It Costs You Literally Nothing To Leave Service Dogs The Fuck Alone.

Reenactor throws a spear at a drone

just to be clear, I’m staying here as long as this site functions. I have 0 intentions of deleting this blog, I will go down with this ship if only to see exactly how bad it gets

Went to the World Taxidermy Show up in Missouri, it was pretty amazing.

Since I hate flying I drove there, and since I have a short attention span I made a lot of stops along the way.

Day 1 was coming to a close and I still hadn’t figured out where I was going to park for the night since planning ahead is for losers. Instead I picked a nearby state park at random and hoped for the best, and got it.

Providence Canyon state park in southern Georgia.

Apparently it’s the result of people messing up farming? I don’t know how you screw up growing plants badly enough to create a miniature replica of the grand canyon, but there you go. Hiking down into the canyon is easy enough, but coming back up with the royal bowling ball in my backpack was Not Great.

Onward I drove, watching the countryside gradually change. Soon something strange and unexpected began to appear along the roadsides.

Rocks!

Holy shit, just wild rocks laying around! Can you imagine?

Absolutely charmed and also concerned that I’d better pull over somewhere to get a closer look at these babies before I drove past them entirely, I pulled into Rickwood Caverns state park. 

Wasn’t feeling the paid mile-long hike through the depths of the earth just then, but there sure were a lot of rocks!

Moderately satisfied by the number and quality of wild rocks encountered, I moved on to Springfield Missouri for the convention. Antsy in the city, I utterly failed to take advantage of the convention events and instead fucked off to look at even more rocks.

Goddamn, would you believe this? These are the biggest rocks I’ve ever seen. Of course I climbed one. Then I remembered that I’m getting a little old to be clambering up rocks, and acutely aware of how breakable my bones are, and sheepishly climbed down.

Oh yeah, here’s a queer interspecies poly goose family and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I left the city as soon as I was done with the dealer room and had pictures of everything, lured by the siren call of a town called Hot Springs.

First though, a brief stop through a park in the mountains.

More rocks! And WATER! At the same time! Holy shit, what a world we live in. Did I shovel particularly enticing damp rocks into my pockets as I walked along? You bet your ass I did.

Onwards and upwards, into the Ozarks! And up, and up, at some point figuring out that you’re supposed to change into 2nd gear. Eventually the scenery was just too much and I desperately pulled over into a scenic overlook at a mountain top. This is so high, oh man. For added context my home town is 15 feet above sea level.

Slate! Just a whole wall of slate with water trickling down! Yes, obviously I stuffed more damp rocks into my pockets. It was time to move on though, the town of Hot Springs still called to me.

Oh, but there was time to stretch my legs at the Iron Springs state park. 

Finally though, we were closing in on the destination. Hot Springs, a town named for hot springs! Oh man, rocks have been pretty great so far, and springs continue to impress; I just cannot wait to see what adding geothermal activity to that mix looks like!

So hey, guess what? There aren’t actually hot springs for you to visit in motherfucking Hot Springs.

Bitter, but less bitter than I would otherwise be if I hadn’t spent the day driving through the most extravagantly fabulous roads you can imagine, I continued on towards home as it began to drizzle.

It was still raining the next day, putting a literal damper on any urge to explore. Still, a petrified forest in Mississippi? Drizzle or not, who could possibly resist that?

There was a giftshop full of rocks, and an overpriced lump of common sandstone from out further west polished into a sphere like a sandy gas giant replica caught my heart.

Kept moving, ended up in a skeezy gambling town. Tried to eat my lunch on a public dock, dumb mutt rushed into the gross water. No, stop…

I ended the day on the Gulf, hoping the morning would hold better things.

It held a bland beach and a dead remora, which I only barely resisted dragging along with me as a souvenir.

Back in Florida, but in less of a hurry this time. 

Moruti was unimpressed with the legendary Fountain of Youth, but perked up when she noticed a squirrel.

It turns out there -is- a waterfall in Florida, and it falls into a sinkhole. Because of course it does.

Now I’m back after a week, getting things back in order, catching up on responsibilities, settling into work mode again. Ignoring the phantom weight of a sandstone sphere for now.

Guys I want to do one of those reblog and I’ll draw your icon (badly, mind you) so I have something to come back to when I’m running low on creativity so please reblog this

Okay, buckle up buckaroos, because today I met an honest-to-goodness cryptid.

I was out running errands and I made a stop at Intimate Books (…for a friend), and on my way out I realized that the bookshop next door was open.

This bookshop has existed for more than a hundred years, and in all my life it has NEVER BEEN OPEN. I mean, I assume it has to be open sometimes, but never at any normal, reasonable hour. Everyone says it’s a front for the mob or something.

So what do you do when the weird mafia bookshop is open? You go the fuck inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. You know that smell when you accidentally leave your towel on the bathroom floor all day and you come back to that mildew funk? The shop smelled like that times a thousand. I expected to see stuff growing on the walls, but the books were pristine. We’re talking first editions, rare editions, weird Bibles and books inscribed to really famous dead people. Librarians would weep for the chance to accession this place. In the first two minutes I found a signed copy of The Crucible and what I think was a first edition of Blake’s Book of Thel.

Then a clerk showed up out of nowhere—honestly nowhere. He looked EXACTLY like a bookseller should look, kind of fluffy and bewildered and really, really gay.

“Are you lost?” was the first thing he said to me.

“Nope. Just browsing, thanks.”

“Browsing, I see. Erm. How do you feel about snakes?” he asked. And without waiting for me to answer, he just walked away and vanished around a shelf.

I figured it was a metaphor, or a code phrase for the mafia. Until I turned a corner like ten minutes later and found a little reading nook. It was really pretty, although I feel like that particular window should have been on an interior wall? Anyway, curled up in an armchair in a patch of sunlight was the biggest fuck-off black snake I have ever seen.

Like, I don’t mind snakes in general. But in their normal context, right? Outside. On the ground. Not six feet long and sitting on a threadbare velvet armchair like it owns the place.

I was about to turn around and leave, but I saw a gorgeous first-edition copy of Leaves of Grass on a shelf, a little too close to the snake for comfort. But I had never needed anything so badly in my life.

So I went back to the counter to buy it, but the clerk was nowhere to be found.

While I was waiting, I noticed a collection of pictures hanging on the wall behind the counter, dating back to the very dawn of photography. A couple were of this rock-star looking guy from the 70s that I should probably have recognized, but there were authors and landscapes and stuff, too. There was even an old tintype portrait of Oscar freaking Wilde, sitting in this very shop with a guy that I would ACTUALLY SWEAR was the clerk from before. Like, I know my family all has the same nose, but this guy had the same everything.

After approximately one year of waiting, the clerk came back out to the desk. By now I’ve realized that he’s too bad at his job to be anything but the owner of the shop.

“I saw your snake,” I told him.

“Did you? Was he behaving himself?”

“He was sleeping.”

“Yes, he enjoys that.”

“Does he just stay out in the open like that? What if he gets out?”

He shrugged and smiled. “He always comes home again, the dear boy.”

Right, a homing snake. That’s totally normal.

Then he cleared his throat and asked, in a weirdly reluctant voice, if I was going to buy the Whitman.

“Yes, please,” I told him. “I saw it on a shelf by the snake, and it was just too tempting.”

He sighed. “Oh, yes, I expect it was.”

When I started to hand him my card, he went all fluttery and said that they didn’t take cards.

All right, fine. I had some cash on me, but I told him that he’d sell a lot more books if he got a Square or something.

He got this scandalized look on his face and went, “Why would I want to do that?”

Oookay. I handed over the cash and he popped open the ancient till and started making change.

In shillings. Shillings! I swear to god I saw Queen Anne’s face on one of them. The silver value of the coins was probably as much as I paid for the book.

But I had to have proof that this happened—at that point, all I had was a book in a plain brown wrapper, not appreciably different from what I bought next door. So I asked him for a receipt.

He looked delighted and wrote one up for me.

By hand.

With a fountain pen.

And that’s the story of how I met a bookseller cryptid and his pet snake.

literally nothing is funnier than just living your life with a cat in a sweater vest. constantly feels like he’s about to offer to do my taxes

America's first urban 'agrihood' feeds 2,000 households for free

The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative is debuting a sustainable urban agrihood in Detroit, and are transforming an abandoned building into a community center.

When you think of Detroit, ‘sustainable‘ and ‘agriculture‘ may not be the first two words that you think of. But a new urban agrihood debuted by The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) might change your mind. The three-acre development boasts a two-acre garden, a fruit orchard with 200 trees, and a sensory garden for kids.

If you need a refresher on the definition of agrihood, MUFI describes it as an alternative neighborhood growth model. An agrihood centers around urban agriculture, and MUFI offers fresh, local produce to around 2,000 households for free.

In a statement, MUFI co-founder and president Tyson Gersh said, “Over the last four years, we’ve grown from an urban garden that provides fresh produce for our residents to a diverse, agricultural campus that has helped sustain the neighborhood, attracted new residents and area investment.” Through urban agriculture, MUFI aims to solve problems Detroit residents face such as nutritional illiteracy and food insecurity.

Now in the works at the agrihood is a 3,200 square foot Community Resource Center. Once a vacant building, the center will become a colorful headquarters and education center. As MUFI is a non-profit operated by volunteers, they’ll receive a little help to restore the building from chemistry company BASF and global community Sustainable Brands. Near the center, a health food cafe will sprout on empty land.

MUFI describes the agrihood as America’s first sustainable urban agrihood. There are other agrihoods around the United States, such as this one Inhabitat covered earlier in 2016 in Davis, California. But the California agrihood is expensive; many people couldn’t afford to live there. The Michigan agrihood is far more accessible.

MUFI isn’t stopping with the community center. They’re also working on a shipping container home, and plan to restore another vacant home to house interns. A fire-damaged house near the agrihood will be deconstructed, but the basement will be turned into a water harvesting cistern to irrigate the farm.

i just want one (1) original post of mine to be famous

Charities/organisations to avoid:

PETA: They’d rather spend their money on publicity campaigns than on the animals in their care. PETA killed 73.8% of the animals in their care in 2015 (x)

FCKH8: Is a for-profit company that exploits oppressed groups for money. They’re also wildly uninformed, and spread misogyny, cissexism and bi/panphobia, as well as stealing their posts/designs (x)

Autism Speaks: They spend most of their money on researching a way to eliminate autism, heighten the stigma against autism and don’t have a single autistic person on their board (x)

Please support other, better charities, and feel free to add any others you can think of to this.

This morning passes as slow as the clouds crossing the sky 

Sometimes the wind picks up and it scurries on past 

For the most part though, it drags by 

A slow winter wind in a cold classroom

The drone of a teacher whom most would consider nice

He is simply energetic and draws from me too much 

I wonder if he draws from the other students 

Do they feel the effects of it the same way I do? 

I don’t know but I sit in the cold room 

Feeling as frozen as the morning dew in January 

And I wait for the day that I don’t have to return to this place

This cold, desolate place that haunts me