@fredmouseoz / fredmouseoz.tumblr.com
I have collated my collected works in 2024 as PDF and epub, and delivered them to the Hugo Voter Packet team.
If you are a WSFS or WorldCon member you will get them as part of the packet.
I have also made them available to my regular supporters on Patreon and Ko-Fi.
Being really into Frankenstein while at the same time being Chinese is so funny because every time Lord Byron gets brought up, the way his name is pronounced always makes me think of the word 白人 (bái rén), which translates into “white guy”. Lord White Guy.
if parks and rec was still being made they’d do a bit where ron swanson has to wear a pronouns name tag and it’d just be “???/???” And it’d cut to a talking head of him going
“I’ve been a fool all this time. It’s bad enough the government knows my name, but now they want to know my gender? So I’m not letting them know my preferred pronouns. As far as I’m concerned, no one in this building should refer to me at all.”
Ron walks into the main area of the office like “Everyone, announcement! I notice that you have been referring to me with he/him pronouns for YEARS. As I do not think the government has any business knowing my personal information, this behavior may incline them to make conclusions that they have no business even thinking about. Therefore, I request that you switch it up from now on. Keep em guessing. That is all.”
He tries to turn around and walk back into his office, but Leslie starts crying and saying Supportive Things about how proud she is to see him exploring his gender and immediately switches to they/them; she instructs Ben and Ann to do the same. Donna and Chris go for she/her, for different reasons.
Tom assures Ron that he will use only the slickest, coolest, dopest designer pronouns; he sweeps in the next day and announces that he's put together a powerpoint of the most stylish and fashionable neopronouns to come out of Milan this season. The powerpoint includes the scarf, cologne and sunglasses that pair best with each option. Jerry is the only one to attend this presentation, which leaves him even more Big Confused about the whole thing than he already was. In Jerry's efforts to clumsily be an ally, he keeps accidentally "misgendering" Ron four different times in four different ways in every interaction and apologizing elaborately for every single mistake, thereby inadvertently doing the best job out of any of them at fulfilling the brief.
Andy does not know what a pronoun is, but in the spirit of himbo helpfulness, he's made a list of Words that he knows Ron likes, such as "sandwich", "woodworking", and "bacon". (Ron snatches it, tears it up, throws it in the trash, and sets the trash basket on fire, and firmly instructs Andy to never again mention anything that Ron likes while inside a government building.)
April, of course, keeps using he/him until Ron calls her into his office to re-explain the strategy of Operation: Muddy The Waters, whereupon she blinks owlishly at him and says, "I mean, isn't that just what they'd expect you to do if you were trying to hide something from the government? If you exclude one pronoun, then they know that's the one you care about. You have to double-bluff them." Ron squints at her for a long moment and says flatly, "Hm. Go back to your desk." The camera stays on Ron watching her through his window as his voiceover says, "April is a valuable employee. I look forward to one day when she leaves this hellhole and uses her strategic genius and insider knowledge to tear down the government."
soup de jour: soup of the day
soup de jure: soup the government wants you to eat
soup de facto: the soup everyone actually eats
soup de resistance: a very impressive and popular soup emerges...
soup d'etat: ousting the previous soup of the day and installing your own
soup de grace: execution of the deposed soup of the day
"I'm not skilled at gardening and i don't have the time/energy to learn, but i really want a pretty garden, so i hired a gardener"
That makes a lot of sense, it's nice to experience that beauty!
"I love writing music, and I can play a few instruments, but my playing skills don't cover the breadth or depth of what I want my songs to sound like, and none of my usual partners were available for recording this month, so I hired someone who's good on sax and another musician who plays an upright bass to help me record my new stuff, and they added a lot of depth to the experience!"
Good call, when you really want the right sound right now it makes sense to bring in people who are available and talented!
"I'm a decent cook and my friends love the food i make, but sometimes I enjoy a really high-quality meal in a carefully curated atmosphere or i don't want to do dishes, so i go to a restaurant and pay a chef and cooks and waitstaff and dish washers to make me a fantastic meal in a nice setting without any of the chores."
Of course, we all love a good time without the usual work sometimes!
"I love music and I play the piano really well, but sometimes I want to hear it played by someone who's really dedicated their career to it, or who plays in a style I'm not experienced with, so I go to a concert and pay a musician for their music, or I buy their albums so I can listen to it at home."
Yes, getting to experience an expert in their craft is a real treat!
"I've been way too busy to take care of myself or my living space lately and it's been taking a toll on my mental health, so i hired someone to help me tidy up this week and then went to a salon to get spiffed up so I could feel better about myself, and i paid those professionals for their work and education and experience and skill."
Good on you, self care is so important!
"I'm not very experienced with sex and and would like someone else to show me what it can feel like, or I want to enjoy sex at a time when I don't have anyone available, or I enjoy sex and am pretty good at it but I want to experience it a dedicated atmosphere with someone who takes it seriously, or I want to see what all is possible when someone is really an expert at it and treats it like a set of skills they've spent a long time working to master, or sex makes me feel good and i could really use that good experience in my life right now, so I paid a sex worker to help me achieve that goal."
...
If you think the last one is somehow fundamentally different from the others, that hiring a professional to provide a service that you want or need for any reason is suddenly immoral because it involves sex, you should probably reflect on why. Because really, at the end of the day, it's not.
#note that someone in any of the other professions (esp gardening cleaning and beauty) could have been labor trafficked!#if that's your only argument against sex work it applies to a lot more than you'd be comfortable with
^ peer reviewing these tags.
"Sex work is exploitative and i won't stand for it!!!!! Anyway what do you think of my garden? I just had it redone by a team of undocumented immigrants who worked for a fraction of minimum wage doing backbreaking labor under a landscape company that will turn them in to ICE if they try to find better work or speak out about their conditions or don't do a good enough job fast enough, so i got a great deal! isn't that wonderful? Anyway, try this Driscoll's™️ Fruit Salad I got yesterday..."
Also, if you are worried about exploitation in sex work (which we all should be), do some reseach and see if there's a sex workers union where you live. For example, In Australia we have the Scarlet Alliance:
While not every country is going to have one, if yours does it is a great way to be able to engage with sex workers while also being certain that they have workers rights and protections. This goes for all the other industries as well by the way.
Sometimes sex workers are trafficked, denied human rights, and exploited horrifically, that is true. And that's why I'm happy that I live in a country where they have a union to protect them. Because those things aren't unique to sex work, and sex workers deserve the same dignity and protection as all other workers.
What’s your score?
𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐒
Feel free to play along and put your number in the tags. Remember, it's a point for something you've NEVER done (not the other way around...kind of confusing.)
Anyway, I've done them all, so I got 0.
My latest cartoon for New Scientist.
In a blistering display of incompetence, the US Dictator has levied a 10% tariff on the islands of Heard and McDonald, external territories of Australia.
Heard and McDonald are uninhabited. By humans. They are home to a number of penguin colonies, however, as well as seals and other critters.
If the penguins withhold all trade with the US until the tariffs are dropped, does that mean they'll have won the trade war? Will the Penguin War go down in the history books next to the Emu War, making it the second time humans have lost to flightless birds? And in this case, without a single shot being fired.
I regret to inform you that it is real and batshit. LOL!
Scientific American: the Uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands are a Pristine Biological Wonderland
Sydney Morning Herald: the tiny Australian islands no one expected to draw Trump's fury
!!!!!!!
Thank you for doing the fact checking I was too tired to do last night. I stared at it going 'this can't be real, can it' and 'is this an april fool's with longevity'.
I truly cannot even with this timeline.
In a blistering display of incompetence, the US Dictator has levied a 10% tariff on the islands of Heard and McDonald, external territories of Australia.
Heard and McDonald are uninhabited. By humans. They are home to a number of penguin colonies, however, as well as seals and other critters.
If the penguins withhold all trade with the US until the tariffs are dropped, does that mean they'll have won the trade war? Will the Penguin War go down in the history books next to the Emu War, making it the second time humans have lost to flightless birds? And in this case, without a single shot being fired.
"i'm tired of seeing-" use your filters.
"but there was an icky ship-!" use your filters.
"i don't like that tag-" use your filters.
don't like what you're seeing? use. your. filters.
When I tell you that I have read fanfic characterizations so OOC that they'd classify as an original character, trust me I have read THOUSANDS. But you know what I don't do? :) Tell the author of those fanfics that they might as well classify that character as an original character if they're going to write them like one. Because that's fucking rude. People don't owe you your preferred characterizations. The back button is free.
us politics has been beamed into everyone’s brains non stop for the past year - please remember & remind people you know, that ‘wasting your vote’ on minor parties doesn’t exist in australia. you can and should put minor parties at the top of your preferences and your vote will still matter
this is a huge misconception about preferential voting. parties don’t preference your votes, you do. if you voted 1 green 2 ind 3 labor 4 liberal, your vote will go down that list in that exact order until someone gets 50% of the vote.
the only thing parties can do is chose who they help form government in the case of a minority (i.e no party wins 76 seats) government - & importantly the greens have already said that they will under no circumstances help the liberals form government
I am a shark defender not in the sense or “they’re puppies 🥺” but in the sense of “these are literal apex predators that are in their home. we know that’s their home, they do not intentionally eat humans bc we are not their natural prey and they’d never attack us if we never went into their habitat. that’s always the risk we take if we go too far out into the ocean and we shouldn’t demonise sharks any more than we should demonise a tiger that mauled some idiot who thought climbing into their enclosure at the zoo would be a good idea. they’re doing what is natural to them and it’s generally pretty easy to just stay tf away from them”
I know most people don't care about anything unless it has to do with the U.S. but can we please start talking about the Canadian election.
Please don't vote for Poilievre. He's basically the Canadian Trump and plans to put in place laws that harm trans youth, and lots of other shit.
Please vote istg this is the only way anything will get better. Poilievre has been kissing millionaires and billionaires asses. He'll make life even harder, and he loves Trump.
Reblogs are appreciated, especially if you aren't Canadian.
this is more nitpicky but it also gets my goat like shit when people solely refer to First Nations Australia in the past-tense. "lived there for thousands of years" still do. "practiced xyz" many still do, and where the past tense is appropriate be clear about the fact that this is a result of genocide. notice when you use past tense to talk about Indigenous shit in contexts where you would use present tense for a different group. there's a reason the quote goes "always was always will be"
lets settle this properly
I have a theory
something about me is that my dad grew up moving back and forth between south australia and victoria. my mum grew up in new south wales with a mum who had not long lived in australia. I grew up moving all over the place. so now whenever I refer to an object that has a different word in different states it is a complete mystery to me which word I will use until it leaves my mouth. "oh you said cossie you must be from -" think again bitch two seconds ago I called them swimmers and tomorrow I'll call them bathers I don't give a shit
