It’s Winterfest at Freethought Blogs!

Childlike drawing of house, trees, snowy hills with a bright sun streaming up in the background and a track of footprints, and a banner that reads "Winterfest Fundraiser, FreethoughtBlogs, December 5, 2020."

Today the Fun is Fantastical and Free at FreethoughtBlogs! We’ve got a deliciously diverse lineup of offerings for you to explore and enjoy. What’s your pleasure?

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PZ interviews briefly some Rock Star FtB bloggers! You can put a face (and a voice!) to the names of your fav writers here, and maybe discover new faces and places you will really enjoy.

Megan Rahm of From the Ashes of Faith

Dr. Sarah of Geeky Humanist

Giliell of Affinity

William Brinkman of The Bolingbrook Babbler

TD Walker of Freethinking Ahead

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Our new story chain, “A Martian Odyssey” – the adventure has begun!

arid, reddish, martian landscape.

Part 1 by PZ Myers at Pharyngula transports us to the wild world of our future, where an isolated, conservative Earth has for centuries turned her back on her weird and wonderful offspring now populating the solar system… until now. How weird are we talking? Well, why take 10 million years to terraform a planet into an environment fit for humans when you can quickly whip up a little radical genetic modification to planetform the human to the environment instead?

Part 2 by Yours Truly here at Death to Squirrels picks up with three of PZ’s strange characters – a Marsborn and two Spaceborn – facing a profoundly consequential decision: what to do about Earth. Iris Vander Pluym, having ZERO experience writing fiction except for that one chapter in last month’s story chain, naturally decides to kill one of them off straightaway.

Abe Drayton now has Part 3 up at Oceanoxia, and now it’s up to William Brinkman at The Bolingbrook Babbler to bring it home! (I’ll post an updated link for Part 4 when available.)

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View our Winter Photo Gallery at Affinity! This collection comprises submissions from FtB bloggers and readers in our community – including YOU if you send a photo or ten to affinitysubmissions@gmail.com, and the Affinity collective likes your work!

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Creativity for Skeptics — a conversation about secular creativity with TD Walker of Freethinking Ahead. This is the event I’ve been looking forward to most this month. I’ve long loved exploring the topic of creativity, but I find the writing of so-called experts and thought leaders tends to be chock full of flaming woo. As an anti-supernaturalist this is off-putting and disappointing to say the least. I can assure readers that whatever my own process(es) may be, supernatural forces play no part in them, and I would like to learn more about what’s really going on within myself and other artists.

I’m definitely watching this just as soon as I finish…painting a dress for a 6-year old. What? Hardly a big deal since I painted my sofa.

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Gaming!

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And finally, I’ll let PZ take it away:

“Did you know this will be the one-year anniversary of our legal victory over the Pissant of Evil? Several of the defendants will be gathering to celebrate that happy event!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzbTXTvMpaA&feature=emb_title

Aww, man! Pissant of Evil was totally gonna be the name of my new fake socially-distanced band! But there goes PZ ruining everything again AS USUAL… 🙄

I kid! I kid! Our illustrious Dr. Myers bore the burden of the infuriating SLAPP suit(s) with the same wit and brilliance he does everything else. And for readers who may not be aware, that includes an enormous amount of work behind the scenes at FtB, from tech support to his laissez faire approach to management issues (which I am 100% convinced would be MUCH easier if he simply ran things like a typical tyrant) to herding the proverbial cats – in this case a large litter of curious, opinionated, godless, passionate, lefty bloggers – better than any human I have ever seen. It takes a lot of (mostly thankless) work to make this place a reality, and by far the brunt of it falls on PZ Myers. I’m sure I speak for FtB comrades and readers when I say: THANK YOU. We are very grateful for this place. And all of your arduous work, even through difficult times, is genuinely appreciated.

PZ especially deserves our congratulations for taking on the fight for freedom of speech, and triumphing for himself, his co-defendants, and all of us.

If you can spare some coin to help with the legal costs incurred when you need to fight “Pissants of Evil,” please give what you can via our PayPal.

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Tuesday Premonitions.

CONTENT NOTE: Graphic image. No, seriously: g-r-a-p-h-i-c. Contains a partial photographic image of an open wound with medical-level detail of a laparoscopic procedure; female frontal nudity.

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Hey, so whatcha doing Tuesday? Nothing nearly as fucking strange as I am, I’ll bet. As I mentioned in my last post, September kicks off Surgery Season here in New York City, and we’re about to kickoff on Tuesday with a laparoscopic exploration under anesthesia (“EUA”). At least two surgeons and possibly three will be having themselves a really close-up look-see at the tissues they would need to construct what radiation has destroyed – namely, a functioning colon as well as a sparkling new vagina. I call this aspiration “Plan A.”

My colorectal ladysurgeon is running the show, along with the gynecological oncology d00d, tho I’m not yet sure whether this mysterious”plastics” person I’ve heard so much about will also be in attendance. Regardless, there will no doubt be biopsies and good times galore. Which, ideally, I will sleep right through.

Back before my first surgery, i.e. the initial colon resection plus bonus ileostomy in February of 2018, I found myself working with my therapist, my original colorectal surgeon and his Physician Assistant to help me visualize exactly what would be done to me. I had started with some Google image searches, but what I found didn’t seem to line up with what had been explained to me. Also, most images I found, whether photos or drawings, were of men, and I was having a hard time relating those bodies to my own. I ended up creating this:

…wherein the dotted line represents the outline of an ostomy pouch, the oval is the stoma itself and the rest of the marks are incisions. It turned out not to be entirely accurate due to various issues and considerations during the operation, but for my “trying to get my head around this shit” purposes, it was close enough. As un-ugly as I could possibly conceive of it, anyway. I remember the night before the surgery lying in bed, running my hands over the soft, smooth, unblemished skin of my belly, and deeply grieving that it would never, ever feel like this again.

So now there’s this fuckin’ EUA on Tuesday. And I’ve had one before, performed by the very same colorectal ladysurgeon back in March when she gave me an(other) ileostomy. I already know what the recovery is like, and it isn’t terrible: it’s like the deep soreness from a couple hard punches to the gut, that gradually fades over a week or so.

Why, then, am I having so. much. anxiety. over this? Lard knows I’ve been through worse – a lot worse. And there is much worse to come, for sure.

Well, I have a theory. I think it’s because I’m terrified of what they will find, or more precisely, of what they will not find. That the radiation damage has kept right on blooming for all these months, and now there is not enough healthy tissue left to re-do a colon resection. That the blood supply to critical areas has deteriorated to the point where successful healing will be practically impossible. That Plan A gets scrapped. There is no Plan B, at least not one discussed in any detail, because Plan A is the only one with any potential for a good outcome. And it has been impressed upon me, many times, that we only have one shot at fixing this.

So I took to drawing again. Only this time I wasn’t trying to create anything approximating medical accuracy, although it would turn out to embody exactly that, at least in part. I made what envisioning this procedure feels like to me – if that even makes any fucking sense. And once again, I made it as un-ugly as I can possibly conceive of it.

Before you proceed, I just want to remind you again of the content note at the top of this post. I mean, this stuff is triggering to me, which is why I’m doing it in the first place: to help me process it in a healthy way.

[Read more…]

I’m trying to be productive today! UPDATED.

I’m afraid there are not enough recreational chemicals in the world to get me through today without tears and rage—to say nothing of the next four (eight?) years. But look! I made this.

womensTwithfinger

I’m working on some other #notmypresident designs too. Sort of. Half-assedly. If you have a specific request I’ll design something for you, too.

*flags bartender*

*orders another*

Be well my friends.

blackTresist

 

whiteTresist

Say hello to my little friend.

While waiting for some prescription refills today, I wandered through a couple shops in my neighborhood. I made it a point, as I always do, to browse my favorite thrift shop. Oooh, some sweet sofas! But nah, I’m good. Nice art too, but nothing that would work for me. And hey, I’m always looking for new specimens to add to my eclectic flatware collection…shit outta luck. *sigh*

And then, there he was.

[Read more…]

I painted my sofa because Jonathan Adler.

Jonathan Adler is a designer based in New York City with a storefront shop in the West Village on Greenwich Avenue. I have sort of a love-hate thing for this d00d because, well, I loooove many of his designs, and yet I haaaaate the stratospheric pricing.

First, the love. If I had to describe Adler’s overall aesthetic, I’d say midcentury-modern-meets-obnoxiously-opulent-whimsical-retro-pop-culture-plus-drugs. Yes, drugs.

[Read more…]

Buy my $#!+, people. ON SALE.

40% off mugs

20% off everything else

USE CODE MAGNETZNMUGZ at checkout.

Smash the status quo with original designs by Iris Vander Pluym.

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This is your semi-regular reminder that the work I do here—and yes, it is work—is not without its costs, timewise and otherwise. If you buy my exclusive merch, I get a (small) cut: WIN-WIN.

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dtsmugs

Do your part to shake the sheeple from their stupor and break the hypnotic spell of the enemy rodents by drinking from these striking mugs—BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!
#squirrelpocalypse

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hottearsmug

Everything tastes better when conservatives are crying.
That is just a fact, people.
Sipping from this nifty mug will soothe your rabid rage at right-wing blowhards and repel conservatives from your general vicinity.

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mugcompositeThese squirrel skull mugs are fucking badass and you should GET YOURS TODAY.

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WHAT?! You mean aren’t in the market for a mug? WTF. Well, then I guess you can shop for other exclusive items here.

40% off mugs

20% off everything else

USE CODE MAGNETZNMUGZ at checkout.

Or you could, you know, just pay me money:

payme__________

All proceeds to fund smashing the status quo, subverting the patriarchy, dismantling white supremacy, waging war on warmongers, obliterating the oligarchy, sustaining struggling friends, monitoring the squirrel menace, mocking conservatives and/or cat food.

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I recognize that many people do not have the bucks to spare, and in any event no one should feel obligated to contribute to my cat food fund. Particularly when they’re thisclose to eating cat food themselves.

Thank you for all of your support.

I must have been a VERY good girl.

Behold what the universe hath conspired to deliver up unto me: the skull of a ravaged squirrel.

squirrelskullwatermark

Okay, so technically it might not be the skull of a squirrel. How the hell would I know? I am not some kind of -ologist, people! Nevertheless, I am going to have to insist that it is indeed the skull of a squirrel, because it is just too perfect for my purposes. (Hey—conservatives make up their own facts all the fucking time. Why can’t I for once huh? HUH?)

And what might my diabolical purposes be, exactly? Well I wasn’t quite sure at first. But then I photographed it, the results of which you see above (watermarked). And I found it weirdly, oddly beautiful. Also kind of badass, you know? As in, evoking death and the transience of our mortal existence, or perhaps the face of some imagined alien being.

But of course what really, really pushes my button is that it’s a dead squirrel. Because let’s face it: the only good squirrel…is a dead squirrel. I ask you: could anything be more full of win?

Why, yes! Yes it can: its provenance.

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My Amazing Lover™ is the proud owner of a planting bed, one that sits beyond a slatted fence and just above street level. It’s full of lovely perennial plants like crocus, white tulips, pulmonaria and some waxy-leafed ground cover I gave him, extracted from the tiny yard behind my palace on Perry Street. He keeps it well weeded, watered and mulched. One day, he said there was something he wanted to show me in the planting bed. He pointed out the disembodied skull, which had a patch of gray-brown fur and some whiskers attached. “I think it’s from a squirrel,” he said.

OMG *swoon*.

The next day we discovered it had been moved, and now rested a foot or two away. The fur patch appeared to be significantly smaller, and I could no longer make out whiskers. By the following morning it had been moved once again, and picked clean by nocturnal scavengers. Circle of life, and all that.

I could not stop thinking about it, that small skull lying in the mulch. (I am super weird. FYI.) A few days passed. My Amazing Lover™ was on his way to me, and called to ask if I needed anything. “I need that squirrel skull,” I said. Like it was the most ordinary thing to ask for in the world.

“Okay.”

A few hours later, I was in possession of a clear ziploc bag containing my prized possession.

THAT’S RIGHT MY PARTNER BROUGHT ME A SKULL THAT MIGHT POSSIBLY BE FROM A SQUIRREL MAYBE.

If that is not the ultimate sign of deep and abiding love…well, I just don’t know what is.

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And because I am about nothing if not ♥♥♥sharing the love♥♥♥, I plastered that skull all over a bunch of stuff at my online store, so you too can be part of the #deathtosquirrels revolution.

mugcomposite

 

squirrelskullring

Who needs pearls? You can have squirrels.

squirrelskullbandana

Subversive pocket square…
for all your formalwear occasions.