Me wearing a hat made out of cabbage, and then me eating that hat

I said I’d eat my hat if I was wrong, and now here we are

And wow yeah the story holds up so far! You should totally read this book and talk to me about it! But like. Actually read it, the audio version is a travesty

But that was ALL I could remember? The details had vanished. And if I want to talk to people about a book I keep pushing at them, I should probably know what happens in it

Anyway I’m listening to this audiobook because I’ve been recommending Blindsight by Peter Watts to people for years and years on the strength of my fond memories of the way reading it fucked me up.

And I could be wrong here about the author intended pronunciation? But in that case THE AUTHOR IS WRONG and I will eat my hat RIGHTEOUSLY. My hat will martyr itself on the altar of Cool Vampire Aesthetics As I See Them

Because the Blindsight audiobook narrator is driving me bonkers for several reasons, and the pettiest one is that he calls the vampire SAIR-uh-stee. And goddamn, if that name isn’t sah-RAH-stee I will eat my hat.

So given all this (and only this, I’m not doing RESEARCH here) how do you pronounce “Sarasti”?

1. Jukka Sarasti is a vampire
2. He is tall and thin and moves with an uncanny, predatory grace
3. He wears dark glasses. His eyes shine underneath like a cat’s
4. He has a cold, inhuman intelligence and does not yeah require companionship
5. It is wise to fear him the most when you cannot see him

Here are your starting parameters:

A set of two pictures: the top is a blurry shot of me under the bed, mouth open + prepared to BITE, the second is me on the floor chomping Ashes’ ankle

I didn’t notice him taking these photos of me rocketing out from under one of the beds to bite Ashes on the ankle, but that’s okay. Bigfoot gets blurrily photographed all the time and it doesn’t impede his daily ‘footing

At least my tendons still let me be the monster under the bed. Mara’s new house has so many beds and I got lurk under all of them

I might not throw myself across slabs every day, but this hits on an ✨identity level✨ and I do have an identity every day

One of the rooms had a long, sturdy table that he called the “ritual sacrifice slab” so of course I had to throw myself dramatically across it, and when I tossed my arm over my head it hurt and I had to SWITCH ARMS, thus ruining the elegance of my corpse moves

In physical therapy, a thing they usually do is ask for a list of ways your injury impedes daily life. This is how, after explaining that I am BARISTA I need ARM, I wound telling my PT about Mara taking me on a tour of his new house

Me, sitting on a big ol’ pile of snow in front of the state capitol, holding a stick triumphantly aloft

Good morning companions! I am stressed about my TENDONS and my JOB and the GOVERNMENT. But it seems I am still king of the ephemeral snow pile? So at least there’s that.

Progress shot of my unfinished tattoo sleeve: dot work night sky with moon and stars, pine tree silhouettes, oak leaves + branches

Tattoo update! Still quite a bit to go, but ✨the vision✨ is coming together

😢

An action figure of the fish man from the Shape of Water playing So Clover

Slept through the New Year’s party, but @samuelhblack.bsky.social and @free-bearz.bsky.social brought me in effigy and it looks like I had a great time

My arm, with outlined oak leaves and branches

same arm, different angle either some larger leaf outlines

Heck, how remiss of me. Anyway I finally started a sleeve with Mar, and this is what we’ve got after the first session

A nice thing about going back to work is seeing everyone’s time skip character redesigns. One has new glasses that make her whole face look different, another has waist length blonde extensions, and I have the beginning of a tattoo that… I never posted pictures of??

Good idea, but do I ask a doctor or a botanist?

A butterfly on my hand inside. It’s mostly black with yellow and blue spots along the edges and it has swallowtails

Same butterfly at a different angle

So.
A butterfly just landed on me.
A live butterfly.
It is December 24th in Wisconsin and there is snow on the ground.

He just. Summoned it with his fat squirrel wizard powers and I have no explanation for what I witnessed

I don’t know where he got that thing! I would’ve noticed a perfect lone potato chip sitting in the snow next to him, and he absolutely didn’t have time to leave and come back

Same squirrel, but now holding a potato chip!

I stopped to take a few pictures, kneeling less than an arm’s length from him. I glanced away for a single second to text some friends his picture and when I looked back he’d Manifested an entire potato chip

A fat squirrel in the snow, munching on a cheesy snack held in his fluffy little paws

Not today though! Today the magic was FAT SQUIRREL WIZARD. I almost tripped over him in the dim morning light, but he didn’t budge. And hey, I wasn’t actually a threat, so in this case it was correct to prioritize breakfast over fear

Really I’m a standard meat robot with the ADHD malfunction and filling the ol’ dopamine tanks with movement + early morning light feels good because beep boop

Usually when I say “there’s something magical about starting a walk in the dark and watching the sun come up” the magic in question is just a feeling

A snowman wearing glasses and holding a sheet of clinical notes that list current attributes of the outdoors. Snow snow tree cloud leaf.

These thoughts are not useful so I went outside and made myself a therapist about it. He had some good insights and I genuinely feel better now. Wish he took appointments in the summer

Buuuuuut what if people only like me because I’ve been Lucky With Circumstances? Circumstances are so precarious! And if I were constantly sleep deprived and cranky and my brain didn’t work and I had no time ever and I lived in a bare enclosure lacking all enrichment I might not be fun to be around!