chugs as much fluoride as a data center chugs water

Cool, my fucking high school diploma has more merit and valor than a presidential medal of freedom.

Sliding? More like hurtling with reckless abandon.

I’d kick the shit out of Stephen Miller.

Hi, I live here.

It’s lovely here.

At at one point in the distant past, my school notes were cold, clinical, written in neat straight block lines, without style or care; people had accused me of memorizing Helvetica; they weren’t far off.

And now, here I am in my middle age, taking a photography class, and my notes look like this:

Pre-transition, I had always thought there were rules about thought: that thoughts always had to stay “normal” and couldn’t really veer off a beaten path. This could have come from my childhood, where I grew up in a culture where conformity was taken to an extreme.

But now, I’ll write random notes to myself, say funny things online and into a microphone, and be human as broadly as possible, to relate to the feelings of others and create my own as well, do lateral thoughts, wordplay all over, and just try to do and think things that make my personal world a bit brighter for me.

I could never seem to get my head around Merge Maestro. It’s on my phone and paid for though. Maybe I’ll give it another go.

Thanks! It’s quite comfy to play with, and rides along real smooth in my bag. I know they’re out of production, but air decks can still be found here and there if you look hard enough. I picked mine up for fifteen dollars each—not bad for a PVC deck that I’ve had for like six years now.

(Also yes, I used an em-dash, no, I’m not AI, I just like em-dashes.)

Five bucks. Worth every penny.

That’s why I keep this tiny stone-paper notebook with handwritten instructions on my favorite games, along with a narrow little air deck and a few counters.

Apologies for my handwriting, but my hands aren’t what they used to be.

Hey now, as a 40-year-old, I find myself heavily invested in the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection on my phone—oh no. I’ve become an old solitaire lady.

NOOOOOOOOOOO

Trans people are who they say they are.

We know this shit. I’m so tired of arguing against bad-faith motherfuckers for my existence.

I mean, I thought Japanese was super straightforward compared to English. I’ve been speaking English for three goddamn decades and I:

• still occasionally flip my Rs and Ls when I’m going fast and being careless
• have to pause a beat before saying “Canada” to make sure I don’t use the rhythm structure/emphasis pattern for “banana”
• sometimes just get really lost when I make a complicated sentence and have to stop and try again
• can barely remember that English speakers take pills, and not drink them (you don’t chew them, for fucks sake! Just say drink!)
• fucking hate that OUGH has more readings than most kanji
• realized a couple years into learning English, that English has twenty-six radicals, stacked horizontally, and they make a word, and that word may not be pronounced how the radicals suggest, and it’s best just to memorize 116,000 kanji-words (and you English speakers bitch about kanji so endlessly, not understanding the sheer absolute fucking monster you came from)

Hi, I came the other way. Air Force baby who spent most of her younger years speaking Japanese and eventually got English happening.

So many people have asked me if they can learn Japanese, and my answer is the same: it’s a whole-ass language that takes many years to be good at, to use for communication. Most people realize they’re not going to be good at a language in three weeks and they bail.

Don’t use a language for just one thing (unless that one thing is to communicate with a society).

I committed myself to learning English because my family and I live in America now, and I needed to communicate with a society in it. (And I think my English is pretty good now but it’s not without a lot of trying, even now. I actually have to fight to maintain my Japanese, by reading books and watching movies and TV!)

Thanks. I ate a bag of tiny cereal marshmallows this morning and it was tasty.

cries in 40

It’s just something I made up, but I did just finish out a 13k short story for a board game studio. My English has gotten good enough that people will pay me for it, so there’s that.

The noise has no skin, a sharp implement, and lurches in staccato.

Best of luck, buddy.