dreaming of you (A5 Cat Art Print) by robinillu

Those am him leafs

#leaf him alone

#No touch his leaves

John Brosio, State of the Union, 2011, oil on canvas

there’s a sequel !!

John Brosio, State of the Union 2, 2014, oil on canvas

Oh sick!!! Big fuckin crows!!!

OH SHIT EVEN BETTER

@gallusrostromegalus

Mr. Brosio is one of my favorite modern painters :)

I’ve been slowly working on illustrating my own Tarot deck about black cats.

I have a long way to go, but I’m nearly done with the major arcana.

Here are some of my favorites:

I set myself a design challenge (as I often do). I wanted to limit the color palette and the brush styles to create a very consistent look.

And since each card focuses on black cats, it forces me to think deeply about symbolism and design to make sure the meaning of each card is clear and each design is unique.

But there’s still a lot of variety coming through. It’s not all class, or all silliness - just like cats

I have a forearm tattoo of the cats in this one ☝️

I’m so happy with how both of these two managed to feel dark, but adorable at the same time.

And then there’s this one absolute diva:

Most of these used my own feline friends for reference.

There are more but I don’t know yet how many I want to share online. If I can actually complete the entire deck I would love to have it made. But I have a ways to go, so for now I continue to chip away, one card at a time.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS | 1.03

they should have adapted daphne du maurier's rebecca with the muppets

I actually think the real advantage tumblr has over other websites is the ability of "reblogging" to create posts with contributions from multiple users. This allows people to build on others' posts, whether that's derailing them with a terrible joke, drawing the scenario proposed as a comic, answering the question posed originally in lively essay format, or rewriting the previous interaction as a scene in Shakespearean iambic pentameter.

This is also why Tumblr is hard to make profitable. Individual users have relatively little power to create good content. It's interactions between users that actually creates the good content, and therefore, no one involved in the good stuff on Tumblr can really claim to "own" it or be the "creator."

Posts have to navigate through Tumblr to pick up the people that can add to them in a constructive way, and then when users interact, the whole interaction can spread across the website as a new evolution of the content. There's no way to simplify this process.

Theres a whole ecosystem running here. It's not as simple as Creators and Consumers, and you can't simplify it to that. That's not how ART works, let alone posts. There's symbiosis. The users that do the nitrogen fixation aren't the ones photosynthesizing. The detritivores can't also be the predators. The "rappers doing normal shit blog" has a different niche than the person that asks why Lil Wayne has socks on in the jacuzzi, who has a different niche than the person who says "those are his hooves, you bitch!"

It's like bioavailability, you see. The user that responds "Those are his hooves, you bitch" is like a predator on a high trophic level, unable to directly feed on producers, needing primary consumers to convert the post into a form that makes a punch line possible.

[ID: A screenshot of the original post with almost every line fully blacked out. The only letters still visible spell out "cocks." End ID]

Enter THE HOTEL OF THE MINDSCAPE.

HOTEL I think the sole advantage of this place, This hellish, warping, twisted tumbler, Lies buried in collaborative art. When sings again the song, another may The words repeat, and add upon their tale. To make a jest, or illustrate the piece, To answer, mock, or Shakespearificate.

This, too, is why 'tis hard to draw out gold: Thou cannot draw a pail from show'ring rain, Thou cannot catch the desert in a net, And, similar, thou cannot find the source Of so-called "content" when 'tis all around.

When written first, a song begins its life, But not the whole of art it has within -- To breathe the air of life and light and wit It must be shared, improved, attached upon, And then, at last, the multi-headed beast Can reach its full potential in its song.

This place is like a forest, ground to leaf, With bears and fish and bees and trees and worms. 'Tis not the simple "made, and then consumed", For, truly, art 'tis never simply that. There's symbiosis in these darkened woods, There's ebb and flow, the predator and prey: When songs are written of the Little Wayne, And of his hot tub stocking hooves most fine, The gentles here who say "they're hooves, you bitch" Are just as vital as the author's song. Each word in verse is sung by someone new, And in this way, the poem comes to fruit.

For though the wolf who stalks across the heath Takes diff'rent station than the grass beneath, Still, both are needed in this wood we carve, For with no grass for sheep, the wolves would starve.

Enter FALSE PUCHIKO, the CLOWN.

CLOWN 'Tis well and truly said, Madame Hotel, But please consider this riposte: a cock.

This is a old post and I have never seen this addition. Brilliant.

Girl help I’m running out of art captions

Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)

MAN [IN THICK ACCENT]: Black cat bring good luck.  Not bad luck.  I have black cat - See, him face - And I am not dead today: Good luck!

“See him face”

I sure fucking do see him face

Him face

Reblog him face for good luck in 2021

Reblog him face for good luck in 2021 (2)

Reblog him face for good luck in 2022

Reblog him face for good luck in 2023

Reblog him face for good luck in 2024

Reblog him face for good luck in 2025

here’s the og video. Go see him face for real this time

white dude in this horror movie : *translates old arabic text* *somehow it rhymes perfectly in english* 

Now I really wanna see a horrible faltering translation from one of these movies, like “Whomsoever enters this room, they shall… well, this word is like… literally it means ‘unbecome,’ but it was used as a euphemism for death, pooping, and—wait, when was this carved?  was it 15th century? Cuz it was a euphemism for sex too in the 15th century.  This is either a cursed crypt, a bathroom, or a royal bedroom. Who wants to roll the dice?”

“You guys, I’ve gotta be honest, okay? This thing’s written in some kind of weird localized dialect, and I’ve only ever studied the standard form of the language. I mean, this part right here…I can’t even tell if it’s some kind of error, or an obscure slang phrase…whatever it is, I have no idea what the fuck it means.”

‘this is written in ancient sumerian. it’s about… uh… well that word is… uh. okay this is either a poem about farming, or straight-up a nasty sex guide. it might be both. i want a shower.’

“okay see the thing is in one dialect this word is the name of a terrifying Demon but in a completely different language from the same area that has the same writing system and gave a lot of loan words to the first, it means ‘horse’ - and the context is really not helping”

“You know what?  This thing is bound in human skin and the walls are bleeding let’s just leave.”

ITS NOT HOPELESS ITS JUST JANUARY.

pan yuliang, "woman watching a cat," 1964

The giant pinecone I bought on a whim in december has started shedding its scales, which it does by shooting them in random directions at random intervals. Since I bought it with no idea what to do with it and I still have no idea what to do with it now, I decided to save the scales and got a glass jar on my desk right next to the pinecone to gather them. So now I have created the opposite of that japanese zen garden bamboo water fountain thing that makes that regular, predictable, soothing soft bonk sound.

I have an arrangement on my side desk that startles the shit out of me at random intervals whenever I least expect it, with a high-pitched tink! of a pinecone scale making impact with a glass jar.

Had to put the pinecone in a bag for the night because boyfriend doesn't want to get startled awake by any unnecessary random cracks and bangs and noise of stuff falling over and onto the floor. Me trying not to wake him up while getting up to get myself water is enough of that.

The Silmarillion fandom is genuinely insane. Like, you hang out on tumblr, read fic on AO3 and you think, yeah. Lots of people have read the Silmarillion. It’s Tolkien. Everyone’s read Tolkien. Barnes and Noble has a whole bunch of the HoME and also a bunch of books by people writing about the legendarium. This is mainstream, surely.

But then you actually touch grass and talk to normal people. Not even that, you talk to people who self diagnose as hard core Tolkien fans. And. None of them have read the Silmarillion. The Silmarillion is famously a book that nobody reads.

And yet. On AO3 The Silmarillion and Other Histories of Middle Earth has more works than The Lord of the Rings. Think about that. That’s baffling. It’s ridiculous. Like I realize that LotR fandom is split a bit by the movie, but still. The Silmarillion has almost four times as many fics as the LotR movies. Everybody has watched the movies!

I need to know what percentage of people who actually read the Silmarillion went on to write fic or draw fanart about it. Because it must be insane, surely. Like, I’m pretty sure the Silmarillion wins some kind of record in this department.

Thinking about the fanfic bell curve where on one end you have “Perfect, needs no improvement or elaboration” (LotR sits here) and on the other you have “So bad it’s no fun to even think about” with the middle being the fanfic zone. But I think there may be a secret fourth Silmarillion option. Which is a book that is perfect* but simultaneously non existent. It’s not even a real story! The language is super pretty and deeply incomprehensible (especially to people who, unlike me, were not raised from early childhood on both the Bible and classic literature). And it’s more of an outline and an abstract painting of cultural and world building vibes (not cultural and world building facts and information) than an actual narrative. There are story hooks galore. There are vivid and fascinating characters, but their lives are glossed over and you only get one or two paragraphs of prose that will reorder your brain chemistry and haunt you forever. There are countless more characters who only exist as names, the implication of whose existence is fascinating. All of this is deeply frustrating, both to casual readers who just want a Normal Enjoyable Book, and super fans who want All the Lore. But it is catnip to anyone who engages in transformative work.

*I am aware that not anyone who is a fan of the silm thinks it’s perfect

one of the hardest things to learn as a depressed former Gifted Kid™ is that half-assed is better than nothing. take the 50%, 40%, even 20% job. scrubbing your face is better than not taking a shower at all. picking up your clothes is better than never cleaning. nibbling on some bread is better than starving.

DO THINGS HALFWAY. NOW YOU’RE 100% BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE BEFORE.

One of my college professors used to say “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.”  I didn’t understand that for years because I didn’t do anything poorly, I couldn’t do anything poorly, I had to Do Everything Perfectly.

But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting.  Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible.  Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible.  Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly… because doing it poorly is better than not doing it.

someone please hit me over the head with this post every day for like the next week thanks. a mention, a reblog with text, a message, something.

Remember to eat, my loves!