Willow: Buffy. Don’t let jerky Parker chase you away.
Buffy: He didn’t. I just don’t want to deal with this right now. I’m taking a holiday from dealing, happily vacationing in the land of not coping.
Super weird to have innocuously added a silly personal anecdote to a post you didn’t realize was super popular…
Only to have it cross your dash a week later and find out that like 12,000 people think you’re lying.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Okay so since this hasn’t died yet, I feel like I have to add to it. The story re: my dept. lead also being on Tumblr and us outing each other with the sacred texts is like, one of the least weird/that sounds fake things that’s ever happened to me.
Some of the greatest hits include:
-Was taken to the military funeral of a total stranger in the swamp lands of Louisiana by another total stranger when I thought I was going to a work meeting. (A funeral that ended with the words ‘Sombitch y'all done shot MeeMaw!’)
-Asked Zac Efron to take a photo with me in 2008 and then getting so flustered that I asked 'Do you want to use my camera or yours?’ (he was very nice and said 'Why don’t we use yours.’)
-Was dressed exactly the same as every single person in my company (not in a company uniform, we were all dressed like our IT guy) when we were raided by the FBI.
-Got asked out at my mother’s funeral.
-Signed an autograph as Kat Dennings to a VERY drunk man at the Nashville Airport just to get him to leave me alone.
-Attended my husband’s 15th high school reunion alone and entirely by accident.
-Had a man come into my cafe and harass my employees and when I told him to leave he got up in my face and said 'I can gut you like a fucking fish.’ And with my utter lack of will to live, I said, without blinking or moving, 'You can try.’
-Acted as maid of honor and gave a wedding toast for a couple I did not know because the bride was desperate to not have her awful sister have the microphone and ruin everything.
…
I mean.
Since @grimeysociety asked, I shall expound upon the tale of being raided by the FBI.
Back in 2018, I started working for a whole body donation center. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when someone decides to donate their bodies to science, we’re like 'Yeah, hi, we’ll take it.’
This company was very much on the up-and-up. We had pristine medical facilities, quarterly state inspections, all the right certifications, the whole nine. HOWEVER that’s not the case for every whole body donation center in the country.
(If you’re considering donation, it’s a wonderful gift, but PLEASE research the company you’re planning to use.)
Imagine that you are an FBI investigator and you have heard all of the horror stories about Frankenstein’s for-profit nightmare factory. Your co-workers have talked about it, there have been team meetings about being respectful of people’s trauma and counseling services available, hell maybe you were there. And now you’re getting ready to raid another facility which might be the same. You go to sleep the night before wondering if you’re going to find a perfectly ordinary office or if you’re going to have nightmares for for the rest of your life about what you find.
And then you walk into the facility and it’s perfectly clean. Everything in order, paperwork filed, nothing amiss.
Except every single fucking person in the entire building is wearing the exact same outfit, from their beanies down to their shoes. Like you walked into a movie theater which you knew was either going to be playing The Human Centipede or Gray’s Anatomy, and it’s playing Gray’s Anatomy but also every single seat is occupied by a mannequin with its head turned towards the entrance.
I wonder if they thought they’d accidentally walked into a cult, some new and special way for things to be fucked up.
actually no make this a thing. itd probably be so good for making trans girls feel safe
im glad like at least 500 people can agree that gender affirming prosthetics shouldnt be exclusive to just trans people. honestly this goes for cis guys too feel free to get some breast forms. just dont be surprised if afterwards you decide you dont want to be a guy anymore
you know i don’t think we often talk about how difficult it actually is to suddenly realize that a belief you thought was good and moral and correct was actually really fucking toxic. how you have to look at something and go ‘oh shit, oh i fucked up. oh this is going to take probably years at minimum to deprogram from my brain because of all the little ways this shit pervaded the rest of my beliefs’
so. to all the people picking up all the pieces of a recently shattered world-view and trying to figure out what is safe to keep and what has to be thrown away and started over
to all the people having to relearn how to even listen to other people
to all the people putting in the work to do better while struggling with the guilt that comes from finding out you were the asshole
i’m proud of y’all.
it’s hard to admit being wrong and even harder to change in the aftermath. just keep doing the best you can and just know that the effort is appreciated. everyone can change. everyone can do better. keep fighting.
rabbits only flop over like that if they feel completely safe btw
to elaborate: bunnies are prey animals and almost never have their guard down– even when they’re resting they’ll usually have their back legs in a position that allows them to quickly run away. if they’re jumping around it means they’re extremely happy!! and if they flop down w/o a care that means they feel very very comfortable and safe to the point of not having to worry about their surroundings. ^__^
This is just the happiest video IMO.
“PLAY! FUN! Happy! Play?” *looks at dog* “No, no play? Naps? Okay. Naps.” *flop*
I have been to the theater a bunch since I got back, and am going again tonight to see Weapons, so before I build up even more of a backlog, here are my latest watches.
28 Years Later (2025). 28 years after the original rage virus that turns people into mindless flesh-eating monsters, a twelve year old boy named Spike leaves his safely quarantined island community and ventures to the mainland in hopes of finding medical help for his mother.
I have heard very mixed reviews of this movie, things like "interesting but messy." I honestly find this a little confusing, because on the whole I found this movie beautifully executed (it's Danny Boyle, after), emotionally coherent, very well-acted, and with only as many unlikely bits as one gets in any zombie/post-apocalypse movie. It's very earnest; I saw someone call it "sentimental, in a good way," which feels about right. I liked the island community, I liked the complicated relationship between Spike, his mom, and his dad. The moments the movie wanted me to find beautiful and moving generally worked for me.
I didn't love it the way some of my friends did; I think it just didn't have enough of my own personal id-bait in it. I thought it was a perfectly competent post-apocalyptic coming of age story, though.
The one fly in the ointment is the ending/cliffhanger, which feels like a visit from the schlockiest era of Mad Max. It's easy enough to just ignore that scene, though, at least until the second movie in the trilogy comes out. IMO this movie works fine without it.
Together (2025). Real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie star as a longtime couple whose stagnated relationship gets more strained when they move to the countryside, and then things get really weird after they go hiking and fall into a weird hole in the ground.
I feel like this movie knows exactly what tone and mixture of horror, humor, metaphor, and relationship drama it wants and mostly succeeds. Unfortunately that tone didn't really work for me, and I found the main couple annoying, especially Franco's character. Meanwhile the movie is NOT interested in the mechanics or backstory of its horror, fair enough, but those are the parts that I would have been most interested in.
The deal with the third significant character is pretty fun, and I appreciate the foreshadowing. I also appreciate that this is yet another horror movie this year with a casual, unmarked queer relationship in it.
Overall, this felt like a perfectly fine movie that was just not for me.
Strange Harvest (2025). A true crime mockumentary about one man's series of ritualistic killings.
If "Lovecraftian serial killer mockumentary" sends tingles down your spine, then this movie is for you. I would not say it does a lot over and above that description, but the slow unspooling of events and the eventual reveals (which mean more to us horror aficionados than to the people being interviewed) are all very solidly written. It also manages to be quite gory, which I feel is impressive given it's literally all shown via photographs and video taken after the fact. There's one particularly grisly kill that is not like anything I've seen before. Plus, you have to be charmed by a movie so indie that the guy playing the serial killer is also the production designer.
Watching this, I wondered why there aren't more horror mockumentaries. They feel like probably just one step up from found footage in terms of budget and complexity (okay, maybe two steps), and they allow for a lot of the same kind of storytelling. I would absolutely watch more of this kind of thing. (Any recommendations? I've seen Lake Mungo, and that's about it.)
Anyway, this movie is a solid example of the kind of thing it is, which happens to be a thing I like. If you watch it, be sure to stick around through the end credits for the little stinger.
[ID: Four gifs of Guillermo del Toro in an interview. He says, “I think the sublime confusion is from 19 to 29. You think you are late for everything, you’re a has-been, nothing is happening, there’s no opportunity for you, the world is closed, everything is a disaster, you wanna die. And then you’re 30.” /end ID]
He once gave a class in Guadalajara and said “Ustedes los jóvenes están en la edad exacta de la desesperación. Yo nunca me sentí más acabado y viejo que a los veintitantos. Decía ‘ya me pasó la vida y no hice nada’. Pero estoy aquí para decirles que no: tienen un chingo de tiempo”
Which translates to “You young people are in the exact age of desperation. I never felt more done and old than in my twenties. I’d say ‘life has passed me by and i did nothing’. But i’m here to tell you that’s not true: you have a lot of fucking time”
my ancestors seeing me shrug off a diarrhea session
People in the notes confused because they’re so accustomed to running water they don’t know how close diarrhea might have otherwise come to killing them if they’ve had it even once lol it’s killed more humans than just about anything in history
We’re the granddaughters of the bowels you couldn’t irritate
Mine would be baffled that I’ve gone 5+ years with bloody diarrhea. Inflammatory Bowel Disease has probably always existed, but they didn’t have treatment.
I do want to specifically shout out Dr Thomas Latta, who is the person who gave us IV hydration, and pretty much magically cured cholera with it in his first attempt. From his diary:
I attempted to restore the blood to its natural state, by injecting copiously into the larger intestines warm water.. trusting that the power of absorption might not be altogether lost, but by these means I produced, in no case, any permanent benefit.. I at length resolved to throw the fluid immediately into the circulation. In this, having no precedent to direct me, I proceeded with much caution. The first subject of experiment was an aged female. She had apparently reached the last moments of her earthly existence, and now nothing could injure her – indeed, so entirely was she reduced, that I feared I should be unable to get my apparatus ready ere she expired. Having inserted a tube into the basilic vein, cautiously – anxiously, I watched the effects; ounce after ounce was injected, but no visible change was produced. Still persevering, I though she began to breathe less laboriously, soon the sharpened features, and sunken eye, and fallen jaw, pale and cold, bearing the manifest impress of death’s signet, began to glow with returning animation; the pulse, which had long ceased, returned to the wrist; at first small and quick, by degrees it became more and more distinct … and in the short space of half and hour, when six pints had been injected, she expressed in a firm voice that she was free from all uneasiness, actually became jocular, and fancied all she needed was a little sleep.
Diarrhea can very easily be death by dehydration, especially when you can’t consume oral fluids (Cholera causes extreme vomiting as well). Not only did we solve part of the problem with clean water, the other half was learning how to put clean water into our bodies (with salt).
Also fun fact, Thomas Latta was active in England at the same time as John Snow, the father of epidemiology, also in response to the Cholera epidemics at the time.
Throughout history, so many people have worked so hard to alleviate human suffering, misery, and death. You will never know the names of all the people who have spent their life’s passion to take care of you, someone divided from them by decades, even centuries, someone whose existence they’d never know, whose name they’d never hear. But they did it, all the same.
I think this is an important thing to keep in mind.
I love how two of the greatest inventions in the field of medicine were soap and saline IV
I’m reminded of this time I saw a post complaining, “Why do blind people in movies always have cloudy gray irises? Real blind people don’t look like that!”
Yes they do. People with advanced cataracts look like that. Modern cataract surgery has virtually eliminated cataract-induced blindness in places where the surgery is readily available, however cataracts are still the leading cause of blindness worldwide, accounting for over half of world blindness.
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