ellen lee, phd

[me, starting a text message I am sending directly to one person, where there is no need to either specify the recipient or get their attention] Hey,

my goodness but film critics do complicate their lives. does the movie kick ass or does it not? that’s the only important question and rarely does anyone address it to my satisfaction

a photo of an aerial hoop performer cropped to show her from the ribs upward. the performer sits upright in a single-point hoop, both hands on the top bar in an overhand grip, looking out of frame with a similar expression as a person might make during a performance if suddenly remembering that they might have left the oven on several hours ago. in this case the expression is because she has forgotten her choreography and is realizing with horror that she is about to improvise for two minutes straight in front of an audience. the background is black, and both performer and hoop are bathed in blue-toned light. the performer wears a long-sleeve patterned and contoured bodysuit and a full face of stage makeup, which accentuates the consternation visible across the eyebrows. her skin is pale and hair is dark blonde and curled, falling mostly loose to her shoulders.

*record scratch freeze frame* yep that's me, 3 meters up in the air in front of a few hundred audience members, with no idea what i'm supposed to do next on this hoop. now i bet you're wondering how i got here...

What is the argument for voting for Democrats for harm reduction if the harm is not fucking reduced

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

corporate call of cthulu setting where instead of rolling a d100 you use whatever number the microsoft authenticator gives you when signing into outlook

i respectfully salute the brave soldiers of retail who are already being forced to listen to xmas music all shift and don't even get extra pay for withstanding what would for me be highly effective psychologucal torture

extremely helpful comparison, thanks for sharing!!

the moral of 1984 is not a story about totalitarianism but about how repressed men cannot be trusted to handle the aftereffects of good pussy

"The pupils do not learn the scribal craft" is the new "the midterm average was 62%"

man sitting across from me on the bus to work has the jawline/cheekbones of manny jacinto & perfect skin. why on EARTH is he going to work at the med school. if i looked like that i'd model expensive woolen peacoats and high concept perfumes but instead my clown ass is pipetting like a chump.

a hand holds a dark plum aloft in front of a white tiled wall, with a shower head visible behind the hand indicating the viewer is about to step into the shower and eat the plum, probably messily. the hand is pale, with long nails and black French manicure style tips. the plum is ripe as hell and was, for the record, delicious.

you've heard of a Shower Beer, now get ready for a new height of decadence: Shower Plum

✅ cold, fruity, refreshing
✅ creates & immediately cleans up a mess
✅ satisfies feral urge to rend flesh with teeth (vegetarian-friendly)

not soliciting Nobel nomination for this innovation but am open to it

someone PLEASE invent a way for tight miniskirts to stop riding up when you walk!!! I'm trying to show a tasteful 15% cheek not everything up to my ribcage

that's by far not the most drastic thing about my life right now that she wouldn't guess but considering the circus part is some jock shit I think she'd still be surprised. but what did she know. I'm also gay now

if you asked 16yo me to predict my career at 30, she'd be right that I have a PhD but she would definitely NOT have guessed that I'm sincerely trying to join a circus bc there's no money to use that PhD for a research job

Bisexual flag: Purple-breasted Cotinga

📷 Tomaz Melo, eBird

spent far too long puzzled by mysterious hip bruises before remembering how many of these drops I did. almost as if there's a correlation. which could mean nothing

specifically I'm captivated by "middle-aged semi-retired-adventurer Jewish mom with strong labor-organizer tendencies and a very messy past" as a character concept. absolutely nobody is doing it like Esther. (though I guess if you ask some members of her Hex, maybe nobody should be)

currently reading The Keeper's Six and am impressed as always by @kateelliottsff.bsky.social's ability to craft characters and dynamics guaranteed to live rent free in my head. she just Gets It

Friends, when I, a Ph.D. in this field, post "I study this and I am still baffled," it is not an invitation for you, a person who has thought about this problem for seven and a half seconds, to guess the first thing that pops into your head as if it is useful insight.

[doing my daily affirmations in the mirror]

i am the horror and i will be persisting

boss* makes a dollar** I make a dime that's why I space out thinking about women on company time***

*university president
**$5.50 per dime that I make
***I'm not even paid hourly I just like to waste my own time. thinking about women

having this weird bug where my autocorrect spells MBTA wrong. what's the MBTI? transit inhibitor?? we already have that it's the MBTA. duh

I'm a doctor now! doesn't feel real yet but I won't let that stop me from being annoying about it

girl help they're deleting my appositive phrases, which I added on purpose for clarification,

fellow verbose and specificity-minded bitches will understand the particular pain of having your writing edited by someone who prioritizes concision above everything that you value in prose

update on this: since I'm in too deep to stop using the beta version on my dissertation figures I've simply learned not to adjust the stroke width of curves when they're not currently on an art board. problem solved. I intend to learn nothing from this experience.

tbt to when someone saw my "everybody hates Rand" helmet sticker and appreciated that I hated Ayn Rand that enough to advertise it. which to be fair I also DO, but EHR is a podcast about the epic-length fantasy book series the Wheel of Time.

a lil crab graffiti on a bus stop shelter. he’s just a little guy

bus stop crab give me strength

many things are always phallic but nothing is so consistently yonic as violin plot graphs. they knock it out of the park every time. when a seminar speaker describes some aggregated data they're about to show I just know it's gonna look like a vulva. & then it literally always does. nice.