Oh My God Oh My God Ohmygod No One Speak To Me-

Sometimes I think about putting my essays on substack or something but the idea of getting no views while actively feeding the ai scrapbot makes me want to

So.

In case anyone finds it helpful because mobility aids are horrifically expensive and inaccessible…

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.

He also is working on cheap, open source, accessible designs for beach chairs, off road chairs, motorized attachments (think smart drive), and so on. Plus he skateboards in his wheelchair. Cool dude, helpful info, pass it on.

Never before have I felt so represented

I’ve decided I’m now asking people if they have a cane kink every time they ask me if I hit people with it.

After all, why else are you asking a perfect stranger how often they use their mobility aid to cane people?

I’ve subjected myself to the horrible ordeal of being known (submitted my work to a literary magazine) and I’m in desperate need of distraction, so I think I may just start talking about my favorite music. Thoughts? Excellent. You’re a great void. Very…silent.

I have not even brought up the “villains.” I say villains because they are not so much evil as they are violently protesting for human rights. Good for them.

My favorite character can open dimensional pockets. She kidnaps her favorite monsters and locks them in an old school to make them play dolls.

Generator Rex is legitimately one of the best cartoons ever created, and if I could find a way to watch it I would promptly write a 10k essay on why.

Things my grandma thinks “made me” a homosexual:

#2 My best friend had a “lesbian” haircut.

She had the same haircut.

My vocalization of this thought was not appreciated.

Oh wow

I fear I will never emotionally recover from this. Thank you.

I had to get Devil’s minion lesbians out of my system.

It is fucking devastating when you realize how little women, particularly queer women, mean to anyone.

My city had 20 Pride Month events last year. Six were explicitly for gay men. Five more centered gay men, and happened in gay men’s bars.

Two were for WLW. One got canceled, the other got turned into a “Ladies Night” so more straight women felt welcome.

None of the posters had women on them.

I live in one of the gayest cities in the country.

Ready, Set, Go…

What’s your favorite Hozier song? Why? No, you can’t say all of them. And don’t choose something stupid like cherry wine (there’s nothing wrong with cherry wine. Obviously. But gods man, have an actual opinion).

You are, however, perfectly welcome to list a handful in no particular order. Here, I’ll start,

Wildflower and Barley ft. Allison Russell

“(I feel as) useful as dirt, put my body to work.”

If this song does not fill you with the incredible longing to fall in love with life, and love, and dirt, you are listening to music wrong. I am sorry, you are beyond redemption.

To Noise Making (Sing)

“Your head tilt back, your funny mouth to the clouds. I couldn’t hope to know that song and all it’s words wouldn’t claim to feel the same it felt the first time it was heard.”

“Was it that or just the act of making noise that brought you joy?”

Enjoy the moment because it will not last, but rejoice in the knowledge that more are coming, as similarly meaningful and unique and impossible to duplicate to the one you are currently living!

Make music. Make bad music. Make music for the sake of exaltation. Make art because if you don’t then what is the point in living! Make art because one of the first things a child learns is to take marker to a wall, or pudding to a carpet. Make art because it is an expression of self. Make art because it is proof of life. Live.

Too Sweet

“Don’t you just want to wake up, dark as a lake? Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?”

Get drunk with your friends and skinny dip off a pier. Ignore the rules, what are they for anyway? Find meaning in how you see it. Confront the wild beast in the woods and let it merry meet the one in you.

Those church bells in the background- Are they ringing in a wedding, or a funeral? A simple Sunday Service, or acknowledging the hour? Life goes on, always. It’s the one continuity. It never stops. So what are you doing with it?

Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue)

“A cure I know that soothes the soul, does so impossibly. A moment’s silence when my baby puts the mouth on me.”

“When the meaning’s gone, there is clarity, and the reason comes on the common tongue of your loving me. And it’s easy done, our little remedy…”

Hot.

What, I can’t like music with an…oral focus? Too low brow? The beat and flow of the music takes you on a sensual journey as much as the lyrics.

Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene by Hozier, Fiachra Kinder, and Rory Doyle

“Jarring of judgement and reasons defeat, the sweet heat of her breath in my mouth, I’m alive.”

“With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean…”

“With her straw blonde hair, her arms hard and lean, she’s the angle of death and the codeine scene.”

I’m gay. Extraordinarily queer. Do I need to elaborate? This sound sounds like a death march. It sounds like the echo in your ears as you dance yourself to death. Years passing away in the span of a single dance and you don’t care, as long as she is your partner. You can’t manage to rip your eyes off her to save your life. You won’t.

Almost (Sweet Music)

“I’m almost me again…she’s almost you.”

It was Almost Sweet Music. We were Almost something. I’m Almost able to be normal about this song. Seperated by a pair of parenthesis, kept apart and yet part of the whole.

Foreigner’s God

“Her eyes look sharp and steady into the empty parts of me. But still my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man’s beliefs.”

“I’ve no language left to say it, but all I do is quake to her. Break it if I try to convey it, the broken love I make to her.”

If you, somehow, have missed the message that Hozier’s music is incredibly political- If you have ignored Nobody’s Soldier, Eat Your Young, and oh, I don’t know, just about 70% of his discography… What do you think this song is about?

It’s also just a really fucking good song.