do birds that get trapped in the ceilings of grocery stores eat really well once the store closes?

“The col­lapse of so­ci­ety will be a good thing, be­cause the weak will die and strong peo­ple like me will sur­vive, pros­per, and emerge from the ash­es to as­sume our right­ful place at the top’ says man who ex­pe­ri­enced a com­plete break­down from which he nev­er re­cov­ered be­cause he could­n’t go to Home De­pot and Gold­en Cor­ral for a cou­ple weeks in 2020’
—Gin and Tacos, ear­li­er this week
 

You know

It’s crazy how to­tal­ly for­get­table Pete Buttigieg is un­til you’re re­mind­ed he ex­ists and then like sev­en sec­onds lat­er you com­plete­ly for­get about him all over again.
 

 

But man

I dun­no about this whole ex­is­tence thing. Don’t wor­ry, I promise I’m not hav­ing sui­ci­dal thoughts or thoughts of self harm. 

Like, I per­son­al­ly feel like I caught a pret­ty de­cent time in his­to­ry to be born and I hard­ly have the worst life out there and I’m still not ex­act­ly psy­ched to be here for the most part.

Be­sides, I’m too stub­born and I en­joy be­ing a prob­lem and com­ing back around on my bull­shit too much to leave.

Also, this is sure to rus­tle some jim­mies, but, fuck it:

You know, if you al­ready had a kid or kids up to this ex­act point in time? Like, lit­er­al­ly to­day? Right now, at the very mo­ment I’m writ­ing this out? Then hey, I get it. What­ev­er. What’s done is done.

I just don’t know how the fuck any­one can look around at every­thing go­ing on right now and still think, 

“You know what’s a good idea? Hav­ing a baby! Let’s snatch an­oth­er hu­man be­ing out of nonex­is­tence and thrust them into the mid­dle of this un­mit­i­gat­ed shit show!”

I can’t ex­act­ly re­late to the urge to have my own bi­o­log­i­cal chil­dren and that’s putting it mild­ly. I iden­ti­fy as a woman but nev­er has any part of my re­pro­duc­tive ca­pa­bil­i­ties come into play when I’ve been fig­ur­ing out my identity. 

So you know, fuck me I guess be­cause maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talk­ing about. 

And like I said, you al­ready had kids? No judgment. 

But if some­one re­al­ly wants to ex­pe­ri­ence what it’s like to raise a child and help them through life and show them love, I dun­no, from this point on­ward, maybe do some­thing for one of the mil­lions of kids out there who have it re­al­ly bad and al­ready didn’t choose to be here.
 

 

Yes­ter­day

some­one I work with told me they had to move their child to an­oth­er school. 

They sound­ed very up­set. I asked why and they ex­plained that some­one at the school called im­mi­gra­tion on them, be­cause of their last name. They told me their fa­ther has been a le­gal cit­i­zen as long as my cowork­er has been alive and my cowork­er was born here and so was their child. 

Their child was also ex­pe­ri­enc­ing racism at school.

Fuck al­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­ll the peo­ple who vot­ed for this. 

I hope they get screwed six ways from Sun­day by every­thing this ad­min­is­tra­tion does and I will have no sym­pa­thy for them what­so­ev­er.

Sit and spin, moth­er fuckers.
 

But

I ac­tu­al­ly had a pret­ty damn good week and I’m in an okay mood. 

Tho be­tween the news about the meet­ing with Ze­len­skyy and my cowork­er call­ing me and just lis­ten­ing and be­ing there for them and learn­ing a lot about their life, I’m just sort of float­ing around af­ter fin­ish­ing my gro­cery store er­rands feel­ing like (to quote Carl Brutananadilewski)

“It don’t mat­ter, none of this matters.”

(I’m prob­a­bly also a lit­tle shook up be­cause I ac­ci­den­tal­ly drove over a curb in the park­ing lot and banged the un­der­car­riage re­al­ly loud and hard and got su­per freaked out that I fucked up our car and thank­ful­ly I didn’t.)

But it’s most­ly just feel­ing really . . . 

I don’t even know, about this life and this reality.
 

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2025 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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