I talk about these guys and the banana spiders a lot! Banana spiders were so cool.

That’s immediately what I thought of. I remember these from the woods when I was a kid.

<3 Little Mazarn

That’s silly. I’m in a really good place personally. My best friend is my assistant manager. I just signed the lease early for another year (starting in May) in my nice apartment that is just a few blocks from my dispensary. We could reasonably be a million dollar a month location by this time next year. I’ve found a Discord where I can make friends with other trans people in my area despite my powerful introversion. And just being a visible trans person in a popular business running a safe place in a conservative area is fighting the good fight! I have integrated the resistance into my life. I have the financial stability to take care of some real life shit that’s in arrears. And despite isolated examples of the opposite, the fact is that people are overall safer, healthier, and freer than they have ever been. I say that as someone who has been attacked in public for being trans. 2024 is going to be good. It’s just going to be extra good for me.

Two honestly. They’re both kinda big picture, but both are fun and easy and low stakes.

1. Slow down, settle, nest. 2023 was a wild year filled with change. I got a job that became the focal point of my life, and then I got promoted. That job came with more friends and connections than I’ve ever had. It has been a very full, sometimes overwhelming year. 2024 is going to be my Convenience Store Woman year. I’m gonna settle into my management position, get good at it, and turn this dispensary into a beautiful weed distribution machine.

2. I’m gonna keep trying for a second romantic partner. It’s gonna be fun because flirting is fun. And the stakes are low because I already have a fantastic, stable relationship with my wife. Failure means continuing the happy life I’m living now. I’ll just keep trying to get the attention of boys with good hair.

2024 is gonna be good, but easier than 2023 plz

To make some sort of major change or take a specific big picture path. The classic “stop smoking/drinking” would be high stakes resolutions.

In fact, one systematic review found that the average prevalence of surgical regret was 14.4% among all research studies analyzed

Holy shit that’s actually crazy to me. [I actually tracked down that number because I was so curious] (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1007/s00268-017-3895-9) It’s over half cancer surgery. I’ve known that the regret rate for transition surgery was low for a long time, but that piece of context kinda blows my mind. You’re more likely to regret a variety of life saving procedures than gender affirming surgery, and it’s often by insane orders of magnitude.

Right offhand, Rita Pfeiffer. There have been times where I was her only Spotify listener. Probably also nobody has heard of Knife the Puppets but me and my wife. My favorite musician at the moment is probably Ashley Virginia, a little known folk singer out of North Carolina. I’ve been obsessed with the Hushabyes since Lindsey Verril of Little Mazarn introduced them to the world. I’m getting a cassette player mostly for New New Sincerity, Lindsey’s label, but there are some cassettes I want from the Spinster Sounds collection.

I’m sure I’ve seen some ultra rare movies, but I watch so much weird old trash that I have no idea how well known any of it is. I’ve seen Tales from the QuadeaD Zone twice. I follow Blood Tea and Red String on Instagram. I excited for the sequel. One of my all time favorite movies is a 1977 X-rated version of Cinderella with full song and dance numbers (a few of them genuinely fantastic!) and Sy Richardson as the fairy godmother.

EDIT: I forgot the real crown gem! We own a copy of the original cut of a movie called Freedom Deep! It’s basically a feature length music video for a band called Goya’s Child. The version of Freedom Deep you can find online is the new cut. It has lots of obnoxious narration over the music and nonsense 9/11 content thrown in. The rare DVD version is still not a great movie, but it’s a painfully fun ultra long grunge music video! Oh I need to make some people I work with watch Freedom Deep.

My wife is half fucking snow white. I’ll be fine as either, but I’d prefer cat. Me and the current cat need to have a cat talk.

This is fairly common in both depression and ADHD, so maybe check on them? Like, make sure they are personally okay. Someone who needs to be consistently stimulated is probably uncomfortable at rest. Being bored all the time is something I struggle with personally. I have ADHD and depression and trauma. Addressing and working on those things helps immensely with the chronic boredom. When I’m more depressed or anxious, I’m more easily bored and crave more stimulation. So, yeah, play Ted Lasso and check in on them.

I can’t really be cursed to begin with. I run a zero faith build, so unless I find myself structurally cursed I’m pretty safe, and structural curses are easy to figure out at least. You either disrupt the structure or remove yourself from it.

I am already an active practicing Discordian. My work is religious. Every day I distribute a substance that uproots the normal workings of the mind. Hail Eris! Hail Yourself!

I have a Tsunami grinder that is excellent. It doesn’t get gritty and stiff to turn from kief like most grinders I’ve had.

A markedly less successful ripoff of Tubular Bells

None. I wish I could see more content. Not enough is made of the fact that you only see content your instance is already connected to. Part of my frustration with the platform is that I joined a neutral instance to have as much content as possible, but relatively little of it is shuffled to me in the all feed. I like discovering new things online. I hate the catch 22 of federation content access, where being on a large enough instance to be certain you’re well connected means being on an instance that has blocked a lot of content to appease its larger userbase.

Conversely, I am not LGBTQ+ and I don’t need to be in their space. They get to deal with normies all the time in everyday life.

Tbh this experience explains the be nice rule. We often get to be treated badly in everyday life. Many of us experience a passive level of hostility and interrogation just out in the world living our lives. A portion of people internalize a portion of what they hear, which leads to hostility and conflict within the community. To counter the flow of outside hate into the group, many LGBTQ+ communities have that sort of blanket tone rule. When you’re sorting out that you’re a different and controversial type of person, it’s important to have a space to express yourself without intense scrutiny. You need a place where it is safe to be wrong, because you’re often declared wrong and attacked just for being there, so you can’t judge your own thoughts and feelings. It’s important that people in that position can be helped and directed without being stifled. Otherwise the true form of the self can be lost to self defense conformity.

I love Ari Aster movies. Hereditary makes me feel like I’m going to puke. We own all three of his movies on Blu Ray, including a special edition director’s cut of Midsommar with a bunch of little dicks on the spine. Beau is Afraid only kind of fits the topic, but it’s probably my favorite of the three.

If you’re of OG Futurama age, King of the Hill is pretty good about not being transphobic. I will always love Hank refusing to speak to Peggy’s friend Caroline when she answered the phone in boy mode. No, he’s looking for his wife’s friend Caroline. Please don’t try to confuse him with stories about who she used to be. He used to sell jeans, and only people close to him know that.

Random trans folk I see look right past me.

I had this happen with a whole group of trans women staying at the motel I used to work at. I passed to them to the point that there was no “oh hey!” moment, no Charlie Kelly meerkat eyes. It was a strange experience, at once sad and satisfied?

Now I work at a dispensary and smoke or vape weed every day. For better or worse, I’ll never voice pass consistently in a world with legal weed. Which I guess is fine. I’m not especially fond of the “oh whoa” moment on the faces of straight men who have decided from a distance I was a hotgirl™ and they were gonna treat me a certain way, but I guess I’d rather disarm straight people than be invisible to young trans girls.

the models and movie stars and idols and influencers

Most of them don’t actually “look like that.” They are photographed from the best angles with expensive camera equipment and lighting. Then they select the best photos from a series of mediocre to great shots. These selected photos are often then edited. There are billions of women who could look like that if they had $20k to drop on a professional makeover and photoshoot