Fujichia

OK, the big news in the compound this week, is this:

I had a cactus day a few weeks ago, and the chain of causality here is that I'm trying not to look at YouTube for a little while, so during menial desk-bound tasks I've been watching movies a little bit at a time over several days, and I RE-watched Predator: Badlands. That's a sidebar in itself but the important part is that it got me hyped on the category "weird spikey little dude". So I got some cactus dirt from the dirt store and cast some attention on the weird guys shelf.

Without getting into any other this-is-good-because-of-this reasoning, I'll just say that plants are a trip. They change slowly over time, which is special for a shelf item, and they solve problems in a variety of novel ways, which is a characteristic I admire in pretty much anything. For instance, some cactuses will grow out a dozen brittle arms, with the understanding that most of them are going to snap off when a desert fox or cruel high wind comes through. Then the ones that remain, those are the good arms. And the ones that broke off will just plant themselves in the nearby earth as new individuals, and that's how the organism moves through a landscape in search of resources, by dropping clones that grow a short distance away. I certainly wouldn't do it like that, but I respect the hustle. and periodically I feel the need to Be The Wind to these guys, and fuck them up a little bit here and there. I don't know if they like it. But I like it.

This fuckin guy was doing OK until the cats knocked it over, maybe 3 years ago, and the top snapped off. I was upset, especially because this one was a gift from Sakiko's grandpa in like... 2012?? But it was fine. And then 4 blobs grew in the new wound, which I really didn't anticipate. Last week after the movie, to be honest, I didn't even do shit to it. Everyone nearby got new pots, or a new location on the shelf, but this guy looked fine so I left it alone. Well I don't know if it just got the vibe of change or what but when I looked a few days later it had started throwing out some kind of fuzzy protuberance. After about a week, the growth looked like this:

and then that night it was like this:

and then the next morning, well let's look at it again. I actually set my alarm for this:

I don't know what kind of animal pollinates these things, sticking its tongue down into this hole and drinking the nectar and getting pollen on it's face that it carries to the next plant. But it's right to do so, this thing smells amazing, and the cactus was thoughtful enough to jut the sweet part away from the prickly part, for our safety. Maybe it's bats??? I don't know and I certainly don't have any evidence. I've lived in 2 places where you can't really totally keep the bats out (haunted barn, industrial mill), but I'm currently very much in control of my proximity to bats (apartment) and I've opted out. But of course I appreciate the bats; I appreciate all of our pollinators. I bet I'd be a great pollinator-- I love to stick my face right in a flower, I get both food AND garnishes stuck to my face and clothing FREQUENTLY, I love nectar, and I tend to really flit about (everyone says this). Vote Jacob For Pollinator '26

The flower only lasted a day, which is fine-- I got a lot of pictures, and "only blooms for one day", that's so romantic. Here's one with my cat Hana:

I really don't know why this flower happened now, when everyone around it got a new pot, but it stayed the same. Maybe it's talking to the other plants? Or maybe it just caught that there was change in the air, and it wanted to sing like everyone else? Sometimes change will come to a system and the reactions are extraordinary, unforeseen, and seemingly unrelated, like how Superman came to earth as a baby and it was such a crazy thing to have happened that 20 years later his perfectly normal friend Jimmy Olson turns into an invisible werewolf and starts dating a mermaid (I'm paraphrasing). Maybe this flower would've popped regardless of what I did the week before. All I know is that in a time of change it blossomed.

Bellisimo!!!

Sorry to everyone I saw IRL this past week, who already saw these pictures!

links / misc

• If you're interested in getting into cactuses, my one piece of advice is DO get the ones with huge spikes. DON'T get the fuzzy ones with tiny hairs. The big spikes are clear in their intent, I respect that. The tiny hairs WILL get everywhere and then you gotta get a magnifying glass just to pull them out of your arm. Leave that shit alone!
• Predator: Badlands (2026) - A doofy young predator lands on a jungle Hell planet and discovers that every feature of that reality is a living Seussian nightmare. Why bury the lede-- I loved it. Lots of fun. Love to see a warrior stripped of their weapons and forced to improvise with weird shit-- that's probably my favorite Action Movie Thing. Great creature design, and every little dude gets its moment in the sun. I don't actually think they had Dr Seuss on the moodboard but there was a "What Was I Scared Of" moment kind of late in the movie that I absolutely loved. Big smiles. And actually now that I think of it there was kind of a Lorax guy too. And Weyland-Yutani is strongly Onceler-coded. ???? Maybe there was too much quipping from Elle Fanning's manic pixie dream android character, but that's only a small mark against, and who among us hasn't occasionally quipped too much, in a scary situation, with a stoic associate? I sure have. In conclusion this reviewer gives Predator: Weird Other Planet.... 🦂️🦂️🦂️🦂️🦂️🦂️ 6 Fucked Up Freaky Little Dudes
• I said last week that I'd be ripping a gig this Saturday and that still goes. It's still Saturday, it's still at Lost Bag, and it's still with Monochromatic Pool and Cla-Ras. I think it's going to be like an atmosphere night, tending towards abstract and echoey. I'm trying to figure out if there's something atmosphere I can do to join the party but so far all I got is a delay pedal. But I still have a couple days. Too late to have a gong shipped but to be honest I'm not ready to own a gong yet. Doors at 730, music at 8, $10-20. [flyer]
• Thank you to everyone who signed up for the Fujichia Feast Society! If you want to support my activities, plans start at $6 a month and include weekly emails, quarterly publications that you get in the mail, stickers, 10% off everything else I make, and when we get 100 total subscribers I'm going to make a new patch for everyone's flight jackets. Thank you thank you thank you to the crew!!! Sign up here: [link]
• I know that some of you guys were worried I was going to start talking about Jimmy Olson again but I cut myself off. There are a few primo Jimmy covers here, and a bit more on the subject, in this post from 2020 about the Fourth World: [Fourth World Under $3]

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