Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

I had to squish two spiders today. They were the very scary kind, and they were hanging out in very inconvenient, non-cup-coverable places, but I hate killing spiders.  I wasn't afraid of them when I was a kid. One of my great aunts was a teacher and had many animals at her house--these most memorably including a small horse and a tarantula. You can bet your butt that I held that strangely delicate eight-legged chonk.* No fear. I remember thinking it was pretty cool, and strange that anyone would find it scary. Around this age (nine, I think?) I regularly read the stories and histories of a ton of different mythologies, including (as was popular in the 90's, I think) plenty of Greek myths.** The story of Arachne stuck in my tender, impressionable, little kid heart--I was sad for Arachne, and disappointed by my previously favorite Greek goddess, Athena.*** So for my whole childhood, I was dedicated to the scoop-and-release method of dealing with spiders, because I knew...

My (arguably) most sympathetic pedantic annoyance is the use of a country's name instead of country's government. China can't spy on you. The Chinese government* can, or can pay private businesses to do it for them, but neither the geography nor the entire population is responsible for the government's choices. Remember how sad we liberals got when people said "Americans" during the Bush years?**  It's the Government! we cried. It's less than half of the country , we promise! We're not villains!*** Sometimes even: Oh! No, I'm Canadian. A country is neither a hero nor a villain. A country is full of individuals, as we USAers know very well. A government gets to make these consequential choices. If we're lucky, we get to vote for the people who make up the government that makes these choices (even then, things can be dicey, see *** again). Not every group of people in a specific geographic area is so fortunate. Some people can'...

Picture yourself entering a small indoor pool. The light from a few high windows mixes with the fluorescent overheads and color of the water to give the whole space a green glow. Your fellow swimmers are three octogenarians chatting and treading water in one lane and a middle-aged man swimming breast stroke with a snorkel in the other. A lifeguard in her early 20s sits opposite from all, looking small in her safety gear. Empty bleachers, save for a single woman in a red swimsuit and blue cap, hoping someone will leave early so she can take her turn. Now imagine this scene, but subtract the classic public-pool-aquarobics pop music coming through the speakers. Replace it with the Twin Peaks theme. This is a true story. The lifeguard played the whole Twin Peaks soundtrack while we were swimming. It was the best pool day of my adult life.

The common practice of eating lamb for Easter dinner (which we did only once during my childhood, fortunately) has always made me a little squeamish. Setting aside the eating of a baby animal, which I very much do not enjoy, it's like getting both mouthfuls of the Eucharist at once. You barely need to transubstantiate a lamb. Blegh. Actually, continuing the supper thoughts, eating Easter ham is pretty weird, too. Given the practiced religion of our good boy Jesus, it is probably the least Christ-approved of the mammalian dinner meats. I propose a change to loaves and fishes, because it is referential without being horrifying, can be enjoyed by a majority of diets, and is great for your cholesterol.

 I drew this a few months ago (obviously based on a dream I had last October) and submitted it to one online journal, but they didn’t take it, and I don’t have the patience nor the desire to go shopping it around places. Why do that when I have a blog? Publishing in lit mags has always been such a thing that it’s easy to forget: it’s unnecessary.  A lit mag is just a group of people with a ~*fancy*~ blog (sometimes a blog printed  on paper !) who find things they like to read and share them with those of a like mind. It’s cool! It’s fun to read a curated list of stories and comics! It feels pretty great to get published by tastemakers! But if I were trying to write/do art for the money, I would be doing an embarrassingly poor job of it. Self-publishing is as old as wheat receipts on clay tablets, and I have the ability to blast pamphlets like Thomas Paine. That’s maybe a bit of a forced metaphor, but I enjoy the sound of the sentence, and—as this is my blog—I do not hav...