Hey 'n welcome! M'name's Vannyx, and I'm honestly trying out this adulting thing as best I can. Fake it til ya make it. We got ART, we got ANIMALS, we got FOOB. Stick with me, kids, we're goin' places.
Not to keep reliving trauma on main, but I’m getting weird deja vu from where my health was a few years ago and where it’s at now. And most of it is revolving around Good Omens.
In May of 2019, we genuinely thought I was dying because I was dying. My organs were in the process of shutting down because my red blood cells were prematurely self-destructing and damaging my kidneys in the process, and I was rapidly coming to terms with the fact that I might not survive much longer. I’d fought the good fight, and I’d lost. Mostly due to medical neglect. And I was mad about a lot of things, but do you know what I remember from the traumatic blur I’m left with?
“I’m going to be so pissed if I die before Good Omens comes out.”
I’d waited 20+ years at that point for something like a tv adaptation of Good Omens. Ever since I was a child and my dad read the book to me, and I fell in love with it. And here I was, mere weeks away from the TV release and on the verge of death.
Then like a miracle, a miracle that hinged on human compassion and a doctor being willing to listen to me, I was saved. Dragged back from the jaws of death by a relentless hematology department that refused to give up on me and ultimately saved my life. And a week later, I got to watch Good Omens propped up in my own bed, still weak, still ill, with my heart stuttering in my chest every time I laughed. And I remember thinking, “I did it. I got to see it.”
That it’s now it’s 2023 and my health has tanked again. My organs are rebelling against me and no one seems to know why. But yet again, a few weeks before Good Omens is set to release, I find a doctor who listens to me and is doing all he can to help. Striving with the grim kind of determination that can only come from a place of compassion and care. Like my world is worth saving, and not just his.
Which is rather fitting, I think.
I’m glad you’ll be here for the next round. And it makes me a bit more determined that somehow we will finish the story.
If you use Google Docs for your writing, I highly encourage you to download your work, delete it from Google Docs, and transfer it to a different program/site, unless you want AI to start leeching off your hard work!!!
I personally have switched to Libre Office, but there are many different options. I recommend checking out r/degoogle for options.
Please reblog to spread the word!!
Crypt Pad can be an option too!
I don’t use Docs very much at all, but this looks like a good moment to take a sweep through my account and delete anything that’s in there.
Having your own personal blog is honestly quite a nice change of pace compared to Reddit. I could put a funny GIF of George Bush getting hit by a shoe on here and the worse case scenario is that no one even notices.
You put that on a big subreddit and you get your eyes gouged out and a heap of political discourse underneath your post.
Y'all ever get so excited about a scientific paper you’re reading that you get chills???
So I thought to myself
Huh, a lot of our invasive species come from China and Japan
And then I thought, huh, I should look up what Kudzu is like in its natural habitat
And I found this article by a team of scientists investigating the history of Kudzu in China
And ohhhhh my goddddd. I’m vibrating with excitement over how cool this is.
The first bombshell that turned my brain inside out:
KUDZU IS NOT WILD. IT IS SEMI-DOMESTICATED.
In China, Kudzu has been a fundamentally important plant for food and textiles throughout history. We have Kudzu cloth that is 6,000 years old!
THIS PLANT CLOTHED AND FED ONE OF THE MOST POPULOUS AND MOST ENDURING HUMAN CULTURES ON EARTH
and in turn
HUMANS SHAPED AND SELECTED FOR ITS TRAITS
*AND*
in its natural range, humans are the main “predator” of kudzu
“Harvest by humans appears to be the major control mechanism in its native areas.”
Kudzu is like that because it co-evolved with humans.
WHAT
YALL
This means
That Kudzu is so highly invasive because—just like most plants evolved to be grazed by herbivores and/or eaten by caterpillars, keeping them in balance with everything else—Kudzu basically evolved to be harvested by humans
The other half of the ecological partnership that keeps Kudzu in balance with everything else isn’t a caterpillar or a hoofed beast. It’s us.
There’s a lot of dumb ass animal cruelty takes in general but my favorite is the people who think you need to force sled dogs to pull.
Have you ever walked a dog before in your entire life? They love to pull. They’re the pullingest damn things you ever saw. They’ll merrily rip your rotator cuff in half like a phone book for the chance to stick their own face into a pile of old feces. They’ll drag you down the road while you go through all 5 stages of grief trying to make them stop.
There are hundreds of products on the market promising to get ordinary non sled dogs to stop pulling their hapless owners down the road and spilling their iced coffees. People have gone so far as to use electric collars to try and zap sense into their poor stupid labradoodle that wants nothing more but to suicidally pull itself and everyone it loves into the snarling maw of the nearest leash reactive pit bull.
A dog that’s allowed to pull, nay, encouraged to pull, is probably the most self actualized animal on the planet right after seagulls that live somewhere with food stands outdoors.
I’ve come to make an announcement: Shadow the Hedgehog’s a bitch-ass motherfucker, he pissed on my fucking wife! That’s right, he took his hedgehog-fuckin’ quilly dick out and he pissed on my fucking wife, and he said his dick was “this big,” and I said “that’s disgusting,” so I’m making a callout post on my Twitter.com: Shadow the Hedgehog, you’ve got a small dick, It’s the size of this walnut except WAY smaller. And guess what? Here’s what my dong looks like! That’s right, baby, tall points, no quills, no pillows — look at that, it looks like two balls and a bong! He fucked my wife, so guess what, I’m gonna fuck the Earth! That’s right, this is what you get: my SUPER LASER PISS!!Except I’m not gonna piss on the Earth, I’m gonna go higher!! I’m pissing ON THE MOON! How do you like that, Obama?! I PISSED ON THE MOON, YOU IDIOT!! You have twenty-three hours before the piss drrrrroplllllllets hit the fucking Earth! Now get outta my fucking sight, before I piss on you too!
Happy one year anniversary to the video that gave us this improvised gem.
