When I was 7 years old and at the optometrist, I was what’s known as a Little Shit. I didn’t sit still. I didn’t want to read the letters. I didn’t want to do anything except go home. Eventually, my mom bribed me with a kitten. A PERSIAN kitten, freshly purchased from the extremely shady pet shop directly across the street. It worked like a charm, I’m sad to say, because I’m extremely vulnerable to kittens. tbh, considering the way my mom was looking at those kittens, she would have bought one anyway.
My dad says that she always did have a weakness for dumb animals. “It’s why she married me,” he always says. Anyway, this is a story about a Very Dumb Cat, not Heterosexual Hilarity Hour.
This kitten weighed about a pound and I suspect 75% of that was fluff. She was smokey grey, had a perfect little nose (she was what’s called a doll-faced or traditional Persian. No pug faces here!), and had the IQ of a hammer.
I mean this with all the love in my heart, but you could just look into those eyes and absolutely KNOW that there was nothing going on in there. It wasn’t even a case of ‘no lights on upstairs’. There wasn’t even an upstairs. There wasn’t even a ground floor. There was just NOTHING going on in there.
Kiki didn’t understand some simple concepts—-stairs, for example. She never figured them out, even after 7 years of living in a house with stairs. Her preferred method of locomotion was to cry very loudly until someone carried her where she wanted to go. One could argue that this was, in fact, very clever of her.
Please don’t give her the credit. It was pretty clear that she was simply confused about how stairs could go up AND down at the same time.
TBH, she never figured out how to get onto furniture either. She was fully capable of jumping and playing like any other cat, but it seemed as soon as she had to THINK about something, everything else shut down. Like… one day, I was playing with her and a piece of string. She was delighted and jumping and playing. Just normal kitten stuff. Then she decided she wanted to sit in my lap instead. I mean, i SAY “decided”, but it could’ve just been a passing air mote depositing the idea in her head.
The point is, she abruptly forgot how to jump onto furniture. She forgot how to JUMP. She just kinda sat there and stared at me for a few seconds before starting to cry. She was actually pretty distressed by it and didn’t stop until I picked her up for a cuddle. Thankfully, she seemed to forget it pretty quickly. No room for anything besides the moment, I guess.
She also never grew very much. Even as an adult, she barely pushed 3 pounds. She also had a serious dental issue. Her canines stuck straight out horizontally. They weren’t very big so they didn’t push past her lips or anything, but it was the most baffling thing her vet had ever seen.
I loved that dumb animal. She was a very good girl and I miss her.
first of all: yes, Judaism exists in the Pokémon universe; Meowth specifically mentions Yom Kippur in the song Nobody Don’t Like Christmas, which you can find here on Bulbapedia. this brings up a lot of theological questions (arceus echad?) but i think we can for the time being set those aside and discuss the real important stuff, like, as observant Pokémon trainers, what do we eat? (can you even be an observant Pokémon trainer? after all, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef had a strong negative opinion on the Jewish-ness of bullfights, and many rabbis have spoken on the scriptural obligation to prevent an animal’s suffering, which to me definitely applies to Pokémon fights. maybe N is the most frum of us all)
(again, this post cannot possibly get into all the implications of trying to be Jewish in the world of Pokémon, so let’s move on)
as a guide for this post, i have followed (with exceptions) this guide to Poke-kashrut (please click here to embiggen) that i can unfortunately no longer find a real source for because the Facebook group therein is defunct! if you have a question as to why a particular Pokémon was not included check the guide first, I pretty much agree with it! (also Wingull and Pelipper aren’t kosher because pelicans are specifically called out as non-kosher bird)
Ford Pines, months after Weirdmageddon, smacking his forehead suddenly: UGHHHH! “BIZARREMAGEDDON”!!!! It was RIGHT THERE!!! It was right there why didn’t I
Don’t give me one-sided unrequited love, give me two-sided unwanted love. Both sides are deeply in love with the other and both sides are like ‘fuck, really?? them??? really?’
alright don’t be mad but. i never read the great gatsby. i know i was supposed to. yes, it was assigned to us. i even know, more or less, what happens in the book. technically, i wrote an essay about it, i think, once or twice.
at the time, i hadn’t read any book assigned to me. ever. it wasn’t that i didn’t like to read. i loved reading. but homework took place in a function of my brain that i couldn’t access. i would sit in libraries or at my desk and just. not do my homework. i spent hours like this, days like this, years like this. just not doing what was assigned to me, no matter the consequences, no matter how badly i wanted to be doing it. i just wouldn’t. and i wouldn’t go to class because i didn’t want to deal with the fact i didn’t do the homework. and then i wouldn’t get the homework. so i didn’t do it.
i remember realizing while i was doing college applications that i had actually, real-life fucked up. that it was permanent, what i had done. that i had a C- of an average and no future to look rosy at. and i still couldn’t make myself do things. i tried to submit applications only to realize i’d shoved off the date to the very last moment. and i was fucked.
it takes me three years and two transfers and three new starts before i am actually real-life trained how to study, how to read, how to enjoy being assigned things.
and i watch parents of my students yell at students for being the same person i was six years ago: screaming at an A-, confused at skipped classes, punishing missed homework. and these students don’t have an answer. they just don’t do things. even if they want to. and they look at me, confused and defeated and without an answer for their parents. “i just can’t,” i hear a lot, and i understand.
parents don’t like “executive dysfunction” as a reason. “anxiety” and “depression” are often misdiagnosed as “procrastinating” and “lazy”. kids just learn they’re like this. that they’re always going to be. that it’s their fault, permanently. they are surrounded by books they didn’t read. and it doesn’t feel good. it feels like suffocating.
today i started “the great gatsby.” i promise. one day, it’ll feel easy.
I don’t usually reblog things that have nothing to do with RPGs, but I want as many people as possible to see this. This exactly applies to me, even to this day.
I agree with monstrous. I rarely post outside of ttrpg ideas and dragon stuff, but this is so god damn important.
Here’s the other thing: It’s okay. You will survive this. If you can’t do the whole thing, do part of it because “anything is better than a 0″ is worth a lot more than you think. And if you can’t do it at all, not even work around it…then it’s okay. There are other opportunities. As long as you’re kicking, there will ALWAYS be more chances, and the next time around you’ll have a better idea of what you need to do to succeed. It doesn’t have to be 100%, even then.
DarkestElemental616 