Weekly Weird: June 23rd-29th (Self Care , Tornadoes , Merry-Go-Rounds, and Chocolate Milk)

July 23rd

Today I'm giving myself a Art Fight Check in, so I'm intentionally leaving this article blank until July 16th, where I'll just come in and say how artfight is going for me this year. I'm writing this first bit on May 30th, so I'll be back for this one.

Honestly, my heart is not in it the same way this year. I've been dealing with art block lately and I can't get past it enough to go off and do random attacks this year. I have been keeping up with returning attacks, but other than that my mind has been elsewhere I suppose. I will still probably try to get some interviews in, and I will return any attacks, but other than that I feel like the energy o had for artfight this year was gone before I got to July.

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July 24th

Today is International Self Care Day, so I'm just going to give a little check in for anyone reading. For starters, a reminder for anyone who forgets sometimes; get food and or water, use the restroom, take a stretch, let go of tension, look at an object on the other side of the room for 30 seconds. I've been there.

Second, if you can, I recommend you do something a little extra for yourself today. Make your favorite food, do your nails, listen to your favorite album loud, maybe find some way to enjoy the little things. It's easy to forget to be kind to yourself, but you only get one of yourself so you have to find a way to make your life, whatever happens, work for you. So take care of yourself, a life is too rare and valuable to just waste, especially if you are "completely sure" you are a particularly worse than anyone else type person. Sometimes it's too easy to feel worse than you are. So be kind to yourself and stay hydrated.

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July 25th

Today is Merry-Go-Round Day. Also known as a "carousel", a Merry-Go-Round is a classic amusement ride where you spin around in a circle on the back of a statue, usually one shaped like a horse. The one carousel I really remember as a kid was from this mall that was a super long drive away and had a good variety of animals. I was able to look it up online and the animal variety was just as vast as I remembered it, which is almost surprising with how you often remember things as a kid.

Alongside the traditional horses there were at least one Zebra, Giraffe, Lion, Tiger, Ostrich, Camel, Hippo, Rabbit, Frog, Deer, Panda, Elephant and even a Peacock chair for accessibility. Looking at the pictures really takes me back, and I suddenly remember the smell of inside a Disney store. It was kinda like what Blockbuster smelled like, but a different kind of plastic and also like if they recently put down new carpet. It really takes you back.

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July 26th

Today is World Tofu Day and I'd like to talk about an absurd video game easter egg. Now I don't like to talk about decisive topics on this website, but I'm going to have to talk about veganism for this one. So I'm just going to say, I don't care if people are vegan as long as they don't take it as a moral standing over people who consume animal products or really believe that all of their food consumption is instantly ethical in the absence of animal products.

So in the ‘00-’10s, some pro-vegan anti-domestic animal bigotry ward organization, not worth giving the attention they want, decided the best way to stop people from eating meat would be crappy flash games. They targeted a few games, but relevant for today, they targeted the popular indie game Super Meat Boy, a video game about a boy who is called Meat Boy because he doesn't have skin and this resembles a slab of meat.

But that's too much meat apparently, so they made a parody game called "Tofu Boy". The creators of Super Meat Boy then did the only reasonable thing and put tofu boy in the game as a joke character. Tofu boy is almost completely unplayable, and in universe this because he has major vitamin deficiencies from his strict vegan diet.

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July 27th

Today is the birthday of the cult classic animation franchise Winx Club. Winx Club could best be described as an Italian Magic Girl series, and I fondly remember the early seasons in the show's Cartoon Network era. I remember it mostly as a good space-fantasy-action series about school-age humanoid fairies fighting monsters and evils and witches. It was pretty well-done with stylish and very 00's character designs.

One thing that kinda bums me out is that the animation absolutely didn't maintain quality from the well animated early seasons. The digital animation just kept getting cheaper and cheaper, they swapped to CGI for some stuff and it doesn't look great. The most egregious thing however is them whitewashing the Space-Latina charter Flora, to the point of replacing her with a white character in the dreadful live action "everyone and everything is awful and drab now" reboot. The current state of the Winx Club franchise is abysmal, which is deeply disappointing with what it was and could have been.

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July 28th

Today is National Milk Chocolate Day. I don't drink soda or alcohol or anything with a large amount of citrus all for sensory reasons, so chocolate milk is my drink of choice.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: What else needs to be said? Chocolate milk is good. That’s it.]

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July 29th

Today I'm finishing the week with a grab bag article, and it's a big one from Ariel about tornadoes.

Say you’re in a situation like this: Your county just got a tornado watch. You’re looking out the windows constantly, maybe even sitting on your porch, searching the sky for danger. And then… oh my goodness, what is that? A dark cloud with a funnel-like shape, pointed like a spindly skeletal finger, reaches downward from the heavens. Is that a forming tornado? There’s no rotation… How is that possible? Luckily for you, that cloud is probably just a scud cloud.

I’m here to help you out with the question, Is that a scud cloud or a funnel cloud? It sounds silly in concept to mix up other things for a funnel cloud or tornado, but you wouldn’t believe how much it happens!

First of all, what actually is a scud cloud? A scud cloud, or pannus cloud, is a type of detached, low-hanging fractus cloud that is found beneath a parent storm cloud. Compared to the organized form of a tornado, scud clouds are more ragged and torn in appearance—and most importantly, they have no rotation. Sometimes you see a scud cloud that looks a little too much like a funnel for comfort, but that’s when you ask yourself, is it rotating? If you do actually see rotation, increasingly so, maybe you oughta get off your porch.

Tornadoes are typically smoother in appearance, due to the tight rotation of air forming a condensation funnel. Funnel clouds that spawn tornadoes also tend to touch the ground. Scud clouds do not make contact with the ground, not in the way a tornado does. To make absolutely sure of this, if you’re studying what you think is a funnel cloud, watch the ground underneath it. Sometimes a visible funnel doesn’t fully reach the ground as a tornado forms, but the invisible column of rotating air in the tornado still does, which will kick up dust and debris.

So, there you have it! I know what some of you must be thinking—“If I see anything that looks like a tornado, I am NOT sticking around to see if it is or isn’t!” And that’s completely fair. But you never know, this advice could come in handy and prevent alarm.