Misadventures of a Young Potato @blessedbrick - Tumblr Blog

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Block/filter out #/us politics and #/it's up to us to avoid any political/activism posts if that's not for you

#master post #misadventures of a young potato

inkskinned

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

inkskinned

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

#heartbreaking #this prose is written like poetry #working to make it so we can all have salmon cooked four different ways #it’s up to us #misadventures of a young potato

mildmayfoxe

1) any stretching is better than no stretching

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

3) statistically you will never be the worst person at anything, there is always someone in the world who is worse at stuff than you are

#misadventures of a young potato

setulose

Not to sound like a broken record but does it make anyone else viscerally angry how we realized in the very recent past that we can successfully eradicate devastating human-specific diseases (smallpox) yet now there's a million people telling you not to vaccinate your kids against measles. I know I know "everyone will not just" but also for real we could never have measles again if everyone would just be cool

#get your shots #us politics #it’s up to us #misadventures of a young potato

fibrearts

Starry Night Microsweater

2022 1.3" x 1.6" ~50,000 stitches, 76 stitches/inch 500+ hours in the making. Over 70 different colors of silk thread including thread combinations

jabberwockypie

That’s Althea Crome’s work. You’ve seen her work before if you’ve ever seen the movie Coraline because she did the teeny tiny star sweater and gloves for the stop motion puppets to wear.

She does, however, work even smaller.

elodieunderglass

Thank you @eloso - look at the tiny knits!

#in awe #incredible skill and unbelievable patience #althea crome #misadventures of a young potato

abandonedniche

oh so some people can just listen to a song and understand the lyrics

abandonedniche

what if you’re all lying

abandonedniche

not even an exaggeration

#sarge singing in the house is how I learn the words to songs 98% of the time #I am merely approximating sounds #this drives him nuts #funny enough this doesn't apply to The Beach Boys #I know those words #Sarge looking at me like HOW #it's a secret #(auditory processing disorder)#misadventures of a young potato

Bro after a long difficult week I am facing a new also difficult week

Had to move an entire bookcase and fish tank last night for building maintenance because the patio situation is ongoing. I still have a 40 gal tub of dirt and bike in my bedroom

Still no answer one way or the other from the apartment complex we applied to. They told me to click confirm on the income verification that was 584829385 different steps because their program doesn't allow you to have more than one job. There's no confirm button, just the ability to connect your entire bank account again

The office went sideways while I was gone last week because no one ever listens to me or knows anything. The admin who was still here doesn't keep any information on how to run stuff at her desk she expects me to tell her everything she needs to know before I leave. I gave her the leasing office number to keep at her desk because she doesn't have it written down anywhere and she tried to argue with me. I had two people dip out on meetings they scheduled today with people who came in specifically for those meetings

I want to scream but I'm going to sit nicely at my desk and try to calm down

#I was gone for THREE DAYS #I don't know how everything can go to crap so quickly #I want to cry #new potatoes #misadventures of a young potato

azspot

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

reading-writing-revolution

#I will never stop screaming about this #gen ai #llms #us politics #it’s up to us #misadventures of a young potato

catchaspark

Myth of the Brown Recluse: Fact, Fear, and Loathing Rick Vetter Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA

treat yourself to a uc riverside spider researcher rapidly losing his cool over the course of this article as he desperately tries to convince his interlocutors, The Entire State of California, that there is literally no evidence that we have brown recluses

blessedbrick

This is an incredible article please read it for the sheer shaking rage of this scientist

#spiders don't attack people #they mind their own business #they learn your routine so they can avoid you #I keep two cellar spiders in my living room because they're not bothering me and they eat fungus gnats #literally just leave spiders alone or if you must do something #get a cup and a stiff piece of paper and take them outside #misadventures of a young potato

targetedknowledge

quillusquillus

incredible sounds happening here

jenroses

This is what we call An Argument

vaspider

An Argument/Game

#typical bunny behavior #bunblr #misadventures of a young potato

lvmimis

tbh i love hear me outs but i also love the opposite of hear me outs where it’s like nearly everyone thinks they’re fuckable except you

#ohhhhhhhh I have a long list #unfortunately a big part of my reputation #the Darcy from the Kiera Knightly P&P #among many many others #I have strange taste ig?#I like to think I have high standards #misadventures of a young potato

questcequecestqueca

She played bass on 10,000 songs, including the most-played track of the twentieth century. She was paid $55 per session. Her name never appeared on the albums.

Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, 1964. A woman in a cardigan walks past the receptionist, a Fender Precision bass in her hand like a briefcase. She doesn’t sign autographs. She signs a timesheet.

Her name is Carol Kaye. In three hours, she will record what will become the most-played track of the twentieth century. She’ll pocket fifty-five dollars and head to another studio, on the other side of town, for the next session.

The record label will never put her name on the album.

Between 1957 and 1973, Carol Kaye took part in roughly 10,000 recording sessions. Not as the featured artist, not as a guest, but as a hired hand. She was part of an anonymous collective nicknamed The Wrecking Crew—elite studio musicians who actually played the instruments on your favorite records while the famous bands posed for promotional photos.

The work was relentless. Three albums before the day was over. Stale coffee in paper cups. No rehearsal. The charts arrived minutes before the tape rolled. If you couldn’t read a chart and nail the take in two tries, you didn’t get called for the next session.

Carol could do it on the first try.

She started playing guitar in grimy bars at fourteen because her family couldn’t pay the electric bill. Music wasn’t a romantic dream for her. It was survival. It was a job—factory work with better acoustics and lower pay.

But she was faster and sharper than almost everyone else. She corrected charts in pencil while the producer was still explaining what he wanted. In one session in 1968, she told a famous producer his arrangement sounded like a dying dog. She chose her own line. They kept her version.

That descending bass line that drives the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”? Carol Kaye. The propulsive groove of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”? Carol Kaye. The acoustic-guitar intro to “La Bamba”? Carol Kaye. The iconic theme from Mission: Impossible? Carol Kaye.

She invented techniques on the spot, out of sheer necessity. When the bass sound was too muddy for AM radio, she stuck felt under the strings and used a hard pick instead of her fingers. The tone cut through the static like a blade. It became the sonic signature that defined 1960s pop.

Bassists spent years—decades—trying to crack the secret of the Beach Boys’ gear to get that sound. They were studying the wrong people. They should have been studying Carol.

She received no royalties. No residuals. No gold-record ceremony. No credit on the album sleeves. When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” hit number one, Carol was already back in a studio cutting a soap jingle.

The biggest bands mimed her bass lines on TV variety shows. New York marketing departments decided a mom in classic clothes didn’t fit the rebellious-youth image they were selling. So they simply left her name off the album credits.

For thirty years, almost no one cared. The truth only began to surface in the late 1990s, when music researchers found the same union contract numbers on thousands of hit records. The very documents meant to preserve studio musicians’ anonymity betrayed them.

Think about it. Every time you heard “Good Vibrations,” “River Deep – Mountain High,” the Righteous Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, or Sonny and Cher, you were hearing Carol Kaye. She composed the soundtrack of an entire generation’s youth.

And yet the records still say nothing. She’s now over eighty. She wrote instructional books. She trained countless bassists. She is finally starting to be recognized by music historians who uncovered the truth about The Wrecking Crew.

But she never got what she deserved: her name on those albums. Credit for the music that defined an era. Recognition that those bass lines everyone associates with the “Beach Boys” were, in fact, Carol Kaye’s.

Fifty-five dollars a session. Ten thousand sessions. The most-played track of the twentieth century.

And the world didn’t know her name.

clevermanka

She was admitted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025 but refused, fuck yeah, Carol. Her official website is incredible.

#carol kaye #incredible woman #session recordings are BRUTAL #both Sarge and I left that world bc we couldn't keep up #misadventures of a young potato

inthetags

Reblog and put in the tags if you can remember where you got the shirt you're currently wearing.

#my mom brought it home for me from her vacation trip #misadventures of a young potato

notecardpasta

When a small mammal scrunches up and cleans its face and whiskers with its little hands very rapidly. I just wanted to give you that thought for a moment did u like it.

blessedbrick