shrines

Subaru Baja

My dream car♥

My beloved subie baja. I am obsessed with this strange beast of a ute. Seeing one drive by is like finding a bird previously thought to be extinct.

They came in a few colors with some having silver or oynx trim. Here is where you can see the colors. They also come in sport or turbo. I do like the turbo a lot more, but looking into it, the turbo may only be fun if it's manual. I would like the benefit of a better head gasket, but the sport seems to actually be more reliable. I think if I were to get any baja, I probably wouldn't be too picky honestly. I think they are all cutie.

My heart goes out to all of the bajas out there. Ily all

anomalocaris

strange shrimp

A silly creature from the Cambrian Period (which is about 538.8 to 486.85 million years ago), specfically the Early to Middle Cambrian. They were the one of the apex predators of the time because of their size which was up to 37cm.

The front mouth-like appendages are speculated to be used to grab prey. They extend and contract much like fingers. Originally, it was thought that they consumed hardbodied critters. However, there is no strong evidence for this other than misidentified bite marks on trilobites. Those bite marks came from a different species that somewhat resembles the anomalocaris, peytoia. If they were to go after hardbodied animals, it might have damaged their mouthparts. Instead, it is thought that they would hunt softbodied animals.

To swim, they ungulate their overlapping side fins. This would have made them "glide" through the water seamlessly. This wasn't a complicated way of swimming, so it can be inferred that they had simple brains. Of course, you wouldn't expect complicated brains in a time period where complex life itself was newish.

Anomalocaris had compound eyes similar to dragonflies. This means that they could have had the most advanced eyes of any species in the Cambrian. The evidence of particular light sensitive proteins suggests that those eyes may have had dichromatic color vision which is two-color vision.

I can't recall when I first discovered that these silly guys had existed. I know I didn't find them from the tribute to anomalocaris video. I highly recommend that work of art btw and a video interviewing the guy who made the tribute video.

I love these guys so much that I tattooed one on myself. He lives on my left calf, and someday, I'll shade him. When that's healed, I'll show him to the world

budweiser

mm beer

I don't have too much to say about this, but bud heavy is just a good, simple beer. I started drinking beer with craft beers because of my bartending job, but craft beers are so iffy. Sometimes you find something amazing, like Pryes Pragmatic Pils or Toppling Goliath Pompeii Hazy, or you find something absolutely foul, like Modist Dreamyard. With bud (and modelo), I just know I'll like it. A good domestic beer is the same every time. I won't be coerced to try some fruity sour that gives me a headache or double stout that will make me fall over. I know what I'll be getting myself into when I drink my beloved bud heavy.

Ford Ranger

gens 1-3

I know this truck.

I ain't no stranger.

I know that truck.

That's a ford fuckin' ranger!

Idgaf about 150s, 250s, silverados, rams, etc. The only truck that truly catches my eye on the street is this strong cutie. Those other trucks don't have a song about them! They wish they were the ranger.

I don't care about its issues. I'm here for its personality and charm. I am always envious of people with a good ranger because I wish I could be as cool as them. Maybe someday I will have a cute ranger to haul my weird facebook marketplace finds. I could see myself lifting it with big wheels and a cab visor for the 'tude.

gars

silly fish

They're just really goofy guys. I love their weird proportions.

They're an ancient group of fish with evidence of them dating back to the Late Jurassic. Their ganoid scales act as armor, and their jaws are lined with sharp teeth. This makes the largest of gars, Alligator gar pretty freaky. Alligator gars grow to be over 2m, so they're pretty strong. They're still big cuties, though.Sometimes, they like to take gulps of air because their swim bladder can function as lungs. It's really weird!!

Gar Species:

All of the gars listed have plentiful populations, so there is currently no worries about losing these goofy guys.

Like the anomalocaris, I also have a gar tattooed. They're some of my favorite freshwater fish, so of course I want one permanently on me. He lives on my left knee with his lover, a walleye, on the other knee. Putting my knees together makes them kiss

lava lamps

cool guy lamps

Ever since I was young, I have loved fun lights. I frequented Spencer's just to go to their light section. Of course, I was afraid of the wall full of adult items because I was 11 and ew sex things. It was imperative that I messed with the lights, though. One type of fun light stood out amongst the rest: the lava lamp. Glitter lamps didn't count because they weren't REAL lava lamps. Lava lamps are just so cozy and vibey in the best way. Currently, I have two, but only one with a functioning bulb. I want a giant one like in Oscar's Penthouse in Shark Tale. I would have a bunch of lava lamps if I wasn't limited by outlets in my century old house.

2-Door Toyota Rav4

I mean look at it

It's such a squat, weird thing. I adore it, and they're kind of hard to come by. I don't think the first gen Rav4 was a particularly good car, but it has a lot of charm. Remember, car functionality is secondary to its charm for me. This Rav4 looks like a skiddish frog that is scared that it is late to the pond party. My jaw drops when I see any gen 1 Rav4 drive by, but I have yet to spot a two door one. Probably because you can't fit much in them.

smiskis

lil green guys

These are the only mystery box thing I'll buy except maaaybe miniverse. I just love these weird glowy guys. They litter my desk and bring so much charm. I'd be willing to fork out the money to have every smiski out there. I even have the little lamp! The battery life on it sucks, though. I just keep it around in a tiny bathtub without turning it on cause it's a pain to charge it (micro usb smh).

My favorite smiskis are the blue ones. I think they just stand out against the green ones in a fun way. I do wish the standing ones stood up better, though. I always have to deal with them tipping over, and it makes my desk trinkets kind of annoying sometimes.

weather

water planet coolness

We live on the water planet, and it does this stuff!!!!! That's so cool!!! I can't be the only one that thinks this. The fact that we have so much water and the moon, and it does all of this! That's CRAZY.

As an elementary student, I loved the three books my library had on tornadoes. I cannot remember what they were, but I do remember one having a multi-layer diagram of a tornado printed on transparent film. This sparked my interest in weather stuff. I'd say that this was my original hyperfixation. I was obsessed with tornadoes, and I kinda still am. I had gone through a hurricane as a child which are also pretty intense, but the unruliness of tornadoes is just so much cooler.

As an adult, I am fascinated by all weather from tornadoes to clouds to space weather. I love to keep up with the weather forecasting in the summer which is the severe weather season in my area. Last summer felt like it lacked some good storms, but I actually saw some interesting things. Stormy clouds in the distance with lightning shooting out the top, multiple instances of asperitas clouds, and more. Yeah, I did have to run out to pick my tomatoes in the pouring rain, but it was a fun weather season.

I still have yet to see a tornado, but I am also not qualified or knowledgeable enough to stormchase. I'd gladly tag along with someone who is, though. I do desperately want to see sprites. Sprites are bits of the mesosphere being lit up by lightning. It is just below where auroras occur, but it's a similiar thing where the particles are being electrified. You can only see sprites if you stand far away from a storm, and I think the sky has to be pretty dark.

Some of my favorite weather resources and channels are:

If anyone is curious, I do love the movie Twister, but because it's not good. Twisters is great, though. I love Tyler Owens. He is such a fun character.

space

the unreachable

Space is so huge, man. It's really scary to think about, but it is still super cool. I got sucked into learning about obscure space things in high school. I was VERY invested in NASA's rovers and landers, too. At the time, James Webb kept being delayed and Perseverance was being built.

I still go back to learning about space here and there. Cosmology is the coolest thing even though it hurts my brain a lot. Just thinking and theorizing about what is at the edge of the ever expanding universe is nauseating but fun.

I find all of the different stars and galaxies to be the most interesting part of space. The Vela Pulsar is my favorite star. It is the remanants of a Type II Supernova, and it has a diameter of only 12 miles. It's tiny, but so fiesty.

It's feistiness is because it is a pulsar star which is a neutron star that is highly magnetized and rotating. It rotating produces a "lighthouse effect." Some white dwarf stars can be pulsar-like because they are also highly energized, but they rotate much slower than true pulsars.

As for galaxies, my favorite galaxy is the Fried Egg Galaxy (NGC 7742). It is located in the Pegasus constellation in the Northern sky. I just think it's so cute, and I'd eat it on some avocado toast.♥

I am also so fascinated by black holes. I think the mystique of them makes them so beautiful as a concept. Also that white holes exist in the math, but one has never been found. It makes me think about how humans are trying to rationalize and make sense of these forces that really don't make any sense at all. What if we're wrong about it all? It feels like there's a one in one billion chance that we're correct about ANY of this wild stuff.

I think the deep sky images are some of the most beautiful images ever taken. I was pretty emotional when the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope came back. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life, honestly. One of the coolest things captured by James Webb is the question mark galaxy which can be found in the image of Herbig-Haro 46/47. The deep sky object is not actually in the shape of a question mark, but it's still really fun to see. It is probably some sort of gravitational lensing combined with slight lens distortion? I don't think anyone quite knows how it happened.

Everything in space is so unfathomably huge it makes me dizzy, but I love it. If I want to feel ill, I think about the super clusters and the the Great Attractor of our super cluster, Laniakea. It's disgustingly fascinating how large the universe is.

Stuff that happens on Earth, or in the Solar System, are stupidly large, too. In 2024, I saw the total solar eclipse, the aurora (twice), maybe a shooting star, and the comet. The coolest was the solar eclipse, of course. It switched on this sort of primal fear that I have a hard time explaining. It was noticeably much colder, and the sun looked evil. Strangely, I was able to see the solar prominence which appeared as red beads. Images of the eclipse aren't enough to explain how it actually looked, though. Once it was safe enough to view it without the glasses, it felt like it had tendrils and that it was some beast. It was cool, and it made my heart race with that primal fear. I mean, no wonder ancient civilations freaked out about this. It looks fucking insane.

The aurora is something I will find myself always chasing. I don't think anyone could be tired of seeing it. I saw it for the first time just a month after the eclipse then again the following October for two nights. It's something that is really hard to explain. The way it looks at this latitude is strange. The images I took are a longer exposure, so they capture a lot more. However, my eyes only saw some colors, but it was mostly white ribbons. You really have to focus your eyes on it and adjust. My photos of the aurora can be seen on my photos page.

I just think space things are so cool and so should you cause we literally live in it. Maybe we're not alone?

༼ ͒ ̶ ͒༽

Some of my favorite space resources and channels are:

Metro Transit

yay bus

Of my sevenish years using Metro Transit in Minneapolis + St. Paul, they've done me wrong only twice. I have had encounters with strange people, but never felt that scared. I may have waited for 30 minutes in the cold risking frostbite, but hey, I made it with no frostbite.

I can always count on routes 11, 4, 17, and (usually) 10.

Mrs. Meyers radish scent

what does a radish even smell like?

It's such a strange thing to make a soap smell of. I love radishes. I love eating them as a snack and growing them is stupid easy. I don't think I can recall a lovely floral scent from them, though. I didn't let my radish plants bloom, so I have no idea what the flower smells like. Looking it up tells me that they're slightly peppery which I guess this scent is, but it's still pretty floral.

Despite its weirdness, I do LOVE this smell. It's something that is never carried in stores. I am noticing that those stores started carrying the seasonal scents less, too. Did I tell you that I love Mrs. Meyers? Radish and spiced acorn are the best scents of any soaps ever.

If I had to pick one scent to be the scent of my house, it would be this strange, fruity, floral "radish" scent.

weevils

the nose is actually a mouth

I discovered these guys in a book about bugs way back in 2016 or 2017. It was the Giraffe Weevil and the Bigfoot Weevil. I mean they're just silly guys. How can you not love them? If you ever meet someone that dislikes these guys, there is something seriously wrong with that person.

Ever since I discovered these guys, I have been obsessed with them. I have mostly dropped my mushroom obsession (it became too mainstream, but I still like them), but weevils have stuck. Other people understand my love for weevils, too. I mean there is a whole subreddit about meeting weevils. They describe meeting them as a "religious experience" which I'd say is accurate, honestly. I have met a few weevils in my time, and I felt like I had spoken to a deity. I have met a Green Immigrant Weevil, Strawberry Root Weevil, and a mystery weevil when I saw the eclipse. I am still on the hunt to meet an Acorn Weevil. From what I understand, they can be found crawling up oak trees in the fall. I think I'm gonna really, really try next fall.

Anyways, here's two weevils performing some sick balancing tricks.

escitalopram

aka lexapro

I take 10mg for my anxiety and panic disorder, and my life hasn't been better. Well, except when I was 6 with some polly pockets chewin on the rubber clothes like the animal I am.

I don't know if I want to go tooooo deep into the panic disorder just because it's kind of long, but I'm pretty open about it. If you're curious and down for a long video, Oompaville's video about his mental health is exactly like my issues with my mental health. It's kinda scary how similar, but watching this video was the beginning of my recovery. I had a pretty bad DPDR episode in January 2024 triggered by a panic attack. It only lasted a month which makes it technically not DPDR, but I have no other way to explain it. This wasn't my first panic attack, either. It was just a really bad one.

Anyways, I had this issue with really, really severe derealization. My hands felt numb constantly. I couldn't eat without my flight or fight response closing my throat. I couldn't even think. All I could think about was how I was stuck like this forever. Oompaville's video literally saved me which is so stupid to say. I researched what I was experiencing, and the more I learned about it, the better I felt. It was like putting puzzle pieces together.

My panic disorder also gave me intense agoraphobia which I still struggle with even being medicated, but it's a lot better. I think people think of agoraphobia as just the fear of open spaces, or maybe mix it up with anthrophobia, but it's different. Agoraphobia is this irrational fear of being in public where you cannot escape or maybe you'll do something embarassing. For me, my agoraphobia just happened. It's usually inexplicably trigged by certain locations. Usually, I just straight up get the panic attack, and I get worried that my panic attack is either me dying or people will know. Panic attacks aren't like people screaming btw. They're pretty quiet.

I worked through a lot of this panic disorder, extreme anxiety, and my agoraphobia on my own. I only did it alone out of frustration. I didn't want to wait until I could afford therapy. Once I reached a plateau, I sought out a general practitioner and further mental health help. I went to a lovely local clinic, and I started on 5mg of escitalopram.

It's actually wild how much this tiny white pill changed my life. I don't see medication as the ultimate fix, but man these little dudes are a fantastic tool like your favorite multitool. I can deal with my panic attacks a lot better, and if they do happen, I am somewhat detached from them. I still struggle with some agoraphobia, but I know exactly where and how to deal with it.

I didn't have to go through trying a bunch of family of medications to figure out what I needed because my mother went through all that. She is on the exact same medication. If they work for her, they should work for me because mother and daughter brains are super similar. I was ridiculously terrified of taking these pills. Day one, I was nearing a panic attack after swallowing the pill. Eventually, I felt pretty stoned. It was kinda great. I loved the seratonin dump. I had a similar high when I increased the dose.

Anyways, sorry for the rambling. It's really hard to talk about my web of mental health issues without rambling. I'll get into the thick of it someday because someone else doing that helped me start my recovery. I just wanted to get across that I take meds for it because it's so extreme, and I am very grateful for this medication. Ily escitalopram