I am done with today. It seems like everyone within several miles woke up In A Mood, and I'm just done. I'm going to go lay down and read. I finally got Stephen Rule's book "Welsh and I". And a cat wants to lay on me. That alone is reason to go lay down. I dare not disobey the cat's orders.

Yes, he pointed out that within the world of Sesame Street Elmo is a child. And he acknowledged his own trauma reactions and personal view. He was mostly focused, though, on how Larry David was pitching a disruptive fit - acting like a child - because he wasn't happy with the focus on mental health as a topic.

Obviously, lots of people hate Wil Wheaton because of how he speaks about politics and his activism. But I also think a lot of people became very uncomfortable with how much they have enjoyed his childhood acting when he opened up about how he hadn't wanted to do it. But he did also say knowing people enjoy it has given him some happiness to be found in it.

Larry David was being an asshole, and I doubt anyone really believes Wil Wheaton was literally accusing him of child abuse.

The articles said a lot of what Wil Wheaton said, but from a removed perspective. Not with that personal touch of being an abuse survivor. And not many people seemed to notice or react.

But today! Today the news has a lot of Wil Wheaton Accuses Larry David of the Same Shit We Did a Few Days Ago, But We Make It Sound Ridiculous When Wheaton Says It! And people are reacting! Because Wil Wheaton needs to shut up! Because it's popular to want him to shut up!

So, a few days ago, I saw some articles about the whole thing with Larry David and Elmo. I wouldn't have known about it otherwise. It seemed the whole thing was unplanned, which was very disrespectful to the hosts and the Muppet performers, and words like "assault" and "attack" were being used in the articles.

Larry David was quoted in the articles, and he said he "throttled" (his word) Elmo because he just couldn't take it that they kept going on and on about mental health.

(cont...)

Since everbody keeps talking about it, I went and watched the video of Tracy Chapman performing "Fast Car" with Luke Combs.

Oh, y'all! I CRIED. My younger self cried. My current self cried. Me and myself cried together.

And now my fingers are crying because I haven't made enough time for playing my ukulele over the past few months. My fingertips went soft and they had to play "Fast Car" over and over today. Because I HAD to!
#CoSoMusic

I was asked to tell the pirate story tonight. That made me want to share it with everybody again. It's one of the things I use in social situations sometimes. Meeting new people is a little easier when I just did something they think is cool. Adults are sometimes even more impressed than their kids are.

https://diydiv.substack.com/p/the-pirate-story

My cat is trying to win a mildly aggressive staring contest that I'm pretty sure the other cat doesn't even know they're having. I tried telling her she already won. She's still staring. Didn't even blink at me.

The unwanted visitors have left earlier than we expected, and I didn't even have to demonstrate how Southern Passive Aggression is the shadow side of Southern Hospitality! 🥳

My steel tongue drum is very calming for me. Eleven notes that are all harmonious. I cannot screw it up. I play number sequences and let the numbers sing to me.

I was playing n^2 - 1 tonight. (2x2)-1, (3x3)-1, (4x4)-1... And I realized there is an infinite number of patterns! Adjust a number, change subtraction to something else. I will never play all the patterns!

This makes me so happy! The numbers will always have new songs to sing!

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your "perfect" offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

#CoSoMusic
https://youtu.be/c8-BT6y_wYg

The Unwanted Visitors have arrived. I have learned enough Welsh at this point that I can say, "Dw i ddim eisiau ymwelwyr." Thinking about using it as a greeting. They won't know I said, "I don't want visitors."

With luck, my weekend will be a couple of days of quiet terror. Without luck, it won't be quiet.

Banjo is tuned. I don't have to be happy about having visitors. They don't have to be happy about visiting.

We have an unavoidable situation in which relatives no one wants here will be here this weekend. This includes a homophobic person who will reject queer relatives from his own home, but isn't likely to feel he can say anything about it in our home.

So it was requested that I put up the flag I got to replace the one the wind destroyed last year. This one is much bigger! Our whole tiny rural town can see it!

I'm not having a good week, and there's not really a chance of things getting better until next week. So I did a reading to break things down for myself and looking at taking care of my needs in this situation. I'm sharing it as an example of a very real divination reading - not just a practice reading. And you just need playing cards and 6-sided dice to do it.

https://diydiv.substack.com/p/im-sorry-but-now-is-not-a-good-time

@Alfred Can you explain the difference between the knitting stitches "M1L" and "M1R"?

But I'm thinking about it tonight. Maybe, for a little more than a year, my high school friend group got as close as we could at that time to understanding community and unconditional love. It's silly...but also maybe not silly.

Maybe we need to learn how to share water and truly mean it when we say, "May you never thirst."

And we really believed we loved each other! We were brothers and sisters, and any disagreement could be resolved. Because we all drank from the water together. So we were one entity made of multiple people.

My husband asked me at what point did I realize I had started a cult? "A few minutes ago, while I'm telling you about it. But you've read the book! That's weirdly fitting!"

And we laughed.

I got my friends to read it. And you had to read it if you were coming into our friend group. We didn't meet up at each other's lockers. We agreed to meet up at water fountains. There was always a glass of water when we had lunch together. If someone wanted to drink from it, someone else held it for them and told them, "May you never thirst." We did it at water fountains, too. Someone else held the button and tood you, "May you never thirst," while you drank.