zx3 @zx3@driveinsaturday.org

butter or guns?

guns that shoot butter. quandary solved forever. NEXT

i believe in the Users.

i believe in the Grid.

i believe that in there, in the Digital Frontier, is our destiny.

i believe that corporations, brands, and politicians have no place there.

i believe queer folk, trans people, internet weirdos and techies lay proper claim to the Grid, as we were its earliest natives.

i believe in our ability to use the digital world to improve the real world, and vice versa.

i believe in spite of it all. tell me why i should panic about the latest crisis and i will believe twice as hard.

we are the ones we have been waiting for.

so how do you feel about fanservice?

A: our collective childhoods have been strip-mined again and again in the name of endlessly regurgitating successful IP that drowns out whatever creativity was left in the entertainment industry, and movies that mindlessly feed us little bits and pieces of things we're already familiar with just to make us salivate on cue like Pavlov's dogs should be shunned by anyone who appreciates quality in their media diet.

B: *long, shuddering exhale, as if fighting back the urge to strangle someone* Listen, you...you cretin. You shell of a man. You wretch of an excuse of a human being. I live in the year of Our Lord Twenty Twenty Three, and in every. Single. DAY. some new existential nightmare is thrust upon me unwillingly, as if it were a flaming turd dropping from a great height directly into my morning's Cheerios. I have lived through a century's worth of crises in the last twenty years. My mental landscape would make Hieronymus Bosch projectile vomit. I have learned not to think too much about the future. I WILL THEREFORE PARTAKE OF WHATEVER GIVES ME SMALL AMOUNTS OF JOY AND SO HELP ME GOD NO DEGREE OF SHAME WILL STOP ME. I will suck the last drops of dopamine from any experience like a starving hyena slurping marrow from a bone. Have I, at last, made myself clear to you? YOU, WHO STAND UPON THE DUNGHEAP OF THE WORLD AND MAKE DEMANDS OF ME? BUT ENOUGH TALK! HAVE AT YOU! *frenzied screaming, wet sounds of rocks hitting meat*

(If your answer is B, you should go see the Super Mario Bros. movie right now. like, NOW. go, my friend. vaya con dios.)

the SO finally agreed to watch Blade Runner with me.

RIP once more Zhora, Pris, and Roy. (Leon kind of had it coming.)

lucky enough to spend a pleasant afternoon with my dad's side of the family...kids who were in short pants pre-COVID, the last time i really saw them, are now these...*brobdignagian collosi.* giants whose heights pierce the very heavens. like i needed help feeling older this week. still, they got the good DNA from our familial gene-swamp, so good on you, boys. may you be happy to fetch things from the top shelf in perpetuity.

started a new Breath of the Wild save the other day, i'm like...three hours in?

has anybody rhymed "Link" with "twink" yet? is that a thing? if not, i call dibsies

current mood: https://youtu.be/bDh9QgzFBN4

tfw this will be your twenty-somethingth year of being Extremely Online and the thought of April Fools' Day shenanigans make you shudder with disgust

later on, after a lavish sushi feast, i visited good old Uncle Bill at Bellefontaine Neighbors, and brought him some vodka and Coke. (i wasn't about to bring him some of the other stuff he was fond of.)

i usually take today off. i had never been to the Weldon Spring Site, which is the location of the massibe white rock sarcophagus that contains the toxic remains of the fissile materials mined and enriched for the Manhattan Project. i still would like to write my Nuclear Occult History of the Central Midwest someday, and this seemed the logical place to start looking for data and inspiration.

i should have taken notes. it's as stark and dystopic as any 70's sci-fi film set. and the spring wind whistling through the metal stairs sounded like distant, ghostly air-raid sirens, which i was told was not a deliberate design feature. and while the view from the top of the sarcophagus was impressive, one could not shake the impression that every stone that made up the giant containment mound, piles of limestone stretching for acres in all directions, was a grave marker.

it is, most assuredly, not a place of honor.

#TDOV -- i am not trans, but i am fortunate enough to have many friends who are. they are all awesome humans who deserve to be loved, treated with respect, and championed.

the fight for trans rights, trans dignity and trans joy are a drastically important battlefront in the larger fight for bodily autonomy, identity autonomy, and the ongoing struggle against fascist oppression.

i stand in solidarity and love with my sisters, brothers and others.