wild-thingslayhere

Latest Posts by wild-thingslayhere

Mine and other’s genuine relief and excitement at the gavle goat burning due to the observation that the previous streak of it not burning lasted through some very tough years is proof of how quickly and organically religious rituals can arise, in this essay I will…

If they just let people burn the goat it wouldn't be a good ritual sacrifice. People that burn the goat are legitimately risking jailtime but they do it anyway. That's what makes the goatburning so powerful.

As someone that celebrated christmas/yule in Gävle most my life I always cheer for both the defence and crime teams. But this year the Goat must go down for a simple reason.

Boring as fuck defence. Nothing new. No armoured knights. Nothing fun. They could at least give the guards silly hats or something.

(fun fact, if you spend a lot of time as a teen in Gävle you can't fathom how many dudes are implying that they *might* be one of the arsonists that got away when hitting on you)

I am pleased to announce that the Gävle Goat of 2023 has been declared "destroyed by Jackdaws".

The goat's fate has largely been accepted by the people of Gävle, who were amused to see the birds eat the straw, even before they were finished setting it up. The general consensus amongst the town was to leave the goat alone and let nature take it's course.

So once again, tradition has been vindicated. May the Gävle Goat rest in peace, and may the odds of 2024 be ever in our favour.

Gävlebocken being devoured by birds is incredible. There’s a whole creation/destruction mythos around this giant hay goat, a constant conflict between burning the goat and protecting it. And this year, it’s (unintentional?) use of hay with seeds has turned it into a birdie buffet. Being torn apart for food is simultaneous creation and destruction. I don’t reeeaaallly believe in omens (or do I?) but I wonder what kind this could be.

And there’s a white raven in Anchorage, which is having its snowiest winter ever, so very interesting winter for birds.

the mountain gävle goats. they write a song about the way that a relationship is condemned to burn from the very moment the straw that comprises it is first interwoven. and yet every time, every single time, year after year it’s worth it, the love was worth the flames because the spirit was there

It’s official!

Look at dem bones

Death from above

Devour ye gods

In death she gave life

Wikipedia has called the fate of Gävlebocken 2023

And given the state of the goat I very much agree.

Because of this I am going to call the daily watch here, if gävlebocken (or what’s left of them) is burned before the end of the year I will obviously update and we can have another joyous celebration.

Until then, happy new years to you all! And may gävlebocken’s destruction bring you all good luck in the new year!

As to whether the Gavle Goat's consumption should be seen as a good omen or a bad omen, I'd say good. Traditionally the Yule goat is made of straw from the final harvest and as a talisman against hard times, and there are unproven theories that its shape is inspired by Thor's goats, who are constantly killed, eaten, and reborn to provide endless meat for Thor and whatever guests he entertains. Therefore, its use by birds as a food store and safe harbor is an affirmation of its original purpose and truly in the Christmas spirit of generosity in lean times. What's more, the birds eating it seems to be have been the one outcome to unite both goat burners and goat keepers, as they have decided not to scare the birds away from their safe harbor and not to harm the goat, a decision that has been universally lauded.

As omens go, this one's all positive: safety, plenty, and unity between previous ideological opponents through a creative third solution built on shared values (birds being fed and sheltered is a good thing). May more birds find their way to the Gavle Goat next year.

It’s okay to not want to have sex ever. It’s okay to never even try it.

I cannot put into mortal words how fucking badly I want that swedish goat to burn. We live in a modern surveillance hellscape and not only is big brother watching you but he’s monitoring your purchase habits so he can sell you a smart refrigerator that will spy on you for the cia. the full weight of modern technology can be rallied to protect that straw monument to human hubris and I want us to burn it anyway. I want the might of modern society to crumple in the face of a drunk swede with a zippo lighter. we can do it just take my hand

Decay exists as an extant form of life

THE WIKIPEDIA GODS HAVE DECIDED

GÄVLEBOCKEN IS DEAD!! 🦀🦀

Jack-o'-lanterns have such a grab bag of lore, i love it

Fire, of course, has a long history of offering protection from evil forces. During the Celtic festival of Samhain (from which many Halloween traditions originate), the veil between worlds was considered thin, and ritual bonfires reminded the spooks to stay on their side of the lane.

Many a lantern has protected the lonely traveler on a dark moonless night. But lanterns can be dangerous too—especially the supernatural ones. in certain folklore 'jack-o'-lantern' was another name for will-o'-the-wisps, atmospheric ghost lights (or as legend has it, lost souls) that appear above bogs and lure unwise wanderers into sinkholes.

Then there's the 18th cent Irish folktale of Stingy Jack, a mischievous fellow who tricked the Devil twice, exacting a promise that hell would never claim his soul. So Jack goes on his cheerful way, and dies (as humans are prone to do), and ends up at the pearly gates. Now Heaven, it turns out, doesn't want a damn thing to do with him. So Jack jaunts on down and goes knocking on the gates of hell—only to have Satan slam the door in his face! How this leads to Stingy Jack being doomed to wander the earth carrying a hollowed out rutabaga lit by an ember of the flames of hell, I couldn't tell you. But that is how the story goes.

Whether the legend of Stingy Jack inspired or fueled or was created-by the gourd-carving practice, by the 19th cent, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh alike were annually carving jack-o'-lanterns out of turnips & rutabaga & beets & potatoes, and lighting them up to ward off Jack and other wandering spirits. Immigrants carried the tradition to North America, where pumpkins were indigenous and much easier to carve.

And so the modern Jack-o'-Lantern was born!

Not that gourd lanterns were anything new. Metalwork was expensive, after all, and gourds worked as-well-as and better-than-most crops when it came to carving a poor farmer's lantern.

As for carving human faces into vegetables, that supposedly goes back thousands of years in certain Celtic cultures. It may even have evolved from head veneration, or been used to represent the severed skulls of enemies defeated in battle. Or maybe not! Like many human traditions, jack-o'-lanterns evolved over multiple eras and cultures and regions, in some ways we can trace and others we can only guess at. But at the end of the day, it makes a damn good story, and a spooky way to celebrate—which is as good a reason as any (and a better reason than most!) to keep a tradition going.

In conclusion: happy spooky season, and remind me to tell yall about plastered human skulls one of these days 🎃

srcs 1, 2, 3

Live coverage of the 14th of January 2024 is now closed.

Here is a recap of today's major events.

It is 12am in Ireland now so I have to go to bed.

I'll be back to resume live updates tomorrow evening.

100 days in, and 1 in every 100 people in Gaza have been murdered. I will not sleep well tonight, but I hope those who allowed this to happen sleep worse. May their dreams be forever painful.

For continuous updates while I'm gone, click the link below:

Al Jazeera

Hunger, cold threaten more lives in Gaza as Israel blocks aid, internet

After 100 days of war, Palestinians in Gaza struggle to survive under weight of thousands of tonnes of Israeli bombs.

There is no easy way out of learning to be literate when it comes to fiction.

You cannot say "An author is never what they write".

You cannot say "An author is always what they write".

Authors who are completely normal people with healthy understandings of every dark topic in our work can write extremely fucked up shit about topics including bigotry, rape, you name it. If you think writing about those topics at all is "glorifying" it, then you will falsely believe those authors are horrible people.

But horrible people can actually be authors - and sometimes they hide their horribleness in ways you can't recognize. Sometimes they don't - sometimes they are just fully and openly bigoted.

But if you can't tell the difference between "A story that has fucked up shit in it because those things fit the mood, motifs, message, or genre" vs "A story with fucked up shit in it because the author thinks those things are morally good", you are going to fucking struggle in life and you will in fact be very susceptible to bigoted propaganda.

And no, I won't sit here and say it's always easy to tell the difference. But with practice, you can in fact tell the difference between a story where the author is writing about the main character being ravaged and raped in a sexy way because it's a safe way to explore that fantasy, VS, an author who clearly just thinks women should be raped and subjugated because that's their actual worldview.

That can involve examining the individual piece of media, other things that author has written, who the author is, etc.

hope is a skill

Look, I know we’re all tickled that the Gävle Goat has been pecked apart by birds, but as far as omens go, it’s a bit like flipping a coin and having it land on the edge

More golden willow leaves etched in chilly frost: Sylvan Lake Series

(c) riverwindphotography, September 2023

👏 Stop👏Romanticizing👏Persephone 👏And 👏 Hades 👏 Relationship 👏

All the cool tadpoles hang out in the writhing mass.

“B had nothing to do with it!” A growled, storming over to the general. “I met them LONG after I ran away.” “Sure,” the general scoffed. They started to turn, but A grabbed their sleeve in a white-knuckled grasp.

“You’ve chased me across worlds,” A hissed. “You know this. So why are you REALLY keeping them? Why are you keeping them away from me?”

“Oh, sweetheart. You’re just tired.” A heard the soft tap of a metal tray being put onto the nightstand, and a gentle hand propped their head up. “Here,” their mother whispered as glass pressed against A’s lips. “Drink this.”

They began to drink, but whatever liquid this was was thick, burning. It felt like sludge pushing through their mouth and invading their throat.

Choking, A pushed their mother away, violently retching as they fell to the floor beside the bed. They got out what little of the disgusting liquid was in their body, whirling around with wide eyes.

“What was that!?” they screamed as they scrambled away from their mother on the ground. “What are you trying to feed me!?”

“Oh, dear,” the mom tsked, tilting her head. She was delicately holding a flask with a black substance inside of it. As she walked closer, A struggled to crawl further away. “It’s only medicine.”

“Oh, what a sweet child,” cooed the god/goddess as they picked the crying child off of the floor. They cradled them in their arms, smiling softly. “How could anybody be so cruel to such an adorable little thing?”

The child began to stop sniffling as they looked up at the deity. There wasn’t any attention paid to the bodies of their attackers strewn about the room.

“Come now,” the deity said as they turned to leave. “You will be with me from now on.”

“What are you DOING!?” the mentor screamed as their estranged student flicked a match/torch into their doused house. “No! NO!”

“Oh, what’s that?” the student asked as they leaned against a rock formation, taking a swig from their bottle. “You don’t like when everything you care about is just taken away from you? Like a puff of smoke?”

“B!” The mentor looked at them incredulously before trying to reach into the house, but it was already too hot. The entire house was ablaze, flames threatening to lick at the mentor’s skin with every breath. They cried out, jumping back, putting their hands to their head. “What have you DONE!?”

The student snorted, rolling their eyes as they stood up and drunkenly wobbled over to the mentor. “All I’m doing, A,” they said with a tired smile, “is letting you live in the world that you said we lived in.”

A stared at B, then a the flames. As they slowly sank to their knees, watching the fire, B snorted. Waving a hand and taking another swig, they turned and began walking away. “Now you know what it’s like to have your entire life blown to smithereens!” they laughed humorlessly, barely heard above the collapsing beams of the house.

You have motivational prompts written on post it notes. They’re stuck around your bathroom mirror so you can read them every day. They really help.

One day, as you’re brushing your teeth, your eyes landed on a post it note. You slowly begin to stop as you read over what is definitely not your handwriting.

“At 7 PM, on the dot, reach out to the mirror. I’ll pull you in.

This is your only chance at escape.

They’re coming for you.”

Prompt #246

“What… What is this place? It looks like the wild overtook it eons ago,”

“It did,”

“…”

“This place is a reminder of a more hopeful time long before the council got their hands on the world,”

a lot of pieces of media will show characters catching fireflies with just their bare hands. in some cases they will just land on the persons fingers. to gently be placed inside of a jar..

for people who live in areas who don’t have fireflies, i want you to know that is not made up or exaggerated for those scenes. fireflies are really like that. they are slow and not cautious at all. while camping i would just walk up to one flying in the air and grab it. and it would sit on my hands like “oh ok.” they are my friends.

I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money. 

“A scam” people are fucking wild.  

skeletons