Cavy Core

@rnrhamster

I want to be friends with your guinea pig. It has come to my attention that to find fellow poets, I need to put more about that in my profile. But I do want to be friends with your guinea pig. Pronouns: any and all as long as used with respect

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Cavy Core@rnrhamster· 27d

Hearkening back to an earlier read. 🛖

Screenshot of a Substack conversation. At the top, Adam Walker posted 21 hours ago: "Your reading should make you more like Dorothea and less like Casaubon. It's partly what's wrong with the bro-culture on the literary side of Substack."

Below that, Curry Kennedy replied 21 hours ago: "All this cozy love of great books will devolve into consumerism unless it is paired with an ambition to speak well and serve the neighborhood. It is very tempting to dream of having read all the classics—and for the dream to end there. Reading is only as good as the doing and being it fosters. This is the teaching of rhetorical tradition."

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Jul 10

What will YOU do with your precious 24 hours because that other dude is dead now. Makes you think.

Patriotic terminator skeleton CEO in a black three-piece suit with a white pocket square and navy blue tie stands against a dark background, giving a crisp salute. Text reads: "Someone once told me something I'll never forget: 'You have the same 24 hours as everyone who has ever died.' Let that sink in."

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Jun 13

📓

Rain Light
W.S. Merwin

All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Jun 12

I will never apologize for reposting this annually. Photo credit unknown.

Meme with caption in white text on black: "Liberté, égalité, frito-lay!" Below, a photo of a great-tailed grackle mid-stride across a parking lot, one foot kicked forward, carrying a potato chip in its beak. Blue accessible-parking stripes and a yellow bollard in the background. The bird's high-stepping march reads like a triumphant revolutionary procession.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Jun 11

From that reddit. Me:

Two-panel meme of Mister Rogers in a green cardigan drawing on a paper easel. Top caption: "Making memes about wells." First panel, he gestures at the easel with the subtitle "I'm not very good at it." Second panel, a close-up of his hand finishing a simple line drawing of a well, with the subtitle "But it doesn't matter."

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· May 30

Ready to go! Testing out the feed again. The cover art is giving me Waiting for Godot vibes. 🐾

Edition of *The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle* by Haruki Murakami against a background showing a keyboard and desk. The cover is bright royal blue. Gold lettering spells out the title and author's name. A stylized illustration shows a red brick well in the center, a leafless tree to the right with a small black cat perched in its upper branches, and a pale rope or cord winding between them across the cover.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· May 25

A pile of paper scraps with puzzle-piece-cut edges in assorted sizes, layered on a red and black graphic poster with bold display typography. Scraps include a green-and-white illustration of Karl Marx rendered as the Starbucks siren, a photographic fragment of bare tree branches, solid navy and brick-red pieces, a soft pink-and-blue watercolor wash, pale blue-gray and red halftone fragments, a tiny ornamental curl motif, and partial bold serif lettering on red reading "Culture" among other fragments.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· May 2

I grabbed the Norton because I am extra. It was entirely unnecessary to do so, and yet here I am. I *think* this is the credit for the painting: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HM...

Cover of Persuasion by Jane Austen, Third Norton Critical Edition, edited by Rae Greiner. The cover features a dramatic painting of a tall ship with full sails navigating turbulent gray seas under a stormy sky. The title appears in large white serif type on an amber/gold banner across the lower third of the cover, with the author's name and editor credit on a black panel below.

HMS 'Bellerophon' (1824), 50 Miles ESE of Malta, 1 Feb 1852

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Apr 29

Fatty, the International Fuzz Pirate, decided she had had enough and exited this mortal plane yesterday. I may be biased, but she was the best pig. Six years! An emoji cannot quite capture the sadness I feel. 📓

A black and gold guinea pig named Crumpet sits on a dark desk mat, viewed from behind, gazing up at a large monitor displaying a grid of photo thumbnails of herself. A rainbow-backlit mechanical keyboard sits in the foreground, and the desk shelf behind it holds small figurines, a skull, and assorted knickknacks. A movie poster (Jaws) is partially visible on the wall to the upper left.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Apr 27

I love going to read an article and at the top before the article starts, there is this gem:

Screenshot of a mobile phone screen showing an AI assistant response. The AI states it has gathered and verified all needed sources, then lists five URLs it claims to have confirmed as real via search results: neurosciencenews.com, bigthink.com, psychologytoday.com, neuroleadership.com, and a second psychologytoday.com URL. The final line reads "All confirmed real from search results. Now I'll write the article."

Insults our intelligence. Could not even check what you cut and pasted.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Apr 4

"You know, for a security guard, he had an awful lot of information, don’t you think?"

Wayne and Garth sit across from each other at a red diner table with coffee mugs between them, in a scene from Wayne's World. Text above reads: "Aren't we lucky we were there to get all that information? It seemed extraneous at the time."

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 30

Lying awake at 2 AM telling myself I'll fall asleep in "about ten minutes" for the umpteenth time, while calculating that if I drift off right now I'll still get 5 hours and 45 minutes of sleep, which is totally fine, I can definitely still function on that. 🔒

Page from the spontaneous combustion chapter of Bleak House:
'I thought you had gone to Jericho at least, instead of coming here,' says Tony.
'Why, I said about ten.'
'You said about ten,' Tony repeats. 'Yes, so you did say about ten. But, according to my count, it's ten times ten – it's a hundred o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!'
'What has been the matter?'
'That's it!' says Tony. 'Nothing has been the matter. But, here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib, till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. There's a blessed-looking candle!' says Tony, pointing to the heavily-burning taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 26

A small golden hamster peers over the rim of a large black coffee mug, with the word "SOON" in bold white capital letters above it. The mug sits on a wooden table.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 25

We have never been fed and are always starving to death. Skin and bones, I say.

A photo of a guinea pig, possibly also lying, you can never be sure with these shifty little rodents. She is brown and white with wide, innocent eyes.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 24

The Dudgeon-o-Meter® 🔒

High dudgeon: Back the fuck away from your phone, keyboard, or any other communication tool, and stay away for at least 3 days to prevent shooting yourself in the foot/ass/anywhere else
Medium-high dudgeon: You’re still passionate, and that’s something you can work with, but you shouldn’t be unleashing it on anyone yet, so go ahead and write a draft email, text, or phone script, but wait 5 days before doing anything with it
Medium-low dudgeon: You’re thinking more clearly at this point, so go ahead and revise that script, but give it another 1-2 days to reflect before acting on it
Low dudgeon: This is the zone where you can be assertive in an effective way, so go ahead and send that text/email or make that call
No dudgeon: I actually think low dudgeon is probably more effective than none at all, because it’s nice to have a bit of oomph and passion.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 20

📓

A printed page showing a poem titled "Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Laméris
"I've been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say 'bless you' when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. 'Don't die,' we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, 'Here, have my seat,' 'Go ahead—you first,' 'I like your hat.'"

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 20

"The...Chancellor... threw down a bundle of papers from his desk to the gentlemen..., and somebody said ‘JARNDYCE AND JARNDYCE.’ Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great heaps, and piles, and bags and bags-full of papers." 🔒

Numerous stacks of white document storage boxes filling a luxury bathroom at Mar-a-Lago, with marble floors, a crystal chandelier, a gilded mirror, and an ornate vanity visible.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 19

She was first introduced in Chapter 15, Bell Yard. Charley Neckett has become the sole provider for her and her two siblings at the ripe age of 13 (or so).

From Bleak House: "We were looking at one another, and at these two children, when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in the face – pretty-faced too – wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child, playing at washing, and imitating a poor working woman with a quick observation of the truth.

She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood, and had made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very light, she was out of breath, and could not speak at first, as she stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.

'O, here's Charley!' said the boy.

The child he was nursing, stretched forth its arms, and cried out to be taken by Charley. The little girl took it," ...

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 16

Don't look now! 🐋

A New Yorker-style cartoon by Amy Kurzweil set at a cocktail party. A giant white whale leans through an open doorway, appearing to whisper to two guests near the entrance. The caption reads: "You'll never believe who's here." In the background, party guests mingle with wine glasses; one figure near the center wears a tall black top hat and 19th-century clothing, suggesting he is Captain Ahab.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 14

I have questions.

A Victorian engraving captioned "Street-Seller of Birds' Nests," sourced from victorianlondon.org. A barefoot figure stands against a brick wall, wearing a smock, a layered cape or collar, and a battered wide-brimmed hat. They carry a large wicker basket filled with birds' nests in one hand, and hold a walking stick in the other. The illustration is rendered in fine crosshatching typical of Victorian periodical engraving.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 14

"‘There!’ says Jo, pointing. ‘Over yinder. Among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver it for you, with my broom, if the gate was open." 🔒

An engraved illustration from *Bleak House* by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"), rendered in dense crosshatching in his characteristic style. A cloaked, hooded figure and a ragged boy stand at a spiked iron gate set within a crumbling stone arch. Jo, the crossing sweeper, points outward through the bars, directing the attention of the disguised lady's servant toward something beyond the gate. The surrounding ground is strewn with broken rubble and debris (gravestone rubble!). A shopfront with a sign is visible to the left, and the arched passage opens onto a dim street beyond. The scene depicts Jo leading the cloaked figure to a pauper's graveyard.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 14

I assumed that it was named for Tom Jarndyce but that is actually not settled in the text itself. 🔒

"This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye, to tell him so. Whether 'Tom' is the popular representative of the original plaintiff or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; or, whether Tom lived here when the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers came to join him; or, whether the traditional title is a comprehensive name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the pale of hope; perhaps nobody knows. Certainly, Jo don't know."

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 14

Truly appalling. He's the butt of court jokes. "It's the system."

"The costs at that time – before the thing was begun! – were three times the legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my father's, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else – and here I stand, this day! Now, Mr Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands and thousands involved where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine less hard to bear, or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was in it, and has been thus shamefully sucked away?'"

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 11

Caption: Mr. Guppy explains, for the third time, why Esther Summerson's rejection was actually, actually, a compliment to him. 🔒 No means no, sir.

A Victorian pen-and-ink illustration from Bleak House. Mr. Guppy stands at left with his arms folded and looking positively desolate among an audience smiling and having a good time.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 11

Chancery damages people structurally by making irresolution the only rational response to an interminable system. 🔒 What's going to happen to Richard?

A passage from Bleak House by Charles Dickens, with the opening sentences highlighted in teal. The highlighted text reads: "'How much of this indecision of character,' Mr Jarndyce said to me, 'is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don't pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is responsible for some of it, I can plainly see.'" The unhighlighted remainder continues: "It has engendered or confirmed in him a habit of putting off – and trusting to this, that, and the other chance, without knowing what chance – and dismissing everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of much older and steadier people may be even changed by the circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences, and escape them.'"

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 9

📓

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 7

I learned stuff about Steely Dan last night.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 7

(flashback to serving my time in law firms) 🔒

‘Of course, Esther,’ he said, ‘you don’t understand this Chancery business?’ And of course I shook my head. ‘I don’t know who does,’ he returned. ‘The Lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s about a Will, and the trusts under a Will – or it was, once. It’s about nothing but Costs, now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death,4 about Costs. That’s the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.’

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 7

Is Dickens suggesting that rejecting the "busy Bee" ethic actually ends up like Skimpole, a parasite with fancy words and justifications? (Ch. 8) 🔒

"He didn't at all see why the busy Bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the Bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it – nobody asked him." The full visible passage features Mr Skimpole at breakfast, discoursing on bees and their "overweening assumptions," arguing it would be insufferable if every worker went around demanding notice for their labor.

Cavy Core@rnrhamster· Mar 7

I only had my hard copy and was on the road yesterday evening so a day late with little snark from the narrator. 🔒