with the man who stood up for her when they were children.

This comic does not have a set update schedule. I will draw pages as time allows. Please enjoy!

[chippdhearts]

Carla Gugino and Melissa Benoist The Girls on the Bus || 1x01

[emaadsidiki]

Haute Savoie, Southeastern France. 🌄🌲🌿🐄

[drawbauchery]

[bookish-bogwitch]

Boyo in the Old Country, Part 4: Boyo Goes Home

Baz spent the rest of his Sicily trip exploring Ortigia and its surroundings. Here’s a city park feat. random Greek temple ruins.

Also feat. this bus. Volkswagen, 1979, Groovy Tiger—lovely.

The absolute highlight of Baz’s trip was the Neapolis Archaeological Park on the outskirts of Siracusa. Here he is in the Ear of Dionysus, which was one of the coolest things he’s ever seen.

Baz would have liked to visually convey the magic of the space. However, he surprised himself (but no one else) by being such an unhinged frothing-at-the-mouth Indiana Jones fan that he got overexcited and forgot to take any more pictures. You’ll just have to imagine it.

Baz capped off his trip by watching the sun set over Siracusa harbor.

Then paying one last visit to his favorite Ortigian.

Ciao, bello.

_______

Stay tuned for bonus content: Boyo behind the scenes

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

[human-encounters-diary]

Day 15

We are set to arrive on Fendaar in two cycles. As we are currently stuck on the SIIR Noxos, I have concluded that the passages of time that I am free of duties would be best spent continuing to observe the human. The human, on the other hand, seemed to have different plans in that matter, as it took me an unusually long amount of time to locate her.

As I eventually found her, she seemed to be working on one of the control panels in the main control room, so I may excuse her absence with duties she had to attend to. As she saw me, although, she seemed rather…excited (this is obviously mere speculation, as the study of the Terran so far has provided far too little evidence to prove such theories)?

As she rolled out from under the control board and sighted me, her face once again split into a wide opening revealing her horrifying amount of teeth.

"Hey! Dude!", she said, raising to her full height and stepping towards me, still baring her teeth, although I did not recoil, as I did not want to seem impolite. She raised her arms, each pointing into a different direction, away from their connection to the human's body.

"Human Quinn. How are you?"

"Me? I‘m fine, the whole 'wandering around in space' thing just made me throw up, I honestly don‘t know why they insisted on keeping me there for two whole days."

The ends of her fingers, studded with claw-like (rather short and rounded instead of sharp, perhaps they were not meant to function as claws at all, or perhaps the beings on Terra were far different from what I knew, and therefore a shape like this was far more useful to hunt) protuberances, scraped over the back of the connection between her head and her upper body. If I interpreted her facial expression correctly, she seemed to be thinking.

"Maybe I got a light concussion too, I’m not entirely sure. But it's improbable, because I’m fine now."

I decided to focus on one piece of information at a time. "Well, this "throwing up" can certainly not be a healthy nor normal process, otherwise, it would not seem so violently painful and involuntary, would it?"

"Well it‘s not…unnatural, it‘s just something that can happen. And about health, it‘s not unhealthy, it usually helps us to get rid of stuff that is bad for our bodies!", she eludicated, moving one of her arms in a rather random manner.

"The scientists have concluded that this fluid is highly acidic. If this 'stuff' is so harmful to you, wouldn‘t it just dissolve in this fluid before being able to cause any further harm?"

Quinn seemed to think about that. 

"Well, just because it gets dissolved, doesn‘t mean it‘s gone, you know? It's still in our bodies, and we have to get rid of it somehow. And if it needs to be fast, we throw up. Honestly, I‘d definitely explain this further to you, but Biology‘s never really been my strongest subject, ya know what I mean?"

I did not, in fact, know what she meant, but I decided against questioning her further.

After a pause the Terran spoke up again: "So, this planet we're landing on..." "Fendaar.", I clarified. "Right. So, this planet that we‘re going to, it‘s a desert, right?" "That is correct." "So, is it a sand, an ice or, I guess you could also count rock desert? 'Cuz on my planet, we‘ve got all of those types."

"Fendaar‘s ecosystem is mostly made up out of sandlike landscapes with rather scarce vegetation and biodiversity. Most of the planets in system 36-54 have rather extreme temperature ranges, and Fendaar is no exception.", I eludicated.

"Alright, cool.", she spoke, rolling back under the underside of the control panel she had been working on previously. She seemed to be sitting, or rather lying, on a piece of metal with four small wheels attached to it, allowing her to move it around.

"Your planet.", I initiated. 

"Yeah?", she responded, while continuing her work on the wiring.

"Am I assuming correctly that your planet has a far bigger biodiversity?"

"Oh, yeah.", there was a small spring in her voice, as if she had let out air in the middle of speaking. "Big biodiversity. We‘ve got deserts and rainforests, coral reefs and permafrost - although perhaps not for that long anymore - mountain ranges and all that stuff."

"Interesting.", I supplied, for lack of a better response. If Terra had such differences in temperature and landscapes, it was a logical conclusion that the humans had evolved to survive under such circumstances.

"Yeah."

It was unusually quiet for some time. That was, until Quinn rolled out from the underside of the control panels.

"Alright, I‘m done." She took a deep breath before opening her mouth once again. Then, all of a sudden, the muscles of her face started contracting as if she was plagued by an invisible pain. Her eyes squeezed shut and she let out horrifying noise, holding an arm angled in front of her nose and mouth. The noise itself was not particularly loud or long, but I recoiled either way, as a measure of safety. I could not be certain if this gesture was meant to harm me, after all.

Quinn‘s arm sank down again as her other hand rubbed at her nose. She huffed, a sound far less threatening than the one she had produced a moment ago. One of the hair patches above her visual organs raised itself, prompting the question to arise if human hair was controlled by muscles or if it had a mind of its own, although this was a question that could be further investigated later. One of the corners of her mouth raised, revealing the seemingly sharpest teeth in her mouth.

"I guess dust is an inter-galactic thing, huh?"

I did not respond. Her face muscles contracted, causing the skin above her visual organs to crease.

"Hey, you okay? You‘re looking a little spooked over there."

"Human, I do not wish to cause you discomfort, but, if I may ask, what was the purpose of the noise you just uttered?"

She did not respond for a moment, blinking with both of her eyes as she stared at me. It was quite unsettling, considering her previous explanation, that most humans preferred not being stared at. 

"I…sneezed?" The creases in the skin above her eyes deepened.

My front pliers uttered another rattling sound. "What is this 'sneezing'? What purpose does it serve?" I admit, I was quite curious. Terrans seemed much more complex than I had previously assumed.

She paused, seemingly to think of an answer. "Well, it‘s like…if something is bothering us at or in out nose, like dust, for example, it‘s kind of the natural response to that. To keep things out of our bodies that don‘t belong there."

"Human bodies seem to require a lot of defense mechanisms.", I commented.

She raised and lowered the connection of her arms to her upper body, baring her teeth once again while raising herself to her full height, using one of her arms as support.

"Y’know, it’s surprisingly hard to explain something you’re so used to to someone who’s never heard of it. I guess I still have to work on the whole 'awareness that I‘m around aliens' thing. S‘ kind of surreal."

She patted off her clothing, as if to remove non-existent filth once again. I had noticed the past few cycles that most of her clothing seemed to consist of several, usually differently-coloured, pieces of fabric. 

Her clothes usually covered her body from the connection between her arms and torso to the connection between her legs and, presumably, her feet. Her feet were usually also covered, although I could not determine the purpose it was supposed to serve in the environment we are currently in, although the theory that the conditions on Earth are vastly different compared to the ones on the SIIR Noxos is gaining more probability, based on the Terran's narrations.

The human seemed to evaluate a question she wanted to ask (this is, of course, a mere speculation based on previous observations: her face muscles were contracted to form a crease over her visual organs, which could so far most likely be interpreted as confusion, thoughtfulness or discomfort; her head was both slightly raised and tilted to one side at the same time, a gesture that was most likely supposed to convey an ongoing thought process).

Although, before she could utter a noise, V-7 informed us of a request from the Vitrichl to gather for a matter of importance.

The purpose of his summoning was to divide the crew into several smaller groups that were to be assigned with different tasks to fulfill once we sucessfully landed on Fendaar.

I was grouped with the Terran, which was unsurprising, as well as Tkzt, a member of the species that is widely known across the galaxies as Ctzas (it is to note that the Ctzas have not evolved any form of written language and communicate exclusively through clicking and chittering sounds. The written forms of, for example, names of this species, are written by other species to produce approximately the same sound as the Ctzas make when recited verbally).

Tkzt, as a member of the unit controlling supply chains and keeping a list of the stock of the SIIR Noxos, would make a helpful addition in our task of seeking out the nearest settlement in order to stock up on supplies.

After all matters of importance were settled, the crew dissipated, continuing their respective tasks. The Terran was ordered to stay and to assist the Vitrichl in another matter, which is the reason I did not cross paths with the human again for the rest of this cycle.

Despite this, I am positive that accompanying the human on an foreign planet will give me a further insight into the species' mannerisms and interaction manners with foreign species, which will prove to be helpful further on in studying the human.

[dog-park-dissidents]

"Carbon footprint" was invented by BP in the early 00s to blame you, personally, for climate change while they dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and yet we're still better at reducing ours than they are theirs

[brainbleedo]

There is something ironic about listening to a horror podcast to help with anxiety- 💀

[crepegosette]

meanwhile in some 1800s ball

[disabled-dragoon]

I was watching a video by another wheelchair user and they were basically showing how inconvenient the timings of bus passes can be sometimes.

For reference, their bus pass is only for "off-peak" travel and does not work after 11pm or before 930am. Mine is the same, although I think if I show it I'm supposed to be allowed on for 50p (that's rarely adhered to, but still). It's different across the country, and I know at first glance that those times don't seem like they would be an issue in theory. But if you work, or you have an appointment, or you're a student or you just have to be somewhere during those times, then it's basically another redundant piece of plastic in your pocket.

The whole point of their video was basically the same as that "we're disabled, not werewolves, Daniel" post. Why doesn't it work during those times? Did they not consider the fact that people may need to use the bus during those times? They did link to a government petition to get this changed, but they didn't push it in the video itself, it was just in the caption.

Not once did they ever mention during their video an inability or unwillingness to pay for the bus themselves, but, incredibly, that is how some people have taken it.

I've seen takes along the lines of:

"It's the same for elderly people and you don't see them complaining."

"And?? Most people can't even get free bus travel."

"Your wheelchair stops other people getting the bus during peak travel times."

"Buses are cheap? Why can't you just buy a ticket like everyone else?"

"Other people need the bus, not just you."

And it just- pissed me off honestly. It might be because it's an issue I've ranted about before, or it might be the fact that half of their counter "arguments" had absolutely no relevance to what the original poster was saying anyway!

There are a thousand other issues with getting the bus as a disabled person- some of them those people even inadvertently brought up! The bus pass is just the bitter cherry on a rotten cake.

And if this is the way people react to that being brought up by someone who has to live with it, I dread to think what else they'll take issue with next.