An Introduction

J Everett Jarvis

J Everett Jarvis

— 2 min read
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First things first: a furze-pig is a hedgehog. 'Furze' is another (possibly archaic?) word for gorse, and I cannot find the etymology for furze-pig as a term, but Wiktionary insists that it's from the West Country. Checking domains for this new project turned up the mysterious yet quite lovely furzepig.com, a web page which gives us 'The Mower' by Philip Larkin - tw: hedgehog death - but no further clues about the name. However, I am now quite attached to the silliness of the whole thing, so on we go together.

🦔

The Furze Pig is intended as a sort of online zine where I can share my odd little thoughts about my odd little interests and hope that people want to read about them. I wish I had a stronger branding message, or perhaps even a strident manifesto, but unfortunately it's just a good ol' blog by someone who read possibly too much of The Toast (DOT NET!) as a teenager.

Here are some things I am interested in:

  • art/media/culture like every other queer millennial online
  • the meta work of trying to be An Artist after spending the first 30 years of one's life drenched in shame & depression (but like, still a laff)
  • the analogue movement + indieweb revival
  • transing one's gender as an adult in Rowling's Britain
  • seasonal living/the modern English countryside/mild witchery

Here are some things I am consciously avoiding:

  • The Discourse, if it does not even broadly affect my offline life. If I ever find myself knee-deep in some rando's analysis of Nebraskan midterms again, I will scream and scream and never stop screaming
  • AI and Big Tech and LinkedIn and content strategies and the algorithm and cancel culture etc etc etc. I don't care and I don't think I would notice if I woke up tomorrow and it was all gone. There is nothing funny or beautiful about any of it!!!
  • editing any posts more than once (save for being deeply and harmfully wrong about something, in which case please dear god let me correct myself publically). My views may change over time but I have to allow the record of my old self to remain.

I hope you enjoy reading my #content and consider letting me send you emails about it - a great honour in modern society. I can't make any promises as to the frequency of this thing; I am aiming for somewhere between weekly and monthly, but I also know that I'm like two missed doses of citalopram away from total schedule collapse at any given time, so who knows!! In the meantime, do feel free to get in touch if you would like to be minimally-committed pen pals.

okay that's all thanks bye xoxo