Bisexual, polyamorous, opinionated, agender, complex-PTSD and cancer survivor, great cook, gamer, photographer, geek, all swirlled around in a bucket - voila
i made a post like this before but I can't find it now. so. I'll just redo it.
What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?
It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.
My first news thing I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. I vaguely remember watching the news with my grandparents before that, but that's the first story I remember, in part because my second grade teacher had us go play so she could watch the verdict đ
The Russian Invasion of Afghanistan... though it was probably the ongoing invasion/war as the initial one happened in 1979 and these memories are from the very early 80s. Big missiles being paraded and discussion of Russia and Afghanistan.
From Alice Springs, Australia it seemed like not only a different country but an entirely different planet. I would have been between 5 and 7.
Itâs recently been found that even hive insects rest. Bees will play with colorful toys. Ants sleep for about 1 minute but they do it so frequently it amounts to a few hours per day. Even trees take breaks.
The only things that work without rest are machines; literally everything that lives requires rest.
EVERYTHING THAT LIVES REQUIRES REST. STOP JUDGING YOURSELF FOR NOT BEING A ROBOT.
robots require very frequent breaks! welding machines generally have it programmed in that they canât run so long they melt themselves. ive overseen two different manufacturing robots now and each of them were fragile, finicky idiots that require constant maintenance and repair. they pause in between moves, in between jobs. youâre always keeping an eye on programming errors, on coolant levels, on heat. youâre always pulling bits of scrap out of joints, sweeping up debris, washing off nozzles and untangling hoses. and even then it snaps a chain and takes a whole morningâs vacation.
Also, please keep in mind, not only do even robots need downtime, many a scientist, engineer, or person who works with advanced technology on the regular can tell you that even robots/machines will sometimes refuse to work without if they donât have their special object/snack/plushie with them. In both industrial and domestic settings. Professionals often donât like to mention it, because itâs not scientific that one of the factoryâs main computers wonât boot up unless a specific teddy bear is placed next to it, but they will sign off on a man hunt if anyone fucks with that bear in any meaningful way.
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize thereâs nothing in there. Not metaphoricallyâthe armor is literally empty. It doesnât appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body mightâve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what heâll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy whoâs got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didnât say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. Iâm not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. Weâre pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures Iâd put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so Iâm not sure why I asked.
Thereâs not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs Iâve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though Iâve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where itâs barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, Iâll never understand. But itâs a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. Itâs like heâs watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. Iâm careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. Thereâs no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like heâs looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. Thereâs nothing there. I ask him whatâs wrong, and again he points. Itâs the most emotion Iâve ever seen from him, and itâs barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When Iâm finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesnât put it on right away. I ask him if somethingâs still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I canât add anything else. Even if he could ask, thereâs no room left.
Next time he comes back, thereâs nothing wrong with his armorâhe lets me check to make sure. I ask him what heâs doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. Itâs in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but Iâll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but Iâm not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. Itâs candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. Itâs flavored with cinnamon. Iâm surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but itâs my own fault so I canât complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him Iâll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave itâs dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where heâs going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when Iâve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesnât move to leave.
I ask if heâs going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know heâs not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him Iâm grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him Iâve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him itâs a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone elseâs empty armor with trinkets. Iâm not sure if thatâs really why he does it. I tell him I donât have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. Iâm not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe itâs nothing at all.
â
I didnât edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
Okay for those of you living in pitiful ignorance, take a raw ear of corn with the husk on and cut all the way around the base (as pictured: above the point where the husk meets the cob, so that the entire husk is severed but still wrapped around the corn. Do not cut through the cob.) Then, with the husk still on, microwave it for 5-7 minutes. It'll basically steam it inside the husk. Remove from microwave --it will be hot, so use a mitt or a towel--and firmly pull the top of the husk/silk, which should come off easily in one piece, unsheathing a flawless corn on the cob. If it doesn't, you probably need to cut a little higher around the base, so all the leaves are severed. No picking off silk!
If you prefer your corn less cooked than 5-7 minutes of in-husk steaming will give you, this whole technique still works if you do it for as little as 1 minute!
Working an office job will truly make you have the wildest enemies, bc why is my nemesis rn a woman Iâve never met and who exclusively haunts me by sending diabolical emails, and also a specific guy who left my company before I even worked here and made the system so fuckass that it ruined procedures for like a year
Yesterday my nemesis (woman Iâve never met and whose face Iâve never seen) sent my office an email so rude, basically saying we had fucked up every project she ever ordered from us, one of the worst emails Iâve ever read in my life.
And it pissed me off so badly that I spent the ENTIRE WORK DAY today compiling evidence from every project my team has ever done for her, pulling past emails sheâd sent us, putting together an entire case proving that she had been the problem all along. That she got projects mixed up, that sheâd made requests that were nonsensical, literally everything you could possibly imagine. Screenshots of emails, reports weâd submitted, EVERYTHING.
This woman in particular has been terrorizing my team for years, her name is almost a slur in my office, I had simply had ENOUGH of her.
I put all of this evidence together and sent it to all of my bosses at 4:30pm. Then I took a long break to eat a sweet treat and drink some tea.
After my break, my bosses all called in an emergency meeting with me and they said they read my report and fucking loved it. And I sat on a teams call with my bossâ boss as she wrote my nemesis the scathing email I had always fantasized about sending, using the evidence Iâd compiled, and hit send.
It was the most satisfying workday Iâve had since I got hired.
sometimes i talk about how awful it was to feel trapped by my daily makeup routine and how i couldnât leave the house without putting on a full face and it played a major role in the misery of my high school experience because i had to spend so much extra time getting ready in the mornings and that followed me into my early 20s as well and it was hell and it was so incredibly liberating to go through the slow and uncomfortable but ultimately essential process of getting my bare face back and having makeup be an optional accessory instead of a mandatory uniform. and the response always tends to be ah yes of course, because of your trans and your masculine. and itâs like aha so close! actually! I think if I ended up being a feminine cis woman I also still would not deserve even a second of that shit! I think trans women and nonbinary people and every human alive should have the option to leave the house without a single cosmetic product ever touching their face! but thanks for playing!
To my 25 - 35 year olds, you've reached the age where people around you are starting to give up on themselves because they think it's too late. Don't let that energy rub off on you. It's not too late.
ok so this is The Court Jester with Danny Kaye and it is the best fucking movie i swear. Itâs a comedy musical robin hood parody thing about an incompetent moron and his extremely competent ass-kicking girlfriend taking down a tyrannical king and restoring the throne to the rightful heir
-the rightful heir is a baby and they can tell itâs the right baby because of a giant birthmark on his asscheek
-the main characterâs only talent is singing and the rest of the pseudo robin-hood group just kinda tolerate him because he repeatedly fucks up
-he gets hypnotized into believing he is this amazing swashbuckling sword fighting hero along the lines of Wesley from the Princess Bride and ends up fighting the villain while snapping in and out of hypnosis
-the vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison, the chalice with the palace has the brew that is true âwhatâ
-he stumbles his way through the entire plot and never knows what the hell is going on
-Danny Kaye is the funniest motherfucker youâve never heard of
And a fun tidbit from the filming was that Danny Kaye had never fenced before this film, so he was trained by Basil Rathboneâs stunt double who was also the fight coordinator. Kaye got so proficient so quickly, that Rathbone himself had to do most of the duel scenes between them as the fight coordinator eventually couldnt keep up with him on the more technical parts of the fight. If you watch closely, you can see that Rathbone stays on camera doing the fencing for a much larger percentage of time than he normally did by that point in his career, and Kaye does all but a couple of shots of his own fencing, because HIS double couldnt keep up and make it believable.
My mum adored this movie so I watched it A LOT as a kid. A recurring quote in my family is the "vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison, the chalice with the palace has the brew that is true" and then "The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon, the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true".
Also it has a young Angela Lansbury in it, and who doesn't want a young Angela Lansbury. She's so very hot.
