Random Thought of the Day

[Heelsbythebridge]

I don't want to work anymore. I just want to sit alone and be depressed without the pressures to maintain basic survival.

[Heelsbythebridge]

I love it here, I'd love to be an Ottawan. Torontonian. Calgarian. Edmontonian. Reginian. Vancouverite. Montrealer. Winnipegger. Etc.

I'd love to be wanted by any of you. I love you all so much.

[Heelsbythebridge]

5mg melatonin + 750ml 14% wine + Extra strength Advil

[Doseone]

Do men dislike being called a "good boy"? I find myself thinking or saying this sometimes. I used to say it to my ex and he hated it, always squawked that he wasn't a dog.

That would depend on the context. lol.

Random though: I hate the cold.

[Ironman]

Well, I have decided to have my laptop keyboard replaced. I have had my laptop for three years.

In the first year, my F1 button popped off LOL. I could still use it.
Then last year - my left Alt key stopped working altogether. I still had the right one, but it's awkward.

Now - I am having trouble with D, E, and 3 not coming up very easily - it's like a Sesame Street advertisement.

Tonight, I struggled a bit to get the DE3 to come up - but it has been behaving a wee bit this evening. I know I am doing the right thing.

My passwords have these characters in them, too - crazy.

The keyboard will be in next week.

[Nyctophilia]

This is an interesting video. Doesn't really reflect my personal experiences since I was never heavily involved in the goth scene irl due to not knowing anyone (I mean I hung out with this one guy from 16-18 ish who sort of dressed alternatively. He was one of the two gay guys in my year when we were in secondary school but during most of the time I was in sixth form. I dunno if he listened to gothic rock and doubt he considered himself part of a subculture. he read tarot cards lol.) though the people he talks about who are geeky and into mage the gathering etc describe myself and many people (mostly guys) I hung out with as a teen and in my early 20s lol. I actually played both Yugioh and Magic The Gathering at different points. I do relate to the feeling that you should be sexually experienced though despite being several years younger than Dorian that was a still a thing when I went to uni. I lied about having previous experience with kissing and relationships when I started uni and the weird thing is I knew at least a couple of guys who were older than me by a couple of years who admitted to being virgins and having little to no experience. My first ex was and he was 2ish years older I think. And I was still lying. That's why I find it so weird how on average women downplay their numbers that wasn't my life lol.

Putting aside the goth subculture thing though I feel like this conversation has become widespread culturally and there seem to be three things going on simultaneously.

1. Actual abuse that people felt was abusive at the time because it was abuse which is of course terrible.

2. People who consented to doing stuff they were deeply uncomfortable with at the time because they lacked assertiveness or were afraid to say no or cause a scene - this is also a serious problem especially with young women but I don't think it can be addressed by infantilising adults because ultimately you'll resort to restricting women's personal freedom that way by creating a more conservative culture which encourages people to undermine women's preferences. It is often women but obviously some young guys might have issues in this area too especially if they're socially anxious. I've had this issue too when I was young - not to the point of having sex I didn't want to have but moments where I should have reacted more quickly or more forcefully.

3. People who were completely fine with their past and are now being told by people younger than them that their experiences/life history was abusive and are trying to retcon how they felt about their own experiences to fit an ideological narrative.

This last one bothers me greatly. As an afab non-binary person most of my feelings/views etc are framed this way by people - usually women actually - who are constantly trying to gaslight me about my own feelings and so I'm immediately sceptical of this. There's also the historical precedent of saying that homosexuality etc is caused by trauma and abuse. Likewise with unconventional sexual preferences.

I think Aella spoke about this recently on twitter with some people she'd lived in a house with who she spoke with about her sex work etc. They were all sexworkers but later some who were completely fine at the time tried to reframe their experiences as abuse and they shared a lot and were close.

There's a desire to say 'oh well with more info people can change how they feel about the past.' OK but I'm coming at this from a position of being constantly gaslit by society - and the uploader of this video is too actually they've said in other videos that they're genderqueer and a trans guy and that they dislike confrontation which I think is all very relevant here. And I think you should be sceptical of the culture pushing you - and it really is right now - and shaming you for not finding your experiences abusive. Or not viewing your personal experiences in the way the mainstream tells you to.

And this age gap rhetoric doesn't just involve people who are young adults or barely legal it also involves age gaps between people who are in their 20s and 40s like actual adults. Also the tangentially related 'height gap discourse.' All these things are equated to pedophilia which is damaging for adults even up to their 30s who look youthful. We have to draw the line for adulthood somewhere and we should not be infantilising adults. And if you don't think doing that will cause a serious psychological complex in itself + stunt people I'd like to introduce myself to you. I have a huge complex about appearing young and my height which started probably around puberty. There were experiences I didn't have access to until a later age than the norm as a result of how I came across to people (this is basically the opposite of what Dorian describes in the video about his own life where he often looked older than his age I think.)

Basically this:

Present day puritanical attitudes are not fun. The double standards of my generation sucked, the homophobia and transphobia likewise, but infantilizing adolescents a year or two short of age of majority is so much worse. Glad I am not a minor in the 2020s.

Also the anecdote with the guy in the club who shuffled over and gave him his number on paper and then ran off is funny because I was reading a tweet where someone posted that some non-binary person did that. Evidently a lot of people have had this thought. It still looks weird right (clearly because I've now seen two people comment on this,) but it's less weird than if it's not somewhere with loud music you can sort of say 'well you can't talk over this.' And maybe you came with people or something. I'm on a level of awkwardness/anxiety even below that. I'll confess attraction to people on the internet where it can't go anywhere. I did almost meet up with one guy though but then never happened and eventually we stopped talking. We'd agreed to meet up when our lives were less messy. I would have brought the idea back up again but my life was too much of a mess/too embarrassing and it still is. Eventually I lost interest too.

Most recently a mutual on twitter who is the only person who responds to my tweets on that account kept responded when I posted feminised Loki twice then finally said 'I like it when you post genderbent Loki because it gives me gender euphoria because I kind of look like her' (tbf Loki is genderfluid so I don't think they can really be genderbent lol but it's not really addressed in the MCU. China might have an aneurysm too lol.) and I said 'she [Loki] does look cute.' Lol mm. This is only slightly better/worse I guess than the cishet guy who responded to her anonymously saying 'I don't think I'm gay but you're cute and I want to [BEEP] you.' she asked him about his gender so he was like 'Yeah I'm a guy. Guess I'm gay.' Then he said he'd argue with her in DM's about it but didn't apparently. I feel bad for most trans women actually because they will get all the most awkward/terrible people I've been noticing this with chasers. If they're not awkward they'll be very misogynistic/manosphere kind of personality. One prolific guy who writes about trans issues a lot moved to Asia sort of like the 'Western women are terrible I'll move to Asia' guy + being into trans women specifically.

I can't flirt either. One of many reasons I think I might have undiagnosed autism. Kind of a robot. Actually I imagine the robots that are coming will be far more eloquent and socially capable than me in general.

edit: Also this mentality is why shy/awkward guys and [BEEP] women often don't bother anymore lol:

I don't think men seeming shy is a sign of not being predatory. In fact I think that one could frame some stories you told in another light. Pretending to be shy is an effective way to make the other think you are no danger. Might be native to assume that someone who effectively and believably portrays shyness or awkwardness is not predatory or could not be. Not saying we should live our life in edge assuming every shy guy is a secret sleaze bag or worse, but I am saying that people will often say of some serial killer that he seemed so regular, or even shy and awkward �������� it happens. In Germany in that time we also had goths and punks and alternatives tho and I Def know some genuinely shy and awkward guys whoove grown up to be just those IT gentle genuine good guys. But I still think one can frame awkward interactions like the guy running away after giving u his number as dear of rejection that a predator also has. In fact they might know about themselves that they act so bad when rejected, that is it actually better for them not to be there for the rejection. Then a person inviting you over under false pretenses to help with something (even if this wasn't the case here) can definitely be seen as a predatory maneuver.... Just some food for thought. Not implying that your experiences were that, just that it isn't far fetched to me that predatory people can act in ways to make the other feel at ease and like it's their idea and they are in control, just like you see it when you look back, and I feel the same about myself. Anyway....

You have to have a very high sex drive/desire for a relationship to push past all of that I think.

The key take away I got from the comments on that video was that most people who were millennials or younger weren't happy regardless of experiences because they felt social pressure to be a certain way (and the social pressure varies depending on culture.) Also insane to me to see how little a bunch of parents parented (which sort of goes against the stereotype for millennials.) Wasn't my experience. I mean my parents dropped the ball in all kind of ways but they wouldn't have let me go to clubs, and would have noticed if I was doing drugs etc. Never felt like I could get away with that kind of shit. (Also never would have gotten into a club lol. Still id'd well into adulthood so there's that. I remember trying to buy Ghost in the Shell that was the first time I was id'd. I was 16 and it was a 15 rated film. Didn't think to bring ID with me. My friend went back in to buy it for me but they caught on and chucked her out.)

[Heelsbythebridge]

This guy wanted to hang out, I hesitantly said yes, and now I wish he would change his mind and cancel but he seems gung-ho about hanging out. Life in our 30s... pattern of half-hearted intentions to be social and wanting to back out once we need to go through with it.

[Nyctophilia]

I'm putting this in another post cause just had more and more thoughts about stuff.

This is sort of unrelated to this particular video but more like the way most trans masc people who are older and not early-onset and straight (exclusively attracted to women,) talk. Like the desire to not be confrontational, risk aversion, repression, strange fantasy ideation:

Digitally [BEEP] people are finding enough online to survive but not to desire life (or, life offline). In my experience, the result is, mainly, a politics of resentment towards other [BEEP] people, who are either leading richer lives than you, or enabling your suffering.

I think a lot of people nominally supportive of transness don't really get that until we create a world that actively desires for more trans people and transitions to exist our youth will continue to repress, grow depressed, retreat to protective silence, ideate, etc

And well not just older I guess. I come across young afab non-binary people like this to some extent. They might in some cases be more aggressive about things like pronouns - but then often they're not irl and that's just the stereotype bigots have, but either way there's many other things going on. This one non-binary person who is the partner of this Butch lesbian YouTuber comes to mind. They have issues with men that came up in one video their butch partner was like 'they could rant for hours about men.' I was looking through their twitter and their only aspirational figure who isn't just a straight up eldritch creature or something is Loki. I dunno often it's a lack of male rolemodels too and they're forced by progressive culture to downplay maleness. And this particular aspect is probably actually worse for younger trans masc people working through that.

I do get the part where you end up relating more to male-adj demons and aliens or mythical beings than real men and women. Often times in stories they're written as being outsiders. So it sort of makes sense when you're non-binary (plus many Gods both in say old Pagan pantheons and even modern fiction like Slaanesh are obviously non-binary.) Many trans masc writers will write about vampires and identify with them. I think Anne Rice was the first person to start writing about vampires from the pov of identifying with them and after that that completely changed the genre before that they were written about like evil monsters with no grey area. And I'm not going to put words in Anne Rice's mouth or whatever but:



There's a lot of erotic stories too where the theme is like some genderfluid alien or not even genderfluid sometimes they're more male coded who will find Human men and corrupt/feminise them and sometimes that's how they reproduce as a species and it's like 'well on a sexuality/metaphorical level that makes a lot of sense to me. Not biologically of course but isn't that what my brain has always been pushing towards as a sexuality?' If there's a Human male character in a similar plot well there's too much envy and you can't self insert. (I suppose I didn't have that issue when writing as a teenager when I had some self insert male Human characters.) But your image is associated with demons and aliens so that imagery has been pushed on you your whole life so why wouldn't you identify with that to some degree?

This is why I have a lot of sympathy for 'otherkin' I don't view this as literal at all but it's easy to see why some groups would identify with a lack of Humanity. And then often the same people who punish people for any amount of weirdness or deviation in the first place with bullying/abuse/gaslighting then attack them for attention seeking or being weird. That's great.

Yes even you Jeffree you gigantic sell out/twat lol. The first clip in this video:



^ yes this first clip which I guess must be well over a decade old now (myspace era,) makes what he said in that interview about people being bored in their homes during the pandemic most likely count as projection lol. Also he just constantly refers to himself as a woman whenever it suits him/he can [BEEP] straight guys lol. Been doing that for a long time. I know he wants them to view him as a guy as with a lot of people he likes 'turning straight guys' he wrote a song about that. I get it I've 'made use of' that fantasy since I was a teen lol. It's the ongoing hypocrisy for me though. Like the whole thing with James Charles who was his friend when he's always done the exact same shit. Speaking of that this chaser knows too much lol (and yet still not enough):

They want to [BEEP] straight guys but have both of them pretend to be gay men. Transmen rarely get phalloplasty

Boy on boy Manga porn that's targeted at girls called yaoi also contributes to the rise in transmen, a lot of girls who transition fantasize about being a submissive gay man and are then frustrated when only straight boys want them

you are never beating the chaser allegations at this rate

I talk about my FtM ex constantly

I think this dynamic is really ugly in reality (back when I dated guys I wasn't in this headspace so that's not what was going on and I was experimenting in general, now I am I wouldn't date a straight guy,) either one person is OK being seen as a girl by a guy or there's just going to be a weird toxic power struggle. Also if you're trans guys like this are specifically into the idea of their partner being submissive and bottoming. And maybe even converting you in the same way they do with any [BEEP] female person that's how they frame things. No fun if you're a top. (Oh there's guys who want afab people to top too/fantasise about you with a dick I spoke about a guy before but this particular group of straight guys.) I think it's really naive to pursue this unless you're OK being in a relationship as a woman with a straight guy. And maybe on some level this is why Jeffree is kind of aggressive. Cause he came across that way compared to James Charles who I think was just sort of into some straight guys or one straight guy (I don't remember the details but he seems like a much less aggressive person in general.) But Jeffree saw it as a competition almost and definitely a way to dominate and gain status. Part of that is just because a lot of people view straight guys as a kind of prize though. Many such cases.



To quote from the video: "and it sucks because going back to dfab folks I've seen a lot of people look through someone's gender even people who are trans men who are on t and things like that who in my view look very masculine. I've watched specifically het men look through their gender and try to find the woman inside. Because that's how much they essentialise them. That's how at least the way I often feel people are looking at me and I have in a couple of situations been confused for dfab person who is non-binary when I say that I'm transgender."

In a kind of mirror of Jeffree (or maybe not? Like I say he has a lot of anger coming from somewhere)I don't think I'm as bothered by women (or some non-binary people,) perceiving me as a woman in a relationship context. So that's interesting. But I don't have the experience to really say if that translates outside my head. Maybe it's because I think there are more women who get gradients instead of viewing everything as binary. I don't know. Edit: I should specify here [BEEP] women and ones that aren't transphobes lol. Because as I said in my previous post there are plenty of women who will never get me either and be antagonistically trying to convert me but they're mostly doing it culturally/tribally + platonically.

I mean he's very obviously trying to be 'one of the bros' now, and he has a straight boyfriend right now. Granted it's not the first time he's had a straight boyfriend but... Yeah.



Several clips here:



Ty says he grew up in the middle of nowhere and has still met a non-binary person irl. I've never met a non-binary person lol. I don't think it's easy here at all. But I live in the UK and have never been in 'community' spaces. Most people here are closeted to some degree or stealth. And I know this because according to recent census data my town is one of the areas in the UK with the most trans men. Everyone I know in this town and elsewhere my age including myself has met trans women or people who later came out as trans women after they knew them, no trans men, no non-binary people. Except me lol and most don't know I am. If we compare how many degrees of separation there is between me and Elon Musk online (I think it's 4, could be 3. This is probably actually the shortest route: Someone who asked me out a couple of times - sad story too tbh they were like a repressed/self hating trans woman > [probably should remove intermediate contact since I went into more detail] > Grimes/maybe Elon) that is less than the degrees of separation between me and another non-binary person or trans guy irl lol. I think someone my brother used to know who is a trans woman moved to Brighton maybe she knows a trans guy or non-binary person now but if not yeah I'd say so. They've never been anywhere. I've met everyone else who is LGBT+. Also this reflects the vast chasm between irl and online again. Like who hasn't talked to or known all kinds of people online at some point?

I've seen many of these clips dismissed especially the alien one as not arguing that gender identity is fluid but there's an actual video I've seen from his channel where he mentioned gender identity specifically as being non-binary. No fucking about or ambiguity he lists several things including presentation etc and then mentions identity specifically. I can't find it right now and I'm not trawling through his videos but clips of it do exist and it's relatively recent from the past few years. (edit: oh never mind I see that clip is in the above video as well lol I forgot.) So he either changed his mind or he's grifting (and people will convince themselves of whatever they need to to grift and feel safe or high status as well so not mutually exclusive.)

Jeffree I get it you want to embrace masculinity at this stage of your life. You like yaks I like highland cows. We're the same (we're really not lol.) You don't have to throw non-binary people under the bus and be a dickhead to do it. Just actually try working on the farm you bought. Turn off the camera. This Dave Rubin bit isn't masculine he's a bit cringe and he can't defend his family (children born to surrogates,) from Ben Shapiro, conservatives, radical feminists et al.

I don't know I can't entirely blame him as I mentioned before conservatives and the centre-right are thirsty as [BEEP] it's literally this clip (replace 9/11 with non-binary or they/them pronouns are stupid):



Edit: I mean conservatives used to be people who had values that I completely disagreed with. Now it's some kind of weird club (not conservative,) with a moving target where everyone just decides who's the weirdest subgroup of [BEEP] person and then makes a bunch of 'kids these days' type comments about them. Hiding the literal stormfront [BEEP] that's not hard to find on twitter these days. Also the ones who try to be edgy and say trans people should be eradicated. Then the libs get mad at them so they walk it back to 'oh I meant the ideology. We have to go back to 2015' - Michael Knowles. 0 difference between 2015 and now on this topic and they don't mean that but they're not allowed to embrace anything too harsh publicly or they'll be relegated to Stormfrontism and lose their bag.

Camille Paglia has had some... Interesting takes. Very aggressive person again. Has a lot of baggage again. This is from 1994:

Here's the problem. I grew up in the Fifties which was a highly conformist era and I had, there's no doubt, a massive gender dysfunction. My particular aggressive personality was completely out of sync with what was expected of a young girl at that time. I thought I was probably a boy. I was also attracted to women when I was very tiny. Then when puberty hit, suddenly my body changed. Boom] I found myself attracted to creatures I couldn't stand.

I still don't get along with men as erotic partners, but the point is my body became attracted to male bodies. I've dated men, I just haven't had relationships with them. My problem with men I guess would have to be called a political problem. I can mate perfectly well with men on a physical level; I'm very attracted on a physical level. But I don't fall in love with them; I'm not involved with them emotionally. I'm one of the strangest mutant creatures on the face of the earth.

And you see again this is just how a lot of [BEEP] people view themselves. She's a lot older too so it's even worse in that generation.

Paglia identifies as transgender. She reports having gender dysphoria since childhood, and says that "never once in my life have I felt female". She says that she was "donning flamboyant male costumes from early childhood on".

Nevertheless, Paglia says that she is "highly skeptical about the current transgender wave" which she thinks has been produced by "far more complicated psychological and sociological factors than current gender discourse allows". She writes that "In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse. But at the same time, no one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity."

Paglia's views led to a petition demanding University of the Arts to remove her from their faculty, but the university rejected it. Paglia considered it "a publicity stunt" and praised the university's "eloquent statement affirming academic freedom [as] a landmark in contemporary education."

(I do remember her specifically using the trans label too in some interview.)

This bothers me a lot because of her politics nobody has really acknowledged this and even Contrapoints referred to her in this way:

Why read Jordan Peterson when Camille Paglia is right there? Tired of male misogynists being promoted over more qualified female misogynists

Female and woman don't overlap perfectly and I don't think Paglia would argue she's not female but I'm still left wondering - do you know she's trans though?

Contrasting her with Jordan Peterson hah. Cause honestly they are pretty similar.

Like don't get me wrong I don't really take J.K.Rowling seriously when she says 'if I was a teen now I could have be transed' her motivation in engaging with this is clearly mostly a fear of men (or anyone assigned male who is sufficiently masculine I think she'd look the other way in regard to feminine straight trans women who mostly pass most of these people would,) being in female spaces and 'think of the children,' but Camille Paglia? Yeah I see that tbh. First of all she's a huge MRA. Also a feminist but only because she seems to view feminism as choosing not to be in relationships with men lmfao. Thinks women should be more like gay men/sees them as role models. And mostly because she's an academic and kind of a philosopher and philsopher's and academics (in the humanities,) make their entire life work about their fixations and personal complexes and her fixation and personal complex was mostly on androgyny and gender.

I'm honest enough to admit that mother nature wants my body to mate with men. I resisted it. To me, that's the rebellion of feminism. But just because we don't want to be under the power of men, does not mean that we have to continue to say penises are silly, penises are ugly.

Anyway when you get past the bullshit this is how she feels and lives now which will be relatable to so many people:

"My romantic life," she says "is non-existent. Except," she adds, in the way that maybe only she could add, "that, for the past four years, I've had a kind of cult for a Brazilian superstar." The "superstar" is the singer Daniela Mercury. Paglia went to Brazil to give a lecture and fell in love with the music, and the star. Mercury is happily married, and the relationship is platonic. And, says Paglia, "voyeuristic". Fans post phone footage of their idol on the web, so she can, she says, "follow exactly what she's doing every day".

Before Paglia met Maddex, and before she started stalking Brazilian superstars, she used to get regular applications for the post of her girlfriend. Maddex applied and got it. Is she still getting applications? For a moment, she is actually tongue-tied. "I, er, there's absolutely no one I can remotely imagine being interested in me." What? The woman who has said she sees herself as the heir to Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker can't imagine anyone being "interested" in her? "My problem," she says, "is that I do not get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them."

It's beginning to sound, I say, as if most of the sex in her life has been in her books. Has it? "Yes." And does she wish she'd had more? "Yes, I do." But surely, I say, suddenly feeling protective, it isn't too late? "Well," she says, "I was always cautious. I was also cautious about drugs and I'm glad I was, because my generation destroyed itself on psychedelic drugs. If my work looks odd, or sui generis, it's because people whose work should have been a context for my work lost the capacity to write."

The humanities - and philosophy - is neurodivergent and/or [BEEP] people trying to 'fix themselves' prove me wrong. Many such cases. Yes you too Jordan. You aint getting away. As I said before I'm stupid so I don't do this for money I just post online like this.

This is the eternal song for what I'm doing online lol (edit: and funnily enough it's probably my favourite song and not because of the lyrics it's musically a very good song):



Edit: also somewhat off topic but I was googling to find more on that Camille Paglia quote where she talked about never identifying as a female and I actually ended up copying it from a Queen forum in the end. Just ended up reading more of the thread and the OP was ranting about non-binary people after a non-binary person on the forum came out as non-binary, was misgendered so requested pronoun options so people wouldn't accidentally default to the wrong pronouns, and the OP of that thread had basically made a thread complaining about non-binary people lol in response which was targeted at them. On a Queen forum. The OP had a very androgynous username and was OK with binary trans people. Anyway. It's bringing back memories of certain other forums around 2016. Tbf a lot of Queen fans are probably older though.

[Doseone]

My parents use that canned air freshener that just makes stuff smell like chemicals. It doesn't really deodorize, it just masks the smell. It's weird to me. lol.

[Heelsbythebridge]

The hangovers are happening

[Heelsbythebridge]

That goal was so beautiful i could cry

[Heelsbythebridge]

I could actual vomit rewatching that. It's too perfect.

Achingly beautiful.

[Heelsbythebridge]

I just had a random memory being 13 and my mother screaming at me that I only go to her when I need something. Well yeah... I was a minor and she was my parent. Who else would I go to? At the same time she would tell me ad nauseum not to trust my father and he didn't love me.

In my mother's perspective, I was not a person/human being and existed to only serve her needs and be her therapist. I was not allowed any wants or needs of my own; none of my problems or fears or worries mattered, and I should only care about her problems and fears and worries.

Now I'm 30 and scared, and confused about where or who to turn to. The feeling is jolting me back to what I felt over half my life ago. Life sure does go in circles.

In a way this is sort of encouraging. I've been more alone than not most of my life... I can do this.

[Heelsbythebridge]

The day this stops mattering... I'll know I'm truly dead.

But also I spent like 6 years with this not mattering. Was I really living? How do we reconcile the different versions of ourselves throughout our lifespans? Different things mattered to us at different points in time. Is our current version the most "real" one?

[Heelsbythebridge]

I spoke to someone in 2017 who said "You know who your people are." It was an HR person at a company I was phone interviewing with... I don't remember her name or the company but it stuck with me.

I'm afraid to leave western Canada. Even after spending nearly a decade growing up in Montreal, the only place who has ever accepted me (at a specific range in time)... I know western Canada is my real home