Tag: milwaukee

  • Delicious Things

    Hey, everyone. Lazarus here again. I have been in a sort of soupy atemporal sea of time and space in my brain. I busted one of my phones a few days ago, so I was running things exclusively off my laptop for a bit there, but I cannot wrap my brain around blogging on my damn laptop for some reason after integrating, hence the lack of posts. I don’t know why. For some reason, I just couldn’t post from there. The thought of typing a thousand or more words on there just seemed fucking impossible after getting so used to typing huge volumes on a phone. So I suppose laptop typing in large amounts is Banned for reasons unbeknownst to me.

    I know a lot about how my mind works, but I don’t know everything. I am slowly learning, however, that when I’m too tired to even think of approaching a task, I probably shouldn’t push through the fatigue and instead let it rest. So that’s what I did. Frankly, I’m glad I did, too, since I started chronic pain flaring properly from stress and how damn cold it’s been in Milwaukee of late. So I had to mentally play ER doctor and decide what was important to take care of right the fuck now, and what could wait until later. Well, it’s now later, and here I am, haha.

    The phone I’m using now has phone PTSD of some kind, I fucking swear. I dropped it in the tub back in late May/early June of this year, and even though it was only partially underwater for maybe ten seconds tops, it acts as though it was waterboarded in some top secret facility someplace and often outright refuses to charge, only semi reliably cooperates with a single fucking cord, and only fucking charges AT ALL when my relationship with my partner Zelda is going well. So there’s that. Temperamental little bastard. I normally like a challenge, but I do not enjoy challenges of the phone PTSD variety. But hey. At least it’s working… For now.

    Speaking of Zelda and challenges, their blog was down for the count for a while. So a few emails back and forth with the web hosting people later, their blog is back up and running and they are writing beside me. Sheik, an alter in their system is out and about currently, and this babygirl is pressed up against me to share body heat because our ancient furnace that heats the place bit the dust sometime last night.

    So she’s been in talks with the property manager that manages both the Zelda System’s place and Emerson’s to hopefully send a guy out to fix the damn thing as soon as possible. It was supposed to be fixed this past spring, but that never  happened. It’s beginning to sound a lot like people need to get their shit together in here. There’s a lot that needs fixing in both places.

    Relationship wise, things are.. Stabilizing more, I think. I made some breakthroughs on my side of the ongoing Zelda/Emerson/me polyam drama during the past few weeks while I’ve been sick and flaring and have had little to do but rest and think, so I’ve been doing a lot of resting and thinking. I realized during this period of One Big Long Fucking Think that I tend to not really feel many emotions of my own that I can describe until they’re so fucking big and obvious that I can’t help but put a name to them and they’re sort of exploding out of me in some way.

    It’s not that I repress them, they’re just always six feet to the left, so to speak, and remain so small and vague until they are a big enough hairy ass deal that they’re so obvious that I HAVE to do something about what’s causing them.

    And by then, externally, the thing that’s causing them has brought me halfway to a nervous breakdown from the sheer stress of it. And I have an even harder time attempting to explain WHY I am feeling a certain emotion because I can’t really trace an emotion back to its origin when it’s so damn small I don’t notice it’s there or it’s so vague I have no language for it.

    Emotions also hardly ever happen at random for me. Like I will almost never sit there, even if I’m not doing anything else, and start feeling an emotion randomly that there’s no explanation for. It’s gotten to the point with my inner work that if I’m alone for long enough, I can shape my emotional state with precision with playlists. And I have a playlist for damn near everything.

    What I do pick up on, and feel all the time, however, are other people’s emotions, often far stronger than my own, especially if I know them well and we are very close. So if Emerson, whose emotions are very strong, is upset, I will hear him out and want to take his side instinctively. Same thing with Zelda, etc.. So this has created an interpersonal three body problem of sorts, to use a metaphor from astrophysics, with myself as the third body in the emotional middle getting tugged back and forth.

    So I’ve had to consciously start learning how to pull back and sink back into my own body and energy and do shit that recharges me when I notice myself getting emotionally burnt out or stressed, which happens a lot, and actually feel through the situation myself to get a read on how I actually feel about the situation at hand and figure out a course of action that will cause me the least amount of stress or headache. Since I’ve started doing that, shit has gotten way better in all of my relationships. I’ve gotten better at judging when I have the mental or emotional capacity to handle a situation in the moment or if it needs to wait.

    All of that has lead to me taking a sort of soft break from posting on social media, as well, and I only really go on Facebook and Instagram to check messages and occasionally grab memes and shit. I’ve rarely been posting on either due to information overload, which was contributing heavily to my stress.

    So… Magic. Huzzah.

    I think that’s enough for tonight, y’all. My brain is starting to get tired. Stay tuned for more magic, beloved entities of various voids. I’ll be around when I can summon the energy again, haha. This flare is kinda kicking my ass.

    -Lazarus

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  • Intuition + Queer Shit: My Host As Seer

    Hi! My name is Firrian. I appear to be the current acting captain of the Ashley system as the current most able fronter. I also appear to be stuck in front because the body is very tired. So I am not going to write about “Guernica” for the time being. We’re risking burnout if we continue with that one. Instead, I am going to talk about a little something-something Eight foresaw a few years back at the tail end of 2021 in honor of Pride Month. You’ve probably learned a fair bit about that old bastard by this point. He’s an Enneagram 8, vastly intelligent, as you may have gathered, and has Seen Some Shit in his time. But what you may not have known is that his intuition is off the charts. He’s also very, very queer.

    This near-inhuman intuition is unique because Eight quite literally sees things. So while I mean he’s Seen Some Shit as in he’s been deeply traumatized, I also mean that he’s Seen Some Shit as in he has prophetic visions, as well. I’m not exactly sure when the visions started, as the system has had prophetic dreams since we were very young. We actually saw Milwaukee in our dreams despite never seeing a photo of the skyline or visiting here from the time we were perhaps three years old. Castor had a dream set outside a restaurant here twenty years before we’d ever set foot in this town. We’d actually have a recurring dream set here for the next two decades.

    A Formidable Intuition

    Eight fully split off from the rest of the system when we were 18 after our father died and it became clear that he could intuitively sense things that wouldn’t come to pass for some time. By 2021, he was in full, uncontested control of the system and in some ways, his visions were in control of him.

    He half jokes that he didn’t have a conscious thought for that entire year – he didn’t have to. He simply knew what to do when. Besides, he was so tired that conscious thought likely wouldn’t have done him much good, anyway. He caught what we think was COVID at the end of that year and the fatigue got much, much worse. From the tail end of November until the middle of January, he slept. Too weak to get out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time, he could do little else but traverse the vast expanses of his delirium and dream.

    Longing (And A Little Rizz)

    He was beset with an odd feeling that he still can’t truly ascertain the origin of, but we have our theories now. We think it may have predicted Emerson’s arrival, as the feeling was soul-deep longing. He didn’t know who he was longing for, he simply felt like whoever he was longing for was longing for him, as well. This feeling frightened him. We are a system of deep agoraphobes, and his agoraphobia is perhaps the deepest.

    He’s so terrified of people because his charisma is off the charts. Multiple people have borne witness to him “asking nicely” as he puts it, for things he should have no ability to even be able to obtain. He is a self-taught, powerful, and very well-practiced sorcerer, hence the name of this blog. However, that does not mean he enjoys it. He’s always hated his ability to charm or intimidate the fuck out of people at will. In fact, he hates it so goddamn much that he and Allēna co-wrote our classic song “A Weapon” about that very thing. Our ex-partner and now dear friend Beany even christened him The Eldritch Fuck for his gifts. While he hates said gifts, he adores her, so he cherishes the nickname.

    Eight's many, ah, talents. Intuition is one of them. So is almost dying.
    Eight’s many, ah, talents. Intuition is one of them. So is almost dying.

    Eldritch Fuckery

    This Eldritch Fuck’s eldritch fuckery does not stop there. I wish I were kidding, but this absolute madman has also cheated death numerous times. We count the COVID incident as one such occurrence, but another time was when he simply walked off heat stroke ten days in a row in Philadelphia with no medical care. Emerson also bore witness to him surviving two major seizures within five minutes of each other in April, which he predicted in advance and arrived at the ER just in time for.

    This phenomenon is called status epilepticus and he very much should have died. But no. He didn’t even black out. His brain was a little bit like scrambled eggs for a while, though. It got better, fortunately or unfortunately for the world, and we got some good meds to prevent further dying while we wait to see neurology in August. He has more than earned his terrifying reputation as an unkillable revenant..

    Why are you telling me this, you might be asking?

    Because of a queer as hell vision he had, of course! I’m gonna share it with you below.

    A Very Queer Vision Straight From Eight’s Intuition Itself

    “I am nothing special,” I repeated. The tall man stared at me blankly.

    “You? Nothing special? You, who has beaten Death so many times he now fears you, you who went on to create spectacular things with your mind, you with the iron will to defy every obstacle placed in your path when you should have been broken beyond repair and recognition, now stand before me and have the utter audacity to tell me you are nothing special? I knew you were daring, but to dare to try and sell me this utter lie…. I want to take whoever did this to you and wrench them apart atom by atom.”

    “I am not lying to you,” I snarled. “I do not lie.” The man grabbed my wrist and spun me around to face him.

    “You should be dead. If you weren’t special, you’d be dead. You would not have lived to the age of two if you were any type of normal.” He spat the word normal out in disgust.

    “Would that have been so bad?”

    He dropped my wrist as if it had burned him. “Yes, you absolute fool,” he hissed. “Do you even know who you are?”

    “I am me.”

    The man’s eyes blazed for a moment and I felt his anger flare up so hot it almost hurt. “You disappoint me,” he spat. “You have no idea how your reputation precedes you, or how powerful you are. Your ability to soothe is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard tell of your strength, how you keep going despite being close to collapse. You have been through pain that would break a mundane being, and you come out of every experience that should have destroyed you more powerful and more beautiful each time. I would kill you myself for lying to me like this if I didn’t have full confidence you would survive the encounter and end me for trying.”

    Eight’s very strange queer vision he got when he was bedridden with COVID

    This vision is the only reason why we don’t think that longing predicted Emerson’s arrival. I have no idea who he saw, but apparently the bitch is tall and very queer himself. I don’t like this. I’m happy with Emerson and our other partners, so I hope the vision does not come to pass. However, we’ve had people seek Eight out for his power and steal him away from his polycule before, so we know from experience that this is plausible. His ex best friend used to joke that he was the painting in a bad action movie for that very reason.

    Ah, well. It’s getting late. I hope you enjoyed this queer glimpse into Eight’s intuition for Pride Month. I totally didn’t spend several days trying to hunt this vision down for y’all.. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about… Stay tuned for more magic, hopefully with less of a delay between posts next time!

    -Firrian, Acting Captain

  • Milwaukee’s Best Headshop (In This Disabled Guy’s Opinion)

    Hey, everyone! This is your favorite paper pusher once more, Renn. We promised the people variety when we started this blog, so variety they shall have. We’ve written a lot about our Tragic Backstory and our disabilities. While this post should piggyback off of that, I’m gonna keep the whinging to a minimum today. Instead, I’m gonna fucking GUSH. We deal with a variety of weird chronic illnesses that we often have to treat ourselves because specialists take fucking FOREVER to see their patients. As a result, we have a rather tragic nicotine problem and are pro-level stoners. This makes finding a top-quality local headshop a necessity. Our favorite, and in my opinion, Milwaukee’s best headshop, is Closet Classics on North Avenue.

    No Conventional Good Stuff? No Problem!

    As you probably know if you’ve lived here awhile, conventional recreational marijuana isn’t legal here, and many legislators and lobbyists have no idea what the holdup is. It’s common practice to blame the lobbyists. In the meantime, many headshops supply the people with variations of the Devil’s Lettuce that are legal under the 2018 Farm Bill as a loophole in states where conventional recreational marijuana is not yet legal, like THCA, THCP, HHC, and others – and this is where Closet excels.

    And before you ask: no, I was not paid to review this place. Yes, I am indeed high on an edible from this place. I ate one before I started writing, hahaha.

    Emerson and Allēna found Closet pretty late one night when she was running low on her Good Shit. Both Lēna and Emerson were thoroughly impressed with Closet’s selection, fair prices, and business practices. She bought a hybrid vape, if memory serves, and when it turned out to be defective, one of the owners gave her an additional vape for no extra charge. That alone earned Closet a new regular customer. PLUS THEY HAD DOGS THERE THAT DAY!

    Milwaukee’s Best Headshop, the Prettiest Glass Pieces

    We love ogling at their glass pieces when we come in there for our medicine runs, as we call them. Many are handmade, and while many of them are far out of our price range at the moment, they DO offer layaway, which is fucking cool. We could stare at some of these bongs and pipes for hours. They make our very autistic crow brain happy. I talked with the owners about some of them and they said that many are handmade locally. So when you buy one of these very cool shiny objects, you are supporting local artisans as well as these chill as fuck owners.

    You know that old question “if someone gave you fifteen grand, but you had to spend it in fifteen minutes, where would you blow it all at”? Truthfully, I’d probably go there and buy all their pipes and a hefty bit of their exotic flower. It’s delicious. Truly Milwaukee’s best headshop.

    Speaking of flower…

    The Most Delicious THCA In This Fucking Town

    We have smoked a lot of weed in our time. Some of it was gross. Some of it was mid-tier. And some was very nice. Rarely, however, has a strain been so delicious that we want to smoke our entire stash in one sitting, and all but one of those amazingly delicious strains have come from Closet Classics. The one other amazing strain like that came from a shop in Delaware, so that one doesn’t really count here.

    These strains are STRONG, too! We’ve had shit from here that isn’t even super exotic or expensive that knocked us on our ass so hard we slept for hours. It’s great for our pain and insomnia. They also have THCA edibles that we get for our pain because they’re easier to dose for us.

    I am glad I have even a modicum of financial sense because if I didn’t, I would be thousands of dollars in debt due to the deliciousness found in this sacred establishment. I need to ask if they offer the entire store on layaway…

    What About Accessibility?

    At this point in the post, you’re probably wondering if the damn place is even accessible if you are also disabled like us. And I am here to tell you that it depends. We live pretty close by, so it’s pretty easy to get there on foot for us.

    Sadly it isn’t wheelchair accessible, though. On days where we would need our chair, we usually ask Emerson to go grab our order for us. If you use a wheelchair and do not have someone like Emerson in your life, I’d recommend calling the shop to see if you can order something in advance and whoever is working that day meet you outside the shop to give it to you. While we have not tried that exact thing yet, the owners have accommodated other needs of ours and are very kind. It would never hurt to ask with these guys. They don’t bite.

    What About Nicotine? I’m Not a Stoner. Is It Still Milwaukee’s Best Headshop?

    If you aren’t a stoner, the only thing Closet doesn’t have is loose-leaf tobacco. They have nicotine vapes and pipes, but sadly no loose-leaf tobacco. However, we love the vapes they have and we get all of our nicotine there, too. Their prices are great on the nicotine side of things, as well. We ended up getting a 10,000 puff nicotine disposable vape today for $16 and change – and it makes us laugh because it’s Bruce Lee themed as well as officially licensed by his estate. It’s so random to me that the legal ghost of Bruce Lee broke into the nicotine business, but it never fails to make me cackle.

    Conclusion

    If I could buy everything here, I would. If I could attain the sheer level of cool that the owners seem to have reached, I would. If you’re disabled and you are looking for pain relief at fair prices from a small business with people who’ll treat you right, go here. If you smoke the Good Shit and like beautiful glass pieces and great vibes, go here. If you smoke nicotine and you want tasty (and arguably occasionally fucking hilarious) vapes, go here. Take this old crazy cripple’s word for it and get your ass to Closet!

    -Renn, Master of Paperwork and Ceremonies

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