st louis
I have besties living in the midwest. They decided to meet up in the closest major city to both of them: st louis, MO. I was invited.
The Airport(s)
I left home planning to arrive at the airport an hour before my flight. When I showed up, my boarding pass wasn't scanning. I went through the entire zig-zag rope maze to the help desk, and the attendant took one look at my pass and informed me I was at the wrong airport.
Long story short, I crossed state lines into another city within an hour, arriving at my gate sweaty and hyperventilating. It was the second most stressful transit experiences of my life, behind time I was stuck on SEPTA in a nor'easter for 6 hours.
Gay Bar 1
For some reason we decided we were going to go out drinking on weekday nights in the off-season. The gay bar we went to was completely dead. But, it was also game night. The bartender explained to us the rules of an adult drinking-game version of Candy Land. We started a game, and it was fun.
Eventually another person arrived. We exchanged names and pronouns and she joined us for a game. We somehow ended up talking about what I would study if I had no obligation to work, and I said philosophy. New person explained she was, in fact, a philosopher. She shared some of her thoughts on influential figures of history/religion/philosophy that never wrote anything down, the (pseudo-)subjects of her essay "The Trope of the Non-Writer". We talked about how Deleuze may or may not be talking about mollusks. We talked about exoteric intelligence and AI. We talked about trauma and mental illness. I assigned her a fursona (protogen).
Bestie threw up so we had to leave, but I gave new person a hug and thanked her for being the life of the party.
Louis the Raccoon
I've been thinking about raccoons the past few years and have decided I think they're very cute, and truly awful creatures. They destroy everything they touch. They try to tear open everything they can get their hands on. They slaughter chickens through fences and don't even eat any of them. I don't want a living one anywhere near me.
So instead, I've been looking at raccoon plushies. The internet was very unhelpful. Etsy had no middle ground: it was either low-effort abstract patchwork animals or full taxidermy. I had given up hope
At the end of our day at the Zoo, I turned a corner in the plushie section and saw a pair of beady black eyes looking at me from behind a bandit's mask-- and, like a thief, it stole my heart. I wasn't expecting the St. Louis Zoo to have a raccoon in their gift shop. They don't have a single raccoon in the entire zoo-- and why would they? Raccoons are vermin. Nevertheless, I knew I had found my souvenir. He's very soft and huggable.
I named them Louis because it's from St. Louis. His pronouns are he/they/it.
Gay Bars 2-4
I don't sleep well when I drink. We had done Gay Bar 1 the night before, and with 3-ish shots and a beer in me, I only slept for 4 hours. I had been up since 5 am. I was miserable. Sober, exhausted, and surrounded by annoying gays, I grieved the absence of a quiet corner and beautiful transgender philosopher to grant me refuge.
It was not my most graceful evening. I don't take for granted the forgiveness besties showed me for my bitchiness, but I also don't ever want to have to go through that again.
SLAM
Four enormous, two-story-tall paintings took up the entry hall of the St. Louis Art Museum. They were part of Becoming the Sea, a show by Anselm Kiefer. No pictures can do those canvases justice.
The SLAM is underrated.
what i'm reading:
"tips for writing a character with type 1 diabetes" by @baeddel
baeddel is an engrossing writer. tips for writing a character with type 1 diabetes
"An Assessment of Visual Material Presented by the Israeli Legal Team at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)" by Forensic Architecture
We found that the Israeli legal team incorrectly labelled and annotated the image presented at the ICJ hearing, labelling a crater—a trace of Israeli-inflicted destruction—as a Palestinian rocket launch site. [emphasis mine]
It's pretty much what it says on the tin: a presentation of analyses by researchers at a British university that challenges evidence presented by Israel in the 2024 case brought by South Africa.
"wanted: uncut cock" by cordeliacordate
bestie had me read this aloud after a few drinks at the Airbnb. It's noteworthy for dedicating an entire 9,000-word chapter to a single blowjob. we didn't get that far, but the prolix verbiage and exacting phallo-aesthetic criteria employed by the protagonist reminded me of Nabokov's Pale Fire.
"wanted: uncut cock" by cordeliacordate on Ao3
what i'm listening to:
I did not have the aux all week. here's what I listened to.
"Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls, live in Buffalo, NY 2004
This live version, specifically. Bestie queued this multiple times back-to-back in every bar we went to.
"Crazy" by LE SSERAFIM
Another bestie pick. I'm stuck between being a crotchety old man and being an accelerationist. I belive future of America to be post-literate and all culture will be replaced with "All the girls are girling, girling". Is this good? Is this bad? Either way, it is inevitable. Act like an angel and dress like crazy.
Igbo Gospel Music
One of our Uber/Lyft drivers was playing Ogugua Eze York, who appears to be a Nigerian gospel singer. There's an unfortunate paucity of information in the anglonet on Igbo gospel.
what i'm watching:
alien: romulus
the homages need to stop. they can't keep pointing at themselves doing homages and saying: "remember how you liked this other movie? doesn't that mean you'll like this movie cuz we're doing the exact same thing???" PATHETIC!!!
what i'm playing:
leon kennedy dating sim
I don't have anything to say about this other than I'm impressed they made it in RPG Maker instead of Ren'py.
"Requiem's Echo" by khywae on itch.io
what i'm working on:
implementing an ECS in Ebitengine
i learned about the Ark ECS from the Ebitengine discord, and I'm working on building the exact same "bouncing raccoons" game with some actual software engineering methods instead of just
something i liked:
being drunk
something i hated:
being sober around people who are drunk
a picture:
which one of you fuckers put this here