Erin Bee @erinbee@gorgon.city

This looks like a regular house until you get to the basement and I hope whoever buys it invites us all to the housewarming to try some special Amontillado.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/24811-Creek-Loop-San-Antonio-TX-78266/80048832_zpid/

I'm not sure which variation of hydrangea this is, but the colours are gorgeous and look like dyed silk. #florespondence

No, search engine, I don't want to know what the BEST sunscreen is, I asked about the "most photogenic sunscreen" so I don't look ok in the mirror and then like a waxy ghost in photos.

Honeybee on a coneflower, late in the season. #florespondence

Forgive me, but I thought the editor's headline for today was a Pagliacci joke at first.

Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says the sea seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels like he is drifting toward terrible doom. Wonders how he is to account for all these horrors when he gets to port. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great Captain is on the Demeter tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor…I am Captain."

Forgot to mention that it's a Pied Butterfly Bat, also sometimes known as the Superb Butterfly Bat or Badger Bat. Since badgers are nocturnal too, that's a fun association.

And it's a member of the family Vespertilionidae, which in itself is a lovely name for nocturnal animals.

This fuzzy little guy is a microbat from Ivory Coast, and there's a lot to like here: Wikipedia describes it as having markings like a bee (cute), but it looks a lot like an inverse Holstein cow (also cute).

(Photos by Jakob Fahr, CC BY-NC.)

There are a lot of reasons to be disappointed in how phone cameras don't and can't take good pictures of the moon, but it's hard to be annoyed with how the lens makes a waxing crescent look so delicate like it was painted there in one stroke or like it's a tiny reflection of light in chipped glass.

Update: Went to get popsicles to help make the heat more tolerable today, and the flowers were still there. The really beautiful thing about them is that the colour is so variable depending on the light. They have a deep purplish wine cast in this picture, but in the shade outdoors they looked violet on the bottom of the petals. #florespondence

I kind of regret not buying the black calla lilies at the grocery store this morning, but they were a bit pricy if it turned out they were only annuals and not perennials and my hands were too full to pull my phone out and look it up. (They're perennials, and I might go back if it cools down tonight.)

Inadvertently booked a haircut for one of the hottest days of the year, and I know that the stylist had to dry my hair to make sure it turned out all right. But I was so tempted just to tell them not to bother, it would have been a lot more comfortable to go home with wet hair.

I predicted a Titanic win based on how horny the movie is and how memelordy the voting can get. Boogie Nights is a good movie, but where was the fedi crew who are down for a centenarian telling the shaggy dog story of that time she got freaky on a cruise? #MovieBowl

Titanic would have swept the #MovieBowl if it had been released with the alternate ending.

"You had it THE ENTIRE TIME?"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8cnPNC3NsE

Walking around in the still hot sunset hour just after the streetlights came on, and the heat feels like the sky looks: thick and hazy peach behind dark mountains flattened by the light of the hidden sun.

I took a picture of this plant so I could run it through a plant identifier app, because my mind just would not access the words cockscomb/celosia/amaranth, and kept going with "Worm on a string plant! Worm on a string plant!" (Brb, buying white sugar button cake decorations that have a black dot on them, because googly eyes aren't biodegradable.) #florespondence

That feeling when it looks like your zany plan to reap the rewards of being loved without submitting to the mortifying ordeal of known might just work

Seward, the protagonist of a rejected Decemberists song:

- turned down by a beautiful but doomed girl
- throws himself into work at the lunatic asylum
- elements of a folk tale
- tempted to condone murder hoping that the glory of scientific discovery will heal his broken heart

"Celine Dion death metal t-shirt" isn't a niche where more than one version needs to exist, but I'm glad they're all there.

They/Them is such a top tier pun for a horror title that I will be heartbroken if the movie is bad.