True, It's quite outrageous. But it's all contagious! 🍭🥩

I wonder if Neil’s owner/s know about how we celebrate the date of that photo

Neil himself is long gone from this world, and yet every April 13th this group of internet strangers come together to celebrate him and his act of banging out the tunes. Like an entire holiday, all for this little guy

Cause I think it’s pretty beautiful if you wanna get all sentimental and sappy

good news :)

400+ people were killed in gaza last night.

my friend tarek has been doing some amazing community organizing in palestine — he’s been teaching classes for children with my other friend farah AND distributing water and providing iftar meals during ramadan throughout rafah! his brother just had a major orthopedic surgery he had to wait about a year for and since food and water is incredibly scarce he can’t properly recover. please donate to their efforts!!!

donate to tarek’s family

donate to provide iftar meals

donate to the water initiative

donate to the challenge classes

quick reminder: tarek isn’t just a word on your screen, he is my friend.

he’s 21, the same age as me. before the war he was studying to be a translator and he dreamt of voice acting, just like so many of you reading this. (he’s pretty good too actually.) he would probably not call himself a poet but every few days he posts something so beautifully worded that he might as well be a poet laureate. he recently wrote: “gaza is sick of being praised by anyone. gaza is tired that its image is on satellite tv. gaza is sick of its name in the sad poems. gaza is tired of the repeated endings.” the message is clear — sentiments are not enough, his people need HELP.

every day i tell him im doing everything i can. and it’s true, i am, but its barely anything, as i’m disabled and bedridden. i’ve kept that fact from him out of shame because i see what he has to endure each day, but i feel SO POWERLESS. every time an announcement breaks that more bombs have dropped in the night or more innocent people were gunned down in broad daylight, my heart sinks with terror and i wonder if i’ve lost my friend. it really would mean so much — not just to him, to me — if you could donate anything you can spare to tarek and his family. he deserves the whole world and more.

yesterday tarek almost got on a water distribution truck that was targeted with bombs. the day before his neighbors had their house bombed (during Eid) and that whole family died. please help my friend

Ma x ......

Round 0

its 413 can homestuck win this

theres a phenomenon that happens on here i have been calling "normalize loving parents posting" which is when you spend a lot of time on tumblr and are exposed to a lot of one specific counter-cultural narrative day in and day out until you start to forget what the dominant ideas are for most of the human population and thus feel the need to "defend" things that are widely accepted and popular. it's called this because of the time a bunch of text posts about shitty dads were circulating and then people with good relationships with their dad didn't feel included enough and started making "uhmmm can we normalize loving parents? not everyone has a deadbeat dad, MY dad is great" type posts, seemingly forgetting that good relationship with dad is a cultural norm that is expected and encouraged. i think its good practice, especially when im annoyed, to stop before i hit the post button and ask myself if this is a real issue or if im normalize loving parents posting. because often im about to try to normalize loving parents

common examples of normalize loving parents posting:

saluting our bravest warriors who aren't afraid to stand up and advocate for the status quo

neil banging out the tunes homestuck style

i almost never do vent art, much less post it but man, i have been feeling bummed out recently

#literally genuinely truly people need to stop stereotyping 'ugly' nerd guys like this because it's extremely old#I can tell you right now you're more likely to get a rancid opinion out of a rich conventionally attractive dude just statistically#also stop using people's photographs to make mean jokes when you don't even fucking know the person thanks bye

Jerry Messing “the fedora guy”s GoFundMe. The face of the neck beard memes for many years and decades of how that affected his life. Disabled by covid and a coma and after his mums passing he has recently upped his donation goal after being forced to move (inability to afford rising rent prices and accommodations like a ramp)

I really do hope he pulls through.

Jerry’s new fundraiser to cover his moving costs. He has had to move out of an abusive household with his ailing father.

Please spread his new gofundme. With the cuts to disability and what Medicaid will cover he needs help and has not had a donation in a month.

happy 4/13 here’s my yearly redraw

in celebration of april 13, i present all four known photos of neil, who banged out the tunes 19 years ago today

source: theagilerat.com (click right to see all four photos!)