The Marci Rating System

1. In a final celebration of Halloween, here's that dragons carving pumpkins comic I was talking about yesterday (I had all the names wrong, lol): "I did Rin eating her pumpkin,", by pocketss

2. LET'S WRITE!!! I'm going for a half-nano this year (25,000 words), and so far I have... ::checks file:: 183 words. Okay, that's a start!

3. Tis the season!

This has been all over my tumblr dash, and luckily know your meme came to my rescue with the source.

Originating waaaaaay back in 2004, from the cartoon "Homestar Runner." (A thing I had never heard of, but apparently it was extremely meme-able.) Big 'early 2000s i can haz cheezburger' energy. (PS: wikipedia says that was 2007)

Video on youtube!

LOL the boat scene in the beginning -- all the 'this stupid boat' complaints reminded me of the 'stupid mental health walk' song, so I went on a search for it!

STEP ONE: I first saw it in this video on tumblr. (Probably not that tumblr, but searching is hit or miss, so who knows?) But I couldn't find any source attributions on that one, so I kept going.

STEP TWO: Ugh, tiktok, but okay. Same video, and very helpfully attributed to Andy Neal, aka andyfilmsandhikes. Nice! It even includes a music attribution, leading to:

STEP THREE: February 2023, this youtube short by Holderness Family Music. Success! Video and music both sourced and attributed!

(The internet informs me that 'stupid mental health walk' has a previous source, but honestly three steps felt like enough, so I stopped there. Time for my own walk!)

Today's the day! Tuesday! I've enjoyed my internet tumblr time, seeing (in no particular order):

*cute cat pics
*a baby rabbit that wants grilled cheese
*that one random ad shouting about drinking olive oil
*humorous posts pulled from other sites
*tumblr!fic
*video clip from a show I've never seen

EXCEPTIONAL way to start the day!

Sometimes I go over to tumblr for a lil' distraction while I'm meandering through my morning routine, expecting a smattering of cute animal pictures and whatever random ad tumblr's decided to blast at me.

And sometimes instead I find a beautiful reflection on art: Permanence is not purpose, by luulapants

The vast majority of books written before the modern day are lost media. Countless artists poured their hearts into stories that were read by few and lasted only as long as the paper they were printed on. Most of the art ever made has been destroyed or thrown away. Most of the music ever written will never be heard again. The expectation of permanence in art is very new, and even now, there are millions of works of art that will never be recorded or posted or shared. Millions more that will never even be completed.

Creation, with few exceptions, is a mandala. A vulnerable song performed for dear friends by a campfire, but the singer soon forgets how it went. A poem shared in a coffee house that rattles the audiences' bones but will never be heard again. A sketch of a lover on hotel stationary that the maid will throw away tomorrow. Our current reality exists by the influence of art that no one remembers.

Permanence is not purpose.

And then I thought 'oh, I'll just keep scrolling a bit to find something to contrast with this for my post,' and what should I come across instead but THE EPIC OF FRODERICK, an absolutely fantastic video from take-a-dip-in-the-deadpool chronicling their journey from 'lemme build a lil' house for that cute frog' to 'I've somehow created a nature preserve.' SO GOOD.

My pre-New Year's resolution was to stop scrolling facebook and scroll tumblr instead, and it has been delightful. I no longer have any idea what's going on around town, but to be honest, I rarely did before either.

both sites: absolutely random content and ads taking up way too much screen space

tumblr: still makes me laugh

THE CHOICE IS CLEAR!

Words of wisdom from Tom Cardy, via tumblr:

"now and then I get the thought
that stops me in my tracks
am I talking about space too much?"

Hot Shit, Tom Cardy

(I saw this pop up on my dash and I immediately thought 'WALKING!' and also 'we're going back to the island!' because this is the same person who did the Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park songs, which I then went and rewatched on youtube.)

Lord of the Rings
("I'm not a third of the way through!")

Jurassic Park
("Let's never go back to dinosaur island!")

I was reading on tumblr yesterday (as one does), and came across a post by laundrybiscuits that's mostly about Stranger Things and the intersection of canon and fandom, and also included this bit that really resonated with me:

"what I personally enjoy about ST is the stories its components let other people tell"

And I was like 'yes!!! yes, that's it exactly!' (Despite my flash of confusion about 'ST' not meaning 'Star Trek,' lol.) That's my experience of fandom in general, which is why I read in so many fandoms that I've never consumed the original media for. And I didn't want to lose the quote, so I'm putting it here!

(I mean, I saw it on a tumblr reaction post, but the post attributes it to Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.")

Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.

There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone."

Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.

Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.

"Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

— Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"

I've seen a bunch of jokes about how tumblr's algorithm is essentially 'throw darts at a wall and then distribute posts at random' but yesterday I got a 'based on your likes' post that was a person playing a flute with a raven,* and I was reluctantly impressed. Nice work, I did indeed enjoy that!

(*And then when I went to find the post in question, I leaned it was a video that went viral in early 2022 and apparently Caused Controversy, which seems very on-brand for the internet. The clip I saw seemed to be about the first 30 seconds of this YouTube video.)