Our first thing is about a particular kind of mouse.

It’s called the grasshopper mouse, of the species Onychomys, and it looks like this.

Awwww. Isn’t it adorable? It’s so fuzzy and rodenty. It looks completely harmless. One would think that something so small and inoffensive would be at or near the very bottom of the food chain.

But you’d be wrong, because this mouse is a motherfucking ninja that can kill and eat things far, far scarier than itself and does so with game so tight it squeaks.

I mean, check this shit out. Trigger warning : if for some reason you love centipedes and would hate to see one lose a fight to something out of Redwall, don’t watch.

He made fucking BUG POWDER out of that huge scary centipede! And he did it with such speed, skill, and ferocity that I can’t help but just gape in awe.

That little fucker is so fast and nimble that he can jump backwards just enough to evade the centipede’s strike and then counterattack instantly with a series of bites.

This species even gives out a shrill battle cry right before attacking, which is technically meant to stun and confuse their pray but in my opinion, it’s also to warn Hell that another victim is coming.

These badass rodents are even immune to the venom of their prey, so in the unlikely event that centipede landed a bite, the mouse would be all “‘Tis but a scratch!” and proceed to kill it even harder.

Unsurprisingly, the grasshopper mouse is entirely carnivorous, and can use its deadly ninja magic to defeat and devour grasshoppers (duh), snakes, spiders, scorpions, worms, and even other mice.

And possibly Bruce Lee.

And it uses stealth to stalk and kill its prey just like any ninja would. It even defends its territory by growling like a mouse sized wolf.

And to think, I used to think shrews were the most badass rodents in the world.

Next up, we have a quite lovely video where friends and family of LGBTI people talk to their Year 7 selves and tell them what to expect.

I was a little confused by the Year 7 talk. Sounded like they were talking to a version of themselves that was a lot older than seven years old. But then I remembered that in the UK and Australia, they say “Year” where we would say “Grade”.

So these are Grade Seven kids, not seven year olds. That makes a lot more sense. Instead of seven, they would be around thirteen, and that’s definitely the year of transition into adolescence for the majority of kids so it’s a very special time.

I guess they call them “tweens” now.

I remember my first day of Grade Seven. It was also my first day of intermediate school (otherwise known as junior high)and all us kids were seated on the grass as the principal of our new school (which was right across the street from our old one…. we could have hit Parkside Elementary with a rock) tried to impress upon us that junior high was different than elementary school and that we would be expected to maintain a higher level of behaviour here.

However, his speech lacked specifics, so I soon lost interest.

If I could talk to my Grade Seven self, I would tell him that it really does get better. Intermediate school is better than elementary school (which had been Hell) and high school is even better than that.

You will even get some friends outside of school. They are not exactly top quality friends, but they can act as your key to wider socialization. Try to relax around people, and try not to be such a whiny wimp. Go ahead and get hurt. Stretch your boundaries. Get some life experience under your belt and stop worrying so much about what the smart thing to do is.

Just get out there and mingle!

Finally, we have today’s vid, which is a video version of an essay I wrote aaaaages ago.

It is a satirical work intended to fruitfully irritate and inflame people into thinking about our system of “democracy” and how it is really quite pathetic that we think we control our own society by picking which person to send to the Capital and get co-opted every four years.

As a means of control, it’s extremely weak. We don’t even get to tell the system what we want. We just get to pick the person who will play a tiny part in the decisions made by a vast body of other hacks who are also being corrupted by a lifestyle of prestige and privilege, and preening under their new social status as the rich and powerful do everything they can to make them feel like one of them, no longer one of the dust eating clods back home.

It’s a ridiculous vision of democracy on the face of it, and the only reason we don’t see it is that we are told that what we have is democracy, period. There was monarchy and then there was democracy and this is it. You have democracy. You live in a democracy.

The idea that there could be more democracy is blocked by the idea that you already have democracy, or so you are told.

But what you really have is democracy flavoured tyranny, and don’t you forget it. The moneyed elites permit the current form of democracy precisely because it poses no threat to them and provides them with docile workers who don’t fight for freedom and democracy because they are sure they already have it.

If the One Percent seriously thought there was a chance that democratic government threatened their position and power in any way, you would seem their attack dogs sink their teeth into everything that is part of democracy (without ever attacking it by name, of course) right away.

Kind of like what we have right now.

I think we should give them something to really be afraid of.

Direct democracy. The people are the parliament and there are no more politicians.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?