Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
i think the weirdest thing about the shelter-in-place has been the nightly howl, which i forget about every night until i’m walking my dog and the neighbors just suddenly start fucking howling.
see, we all live literally miles from each other; with the shelter in place in effect, most of us never see other humans FOR DAYS besides the ones we live with. so my neighbors decided we should just howl— like dogs— every night at approximately the same time to ‘encourage community bonding and release tension’.
it’s also a useful reminder that everyone is still alive. i’m not sure what we’re supposed to do if we notice a howler is missing.
at least one neighbor suggested, “hey, maybe we should just set up a telephone tree instead” but was soundly called off because “listen, we all moved to the mountains because we don’t want to talk to other human beings, we’re just going to howl instead”.
You know what? I miss it. I miss the Nightly Howl.
My neighborhood evacuated due to the fire. We’re all scattered now, almost lost. We’re in cities that are not our own, and voiceless.
I haven’t heard a single howl. 8 pm is silent now, which is somehow the worst aspect of this. It passes almost without notice.
Someone on the site asked if we could still howl, regardless of our location. Maybe we’d find our neighbors that way.
Maybe I’ll head out to the beach tonight with my dog and howl.
i’m delighted to inform you all that the Nightly Howl is back. Now that evacuation is lifted, the werewolves are back and louder than ever. i’ve NEVER heard so many howls, so many voices, and for so long. Someone even has some sort of horn.
Homeless shelter is transformed into 5-star restaurant, hot food and warm hearts all around. See the full video here.
I watched the video and I thought it was great. Because it’s not just like, nice food or whatever, it’s being treated like a guest. The people who staged this also made a 5k donation as well as handing out fancy gift bags that had basic self-care items/toiletries which are in really high demand because people will donate food but never think about hairbrushes, soap, toothpaste, et cet.
Not only that but i really appreciate the sentiment here that’s so against that whole poverty policing, “poor people don’t deserve anything nice ever” bullshit that’s getting louder in our society.
So last Christmas/holiday period I worked at a gift store as a casual holiday assistant.
The number of times I had blokes come in and attempt to purchase a candle for their wife/so/mother/girlfriend etc for Christmas or birthday.
And they’d like walk up and say ‘I need to buy a candle’
We had at least 25 different candle scents.
Some guys knew what they were after- cause they would take a photo of the candle they already had.
Some had literally no clue.
Some say ‘you just pick a good one’ and we say ‘oh but you know what she likes, we’ll just help you decide’.
So we’d go through the entire process of
“Ok so sweet? Or sort of more not sweet or citrusy?”
Some weren’t sure what the difference was so we’d pull our sweetest possible candle tester (caramel sunset- it’s like sticking your face in a candy store) and our most neutral non sweet candle tester (ocean breeze - it’s a neutral sort of salt and lemongrass scent) and make them smell them.
The sweet one either gets ‘oh YES but maybe not that sweet’ or ‘no. no. She likes. Not that’
Once we make a decision on sweet or not, we then can start pulling candle testers.
We slowly narrow down those categories by smelling various test candles.
Some of these blokes have absolutely zero idea what they’re looking for when they come in, but generally we get some sort of ‘oh yeah, her perfume smells like that’ or ‘the candle we have smells a little like that’ or ‘oh I REALLY LIKE THAT’.
Sometimes we have to go through Every. Single. Candle. To get the one they are after.
During Christmas I did this probably 4-5 times a day on average. Sometimes multiple times for the same customer because they had to get a candle for mum and wife and sister and Aunty.
One guy came in on CHRISTMAS EVE about 20min before we closed and said ‘so I need…. Five gifts…. For my mum, for my girlfriend, my sister, my grandma and my girlfriends mum.’
It was….. a long 20 minutes.
It’s lovely to see them get? Not excited, exactly, but sort of enthused that! They! Made! A! Good! Choice! Because they do know their partners. They know the perfume, or what they already have in the house, or what scent she likes. They just weren’t sure how to get to the final option.
Once the candle has been selected, and they purchase it, we offer free gift wrapping.
The look of relief on some of their faces is. Absolutely priceless.
We have like. 40 something different wrapping papers. Sometimes I ask ‘favourite colour?’ And they just look blank, so I pick two nice but different papers so it’s both easy (they’re both pretty!) but they also don’t feel like I did all the choosing for them (then if she comments on it, he can say he picked it).
I live in a small country town, by the way. Some of these fellas are in their dusty work jeans, boots and clearly came in from a long day on the farm because it is Important that they get this gift.
Some seem very awkward about this whole process, some are self deprecating, some are really enthusiastic. Some start super awkward and then get really enthusiastic.
I sold. A LOT of fucking candles this last Christmas. A LOT.
I could smell those fuckers in my sleep.
I’m not making fun of these guys (ok I am just a little) because I appreciate that they a) know that their wife would like a candle, b) are prepared to smell 25 different candles to find the one they think she would like, rather than just picking one based on the colour of the box, and c) acknowledge that they need a hand selecting one and asked for assistance
A bird explaining to a hedgehog crossing so it doesn’t die.
!!! ok but that’s legitimately what it’s doing!! That’s a corvid right there (looks like a hooded crow, to be precise), which means it’s intelligent enough to recognize, a) cars are dangerous and streets should be treated with a certain degree of caution, b) this car’s slowing down for them–cars do that sometimes–which means they’re not in imminent danger, so it doesn’t have to fly away just yet, c) that hedgehog’s still gonna get killed if it doesn’t MOVE, FAST (cars can change speed very quickly and the hedgehog’s still in the way), and almost certainly also d) if the bird does nothing it gets a free lunch.
Y’all, Y’ALL. This bird is consciously deciding to put itself in danger in order to save the life of a very stupid creature. A creature which, if the bird did nothing, could be free food.
i can’t - look if you follow me you know I have a thing for corvids, but this is - like!!! People are always saying “ah yes they have sub-human intelligence and don’t consider anything that isn’t immediately necessary for their own survival/pleasure,” but! Whether or not it can do philosophy, this crow is clearly demonstratingcompassion. Even if it’s just the kind of compassion a toddler shows to a snail, a social creature that instinctively recognizes the potential for emotion in other beings, that’s still huge and cool and important and corvids!!! are! neat!!!
Also, by the car stopping for them, that hedgehog has two other species actively working to help it stay alive for no gain of their own.
Reminds me of that professor who said the beginning of civilization was when someone took care of another. The broken thigh bone thing.
“Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts. We are at our best when we serve others.” - Margaret Mead
Stone age toddlers may have attended a form of prehistoric nursery
where they were encouraged to develop their creative skills in cave art,
say archaeologists.
Research indicates young children expressed themselves in an ancient
form of finger-painting. And, just as in modern homes, their early
efforts were given pride of place on the living room wall.
A Cambridge University conference on the archaeology of childhood on
Friday reveals a tantalising glimpse into life for children in the
palaeolithic age, an estimated 13,000 years ago.
“Some of the children’s flutings are high up on walls and on the ceilings, so they must have been held up to make them or have been sitting on someone’s shoulders,”
