Alocasia are on my shit list. I usually talk shit about my maidenhair fern, but I have shit aplenty for alocasia too. Basically I hate plants that act like they’re gonna die, then come back looking extra cute like nothing happened.
They’re emotional abusers, I’m telling you. Do they care if we suffer pain watching them die off again? NO, they do not. They just keep doing their little things like it’s a no-thing.
Maidenhairs will die off if you forget to water them for a second; alocasia like dying off because they need lots of plant food. They’re the most fertilizer-hungry plants I’ve got. If you’ve got an alocasia that seems incapable of growing more leaves — like, every time it grows a new one, an old one must die — it’s usually because they aren’t getting enough nutrients.
I’m terrible about remembering to feed my plants. My house has two levels, and the fertilizer lives on one level. So usually only one floor’s plants are getting fed at any given moment. Why not get a second thing of fertilizer, you ask? Or split the one into two? I keep asking myself that same thing.
I also keep asking myself, why not just let the plants die-die, forever?
There’s no tidy answer. I’ve been booting plenty other plants from my life, but these ones persist. Maybe the very fact they demand emotional reactions makes me more attached to them.
Spider plants stick around even though I also find them frustrating. Their roots drive out all the soil in no time flat, and then they act like drama queens because they’re always thirsty. You can keep them alive. They’re hardy plants. But they get all ugly if you don’t keep up-potting them. A single spider plant (and it’s never a single spider plant) is said to max out with a twenty inch root ball diameter. I don’t have room for this many twenty inch-plus size pots. I mean, I have room, but not the lighting.
Oh god, I need to upgrade my lighting, don’t I?
At some point it’s likely that my house will be nothing but a few stubborn euphorbia, a couple orchids, and ten thousand pothos.
And probably a single perpetually dying maidenhair hanging out with its spider mite-riddled single-leafed alocasia friends. Like some stupid asshole gang of stupid jerk plants. Stay gold, alocasiaboy.
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This sort of nonsense is why it makes total sense to me that baobab trees migrated across the ocean from Madagascar. (Smithsonian Mag) Plants can be so willful.
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Engadget: X-Men ’97 didn’t have to go that hard, but I’m so glad it did
I truly hadn’t expected to love X-Men ’97 as much as I do. Easily my favorite TV show of 2024 at the moment.
I don’t know why Beau DeMayo was fired (I don’t think anyone but DeMayo and his supervisors do), but it’s said he’s hard to work with. I have to side-eye that statement in regards to a queer Black man, but all right. What do I know? I’d love if they can sort through their issues and get him back on board. The gay-ass nature of X-Men ’97 is why I’m so attached to it. The fact it goes so hard is why it has my eternal devotion.
Brad Winterbaum compares the genocide at Genosha to 9/11 (Variety), and doesn’t mention the Pulse nightclub shooting (Out).
DeMayo has an influence on s2, and nothing to do with s3. (IGN)
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Cronenberg’s new movie, The Shrouds, sounds like an intensely personal piece about the grief of a widower. (Vanity Fair)
I absolutely adore Crimes of the Future for being such an intimate narrative about disability and chronic illness. I don’t know if I’m going to see The Shrouds for a while, but the raw honesty of Cronenberg’s work is hypnotic. Aging artists deserve platforms to share their truths. We deserve these projects to help us along with age.
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I feel fonder of Challengers in retrospect than I did while watching it. It’s available to watch at home now (Variety), and I hope lots of people will. It wasn’t a movie for me — but I think it was kinda fabulous.
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The New Yorker discovered that movies like The Idea of You (and romances at large) work for some people because folks like fantasy fulfillment. Imagine that.
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NPR asked what brings sibling close together. I am very very close to one of my siblings (obviously) and good friends with my sister, so I reflected on this a moment.
My answer is that caring about people can bring you close. I am a mess, and Sibling has always loved and cared for me through it. Sibling is a different kind of mess, and I love and care for them through that. We’re not codependent — but we know we can depend on one another when shit hits the fan. And we often have. That forges a unique bond.
With my sister, I’d say what has us close is communication. Being willing to talk through awkward shitty stuff means that we can be close even though we have not had an especially warm bond over the years.
It’s like any relationship: You choose to invest into it. The relationships you give attention will thrive. They must be watered and fed like those fuckin’ alocasias.
I had great friendships with older women when I was a young adult, and one thing a dear friend told me has always stuck out: Love is an action. It’s not a feeling. It’s what you do for and with each other.
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I used to go on a lot of cruises. I no longer do. There are so many reasons — human rights concerns, ecological damage, safety issues — but one of the big ones is that cruise ships are not humane about illness. If you get sick, you can get dumped anywhere. And if you need an emergency evacuation, you may not be allowed to leave until they’ve over-charged your credit card to pay their medical bill. (NPR)
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Disneyland performers have voted to unionize. (NPR) Good luck! I hope they get every single one of their needs met.
