if i met a genie and fixed the world and all its ills with my first two wishes, my third wish would be that sabrina carpenter would get gradually taller. she’d be in on it and think it was hilarious. we’d have a strong cap at 7 feet here, maybe an inch a week so people have time to theorize–let’s not be ridiculous. but she’d still keep up the “ooh! im so little and small!” schtick. but shed be gradually getting taller. she’d be like 6'1" and still jumping for the microphone. and she’d never say anything about it. and if anyone asked shed act like she had no idea what they were talking about. and shed cheekily play into it a little bit but mostly still keep up the “ooh im so little and small” schtick. do you see my vision. do you get it
ok and so if i met a genie and fixed the world and all its ills in one wish i would do the sabrina carpenter thing second and third i would wish for all evidence of one random taylor swift song to disappear from the world once every month or so. taylor would have no memory of it. her fans would remember it and there would be an outcry over where it went (it’s not even in concert videos anymore!) but taylor would have no memory of it
instead, all her brainspace spent on that song would be replaced with the vivid memories of roman gladiator, taylaurius velox. she’s able to hide this at first, but her music begins to take on a gradually romaner and romaner tint. at first, people are like “damn, she’s getting REALLY conservative, huh” and other people are like “wow, she’s so deep, she knows what a rubicon is” but eventually travis kelce leaves her out of nowhere (he wasn’t sure if dating someone possessed by a roman gladiator made him gay or not and anyway he was getting sick of being like “we’re going to play the lions” and taylor being like “LIONS? WHERE?”) and taylor publishes an entire brutus themed album about this betrayal and it’s beginning to weird people out
and so eventually travis kelce is getting like, bomb threats sent to his family for leaving taylor and eventually he’s like “okay, okay, i left her because she kept having all these vivid nightmares of gladatorial combat and she kept saying that football was giving her the ick because we never actually killed anybody for the glory of rome” and then he just gets more bomb threats because he left a struggling woman during a mental health crisis
and eventually taylor is writing music about her forbidden roman senator lover and her fanbase is either whittled WAY down or WAY up because people want to watch this trainwreck happen (or maybe she influences culture so hard that we’re just all really into rome now) but she’s being super cagey about the name of this roman senator. until. and now here’s the twist:
weird al has been getting all of the same vivid memories of taylaurius velox. and he still has all his memories of her old songs. so he’s writing all these detailed song parodies of taylor swift songs that don’t exist anymore including specific details about their shared gladiatorial reality that taylor has never shared with anybody else. including that her lover’s name was publius, and she’s been calling him Poob for short
at this point a lot of original swifties are leaving. they could do the brutus stuff, but they really can’t survive poob. taylor makes a clapping back at the haters song including the lyric “these bitches don’t know publius” and it ends up all over all sorts of merch. there’s a renewed archaeological interest in roman gladatorial combat
most importantly, the internet discourse is the best it’s ever been. does this make taylor swift transmasc? is travis kelce problematic for leaving his fiancee while she gradually morphs into a roman gladiator? is this good queer representation? if taylaurius velox was a gay man, does that mean the gaylors were technically correct? is weird al morally wrong for capitalizing off of her music if she cant remember it anymore? was weird al sent by god to torment taylor swift?
I think my coworker’s fucking the IT guy bc we normally have to submit a ticket and they’ll get back to us in 2-3 days unless it’s crazy urgent. But he showed up like 1.5 hours after and went “Tanya… you miss me already?” And she giggled and went “omg stop Daviddd” meanwhile I’m sitting here like
He was like “You sure you’re not just coming up with excuses ;)” and she was like “Nooo my mouse really keeps dying” and he was like “Haha I believe you” and I felt awk so I blurted out “It’s good of you to like, validate her fears” and they both looked at me like I just appeared in their bedroom
Once I was doing fieldwork with someone from Europe and said “careful, there’s a rattlesnake over there.” And she rushed over like I’d said there was a quetzal.
I said “Ma’am please, we’re three hours from a hospital!” and she said
1.) I don’t understand how that can be
2.) But I’ve never done fieldwork from a car before (!!!) so I’ll take your word for it.
3.) Did you just call me ma’am? Like a cowboy?
We drove through the Los Angeles megacity together — and at one point were stuck in traffic.
“Heeeey”, she said, like someone gently broaching a topic I should have noticed, “Why does the lane next to us have diamond shaped symbols on it?”
That is! A subtle and friendly way of asking why we’re sitting in traffic when there’s a carpool lane Right There! I laughed and pulled into the lane and started driving.
Unfortunately. That isn’t what she was implying, she was genuinely asking. So we were stuck in traffic, she asked about what was clearly a breakdown or emergency access lane, and I laughed and started driving in it. She was Alarmed.
“Hello! Excuse me! We can’t drive in this lane! No one else is driving in this lane!!”
“Oh! I should have said — this lane is for people with more than one person in their car.”
“That is RIDICULOUS. You are lying. You are lying about what this lane is for and we’ll get arrested! (ma’am it’s fine but if it weren’t it would be more of a “ticket” situation) we’ll get a “ticket”! (Ma’am again it’s fine but were it not I alone would get the ticket) because that IS NOT the purpose of this lane. That is a RIDICULOUS lie.”
“I’m sorry, I should have said — I thought you were being subtle about my oversight. Please observe the carpool sign.”
“I don’t know what a carpool is and I don’t believe you.”
“How about you look at all the cars stuck in traffic and see how many have more than one driver, and if there are at least five I’ll get back into the traffic jam.”
“FINE!”
<a pause>
(With dawning horror) “none of these cars have more than one person in them.”
“I know.”
“None of these cars have more than one person!!”
“If you weren’t here I’d be right there with them.”
“OK but there was no train to where we needed to go.”
“There’s no train to where they needed to go either.”
“HOW.”
Later that day:
“I know McDonalds and Burger King sell Burgers, but what does Wendy’s sell?”
“Burgers”
“And Sonic?”
“Burgers.”
“Jack in the Box?”
“Burgers.”
“In’n’Out?”
“Look, It’s burgers all the way down.”
She hopped off a plane, went camping on Catalina with her husband and his lab, and then I showed her a rattlesnake, dragged her through heavy brush, took her (food) shopping in Beverly Hills, illustrated American car dependency and love of burger, and threatened to shoot someone trying to break into our hotel room. (I did not have a gun) She speed-ran the US American experience in eight days.
